Different PS3 laser faults?

Redisle

Hi Lads,

Bought a 60gb a few months ago to repair the laser but had far more serious problems with the console when I got it home. Long story short video didn't work. I did have it to a point last week where it would boot then lock up with artefacts after about 10 seconds but at this moment it's back to no video.

I did manage to get it working correctly at one point and when I did it played dvd's just and also booted a ps2 game with no problems. I didn't have any ps3 games/blu rays to test and it wouldn't power on again after a restart anyway.

What Im just wondering is if the laser is faulty at all? I know I did read of cases where the laser read everything except blu rays but I was under the impression that this only occurs on the twin laser system in the KES-410A. This being a 60gb it has KES-400A so perhaps it is functioning fine?

So has anyone ever come across a KES-400A that reads everything except blu rays?

Reason I ask is Im probably going to split this one for parts and a functioning blu ray drive is worth far more than a dud!

Myrddin

The fact it's not booting tends to rule out it purely being a laser issue. Are the artefacts appearing just while browsing the GameOS? If so, it's a more serious problem and probably heading towards a YLOD. The laser issue will only affect detection of discs, loading times etc & artefacts within games/movies to an extent. But booting issues, and GameOS glitches would signal a more serious issue.

Wez

^^^ What he said..

If it's the laser it'll boot no problem, just the disk icon won't appear (clock in the corner keeps spinning) even without the BR drive attached at all it'll boot, so this must mean it's more serious than that I'm afraid.

Redisle

Oh Im well aware of that. Ive tried everything to fix the actual mainboard issue, including a heatgun reflow. I think it may have been damaged when I was bringing it home in the car, pretty sure the gpu is fecked now, It pretty much boots to the menu and locks up after a few seconds now, don't even have time to browse.

Disregarding the mainboard issues what Im wondering is if it's possible my laser is actually ok since it is reading DVD's and PS2 games, I didn't have any blu rays to test at the time. Probably going to stick parts on ebay/adverts.

Wez

Did you use flux when reflowing? Clean it with alcohal or anything before hand? This helps get a better connection for anything you reflow..

Also, what model is it? I might take your BR drive if it'd suit, only if it's well and truly dead..

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

Disregarding the mainboard issues what Im wondering is if it's possible my laser is actually ok since it is reading DVD's and PS2 games, I didn't have any blu rays to test at the time. Probably going to stick parts on ebay/adverts.

Not necessarily, there's two diodes on the 60gb models. One for DVD wavelenght, one for Blu-Ray wavelenght. It's common the DVD one will outlive the BD one, as on a PS3 it tends to be used less. So in essence, just because a DVD/PS2 game boots, doesn't rule out an issue with loading Blu-Ray discs. I know from painful experience :pac:

Myrddin

Wez wrote: »

Also, what model is it? I might take your BR drive if it'd suit, only if it's well and truly dead..

Arn't they paired to the mianboard Wez? Or are you looking to pillage parts from it? :pac:

Redisle

EnterNow wrote: »

Not necessarily, there's two diodes on the 60gb models. One for DVD wavelenght, one for Blu-Ray wavelenght. It's common the DVD one will outlive the BD one, as on a PS3 it tends to be used less. So in essence, just because a DVD/PS2 game boots, doesn't rule out an issue with loading Blu-Ray discs. I know from painful experience :pac:

As far as I know the 60gb launch model used the KES-400A which is a single dioide module. The later consoles starting with the 40gb used the KES-410 which is the dual laser module. I didn't actually manage to fix the console I bought but I did learn a hell of a lot about repairing them in the process! I was just wondering if anyone had ever come across a single diode module which was refusing the read only blu rays, I was aware it was quite possible on the dual diode.

See here.

Wez wrote: »

Did you use flux when reflowing? Clean it with alcohal or anything before hand? This helps get a better connection for anything you reflow..

Also, what model is it? I might take your BR drive if it'd suit, only if it's well and truly dead..

I didn't use flux, I know it helps but in reality I don't think the problem is being caused by gpu seperation at all, it was just a last ditch effort. Regarding cleaning I did clean the chip using some thermal compound cleaning solution.

Regarding model it's a 60gb launch, CECHC03.
Im not going to be splitting the console immediately so I can't promise any parts just yet, or I may keep it for parts myself, not sure yet.

Incidentally do you know anywhere to get rubbing alcohol or similar in Ireland? Would be very handy to have a bottle around for cleaning. I have tried a pharmacy before but no luck.

EnterNow wrote: »

Arn't they paired to the mianboard Wez? Or are you looking to pillage parts from it? :pac:

The drive controller boards are paired with the mainboards. But there's nothing stopping you buying an entire replacement drive just as long as you use the original controller board, there's nothing tying the controller boards to the drive so as long as it's the same model drive it works just fine.

