No audio

bahamutfan64

New member
The colored locations are simply the path along which the signals coming from the audio chip travel along to their final destination. Where that is is irrelevant to us in this case since what we want to do is "capture" those signals as they're traveling and route them to the PS1Digital, and that can be done either by soldering directly to the pins of the audio chip or on those alternate colored points.

To confirm this yourself, you can take a multimeter and verify continuity between the chip pins and those points - it will beep.
 

mmcpaul

New member
The colored locations are simply the path along which the signals coming from the audio chip travel along to their final destination. Where that is is irrelevant to us in this case since what we want to do is "capture" those signals as they're traveling and route them to the PS1Digital, and that can be done either by soldering directly to the pins of the audio chip or on those alternate colored points.

To confirm this yourself, you can take a multimeter and verify continuity between the chip pins and those points - it will beep.
Appreciate the help with this. I'm not super experienced with this stuff but, I'm learning. Mostly by trial and error. Any help is appreciated.
 

bahamutfan64

New member
No worries at all, none of this is exactly intuitive and unless you had prior exposure, it's certainly challenging to piece together from scratch.

Once you solder the wires 1-5 to the little board and plug the cable in, you can place the board essentially anywhere on the motherboard where there's space for it. I typically secure these things with Kapton tape, but any non-conductive adhesive will do.

Edit: I would probably add tape to the other side of the board just to be on the conservative side in terms of things shorting.
 

mmcpaul

New member
No worries at all, none of this is exactly intuitive and unless you had prior exposure, it's certainly challenging to piece together from scratch.

Once you solder the wires 1-5 to the little board and plug the cable in, you can place the board essentially anywhere on the motherboard where there's space for it. I typically secure these things with Kapton tape, but any non-conductive adhesive will do.

Edit: I would probably add tape to the other side of the board just to be on the conservative side in terms of things shorting.
One last question. Are all 4 of these vias in this picture 5volt? I scraped a little to much solder mask off now and am having a hard time getting these things not to bridge.20210418_135533.jpg
 

bahamutfan64

New member
You can just look at what the pin arrangement on the audio flex cable is:

Pin 2 of the chip = Pin 1 on flex end = pin 1 on board
Pin 3 of the chip = Pin 2 on flex end = pin 2 on board

etc...
 

devsfan1830

New member
10P 0.5mm FFC/FPC breakout with an appropriate 10P cable would facilitate connecting to these alternate points on a PU-18:
View attachment 171
View attachment 172
So as Im about to do this bypass I discovered something rather concerning. That component that appears to be a ceramic cap where you marked the spot to tap off the green RST signal, that component is gone from my board. I have no idea if it was always missing or it got inadvertently removed during my attempts to self install, by the installer I hired to fix it when I failed to get the GPU ribbon on, or just now when I desoldered the audio flex. I went ahead and performed the bypass anyways. I have continuity between the pins on the audio chip and the ps1 digital via the bypass path. Every pin ia correct. However when booting the ps1 i get no audio still on the boot logo. I am currently also awaiting a new xstation as im one of the ones who apparantly had damage to the sd slot due to the 3d printed mod. So at best the xstation allows the system to boot to menu but wont read the sd card. I am at this point thinking either no sound is normal due to this circumstance OR that missing component is causing the audio IC to malfunction. I welcome any advice as well as whether maybe anyone on knows what that component was and if i can source a spare. It took me 5 tries on ebay to obtain this PU18 PS1. Id like to rescue this one if possible.
 

devsfan1830

New member
Also worth noting i get no analog audio either. And yes i did test every pin to make sure there are no shorts or pins lifted from their pads
 

bahamutfan64

New member
No audio can be caused by legs on IC701 no longer making a connection, possibly lifted a little by accident when installing the XStation.

I would try to reflow IC701. Doing the same with IC310, the sound RAM, wouldn’t hurt either.
 

devsfan1830

New member
No audio can be caused by legs on IC701 no longer making a connection, possibly lifted a little by accident when installing the XStation.

