Whats the verdict with a new V9 or V10 ??
 

Whats the verdict with a new V9 or V10 ?? Theres not really an answer.


Will they die soon after it is chipped ? Or are they ok now ?



I have a v10 but I havent used it much so i dont know its fate yet.

Its kind of hit and miss. But the majority of the fried ones have been in the PAL regions like the UK. It’s being caused from a combination of bad laser head coils and poor quality LA6508 Driver IC. What’s happening is that if the laser head coils are defective or bad from lets say a few or more coils being shorted this drives the resistance of the coil down from where it should be, around 4-5 Ohms thus increasing the current/voltage that the LA supplies thus making the poorly designed LA get hot to fast and burning up. This in combination with a mod chip seams to be happening more because the laser of course has to work harder to read back-up media (this is not the mod chips fault, just the general nature of back-up media) thus asking for more power from the LA, and if the coils where weak to begin with, now that they are getting more power, the whole thing just starts to snow ball, as one coil goes the coil gets hotter, burning the enamel off the next closest coil and so one and so on until its shot driving the current draw from the LA way hirer then designed.

Now you would have thought Sony would have come up with a fault interruption scheme that would safeguard the LA from toasting it self, but apparently they didn’t, so when this starts to happen poof there goes not only the laser but the LA as well.

Luckily there are a few places online that are supplying the LA's so they can be replaced, but you then have to replace the laser as well, and the problem could just rear its ugly head once again. So to combat this some people are putting resisters/fuses inline with the LA to keep the LA from frying if the laser takes a dump. This has its plus and minuses in my opinion. There are other creative solutions that people are trying to market. One very interesting one is a mod chip looking PCB with on LA/BA on it that you run wires from to the mobo. One design is using an LA; the other I have seen is using a BA from the older boards. I kind of like the BA design because the BA's for one are cheaper, and also they are suppose to me tougher. Only time will tell to see what happens with this fix. Here is a link with a little info on these.

http://www.gamefreax.de/cgi-bin/gf_site/news.pl?lang=UK

So to answer your question finally, there is no verdict, it’s more like cross your fingers and hope.

lol, its worse over here more pal consoles die than ntsc ones ekkk.

that is really odd u know that more pl machine have problems over ntsc machines. unless it has something to do with the type of modchips people have been using.

since from the looks of things pal machine always get their machines modded first before their us counterparts.

There could be a few reasons for this. But the biggest one I can think of is that each region gets there parts from different factories, same manufacturer, just a different factory in that region, thus maybe the factories producing the LA's and/or lasers in the PAL regions had a few bad batches that where sent out and used in the making of the V9's and V10's.

what was changes were made from the v9 to the v10?

A noticable change at all? for the better?



Do you think sony made it this way so they would die if u put a modchip in it?

I think its just blind luck, I doubt they'd make their system worse on purpose.

Agreed. Also there wasn’t much of a design change between the V9 and V10 other then the layout of the board and a bios change of course. The V10's are still using the same laser and LA, but I'm thinking that maybe they realized there where some bad batches going round and franticly put a stop to there use, and while at it why not make those new changes to the board the engineers came up with. Just my thoughts on it.

Im going to phone Sony and ask them if the LA chips still burnout on the V10's ;)

And their relpy will be, "Burn out? What do you mean? Our products dont burn out!"

Considering the nature of this V9 defect. If you are going to have a problem with your V9 it will show up very early in the PS2’s life span chipped or not. If you’ve already been running a V9 for a month or 2 with no problems, (especially if you been renting games the are slightly scratched up) you should have no worries about installing a chip.

My suggestion if you just pulled your V9 out of the box and want it chipped right away, hold off for a least a week and run it heavy on rentals to make sure. If it does give out, your seal is still good, and you can return it.

I never liked doing virgin Stations, I always thought “If one of these things are defective, I’ll take the blame for sure” and that’s what happened to installers of bad V9’s.

bought my version 9 playstation 2 weeks ago with matrix chip fitted went a bit wonky today,jerky movement .now it just says no data all the time think its had it doesnt make noise as if loading either won,t play even originals. contacting seller tomorrow hope he sorts it out as i know u lose ur warranty but 2 weeks is a bit much:(

yea i hate the new ps2's thats why i am telling everyone to get a v 7 as its the best version.

