A while back, I bought a Japanese exclusive midnight blue ps2, and when I was cleaning it and testing it, I came across an issue I never even took into consideration. Once the power supply was swapped out for a North American power supply, the issue that cropped up involved the dvd laser. The ps2 struggled to read any games, and when I went to swap out the laser, I realized that the laser was not standard. It seems I was unlucky and got a ps2 that used the dreaded PVR-702w laser.

This laser is almost impossible to get your hands on, so when I found a listing on eBay for it, I bought two of them. Much to my disappointment, when the "lasers" came in the mail, they were listed as an ornament, and the package came with a singular triple a battery in it. I had been scammed by the eBay (re)seller.

The project was shelved for the time being since the ps2 worked with freeHDBoot, and therefore the bad laser was not an issue. Though I did not stop looking for replacement lasers, which bring me to just a few days ago. I decided to look for the laser again, but what I stumbled upon was a laser that looked very similar, and may just work as a replacement. I found the 24 pin version of the PVR-502w laser which looked almost identical, but the functionality has yet to be tested. I have ordered 2 of them from different sources, and will make another post once they are in, and tested in the ps2. I have high hopes for this experiment.