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Worklog Ashida build. My first portable.

deesil

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> I do not have any idea what I'm talking about here but I do suspect that maybe that is a source of interference.
HAH! Same.

It's so hard to isolate variables and prove that the change you've made is actually the source of the change you're seeing.

Glad you're making some progress. I'm going to get my Ashida back on the bench now that we're home from vacation. One suggestion that was made was to disable the DD and to use composite out, temporarily. I'd like to do this to see if I can eliminate the DD as the source of my I2C problems. The challenge is that it'll be tough to "play" anything with it open like that. I'll have to see if I can work something out.

I may just run the fan calibration though. That seems to be enough to get the whole thing to panic.

Okay, I made a thread to see if we can collect some data around the RVL-DD: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.p...e-stories-sdw-sdc-and-controller-issues.6761/
 
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Ok so I'm now very confident that my Ashida is orders of magnitude much more stable than ever before. I haven't seen a single RVLoader crash all day.

This is what my final wiring looks like:

The top lines are the audio lines, and the ones at the bottom are the SDW and SCW pairs, along with CK and DI. Not pictured, I also ran the GCD wire along the flex cable.
Like I said before, my idea was trying to avoid going over the GPU as I suspect with all the swicthing and stuff happening in it there might be a source of interference through those caps.
IMG_3545.jpeg

I did ran into an unrelated and unfortunate problem though, taking it apart so much did end up taking a heavy toll on the DD flex and it seems like I broke the SCW line in it, and possible a video line since I started to have some boots in 4:3 and other times some glitches on the screen. after testing with my multimiter I concluded that the flex cable was cacked and I decided to replace it. In order to prevent this from happening in the future, I made some light creaces for it to fold over when I close the system. I do feel like a flex revision might be a good idea in the future... Possibly tweaking the design a bit (it clashes with the controller flex cable for example, and 2 of the screws go right on top of the controller flex cable... and no, the flex on top is not possible, or at least I couldn't figure out how) maybe also add a few more pads like audio lines, GCD... So that the screen portion of the build can tap into them from there and we don't have cables running between the parts anymore. Who knows, maybe even not soldering the flex to the DD board and having a latch? one can dream lol

(EDIT: I just realized how much of a MORON I am. The DD flex cable is supposed to go UNDERNEATH the board that hosts the GC+... I... Have no words.)

IMG_3546.jpeg

As it stands, I'm very happy with how it turned out on the hardware side. Some years ago these projects inspired me to get better at soldering, learn a bit more of electronics theory; I started to do more involved console mods like HDMI and stuff like that, things that to me were impossible 4 or 5 years ago, and all of that was in preparation for this project. It was my 2024 goal and even though I had to put leave the project for the end of the year, I still technically had it running before 2024 concluded lol. I will probably build a few more for some friends and then eventually try one of the more hardcore trimmings, just for the fun of it. I do have to figure out exactly what I want to do tho.

Huge thank you to the whole community.
 
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Ok, because it's never over, there's one more thing.

I noticed that the "gc pad resets and the stick craps out" glitch came back... So I decided to say screw it and threw in yet another ground pair... GDC+Ground. There's a ground via right next to the GCD vias close to RA1. I'm now testing if it finally got rid of the problem, and it seems like it... I booted TTYD and locked the stickto the right. Mario's been running against a wall for 10 minutes now, if it ever stops, I know that the controller has reset. So far, so good.

EDIT: yup, GDC paired with GND indeed seems to solve the issue of the controller randomly resetting during gameplay. Knocking on wood but so far my Ashida is looking very good. I'm extremely happy. Once I confirm that it is rock solid stable (I'll give it about a week of daily gaming in it) I'll proceed with MX Relocation. I'll then probably think about bluetooth just for the challenge. Also very eager to see if people having issues with their Ashidas would be able to solve them the same way I did with mine. Hopefuly I helped at lest one person in the process lol.
 
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UPDATE:

Ok so in terms of stability, my Ashida has been rock solid since the addition of the twisted pairs.

The new (less) annoying issue it developed is that sometimes it now takes a few tries for the console to boot (as in sometimes the screen wont turn on before I turn it off and on again 2 or 3 times). Once the console boots, there's absolutely no issues with it whatsoever. I'm not sure it's something related to U10, I think that maybe a ground loop might be responsible... I'll see if I can grab a different ground spot for the SDW and SCW lines that I now paired with the ground on the DD flex, and see if that helps.

I played an entire battery charge last night. Wind Waker, Mario Kart Wii, Gabriel Night through ScummVM, Mario Galaxy 2... The controller didn't bork even a single time. I'm happy.
 
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Ok, let's run an experiment. After confirming that my Ashida doesn't crash RVLoader anymore, let's break it again!

I'll remove the ground connections from the SDW and SCW pairs. Two things I expect to see:

1- Crashes return.
2- The console boots 100% of the time meaning I did cause a ground loop.

Well... I'm delighted to say: The crashes ARE BACK. This means that pairing the lines with ground does indeed resolve the crashes issue. The difference is night and day. I only removed the ground wires and sure enough, after like 2 minutes of the console being on, the crashes began!

So at this point I'm calling it: You NEED twisted pairs with ground for SDW and SCW.

As for the console booting 100% of the time, I'm still testing it. So far so good... I'll see if I can find a different ground for these wires.
 
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I feel like I'm gonna lose it. My console now refuses to go back to it's "no more crashes" state. The ONLY yhing I did was move around the GND wires for the SDW and SCW pairs and now even where they were before, my console went back to crashing. This is so damn frustrating...
 
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deesil

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Yeah, for sure. I know the feeling. The fact that Aurelio Said grounding shouldn't matter leads me to believe that it doesn't. But who knows.