Wez

Ah right, flux gives you a much better chance of a "proper" reflow and the alcohal is for flushing underneath the chips to clear out dirt/dust (every little helps) before heating/fluxing. If you can find an electronics store they should have something suitable there.

Yup, just swap the logic boards over (like older 360 drives apparently) and that's all! Only problem that arises is when the logic board (or the chip on it) dies.. Only Sony can pair another board to it.

Also, there's 3 types of drives/lasers, kes-400's kes-410's and kes-450's which in order is: Single laser for older fat's (4 usb ports), dual lasers for 2nd gen fats (2 usb ports) and then for the slims. You can swap logic boards when they are the same revision drives, otherwise apparently they won't work.

Although on that note, I've seen oodles of the controller boards for sale on Ebay, can't see them as being much use to anyone!

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

As far as I know the 60gb launch model used the KES-400A which is a single dioide module. The later consoles starting with the 40gb used the KES-410 which is the dual laser module. I didn't actually manage to fix the console I bought but I did learn a hell of a lot about repairing them in the process! I was just wondering if anyone had ever come across a single diode module which was refusing the read only blu rays, I was aware it was quite possible on the dual diode.

See here.

Spot on, I mixed them up. The later unit was designed to take the workload off the Blu-Ray diode for dvd's, and as such they supposedly fail less. So yours is single diode unit that's only reading dvd's? Is it possible that the diode is weak (current leakage), causing Blu-Ray wavelenght generation problems, yet is happy enough at the larger dvd wavelenght?

Given this problem too, I'd say the unit is well & truly borked.

Redisle

EnterNow wrote: »

Spot on, I mixed them up. The later unit was designed to take the workload off the Blu-Ray diode for dvd's, and as such they supposedly fail less. So yours is single diode unit that's only reading dvd's? Is it possible that the diode is weak (current leakage), causing Blu-Ray wavelenght generation problems, yet is happy enough at the larger dvd wavelenght?

Given this problem too, I'd say the unit is well & truly borked.

For all I know the blu ray drive in my console could be perfect. Bought it originally with the symptom of not playing games but that could well have been a software problem. Like I said when I managed to get the console going that one time I didn't have any blu rays/ps3 games to test but it did play dvd's and ps2 games.



I *think* the console is beyond repair anyway. I have been working with some other folks on another forum/blog to try and diagnose it but no good really, I did find some loose solder on the board when I opened it up first but I couldn't find it's source, It was a biggish piece so certainly looked like it came from a through hole component, of which there aren't many. One guy was suggesting it may be a problem with the sata power or data connector but I haven't really investigated that yet apart from swapping drives, which didn't make a difference.

The thing about the console though is it almost always locks up after the same amount of time, like perhaps it is making a call to some component and failing. Thought it may have been heat related but I doubt it now, I replaced the thermal compound with some pretty good stuff when last reassembling and the fan runs just fine so heat really shouldn't be an issue. Also at times I have managed to make the console work by shaking/banging it to an extent, which seriously reduces the chance of it being bga related since those are held on pretty tight with the hsf plus if they were loose enough to be effected by console movement I wouldn't think it would be booting at all!


Perhaps I should live in hope that someone comes up with a hardware diagnostics program using the PSJailbreak code, something similar to that Sony no doubt has always had access to. It's just blind guessing really without something to do diagnostics with.

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

For all I know the blu ray drive in my console could be perfect. Bought it originally with the symptom of not playing games but that could well have been a software problem. Like I said when I managed to get the console going that one time I didn't have any blu rays/ps3 games to test but it did play dvd's and ps2 games.



I *think* the console is beyond repair anyway. I have been working with some other folks on another forum/blog to try and diagnose it but no good really, I did find some loose solder on the board when I opened it up first but I couldn't find it's source, It was a biggish piece so certainly looked like it came from a through hole component, of which there aren't many. One guy was suggesting it may be a problem with the sata power or data connector but I haven't really investigated that yet apart from swapping drives, which didn't make a difference.

The thing about the console though is it almost always locks up after the same amount of time, like perhaps it is making a call to some component and failing. Thought it may have been heat related but I doubt it now, I replaced the thermal compound with some pretty good stuff when last reassembling and the fan runs just fine so heat really shouldn't be an issue. Also at times I have managed to make the console work by shaking/banging it to an extent, which seriously reduces the chance of it being bga related since those are held on pretty tight with the hsf plus if they were loose enough to be effected by console movement I wouldn't think it would be booting at all!


Perhaps I should live in hope that someone comes up with a hardware diagnostics program using the PSJailbreak code, something similar to that Sony no doubt has always had access to. It's just blind guessing really without something to do diagnostics with.

Sounds really weird, the failling at constant intervals does tend to make it seem like a call/OS/software failure alright. What firmware is it on? If below 3.41 I wonder would it stay alive long enough to initiate the update & flag it for the next reboot.

