PS3 Newly Restored CECHA01 Not Playing PS2 Games

[lostman1234]

It's possible that the EE chip isn't getting enough power from the new tokens to work without a hitch. I've had my PS3 BC examined and it was found that the tokens used to replace the originals didn't have enough power to boot straight into PS2 without any issues below 40 but the power it WAS getting was close so it functions at 40 c as a result. Maybe yours is similar?

So after you got yours checked and fixed, it runs below 40 now without any freezing issues?

 

[Haker120]

But what tokens are we speaking? NEC/TOKINs or something else? And my awaits another check tho, still minimum temp to make ps2_emu working is 71 degrees.

 

[Timbo9876]

This is kind of weird, as long as CELL's temperature is higher than 71 degrees all ps2 games work (no matter with ot without upscalling) but then if temperature will drop under 71 it instantly freezes, and even then RSX cannot reach more than 60 degrees. So for now I set min temperature to 76 and I'm not sure how much % for ps2 to not damage console, I mean now I have 25% which is drastic so I won't go playing more than testing.

EDIT: No matter PAL/NTSC with or without upscalling, as long as CELL's temperature is high enough, all ps2 games work.

You might wanna check this out

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[lostman1234]

You might wanna check this out

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mine has had its TOKINs replaced with the RIP-Felix tantalizer board and it still has problems with PS2 games if the board goes below 60c

https://www.psx-place.com/threads/f...ames-and-their-temperature.44219/#post-395483

 

[Haker120]

That seems to not help, service, I fix my consoles at, told me without knowledge which component is faulty won't heat whole motherboard as it was heated around 3 times now (2 reballings to 90nm and 1 final to retrofit 40nm RSX) to not risk making it unusable.

 

[Timbo9876]

That seems to not help, service, I fix my consoles at, told me without knowledge which component is faulty won't heat whole motherboard as it was heated around 3 times now (2 reballings to 90nm and 1 final to retrofit 40nm RSX) to not risk making it unusable.

Heating the motherboard at 120 degrees is perfectly safe and won't harm your console. By baking it for 3 hours at this temperature, it removes all the built-up moisture in the motherboard. Because these consoles are nearly 20 years old, moisture definitely builds up over this time. I then let the MB cool down for an hour in the oven so it gets a very gradual cool down.

You can see from my video that the issue is completely resolved. I will now monitor how long this works for and report back if it fails. Baking the console in this way, I place the MB on a bracket so it's completely flat, may help the MB with warping issues that may well be contributing to the issue.

Heating the MB when doing a frankenstien uses far more heat in a short space of time. This would not have the same result, and this is likely the reason why your issue hasn't been resolved

It seems a capacitor that is failing seems to be a likely candidate. We know that when we heat capacitors, we can turn a bad cap into a working one. It could also be an RSX issue, but considering that PS3 and PS1 games are not affected, this seems unlikely but still possible

I hope in time a more definitive answer can be given. Currently, it seems a long, slow bake resolves the issue. In time, hopefully, we can find out why.

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[Totops3]

Hello. I made this account to post that I can vouch for Tim's theory. My PS3 with the emotion chip wouldn't boot into PS2 reliably at all unless it was at minimum in the mid 40 C. Despite being delidded and having liquid metal applied along with having good quality tokens this issue remained. I sent Tim my console after viewing his video and his posts here and he baked my board. The board before the bake was slightly warped and is now completely level. I got the console back since and it can now immediately boot into PS2 games even at low temps -

 

[Totops3]

In the mid 20 Celsius range. Tim after the bake and I have tested the console since receiving it back and PS2 playback is flawless now with no fears of the PS2 black screen of death. Tim has also done an outstanding job refurbishing the console as well and I can't thank him enough.

 

[Timbo9876]

Any recommendations on where to get the chips outside of eBay?

This issue is common and has come up a lot. So much so it's already been well documented that computer booter and Ace Consoles have tried replacement of the RSX, GS and EE chip, this did not resolve the issue. Recently I have had a few consoles that refused to boot PS2 games from cold boot, but the moment the system reached over a certain temperature (the temperature varies depending on how severe the issue is) then the console will boot PS2 games.