I would try to reflow IC701. Doing the same with IC310, the sound RAM, wouldn’t hurt either.
The thing is, the audio was working when I got it back from the installer. Xstation and PS1Digital were 100%. The chain of events are as follows. I had fiddled with the xtstation sd mount some time after the install when i saw the story about rerouting the sd extender cable to relieve stress on the sd port. I then put it back on the shelf. There it sat where until last week where took it back out when i got my memcard pro. Sound worked (though one boot it kinda crackled once during boot) and the xtstation started hanging then ultimately stopped reading the sd and also at which point the boot sound stopped. I see the access indicator flashing on the xstation during the boot logo but it ultamtely boots to the memorycard/cdplayer screen. I emailed that to castlemania games and was told that its a sign of the sd card extender issue where the bluntness of the tip of the adapter can damage the pins and stop the sd card from being read. I probably had caused this when re-routing the extender and didnt know it. However, at no point was the metal shield removed and the ps1digital exposed or even touched. That the xstation stopped reading the SD card AND losing the boot audio is weird.

Since the new xstation arrives tomorrow it may be worth waiting on reflowing those ICs until then. That is assuming the new xstation boots right. If it doesnt then I have a mess on my hands having to recheck the QSB too...
 

devsfan1830

New member
I would still reflow IC701 since it's both involved in sound and the key component of the XStation installation.

Also, Dan and Chrisof are a lot more active on Discord than on here, as are more people generally: https://discord.gg/wrHgE3wk
Lol actually i just did that after seeing exactly what those ICs were for. Al pins now nice and shiny with plenty of kester no clean flux and a fine point iron. Still not working.
 

FrenchyToasty

New member
Thanks for this guys, I ordered the parts, a replacement flex set is not so expensive but having it shipped to Canada was $40. That's unacceptable.

I messed up the sound ribbon when I installed the whole kit into a second PS1 (I did a Bios swap and overheated the first board... yeah what a noob) I reinstalled it successfully (messed up a pad of the the CPU ribbon but did a jumper cable from the pin to the end of the ribbon) had no sound. That was a VERY bad day and also a bad weekend because I only though about this.

I thought of just putting jumper wires from the board points to the PS1Digital board but I didn't want to have spagghetti between the two.

So before I actually receive the "ribbon and breakout board" kit and make it permanent I did a little "jig" took a DualShock 4 usb ribbon and trimmed two "wires" of the flex and with flux I soldered thin wire at the end of each required pin to.reach the indicated locations on board. Tested with multimeter to check continuity and if there was shorts. Every pin comunicates with the right location.

Tests, hurray sound! But MemCard Pro doesn't work, it will read and write to regular cards just fine... it did work on my original install just fine and I tested the card on my PSOne and it still works fine.

Help please!!
 
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invaderyoyo

New member
Thanks for this guys, I ordered the parts, a replacement flex set is not so expensive but having it shipped to Canada was $40. That's unacceptable.

I messed up the sound ribbon when I installed the whole kit into a second PS1 (I did a Bios swap and overheated the first board... yeah what a noob) I reinstalled it successfully (messed up a pad of the the CPU ribbon but did a jumper cable from the pin to the end of the ribbon) had no sound. That was a VERY bad day and also a bad weekend because I only though about this.

I thought of just putting jumper wires from the board points to the PS1Digital board but I didn't want to have spagghetti between the two.

So before I actually receive the "ribbon and breakout board" kit and make it permanent I did a little "jig" took a DualShock 4 usb ribbon and trimmed two "wires" of the flex and with flux I soldered thin wire at the end of each required pin to.reach the indicated locations on board. Tested with multimeter to check continuity and if there was shorts. Every pin comunicates with the right location.

Tests, hurray sound! But MemCard Pro doesn't work, it will read and write to regular cards just fine... it did work on my original install just fine and I tested the card on my PSOne and it still works fine.

Help please!!
You probably figured it out by now, but I had the same issue with my MemCard Pro.

After installing the PS1Digitial, everything worked great, zero issues. Controllers, OEM memory cards, digital sound, digital video, analog sound, and analog video all worked perfectly.

Then, I got the MemCard Pro and it just wouldn’t work.

Turns out one of the fuses was blown. Strangely, everything except the MemCard Pro worked fine even with the blown fuse.

It was one of the fuses with the number 20 on it. After replacing it, the MemCard Pro worked perfectly.
 