Also, how does the system behave with the drive disconnected on boot?

Redisle

Im not sure exactly what firmware it's on but when I was browsing the menu's I did notice it still has the OtherOS option so it's not the more recent one.

It behaves exactly the same without the blu ray drive connected, freezes as per usual.

If I boot without the hard disk it will come up with the wavy line background and no icons, then freeze after roughly the same time anyway.

Edit: I actually have a video here of what it does, this is an old video but it is still behaving rougly the same, perhaps locking up slightly faster since the reflow though!

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

Im not sure exactly what firmware it's on but when I was browsing the menu's I did notice it still has the OtherOS option so it's not the more recent one.

It behaves exactly the same without the blu ray drive connected, freezes as per usual.

If I boot without the hard disk it will come up with the wavy line background and no icons, then freeze after roughly the same time anyway.

And had the previous owner tried any repairs himself prior to you buying it? The solder lump is weird, did it look factory (perfectly smooth/shiny), or a diy application of solder that had gotten loose maybe?

Redisle

I was the first person to open it, sure of that.

The solder was more a portion off the side of a through hole pad rather than perfectly spherical or anything. Like part of the exterior surface of a cone I think. Another possibility of course is that the loose solder shorted something else which is causing all these problems.. again, some diagnositcs software would be a wonderful help! This will probably never end up fixed in reality but it's an interesting thing to work on nonetheless.

Myrddin

Ok, well assuming the tamper sticker was still intact, it's conclusive the solder has come off something that either;

a) needs it back
b) as you said, has caused a short somewhere (worst case scenario).

Your aware the PS3 field tech service manuals have cropped up over the last week or two? They're no doubt copyrighted so I won't say much more than they have been publically leaked.

Have you tried slightly flexing the board to re-produce/prevent the crash happening?

Redisle

Tamper sticker was still in place alright.

Hadn't heard about those manuals no.. might make an interesting read!

I can't say Ive ever tried flexing it, It would be quite difficult to flex the board really with those backing plates plus trying to run it out of console while balancing the likes of the power supply on top!

What I will say is that one time I did manage to get it working at one point for a few minutes by banging/sharply tapping the console. This actually unfroze the console and removed the artefacts. This has only really been succesfull once however. The console is quite tempermental really, it does boot and freeze most of the time but then sometimes it dosen't even give any video! Pretty infuriating to say the least. It's a pretty crazy problem!

Thing is though I am glad in one way that it didn't turn out to just be
a laser fault because I have a gained quite a bit of knowledge from the troubleshooting experience and obviously opening the thing up and what not. Before this Id barely even used a ps3!


Edit: Oh yeah, another key thing I should probably mention too is it will only boot from stone cold. I mean it will boot and lockup but it won't come right back on after an immediate reboot, it has to be left for a while, not sure exactly how long, perhaps a few hours, before it will boot/freeze again! Quite tempermental like I said!

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

Tamper sticker was still in place alright.

Hadn't heard about those manuals no.. might make an interesting read!

I can't say Ive ever tried flexing it, It would be quite difficult to flex the board really with those backing plates plus trying to run it out of console while balancing the likes of the power supply on top!

What I will say is that one time I did manage to get it working at one point for a few minutes by banging/sharply tapping the console. This actually unfroze the console and removed the artefacts. This has only really been succesfull once however. The console is quite tempermental really, it does boot and freeze most of the time but then sometimes it dosen't even give any video! Pretty infuriating to say the least. It's a pretty crazy problem!

Thing is though I am glad in one way that it didn't turn out to just be
a laser fault because I have a gained quite a bit of knowledge from the troubleshooting experience and obviously opening the thing up and what not. Before this Id barely even used a ps3!


Edit: Oh yeah, another key thing I should probably mention too is it will only boot from stone cold. I mean it will boot and lockup but it won't come right back on after an immediate reboot, it has to be left for a while, not sure exactly how long, perhaps a few hours, before it will boot/freeze again! Quite tempermental like I said!

I'd strip the console down to the last screwn, take it all apart & reassemble it. I wonder if something lodged somewhere, and as it heats up its expanding and causing the short. There'a plenty of guides out there to do it, I went as far as removinf the BD drive and having that apart but that's unnecessary in your case. Just remove the BD drive as one unit, and set about taking the PSU & motherboard out.

Re-assemble everything slowly & test when done.

Redisle

Some interesting developments.

I ripped it all apart again and went over the entire board with a magnifying glass, I did find a few more specs of loose solder that I then proceeded to remove.

I could also hear what I thought was a rattling from underneath the gpu when shaking the board.

Next thing I did was take it out to the garage and blast the entire board with the air compressor, crude maybe but possibly effective.

