Ps2 Tool broken in shipment..junked.

PS2 TOOL not working

Thanks for starting this thread for me ASSEMbler.
It's my unit that is having trouble.

Here are some more details of what I am seeing so hopefully someone can help me out.
Current status of the hardware:

LED status:

Green power LED on.
Blue reset LED on.
BLUE DVD LED on.
TOOL LED off.

Dip Switches on back:
1 down
2 up
3 down
4 down
5 up (NTSC which I want)
6 down
7 up
8 up

Front Panel switches set to DVD and TOOL.

Using known good network cable and there is a link light on switch and on the PC card in the TOOL.

Using known good multi AV PS2 cable connect to television. Nothing comes on the television screen on boot. Though there are some quick white flashes as if it is getting some signal.

PC card is connected to an LCD monitor. Displays POST and Linux booting sequence just fine.

The PC boot hangs sporadically on post after not detecting anything on the IDE Primary Slave.

If it does get past that screen the tool hangs on boot post the mrp.0 error (which is posted above) with the last message referring to DHCP or if I have it set to static it says nothing.

I had already changed out the Midway config by changing ifcfg-eth0 to the following:

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
BROADCAST=192.168.0.255
IPADDR=192.168.0.20
BOOTPROTO=STATIC
NETWORK=192.168.0.0
DHCP_HOSTNAME=ps2tool.private
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1

As I stated before I also tried with BOOTPROTO=DHCP which doesn't work.

If I boot into single user mode and try to ifup eth0 the machine also hangs.

When I run dmesg I do get a weird error message for eth0:

eth0: OEM i82557/i82558 10/100 Ethernet at 0xf000, 00:90:05:BF:18:5F, IRQ 15.
Receiver lock-up bug exists -- enabling work-around.
Board assembly fffff-255, Physical connectors present: RJ45 BNC AUI MII
Primary interface chip uknown-15 PHY #31
Secondary interface chip i82555


The full error message I am getting on boot is the following:

Starting dsnet: sam: /usr/local/sce/driver/sam/2.0.36/sam.o not found
Loading mrp driver ( /usr/local/sce/driver/dsnet/2.0.36/mrp.o )

********************************************************************
* Loading failed by unknown reason (maybe board not found) *
********************************************************************

Unloading mrp driver
dsnetm dsnetm (Version 1.23.1 Wed Jun 4 12:15:52 JST 2003)
Connecting to /dev/mrp0 …
invalid port dev/mrp0
cannot connect

Using DHCP for eth0...

If I try static the only difference is the last line is missing.

I do see two blinks of the yellow activity light on the network port when the machine starts but its at the beginning of the startup not when linux is trying to start the networking.

Any suggestion or help would be much appreciated.

 

Hi,

network connectivity is the least of your problems. I assume your unit experienced heavy shock in transit, causing some internal connection to get loose. I suggest to backup the HDD(s) as soon as possible, just in case. However, the following problem is far worse:

You can ignore the sam driver loading error, but mrp is important. Without it, the PC side will not be able to control the PS2, even if the rest of the hardware was fully functional.

Do you get the device listing immediately after POST before the LILO prompt shows up? You should see 4 devices in there (or 5 if you have the SNSystems CDVD Emulator card fitted), the most important being this one:

BusNo=0, DevNo=12, FuncNo=0, VendorID=104D, DevID=8047, IRQ=11

Just check for the vendor and device ID, as I think the other numbers may vary. This is the device mrp searches for. If it is not there, either your backbone (the base board on which the PCI slots reside) or the connection to the PS2 board is broken. It might also be possible that your BIOS is misconfigured, but I doubt you can hide the MRP device this way.

For reference, here are some screenshots of the BIOS setups from my machines. Before comparing them, please check which PCI card is installed in your machine; if I remember correctly, the PCI586VE is the older one without the PS/2 mouse port.

PCI586VE (7 pictures total)




PCI815VE (13 pictures total)

As the DVD LED is active, your PS2 side gets power and at least seems to be active. Can you open/close the drive tray?

These are fine (default for NTSC systems).

Fine, too. You may want to toggle them a few times, just in case there is some dust inside.