CZroe

New member
Here is a quick clip of what worked for me:

I had done several manual bypasses for the easier stuff like 5v or LRCK, but this is the catch-all solution and a way to avoid soldering to the back of the audio flex connector on the PS1Digital. The 4-layer PCB means we can’t easily trace out good alternates for a manual bypass, hence, the breakout board. ;)

I apologize for not getting back to you guys sooner. You can see in my screenshots back then that I had ordered the breakout boards to develop/finalize a bypass for everyone weeks before I posted here. It took that long to ship from China but I intended to share much more once I figured out placement, best practices, shortcuts, etc.

Unfortunately, soon after receiving them I took a direct hit from the strongest part of an EF-4 tornado right while I was in the middle of testing my breakout board bypass method for the first time. I even see it in my video where I open the back door to find the missing balcony:
(3:05)

I finished a week ago so it took me this long to get the thing tested and moved to the client’s board since it has been disaster after disaster ever since (multiple floods, damage, incompetent contractors, landlord deciding to sell the place, etc, etc).

To illustrate the irony, let me describe that moment... March 26th, 12:04AM: Finally time to test my breakout board bypass but my TV powered up a bit too late to catch the boot up sound during my first test... so I hit Reset. It takes a moment for my TV to sync HDMI and another moment for it to play the audio, but the moment the PS1Digital image appeared on my screen, household power went out. It wasn’t even raining but I heard the air raid sirens warning of a tornado. Less than a minute later we were sheltering in the basement while the EF-4 tornado ripped the house apart, picked up my car, and then crushed it under a tree. I tried to put a tarp where the roof used to be when the remnants of the ceiling collapsed, breaking my arm and putting an end to my mod work for a while... not that I could’ve done much with no power, Internet, transportation, etc anyway. Some of my neighbors didn’t have a single wall left standing, which is how they calculated it was an EF-4 at my exact location... nowhere else on the 38.9 mile long track. They know the building codes and what it takes to wipe an entire home off the foundation. We were at ground zero. I checked a couple days ago and it is still the strongest tornado on record so far this year and I was literally still inside the vortex while EF-4 winds were tearing apart my neighbors who lost everything.

I set up a workshop to resume but the landlord decided to sell leaving us no place for our lifelong collection. I’m about to be homeless and everything I try to hang onto is getting damaged in the aftermath. I had to invite pickers over to get it for pennies on the dollar... which hurts since I was the original owner for most (kept my shrink wrapped boxes even as a kid).

One guy this past Saturday got at least $25,000 worth of my childhood collection for $6,800 and he is just one of many. That’s like losing 3/4 to the tornado and still being forced to sell the last bit... even if the tornado didn’t take it directly. :( It’s currently spread across at least six locations and I keep losing more and more to floods and worse.

That same day I visited the tornado-damaged place with the picker and found contractors taking pictures of my stuff in the basement and sharing it with other strangers. These people have access with the realtor key lock box and some even have a key. Others have taken the lock box key without authorization and left ME locked out since they had also changed the locks. Yet other times I have found giant ladders left in place to unlocked windows and an otherwise-inaccessible balcony door (sans balcony after the tornado) that were only placed there when they were leaving. Very sus.

I had a good conversation with the contractor who was excitedly sharing pictures but even if I trusted him, how can I trust the people he sent those pictures too? ...his coworkers? ...or any of the other coming through this revolving door in an unoccupied home? I came back later that night to find that the same dudes had knocked the topper off my PS2 retail kiosk, damaging it on the concrete floor, and then walked all over it (big plastery footprints). Clearly anything I try to hang on to is in danger. That whole garage was a watery lake the previous two weekends (two separate floods) and it was absolutely full of my stuff since it was the only part of the house with a roof. Lost a lot. Floods were caused by contractors... roofers ripped off the gutters and left it that way causing water to cascade inside. Almost as bad as the people who took out the kitchen’s window and framing just before another storm which caused a basement flood (the other place where I still have a lot of things).

Previously I tried to list things on eBay but then my dog was in a serious accident. He survived with a huge vet bill that set us even further back. Transportation was such an issue that we couldn’t resume selling even once my pup was recovering. Things were BARELY progressing when my dog suddenly got sick and died two weeks after his accident. Both incidents were caused by the tornado forcing me to leave him in the care of my mother who could not properly care for his special needs. It’s been a couple weeks now but I’m still a mess over this. I really miss my pup and thought I had years left with him. :(

My brother was also displaced and had no place to charge his car, which meant he needed to use Premium gas to carry me and our mother... then gas prices doubled from the pipeline hack. I was forced to spend my car insurance check on my $5,000 medical deductible (MRI alone was $1,333) and with out-of-pocket physical therapy I’m not going to be able to get a car any time soon. I got a little folding electric kick scooter so my brother could get to and from public car chargers and we could go our separate ways in a pinch and it broke down in less than a month.

