V3 - Messiah1... counting backwards - dots spin fast...

[ShadowKnyght]

Ok the saga continues...

after realising how easy it is to replace the laser sleds... I went to an old V3 I had lying around that worked except for a bung laser... or so I thought...

Replaced the laser...

The chip in this one is the good old Messiah1 yes that is right 1...

But sure enough it fired up and worked nicely... the first time... played DVD and CDR's

Thinking great I will just give this one to the customer in place of there weird DUO installed V3 that wont play DVD's past the PS2 logo...

Problem is then it started reseting itself - in that each time it loaded it would ask for the time etc to be set again... i.e lost config.

Finally got past this... well I thought I did...

Then it went through strange cycles of working perfectly, then not even spinning the CD and then sometimes not even coming up with a picture...

Now it has stabilised if you can call it that...

What it does is if you stay on the browser screen the white glowing dots start to spin super fast....

If you go to the system config page - you can set all the settings but then when you set the time or if you stay to long in there - the time starts to count backwards extremely fast????

Days start shooting backwards...

if you reset - you have to set the config again...

Anyone know what the hell is happening??

What could cause this? A short? where exactly??

Seems like the clock circuit is faulty - i.e. the crystal that keeps time or something in that area... or flat / faulty battery??

been turned off for a long time...

any ideas?

I think after this I am not touching these bloody V3's again - DUO or no DUO... and just when I removed the Chair of the I hate V3's club from my sig...

[ShadowKnyght]

so anyone know what will make the system configuration reset all the time?

and this counting backwards??

Unstable clock frequency?

flat backup battery??

[CN-Twat]

Hair shorts or a blob of solder behind the bios legs can cause this. When shit like this happens break out the flux and solder wick Alcohol and high power magnifier and exacto knife. Usally points close to M,N,O,P is the cause. Wick and flux to mop up extra solder. Clean bios chip with Alcohol and toothbrush. It would be good to blow dry now with high power air blasts that will dislodge any small bits of solder. Look at legs with high power magnifer. Break out the fine tip exacto knife and scrape in between each leg of the bios chip Carefull not to damage tracks. You can actually feel if there is a blob or hair short with the knife when draging in between the legs. While your at it do this in betwwen ALL the legs of the bios.

[ShadowKnyght]

thanks - but managed to sort this out this morning - it was not the BIOS it was a invisible short between points B and C on the CD/DVD controller...

Was not even showing up on the multimeter as a short so it must have been tiny...

either way - resoldered these two points on the chip leg - more so point B and viola - worked and stayed working!!!

Apart from almost breaking my fist on the ground at one stage with frustration - alls well that ends well!

problem is all up between the stuffed laser and what ever else was going on with the DUO installed board and swapping this one over and getting it working - it took me like 3 days and I wont make money back on it - not enough to compensate for lost holidays anyway...

In the end - thanks LOD and Entity for suggestions.

was not a loose battery or flat battery after all...

Man this stuff is scary - thank god I have background in electronics else this would have been a trashed station.

Least the PS2 is not as bad as an XBOX - leave one of them disconnected for 5 hours and then mod it without resetting the time and date - and boy does one have troubles...

[EnTiTy]

the only trouble with the ps2 is more than one fault can cause the same problem :/

glad you sorted tho.

maybe it was shorted to ground rather than c the controller has test point's and reset points as i mentioned.

never had that problem with the xbox tbh they do use a cap rather than use a battery.

do you exploit and flash the bios or actually mod the xbox i can see how the exploit can loop the clock when if exploited when the xbox has lost it's time.

but not when modded.
EnTiTy

[Robot]

this is where a hot air station is king

[ShadowKnyght]

no I mod - Use the Apple X Pro and soon the Apple X V...

Xecutor2's are to expensive even though they are the DMS of the xbox world.

the station I had the problems with had what looked like one of those temporary TSOP flashing chips on a home made looking PCB with a socket... still attached... so not sure if it was installed by a novice or whether it was just a cheap beta version chip that did not actually re-flash the stations bios... probably didn't as it booted to the original fine in the end...

it was my brothers - was removing this old chips and sticking in the AppleX plus as a Christmas present - stuck in a 120GB drive for him...

The problem is that if some novice user or installer deletes the standard xbox dashboard thinking they don't need it - and the station is left unplugged for over 5 hours - it goes looking for the original dash for prompting to set the clock etc - when it can't find it - the box sh!ts itself and says error code 16 - return for servicing.

Before this I knew just enough to install the Xbox chips - now I am almost and expert on the buggers - almost!

Funny thing is that the forums for the Xbox - xbox-scene - keep going on about how much better they are than the PS2 forums...

And yet I asked for help and never got it - searched - worked stuff out for myself and fixed the problem myself...

this forum is so much more technically helpful - even though apart from this weeks problems I have been giving help far more than receiving it!

[EnTiTy]

ah i understand that now if the dash is missing that makes sense, the new xecutor bios revision take's care of that so il give you a head's up on that one the bios skip's the time check so no error 16 ever

i agree the ps2 modchip gang are more tech orientated, tbh modding the xbox is a kid's game i just like it's versatility reguarding emulation

oh while i forget the mod you removed was prolly a homebrew bios flash it's a complete bios replacement rather using the debug bios lpc points.
so yeah it can be used for flashing the tsop just install it cut d0 and flash.
EnTiTy

[ShadowKnyght]

yes once I worked out how the xbox was a breeze to install into and add a HD to...

The idea of a 120GB HD in your games console is pretty cool as well!