Hacking Hardware PS1/2 Help identify Psone modchip instalation

[Dariuz_Wolf]

Long short story: An familiar not too involve into gaming send me his broken PsOne to fix it because he knows i like retro consoles.
The owner proudly told me that the console was never opened, until I did and showed him that indeed it has a modchip.
I'm not familiar with Ps1 modchips so I try to find what instalation is, but i couldn't find one that machs it. I don't have a multimeter, so i dont know if the chip is dead or not, because it can't read backups.
Indeed the console was never opened in their time, because the seals of warranty were intact (until me).
Also one yellow cable is solded in between two resistors, don't know if this connection is appropriate or not

 

[icegod]

https://github.com/Kippykip/PSX-Modchip

Take a look at the diagrams there, to see if it matches your layout.

If it can't read backups, it also could mean the laser is death or dying.

 

[Fien]

Does it read original game discs or play CD-DA ("music CD's")? If not, then the problem probably isn't the modchip.

The laser could be worn but it can also be possible that the assembly just need cleaning/lubrication.

And I have the experience that on some of these units a specific capacitor (C705/0.47uF) will go bad, making disc reading very bad.

 

[DaFixer]

Some old PSone mod chips can't play out off region games. Long time ago a coworker have a PSone but he can only play pal pirate games and no ntsc games, for some reason.

 

[Dariuz_Wolf]

https://github.com/Kippykip/PSX-Modchip

Take a look at the diagrams there, to see if it matches your layout.

If it can't read backups, it also could mean the laser is death or dying.

Does it read original game discs or play CD-DA ("music CD's")? If not, then the problem probably isn't the modchip.

The laser could be worn but it can also be possible that the assembly just need cleaning/lubrication.

And I have the experience that on some of these units a specific capacitor (C705/0.47uF) will go bad, making disc reading very bad.

Some old PSone mod chips can't play out off region games. Long time ago a coworker have a PSone but he can only play pal pirate games and no ntsc games, for some reason.

The laser unit is in a good condition, before open the console I test it with backups from the owner and my collection of CD music. The backups didn't play, always show up the red screen error. For the other side the CD music played perfectly, no problems with the laser unit at the time hehe.

To clarify, the console is in perfect condition, I clean and lubricate the laser unit two days ago and remplased the spinholde because the original was crooked. control and memory ports are also perfect, the only thing not working is that modchip.

For now i will check that link icegod sent.

 

[Fien]

Some old PSone mod chips can't play out off region games. Long time ago a coworker have a PSone but he can only play pal pirate games and no ntsc games, for some reason.

That's only for PAL region PSOne's, those have a extra protection in the BIOS. With a "standard" modchip like a MM3 it can only boot PAL games. A "Onechip" was the only modchip which can bypass that back then, with some drawbacks.

Nowadays there's a PSNee version for these PAL PSOne's that's better then the Onechip.

 

[SylverReZ]

The closer I got to, was a "ONEchip," a modified version of the Mayumi V4 or MM3 code to circumvent the extra protection in the BIOS; for example, the strings and region code found at the beginning of every PS1 game. If I recall, the logo was part of the protection, too, which was modified to display different logos from whichever scene distributed games (Paradox was one). Like the above, definitely swap it for a PSNee chip, as they are more reliable and cheaper to make.