Story Time: I Had the V.9 clicking laser issue...

[HeHateMe]

Hi, been lurking for a while watching the scene unfold. Nice to see there are actually some stable direct boot chips out there now so I can get my import fix. ^_^

Anyways, on to my issue. I, not being at all confident enough in my soldering skill to tackle a 24 wire install, decided to bite the bullet and purchase a pre-modified console from www.playstationmodchip.com (some America Jr. outfit, fast shipping though!). It's a V.9 w/a Messiah2 1.33b.

Worked perfectly for a week or so... then it started not booting originals all the time (looked like it was working, then DENIED: Red Screen). Not a huge problem, as it was fairly infrequent at first, and considering the first gen Apple chip I was using on my V.7, it was still a big step up. Not long after this began, it also did the "I look like I'm gonna boot but instead I'm going to freeze completely" thing. Then came the clicking... which is usually a sure sign of impending doom from what I've gathered by reading this forum.

I figured I would just open it up and see if maybe something came loose or whatever... and what I found was paper tape all over the place. PAPER. It was strewn about this way and that... and basically just looked like an electrical fire just waiting to happen. Apparently, the one thing they forgot to slap the paper tape on were the exposed contacts... which I'm sure were rubbed up all nice and cozy against the metal cage.

I cleaned all the paper crap off, and took a look at the soldering job. Not bad... everything looks pretty clean, although the chip was mounted in the lower left hand portion of the board in a less than optimal place... on it's paper tape. Chip needed to be remounted, obviously, so I used that thick rubber double-sided mounting tape, which is normally used for posters and light picture frames. Great stuff. I then went ahead and tied down the now loose wires neatly with some strips of plain old Scotch electrical tape. I laid a bit over the chips contacts as well, because I'm paranoid like that.

Ready to reassemble... took about an hour to figure out how to put the laser unit cables back in without channeling Vishnu. In the process, I dropped the laser unit twice. I'm sure the face I made was pretty funny. The install men must've thought there were too many screws when they opened it up to chip the board, as they didn't put 2 of them back in. The ones they did decide I needed were stripped pretty good. Nice.

Finally, I got what I thought would be my new Sony paperweight back together... plugged it in and away I went. OMG, it booted... and it didn't explode or take out the city's electrical grid in the process!

I ran the full battery of tests (all media types, cold boot, reset, eject/reset, browser)... and it hasn't hiccuped or clicked once. Been playing Guilty Gear X2, Soul Calibur 2, & DOA:HC (JP) for 4 days straight on it without a single boot failure, click. whir, or anything out of the ordinary. My forearms and hands hurt really bad, and I've lost all motor functionality in my legs... but damn-it my V.9 is working right!

Kai

[fluidmax]

did you take a picture before you removed all those paper tape?

sure would like to see that...

[HeHateMe]

Originally posted by fluidmax
did you take a picture before you removed all those paper tape?

sure would like to see that...

Tear up a piece of white paper and throw it at a PS2 mainboard. Viola.. you've now got what I had.

Kai

[fluidmax]

that bad?

i thought the shop you bought from they had pros doing the installations....

[HeHateMe]

Originally posted by fluidmax
that bad?

i thought the shop you bought from they had pros doing the installations....

Yah, it was pretty jacked up. Like I said though, I have no problem whatsoever with the soldering job they did... it was quite excellent actually. Another thing they did (or should I say, *didn't* do) is trim the wires, so there's alot more there than what probably needed to be.

Also, and I'm not real sure about this one... is that for the GND they used 2 wires from the chip to the same point on the mainboard. Could this potentially cause problems?

Kai

[ShadowKnyght]

no it wouldn't. but they could have just used thicker wire