I think my PSX DVR is a refurb? Info inside...

Well my PSx finally arrived, it was in pretty bad shape (Side broken and really really dirty)..

The void label was intact!

Anyway so I decided to strip it down to clean it and take photo's for my PSx blog. Well first off it seemed a little odd inside, the white stickers which hold down some wires ect had been torn and covered over with this black fabric tape stuff (Very neat looking).


Another thing was this o.0 ....





It's located near the socket for the laser, it may have something to do with it.. Also an IC near it (Controller IC?) looks like it has been replaced (lots of flux residue around it) it had a thermal pad on it. [See first PIC]

And I don't know if this is anything odd but i thought it was considering t has an unused port on the top....






And I found this to be a little more convincing...




Just a HDD right? Well this console was built in 2002 aannd the PSX was discontinued in February 2006 (From what I have read..) BUT this HDD was manufactured on the 2nd of July 2006?!

This may or may not be very special but I thought I would get some advice..

 

This has nothing to do with the topic but, I'm glad it finally arrived since since you were worried about it.

I'll watch this space though, as these units are interesting. Hope you can get it to function... if the HDD works

 

Congratulations on successfully acquiring one! I hope that it turned out to be working.

If I'm not wrong, Sony still offered repair services for the PSX in 2012.

When I took mine apart, I certainly didn't notice that expansion device with a CXD9731GP SPEED device on it. I'm having problems telling where your expansion device got connected to, since your board looks a bit different from mine and mine certainly doesn't have an expansion interface on the board like all normal retail PlayStation 2 consoles do.

From the numbers printed on the chips in the photograph you took, I believe that it's near the CXD9611 SSBUSC chip and CXD2947 SPU2 chip.

The SPEED chip should be on the side where the CXD9797GB EE+GS chip is (under the CD/DVD drive). What's there for your board?

It'll be good if you could locate the DVRP and checked for whether they might have done something to it too, since it's related to the SPEED device of the PSX: Fujitsu MB91302A, on the same side as the EE.

Just saying, that connector on it looks like the same connector on the expansion boards that the SCPH-18000 consoles sporting the old GH-003 board have.

Mine is a DESR-5100 (XPD-001 mainboard), manufactured in 2004 by Sony EMCS.

 

I took photos of the main PCB and the other PCB's also, I will up load them soon. This board plugs into the main PCB near the Video board.

Here>

Also how much do you think Sony will charge for a replacement unit? Like they do with out of warranty PS3's, I tried contacting them and was just bounced back and forth between the two departments (Sony Australia) :/

 

That black fabric tape is pretty common in Sony consumer electronics stuff, and the added board looks like a genuine Sony manufactured part.

The connector on that sub-board looks like it's wired to the EPCS4 that holds the configuration data for the FPGA, so it's most likely a programming port.

 

Thanks. I had to use a proxy to view it... but WOW, your board is totally different from the one I have. D:

EDIT: The photograph of my mainboard (2nd from top) is upside-down if you compare it with yours.
EDIT 2: The bottom-most photograph shows exactly the same thing as you have shown.

The SPEED device is on the other side of that board. To check it out, you will have to remove the mainboard. If you can't or won't do that, it's fine... although it might be interesting to know whether they did anything to the integrated SPEED device of your PSX. :love-struck:

I have an identification tool as well, which we can probably run on your PSX to gather data from it... if it does work. But again, that depends on whether you're willing to go that far... for science!

This seems to be their repair support page for the PSX: http://www.psx.sony.co.jp/support/repair/index.html

There are too many Kanji characters that I can't read, so I can't tell what they are charging 25200 yen for... although I'm thinking that it's something like an estimated cost.

 

Hopefully you should not need a proxy to view these..


















I am willing to do pretty much anything with this unit, I don't know if this unit works or not as I am still waiting for my stepdown converter to arrive

EDIT: The last two are of the non-cpu side..

It's a 5500 btw..
It's strange that my unit has more separate parts than yours, usually they have less parts the newer the model.. ?

