here's the thing, Took my chances with a slim ps2 and soldered a modbo 4.0 to it to make it a bit more usefull. After a bit of fighting and few resolders, booted it up and the chip itself works fine, boots ULE from memorycard and all the usuals. The problem with it is that i seem to have killed the original system of the console completely. Using normal boot type, all i get is a black screen, with or without original game, and it won't load the original interface at all. Currently only way to use it is to boot an ELF from memory card. Normally i wouldn't care since there's always HDLoader, but in this case, as the console is V15 slim, it's pretty useless if it won't run disks. Since i did use a way too big soldering iron and my soldering skills are a bit sub-bar for stuff like ps2 modding, im pretty sure i fried something while putting up the chip. Now the problem is that im not even nearly as familiar with PS2's than i should be so i have no idea what i fried and where some line to BIOS perhaps.. Im sure someone here has some idea of what i possibly fried. any help is more than appreciated i'll post the install pic for this particular chip in few minutes when i find one. edit: here's the install diagram:
Could this be a new contribution to this thread? http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13636 Seriously: I presume you have checked that your modchip supports your particular machine? I think I remember reading that one group had to change their FPGA code after Sony released a new version of the drive controller, but the usual modchip descriptions didn't mention that change; it was only indicated by a small colored point somewhere on the top of the FPGA... Check the points A,B,G,H,I, as they are used to connect the modchip to the drive controller. If you can't see anything obvious, use a multimeter with continuity tester. I'm not sure whether you have access to the other side of those vias, but if you do make sure you haven't broken one of those traces by melting its via. If I remember correctly, SX is only used for PS1 games, but you might want to check that as well. The same goes for CX. I think those SMD resistors can get lost way too easy when using the wrong soldering iron... I would expect the BIOS points (R,W,M,N,O,P,Q,T,U,V) to be okay, as you can boot from memory card. Could you try to install the latest release of FMCB using this console? In the unlikely case that this works, you can expect the connection to your drive controller to work as well, as FMCB needs it to do its magic. Another idea, just in case: you could try to disconnect the +3.3V line of your modchip, but leave all other wires as they are. That should disable the chip without causing any further harm; if your system boots, you have a faulty (or incompatible) chip or firmware. Good luck!
thanks for the honours of offering a place on the thread on a serious note, it kinda does fit there, i got impatient and not having proper tools for this and it being first slimline i've done it was rather expected that this will happen. i did trace most the pins with multimeter to ensure that they are connected and there are no short circuits anywhere. I'll take another peek on A, B, G, H,I tho since them being smallest points to solder at, i had some real issues since i used nearly 2mm soldering iron tip -_- it does look too horrible to even put up a pic of it but supposedly the contacts themselve are fine. As mentioned the chip itself does work too, just the original stuff died, which is why i thought that i'd had fried something. on a sidenote, if i did fry one of those, is it even fixable at all or can i just throw this thing away ? I'm gonna try and disconnect the chip and see what happens there and get back to it later or possibly tomorrow thanks for that. i'll also try to install FMCB, but i honestly doubt that there's anything wrong with the drive as i can browse data from disks with ule, watch avi's with SMS and whenever i put a game in it starts reading and then just stops. and as forementioned, refuses to load the standard "OS" at all. in any case, i'll test those and i'll try to get a scan of the board so that you can laugh at it and possibly see something that's beyond my technical experience edit: here's a scan. be warned, the image is 10MB clickety click edit2: tested disconnecting the chip and that kills the console completely. It seems that it tries to read a disk all the time, hte motor is spinning even when there's no disk inserted. Could indicate a problem with the controller.