Hmmm, now I wish I never sold my v5 :rolleyes:

Its really not as big a deal as this thread is seaming to make it. I have only had one V9 take a crap on me so far.

out of how many?

I agree totally m8, I havnt had a dead v9 since xmas! It was obviously a bad batch.

The v9 is quieter/faster & smoother, why would anybody want a v7?

got my v9 back today and rechipped with matrix working fine now hope it keeps on going :D

I agree with you both, I dont install near as many chips as you or Spedmetal but all the v9's i have done are doing well.

That is fine for some but personally down in oz one bad station is a big problem as we don't do as many stations as other regions

I used to think it was all down to installer error until it happened to me...

and it was one of my cleanest installs! :

http://www.cyber-mag.com/station/ins...eX-5_color.jpg

The V9 had a double wammy 3 weeks after the install - coil resistance down to 1.2 ohm and heat effects visible around the LA chip...

I tried in vain to add a couple of 2.2ohm resistors in series with the coil but that as expected it did sweet FA.

My fear is that even using the replacement BA trick I will have to buy a new laser as well and they are not cheap down here - and I also doubt the reliability of these so called "new" lasers...

lastly I hate to stuff customers around so I hate the fact that this issue has been dragging on a bit with my customer.

What do you mean the V9 is "faster and smoother" than the V7? I know the fan is louder, but does the laser move slower in reading the data? Are the loading times longer on the V7 when playing a game?

The V9 recognises the media type and boots to the logo in 1/10th of the time the older models do.

Sh!ettt, why did everyone tell me to get the V7 instead of the V9 then??

because the V9 is a double edged blade - on one hand it boots faster but the same chip that lets it boot faster is the cause of dead lasers and dead V9's!

V7's are just a safer option until this gets sorted...

I haven’t noticed any speed difference, but I have noticed EVERY SINGLE V9 I’ve had here do not read cheap media as good as the V7! I’ve had to adjust the cogs and pots in a few already, one V9 was not even reading a Ritek backup when I received it. Not to mention all the headaches with the Mods needing to be just right. And the fact my supplier doesn’t send proper wire to do the job right. I’d take a V7 over a V9 any day, absolutely!!

I keep a few low quality burns around to test how the PS2 lasers are handling media. Also I could not get a V9 to read a CDRW like I have with V7’s.

Thnx, wow great answer. But I still want to know, is the V9 faster loading scenes, levels etc. during gameplay as well? Or is it just faster during initial boot?

The V9/V10 from what I have noticed is much faster at loading all the way around, even better then any V7 I have modded. I have not experienced any of the problems with the lasers in the V9/V10 that ihaveanosebleed has spoke of.

However I do agree that the V7 is a rock solid machine that has proved it self over the years. I never saw a single V7 die at my hands. Can’t say that for the V9/V10.

Excellent and very informative responses, much appreciated! I guess I just need to learn to be more patient with my machine :D

Since I happen to have a V9 and a V7 here I did some loading tests with a backup. I picked Vice City because it has quite a long loading time after the second FMV.

Length of time for Playstation 2 logo to appear after pressing reset from standby,

V7 – 19 seconds, V9 – 12 seconds. Quite a difference here, never really noticed it before though.

Length of time from standby to first FMV starts,

V7 – 28 Seconds, V9 – 20 seconds. Again, mostly different because pre-logo booting.

Length of time loading data after 2nd FMV, stopping after loading bar disappears.

V7 – 68 Seconds, V9 – 66 Seconds. Not too different here, less than 3%, hardly noticeable if at all.


I also gave them both a shot at booting a CDRW backup. V7 booted fine, played FMV fine and loaded game. V9 would not boot, just lots of scary noise, “CLICK WHIZ” sounds.


Especially since I like to test homebrew wares and experiment with things, I really like the idea of being able to boot CDRW’s.. V7 is still my choice for best PS2.

For people who dont know...

With the dms3 chip you can skip the logo and go straight to the game when you turn it on.

You have to make sure you update the chip with the 1.8 dms cd first.


press select when u turn the ps2 on and straight to the game.


cheers to DMS

That is pretty much what I thought - only really faster on the initial boot side of things... the rest is negligible.

Personally I use the Blue-X5 in the V9 so I skip the logo and go straight to the game - as such it takes only about 5 seconds to start loading GT3.

yup good old smartchip:)