A PS3 Story: The Yellow Light Of Death

[RIP-Felix]

Okay Guys. I have been working on a BIG project in secret for the last 6 months. But it took nearly the last 4 years to research. And it finally went live today! I hope you enjoy...

EDIT: there were some legit oversights that a few people pointed out to me about the video that I needed to address. They were serious enough that I needed to pull it down. Soft opening didn't go well! Anyway...it's back up now. New and improved!

[tthurman]

I just need a stock unit to use my existing library of games, so I will be looking to pick up a PS3 Slim.

Nice work on the video!

[tthurman]

This whole thread got me to reflecting back on my PS3 experience.  

Amid rumor's of their eventual demise my in-laws decided to gift me a $100 GC to Circuit City for Christmas 2008.  I had no idea what to do with it at the time, so I carefully paid attention to what was going on with CC until it was all but certain they would file for bankruptcy protection.  I actually left work early one day and drove straight to Circuit City and used the GC to assist in the purchase of a 80 GB model a day or so before it actually happened.

This was the model that dropped the Cell and GPU to 65nm that came bundled with one of the Uncharted releases.  I went home and set up Sony's app to run F&H.  After a very limited amount of Uncharted time it just ate the disc one evening, something a couple of power cycles resolved before it gave it up and then immediately died at the ripe old age of three weeks.

Sony sent me a prepaid return box that was identical to the stretch film support system found in the retail box.  In return I received a refurbed model that appeared to have been dragged behind a car for a few hundred miles.  It worked, but had all the look of a 40 grit sandpaper mod.  As you can Imagine I was not happy and I let Sony know this.  They shipped me a second unit that was in better condition, but still rough around the edges and nowhere in the condition of the one I had just purchased.  From here I made an unsuccessful attempt to refute the charge to my credit card company, with my case being I would have been within the 30 day return period from Circuit City, but ending up having to accept a refurb model due to the circumstances. 

This was an exercise in futility and I still have the machine to this day.  I ran F&H on it up until the day Sony ended support for it, and made sure to keep the vents clean since I was well aware of what it did to my PC's.  It ran the last time I fired it up, but the power button has become finicky and seems to work less reliably in drier climates (winter) and perfectly in humid months.

This post has had me searching for a reliable PS3 model now, something of a misnomer.  I have a small library of games, which consists mostly sports and driving that I want to have a viable system for.  It's a shame the vision and technology in the PS3 wasn't expanded upon, the cell was never fully utilized and is still a very viable processor today, albeit a pain in the ass to code for!

 

 

[tthurman]

So what’s the legit oversights that have you pulling the video down again?   

[Draco1962]

A Sony "Cease and Desist" order for telling the truth? Confuzzled.

[RIP-Felix]

On 8/29/2022 at 6:37 AM, tthurman said:

So what’s the legit oversights that have you pulling the video down again?   

In the original I forgot that ATI designed the 360 GPU and mistakenly said Nvidia designed both. That was inaccurate. Both were fabricated by TSMC (at least some of the defective chips). So it's not too big an oversight, it just didn't paint the correct picture of how 2 different designers ended up having similar issues.

I also toned down the "who's to blame" rhetoric and placed a disclaimer before BumpGate theory. There are a few other minor changes that I think improve the accuracy alot. Most people wont notice.

[tthurman]

Well you certainly got me thinking about the what if’s and looking into contingency planning for the long term.  It’s already getting late in the game for the PS3, and you know all to well how prices skyrocket on these things with age.

[tthurman]

I see a lot of people talking about replacing the "laser lens" on the super slims, which just seems to be the sled assembly of the blu ray drive.  Do you have any experience here?  This drive is more like a laptop style drive and I haven't done a lot of digging on it.  Is this married to a daughter board or similar?

[RIP-Felix]

On 9/1/2022 at 5:33 AM, tthurman said:

Well you certainly got me thinking about the what if’s and looking into contingency planning for the long term.  It’s already getting late in the game for the PS3, and you know all to well how prices skyrocket on these things with age.

I wouldn't worry about it until you have issues. No sense worrying about something that may not happen.

On 9/1/2022 at 8:35 AM, tthurman said:

I see a lot of people talking about replacing the "laser lens" on the super slims, which just seems to be the sled assembly of the blu ray drive.  Do you have any experience here?  This drive is more like a laptop style drive and I haven't done a lot of digging on it.  Is this married to a daughter board or similar?

The BD has a daughterboard that is married. So if you replace the whole Drive, you need to retain the OG. However, you can remarry them using a jailbroken custom firmware. You just need to dump the eid root key and use factory service mode to remarry it.

I'm not sure how common BD issues are. Pretty common I'd suspect. 15 years or so old solid state lasers are starting to fail. Not too big a deal to replace the laser itself. But I've not needed to myself...yet.

[tthurman]

Well, I found a new PS3 Super Slim 12GB on ebay and won it for $200.01 delivered.  I had a new 1TB Toshiba spinner from a laptop I bought and immediately upgraded to an SSD and it along with the Sabrent drive caddy brought this right up to speed, albeit spinner speeds. 

I went ahead and picked up a vertical stand for it so I'm leaning towards getting a spare laser while they're still only around $30.

I'll clean up my 80GB phat over the winter plan next steps with it, if I recall correctly its a CECHK01.

[RIP-Felix]

K has a 65nm GPU and CPU, it's a pretty reliable model. But it does have tokins that can fail on you. The biggest issue with thise super slims are the wifi modues, from what I hear.