PS3:Syscon Diagnosis

Note from Edith:

Do not publish this page yet. It is a work in progress. I will finish it when I get out of the shower. Diagnosing any issue that prevents the PS3 from booting, or specifically, the Yellow Light of Death has been made easy with the aid of the PS3's System Controller chip. It stores error codes that the system may encounter on boot, or during normal operation.

Getting this information is one thing, but in order to do that, we need to get access to the syscon, and to do so, we're gonna use a serial connection and a linux terminal.

Prerequisites

• A PS3 to open and diagnose
• A linux computer with Python installed (Windows can be used, but this guide will not cover that)
• A USB to TTL Serial Converter Cable
• Some spare wire, specifically 30 AWG single core
• A soldering iron, and the required experience with a soldering iron.
• Various other electronic tools, a multimeter isn't a bad idea.
• This python script

Identify your syscon type

You either have a Mullion or a Sherwood syscon, the differences are important for this guide.

PS3 Models from A - K, COK-001 to DIA-002 have a Mullion, all PS3s from the L models afterwards have a Sherwood.

Connecting the syscon to the serial connection

The points to solder to on the PS3's motherboard are different for every model. You will need to refer to this github to identify your board, and the solder points you will connect the serial converter to.

It is recommended to use wires with connectors so you can remove the serial converter once you are done, and so you don't have to unsolder your wires. This will not only make you do less work, but also make it easier to diagnose any future errors and issues.

In the end, you should have 4 wires, one for the RxD point on the board, one for the TxD point, Ground (GND), and Diag (Sherwood models do not have DIAG).

RxD should be connected to the TX pin on the USB serial converter. TxD to the RX pin, Ground to Ground, and DIAG should be connected to ground.

• The metal shield around the motherboard, or the copper edges can be used as Ground.

Your converter needs to be set to 3.3V mode, otherwise you could seriously damage the console.

Opening a serial connection to the syscon

Now that we've done the necessary solder work to connect the syscon to our serial converter, we can interface with it via a terminal.

Plug in your serial converter to your PC and open a terminal. You'll need to find out what filesystem path the converter exists on, usually it'll be /dev/ttyUSB0. You can use dmesg to find this out:

• $ sudo dmesg | less (you need root privileges to use dmesg)
  • Because the dmesg command outputs the entire kernel log buffer, the output of this command is too big to put in this guide.

Once you know what file you need to use, we can use the python script:

• $ sudo ./ps3_syscon_uart_script.py /dev/ttyUSB0 <CXRF or CXR>
  • You should replace "/dev/ttyUSB0" with the path that corresponds to your serial converter, in case that's not where it is.