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PS3 New PS3 YLOD fix

Anthony817

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Bro, I would just stop now while you are ahead. Bad_Ad84 is a highly respected member in the community many of us have known for years. He knows his stuff. He literally has a side business where he sells components to mod machines or mods them himself. Plus like mentioned before, he literally does electronics repairs for a living.

Nobody was insinuating you were stupid mate, he was just trying to explain things to you in a scientific method without doing something that would lead you to believe it was something else to the contrary. Many of us have reflowed these machines before. I have done it at least 5 different times in the past. Heating up the NEC/TOKIN capacitors does indeed restore some capacitance to them for a little while at least. So as they so kindly explained to you, if you just throw the thing on a hot air station and it works you don't know if it was indeed the capacitors if you are also going to do the processors as well.
 
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supersega

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Bro, I would just stop now while you are ahead. Bad_Ad84 is a highly respected member in the community many of us have known for years. He knows his stuff. He literally has a side business where he sells components to mod machines or mods them himself. Plus like mentioned before, he literally does electronics repairs for a living.

Nobody was insinuating you were stupid mate, he was just trying to explain things to you in a scientific method without doing something that would lead you to believe it was something else to the contrary. Many of us have reflowed these machines before. I have done it at least 5 different times in the past. Heating up the NEC/TOKIN capacitors does indeed restore some capacitance to them for a little while at least. So as they so kindly explained to you, if you just throw the thing on a hot air station and it works you don't know if it was indeed the capacitors if you are also going to do the processors as well.

Yeah, I get it that he does stuff like that. Well understood. But in my post, I said I was going to compare the voltage drop across the capacitor before and after heat, therefore proving that the heat is only a partial solution to the YLOD. That’s using solid fundamentals of electronics as well as using a scientific method in order to prove it. I should have been also more descriptive, what I wanted to do was heat the capacitors separately to test this.

Also, I have no doubt that Bad_ad is good at what he does. However every single interaction I have had with him has been negative, even if my method, sometimes unorthodox, would work. This is both on AG and OG. Even when I know I am right and have proof of it, I am still met with resistance (eg, read the PS2 modchip thread).

I do things differently, so I must automatically be wrong and therefore stupid; thats how it sounds to me.
 
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Bad_Ad84

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But in my post, I said I was going to compare the voltage drop across the capacitor before and after heat, therefore proving that the heat is only a partial solution to the YLOD.

No, that isn't what you said at all.

Just reflowing with hot air station (just got one as a gift... good excuse to use it!)

You said reflow, not heating the caps (I'm the one who said this in reply to you afterwards). A reflow is heating the chips to the point the solder melts. Almost universally anyone will take this as the cpu etc. Which means if it was a solder ball, you wouldn't know if it was caps or not.

I did cover in my post if you meant something else by reflow.

Heating the cpu below the reflow point also fixed them at times, even if temporary - look at the "towel fix". There's a lot of variables you are ignoring, yet seemingly don't want to be told about.

You are using the incorrect terms and not explaining yourself, you said you wanted to confirm what trimesh said - which was that solder balls are also definitely the issue - this is NOT related to the caps.

Measuring the voltage drop is a test you can do once the caps have already failed. Measuring the voltage drop will give you an indication of the capacitance of the capacitor.

If you explain it like this, say this is what you are testing and then come back with you were testing something else - how can you then tell me my post replying to what you said (and not what you meant, but didn't say) is wrong and I don't understand?


Ps2 mod chip thread, you say "the pin out between chip a and chip b are very different", when in fact they are identical except for 1 pin.

Yet you are annoyed about this?


If you want to take help as a personal attack, you will never improve as everyone will just have to keep telling you how right and awesome you are.

Being wrong is OK, no one knows everything. But accepting you are wrong means you can learn and get better.

Using incorrect terminology is also OK if you are learning. "oh, my bad I meant x or y". But I don't know what you do or don't know, I'm going to reply to what you wrote and the terms you used, that's not my fault if the reply then doesn't match what you thought.

