Picked up so many of the things, now I just need to give them a good cleanout and make sure as many of their innards as possible are working. Some have liquid damage but most seem to be OK. Compared with the Sega Saturn, these things are a breeze to work on.

Welcome to the army of retro PlayStations! I’ve managed to accumulate a rather ridiculous pile of the original Sony consoles, all in various states of disrepair. Some work, some don’t, and some look as though somebody has been having a particularly bad day with a screwdriver.

The eject buttons seem to be a common annoyance. One console has its lid taped shut because it won’t stay closed, while another is missing parts of the CD mechanism altogether. Who steals a PlayStation laser and leaves the rest of the machine behind? Honestly!

Quite a few appear to have modchips fitted as well. I’ll have to investigate those properly when I get around to repairing the machines. I’ve already done some basic power-on testing and pulled several of them apart to see what I’m dealing with.

A couple have liquid damage, including one where something unpleasant seems to have entered through the front of the case. Lovely! Others look much healthier, although a machine switching on doesn’t necessarily mean its CD drive is going to read anything.

The good news is that replacement optical-drive assemblies don’t seem terribly expensive. At the time I could find complete laser and motor assemblies online for roughly eight dollars, so at least some of these repairs might be worth attempting.

The consoles themselves weren’t particularly expensive either. If I remember correctly, seven of them cost around fifteen dollars before postage, with the shipping making up a considerable part of the total. Still, that’s not a bad pile of equipment for the money.

I’ve also got a collection of PlayStation 2 machines to investigate, including both original and slim models, along with yet more Xbox consoles from another auction. Apparently I haven’t got enough unfinished projects already!

None of these original PlayStations is one of the fancy models with RCA audio and video connectors on the back. They’re the more ordinary versions, but that’s fine with me. There should still be plenty to investigate.

Now comes the interesting part: finding out which ones can be brought back to life, which ones need spare parts, and which ones might end up donating their innards to the others.

There are going to be PlayStation bits everywhere!