PlayStation 2 MECHACON Adjustment Program (PMAP)

Thank you for your reply. I will try to make some videos to show you the problem and laser activity.
One of the technicians who looked at the PS2 told me he unwelded the DMS4 and the problems persisted.
He also told me that he tried to change BA/LA chips and nothing worked.

One of the things I noticed latelly, is that sometimes (very rarely) when I put the console vertically, it spins the disc at the first try.
Other thing that sometimes work (rarely), is spining the DVD with my hands at the same time I power on the console or as soon as the disc magnet locks when closing the disc tray. It works sometimes... I´ll try to make a video of that too.

thanks

 

Videos would be great! Try to show the laser activity and sound will help as well

 

Are you certain that your consoles all came (out of the factory) with the KHS-400C? The F-chassis model can have the SANYO SF-HD7.
According to l_Oliveira, these consoles appear to eventually use the right defaults, if the wrong optical block is installed.

 

Hello everyone,

Here is more info on this situation:
The console itself that is more important to me to repair, is a Portuguese PAL SCPH-30004R - Serial is: C4632766.
It was only opened once by strangers to install the DMS4Pro. The other times it was opened it was to change laser unit and it was a KHS-400C in it. I have another 30004R which came with KHS 400C, and another 30004R motherboard I bought for parts/repair the DMS4 one. (I have 4 PS2 models here in portugal and all came with KHS-400C the other 2 I have are V9´s).

It could only be changed if someone changed the lasers on the same moment of the modchips assembly. I think its unlikely to happen.

Here are some videos I made some moments ago:
First, is the console booting without disc (the big cracking noise in the background is my chair asking for WD40 ) :


Then I booted a demo disc to show the problem and the laser activity (Did some continuous boots to make the problem repeated):

And with a "white clear" disc to better see the laser working:


Then I did a complete video of the problem and the process of booting a game:


Then I did a video showing the process of spinning the disc by hand helping the game to boot.


Something I notice on these consoles is the coil Whine. It is also noticeable in the videos, and it depends on the laser/tray activity.

Is this of any help?

Thank you all.

 

Okay, your problem is the disk type detection failing. The most common reason is too little laser power.
You can adjust it with the 2 trimpots below the read head. One is for CD, one for DVD.
The one on the edge is CD, the inner one, nearer to the spindle motor, is DVD.
Try turning the DVD pot a few degrees to the right. If it works, great! If it doesn't, undo it and continue debugging.

A few notes:
- The coil whine / chirping is normal for these machines, in my experience. It sounds pretty ugly but all my consoles do this.
- That modchip must be doing something curious when the BIOS never stops attempting to read the disc, even though it's not even spinning. Not a problem but curious.

 

Thanks for your help.
I will try the trimpots later today. First I want to state something I´ve already done:
The same KHS-400C laser unit works very well on the other V9 consoles.

I´ll make a list of the 3 motherboards I have here, and the behaviours tested with the same laser unit:
1-GH 015 V5 with DMS4 Pro (the one in the video); <--- the one I like the most
2-GH 015 V6 with Duo2SE with same behaviour that the one in the vídeo; <--- I will try to unweld it to see if the problem changes.
3-GH 015 V6 with Duo2SE which starts spinning the disc right away, but cant recognize it, and have GPU problems (image all messed up);

Its really weird this problem. Should I call an exorcist instead?

Regarding the trimpots, I´ve never achieved good results messing with those things.
I´ve read a lot about values and never found it usefull. I´ve even read that decreasing too much the resistance I could burn the BA/LA´s...
What are the reccomended maximum values in the trimpots in order not to burn anything?

Thank you!

 

If you must adjust those potentiometers, your optical block is already worn out.
Also, the gain adjustment is usually done with the software service tool instead.

The console may have to be adjusted to support the optical block, if you replaced it. By simply switching the optical block, you are hoping that the values used with the old block will fit the new optical block.
So what you could try, would be to go through with the adjustment (electric-circuit + mechanism adjustment) process.