You seem to think I'm stuck in my ways and think I know it all, which is the exact opposite of how I am. It's also how I got very good at what I do, because if anyone can show me something that helps or can point out where I'm wrong, I'll use it next time. In my career I've done several training courses for things I already know - just to see if I can improve how I do things. All knowledge is a benefit.

Experience is just a collection of mistakes and fixes. Got to get it wrong sometimes to learn.
 
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cta

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I do things differently, so I must automatically be wrong and therefore stupid
Not gonna lie, if you actually do things the way you describe, you are indeed wrong and come across as stupid. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you don't and are just bad at communicating.
 

Nully

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Has the flame war cherry finally been popped on OG?! Things were a bit too tame. I think that doubling down is counterintuitive, but Ad can be a bit blunt (See: jaded from misinformation) and I’ve legitimately felt the need to console another member through PM over it, he really took criticism and correction to heart and it shattered his ego to the point of paragraphs of self deprecation. Don’t be that guy!
 

Bad_Ad84

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Things need to be kept in context of what's actually being said.

A brain surgeon could come on here, post some stuff about a mod that's nonsense, double down and end up with a reply something along the lines of "you don't know what you are talking about".

This is obviously in context of the thread, not that the guy is an idiot and not a brain surgeon and knows nothing about anything and everything. It shouldn't be damaging how he feels about himself.

Don't measure yourself worth in what someone says about your post on how to check a capactior and whether that's right or wrong.

If you went on a quiz show and gave an answer, then were told "wrong, the answer is z" is this going to have the same result??

I really really struggle with people taking corrections or guidance as ego destroying. I am often seen as blunt as ill reply and "take apart" the post. But that's not the intention. If I posted something and I'm wrong and someone just replied with "you are wrong" - that's helpful to no one.

You aren't saying why and there's no information to back it up. I'd want parts of my post quoted with information explaining what's incorrect and what's the better way. This could lead to more replies and discussion - this is what forums and newsgroups were made for. Either I'd learn something, the person replying would learn something and anyone reading now or 10 years in the future would learn something.

I honestly don't see why this has turned into so much drama. My replies were accurate to what was posted/said. It seemingly appears that what he said isn't quite what he meant - so just clarify and job done.
 
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Trimesh

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i would go for the nec-tokins change first. most ps3 work after that, but the crack solder under gpu-cpu is also posible. anyway the xbox 360-ps3 generation of consoles was bad. xbox 360 was reliable after the jasper model and ps3 is only slim lines. but question remains ps4 and xbox one used too leed-free solder why the curent generation doent fail as much as previous? do they use a better leed-free that wont crack after multiple heats-cooldowns? maybe @Bad_Ad84 know something about it

The short answer is that stress cracking of solder balls is an old problem - there are papers where people are talking about it dating from back into the '90s - but it wasn't considered severe enough to worry about in anything but high-reliability applications, so it was largely ignored.

There are multiple reasons it went from being pretty much a technical curiosity to a major problem, and that's also why some products (consoles and GPUs for example) were affected much more than others:

1) The change to RoHS solder, which is less ductile
2) Increase in transistor density combined with smaller packaging
3) Adoption of extensive clock gating as a power and thermal control measure
4) The wider use of flip-chip packaging
5) Wider use of high-powered parts in consumer applications

The first is the one that's often blamed as "the problem" - but that's not really true. There is no reason that a joint made with RoHS solder needs to be less reliable than one made with PbSn solder - the main difference is that the PbSn joint can withstand more abuse, but that just means that (if you're lucky) you push the failure threshold past the point where the device is removed from use for some other reason.

The second and third have to be considered together - increasing transistor density will typically increase power dissipation, and the package size reduction will compound this by increasing the power density even further. This results in more heating. The clock gating is important because it makes thermal events more frequent - if you have a chip that has no clock gating then it will heat up as soon as the power is applied and remain at a largely constant temperature until the power is removed. As a result, each power up/power down cycle represents a single thermal cycle. If you have extensive clock gating then the device temperature is constantly changing - an a single power up/power down cycle may correspond to hundreds or even thousands of thermal cycles.