 

That 25,200 yen [USD$257.72] looks like the cost of a replacement, it's about the same for a PS3.
I should travel to Japan and take in a bunch of dead units and get them replaced OR some how get a hold of the software to clone a new drive but if they do things the same as sony (Ericsson) then we have no hope that way (The use an automated software recovery system which connects to a encrypted server, makes things super easy but you can't mix and match FW)..

 

Thanks for the HD photographs and for uploading them to a different host!

It looks like they just made the PSX more modular. Your MECHACON has a newer mask ROM version (703 vs 702), and I don't see a SPEED chip on your board (It's beside the CXD3098Q DSP chip on mine). Your board is a XPD-005, and it appears to have an unused system expansion connector on it like retail consoles have (The unused connector pads near the DVRP in the second photograph).

This means that I was wrong: that daughterboard wasn't connected to the system expansion connector, but probably just an interface that connects the mainboard to the SPEED expansion device.

Which factory made yours?

 

I do not know which factory.. :C
Here is a photo of the rear of the console (I should have uploaded it first).

 

Yours has "S. EMCS" printed on it, which means that it was made by Sony EMCS, which was the same plant that made mine. My unit's serial number of J0842974, which either means that their serial numbers don't increase as the consoles they produce increase in numbers... or your unit is really older than mine but had its mainboard replaced.

Your ports have a different layout than mine as well, so they definitely changed something. It may be interesting to know whether your mainboard is common or not (if it's not, it might have been a board that was only used in replacements).

 

Hmm maybe it will be the same situation as with the Ps3's were the refurbs are actually entirely different units to the rest...

Did anyone ever get the Ghost2 to work with this and what about FreeMCboot?? I am willing to use this unit as a guinea pig
[FONT=arial, sans-serif]
Also I wonder if anyone has tried putting one of these drives in a duplicator (or if we had the money a forensic Duplicator )? [/FONT]

 

And the PSP too (PSP-2000 units get a TA-90v1 in replacement).

FMCB works if the "system type" byte is changed to 0x01, or if the file key is the same as the one used by the PSBBN games... since Sony seemed to have made an exeption for that file key.

Magiagate containers from a retail PS2 will NOT work on the PSX and vice-versa, except for those PSBBN files.

It seems to be looking explicitly for a Sony disk (ATA disk with Sony custom firmware). I commented about that in another thread here and on this page: ichiba.geocities.jp/ysai187/PS2/PSX.htm

Replacing the disk with a Sony disk allows the unit to start up and to have it's HDD functions... although getting content onto one of those is another matter.

If your unit has a dead HDD, maybe it'll start working again if you used a Sony SCPH-20401 and stuck my files into it...

 

Is the Sony FW written to an eeprom on the drives PCB or the the drive itself? If it's on the PCB all we need to do is find another drive the same model ect. and load it up with the files and swap PCB's..

Also did you write that page?

Seems like we know that answer now

I am bidding on a SCPH-20401 disk now (Unless some one here has one for sale ), how big are the files?

Thanks

 

AFAIK, the firmware is stored in the service area on the drive's platters.

However, I do believe that it is possible to attack the DVRP's firmware since Sony provides firmware updates to that processor on the update discs, and the modules they provide contain functions for sending firmware updates to the DVRP. If that was done successfully, we should be able to use normal ATA disks with the PSX...

Yes, I did indeed.

Yea, but I'm just lazy to update the page. D:

It's about 100MB in size, 41MB packed.

But like I wrote earlier, getting the files onto the PSX is another issue: The PSX (or more specifically, perhaps its DVRP?) encrypts every sector on the disk, meaning that the only way to write data to the disk would be through the PSX itself.

To do that, you will need a way to have a way to run unsigned code on it. The classic way was to use Swapmagic, but that only works if your PSX's HDD is currently working.

Otherwise, I could probably try to complete a special installer that installs a repackaged version of FMCB that works on the PSX... but right now I'm sort of tied up with other things to do at the moment. :X

Also, I'm suggesting that it's possible to revive a dead PSX by copying files over since it doesn't seem like the files are bound to the PSX unit itself:
1. No known Magicgate containers are tired to the PSX, other than the ones used on memory cards and with PSBBN software.
2. People have swapped disks between PSX units before and they still work. This supports the notion that the content on the disks are not bound to the PSX units.
3. However, we don't know whether they really bound any of the files to the HDD unit itself since my own spare SCPH-20401 unit seems to have a crashed head and won't complete formatting.