One thing that's very difficult on this project is to assign causality to changes that you make. Without being able to gather data and then make observations of that data, mostly one's observation are essentially empirical.

It's very frustrating. I wish I knew more.

My current plan is to disconnect the DD and use composite. If I can get through fan calibration (which I have done on this system in the past, maybe before the DD was in place), then I'll have some good empirical evidence that the DD is at fault. But even then, if the console is open, that's a change. If I use an external GC controller, that's a change. It's really tough to isolate things.

One other thing I'd like to do is build an I2C sniffer and see if I can collect some I2C crash data. stuckpixel suggested that and I really like that idea.
 
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I moved the pairs from the flex to the DD board directly and now it's fine again lol. 30 minutes on the status screen and counting. I'll leave it alone for now... When I got some more time (probably on the weekend) I'll try moving some ground cables around trying to see if I can solve the "reset a bunch of times to boot" issue. My current loop now, which I believe it's the issue, goes like this: MC/GND on the DD flex. That means this pair shares the same GND as DD. The other end, of course, goes to the audio board... Now the audio board is grounded to the PMS through the GND pad right next to U10. This is the same pad I used for the PMS side of the SDW SCW pairs... and the other end is the DD. I might need to move the ground from PMS to Audio Board somewhere else. We'll see.

EDIT: the other strategy would be learning wtf I'm doing in the first place lol. Being able to measure interference or something like that would be much better instead of shotgunning the whole issue.
 

deesil

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I'm in the same boat on the learning. It's all guesswork of you don't know the underlying tech.
 
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Seems like I managed to stabilize it again. From the looks of it, the routing seems to be extremely important. I've been playing around with moving the wire pairs around to different locations and NOT soldering anything. My current wiring is not at all that different from the last one I posted, but I did separate the pairs. I put one of them going midway from the usb lines and the other pair... One thing that isn't pictured is the position on the PMS board when both wires are soldered to their respective pads... Once I separated them as much as I could (when the pair splits to go to the data pad and the gnd pad, so both data lines are now close together without a GND pair), the console finally stabilized and stopped crashing. I did 3 runs of 40~ish minutes each on the status screen, all of them back to back, no crashes. This could also be anecdotal, of course... (I didn't take note of the charging state before... I always tested it at 80~ish % battery, and this time I left the USB-C charger installed since I did notice that it was much easier to crash the console while charging) But there we are. I just report on what I tried and what my results are, hopefuly giving someone ideas on what to try out for themselves.

I think I'll stop playing around with this and focus on learning what's ACTUALLY going on. Is it ACTUALLY interference? is it something else? I'd very much love to be able to measure it somehow and have visual, measurable and verifiable proof of what's happening.

Aside from SDW/SCW, what I can pretty much confirm is that GDC+GND seems to be extremely important. Since the moment I wired GCD that way, my controller has been flawless.

Also I'd like to stress I'm just being very picky, because I want it to be as perfect as possible. The console itself has been 100% playable for quite some time (I NEVER experienced a single crash during gameplay... I only had that controller resetting issue but it's been fixed) I did put a LOT of hours actually PLAYING with it and I'm enjoying my time with it a lot. So while in the back of my head it bothers me to know that RVLoader might crash, it's not that big of a deal.
 

Stitches

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Wiis are either indestructible bulwarks that work perfectly despite every possible mistake being made, or lumps of wet tissue paper that kill all your peripherals despite you doing everything correctly. Sadly it really is just the whim of the machine spirit whether a trim works.

I'm told it helps to pray
 
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Ok so, it seems like the SDW/SCW crashes are indeed a bug in RVLoader. Aurelio's been working on it, so we just need to be patient and wait for a new release.

The other issue I was having was unreliable boots... as in sometimes I would need to turn on and off the console 2 or 3 times before it would finally boot. I learned that apparently the size of the U10 cable matters a lot and that the U10 emulation on the PMS is not really ideal to use compared to the actual chip... Thing is, I didn't install mine thinking I was going to be using the PMS anyway... and I didn't want to take the whole thing apart in order to flip the motherboard and install it... So... wireless U10 it is! I simply scrapped a bit of the solder mask off the board (for the ground legs) and sent it. So far, 100% boots!

IMG_3576.jpeg
 
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Stitches

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Ok so, it seems like the SDW/SCW crashes are indeed a bug in RVLoader. Aurelio's been working on it, so we just need to be patient and wait for a new release.

The other issue I was having was unreliable boots... as in sometimes I would need to turn on and off the console 2 or 3 times before it would finally boot. I learned that apparently the size of the U10 cable matters a lot and that the U10 emulation on the PMS is not really ideal to use compared to the actual chip... Thing is, I didn't install mine thinking I was going to be using the PMS anyway... and I didn't want to take the whole thing apart in order to flip the motherboard and install it... So... wireless U10 it is! I simply scrapped a bit of the solder mask off the board (for the ground legs) and sent it. So far, 100% boots!

View attachment 37189
I always enjoy seeing wireless U10
 
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lol I'm so glad that everything is so conveniently in there, juuuuust in reach of the correct legs on the u10 ic. It's almost made on purpose lol. I was not aware this was a thing until a few days ago... I saw a picture and was like "wait, what?? is that cap 3v3 on that side, no way" I checked and sure enough, that side of the cap was 3v3 lol.

Anyway, this is going to be how I'm doing U10 from now on. My console had 100% boot rate since I did that.
 

deesil

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Wireless u10 is definitely the way. But you have to run CK and DI first if you are using the DD as wireless u10 can cover those vias. I actually had to redo my wireless u10 to make room.
 
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Yeah I was careful to leave "plenty" of space for them. In the picture they look a bit sketchy, but I did clean them up afterwards.
 
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