Probably a useful note for myself and maybe others about jdm-055

[Eren_Ackerman]

A while ago I mentioned in a different post how I was able to revive a JDM-040 board's charging function. The board had lost its ability to charge because I used a phone charger with it. I used that controller for a while (probably for a couple of months) after that by taking the battery out every time I needed to recharge it. One day I decided to experiment with it by connecting cables directly to the battery connector so that I could charge it without taking the controller apart every day and, to my surprise, doing that fixed the charging back to normal. Apparently the 5v shock to the battery connector had reset the charging IC somehow.

Some time later I tried the same trick with a JDM-055 and concluded that doing that had killed that board's CPU chip. But later I discovered that THAT was a mistake; a wrong diagnosis. I realized it by taking a second look at a group of JDM-055 boards that I had stored for parts, and it turned out that some of the non-charging boards actually had good s2pg001a chips. I combined some of them and I was able to restore 3 or 4 controllers with full charging function by swapping CPUs and charge ICs between boards.

Now I'm back at playing with boards again. I had a controller that always showed the yellow light as if it was charging, and that it would also get stuck with a blue light after disconnecting the bluetooth device paired to it. That board I decided to simply stick an auxiliary charge board to, as another user of this forum suggested. Works fine. But now I got another controller with that same exact symptom and decided to try the 5v trick on it.

At first it didn't seem to do anything. I used an adjustable step-down module set to 5.01 volts and 1 amp. Specifically I tried a little shock first and everything was the same. Then I tried keeping the cables connected for a few seconds, and still the same. I put in a battery and tried again. All the same. So I decided to set a little more voltage, 5.2v to be precise, and after keeping the cables connected for a while the board FINALLY decided to turn off the yellow light; both after turning the controller off and by disconnecting from the paired bluetooth device. But my computer still reported it charging in DS4Windows. Then a few minutes later the yellow light came back again.

I think I'm getting somewhere, maybe, so I needed a place to note this to remember it later. Also because other users might want to experiment with basically useless boards that they probably won't mind sacrificing for similar tests.

[Eren_Ackerman]

UPDATE:

I think what I did above must have done something related to heat. That would explain why it worked for a few minutes and then went back to the same.

Now I swapped the CPU and it appears to have gotten "unstuck". I'm not sure if the heat did the trick, or the CPU swapping. I still have the other controller with these same symptoms so I'll be using that for comparison. First by reflowing both the S2pg001a chip and the CPU, then checking, and then swapping the CPU altogether if no changes are noticeable.

[Eren_Ackerman]

UPDATE 2


What I did for the previous update was to reflow the S2pg001a charge IC, and then swapped the CPU. The result was that the controller properly knew when it was charging and when it was not. It didn't get stuck with either blue light or yellow light, but it also wasn't charging as it only went up to 40ma-50ma.

Then I noticed that this capacitor had moved out of place during the reflow for the charge IC.


I took the capacitor out and replaced it with a spare one from a parts board. The controller still knows when it's charging and when it's not in DS4Windows, and still only around 50ma. It got stuck a couple of times with both blue and/or yellow light, but then got unstuck again.

So, in summary, I made it go from charging yet stuck, to UNstuck but not really charging.

This is where I will be stuck myself because I don't really know much about this. My assumption would be that the capacitor is either the wrong value of uF, or it got degraded into the wrong value if that's possible. When I plug in the USB cable it shows in DS4Windows as if the battery was at "63%+" (where the plus sign means it's charging, but when I unplug the cable it shows as if the battery was at 87% without the plus sign. I took the battery out and hooked it to an external charger and the external charger shows 3.8v and marks it at 50% charge.... So maybe this time it's the battery? I'm trying another battery in the controller that when unplugged shows "50%" (not charging) and when plugged shows "54%+" charging at only 84ma (so not really charging, but it knows it should). EDIT: The other battery also started showing inconsistent values: 54+ plugged, 76% unplugged.

[Eren_Ackerman]

Final update:

From whatever I did before I was able to get the yellow light fully unstuck. Also the blue light when disconnecting from the paired bluetooth device. But the charging itself never came back. I decided to just put an auxiliary charge board inside and the controller works as expected. With lights and USB connection working all properly.