PS3 fun

Non-EMS Electronics related discussions and projects in here please.
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pishta
LQFP112 - Up with the play
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Aug 28, 2013 6:07 am

PS3 fun

Post by pishta »

I have been in the stone age when it comes to video game consoles. Never had an Atari, or Colecovision or even Nintendo until my kids had to have a Wii. So after a few years of modding and downloading free games off pirate sites (hey, the only way to go!) I bought a mint ps3 from a guy who only watched blu-ray movies on it. At the time of its release, it was a very competent blu-ray player in its own, and the cost was not much more than a standard blu-ray of the day. Fast forward 8 years and now we have the PS4 and people are dumping their ps3's cheap (dont know why, the PS4 cant even play PS3 games!) . If you can get one used and working for $100, it really is a very cool piece of gear even if you are not a gamer. It can rip CD's to its hard drive (fully upgradeable past 1TB, just slides out), acts as a media server player for movies off your network, has optical out for your 5.1 stereo, can store movies, does netflix, heck it even plays games! If you see a 60G fat model (1st generation) and it works, snap it up! These are the best ones as they can play uber cheap used PS2 games natively, the later versions CAN NOT via hardware emulation, only slow software or not at all. You can also get your nerd on and install custom firmware that allows you to install games to the hard drive, download games, and even install linux on it (prior to firmware version 3.21). If you should pick up one that has a version greater than 3.55, its hard to downgrade as youll NEED a hardware downgrader such as a teensy++ (I got one if you wanna borrow it) and a fair bit of soldering skills as there are like 30 wires you need to solder to the mobo to get access to the NAND chip. Remember, versions 3.55 and lower CAN be software modded, anything greater than 3.55 CANNOT be soft modded, no how, no way. Forget youtube, it CANNOT be done via software. Believe me I looked hard and they are all BS hooks to force you to take a bogus survey that makes the linker 25 cents for getting your email and demographic info.

You can get broken ones (RLOD or YLOD) red or yellow light of death problems and fix them pretty easily. Seems that both are attributed to the lack of lead in the solder they used for the GPU and CPU as well as everything else. When they get hot (original thermal paste has dried out on all of them) they overheat and crack the brittle no lead solder joints under the chips. You need to reflow them with a heatgun or reball professionally. heat back of board with low setting of heat gun, 700F on mine, for about a minute at 8 inches, always moving. Then flip board over gently (lay it flat) to get to big GPU chip. Preheat board for 30 seconds @ 8 inches and then concentrate heat on GPU for 90 seconds at .5 inch. Make 90 circles around it just to keep track of time and not concentrate heat on one corner too long. REmember you are only reflowing the chip, not surrounding chips so keep your circles tight. then move to CPU chip and do 90 seconds. DO NOT TOUCH CHIPS as you can knock them off their pads. pull back heat gun and heat (cool down phase) entire board again for 60 seconds at 8 inches. Walk away for 30 minutes, DO NOT TOUCH BOARD! clean old thermal paste off of both chips and heatsinks and reapply to chip in a very thin layer. Reassemble and test. If you still have red or yellow, test power supply by shorting end pins of 4-5 pin connector leading to power supply while the mains are connected but power supply is off motherboard. You should hear a relay click and pick up 12V out of 2 large pin sockets on bottom of P/S. If not, you need to replace it, $20 on Ebay, just get right pin count model (there are 4 and 5 pin models as well as black and silver ones). I have 3 working Ps3's now, one is stock for kids, one is modded for me and one is getting sold as a modded console for 10X what I bought it broken for. Have fun!
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