Final Fantasy IX - Stuck in Cleyra's Trunk (real disc)

As the topic says, I am having trouble proceeding through Cleyra's Trunk in Final Fantasy IX due to loading problems. Two screens after the first moogle in the trunk (which is to say, the screen right after crossing the small wooden bridge), the transition occurs for loading the next screen, but it never manages to load. This is a known issue with ROMulation's rip, but I am using an ORIGINAL copy of the game on an unmodded Playstation One (the small model). I'm fairly confident about the condition of my disc, so....

Any thoughts? Is my disc badly scratched after all, or is this a known problem? I seem to remember making it past this part before, with the same disc and the same hardware, so...... :/

 

Probably a combination of a scratched disc and a weak laser.

I had a similar problem with the loadings on a few of my FF games on my old grey PS1. I had to open it up and adjust the laser's amplifier. It worked for quite a while more, but then finally it stopped.

 

Adjust the amplifier, eh? I assume this would require fully opening my PSOne and modifying the hardware. How involved is such a task; is it worth it?

If not, I guess I'm going to have to abandon my real save and start over with an emulator - not very appealing, because I've been working on the playthrough for about 9 hours. Nonetheless, I know that there are two PS1 emulators for the Wii; I do not recall their names. Methinks I'd have to do some fiddling at Cleyra's Trunk, judging by the comments on the ROMulation rip. Any thoughts on that?

 

I never did it on the small PSOne. But it wasn't very hard on the big grey PSX I had.

 

Hmm. I'm spitballing here, but it seems likely that the PSOne had drastic changes in the hardware structure to make it harder to open and modify, so......

If I can't find any clear instructions, I guess it's time for emulation.