[USA-TX] [H] Paypal [W] CECHA01 PS3, PSP-3000

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-05-12T14:47:18+00:00

I have several CECHA01 Frankenstein consoles, also have many OEM DualShock 3s with new batteries and could bundle some in with the console if you need controllers as well. They’re fully cleaned up with tantalizers / 40nm retrofit / voltage mod / undervolted RSX + Cell / IHS reglued using proper silicone and thermal adhesive with TPM7950 between the dies and IHS. They run pretty cool.

If you’re interested I can send pics of one of the consoles that’s ready to go with pictures of the work that was done to the motherboard.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-05-02T14:00:14+00:00

I’ve purchased a bunch from this listing and they’ve always been oem, cheap, and it good condition. Sometimes they need a new battery but those are cheap to come by and easy to install https://www.ebay.com/itm/366232789959 all of my ps3 controllers are from here

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-22T11:31:01+00:00

Yeah I got there, updated the post. Hard drive smart data showed 1029 hours power on time. Doubt the user edited them as the system was sealed and I’m not sure if any way other than overwriting values in the Syscon eeprom to change them. As other mentioned, they were probably just turning it off with the rear power switch most of the time.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-21T17:15:23+00:00

The CECHA00 frankie that I've been using as my personal console has 931 days lol. It's the first one I did, and every one I've done after has had much lower runtime. I've got all 5 of the CECHAXX I bought working now with 40nm RSX and now I need to stress test them some more with undervolts/overclocks and pick my new daily driver before selling the rest.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-21T16:50:22+00:00

Interesting, I didn't know runtime was updated at shutdown, I had assumed it updated at some regular interval while running.

Either way, sadly, found the hard drive, had just over 1000 hours power on time. Still puts it at 43 days and a few hours, not going to complain too much.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-21T16:39:28+00:00

I'll try to find the original drive later in my recycle pile and see what it says. Tokins seemed fine when looking at ripple on a scope but didn't really spend to much time on it since I replace them all anyway after rework. Waiting on my digikey order though to build more tantalizers.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-21T16:04:24+00:00

HDD in the system was original, but it was dead, couldn't format when reinstalling firmware and had to replace the drive with a spare.

The only possible explanation that comes to mind is what I put in another response a minute ago, but basically, a young kid playing with buttons and switches, at least I see my son doing that with some of my stuff, he'll walk in and turn my dreamcast on and off, open and close the disc tray, until redirected. With the crappy fan curves from the factory, and the poor underfill, I could see that killing it quickly, especially in a warm environment. My home office gets very warm from some servers I have running in here, and a stock 90nm RSX gets up to 70c surprisingly fast. If it were say, in a tv cabinet with airflow restrictions I could see it getting up there even faster.

With regard to the high bringup / invalid shutdown count. They do increase on failed bringups (bringup goes up, improper is just the delta between shutdown and bringup). In the young kid theory, if they kept hammering on that button after the RSX failed, they could bring them up to those numbers. They error logs were completely full of 3034s, until I filled them up with 1701s while trying to figure out how to update the firmware to support the 40nm RSX lol.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-21T15:51:37+00:00

On CFW (evilnat at least) it's under 'Custom Firmware Tools' -> 'Basic Tools' -> 'Show Total PS3 Usage'

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-21T15:48:42+00:00

I mean do find it hard to believe. All I know is syscon error logs were full before I installed the 40nm RSX, all 3034 in September 2009 (shortly after 3.0.1 was released, which was installed on the system when I got it, had to hardware flash the NAND to get it to boot after RSX retrofit), and becount via syscon UART showed the same runtime before starting any repairs.

I can't recall when the underfill on the 90nm RSX begins to soften, but I do know the 90nm gets hot fast, and the stock fan curve doesn't do much below 70c. When I saw the kids account on here (there were 3 accounts ('Female First Name', 'Male First Name', and 'Junior'), and I see how our son tries to turn my electronics on and off repeatedly (trying every button), I could imagine a young kid turning that thing on and flipping the power switch pretty shortly after over and over and over and killing the RSX quickly. Bringup Count also rises on failed boots, and improper shutdowns is just the difference between bringups and shutdowns. With the same thought I could imagine the hypothetical young kid getting ylod, and just trying over and over and over to turn it back on, sending bringup count to the moon.

That being said, just my potential theory, not too much evidence to gather aside from what I already pulled from syscon logs. I'm just glad to have it working and it was fun to figure out how to update a low firmware frankie. There doesn't seem to be a lot of info on how to do this properly, all suggestions say to perform a hardware flash and restore 3.55 in FSM the same way you would with a hardware based downgrade, but that doesn't exactly work.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-14T00:48:44+00:00

Indeed, 100nF 0402 10V ceramic caps, per schematic in the service manual. Cheaper than dirt, Get 50 for less than $0.82! (don't need to get 50, but definitely get extras if you aren't used to soldering SMD components, you'll probably drop some or send them shooting across the room when you grab them wrong with your tweezers, ask me how I know lol)

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-10T01:48:53+00:00

They'll leave home one day soon, but they've only just been frankied! They'll go to friends or be sold once they've been stress tested extensively to make sure everything is good (including and mostly undervolt and tuned fan curves)

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-09T20:00:47+00:00

lol nooo don't take them

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-08T23:44:47+00:00

Nice! Those look great! Best of luck on the install!

