Hung on Atmosphere logo

Had a buddy send me his unpatched v1 console this week, according to him it was turned off and the next day refused to boot. All attempts to get it to boot into OFW are met with a black screen. Any attempt to get it into Atmosphere leaves me stuck on the Atmosphere logo. I can get around in hekate just fine, eMMC is not corrupt or damaged, all the other IC’s it reports on come back just fine. Ive cleaned and rebuilt the SD card with a fresh copy of the latest build of atmosphere. I’ve tried booting with additional pressure on RAM, then APU, with no change. Used a known good battery just in case and same thing. No obvious shorts on the board, charging circuit is functional and can charge.

I am honestly left thinking I have an APU related issue and this board is a non-fix, but before I give up on it and ship it back as a paperweight I thought I’d give it a hail mary and see if someone smarter than me might have a trick or two to try that I missed. Unfortunately I don’t have the tools (or patience or balls) to attempt an APU reball, so that is out of pocket for me.

Would really suck to see this one go as its damn near mint condition and a low serial # console.

I assume you don’t how much current draw when hanging on logo.
Hot air on wifi chip to see if Anything change

well usb ammeter is showing .48a. I could reflow wifi, but i think i would get farther in the boot process before that was an issue?

My bad, I meant current draw from battery connector with bench power supply dummy battery. Not charging current from port.

Oh, i haven’t measured that yet no. I do have a bench PSU so I could set the board up to get some readings.

Ok, hooked up my bench PSU and the switch to boot from it (10k resistor between pads on battery connector, + hooked to vbat - grounded to usb shield). Set up PSU to 4.2v with a 2A limit. Injected hekate, current draw stayed at 0A, then injected atmosphere and saw current rise to .22A and stop.

given this chart I think I can conclude I either have a dead APU or bad RAM. I never see second stage boot in any fashion, I know the eMMC is not corrupt or damaged thanks to hekate, so that just leaves the RAM / CPU as potential culprits.

My diagnosis seem right or is there anything else I should try before writing this one off and sending it back to my friend?