MAGIC 3 & 3.1 booting issues

[alicecooper]

Whats up with the Magic 3 and 3.1 booting problems!
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Firstly there are far too many posts for it to be simply everybody not beiong able to solder the chip correctly.

I have a AUSIE V4 GAP BIOS PS2 and i had a Neo 2.2 installed with a cap and all my TDK GOLD media Backups worked 100% perfectly, it was just a matter of finding the correct time to hit x.

After 3 months of trouble free booting i decided to get the ORGINAL BLUE MAGIC 3.1 chip so i don't need AR2.2 anymore.

I fitted the chip using garden hose for 5v and ground and i kept all the wires as short as possible.

BACKUPS
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I tried all my PS2 backups and none of them booted ! at first i thought BIOS points or Controller points or maybe LASER adjusting , then i said no wait i checked every point as i did them and all points again after soldering so before i start resoldering and changing this that and the other lets try more media etc first. All my backups were on TDK GOLD media so i then grabbed a crappy SKC and a good verbatim and did 2 backups. I threw them into the ps2 and held reset to go into standby then gave reset a tap and vola , it loaded my backup.

So this means my soldering points are indeed OK, so i tried booting it again and again and again and it worked fine every time , both the Verbatim and the SKC's worked fine.

So i thought i would copy all my backups again onto different cd's so they would boot but then i thought how come they booted before using NEO 2.2 ? Can magic be picky about the media ? surely not ?

Then i adjusted the CD pot on the laser, My V4 cd pot was at 952 ohmes and i adjusted it to 804 ohmes , i have read to adjust it to 600 ohmes for perfect booting and i have also read do not adjust under 750 ohmes or your laser will die quickly. So i thought it can't need adjusting to much because it booted fine on NEO 2.2 !

Then i cleaned the laser with a cotton tip and alco. Now i tested all my TDK backups again and they now booted 98% of the time. So what does this mean ?

Well obviously it's not the soldering , The media type does make a difference and cleaning and adjusting the pots can give better results even if it wasn't needed before with other chip types such as NEO 2.2 Very confusing. Some people said that MAGIC chips won't boot RAW backups so i tried using RAW and non RAW images but all work fine now. CLONECD with my mitsumi 4804te for RAW and NERO for NON RAW. And yes my burner is suported for RAW. So RAW is not the problem with 3.1 but it may be a problem with 3.0


ORIGINALS
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Upon testing originals of all types worked ! but then later after testing more and more originals i noticed some originals did not boot with the chip active ( TY Tasmanian tiger ) would not boot with the chip active. Holding reset at power on untill the browser screen arrives works to boot TY tiger.

So after all this testing i have come to the conclusion that MAGIC 3.1 patches the BIOS etc to boot the game whilst the PILLARS are on the screen , during this time your laser has to examine the cd then focus on it , then spin up to speed , then boot it. However MAGIC 3.1 will not boot from the BROWSER screen ! so if your laser did not have time to do all the above whilst the PILLARS screen is displayed then the browser screen will be displayed and the game will not boot. A few different things can happen here , it may go black screen and freeze or the controller will be dead and the browser screen will be displayed or it will try to go into dvd movie player mode and after a few seconds it will say error reading disc because it is not a DVD MOVIE.

So you see if the media is easy to read then the laser will do its stuff in time and the magic will boot it with 100% success rate.

But if the media is of a different colour dye or has fingerprints or scratches or is pressed differently or burn't at a higher speed or anything else that your laser doesn't find qucik and easy to focus on then it will not boot most times.

So why did the same cdr boot perfectly on the NEO 2.2 or messiah or messiah2 ?

Because it does not have this time limit , the NEO 2.2 spews the fake data in a continuous loop and the laser can take as long as it likes to boot the cdr. Or with the M or M2 they can boot from the browser screen which means again the laser can take as long as it likes to boot the game.

Now let the comments begin !

[charlie_ps2]

Nice piece of deduction - all avoidable if you had read my posts on this topic buried as treasure in this mound of mis-installs!

The originals that don't boot with Magic 3.1 active are, in my experience, anti-mod protected games and usually those are PS1. So it would be interesting to know what makes TY The Tasmanian Tiger different from other OS2 games. Does it boot on Messiah 2?

The Magic 3 & Magic 3.1 are equally fussy about what they boot and don't boot and this subject is quite done to death.

The price you pay for these cheapish chips is that they don't boot everything.

[ThAD0oD]

Originally posted by charlie_ps2
So it would be interesting to know what makes TY The Tasmanian Tiger different from other OS2 games. Does it boot on Messiah 2?

Original, cd-r and dvd-r backup work great on my messiah 2 (downloaded cd-r, [in less than 24hrs] bought original burnt to dvd-r )