Not my finest moment, but I once did the opposite. The PS2's optical drive was clearly failing, it would work with some discs but not others. Cleaning the lens

Not my finest moment, but I once did the opposite. The PS2's optical drive was clearly failing, it would work with some discs but not others. Cleaning the lens didn't help. The Internet told me it was possible to use a screwdriver to turn something in the console to increase power to the laser (iirc). I tried this, but I ended up bricking the PS2. Oops. No big deal, replaced it the next day. And yes, I'm very much a 'software person'. You know what they say about the one thing worse than an electronic engineer with a C compiler. I recall that when replacing it, the electronics exchange place I went to would only sell a used PS2 when bundled with a controller, you couldn't buy the console on its own. I did the obvious thing: I sold them a controller for store credit, then bought a PS2 bundled with a controller.