It's ten years old, but it's still OK by me...until this week!
Way back around 1995, yours truly plunked down some money on what was said to be way ahead of it's time. I'm talking about the original Sony Playstation. Ten years have since passed and there has been a Playstation 2 with Playstation 3 arriving next year. I don't care about all the fancy bells and whistles of all the new gaming systems available today. Heck, I don't need to be able to go online and play "Madden 2006" with a kid in China, and I don't need a built in DVD player when I have two already. Call it by whatever you want: Playstation One, Playstation X, PS1, PSX...it was just fine for me, until this week when I popped in "NBA Live 2001" only to discover it was scratched. Not knowing what to do other than breath and wipe the CD with my shirt from the inside out in a straight line, I turned to the Internet for help. I came across a website called eHOW.com which had a section devoted to this type of thing. These are actual tips submitted by "experts" and also are said to work on audio CD's too. At the end, I'll tell you what I found out.
- Boil a pot of water on the stove, drop the CD in for a minute, take it out, let it air dry, and the scratch is gone!
- Smear toothpaste over the disc, wipe with a cloth (colgate gel works best)
- Same as above except with peanut butter...no peanuts, only smooth and creamy.
- A tea kettle of water you let come to a boil. Hold the bottom of the disc over the steam and place in the freezer for an hour. Remove it and allow it to come to room temperature, wipe with a clean dry cloth.
- "Reddi Whip" whipped cream (the one in the can, NOT "Cool Whip")
- WD-40. Spray it on, wipe it off.
- Lemon Pledge. Spray it on, wipe off.
- Clear liquid floor wax. Apply with clean cloth, wait ten minutes and wipe off.
- Palmolive dish soap. Apply with cloth, rinse off with hot water and stick in freezer overnight.
- If scratch is visible, use a "Sharpie" to fill in the scratch (video game CD's only with the black underside)
- Light a candle and hold the scratched portion over the flame.
- Soak disc in a pie plate and pour Jack Daniel's over until covered. Let soak an hour and then stick in freezer overnight. In the morning, remove from freezer and hold under hot water faucet. Wipe with dry cloth.
I'm not making any of this stuff up. I would advise you NOT to do any of these tricks because there's a fuzzy line between helpful hints and someone posting a prank. As I said, there was one thing I did try: Lemon Pledge. While it didn't do any damage, it didn't fix the problem either. Since you can't buy games anymore except for a few here and there, I'll have to live without it. All I can do is hope for some kind of revival of the PSX in 25 years like it's happening with Atari and Colecovision right now. Any tricks I can use without purchasing a lame repair kit that doesn't work? Send them to me. I'm still keeping my PSX anyway. THAT'S the way I see it today!
posted by Dave Sypniewski at
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
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