 

I would pay top dollar for that!

Probably a silly question, but what happens if we were to put the psx drive in a ps2, it probably isn't the even the same format but I could be wrong?

As soon as my transformer arrives, I'll be able to move from guessing to trying ... then wondering why it blew up lol

Hmm I thought as such :/

I have heard roomers that the Ghost2 chip works with the PSX, but I can not find any info about it.. even who made it..

 

AFAIK, it seems to be using the APA format as well when I dumped sectors from the disk using the PSX itself... but like I wrote earlier, some part of the PSX is encrypting the sectors that are written to the disk (Probably the DVRP, as the HDD doesn't seem to have special functions to do that...) and so the PS2 can't access the disk.

I'm quite sure that if one was to format the PSX's HDD with a PS2, the PS2 will have a really large HDD to use (as in, unpatched Sony software can use it)... but who would dare to try that? (at least, not without some proper method of restoring the original contents of the disk) D:

As for the "48-bit LBA" region, I don't really know about its format as that region is governed and managed by the DVRP itself. One accesses it via dvr_hdd0:, and the driver that provides that interface simply forwards the parameters you provide to the DVRP without revealing what sort of filesystem it has. It's probably APA though, since I remember seeing some strings related to APA within the DVRP's firmware.

I thought that they said that the Ghost 2 chip was the only modchip that works on the SCPH-10000, and then it was assumed that it worked on the PSX because it was previously incorrectly assumed that it had the boot ROM of a SCPH-10000?

 

And also!!

MY PSX ARRIVED!!!!!11

It was sold to me as faulty (Not booting!), When I stripped it down to take photo's it was very dusty (cigar/diesel soot), So I cleaned every peice for good shots. and also I thought "Hey while I'm here I'll just give the HDD a spin (Frizbee trick) it made a nice smooth spinning sound "

So when my 200W stepdown transformer arrived today, I set it up, as soon as I plugged it in it the light stayed red and the hdd spun up then down after 10 seconds... So I pressed the Power key -> PSX Logo then blue orb in the top right corner then black screen :C .. So I pushed the home key ... annd.. BAM! the XMB shows up! everything works I am just going to do a factory reset now to 'clean' the hdd of any possible bad sectors (?) and see how it goes!


Now! how do I learn Japanese!? LOL DDDD

 

D:

Did you try the console before doing that? Sometimes the seller marks the item as "not working" or "junk" because it was either unable to be tested or wasn't tested and the owner didn't want to take the trouble to (so it was just sold as an old piece of equipment).

When you supply power to the PSX, its HDD will spin up for a while.. and then back down.

When you start it up, it seems to take quite a while to get to the XMB (seems to be either reading a lot of stuff or just transfers data slowly).

When you get to the XMB, it doesn't show the XMB interface but whatever the current channel it was set to is showing (and, if it isn't connected, you'll either get garbage or a black screen).

Still, congratulations on acquiring a nice working PSX.

How are you going to do a factory reset?

I once thought that it had a format button since some other guys here said that they found one, but I don't remember seeing one. I did find the PS2 data region clearing option though. @_@

Anyway, even if you do format the disk, bad sectors will always be there. At most, you could coax the drive to remap them, but it should be done automatically anyway... until the disk is unable to do so (like my Maxtor SCPH-20401 HDD unit).

Google!
(Or go take classes)

 

So I was playing around with my DESR-7100 HDD today and decided to dump the SCE security information of it's harddrive (using a normal PS2):

For those who don't know what this is, this is the security sector which is read when the drive is identified as a SONY hard disk drive.

I was just messing around but when I saw that "DESR-7000" as drive model I found it cute enough to post here.

Btw this stuff is reported to the DNAS server when you try to install something like for example PlayOnline/Final Fantasy XI.