PS3 Black screen in PS2 games on back compat PS3s

D

DoublesAdvocate

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I've now found this issue on several PS3s and I'm beginning to think that this is a common hardware failure related to some sort of capacitor. I've seen several posts roughly describing the same issue on gbatemp, reddit, psx-place, etc.
Basically the issue manifests as such:
- When launching a PS2 game either directly from disc or when ripped as an ISO to the HDD the console will freeze.

-PS1 games and PS3 games will play without issue, and the console will not have had any YLoD issues in the past.

-This freezing issue will only occur when the console is "cold" so to speak, if you wait until the CELL/RSX have heated up to something like 60-70C then the games will launch completely fine.

-This doesn't work vs work temperature range can be tested by launching a PS2 game when the console is "cold" (below 50-60C) waiting for the PS2 mode to freeze, pressing the home button and choosing reset game, continue doing this until the console has warmed up to it's "warm" temperature range after which the game should play without issue.

I have noted almost the exact same behavior on a 90nm RSX CECHA, and a 40nm RSX CECHA, not only that but both the 90nm and 40nm CECHA I tested this on have less than 700H of use (for the 90nm it's actually under 50H)meaning it's extremely unlikely that this is a BGA issue with the RSX or CELL.
DennisDelitsso noted almost the exact same issue on his console recently and originally thought it was webman/CFW related but later changed his opinion when it continued happening even without either.


(I wasn't sure if this should go in here or in the hardware mods forum)
 
Yep, I'm DennisDelitsso aka Dorian aka ddsqa

I have the same issue on my console and it looks like it's getting more common as we go into the future. (posted about the issue in another thread)
Last member I spoke to, datriax from here, actually fixed the problem.
Link to his reply https://www.psx-place.com/threads/cecha01-ps2-black-screen.27716/#post-279645

I'm very surprised to see even 40nm RSX CECHA had this issue since I thought it was a new revision, so to speak.
But it seems the capacitor is a capacitor, and it can still fail like with any other hardware.

Identifying that exact faulty capacitor in the system seems to be the problem for me.
 
Probably not the issue for you guys, but worth noting a lot of recent CFWs have an issue with PS2 games on BC models, so some reports on the net of this problem are probably related to that. Use the very latest hotfixed version of Evilnat 4.87.2, or Rebug CFW to be sure your PS2 emulator is working ok.
 
DeViL303 said:
Probably not the issue for you guys, but worth noting a lot of recent CFWs have an issue with PS2 games on BC models, so some reports on the net of this problem are probably related to that. Use the very latest hotfixed version of Evilnat 4.87.2, or Rebug CFW to be sure your PS2 emulator is working ok.
Click to expand...
Yup, always good to do a double install of the same FW just to make sure any issues were ironed out. I did that on the 40nm CECHA but it didn't solve the problem.
Also worth noting that in some cases it could just be a scratched disc that causes a freeze in a specific spot.
 
Hi,
Did you manage to find the solution? I've got the same problem with my PS3 CECHA, which has very low total usetime (~200h)
 
wvzilki said:
Você conseguiu resolver seu problema?

Did you manage to solve your problem?
Click to expand...
Yep, I have the same issue, and I'm starting to think it's the NEC tokins. Now, it's worth noting that there may be different variations on this problem. But it does look like it's a failing component, and when it fails completely, you only get a black screen. It won't even boot.

Now we have felix's tantalisers it's fairly easy to replace all the tokins without the need for bridging wire, etc. We also know that low ESR caps are required. Otherwise, the process is counterproductive.

The problem with this fault is that it's not easy to diagnose, and no syscon error codes are generated. Would it be possible to look at the consoles' behaviour via syscon whilst trying to boot a PS2 game? Could the boot sequence be looked at to see if any failures are logged?

For now, I'm going to try to replace the tokins, I will post back with my results

Sent from my SM-F936B using Tapatalk
 
I pre-baked the motherboard for 3 hours at 120 degrees. When I took readings of the NEC tokins on the RSX side of the board, I got a reading of 0.8 ohms. After the bake I took the same readings which have now increased to 1.3 ohms.

The issue has now been completely resolved. To test this I ran the fan at 80 percent keeping h the console at 45 degrees CPU side and 43 degrees RSX side. PS2 games booted first time with no.issues at all.

Previous to this I piggybacked on some tantalum caps and this had no effect. So I'm guessing the increased ohms from the NEC tokins on the RSX side is reading it from the RSX itself. This console has hardly been used and is no more than 35 days runtime but it seems the RSX may have been starting to fail and the pre-bake has revived it.

See link below

 
DeadEnd said:
In some cases, yes. I had one where ee-gs was artefacting. Heat made it work again for some time.
Click to expand...
Going over other threads, it seems Ace Consoles, computer booter and some other technicians have tried replacing the RSX, then GS and EE chips and the black.screen when booting PS2 games was not resolved.

Could this be something to do with motherboard warping? I have noticed that consoles with this issue had a visibly noticeable warped motherboard. After a slow bake and a long, gradual cool down, the motherboard looked straighter and less warped.



Sent from my SM-F936B using Tapatalk
 
Timbo9876 said:
Going over other threads, it seems Ace Consoles, computer booter and some other technicians have tried replacing the RSX, then GS and EE chips and the black.screen when booting PS2 games was not resolved.

Could this be something to do with motherboard warping? I have noticed that consoles with this issue had a visibly noticeable warped motherboard. After a slow bake and a long, gradual cool down, the motherboard looked straighter and less warped.



Sent from my SM-F936B using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I'm not a hardware person, but I can imagine the mobo could get warped from years of heating up and cooling down. Afaik, that causes the mobo to flex. It's the popping noise you sometimes get with electronics. Whether that's the cause of your issue, I don't know.
 
Timbo9876 said:
Going over other threads, it seems Ace Consoles, computer booter and some other technicians have tried replacing the RSX, then GS and EE chips and the black.screen when booting PS2 games was not resolved.

Could this be something to do with motherboard warping? I have noticed that consoles with this issue had a visibly noticeable warped motherboard. After a slow bake and a long, gradual cool down, the motherboard looked straighter and less warped.


Sent from my SM-F936B using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

But you cannot say it was not resolved. Because there are always different reasons and causes for this particular fault. There is no single fault that causes black screen in ps2 games. There can be numerous. Like I have mentioned in other threads, I repaired it on one ps3 by replacing EE-GS. In that board, I could quit out of the menu when ps2 game was showing black screen. But Before that I had also tried removing one of the resistor banks around bridge chip , and it changed the behavior in a way that I could no longer use the menu . I was simply stuck in black screen, in other words - GLOD. So you can see, any component in any line between ps2 section and ps3 section on the motherboard can cause it. Sometimes the board itself can be damaged indeed, a broken trace inside PCB layers could be causing it. Who knows. But it's a case by case basis.
 
DeadEnd said:
But you cannot say it was not resolved. Because there are always different reasons and causes for this particular fault. There is no single fault that causes black screen in ps2 games. There can be numerous. Like I have mentioned in other threads, I repaired it on one ps3 by replacing EE-GS. In that board, I could quit out of the menu when ps2 game was showing black screen. But Before that I had also tried removing one of the resistor banks around bridge chip , and it changed the behavior in a way that I could no longer use the menu . I was simply stuck in black screen, in other words - GLOD. So you can see, any component in any line between ps2 section and ps3 section on the motherboard can cause it. Sometimes the board itself can be damaged indeed, a broken trace inside PCB layers could be causing it. Who knows. But it's a case by case basis.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, the menu was accessible on all 5 consoles that i have baked. After baking the console, the console would boot PS2 games. You replaced an Emotion Engine chip? That would have made a great video.

But could have the heat that removed the EE chip corrected, the warping enough for the traces to communicate again. Couldn't this be a possibility? It's a bit like when people were replacing tokins, and it was the heat that was used to remove the NEC tokin that was temporarily correcting the RSX flip chip error. When you removed the EE chip, was you able to check if the one you removed was non functional?

I started thinking that due to the MB warping that maybe some traces were not communicating as they should do. It's just good to know that a slow bake brings back PS2 playback. The question is, how long will it last. I will now monitor it and report back if one fails again. Because the issue is so complex, if a slow bake brings ack PS2 playback, then this could be beneficial, especially if it lasts. I was able to see that all 5 consoles had motherboard warping. I could see this because if an area didn't touch one of the points on the bracket, then i could visibly see it was slightly warped.

Also, a slow bake at 120 degrees over 3 hours doesn't seem to harm the motherboard at all, so it's not like the process is harming the console. If anything, it's beneficial as it removes unwanted moisture from the motherboard and helps to correct the board warping.

I understand that this doesn't answer any questions as to why these 5 consoles didn't play PS2 games and now do. However, I feel that it's important to document that a slow bake brings back the abilityto play PS2 games, it's not a fix but hopefully it's a step in the right direction that could help to uncover the cause to this issue.

Sent from my SM-F936B using Tapatalk
 
I would suspect the bake rejuvenates EE-GS and/or RSX temporarily. Depending on which is causing the problem (Because RSX can also cause nops2 issue). For some reason I also believe motherboard warping to the point of breaking contacts would be somewhat rare. But I won't claim it's not a possibility, but just feels like it's unlikely.

And no, I just took EEGS from a random spare COK-001 board which was already dead otherwise (Cell cracked), I got lucky with it.
 
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