PlayStation®3 General Discussion

[R--KeRoZeN--R]

---

Thank you

On a side note - I tend to err on the side of believing that most people who go to the bother of finding this tech help section and posting are genuine

We do get the odd troll popping up, but in the grand scheme of things it's not a big issue

And certainly people such as yourself, who go out of their way to try and find solutions don't fit the troll stereotype

anyway, back to the main issue

My biggest problem is that I don't know how / which bit of software actually controls the drive

In theory, there should be a bit of low level code somewhere that says "spin the disc" - and for a drive which only reads blu-rays, this bit of code would be nice and simple - "spin the disc at x rpm" - because blu-rays have a constant spin velocity.

However, DVDs don't - they use variable spin speed, due to the way the data is mapped out.

So the code needs to be able to say "spin the disc at this particular speed"

NOW...

IF the Sony code is getting confused, and telling the drive to spin at 'x' when it should be spinning at 'y', whereas the Linux code is saying 'x' properly, then we could see what you are seeing

But that wouldn't explain why swapping the hardware then makes it work, as the software wouldn't have changed

The ONLY facts that we KNOW are:

blu-ray drive died (for whatever reason)

fitting new parts = blu-ray drive works

To me, that says "hardware fault"

But it gets us NO closer to explaining WHY the hardware failed

Or why the hardware fails under one OS (Sony) and may work under another (unbuntu)

---

Very interesting and enlightening post TTDegs. You're really helping in trying to understand the problem.

The only thing is that I don't know if changing the hardware would solve the problem I'm having. I don't want to invest into changing the drive (and I think I shouldn't, especially if we can prove it's Sony's software causing the problem) if I am not sure it really is faulty. I read stories in the forums about people who got either a repaired system by Sony or bought a new slim (in about the last 4 month), and the updates messed up their drives again. How can I tell it won't happen to me? How can I tell that those systems where the problem was solved with new hardware had exactly the same problem than mine (or other people having the same issue)? Again, I don't think you can say that a drive died if it works in another system. That just doesn't make any sense. Either it is dead or it is not, there is no between.

If I get back to your idea of the drive spinning speed, it must be possible to restore the right spinning speed for the drive in the software. If the drive works in another system, then the problem is in the system and it can be solved.

Another thing, how do you guys explain that my drive will, from time to time (it's getting rare), recognize BDs (DVD and CD work ok all the time). And when it does, I can play the hell out of it. No freeze, no black screen, no error code. A dying drive sure does such things as freezing, what it doesn't do is play media for hours without any problem. I just don't get it and how I feel things, my drive is not physically damaged. I already saw a lot of dying drives and they either stopped recognizing anything from one moment to another (making a nice little noise), or they started making read errors, freezes and finally wouldn't be usable at all anymore cause they wouldn't recognize ANY disc at ANY time. They won't just have a problem recognizing some discs, but once it passed, they would play media without any problem for hours. Another thing, once it has recognized one BD, it would recognize any BD inserted.

[deadbluray]

right, after doing some testing for the past 2 hours or so, its the lasers that are failing IMO, messed about swopping drives, motors, lasers, and what i find is, if the laser works, the motor will spin

the 60gb laser that i mentioned in the previous posts lights up, therefore the motor spins, tried this laser on another motor, motor spins.

but the 60gb laser is also faulty, i know this from testing a new KEM 400AAA unit, the new laser puts out a bluey/purple beam AND then a red beam, i get NO red beam on the 60gb,

what i summise from this is, the laser puts out the blue beam to test the disc (checking for bluray or PS3 game ?) then puts out the red beam to test the disc (DVD/CD) then the electronics decide which disc is in the drive, disc spins at correct speed and the laser for that disc is shone

now because the 60gb laser was only showing a blue beam, the electronics must not of been able to work out what sort of disc was in the drive, hence low speed spin and stop, by the way, it does this 9 times then stops

now i'm only guessing but i expect the lasers on the other KEM 400AAA drives i've changed don't work, only checked one at present, not sure i can be bothered checking the others either

as to whether a firmware can stop a laser working, i dont know, what i do know is, this 60gb PS3 was on 3.01, and is now updated to 3.15 with a working BD drive

i hope this testing info is useful to the forum

[R--KeRoZeN--R]

Another thing, how do you guys explain that my drive will, from time to time (it's getting rare), recognize BDs (DVD and CD work ok all the time). And when it does, I can play the hell out of it. No freeze, no black screen, no error code. A dying drive sure does such things as freezing, what it doesn't do is play media for hours without any problem. I just don't get it and how I feel things, my drive is not physically damaged. I already saw a lot of dying drives and they either stopped recognizing anything from one moment to another (making a nice little noise), or they started making read errors, freezes and finally wouldn't be usable at all anymore cause they wouldn't recognize ANY disc at ANY time. They won't just have a problem recognizing some discs, but once it passed, they would play media without any problem for hours. Another thing, once it has recognized one BD, it would recognize any BD inserted.

