You guys are gonna hate me.......
I was looking for a new fixer-upper/tinker project and found a deal online for a trio of PS3's that was listed as for repair/parts and snapped them up for $50 shipped. Was said these had problems of no certain issue, only that they did and I was thinking if I could just get one or maybe two going it would be a nice thing.
They arrived yesteday and I dove into them checking them out, looking to see what problems they had and what I'd need to do to repair them.
All three systems came with their HDD's, that was the first real suprise I got. Most every listing I saw said the HDD and with many listings even the HDD caddy wasn't included, much less the drive itself so that was nice. No cables or anything else was sent, just the systems themselves.
After initial powerup testing had been done I dove into two of them.
I found one with it's cooling fan unplugged due to someone going in before and forgetting to plug it back up, fixed that and did the usual re-tim job with it. Another one had never been opened since I had to remove the warranty sticker to access it. Re-timmed it, checked it over largely due to it failing the cooling fan test. The third showed no problems as was when tinkering so I left it alone ATM, and all three did not have the YLOD or RBLOD with this testing.
Then decided to hook up the two that did pass the fan test to check for video issues.
Right from the start the one I didn't open up showed good video function, the disk drive checked OK (So far) and went straight into the menu; Had to find a compatable controller and it's getting input so.... Looked like this one was OK but went ahead and did the extended format of the HDD just to see if I got a YLOD or RBLOD - Passed that after taking over 5 hours to reformat the drive.
The other one that had it's fan unplugged needed a video reset, after doing that it booted like the first one, no further problems noted at this time but haven't had a chance yet to let it run for an extended period of time for testing it for a YLOD/RBLOD..... That's coming soon.
The third and final one that failed it's fan test I checked and it was connected so after it's re-timming and reassembly I checked it. Video reset was done and it worked like the first two! Also noted even though it's fan was failing the fan test, the fan itself DOES work since it did start moving air after letting it run for a few minutes but it did get kinda hot. Gonna let this one sit until I can find another fan for it.
So.... At this point the amount I gave for these and to receive all units in a working/semi-working condition was a real bargain. I also have another one coming in today that was said it won't power up, I'll swap it's PSU out and between it and the one with the faulty fan I'll decide what to do.
Still have some testing yet for all of them but so far things are looking really good.
Started with a Genesis and was blown away by the the blast processing. Then I got a SNES after a fiend introduced me to LoZ:LttP. After that I did the original Zelda, Zelda II, Final Fantasy and any other RPG I could pick up. Emulation helped by filling in a few spots -- including fan-translated ROMs of FF II and FF III. That was so helpful, as this was well before the time Square started porting every game to every platform with official English translations (which were not always as good as fan-translated).
