PS2 & Blue-bottom discs

[Fred Flintstone]

Do PS2 blue-bottom discs (CD-ROMs) harm the system's laser?

I recently purchased a factory sealed 390001 model fat PS2 when my launch model bit the dust since they're known to be the most relliable, and at the same time purchased my first ever blue-bottom game, SSX. When I play SSX, compared to my silver-bottom DVDs, it spins crazy fast in the drive and makes a lot more noise. Is this in any way harming my laser or other internal drive components by putting excessive stress on my machine?

[Tomara]

Ah, the wonderful world of DRE! The old ROD! :D

They don't harm the laser, Sony's old lasers are just unreliable and faulthy. Those blue discs are CDs, the silvery ones DVDs. Two different types of discs and the PS2 needs to switch between them. What happens? They get stuck (for some reason or other) and refuse to read CDs/DVDs. Usually it's the CDs that don't work anymore, because CDs are harder to read. A good cleaning might help, or you may need to realign the laser.

[Fred Flintstone]

Well, like I said, my PS2 is brand new (albeit an older production model) so I don't think I have to worry about DREs for a while. I just want to know if it's "safe" for my system to play CD-ROM games on it. I'd like the laser to last as long as possible.

[Tomara]

It's a PS2, PS2s are cheap and easily replaced :/ If you have CD games you want to play, just play them. The newer models seem to have more problems with CDs than the fat PS2s anyway.

[ShadowLaguna]

The only blue-bottom PS2 game I own is Tekken Tag Tournament, and I used to play that a lot on my phat PS2. My PS2 still works fine, after all these years. Hell, I play a lot of my PS1 games on my PS2. I doubt that you'll have any troubles either.