REMEMBER, the main chips have already been replaced and this did not resolve the issue. In some cases the console won't boot the PS2 game no matter how hot it gets, but I believe it's the same issue just more severe.

So i did some experiments with the consoles I had recently to see if I could get to the bottom of what's going on. I did notice that when people installed custom firmware and webman mod the issue started to present itself. This is because webman mod from default will aim to keep the console under 68 degrees. This means the system can't reach the desired heat to run PS2 games. So on lots of forums you will hear people saying that after a custom firmware installation they can no longer get PS2 games to boot.

So my first thought was to see if replacement of the NEC tokins would work. However I then got a reply from someone saying they had already tried this and it didn't work. So my next thought was to see if baking the console at 120 degrees for 3 hours on a PS3 motherboard bracket would help. I believed if this works then it's likely to be an RSX issue. But then I remembered that the RSX had been changed on a console with the same issue, I baked it anyway to remove moisture and to help straighten out any warping of the motherboard.

Well to my surprise it booted from cold, it would only do this before if the console was running hot. If it's not the RSX, EE or GS chip then what's happened? Has a failing capacitor been revived with heat, why was it now working? I then obtained 3 more consoles with the same issue, all of them now work from cold boot, what's going on??

So my theory is the motherboard is slightly wrapped and this prevents some traces communicating between some components on the motherboard. When the console runs hot the motherboard expands and contracts which allows the trace to communicate as it should. By slow baking the motherboard this helps to irradiate the warping thus resolving the issue. This is only theory but currently all I know is that by resting the motherboard on a PS3 bracket (not screwed down just resting on it) and allowing a 3 hour bake at 120 degrees (turn off oven and don't remove until it's cold, that's normally another 2 hours) then after this process the console boots PS2 games from cold boot again.

I currently have not had a console that refuses to boot no matter what the temperature is, but when I do get one I will try baking it to see if the issue is resolvable using this method.

Link below of me trying out this method for the first time.

 

[Haker120]

Well, my DEX forced to be CEX once again in service and I told serviceman about your theory @Timbo9876 and he said if finding bad capacitor won't help, he'll heat mobo at 120 degrees on my responsibility and maybe it'll help or maybe it'll kill my console, in any case I'll let you know what happened.

 

[Timbo9876]

Well, my DEX forced to be CEX once again in service and I told serviceman about your theory @Timbo9876 and he said if finding bad capacitor won't help, he'll heat mobo at 120 degrees on my responsibility and maybe it'll help or maybe it'll kill my console, in any case I'll let you know what happened.

It won't kill the console! It's a pre-bake that is standard for work prior to BGA rework. If he thinks that it. Would kill your console, then I would question his ability to do the work in the first place


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[Haker120]

Well, he revived that motherboard that lacked a lot of components. And it's me who worry about killing console, not serviceman. Sorry for saying it wrong. xD

 

[Joybuzzer]

Just wanted to add my experience with this issue.

I recently bought a frankie CECHA00 from Japan done by Sony themselves. The seller I got it from also claims to have delided the CPU and replaced the paste on both the CELL and RSX. I say "claimed" because I haven't opened the console myself, so I can't be 100% sure. He also might have replaced some of the NEC Tokin capacitors, but again, I can't be sure without opening it.

After a fresh install of 4.91.2 Evilnat CFW, I decided to play some PS2 games, and I used the debug settings to change my region to Europe since I have PAL games. Before doing so, I activated a fan setting to keep the temperatures below 70C since I noticed the CELL was running a bit hot (70C) when idle using SYSCON fan settings. My PAL games seemed to work randomly - sometimes it would boot up normally, sometimes it would be a black screen without a menu, sometimes it would be black screen with the menu, and sometimes green lines would appear when the game was loading, which would either disappear or remain until I exit out. It's worth noting that when the game booted properly, it would also run fine without any issues. I tried disabling the PS2 upscaler, but the issues persisted. I read that PAL games sometimes work funny on CECHA consoles, so I decided to try to load an NTSC iso file. It was pretty much the same result, except when it wouldn't load, it would just be a black screen. When it did load, it ran normally.

