CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

stefuel

If you press the power button it goes from standby (solid red) to green then a quick blink of yellow to flashing red.
From what I read on line that is a bad hard drive. I haven't used the PS3 for a while and found this problem when I got the bright idea to upgrade the firmware so that it could do 3-D.

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 7098 Location: Fort Collins, CO

No, that's a YLOD (Yellow Light of Death). Just had one myself a few weeks ago.

It's caused by lead-free solder not holding up well. Temperature fluctuations cause the solder to fracture and eventually you end up with lifted traces. My PS3 always ran in a cool basement HT with good ventilation, and the air that came out of the heat vent was never more than slightly warm, so I don't know why mine failed, but it did.

There are kits on the market to fix it yourself. You need to reflow the solder to reconnect the joints. You can do it with a heat gun but you can damage things if you're not careful. Plus you should replace the thermal paste with better-quality stuff. Getting in there and doing all of that looked like a PITA so I took mine to a local place that uses a commercial reflow station. Cost me $70.

stefuel · Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 11:46 pm Post subject:

It was both. I did the re-flow my self. After that it would power up but then I got the " can not detect the hard drive error"
I went to BB and bought the cheapest 2.5 SATA drive I could find which was a 320 GB. The original was a 40. It instantly detected the new drive and formatted it. After that I uploaded the latest firmware and that old PS3 is cranking out 3D.
Now I'll admit, 3D is pretty cool but I don't see my self using it on a regular basis. I picked up one 3D movie while I was at BB for the hard drive Ice Age Continental Drift. I'm sure there are better movies for the 3D effect but the kids wanted that movie anyway. When I first got it running I wasn't to impressed. Then I realized I did not have the PS3 set up correctly to output 3D. That big Samsung flat screen was outputing simulated 3D.

bigge3415 · Joined: 28 Apr 2013 Posts: 5

In my opinion 3D is only good with a large viewing screen.

stefuel · Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:42 pm Post subject:

mc86 · Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:46 pm Post subject:

My dad put his PS3 in the kitchen over to reflow/melt the solder (as per some folks on ebay) and it fixed the problem. Crazy cool.

Matt

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 7098 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Yeah, my then-wife's laptop died with the Nvidia problem that was so prevalent about 5-6 years ago. No display whatsoever -- the laptop was useless. Then I read some crazy thing about overheating the laptop. (Nobody seemed to know about solder cracks, lifted traces, etc yet.) So since the laptop was already a writeoff, I tried it -- turned it on, wrapped it in a towel, and let it run until it overheated and shut itself off. Then let it cool, turn it on, and shazam! Fixed display. Now that I understand the solder-reflow issue it makes sense, but it was the strangest damn thing at the time...

stefuel · Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2013 10:11 am Post subject: