anyway on to the best thing ever, a backward compatible ps3 for as little as $130USD(united states dollar)
ive been going though chemo lately and cant go out to do much lately, so i tend to waist time gaming when im not up for going out, but my ps2 is kind of wanky and is a hassle with the short wired controller so i decided to see what it would take to have a good 60gb ps3 that i wouldn't have to worry about.
so i looked online for some 60gb ps3s for sale on Craigslist and found the only ones in my price range had the dreaded red light of death, (don't bother with the ones with the yellow solid light)the rlod tends to be a 90% chance of just needing a re-flow or re-balling)
i offered the guy $45 and i might be able to git his data backed up for him and give him his ff13 game that was still in the system, to witch, he liked my offer(never pay more then $45 for non fully functioning systems)
so i went to his house (do this at your own risk as some people are crazy)with a friend, and used his wife's hairdryer in they're kitchen and heated the ps3 for about 18 min in a ps3 sized box and then let it set for an hour, after witch the system worked fine long enough to get his data backed up and on his new ps3,and get his game out.
(this method of repair is not intended to last long and tends to dry out the grease in the blue-ray drive, so don't use it often ) if the hairdryer trick works, you have a system that only needs a re-flow or re-ball(re-flowing resets the old lead-free solder witch will break down faster then before as it is weakened by this point, while re-balling replaces the old solder with new leaded solder that wont break down as easy as it's lead free counterpart)
so before doing anything else with the 60gb ps3 that i now had,(still not a worry free system)i went online to hunt for a reputable re-balling shop near by that didn't charge an arm and a leg and did quality work, and found a guy on Craigslist that did re-balling for around $90 to $95(re-balling can cost as much as $140)and also had him replace some of the thermo-pads(the soft rubber looking pads on some of the chips to help cooling) in the ps3 for a total of $96 with 60 day full warranty.so i had a friend go drop it off and pick it up the next afternoon.(25 hour repair is fast here so don't be rude)
leading to a total out put of $136 for a $220 ps3,(now worth $275 after re-balling)
Ive been playing my backlog of ps2 games for about 2 weeks so far with no problems what so ever
ps: as a side note, the 60gb ps3 tends to produce much more heat then my 80gb ps3, so i recommend never using it while laying flat,always have it standing up, this helps as the rsx and cpu chips are on the bottom of the motherboard in FAT ps3's and heat naturally goes up away from the heat-sink while laying flat( sony intended for the fat ps3 to fail after a few years, !!pricks!!)
the slim ps3's don't not suffer from this odd design flow as the chips were moved to the top of the motherboard,
hope this helps gamers that don't have the money to put out on over priced equipment