The SONY technicians probably used equipment (i.e. jitter meter) to get accurate measurements for adjusting things like the skew, FYI. Gain is adjusted in the electrical-circuit adjustment and is done automatically.

 

Thank you!

So what your are saying is that every console is "tuned"/"married" with the individual laser, and this must be updated everytime the laser is changed?
Considering this, there is great probability that readjusting my motherboards to the laser units, the discs will be well detected and read?

This adjustment can be made with the PMAP tools, right?
Do I need to connect the PS2 to the computer? Is the process simple/automatic?
Theres info in this forum explaining the process and what kind of equipment is needed?
I´m comfortable with soldering and stuff, but not too much with software programming and coding...

Thank you all.

 

Before you start taking everything that I write as the truth, please take note that I am not from this industry and my knowledge comes from my studies of the SONY adjustment tools and their manuals. Sometimes I also hear a thing or two from the folks on these boards, but I do not have practical experience at all.

The help documentation for the ELECT (electric-circuit) and MECHA (Mechanism) adjustment tools indicate that the technician is expected to make such adjustments, whenever the optical block and/or spindle motor driver are replaced.

There were also various models of the optical block, so the console also had to be calibrated to support the installed optical block.
For example, you know about the SONY and SANYO optical blocks. But the SONY optical blocks had at least two lens models: the T487 and the (new) T609K. Apparently the T487 was used up to the KHS-400B, where some of them were shipped with the T609K. Older consoles were not calibrated to support the T609K, out of the box.

Yes. That is, if we assume that your consoles are free of other hardware problems.

Yes. If you have the SONY tools though, those should be better.

You must connect the MECHACON's serial port to a RS232C signal converter. The MECHACON is a 3.3V device.
The RMC line of the MECHACON has to be connected to ground, to put the console into test mode.

It's not straightforward, unfortunately. Particularly because I made PMAP a command-line program.
Thankfully, the gain adjustment part is automatic.
Mechanism adjustment (tangential and radial skew), however, requires you to issue commands to the console with PMAP.

Just remember that the ultimate goal of this adjustment process, is to achieve the lowest-possible jitter when reading all types of discs.

It's all in this thread (particularly, the first few posts). The README file included, also explains some things.

Few people have used such a method, mainly because PMAP was made last year and the SONY tools are rare.

 

No problem! i´ve lost a lot of time and money trying to fix it. i´ll try this at my own risk!

So, the 400C can only be T609K, right? I´ve never had personal contact with any other thanthe 400C.

If the lasers read just fine after a minute, isnt that weird for an adjustment situation? I think we will be down to hardware problems in the end.. but I wish i´m wrong

I´ve heard of those tools, but never knew exactly what they were. Are they like super special discs with maximum quality to optimal laser tuning? or is just some software tools? If good discs are used, can I use very new PS2 original games and Verbatim DVD+R?

I´ll try not to burn the house down ... in alternative, i´ve read about Lenschanger for lens update. Can it do a similar job with this detection problem?

What kind of relation does this adjustment have with the white knob and screws in the laser disc tray?
If it gives many Jitter errors, I will have to adjust the knobs and the pots in the laser?

Sorry for the amount of questions, but I really dont want to mess up with this.

Thank you!

 

That is likely so.

It seems to try to focus on the disc. So why not just give it the correct values to save it the trouble of doing that?

They're software tools. It seems like they're used with actual measurment tools (i.e. jitter meter). The discs used are (expensive) adjustment discs.

You can use (good) PlayStation 2 game discs. Maybe you shouldn't use DVD+R discs though. To begin with, the early models don't seem to support DVD+R discs well.

I don't think that lenschanger has such a facility (there are no known commands on the PS2 side for adjustment), but it does manipulate the EEPROM to allow you to change the optical block type. The values are from other consoles, AFAIK.

Unlike lenschanger, PMAP issues the command to load the defaults for the SANYO/SONY optical block.

The update values were taken from the SONY tools. If you're referring to the EEPROM updates, then yes... perhaps lenschanger does have such a thing.