Put it back together there just the mainboard and psu and it actually booted and worked away without freezing! I was stupid then because I pressed Restore Defaults, it proceeded to reboot and give an error about lack of controller and it's doing that on every boot now, so Il have to wait till tonight and borrow a controller off a friend. Things are looking up though! So hopefully after I get a controller il finish the system restore then fully reassemble.

One issue is that the fan is going high after a few minutes but that's most likely because I got lazy and put the thermal compound on the hsf instead of on the gpu/cpu. Il prob have to open it up again and redo the compound.

Wez

That's great news, happy to hear!
I find getting a good imprint for the thermal paste is pretty tricky (and the amount you use compared to 360's!). I took the last one apart 3 times and had to keep touching it up, then YLOD'd after being put back together (this one was for prevention, was already noisey as hell), I was stumped! Air compressor isn't a bad idea at all though, haven't got anything powerful enough here.. Might buy some of that "air in a can" and try it out, either that or bring the mobo down to Applegreen! :pac:

Redisle

Got a controller anyway, The thing seems to be working fine but I haven't connected the brd yet because the catch is broken so it has to be hot glued (something I caused myself on a previous teardown).

I just redid the compound there but the fan is still going nuts, For example I just turned it on from cold and did a scan for wireless networks, the fan increased to max almost immediately, if I actually do anything the fan is going nuts. I don't think I lost any but would losing one of those small thermal pads from another component cause it to go high so quickly? Strangely also the console isn't seeing any media on a flash drive, stuck an avi and some music onto a flash drive, it detects the drive but it's not seeing the media!

Any Ideas? Especially regarding the fan?

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

Got a controller anyway, The thing seems to be working fine but I haven't connected the brd yet because the catch is broken so it has to be hot glued (something I caused myself on a previous teardown).

I just redid the compound there but the fan is still going nuts, For example I just turned it on from cold and did a scan for wireless networks, the fan increased to max almost immediately, if I actually do anything the fan is going nuts. I don't think I lost any but would losing one of those small thermal pads from another component cause it to go high so quickly? Strangely also the console isn't seeing any media on a flash drive, stuck an avi and some music onto a flash drive, it detects the drive but it's not seeing the media!

Any Ideas? Especially regarding the fan?

Stupid question I know, but was the flash drive formatted in FAT32? The PS3 can't see NTFS Flash/External drives.

Redisle

It was FAT32. Figured that problem out anyway, I wasn't using the correct folder structure!

Still have an issue with the fan speeding up I think.

Edit: Yeah, left it sit at the menu there and the fan went nuts after about a minute. Somethings up!

Redisle

Well that didn't last long, it's bricked again. No Video! Back to the original problem again now (boots with a green light but no video and dosen't pick up controller). Im not positive but I *think* it may have stopped working after I tried to use hdmi, which may actually have broken it originally too. Ah well.

Myrddin

Redisle wrote: »

Well that didn't last long, it's bricked again. No Video! Back to the original problem again now (boots with a green light but no video and dosen't pick up controller). Im not positive but I *think* it may have stopped working after I tried to use hdmi, which may actually have broken it originally too. Ah well.

I think on a PS3 if you hold the standby/power down button while booting it resets the display settings. You may at least get it to work with RGB...

Redisle

Haha, believe me I know all about that, Id say I must have done the video reset sequence at least 100 times in the last few months! Im actually getting the impression from some other reading that it may be a bad powersupply. When I don't get any video it dosen't actually boot fully, there's no activity on the network port and it dosen't pick up a controller. It is quite possible really that it's the psu not supplying enough current. Might try and find the pinout and test the outputs.

docentore

best thing if u could get a whole psu unit.
just started reading the thread. it seems to me that it is a problem with power, ie voltage regulator on mobo or in psu or capacitors in psu.

Redisle

Was just probing the power supply connector for the brd and I managed to bridge 12v and Ground. Tiny little spark and the console beeped and shut down but Im not getting anything on the pin now so Ive either blown a fuse in the psu or blown a trace, not sure which is more likely but if it's the latter then I guess this is where I leave it! It WAS showing 12v beforehand and Im getting 5v fine too, don't have an easy method of doing some kind of load test.

docentore

Redisle wrote: »

Was just probing the power supply connector for the brd and I managed to bridge 12v and Ground. Tiny little spark and the console beeped and shut down but Im not getting anything on the pin now so Ive either blown a fuse in the psu or blown a trace, not sure which is more likely but if it's the latter then I guess this is where I leave it! It WAS showing 12v beforehand and Im getting 5v fine too, don't have an easy method of doing some kind of load test.

it is like with computer psu, it might show you 12v and 5v but under load the voltage drops, it might be only 5-10% and the device wont work properly.

Now new power supply is the only way. Unless you want tot get rid of it