The reason flipchips are significant is that they have two electrical interconnects - one between the die and the carrier PCB ("primary interconnect") and the second between the carrier PCB and the PCB of the system it's installed into ("secondary interconnect"). This is a problem because the die has a certain expansion coefficient (2.6ppm/K for silicon) and the main PCB has a different one (about 12ppm/K for FR4) - but the carrier PCB has to be rigidly bonded to both of them, which obviously represents something of a problem since it's impossible to match both these values simultaneously. The generally adopted solution was to use low CTE carrier boards and try to match the silicon (since that interconnect is finer pitch) and rely on the ductility of the solder balls to accommodate the CTE mismatch. This mostly worked pretty well, until it didn't.

The fact it's a consumer product is significant because it's typically going to be used in a quiet environment and this rules out of the other approach for keeping temperatures under control because fans that sound like jet engines are generally considered undesirable in a box that has to sit under your TV.

In the specific case of the 360, you also have to add just plain bad thermal design. They used a small heatsink on the GPU and stuck it under the DVD drive with an air duct that narrowed down and generated considerable backpressure which drastically cut down on airflow.

There are multiple reasons it's not so much of a problem anymore. One of the biggest changes is that the packaging is now typically made using high CTE materials that match the PCB much better and use soft pads on the primary interconnect to the die to accommodate the stresses there - although the ratios remain the same, the die is smaller so the distances are also smaller. The use of smaller device geometries means there is less heat to deal with anyway - and most importantly, this is now a potential problem that's on everyone's radar so they actually think about it.

Incidentally, the existence of two interconnects in a flip-chip BGA is why "reflow it with a hot air gun" is terrible advice - using a powerful and uncontrolled heat source like that is very likely to introduce a large thermal gradient across the package and this can easily damage the primary interconnect - if you look at the rework data provided by the device vendors they typically call out a 120-180s ramp to bring the device up to temperature. This is not being done to annoy people or waste their time - it's because doing it any faster risks damaging the device.
 

truemaster

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oh i feel wiser now. very kind of you to take time and write all of this. so solder cracks under bga is an old thing that happend on leeded solder too but there was no failure. and the leed free solder hasnt change materials pcb are made more flexible. im not certified in electronics just a hobbiest man. but i study a lot espacially if i have to make a repair-modification, mostly on mine things, familys or my friends. the heat gun method is what i use, since i dont have shop and customers, a profesional bga station is out of question. my heat gun have range of heats starting from 100 celcius and it max at 600 celcius, i use a botom heater full temprature adjustable and always wired it with thermocouples, one to botom one to upper side of the pcb. i have seen multiple videos on how the do it on hot air station, and i try to do same thing 120 c for 30 sec then up to 180 c for 30 and then up to 225 c for 30-35 only on the bga that need reflow. always insulate the electolitic caps in aluminium foil taped with clapton tape, and apply liquid kingbo flux around the bga i reflow. but regarding even rebal ive seen worst methods no thermocouples just hot air and as botom heater a gril without thermostat totaly bad executed
 

Trimesh

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oh i feel wiser now. very kind of you to take time and write all of this. so solder cracks under bga is an old thing that happend on leeded solder too but there was no failure. and the leed free solder hasnt change materials pcb are made more flexible. im not certified in electronics just a hobbiest man. but i study a lot espacially if i have to make a repair-modification, mostly on mine things, familys or my friends. the heat gun method is what i use, since i dont have shop and customers, a profesional bga station is out of question. my heat gun have range of heats starting from 100 celcius and it max at 600 celcius, i use a botom heater full temprature adjustable and always wired it with thermocouples, one to botom one to upper side of the pcb. i have seen multiple videos on how the do it on hot air station, and i try to do same thing 120 c for 30 sec then up to 180 c for 30 and then up to 225 c for 30-35 only on the bga that need reflow. always insulate the electolitic caps in aluminium foil taped with clapton tape, and apply liquid kingbo flux around the bga i reflow. but regarding even rebal ive seen worst methods no thermocouples just hot air and as botom heater a gril without thermostat totaly bad executed

Yeah, you seem to be doing the best you can with limited tools - what I was really talking about are the people that try to reflow these things using a paint stripping gun set to 600c and no lower heater, which will typically just end up damaging something.
 
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