My CC Stopped Working, Help...

[darknezz7]

Ok heres exactly what I did. I was trying out a copy of GOWII and it wasn't even acknowledging there was a disk in the drive. So I decided to check if there was any updates for my chip, which was firmware 29, so I downloaded 34 and put it on my usb stick. In BM I tried to install from the usb stick but couldn't figure it out, I don't think I did anything really. I then burned a CD with the firmware and stuck it in the console and restarted. Now all I get is a black screen when I hit reset! I can press reset 5 times and the original ps2 stuff still works, real games play and movies. But when I shut off and turn back on nothing, black screen. I opened up my ps2 and checked all my wires, it all looks fine, the light on the chip flashes once when I reset then stays off, and when I do the 5 times reset and it goes to the orig ps2 screen the light stays on. If somebody could please give me some suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Is there a way to clear the memory on the chip and be like I just installed it?

[xpzone]

reinstall firmware 29 and that should fix it.

[Hoyt]

It sounds like all you need to do is hit reset three times to boot the chip into minimal mode. It will still come up to the Sony browser but you will be able to boot the firmware CD you made and reflash the firmware and reinstall Boot Manager.

Hopefully this will get you going.

[darknezz7]

Hah, I didn't even know by pressing reset 3 times it goes to orig ps2 screen but with the chip active. Thanks. However now I see another problem! When I put in a dvd movie at the CC BM screen it loads it then stays a black screen. If I reset 5 times to orig ps2 they play fine though. I installed firmware 34... Thanks for the help.

[Hoyt]

Glad it got it loaded for you. With the Wikki down these forums are about the only place I know of to get info on CC chips.

You might want to check the bug list for release 34. Seems like I saw some folks mention that they were having trouble playing DVDs, I'm not sure.

You could try your old version 29 again and see if that fixes the DVD problems. Some folks seem to like that version for various stability reasons.

[Jones23]

Yep, booting DVD-video discs is kind of broken in R34. Either you disable the chip, or you install R29 again, which doesn't have this problem.

best regards Jones23

[Hoyt]

Hey Jones,

Do you know the differences in R33 and R34? If I remember correctly R29 will not read the configuration files for R34, but if R33 will I might be interested in giving it a try to see if UT will run under it.

[Jones23]

Here's the changelog:

Release 34 -
    Fixes/Changes:

        - Fixed yet another bug in the PS2 Video Fixes that caused fixes to not work, or stop working after a while
            in some games.  Hopefully this is the last of them..

        - Added a new configuration variable, "BM.AUTOLOAD_FSD_EN", which allows you to disable the automatic loading
            of USB and Memory Card drivers when loading homebrew applications.  This is mostly only useful for
            Unofficial Launch ELF(uLE) and Simple Media System(SMS).  To use this, edit APPINFO.PBT for each of these
            applications and change the following line:
            SHUTDOWN "MM"
            to:
            SET "BM.AUTOLOAD_FSD_EN" "0"

Release 33 -
    Fixes/Changes:

        - Fixed a bug where macros would not be saved in some situations.

        - Fixed yet another bug in the PS2 Video Fixes where forcing the color would not work.

        - Added "auto-calibrate" function to CC hardware driver which automatically detects what speeds work best
            for the console that the chip is installed in.  This should resolve the black screen issues people
            are experiencing with slimline consoles, specifically v14+.  The additional benefit of this is that
            users get better speeds when reading/writing the CC DataFlash and EEPROM(not that EEPROM is ever going
            to be fast.)

        - Increased delays in the firmware source code CC hardware driver CCHW.S to improve compatability with v12+
            consoles.

        - Fixed a "typo" in BMINIT.PBT which caused it to not be possible to upgrade from PS2client.

If "configuration files" refers to the APPINFO.PBT, then you're right. You can give R33 a try, though I don't know if it will change anything.

best regards Jones23

[Hoyt]

Thanks for the info. I guess also I should have asked what version is the "cutoff point" for recognizing current appinfo.pbt files? How many realeases back can we go and still use the current installation packs?

[Jones23]

The APPINFO.PBT should be the same for R30 and above. IIRC only the :INSTALL section has changed for R3x, the :RUN section is the same, so even R29 should be able to start your installed Apps, only installation would fail.

best regards Jones23