The tray has two screws on most models; one for tangential and the other is for radial skew.
You need to adjust both of them until you find the sweet spot - the position that gives the lowest jitter rate.

Only the B-chassis (SCPH-30001, GH-004/GH-005) had the AUTO-TILT motor. That model only requires manual-adjustment for tangential skew. Unfortunately, it only existed in the US, as one model.

Unless I remember it wrong, you're supposed to first begin with the electric-circuit adjustment, to adjust the gain level. After that, then you try to adjust the mechanism (tangential and radial skew).

The pots on the optical block shouldn't have to be adjusted with.

 

I think @ftadeufs will be in over his head with the full adjustment procedure.
It's worth it to simply assume the most likely case of the laser intensity being too weak for pickup.
I'm saying this from practical experience, having done this on quite a few drives now.

What usually happens when the console doesn't like the laser (when the model is wrong), is no read action at all.
In his case, the console works with the laser, only the pickup is failing.

My suggestion is to try turning the pot, see if it helps, and keep/undo the action, depending on the result. It's a 2 minute test and can save him a lot of headache.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.
I turned the DVD pot from 1.7kOhm until 1.3kOhm, tried several times, and the same behaviour occurs. Should I go further?
I noticed no improvement on the quality of the laser reading discs.

I didnt mention on thing earlier: Sometimes when I open and close the tray lots of times in a row, it starts and reads well. But its very rare to happen. Pushing by hand, works a lot better.

If this way nothing works, I´ll try the PMAP option.

thank you all for the help!

Another thing, reducing the pot resistance, make the games read quality worse. I have a backup of WRC that I use on the Video
that now gives a lot of focusing clicks to the laser unit.

 

bad spindle motor?

 

Already thinked about that, but the drive works flawlessly on other console.
One thing might that might make sense is the circuitry that gives power to the motor not working well, or not giving enough start power.

Could it be?

 

Okay, so the easy route is out
(You did turn the pot to the right, right? I don't know whether that increases or decreases the resistance. I never bothered to measure because I see the results on my oscilloscope.)

So you should do the full calibration next:
Make your life easier by getting a 3.3V capable Arduino or clone. You can configure it as a serial level shifter and USB serial adapter by simply bridging the reset pin to ground on it and connecting your TX and RX wires from the PS2 testpoints to it.
http://hardwarefun.com/tutorials/using-arduino-as-a-bridge-to-connect-serial-devices-with-pc

Make sure your Arduino has a 5V/3.3V selector or is a 3.3V model and follow the usage guide to the PMAP tools.
You need to find the TX and RX points on the PS2 board, solder wires to them to go to the Arduino. Also solder one wire to a ground point and connect it to the Arduino as well, otherwise the communication won't work.

 

The spindle is fine since it works after pickup succeeds eventually. If it someohow manages to boot a game, then nearly everything is working. It just needs adjustment. Possibly the read head alignment is severely wrong and you need the PMAP tools to read out the jitter values and adjust it.

 

You say that, but it also works if he manually spins it up in this console. If it was just the laser unit, manually spinning the disc wouldn't improve things?

 

Yes. turned the pot right, decreasing resistance. It seems now the thing reads worse.. i don´t know if it got more worn out. ...
One thing that happens sometimes, and it must be considered is: I turn the console vertically, and it spins the disc right away a lot more times than it does on an horizontal position!

I´ll give it a try these days... need to gather some equipment

Thnak you!

Turning the console vertically, makes it spin the disc right away a lot more times than it does on an horizontal position... I dont know if it changes the spindle resistance or something... but it could be the problem...

 

Well, it's possible. But I find it unlikely.
@ftadeufs do you feel much resistance when spinning the disc manually or do you hear any noise when doing so?

Not from this, no. You would make it worse by overdriving it too much and running it that way for some time. Or a one time maximum voltage attempt ;p Just undo it and it'll be as it was before.
I noticed it on my GH-006 and -007 models as well, by the way.
They read PSX discs worse when increasing the laser diode power over a readback Vpp of just 0.45V. This is very small and may be related to the software gain settings.