SCPH-10000 freezing

My unit has started randomly freezing. It can happen at any time regardless of whether a disc is running or not. Sometimes I don't even get to the browser from bootup. Anybody have any ideas as to what's causing it? It's not dust as the unit is as clean as the day I bought it eleven years ago. It's had less than 30 hours usage in that time also.

 

The fan is definitely working, so I'm guessing it must be the thermal compound pads. Where can I find them inside the unit?

 

I don't want to be a party popper here, but that's a signal that something around the RDRAM circuitry is about to break.

OR you have been running it without the top cover for a long time and it has now a LOT of cold solder joints on the motherboard. :shrug:

I am talking that out of self experience as I almost destroyed an SCPH-10000 while trying to fix it's laser. I ran it for about two hours without the top cover (it's what forces the fan air to run through the heatsink).

 

It's never been opened up until yesterday. I figured it may have been a build up of dust, but it was clean as a whistle. I've taken extremely good care of this unit, it seriously looks brand new. Considering how little usage it's had, I don't get why it's acting up now.

Can it be fixed?

 

Anything in the world of electronics can be fixed...

Hmm, sound like the thermal pads or very rarely will it be a lifted BGA pin. If it has been hardly used and stored, it will be a pin (cold solder joint) or ball that has lifted / cracked from environmental harm (cold hot cold hot climate). Trouble is, it will be impossible to find what one.

Check all of the QFP chips, and then I would possibly try a re-flow with flux under the CPU. If that does not work, try the GPU. (EE + GS I think the PS2 IC's are called).

I dont know what other chips are in the SCPH-10000 model, but any one of those BGA's could be lifted...

This should never happen with PS2's. Its weird.

 

I'm going to replace the thermal pads to start with. Hopefully that'll sort it.

 

So, I've worked out that it only happens after I have been using my Free McBoot memory card. I've been running it non-stop for about a week with zero problems then last night after I messed with Open PS2 Loader it happened more or less right away.

Is this a known problem? Can anybody shed any light as to why it might be happening or how to fix it?

 

Well if your using Free Mcboot, then yes. ASSEMbler is right. The system will not like what hardware it has found, and hence freeze.

 

That's not true, since Free McBoot is known to work fine on SCPH-10000 models (only problem is no OSD), and I have it working fine on mine. In fact I'm the one who made the install for him, but I don't seem to have this problem.

Is your card a clone by any chance? They are known to have reliability issues.

 

Did it by any chance happen when you tried to exit/IGR from OPL? That happens to me too (presumeably due to the ancient kernel on such a machine), and if this is the case with you there is a workaround for it.

 

It happens after I exit OPL. I then switch to a regular memory card and when I try to play Ace Combat 5 it randomly hangs, sometimes even on the Sony splash screen.

 

So does one of the memory IC's have a cold solder joint then?

 

No. It works fine as long as I keep it away from Free McBoot/OPL. I'll just use my SCPH-50000 as I get the OSD with that unit.

 

You're not clear on what you mean by "exit OPL", since it can be interpreted in two ways. Did you use the option within the program itself, or manually reset the system? If you mean with the option, then that could be causing the issue itself... perhaps some of the OPL code stays resident in memory and causes the hangs. I would manually reset the system before starting any disc-based games, since this will flush the memory clean.

So can you explain what you are doing? It sounds like you are using the OPL IGR/exit option and then switching to a regular card and using the PS2 console as it was intended without manually switching the system off first, which is obviously going to be "unclean".

P.S.: You never got back to me regarding your OPL problems with your console after I pointed out the inappropriate game installation method that you used for your hardware. If you address that then you could simply play this game from OPL instead...

 

I'll have to look back into this. I've not been using this unit at all since setting up the 50000.

 

Only two revisions of the SCPH-10000 BIOS are known to exist. And both have been tested and verified to work properly with FMCB.

You can't use the custom OSD feature of FMCB on a SCPH-10000, but you can use uLE as a shell so everything is dandy. While CogSwap and ESR do not work on FMCB (ExecPS2 crap) and some emulators fail due to lack of LIBSD module on ROM0, a lot of homebrewn actually work.

I have also tested FMCB on SCPH-15000 and 18000 type a (SCPH-15000 with extended bios and built in DVD driver) and type b units (new chipset, same design as 1st gen US consoles SCPH-30001 but has a PCMCIA slot instead of a expansion bay) and everything works on these.

By the way, SCPH-18000 does not suffer of the ExecPS2 function problem and have LIBSD in the rom.

I really regret to say you might have a faulty unit. :shrug: