Playstation 3 woes - 3 Beeps and RLOD

Well, they have made it close to impossible to fix without the relevant documentation from Sony.

I found a Sony dealer close to me yesterday who fixes them so I dropped it over to him yesterday. €30 for a repair valuation.

I suspect the fan myself now. I think the fan is being tested as part of the boot sequence and this check is failing.

Have you tried contacting Sony directly?

johnfás wrote:

Have you tried contacting Sony directly?

Yeah, been through all that. They don't want to know if it's out of warranty.

I could have gone back to the shop though and forced the issue of reasonable expected usage from an appliance that cost 600 quid. And from anecdotes on the web, shops are taking them back even after warranty. But I had already opened mine up at that stage.

The repair guys couldn't fix it. Still kept my 30 Euro. They said the motherboard is fecked. Maybe they are right. They offered me a refurb. unit for €250.

So I've decided to take a closer look myself. More on this tomorrow.

This is a packet from the I2C after the 3 beeps. So the standby micro has already decided there is a problem.



This is the comms with the ADT75 - labelled 3 in the previous image.According to the datasheet, this is working correctly and is reporting correct temperature. 0x154 (12 bit mode) equates to about 20 degrees C.

Now for the dodgy bit.





Here we see correct master function followed by what looks to me like a malfunctioning slave. I have marked the 8 bits which should be a temperature report from one of the ADT7461's as dodgy, because it does look dodgy. Seriously.

Is the ADT chip the one at the end of the yellow line below - on the left? The ADT chip is the one which monitors the temperature and your machine thinks it's getting too hot, no ?

You couldn't photograph some of the yokes you're using to poke and prod the chips with could you? I presume you're sticking probes onto the chip and getting those readings on the screens.

You'd almost have to explain those readings too by the way if you had the time and inclination - are they voltages going up and down?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

There are 3 ADT chips Audi. See the little blue circles.

I2C (called I squared C) is a bus topology designed by Philips semicoonductor a long time ago, maybe 1980's. It is a 2 wire bus consisting of clock and data.

In the scope plot above, the yellow trace is clock and the blue trace is data.
You can see in the same image that the scope has measured the clock frequency as 97KHz. This is the same as 97 kilobits per second.

In this case, a SONY specific microcontroller wants to know the temperature of the IBM CELL processor. There is an ADT (Analog devices) chip sitting right beside the CELL, and it uses a diode implanted in the CELL substrate as it's sensor.

On both the blue and yellow traces, the scale is 2 Volts per division. A division is represented by the dotted lines in the background. So the signals vary between 0 volts (Binary 0) and 3.3 volts (binary 1)

I'll get a photo of the probe yoke in a minute.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

There are 3 ADT chips Audi. See the little blue circles.

I2C (called I squared C) is a bus topology designed by Philips semicoonductor a long time ago, maybe 1980's. It is a 2 wire bus consisting of clock and data.

In the scope plot above, the yellow trace is clock and the blue trace is data.
You can see in the same image that the scope has measured the clock frequency as 97KHz. This is the same as 97 kilobits per second.

In this case, a SONY specific microcontroller wants to know the temperature of the IBM CELL processor. There is an ADT (Analog devices) chip sitting right beside the CELL, and it uses a diode implanted in the CELL substrate as it's sensor.

On both the blue and yellow traces, the scale is 2 Volts per division. A division is represented by the dotted lines in the background. So the signals vary between 0 volts (Binary 0) and 3.3 volts (binary 1)

I'll get a photo of the probe yoke in a minute.

Ah sorry - your diagram of the motherboard is very detailed now that I look at it.

The first probe shot above is of the ADT chip labelled '3' is it ? and that's ok ?? Is the second shot of another one of those little blue chips and that's seriously not ok ?

Philips semiconductor technology from the 80s ? Is that architecture sort of standard for that kind of stuff though? Is the whole blue and yellow system you've labelled all a temp monitoring system and does nothing else ?

have you tried a stanley lump hammer and 30 seconds of delerious fun?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Ah sorry - your diagram of the motherboard is very detailed now that I look at it.

The first probe shot above is of the ADT chip labelled '3' is it ? and that's ok ?? Is the second shot of another one of those little blue chips and that's seriously not ok ?

Exactly right.

Quote :

Philips semiconductor technology from the 80s ? Is that architecture sort of standard for that kind of stuff though? Is the whole blue and yellow system you've labelled all a temp monitoring system and does nothing else ?

It is standard. Philips developed it to allow chips to talk to each other (hence Inter-Integrated Circuit or I2C) usually a micro talking to a slave memory or sensor chip. It is still widely used today.

Yes the blue and yellow on the image is only temp monitoring.

Here's the beast I am using to probe

zakalwe wrote:

have you tried a stanley lump hammer and 30 seconds of delerious fun?

That's the next procedure. Would a wood handle lump hammer be ok ?

Looks like beyond economic repair time..(hammer at the ready!)...unless you can swap out some of those BGAs...

its hammer time!

da da da da you cant touch this!!!

Stand down with the hammers.

I emailed Sony last week with a big long whinging email and they replied saying they would replace the unit at no cost except for shipping.

I received a brand new one (factory refurbished - looks brand new) by courier yesterday.

Hooray! Consumer power rocks!

I'd say you are absolutely delighted. Are you a Pro Evo fan?

johnfás wrote:

Hooray! Consumer power rocks!

I'd say you are absolutely delighted. Are you a Pro Evo fan?

I am delighted. The damn thing was depressing me. I only got renewed vigour when 2 guys in this office had theirs pack up in the last month. That's 3 PS3s in one office.

I should have emailed from the outset. This telephone support is a nonsense. They can say what they like to brush you off and there is no record. Lesson learned.

Is Pro Evo a football game ? I'm not a fan anyway. I like driving cars really fast and killing bad people ...

I'm not a big football fan in real life but I like playing the games - they are good for playing against other people.

I know someone who is on his third PS3 at this stage. The first time the fan sucked the carpet up into the machine .

johnfás wrote:

I'm not a big football fan in real life but I like playing the games - they are good for playing against other people.

I know someone who is on his third PS3 at this stage. The first time the fan sucked the carpet up into the machine .

If he can put a DVD into the Hoover, then I think I might know what the problem is ....

3 PS3s in one office though ... bloody hell. Didn't the XBOX 360 have problems as well ? I think I remember some problems.

Anyway congratulations on your new heater cum games console. Is the spec the same?

Yes the XBOX had some problem called the "Red Ring of Death"

I had a Play Station 1 way back when and it was the BEST THING EVER. I didn't bother with a PS2 but went for an X-Box, which I used once. I've never bothered with anything since, I still use my Playstation occasionally though. I still have my Atari 5200 too and it still works as does my Sinclair ZX81.