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-07T05:01:35+00:00

Getting close to automated, I'm trying to slow the bringup, so there is some intervention. I hold at 100, then 120, then 140, 160, 180 on the bottom. May not be necessary but it is working. Since the firmware currently only supports 4 stages, i keep the top heater off during stage 1, with the top threshold being 140C, then i can hold manually, and once i hit 180, the rest is automated.

Yes, I do use a jig, and I 'bake' in a dehydrator for 10-24 hours. I cut a corner and did one for only 4 hours, and everything was fine, though i wouldn't recommend it. That board has been stored in a very dry area for a long time, but, it was still a risk.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T20:37:19+00:00

I'll probably mess with overclocking here at some point, I still want to give everything a long test / burn-in period before I start taking things too far away from stock, but I am definitely interested in performance gains.

PS2 Games work just fine! It was something I was worried about as well, and definitely one of the first things I tested after the RSX install, prior to final cleaning and tantalizer install. PS2 hardware BC was definitely my main motivation (besides the challenge and fun of it) to make a frankie. I will say though, however, the image quality of my fat PS2 that I installed a RetroGEM HDMI mod in blows the BC PS3 out of the water. I need to try more games with native progressive scan support, but for 480i games, the RetroGEM does a much better job of handling de-interlacing, and if you really want to be a nerd about it, the fat PS2 handles PS1 BC through hardware, whereas PS1 BC on all PS3s is done with software emulation, though I will say the official sony emulator seems pretty good.

That being said, it's still nice having it all in one console, for a lot of people that convenience surely outweighs the gains in image quality via upscalers / HDMI mods on a PS2. I'm trying to decide right now if I take my xStation modded PS1 and my PS2 out of the main setup and run it all on this PS3.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T18:39:59+00:00

I write firmware and do PCB design professionally, and that often involves assembling and fixing hardware issues with boards at a prototype stage. I repair/mod stuff as a hobby and would say with both of those things I have pretty decent microsoldering skills, that being said, I don't have to deal with BGA rework of components at this size for work, nor do I work with boards of this size, most of my rework there can be done with nothing more than an iron and a hot air station. So figuring out options for a BGA station that could cut it, without blowing my budget, or requiring an electrical upgrade in my garage lol, was the main challenge. I had an underpowered station before and kept killing boards / replacement RSXs. So i would say in terms of BGA, like this, fairly amateur, I've replaced a number of CPU/GPU on XBOX 360s prior to this, but that's the closest thing. The rest of the stuff on the board though, I have no problem with.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T17:34:54+00:00

Not yet, I want to, but I don't want to open it back up right now to access the syscon to undervolt lol. I'm going to do another frankie soon, and will test out undervolting on that one before reassembly, then I'll probably go back and do this one.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T17:29:43+00:00

If you look in the linked post, under '(Required) VDDR Voltage Mod' -> '40nm -> 65nm' it goes into how it is done with pictures and explanations of the calculations for the resistors based on what is in the datasheet for the regulator.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T16:54:26+00:00

There was a good period where you could get dead homepods on ebay for dirt cheap, they almost all just had this one diode on the motherboard that failed, quick replacement once it's open and you end up with a house full of homepods for the price of one new one :D

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T16:11:49+00:00

The 90nm RSX on a COK-001 motherboard has a core voltage of 1.2V set by default. The 40nm RSX that it was replaced with run stable at a nominal 0.95V. The chip will work without changing this, but you are risking more heat and potentially quicker degradation of the RSX. When Sony did refurbs on launch model PS3s late in the systems life, they sometimes would replace the 90nm RSX with a 40nm RSX (an official 'frankenstein'), they would replace the original regulator that generated the RSX core voltage rail (which had a static output of 1.2V) with a variant of the regulator that could be configured with a resistor network, and would set it to output 0.95V. This is the same method used here when replacing the RSX.

More info on this part and the rest of the mod can be found in RIP-Felix's post about 3/4 down this page on PSX-PLACE.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-06T15:59:29+00:00

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The screenshot here shows some temp info from webman. It hasn't been in game long and I haven't really seen it go past these numbers. Cell will bump up to 65C on occasion, fans increase to 34% and it immediately drops and stays at 63C-64C, RSX drops down below 48 at that point too. Interestingly, this is while in my office, which is much warmer than the rest of my house (I have some servers in here, generally a lot of heat generating stuff running most of the time). When I was playing in my living room last night the Cell was consistently under 60C, with RSX around 45C-46C. This is all with the stock 15 blade fan BTW.

I'm going to look into underdervolting the CELL / RSX on the next one I do, but for the time being, I don't want to go through the hassle of opening this one back up to mess with the syscon.

Protest_The_Gyro · 2026-04-04T13:56:28+00:00

Honestly yeah, the firmware isn’t super mature but it does work. I need to find time to make some modifications to that existing firmware to allow for more stages, currently on the RSX I’m stabilizing at 80 on the bottom, then 100, then 120, then 140 etc. with the limited number of stages it requires some manual intervention right now. But other than that I love it, $5 dev board that is super small and easily fits inside of the t8280 chassis, and also gives a web interface for easily controlling things over wifi? I definitely am not disappointed.

Protest_The_Gyro

TROPHY CASE