So the ethernet PHY on the card is fine as well.

This is a good sign, as the PS2 side defaults to a fully-black screen on boot. It indicates the board is okay, just the connection to the backbone is broken.

Where exactly does it hang? After the device listing, but before displaying the LILO prompt? If so, your HDD is probably dying.

I get the same messages on my unit. What about the self-tests afterwards, are they okay as well?

As I see it, you need to disassemble the unit and check for mechanical defects on the boards and all connectors. I suggest you refer to Parris' excellent disassembly guide for this: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14710

Good luck,
SilverBull

 

Will try tomorrow...

@Silverbull
Thanks for the helpful suggestions and all the screen shots.

The DVD drive does open and close and I did toggle all the switches to confirm they were in the correct position and hadn't been moved in transit.

My Plan was to clone the drives right away but with no networking I can't get copy the disk off the drive unless I open it and I as hoping to avoid doing that.

I'll disassemble it tomorrow using Parris' guide and double check everything.

@ASSEMbler
I'll let you know as soon as I can tomorrow what I find when I open it up.

 

i had this happen on my unit twice at random a while after i had it set up. (a thread about it is propably somewhere still.)

it's quite a longshot but i was able to make it work by taking out the primary drive and replacing it with the secondary one (they should be identical so what i assume is that the drive itself went bad).

the secondary drive worked so i imaged it, restored the image to 2 new drives and plugged them in the rig.

everything fine since then.

running a DTL-T10000HJ / PCI815VE here.

 

Sounds a exactly like the problems I had with my Tool. Ended up replacing the Linux Backbone fixed the problem! But strip it down first and check all the connections on the two boards.

 

One sad scene...

The mystery is solved but not in a good way. Sadly it looks like it got damaged in shipping. The PCI connector on the backplane is totally cracked where the SBC is inserted.

Thanks to Silverbull, Mugi and IcarusNick for the suggestions.

I'm going to work with ASSEMbler to make a claim with the shipper.

Here is a link to some pictures for the morbidly curious.

http://dante.andrew.cmu.edu/PS2_TOOL/

 

I had exactly the same damage on one of my Tools, I ended up buying a spare backplane from someone, so you can either find someone with spare parts, or replacing the pci connector...

 

Don't panic if you look hard enough you will find what you need I did!

 

The card should work in any of the pci slots if my memory is right... Also, If someone's handy with epoxy, it should be a bit of a quick fix to rebuild that slot- I'd clamp the pci clot back to shape, then cut a nice thin strip of fiberglass cloth and epoxy it around the broken part - halfway down the side, and around the end. after everything sets, it should be as sturdy or moreso than the original.

one other option is to send the midplane board to someone who can desolder the pci connector and put a new one on, a pretty sinple operation assuming no other damage.

Oh, and damn the massive heatsink on the VRM.. Never seen that kind of damage before, but it IS ups... they're great in terms of getting boxes where they need to go, but unless the inside and outside is fully padded, remember, if the box can't be thrown across the room in some crazy olympic sport, you're tempting fate here.

Of course in the cases of sealed systems (aka tool), packing the inside is an impossibility...

 

i always wondered how a damaged item is handled by ups/fedex...

do they do the same things over things like artwork or one-off- aka- if you want to collect insurance, it means what's left of the item is destroyed? seems hilarious and horrible at the same time

I usually just have had issues with thinks being outright lost when i go with ups.. and even then it's rare...

 

If they pay out insurance and it is a low value thing, the item is either destroyed or the holder is directed to destroy it (at the option of the adjuster).

If they pay out insurance and it is a high value thing, the damaged item is usually collected and then resold at auction later "as-is" along with other items that have been collected from claims.

Once the insurance claim is paid, the insurer becomes owner of the damaged goods and can do with it whatever they so choose.

-hl718

 

That's a shame, he should have resold it as spare parts...

 

My guess is that he probably wanted to get the money so that he could get a replacement working Tool from Kev.

-hl718

 

I guess im late here already them
would have a spare board i'd have gladly contributed to this cause.
It's a shame to see an unit like this go..