I have been a gamer nearly all my life. For me it started way back with the Atari, I still remember bringing it over to a couple of different friends houses and playing some of the worst looking games ever and thinking it was awesome. I’ve gone through system after system, from Nintendo to Sega to Sony. However I’ve never had a system just completely fail on me and break. That is, until the day my Playstation 3 decided to flash it’s yellow light and go into a coma. My PS3 was not your typical PS3, mine was a rare 60gb system that had a short factory run made by Sony that had the actual PS2 chip inside. This was rare because all the newer systems were not truly backwards compatible. Being backwards compatible means you can play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games all on the same system. I had intentionally purchased the rarer version from ebay because I knew down the road I’d stand a better chance at selling it when the day came to upgrade. However what I did not count on was the yellow light. This yellow light, otherwise known as the yellow light of death, is when the system’s cpu overheats and shuts down. The problem is when this shutdown occurs it is for good. I was shocked when this happened as I had taken extra care to protect my PS3 from getting too hot, but being the nerdy gamer that I am, I knew of a fix. A fix that was risky, but the rewards were great if it worked. The risk was that you had to completely take apart your system, all the way down to the cpu, however there were more than enough guides online explaining how to do this, so I felt confident. I purchased a couple of items that I needed and began to disassemble my beloved PS3. The pictures I have included can barely describe the mess that befell our kitchen table.
After nearly two hours of taking this apart, applying the new thermal paste to the cpu’s and putting everything back together, I hooked up the system to the TV and turned it on. Voila! It worked, for about a week! I then decided it was time to sell my system to someone, anyone, that would take the system and not bother me if it messed up on them. I wasn’t wanting to screw over someone but I also felt like I had been screwed over by having a system just fail on me. I lucked out and by chance found an ad in the paper of a game trading store offering $150 of in-store credit if you traded in an old PS3 and used that money towards purchasing a new system. How on earth could I pass this up? I then performed the second tear down of my former PS3 and put it back together, and yes another two hours later I turned it on and it worked again. I knew that I needed to take it to that store, allow them to test it, see that it worked and beyond that if it failed, that wasn’t my problem. I didn’t feel too bad for the company because they already get my business with games, and they are also known for screwing over a lot of people on buybacks. I also knew that if they figured out it was broken they could send it to a professional to have it fixed. They tested it and I was able to get a brand new PS3. The only problem was that it was a PS3 slim. It still did everything that my old system did minus the backwards compatibility, but it had minor differences.
As you can see it’s not the same system, it’s a little louder and it has two fewer USB ports on it. However it is a lot lighter weight and physically takes up less space. My old system actually had a 320GB hard drive in it that I had swapped out so when I traded it in I took that out and was able to put that into my new slim. So I have a PS3 Slim with a 320GB hard drive. All in all with coupons, and other discounts I got I spent $40 cash to replace my broken PS3 which is pretty darn good if you ask me. Let’s just hope this system lasts me till a new and better PS3 comes out.
Charles Cook Designs 