apparently i have just been hasty with this whole thing and certainly not trusting myself checked the drive controller lines with proper tools (took a 2400dpi scan of the board) and there was a splatter under G that shorted it. also resoldered M and Q since they looked suspicious. still looks horrible and is by far the worst quality mod i've ever made but atleast it runs now. sorry for the trouble and thank you SilverBull for taking your time to put up with my nonsense
You're welcome :icon_bigg. Glad I could help; I just wrote an answer to your previous message, but I'm too lazy to edit that one all over, so here it is... I hope I didn't sound too harsh. It doesn't look too bad for a 2mm tip, though, I've seen worse... I remember the mainboard of an old Sony radio which needed to have some capacitors replaced. It turned out the traces would simply fall off the board when doing so; and they did, massively. Solution was to replace the (SMD) capacitors with far bigger ones (why bother with SMD when you have to rework that section anyway?), then ignoring the bad/partial traces and using regular wiring instead. I'm really confused now. If uLE (or other homebrews) can read the disc, your drive is fine. I would expect the 5 connections to be okay as well then, as any disconnected one would render the drive pretty useless. This may be a stupid question, but did you check that your modchip supports that particular slimline board? That is, do you know someone or have read at a reliable source that your particular modchip does indeed work with slimline boards having that specific BIOS version, model number and date code? For example, FMCB stopped working on slimlines beginning (if I remember correctly) with date code 9C, because Sony has fiddled with (or completely removed) the OSDSYS upgrade facility FMCB exploits. Current modchips not only interface with the drive controller, but perform quite heavy patching of OSDSYS as well. Therefore, they depend on what version of OSDSYS is running. This seems not to have caused problems in the past, as the code being patched was pretty stable. However, a single change to OSDSYS could theoretically confuse the patching procedure to a point where it fails completely; a good patcher would simply refuse to do anything at all, but a bad one might overwrite arbitrary code that would crash the console instantly. The reason why this patching is necessary lies in how modchips work: they trick the drive controller into identifying a disc as something it might not be. There are two completely different kinds of "disc identification" going on here: The first one is done by the drive controller itself, and uses low-level information from the disc itself. This is the kind of identification modchips interfere with by means of the A,B,G,H,I lines. If the drive controller identifies a disc as "unknown", it won't allow access AT ALL; it'll simply report the error (an unmodified OSDSYS displays the infamous red nebula in this case), then lock up. To re-authenticate the disc, it is needed to cycle the disc tray (even for slimlines; the commands are interpreted the same way, even though there is no tray). The second identification is based on what files are present on the disc itself, and used by OSDSYS to start the disc (SYSTEM.CNF with "BOOT2" entry => PS2 game, SYSTEM.CNF with "BOOT" entry => PS1 game, ...). Therefore, to start a disc that would not normally start, the modchip first has to force the drive controller into authenticating it as something it likes, like a PS2 game from the correct region. Then, OSDSYS sees the real files on the disc and starts the appropriate application (main ELF for PS2 games, PS1 emulator, DVD player). However, this might cause a problem if the disc type detected by OSDSYS does not match the one reported by the drive controller; retail games typically read this in order to verify that they execute from original media. To avoid nasty side effects, modchips patch OSDSYS in order to get a callback for the "correct" disc type, then force a re-authentication of the disc before starting the application, if necessary. You can see how this logic works on an arbitrary (modded) console by opening the browser screen, then inserting various discs and closely watching what disc icons appear. For example, one of my modchips reports all game discs as PS2 DVDs even if they are PS1 CDs; starting them does work, however, because they are re-authenticated as needed. I'm not saying that all modchips ever built work this way, though, so you could get completely different readings on your console. However, it seems this procedure is used pretty extensively by modchips supporting something called "autoboot" for all discs; some old chips require you to hold down buttons in order to start the disc in the correct way, and I'm pretty sure they needed to do that because the OSDSYS patches weren't known then. I don't know, it depends on what layers a via connects to and what part of it is actually fried. If a via has fallen through/disconnected and was meant to connect some inner layers, I'd say its not possible. However, if it was only meant to connect the outer sides of the mainboard, you might have a chance to replace it by regular wiring, that would go around the board and connect the loose ends of the destroyed via. I don't know whether that would work for these lines, though, as the extra wire could catch noise and confuse the chips even more.
That was a good reading and yeah, i did confirm that the chip was compatible and the instructions especially described the type of board and dissassembly of my unit. it's it's a GH-051-32. (same isntall diagram as the one i posted above but the printed version i used states my mobo model) My supplier is also very reliable and good with these things so chances are quite small that i'll get imcompatible parts as long as i care to provide him with all the needed info And what comes to the drive working with uLE, believe me, my first expression was exactly "W T F !?" I've never seen a modchip or a console behave like that, and unless you think properly over it it doesn't really seem too logical. The drive was completely fine and everything worked but the main OS wouldn't run at all and inserting a game disk just gave a quick spin and then halted. In any case im just glad that i didn't actually fry it even tho I was prepared to just toss it away. and you weren't really being harsh with that. as i typed above if you ask me, i should just redo it but i just wowed that i'll never ever mod a slim ps2 again. Wanted to try it and now it's done so i'll leave that for others .. No wonder people charge a lot for doing those :\
