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Troubleshooting new Darksoft setups (some games won't load or 0% progress)

Cereth

Cereth

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So I have 3 Darksoft carts, 4 dead CPS3s, 2 working CPS3s, 3 SCSI drives, 9 128MB SIMMs, 6 64MB SIMMs, and 3 32MB SIMMs. I'm trying to put together as many working setups as I can. I've done all the basic troubleshooting I could think to do before coming here for advice.

So far I have one working board, 6 proper SIMMs installed, a Darksoft cart, CD, and SCSI drive hooked up. I've tested the SIMMs to be good, and installed every game properly EXCEPT JoJo's Venture and JoJo's Bizarre adventure. JoJo's Venture takes several hours, gets to around 42%, then goes no further. JoJo's Bizarre Daventure gets to "Now erasing the prior memory." and goes no further. Changing the SCSI drive to the other two drives, any install sticks at 0% progress.

What I'm trying to figure out is what's wrong in the chain. I don't know if maybe the SCSI drives aren't getting enough power, just need to be cleaned/adjusted, bad sectors on the CD, something wrong on the cart or a bad pin somewhere along the SCSI chain, or what. Obviously some of those don't sound right and it sounds more like it's probably a bad burn. Since I've tested every game now though, I thought I should ask before I go any further.

What I have done: tried to install every game, changed SCSI drives, changed SCSI cable, tried both versions of the CD (the other crashed at region select as expected)
What I have not done: burn a new CD, try the other working board, change SIMMs, change cart
 
I knew I should have mentioned that as well. No I don't and yes I am planning on getting one for myself in the end, but I don't have even those small amounts to throw around right now with trying to rush out two containers. The amount isn't bad but trying to pay that off in a few weeks is tight ):
 
I'm guessing your CD drives are weak or the CD media is bad.
 
Cereth said:
So I have 3 Darksoft carts, 4 dead CPS3s, 2 working CPS3s, 3 SCSI drives, 9 128MB SIMMs, 6 64MB SIMMs, and 3 32MB SIMMs. I'm trying to put together as many working setups as I can. I've done all the basic troubleshooting I could think to do before coming here for advice.

So far I have one working board, 6 proper SIMMs installed, a Darksoft cart, CD, and SCSI drive hooked up. I've tested the SIMMs to be good, and installed every game properly EXCEPT JoJo's Venture and JoJo's Bizarre adventure. JoJo's Venture takes several hours, gets to around 42%, then goes no further. JoJo's Bizarre Daventure gets to "Now erasing the prior memory." and goes no further. Changing the SCSI drive to the other two drives, any install sticks at 0% progress.

What I'm trying to figure out is what's wrong in the chain. I don't know if maybe the SCSI drives aren't getting enough power, just need to be cleaned/adjusted, bad sectors on the CD, something wrong on the cart or a bad pin somewhere along the SCSI chain, or what. Obviously some of those don't sound right and it sounds more like it's probably a bad burn. Since I've tested every game now though, I thought I should ask before I go any further.

What I have done: tried to install every game, changed SCSI drives, changed SCSI cable, tried both versions of the CD (the other crashed at region select as expected)
What I have not done: burn a new CD, try the other working board, change SIMMs, change cart
Click to expand...
When you say you have 4 dead cps3 boards, what do you mean by dead. Like there is an actual issue with them.
 
Mitsurugi-w said:
I'm guessing your CD drives are weak or the CD media is bad.
Click to expand...
Sounds good, that's about what I thought.


DarthMig said:
When you say you have 4 dead cps3 boards, what do you mean by dead. Like there is an actual issue with them.
Click to expand...
Two have bad SIMM slots, the other two I don't remember. May have not been displaying video or something.
 
Cereth said:
Mitsurugi-w said:
I'm guessing your CD drives are weak or the CD media is bad.
Click to expand...
Sounds good, that's about what I thought.

DarthMig said:
When you say you have 4 dead cps3 boards, what do you mean by dead. Like there is an actual issue with them.
Click to expand...
Two have bad SIMM slots, the other two I don't remember. May have not been displaying video or something.
Click to expand...
OK too bad. I was just asking because i have been looking for cps3 boards on ebay and there are none that are just boards only for sale and the ones that are for sale are full kits which are really expensive.
 
Update, think you're right. Trying a new CD, has installed everything so far. I'll test each SCSI drive after as well.
 
Any recommendation for burning a CD? None of them work perfectly, always at least one game that doesn't install.
 
Try to use an A brand like Verbatim and burn at the slowest supported speed
 
The problem I find is that most CD burners don't support slow speeds anymore. Mine won't go less than 16x.

Lets start a gofundme to get this man a SCSI2SD. ;)
 
I just ordered two since I don't feel comfortable selling a multi that is flaky, and I need one for myself. Mine goes down to I think 2x or 4x
 
Burning at a slower speed doesn't always guarantee a good burn in my experience. A lot of newer cds are expected to be burned well over 24x.

honestly I would've tried a different cd type. It could also be those SCSI drives lasers might need a cleaning/are weak.
 
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Yeah long run I'll probably test with better CDs later, since I won't have need for a buncha SCSI drives sitting around. Would prefer to sell them knowing their condition
 
SCSI2SD is the best thing you can add to your CPS3. It's good, it works well and help troubleshooting. :thumbup:
 
Just reporting back, SCSI2SD fixed any install issues I had. Everything runs fine on one board, the other can install (swapped out a bad SIMM) but JoJo's Bizarre Adventure plays the start of the demo loop and goes to a black screen. You can still insert credit and play. I haven't tried other games yet, and I haven't tried swapping the good set of SIMMs over to that board yet. Any other suggestions? It was suggested I clean the SIMM pins, will be doing that as well.
 
those are the right steps...just change parts until you find the one that fails.
 
Recently，I added 2 128M and 1 64M to my CPS3 SF3.1 and changed the cart to multi nocd version. But when i powered on, it shows no enough memory installed. I have cleaned the memory. What's wrong? Thanks
 
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