I was stumped by this issue as I thought that if the EE/GS chip was faulty, PS2 games wouldn't play at all. Why would they load on what seemed like random occasions? Why would they play flawlessly after they have loaded? Anyway, I then found this thread and decided to see if the "it plays PS2 only above 70C" theory applied to me. I left the console on SYSCON fan settings, waited for the CELL temperature to get to 70C, and then voila, the PS2 iso would load without a problem. The difference here, though, is that I still had the fan speed at 40% while playing PS2 games but that didn't make the game crash and didn't impact performance. When I exited the PS2 game, I noticed that the temperature had fallen to around 50C. I immediately started the PS2 game again, and it worked without an issue. So, it wasn't the temperature affecting the PS2 loader. I reverted back to my custom fan settings, and when trying to load a PS2 game, it was broken again. Basically, I came to the conclusion that if I wasn't using the SYSCON fan settings when loading a PS2 game, it would likely not work. When using the SYSCON fan settings, it would work all the time, and I tried with a couple of different games. While playing the games, the fan goes to 40%, and there don't seem to be any issues. It's worth noting that PAL games still behave funny, but I assume that's because of the difference in the video standards.

I know that when Sony would perform an RSX swap, they would also put a custom SYSCON, so maybe that's somehow related to this issue, but I'm not sure.

TLDR: Using SYSCON fan settings when loading a PS2 game solves the issue for me, and I can still use custom fan speeds while playing PS2 games. Temperature doesn't seem to be a factor.

 

[Haker120]

Capacitors responsible for powering ps2 chips are bad, I had the same issue and replacing them fixed issue with ps2 games permanently even though old capacitors had correct ESRs.

 

[Joybuzzer]

Capacitors responsible for powering ps2 chips are bad, I had the same issue and replacing them fixed issue with ps2 games permanently even though old capacitors had correct ESRs.

Are these capacitors next to the EE/GS chip? And are they hard to replace?

 

[Haker120]

Are these capacitors next to the EE/GS chip? And are they hard to replace?

Honestly I dunno, this is what I got to know after it was fixed by person who was looking for the issue with ps2 games. I just wrote what I got to know.

 

[Timbo9876]

Honestly I dunno, this is what I got to know after it was fixed by person who was looking for the issue with ps2 games. I just wrote what I got to know.

It would be helpful to know what capacitors are responsible for PS2 playback

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[Joybuzzer]

It would be helpful to know what capacitors are responsible for PS2 playback

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Hey Tim! Are the boards you baked still working properly?

 

[NextGeneration9501]

hi. i have the same problem with A06 as well. never opened by previous owner. still has original 90nm RSX. 20 days total runtime from what the syscon says (not sure this is real or not). last syscon error was 1002 then 3004 so i replaced 2 of 4 rsx nec tokins. playing TLoU no issue.

playing PS2 on HW mode got issues, black screen. baking at 120c for 3 hours then let 1 hour in the oven did not work. but random times, there's about 5% chance from my total 'resets' i would get the ps2 logo then nothing.....

i think probably i didn't use the BGA rework motherboard bracket during the baking but i did put tin foil balls underneath the motherboard. all 4 corners of the motherboard have covered.

has someone really have found the cause of the issue? because I'm thinking of selling the console for parts scrapping or donate to the landfill.

 

[Darealbandicoot]

hi. i have the same problem with A06 as well. never opened by previous owner. still has original 90nm RSX. 20 days total runtime from what the syscon says (not sure this is real or not). last syscon error was 1002 then 3004 so i replaced 2 of 4 rsx nec tokins. playing TLoU no issue.

playing PS2 on HW mode got issues, black screen. baking at 120c for 3 hours then let 1 hour in the oven did not work. but random times, there's about 5% chance from my total 'resets' i would get the ps2 logo then nothing.....

i think probably i didn't use the BGA rework motherboard bracket during the baking but i did put tin foil balls underneath the motherboard. all 4 corners of the motherboard have covered.

has someone really have found the cause of the issue? because I'm thinking of selling the console for parts scrapping or donate to the landfill.

This seems to be a reliable fix by @Timbo9876 and Consoletek. Tokens replaced without heat and an ultrasonic clean and a slow bake seems to work.