[R--KeRoZeN--R]

---

deadbluray a écrit :

right, after doing some testing for the past 2 hours or so, its the lasers that are failing IMO, messed about swopping drives, motors, lasers, and what i find is, if the laser works, the motor will spin

the 60gb laser that i mentioned in the previous posts lights up, therefore the motor spins, tried this laser on another motor, motor spins.

but the 60gb laser is also faulty, i know this from testing a new KEM 400AAA unit, the new laser puts out a bluey/purple beam AND then a red beam, i get NO red beam on the 60gb,

what i summise from this is, the laser puts out the blue beam to test the disc (checking for bluray or PS3 game ?) then puts out the red beam to test the disc (DVD/CD) then the electronics decide which disc is in the drive, disc spins at correct speed and the laser for that disc is shone

now because the 60gb laser was only showing a blue beam, the electronics must not of been able to work out what sort of disc was in the drive, hence low speed spin and stop, by the way, it does this 9 times then stops

now i'm only guessing but i expect the lasers on the other KEM 400AAA drives i've changed don't work, only checked one at present, not sure i can be bothered checking the others either

as to whether a firmware can stop a laser working, i dont know, what i do know is, this 60gb PS3 was on 3.01, and is now updated to 3.15 with a working BD drive

i hope this testing info is useful to the forum

---

It is! Thank you very much!

But how would you explain that my drive works from time to time and when it does, it reads BDs for hours?

And how would you explain that blu ray drives having this problem reportedly work under ubuntu? (which I still have to test).

[deadbluray]

i'm not sure of your model/age of PS3, but if it had the twin laser BD drive, i.e. one laser for BD and games and the other red laser for CD/DVD, then maybe your blue laser was only intermittantly faulty, hence why it always plays DVDs, and sometimes lays BDs

as for linux/unbuntu making the drives work, sorry i ain't a software expert, i can only report back my findings from my tests last night, which were only possible due to the fact one of the lasers partially worked out of the 6 i have changed

maybe the life span of lasers is only 2 years, the evidence shows its 40gbs that are for sale on Ebay in abudance, and they are just over 2 years old now, out of the 4 40gb ones i have bought none were twin laser models, which i believe to be march 08 on PS3s, so if got one of them twin laser ones to test, then i could be more sure

talk more later

[TTDegs]

@ deadbluray - yep, kinda worked out your not trolling

and thank you very much for the efforts you're putting in to this!

got to say that your results are adding to my confusion though

could you possibly detail the specs of the ones you have fixed - what model they were, what laser unit they had, what fault (no laser or no spin) and what you replaced to fix them?

If you get a pare hour - could you possibly try putting a 'dead' laser (laser or drive) into a different (fixed) PS3, and see if the 'dead' unit is still dead in the same way? (hope that makes sense! )

from in here, the 'drive' (as a whole) seems to fail in several ways:

1) the blue laser dosen't work

2) the red laser doesn't work

3) the drives fail to spin (may be due to the lasers not working and not registering a disc? - speculation)

these failures can happen either with a big bang, or intermittently (mine gradually got worse until it stopped working altogether)

I am beginning to doubt that the firmware is the root cause of the problem per se.

I do think it may be the catalyst - people tend to upgrade to new firmware when turning the PS3 on - either with a forced update over the 'net, or from a new game disc.

And the drive obviously fails (or starts to fail) when a disc is inserted.

For a component which is about to die (be it disc motor or laser or light bulb or car engine), most failures happen in the split second when they are turned on.

The timing of the failure vs the d/l of any update (game or firmware) could therefore be something of a coincidence - ie it is the use of the drive, which coincidentally happened just after the upgrade, which caused the problem.

Whilst the drive itself obviously does have a motherboard that could (in theory!) hold code (we know it hold something to match itself to the main PS3 motherboard), when swapping full drives over, that motherboard has to stay in place - so any malignant code would stay there too.  But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Looking at the motor units, there doesn't appear to be any sort of chip on it which could hold code...

