3.3v powerline issue

[Bakuku]

Hi,

As my topic title says, I'm having an issue with the 3.3v powerline on the Cube.
Don't know if it's really an issue...

The thing is that gradually the resistance between the 3.3v and ground keeps dropping.

Example:

Today it's 437ohm while yesterday is was 2.034k ohm and the day before 2.4k
Is this normal? I've only turned it on maybe once or twice and never for long! 2 minutes tops.

This has happend to me many times before and in the end my meter would give a beep indicating a continuity between ground and 3.3v.
And the wierd thing was that these Cube's would still boot normally and play games and some of these boards would then sometimes freeze after 15 - 30 min of gameplay. Depending on the game.

When using a North-American Cube this issue never occured.

I'm using a PAL Cube CPU(P) DOL 001.
The custom regulators are new and build using Zenloc's resistance Table.

Anybody else have these issues with PAL Cube's?

Any help is very much welcomed!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Blargaman91]

That sounds like a meter issue to me. How long has it been since you last replaced the battery?

 

[Bakuku]

That sounds like a meter issue to me. How long has it been since you last replaced the battery?

I think 4 weeks ago... The meter is not broken. I'm sure of that. Because just last week with the NTSC Cube the resistance was a constant 3.5k or more.

I just checked the value and again it has dropped to 403ohm
It just keeps dropping over time... Maybe this is something that happens to PAL Cubes?

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Blargaman91]

The black capacitors (I forget what kind they are) underneath the GPU are what cause low resistance readings, but it's usually not an issue. You might try to replace or just remove this 3.3v one and see if it affects your readings:

 

[Bakuku]

But that still wouldn't explain the decline in resistance over these past few days or would it... what I get from your response, the value would just be low and not going down over a short period of time. Will still try what you suggested.

I'm really confused with this.

If anybody is interested, I'm willing to ship some CPU-1 Pal Cubes to some respected members for some testing.
I'm guessing Belgium aswell as Germany have slightly different revisions than the rest.

 

[Blargaman91]

I know, I'm wondering if the caps are failing. No idea what else would cause that.

 

[Bakuku]

I know, I'm wondering if the caps are failing. No idea what else would cause that.

If they are then that would mean Pal Cubes (or in my case the ones from Belgium and Germany) start to deteriorate once trimmed. Again NTSC-U, No problem. PAL, not so great.

I'll make some scans tommorow of an untrimmed PAL Cube from my region.
Maybe someone can figure some stuff out.