- My TTL USB Serial cable pinout is (R=5v, B=GND, W=RXD, G=TXD). Does RXD go to the motherboard's RX? Same for TX? Or does the USB's RXD goto MB TX? In other words, does the motherboard's transmit go to the USB cable's Receive?
- Does the GND wire on my USB cable need to be grounded to the PS3? This was not clear in the Tutorial.
Disclaimer:
For the life of me I can't find the source of these additional test points, but here's how I have them documented -- I'm sure
@db260179 has this somewhere. In the official service manual, they're off of connector CN4009 (see page 21 and 30 of the manual for block diagram and board layout, respectively). In the manual, they're on pins 10 and 11, but someone somewhere told me they map also to the test points I'm using, which are WAY easier to solder to. Oddly enough, testing continuity between CN4009 and those test points below doesn't return anything, and those test points aren't documented in the manual. They 100% work, though, I just don't know where I found this.
/Disclaimer
I'm using the red/white wire for the diag pin (still floating, at this point).
Syscon RX goes to UART RX, and Syscon TX goes to the UART TX. There is NO crossover. EDIT for posterity -- You are supposed to cross the connections TX to RX and RX to TX.
Here's a slightly better close up -- sorry, I only have my phone camera...
From those points, they connect to the RX and TX of the UART device, like this. Note that I'm using a white wire for GND, but that's grounded to the PS3 chassi.
I needed a "SYSCON for dummies" tutorial.
I also use python for windows, not linux, and I use it straight on windows, not WSL. I think we learned early on that there were odd compatibility issues with 3+ python, and that 2.7 works more reliably. Getting python to show as part of the PATH can be a little tricky sometimes, it seems that the installer doesn't always puts it where you think it should. I'm going to uninstall and reinstall my workspace and take better notes of how to get it working.
Do I launch a python terminal or a CMD promt to enter $# dmesg? Or is that a linux command that doesn't apply to windows at all?
Just CMD prompt works fine (or windows terminal, if you have it, works as well). You don't need to type dmesg, though -- that's a linux command.
How does the next part work ($# python ps3_syscon_uart_script.py)? do I have to change directory to the python script, then launch it?
Right, you have to be on the same directory where you saved the script., then launch it.
What about the specific variables, Comm port and baud rate? Is this the same for windows as it is for linux? My USB was in serial port COM6, which doesn't look like the "/dev/ttyUSB0" example provided in the tutorial. So would I do the following?
Your command is correct! In windows, you only specify the port windows auto-assigned for you (in your case, com6 -- mine is com3). You don't need to specify the baud speed, only the connection mode (which is either CXR or CXRF).
Ultimately, you don't have to be a python expert -- I'm most definitely not. It's unfortunate that getting python up and running is such a pain, but that's the extent of it. Everything else is just direct interaction with the syscon.