Looking at the lens units, there are circuit boards (and I've no idea what they do!), but...

IF either of these held code which is causing the problem, then it would be replaced by putting new lasers / drive units in.

I fixed mine by just replacing the lasers - implying that any malignant code (if there was any) was stored on that.

But I think that's pretty unlikely personally - though impossible to rule out 100% I guess

It has got me thinking though...

@ deadbluray (again )

if you fixed one of the PS3s by putting in a full KEM unit (because the drive wasn't spinning) - could you possibly swap in a previous dead laser KES (drive was spinning but no laser lit) unit into it?

my head hurts now LOL

[R--KeRoZeN--R]

---

deadbluray a écrit :

i'm not sure of your model/age of PS3, but if it had the twin laser BD drive, i.e. one laser for BD and games and the other red laser for CD/DVD, then maybe your blue laser was only intermittantly faulty, hence why it always plays DVDs, and sometimes lays BDs

as for linux/unbuntu making the drives work, sorry i ain't a software expert, i can only report back my findings from my tests last night, which were only possible due to the fact one of the lasers partially worked out of the 6 i have changed

maybe the life span of lasers is only 2 years, the evidence shows its 40gbs that are for sale on Ebay in abudance, and they are just over 2 years old now, out of the 4 40gb ones i have bought none were twin laser models, which i believe to be march 08 on PS3s, so if got one of them twin laser ones to test, then i could be more sure

talk more later

---

Sorry, I gave no precisions about my system. It's a 60g model with single laser diode (twin ray). CECHC model pre-fix. I bought it in december 2007. A friend of mine, a big gamer and let's say (way) less maniac with his PS3, bought his at launch and it still works flawlessly. The guy moved it via airplane several times and often lets the discs just lay around with no case, and he smokes, a whole lot (sometimes I can't even breathe and I have to leave) while playing. I know it suffered a lot more than mine in it's life. If it was just pure age doing this, his should have been dead before mine as it's older in age AND it probably got older faster. So there must be at least one other variable in a PS3's lifespan.

My guess: variable quality of new consoles when they leave the factory (probably due to a lack of or bad quality control) and/or software (update?) related problems that interfere with how the drive is working under PS OS. Which would explain why some drives (perhaps the ones the software didn't manage to totally kill) work under ubuntu. If that's the case, Sony is 100% responsible and they must fix those problems for free.

About my possible intermittently faulty laser...How would it be possible that a laser has intermittent problems to function JUST AND ONLY while it tries to recognize the disc. Once this is done, the laser works flawlessly, plain and simple. If it was the diode dying, it would also have problems while playing back media and would produce read errors (or even black screen when trying to start playback). As I said, I am confused and I never witnessed a drive dying that way, it doesn't make any sense.

But seriously, your testing and findings are pure gold. Thank you!

[R--KeRoZeN--R]

---

TTDegs a écrit :

@ deadbluray - yep, kinda worked out your not trolling

and thank you very much for the efforts you're putting in to this!

got to say that your results are adding to my confusion though

could you possibly detail the specs of the ones you have fixed - what model they were, what laser unit they had, what fault (no laser or no spin) and what you replaced to fix them?

If you get a pare hour - could you possibly try putting a 'dead' laser (laser or drive) into a different (fixed) PS3, and see if the 'dead' unit is still dead in the same way? (hope that makes sense! )

from in here, the 'drive' (as a whole) seems to fail in several ways:

1) the blue laser dosen't work

2) the red laser doesn't work

3) the drives fail to spin (may be due to the lasers not working and not registering a disc? - speculation)

these failures can happen either with a big bang, or intermittently (mine gradually got worse until it stopped working altogether)

I am beginning to doubt that the firmware is the root cause of the problem per se.

I do think it may be the catalyst - people tend to upgrade to new firmware when turning the PS3 on - either with a forced update over the 'net, or from a new game disc.

And the drive obviously fails (or starts to fail) when a disc is inserted.

For a component which is about to die (be it disc motor or laser or light bulb or car engine), most failures happen in the split second when they are turned on.

The timing of the failure vs the d/l of any update (game or firmware) could therefore be something of a coincidence - ie it is the use of the drive, which coincidentally happened just after the upgrade, which caused the problem.

Whilst the drive itself obviously does have a motherboard that could (in theory!) hold code (we know it hold something to match itself to the main PS3 motherboard), when swapping full drives over, that motherboard has to stay in place - so any malignant code would stay there too.  But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Looking at the motor units, there doesn't appear to be any sort of chip on it which could hold code...

