When I went to test a PS2 controller with my personal PS2, I realized that the console itself had broken. Seemingly out of nowhere, the PS2 power indicator light would not turn on. I disassembled the console to take a look inside and start troubleshooting. I thought that it had possibly just been jostled around and the ribbon cable connecting the power light had come loose. After disconnecting and reconnecting everything, though, it turned out that that wasn’t the case.
This is where I started to fall down a bit of a rabbit hole. I was trying to test the power supply, but up until this point I have had an absolutely terrible multimeter and the readings have never made sense and I couldn’t trust them to be accurate. At this point, I knew I needed to level up my game if I wanted to improve my diagnostics. I bought a Fluke 115 off of Facebook MarketPlace, and then I was ready to resume testing of the power supply. With it plugged in, I was able to see that AC power was flowing into the power supply, but there was no DC power coming out of the supply to the motherboard. This was the definitive proof I needed to let me know that the power supply was dead. With this discovery, I knew that I needed to acquire a replacement power supply.
I started to keep an eye out for broken PS2s on MarketPlace, and within a few weeks I saw a listing pop up that included 5 broken consoles for $100, one of which was a PS2. The seller confirmed that the power indicator light came on, but the console didn't work. I purchased the consoles from him, and got to work with the power supply swap. After swapping the broken one for the working one, the console began working normally again.