exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

rubber_jonnie wrote: 14 Aug 2023 10:20 I'm not hopeful this will change much at this point in time in terms of fixing anything on this board, it was pretty dead to begin with, but it's worth it for the practice and to work on techniques using the rework station.

Sure, it's always good to have some spare boards for scavenging parts or practising new techniques.

Have fun with your new tool !

I certainly will 😁

So I was cleaning up the pads on the PS4 BLOD board where and I saw what looked like pads that had been pulled off. It was a gloomy sight:


It looks like the pad has gone where I am pointing with the tweezers. However I gave it a quick scrape and lo and behold, it's oxidation:


Since it is now clean and clear, I'm quite relieved. There's quite a few pads like this and they all seem to be the same, so I have a little work to do to clean them up.

You learn something new every day :)

Well, the replacement HDMI encoder arrived for the WLOD PS4, lets see if that brings it back to life. If it does it means I have 2 dead encoders...

I'm not familiar with HDMI encoder failure being a PS4 failure point but HDMI retimers were a big issue for Xbox One S.

alexh wrote: 15 Aug 2023 15:17 I'm not familiar with HDMI encoder failure being a PS4 failure point but HDMI retimers were a big issue for Xbox One S.

It's quite common for WLOD on the PS4 from all the stuff I've read. That and the OG PS4 HDMI port.

Ok, some mild progress on the PS4 with the WLOD.

I fitted the new HDMI encoder:


And now instead of no signal, I get this in safe mode:


So I have an HDMI signal of some sort, which is patently better than no signal at all, which is all I got before.

Since I get a white light, it generally means that the console is working, but it just isn't showing anything on screen, so to test I hooked up the controller I repaired (Works fine on my PS3) and it syncs.

The safe mode menu has a reboot option as the first item in it's list, so I hit X and lo and behold, it reboots. In addition, I saw a 1080P message pop up on screen on the TV. Still nothing on screen, but definitely progress.

Next I'll have to work through the remainder of the components in the HDMI circuit to check for shorts and other failures. I already found and replaced a bad transistor that was shorting the 12v rail and not producing 5v, so there may be more since this machine had a failed (Not fixed yet either) PSU.

I hope the APU hasn't been damaged and causing the lack of image, that wouldn't be good at all.

Good progress !

Fingers crossed for the APU.

:crossed1:

HigashiJun wrote: 21 Aug 2023 12:10 Good progress !

Fingers crossed for the APU.

:crossed1:

Thanks!

I am close to being able to re-ball the APU on the other machine soon. The solder balls are on the way as is the IC clamp. I already have the stencil here. Be interesting to see if I can reattach it and at least get the same BLOD as I had before.

I at least have a working profile for the re-balling machine now, so I can try a reflow on the WLOD machine if needs be.

Good !

Glad you have the right stuff for that kind of job.