Looking at the lens units, there are circuit boards (and I've no idea what they do!), but...

IF either of these held code which is causing the problem, then it would be replaced by putting new lasers / drive units in.

I fixed mine by just replacing the lasers - implying that any malignant code (if there was any) was stored on that.

But I think that's pretty unlikely personally - though impossible to rule out 100% I guess

It has got me thinking though...

@ deadbluray (again )

if you fixed one of the PS3s by putting in a full KEM unit (because the drive wasn't spinning) - could you possibly swap in a previous dead laser KES (drive was spinning but no laser lit) unit into it?

my head hurts now LOL

---

It's my opinion too that the problem a lot of people are facing is the result of an interaction of different variables. But what I can tell you for my case is that I played PES before it supposedly died (pre-update). It worked flawlessly. My girlfriend wanted to play MW2 which forced me te make the update. The game loaded and produced audio+video errors (never seen before), but just in the intro. The errors stopped at start screen and the game worked without any kind of problem. She then played MW2 for about 1-2h. No freeze, I turned the system off normally. The day after, I start up my PS3, played Assassin's creed 2 without any problem. Wanted to swtich to PES and it didn't recognize the disc right away. After trying again, it worked. So it wasn't the split second after it was turned on. After the next update (3.15 i think) things got worse and it took more attempts for discs to be recognized, BUT as I said, once recognized, they played flawlessly. I could FF, RWD and jump around on the disc at will in BD movies (which is kind of a stress test for a drive). If the drive/diode was on the brink of death, this should have killed it completely, which was far from being the case (it was over a month ago and if recognized, it still plays BDs flawlessly now...but it's getting rare and I stopped trying the last time it worked I don't want to kill it completely as long as I didn't test it in ubuntu). I wouldn't have all those questions if it died (with or without error code) while in a game or movie. The problem seems to be recognition-specific.

"I fixed mine by just replacing the lasers - implying that any malignant code (if there was any) was stored on that." Not necessarily. Your laser perhaps "really" died before replacing it, due to code located somewhere else. I mean the code (where ever it is located) could have affected your drive in the first place...and with you trying to get BDs working, it perhaps slowly killed your drive in interaction with that supposed malignant code. Do I make any sense?

Btw, my head hurts too.

I don't have a lot of time for testing purposes at the moment. In the next days, I probably will. First I will do is try to reproduce the "disc reading in ubuntu and not in xmb". If that does it, I will confront Sony with the problem and see what they say. If it doesn't work in ubuntu, I will buy a drive/diode (I will probably ask you guys to help me out with the right choice/steps as you seem to have become PS3 traumatology experts ) and replace it myself, but not before testing a bit with the supposedly dead (twin) diode.

[deadbluray]

---

TTDegs wrote:

@ deadbluray - yep, kinda worked out your not trolling

and thank you very much for the efforts you're putting in to this!

got to say that your results are adding to my confusion though

could you possibly detail the specs of the ones you have fixed - what model they were, what laser unit they had, what fault (no laser or no spin) and what you replaced to fix them?

If you get a pare hour - could you possibly try putting a 'dead' laser (laser or drive) into a different (fixed) PS3, and see if the 'dead' unit is still dead in the same way? (hope that makes sense! )

from in here, the 'drive' (as a whole) seems to fail in several ways:

1) the blue laser dosen't work

2) the red laser doesn't work

3) the drives fail to spin (may be due to the lasers not working and not registering a disc? - speculation)

---

the ones i have fixed are , 5 x 40gb, all single lens lasers, complete drive unit fitted P/N KEM 400AAA

                                          1 x 60gb, single lens laser, part fitted as above

none of the motors moved or lasers lit on the 40gb PS3s, 60gb worked as previously mentioned 

quote TTdegs 3) the drives fail to spin (may be due to the lasers not working and not registering a disc? - speculation)

personally i don't think this is speculation, whatever disc i inserted into the working new BD drive, both lasers were shone onto the disc, so obviously the disc is being read/checked by both lasers, then the software is deciding "ah there is a DVD in the drive, i will play that"

which sort of proves, no laser = no motor spin

if i get time i will try an old laser in a new unit, but i am 99% certain it will NOT work

[deadbluray]

right i've tried just the laser off a drive that was replaced, it didn't work before replacement and it doesn't work when fitted to a new drive, so the laser is FUBAR'd for sure

i hope i've covered all the bases in the tests, all we need to do now is find out what is killing the lasers