A VERY Strange SCPH-30001 Motherboard

Good evening, everyone.

Last evening I disassembled my very first fat PlayStation 2, ever, and I wish I had known that what I have is highly unusual BEFORE putting the entire thing back together again. I picked it up in an as-is condition from a local thrift store in my area, and had only disassembled it to clean the fan exhaust.

While looking at the board, I was impressed by its compact size and had started looking up other boards online out of pure curiousity. What I noticed is that every other board I had seen was far larger (longer), and looked to take up the entirety of the bottom of the case. Again, this was NOT what my board had looked like (and in case you're wondering, NO: there was nothing missing from the inside of the PS2, and it powers on & functions perfectly, save for the DVD drive not reading discs).

My board is square, with a large heatsink.

When I get an opportunity, I'll take it apart again and present some photos of what I have.

In the meantime, however, does anyone out there have any clue as to what I have?

PHOTOS (apologies for the blurriness of the photos, my phone camera focus no longer works!)





Now, I double-checked the rest of the chassis, and outside of the DVD drive, expansion adapter interface and fan, there's nothing else in this PS2.

Is this type of board normal?!

 

Just disassembled now, couldn't wait. Photos are forthcoming.

 

You have an early console, that's all. Unless your main board has something different about it (unknown chip revisions and models etc), it is just another mass-produced retail console.

 

That's a GH-004, ten screws U.S. Launch console.

I have four of that type.

That console is more complex than newer units and it has the "auto tilt motor" which pisses off noobs (the white parallax cog moves with an automatic adjust routine).
Because people who think they know about the PS2 can't deal with that unit (mostly because the unit aways move the tilt adjust back to the original position) they think it is a bad console but it's actually one of the best Expansion Bay models that there is. The only flaw it has is that it only work properly with the KHS-400B laser.
By the way, that "white cog" "sweet spot" position is saved on the console EEPROM.

 

This MB reminds me of GameCube MB. Would be interesting to know is it bigger than cube's MB.

 

Some pics of my own.
That one had a modchip fitted at some point. I had the modchip removed when softmod got useful enough to allow for launching everything (even copied DVDR discs) but game CD-ROMs. Because modchips cause collateral damage I prefer to keep my systems vanilla.

 

It's funny that you mention this. While looking up laser repairs I came across a video explaining how to manually correct this issue. I'm going to give it a try later today.

Why do you consider it one of the best of the old models?

 

You can't "manually correct this issue". What the idiot do is disconnect the automatic adjust motor and leave the thing "floating" holding itself with just the magnetic tension of the motor. Any slight jamming of the console will make the gear "walk".

The proper way of setting up the adjust is digitally edit the value of the eeprom field in a hex editor.

But before that, you need to make sure the laser pickup is working. Can you test that laser pickup on other PS2 ?

 

The only other PS2 I have is a 39001. The power supply has blown caps, so I can't determine if the rest of the machine works, as I don't have another power supply available for it.

Can I dump the EEPROM using a regular EEPROM reader? If so, what value do I have to adjust?

 

To dump and write to the eeprom we use a tool called "lenschanger".

 

I should make a new thread for this, but has anyone tried lenschanger? There is very little info about it online.
It says, that it will only work properly if it has access to DEV1 mode. Does FMCB give you DEV1 access?

 

@l_oliveira: while we're on this topic of this console and its auto-tilt motor, do you know how good the diagnosis feature of the PlayStation 2 actually is? From my memory, the PlayStation 2 user manual states that turning that one will cause the console to calibrate the CD/DVD drive (including the auto-tilt motor, which you once mentioned too).

"DEV1" probably refers to the MC booting feature of some modchips. You don't need it to run lensechanger. Just boot lensechanger from either FMCB or uLaunchELF.

On the other hand, "DEV1" in the SONY service manual refers to the DVD ROM chip.

 

It's actually very good. If the drive isn't suffering of too weak laser, is mechanically too far of the adjust sweet spot (there's a parallax adjust screw on the arm of the optical pickup too) or is dirty the Diagnosis function won't help too much. The only problem with the Diagnosis function is that it does not save the new adjust so every time you reset the PS2 you have to turn it on again. Similar to the PS1 driver enhancements setting.

SONY has that adjust tools which connect to the PS2 motherboard through the RS232C cable. That's the real PROPER way of adjusting the console laser. The consoles ship from the factory with some sort of "average" setting. When the service mode tools are used, the console will adjusted with settings that are specific for that laser pickup.

Sometimes I had customers bring in consoles that have been serviced at SONY service centers with the serial port tool and I had problems with replacing the laser. When I discovered the existence of the TESTMODE and the serial port tool that became clear. I started to use lenschanger to "fix" cases where the EEPROM saved adjusts were too off for the pickup I was putting on the console and usually I had pretty good results with that.

Basically if you're trying to replace a PS2 optical pickup and it's giving you headaches (aka, the laser work fine on all other PS2s you test but the one you're trying to put it into) usually it's the EEPROM that is adjusted with unusual settings.

 

I guess I'm a noob Because, I tore out my drive and just used hdd osd. I also put a fan where the ps2 drive used to sit.

 

A case of ruining a perfectly fine PS2 ?

Anyway it CAN'T be one of these as it won't power on without the drive board (power on signal go through the drive board.... (did you keep the drive electronics board ?)

 

Yah I mounted the drive board via some studs I made, but rather than describe it I will post pictures tonight or tomorrow (probably tonight though). I am extremely bad at describing things.

 

Anyway, in the end if it worked right for you, who am I to say anything... But surely feels like a downgrade losing the drive functions... hehe

But hey, while I admit these early US PS2s are a pain in the butt to service, while they work properly they're the best expansion bay models out there. (people dislike them because they're hard to mod lol)

 

Interesting. Now I'm curious about that. What would be the technical differences/advantages of a GH-004 expansion bay compared to other models?

 

Better construction. SONY aways develop their machines over time to make them cheaper to produce, where their goal is aways maximizing their profit margin, not increase product quality.

 

Here are those pics I promised.
I Know Its not perfect and it was done quickly, but I'm content with how it came out. Also I mounted the drive bezel so when you look at it from the outside it looks like the drive is still there.