so today I opened it up and cleaned the laser with 70% rubbing alcohol on a q-tip, waited until it evaporated, then cleaned again
I got this for MGS3 online mode which now has community servers, it would load the base MGS3 game but when it launched the ELF for the online mode, the system hangs so I can't soft-reset. after cleaning it loaded twice, but when I connected the network adapter again the same thing happened
tried MK: deception, socom 1, 2, and 3, all hang the console on loading screen
tried TH pro skater 3, brings me to main menu but when I test the network settings it hangs
i had FMCB installed, ELFs won't launch or if they do they don't function correctly, loading the FTP server on ULE also hangs the system, and SMS loads infinitely. trying to run the FMCB installer on either USB or memory card also hangs the system
I even installed FMCB onto another memory card that never had it installed before on my slim PS2 (broken lid and the fix makes the console think the lid is always closed and thus I cannot launch the ELF for the MGS3 online patches) and retested all of the above
so the main problem seems to be ELF execution. is this a bad RAM or CPU issue? is something wrong when the network adapter is involved and why would that be? my old fat PS2 had its network port fried by a faulty refurbished HDD, but then it just stopped detecting the network adapter, that makes this even more confusing
i might just buy another because i was hoping i'd be able to play MGS3 online again instead of figuring out why ELFs won't execute properly, but if i can fix this i'd rather not be out of $60 and the cost for a second console
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UPDATE:
i narrowed it down to the network adapter, when i have the network adapter plugged in, games hang when loading, when removed, every game mentioned above loads with no problems, cleaning seems to have worked well
i bought a new network adapter, hopefully that fixes it. i just hope its the network adapter that is bad and not the port, i suppose it hangs because the console initializes the network adapter hardware but the adapter fails, i suppose if the port was bad it wouldn't initialize
very weird issue i have here yeah?
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UPDATE 2:
so I tested it again with\without network adapter, and when I said the game "hangs", if I remove the network adapter the game continues to load up, I can leave it in for 3 minutes and right when i remove it, the game resumes
one might say my issue here is, perhaps, obscure