To add insult to injury, my brother’s car tires were showing unusual wear but we were relying on him and his car too much. By the time he could get it checked they were showing cords in some places despite plenty of tread left and he was only barely past the 40,000 mile tire warranty. Though you might expect a leak from the strange tire wear, we were on our way to get the cheapest tires we could at a discount tire place when we got stranded with a screw through the tire. By the time we were done with the roadside repair the tire place was closed. When my brother got back they had sold the tires to someone else. This “recovery” has been a cavalcade of comedies. :(

We were already planning to move the workshop out of the basement and had signed a lease when the tornado hit but I was unable to install lights or do much of anything with my arm in a sling. Even now I can’t use my rotator cuff to get my elbow over my head. It’s against the terms of the lease but we will probably take turns sleeping at the workshop since the landlord needs us and our stuff gone and we are in no shape to go anywhere else. At that point we will technically be homeless but at least it’s better than being on the street and we still have what we need to work our way out of this. Lighting still sucks though.

Sorry to gush but it’s cathartic. My brother has just freed himself from his obligations to the landlord and I rigged up a way to charge his car at the workshop so we are finally ready to get some work done!
 
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CZroe

New member
I already ordered the parts. It seems this is a problem with this flex cable. I was able to find that we can order a replacement set of flex cables for $20 but the issue is likely to repeat and I bought the parts I need for about $12 and this solution is more robust.
That has been my experience. I mean, the GPU flex is supposed to be the hard part, right? ;) well, in dozens of installs I haven’t failed a single one of those and yet I have a pile of bad audio flexes. Heck, I even saw a particularly notable rockstar modder deal with a return due to bad audio flex. :( Even if the replacement audio flex survives, and it often doesn’t, it still seems a waste of a good GPU flex... and $20. I’d say to sell the extra to someone who messed up their GPU cable but, well, they are probably going to need an audio bypass too.



Anyone have links to the parts above. Possibly an installation video?
Not really an install video but you can see my first one here:


Not much is visible as it’s mostly tucked underneath but you can see a jumper on the top of the breakout where I connected the ground plane to pin 3 (Ground). Probably not needed but I wanted to eliminate any confounding factors for my first test. You can see that I got ground from a chip leg but it might not be the best place. Worked for me though. I got 5v from an unpopulated footprint on that big 5v area. The only one without a good alternate point is Pin 5, Reset. If you are comfortable jumping straight to Pin 5, go for it but you may find it a little easier to solder to the ceramic surface mount capacitor beneath or the opposite side of the resistor below that.



So I see that you have 2 different spots here with the number '2'. Can you get 5 volt from either of these spots? Do the green, blue, red and yellow locations also get soldered to the cable adapter or are they supposed to be jumpers from the audio chip to the locations you have marked on the board?
Yes. I also marked two places for ground. You can find ground and 5v all over the place. Set your meter to continuity or resistance, put one probe on a known-5v point like Pin 2, and use the other probe to look for 0-ohms on chip legs and fat traces until you find one. :)



One last question. Are all 4 of these vias in this picture 5volt? I scraped a little to much solder mask off now and am having a hard time getting these things not to bridge.


Yep. You can see that they are all connected to the same fat power trace or else they would have a bit of space around the copper rings to isolate them from the copper we . They used multiple vias so it could carry more current to the other side of the board since a single via may not carry enough amps and could burn up.



Having the same issue. An initially good install suddenly has no audio. So I've ordered these parts to attempt your bypass method. I was wondering if you could post what signals go to which pin #s on the adapter pcb.
The breakout PCBs I ordered have reverse numbering on the other side since they were also made to breakout a larger 1mm pitch if you populate the connector footprint on the other side. Luckily the first 10 pins of the audio chip line up with the connector on the PS1Digital board so you just have to be mindful that the pin on the left ends up connected to the left of the PS1Digital, then see which side of the board labels that Pin 1 and you should have numbers that correspond with the pin numbering on the audio DAC IC.



