Pumping my Yaroze. AKM ak4309avm [done], what else can I do?

[vj88]

Hi everyone!!!! So, I managed to install correctly the famous dac ak4309avm on my yaroze ( ak4309vm is the original one) and works like a charm ... now I have a cuple of questions to which someone could reply:
1) I have a dtl h1100 converter board with external psu and a scph 9002 psu... which one is better in your opinion?
I have noticed that the converter board also warms up quite enough so I'm wondering if it's really worth it.
2) Any point of change GPU and SGRAM with one of a more recent ps1/psone?
3) Increase the ram would not do anything 'cause games have been programmed to use only 2mb, right?
4) I saw an episode of "my life in gaming" in wich they said that there is a model of "fat" with a better graphic, similar to psone but due to the high number of revisions can't say wich one... do you know something about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7fCTHu99bk
5) Somewhere I read that the scph 1000 has better graphics for the presence of many more capacitors... but as I can see pu7 has only two capacitors more than pu8!
6) What about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytlZddyw5tI
It might work? the bios of a psone on the yaroze? (I hate the blue menu ) Can't find anywhere if Yaroze has a special BIOS...
Thank you all.

PS I have 2x psone (ntsc-U and PAL), 2x scph 1002 ( revision b ak4309avm and revision c ak4310vm), 1x scph 5502, 1x scph 7002, 1x scph 7502 , 1x scph 1000, 1x dtl h1102 from which I can "collect" pieces.

[vj88]

UPDATE ON 5) Added the two missing capacitors (from a scph 1002) probably is just my immagination but video quality (RGB) seems to have improved a little.

[rama3]

Honestly, there isn't much you can do to improve a PSX, especially if you don't really know what does what.

The power supply should offer the 7 pin connector that the original has. Later 1002 machines have slightly better efficiency and less energy wasted as heat.
If your external supply does the job, then this is best for the machine.

RAM and other ICs are matched, both in hardware and possibly in software as well (as delay timings).
It wouldn't improve anything anyway. Your board already has the final revision specs chips.
Same goes for the amount of RAM. As you guessed, games only use what a retail machine has.
If you do development on the system, extra RAM will allow for nicer debugging. Otherwise it goes unused.

Adding capacitors randomly isn't good. You never know what unintended effect they have, unless you know exactly what you're doing. (The capacitors you added are for passing Luma to the non-existent S-VHS output. They do nothing.)

All in all, I wouldn't mod this unit any further. It is rare hardware and their retail counterparts are cheaply available. Mod one of those! ;p

[vj88]

Thank you very much!!! So it's: "leave your Yaroze alone!!" hehehehe You are right, I'll follow your advice.
Just for the love of science, regarding putting a psone (or scph 7501) NTSC-U BIOS on a Yaroze NTSC-J: I have read on another topics someone said that it's possible but have to patch it:

I don't know of any compatibility issues, except one small detail: Port 1F801060h is initialized differently in older BIOSes (probably related to different DRAM chips installed on the mainboard), but you could patch the corresponding bytes.

How can you do it? What do you need? Yaroze will be ragion free as usual? Yaroze BIOS is different from a normal scph? According to wiki it has a 2.2 BIOS model such as other scph but I'm completely ignorant on this subject.

(too many questions)

And then talking about the two capacitors, I am of the idea that you are completely right (I was also thinking that they were used in order to do something for S-VHS output) but my mind keeps playing tricks on me... the colors continue to look better and the textures more defined to me( obviously we are talking about a minimum percentage).

Yaroze no cap:

scph 1002 no cap (practically the same as the image above):

Yaroze with cap ("better" colors, look at the "CTR") :

Comparison:


PS It's probably a sort of placebo effect. I'm completely crazy, do not pay any attention to me on this last part! Hahahaha!

[Shadow]

The colours do look slightly more vibrant with the capacitors.

[rama3]

The caps really do nothing :p
The pads are leftovers from PU-7. Luma used to go through them and into the S-VHS connector.
As the port got removed, the caps could be left out. You can still see the pair that's used for Composite, since that's still supported.

CRTs are hard to compare image quality with anyway. At least an upscaler should be used, preferably with options to turn off filters and enhance noise.
(Hint: https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control :p )

[vj88]

CRTs are hard to compare image quality with anyway. At least an upscaler should be used, preferably with options to turn off filters and enhance noise.
(Hint: https://github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control :p )

That's why I also took a photo from a normal scph 1002 (that is identical to the other photo anyway and different from the yaroze with caps) ! Even if I agree with you in saying that a photo of a CRT ( PVM HR trinitron) It's hard to compare and unfortunately I haven't got an upscaler or something to take a better picture!
In any case, if the PlayStation will not going to implode, I'll keep it as it is because placebo or not, it seems better to me anyway!
About the BIOS?
Thanks