You can just look at what the pin arrangement on the audio flex cable is:



Pin 2 of the chip = Pin 1 on flex end = pin 1 on board

Pin 3 of the chip = Pin 2 on flex end = pin 2 on board



etc...


Not only can different sides of the breakout board have reverse numbering, the type of cable can reverse the numbering again. I paired mine with a B-type cable (contacts on opposite sides) which reverses the pin numbering AGAIN. I like that I ended up being able to use the numbering on the back side of the board since I was mounting it upside down. :)



So as Im about to do this bypass I discovered something rather concerning. That component that appears to be a ceramic cap where you marked the spot to tap off the green RST signal, that component is gone from my board. I have no idea if it was always missing or it got inadvertently removed during my attempts to self install, by the installer I hired to fix it when I failed to get the GPU ribbon on, or just now when I desoldered the audio flex. I went ahead and performed the bypass anyways. I have continuity between the pins on the audio chip and the ps1 digital via the bypass path. Every pin ia correct. However when booting the ps1 i get no audio still on the boot logo. I am currently also awaiting a new xstation as im one of the ones who apparantly had damage to the sd slot due to the 3d printed mod. So at best the xstation allows the system to boot to menu but wont read the sd card. I am at this point thinking either no sound is normal due to this circumstance OR that missing component is causing the audio IC to malfunction. I welcome any advice as well as whether maybe anyone on knows what that component was and if i can source a spare. It took me 5 tries on ebay to obtain this PU18 PS1. Id like to rescue this one if possible.
I don’t know what else it might do but without Pin 5 (RST) it should still boot. Might not be able to reset the console using the PS1Digital menu though. That is the problem my friend had when he asked me to diagnose after his installer refused to warranty it. It seems the installer simply never tested Reset in the PS1Digital menu and wanted to blame my friend’s shell swap, but I found the capacitor had flowed into contact with the resistor and was likely causing my friend’s reset issue. Either that or the shell swap did damage the audio flex and reset would’ve worked even when shorted past that resistor. Regardless, his was the perfect candidate for a bypass because even audio had stopped working after all his troubleshooting.





No audio can be caused by legs on IC701 no longer making a connection, possibly lifted a little by accident when installing the XStation.



I would try to reflow IC701. Doing the same with IC310, the sound RAM, wouldn’t hurt either.
Thanks! I need to try this on a particular console that only gives me glitchy digital audio, though it still sounds fine over analog. I even replaced the bypass with a fresh, new, audio flex that was babied and it did the same exact thing.



Thanks for this guys, I ordered the parts, a replacement flex set is not so expensive but having it shipped to Canada was $40. That's unacceptable.

...

So before I actually receive the "ribbon and breakout board" kit and make it permanent I did a little "jig" took a DualShock 4 usb ribbon and trimmed two "wires" of the flex and with flux I soldered thin wire at the end of each required pin to.reach the indicated locations on board. Tested with multimeter to check continuity and if there was shorts. Every pin comunicates with the right location.
Nice improvisation with that DS4 flex bypass. :) I wish the original digital audio flex had some test points or something we could use to jumper off from.
 

FrenchyToasty

New member
You probably figured it out by now, but I had the same issue with my MemCard Pro.

After installing the PS1Digitial, everything worked great, zero issues. Controllers, OEM memory cards, digital sound, digital video, analog sound, and analog video all worked perfectly.

Then, I got the MemCard Pro and it just wouldn’t work.

Turns out one of the fuses was blown. Strangely, everything except the MemCard Pro worked fine even with the blown fuse.

It was one of the fuses with the number 20 on it. After replacing it, the MemCard Pro worked perfectly.
Oh God I'll have a look! Thanks for that sir. You mean one of the three fuses down near the controller ports connector right?

I got 2 other SCPH-5501 PS1 and was ready to buy a new kit. Probably gonna end up modding them and sell them... I hope they improve their flex then.

BTW sorry to hear about these stories guys, I'm lucky enough to live in a very safe place.

Edit:

It is now the day after and I got the MemCard Pro working by changing the fuse BUT now in xStation it is displaying image lower than it should... cutting down image at the bottom (flush under the button prompts) and leaving a black margin at the top. If I turn on the PS1 with the disc door open it'll boot normally with no margin and even closing the door will get me the xStation menu to pop up correctly and then the games too. Any idea what's causing this?
 
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