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zamardii12
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2014
- Messages
- 3,409
I don't have many people to share this with so I thought i'd share it here. A little background... When the PS3 launched it was really hard to get. A good friend of mine got his hands on two... the 60GB model and the 20GB model. He sold me the 20GB model for retail cost. I was always fond of the launch edition PS3 because it's an incredibly unique machine. It has the full Emotion Engine chip on the same motherboard as the PS3 RSX GPU and the Cell CPU. The PS2 hardware was built right into this PS3 which means the PS3 is compatible with every single PlayStation game to ever release. The launch edition PS3 to me is a love letter from Sony to their fans that they put in the effort to make the PS3 not only a very unique system but also to make sure that their ENTIRE library of games across 3 generations would work.
It's hard to overstate how incredible the original PS3 was. The system at launch was capable of running a full Linux operating system (specifically Yellow Dog Linux) which would turn your PS3 into basically a full computer with printer functionality, internet, and everything else you would expect from a Linux system. The system had an insanely powerful processor which arguably cost Sony more than it was worth in the long-run b/c the R&D costs for the CELL processor were insanely high estimated at numbers close to half a billion dollars and this alone made the PS3 cost over $800 to manufacture. For those of you interested in the unique applications the Cell processor was used for at the time including cluster computing check that out here: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)." For those who don't remember the PS3 when launched went for $500 for the 20GB model and $600 for the 60GB model. People said the console was very expensive at the time, BUT people forget or didn't account for that fact that the PS3 had a Blu-ray drive and at the time the PS3 when it launched made it also the most affordable Blu-ray player available.
On top of the Linux functionality, Blu-Ray playback, and more the PS3 also had full PS2 and PS1 game playback. I remember at the time also using my PS3 as a media server in my home streaming movies from my computer over to the PS3 in the living room.
Anyway, I am going off on a tangent here but I guess COVID has gotten me really into trying new things around the house I haven't before and acquiring a launch edition Model CECHA01 version of the PS3 has always been something I've wanted to add to my game collection. Historically speaking the launch versions of the PS3 ran quite hot. There were also some questionable quality choices made by Sony regarding certain elements of the PS3 including the capacitors, and the thermal solutions for the CPU and GPU. In short, when starting down this path I discovered that a very large majority of the launch backwards compatible versions of the PS3 would certainly fail due to faulty capacitors which would over 80% of the time cause the dreaded YLOD or "Yellow Light of Death." I experienced this personally with my launch PS3 years ago when I had it, and at the time I had to send the PS3 into Sony to have them fix it for a fee. In any case as I was researching this I found a lot of helpful info online about this problem, and the general consensus is that if you truly want to fix this problem you have to start with replacing the faulty NEC/TOKIN capacitors. So not knowing anything about sawdering I started watching YouTube tutorials, and spent a little money and bought a simple sawdering kit. I purchased some really nasty fat PS3s locally and while some of them were simple fixes, two of them are so bad in shape that I decided to use their motherboards as practice boards and practiced removing their caps and just sawdering lines and things on them.
So I went to an electronics website and ordered capacitors that were recommended to me and others as being the best replacements for the ones on the PS3. Once I got those in I was ready to go. I fiddles for 3 hours on the placement of the caps only to end with no confidence in any of the work I did and not even sure it would power on. Well it did power on, and not only that but it stayed on... I left it on a running game for hours and I was shocked that it stayed on. I fixed it! I couldn't believe it. I was so proud of myself. Granted my work isn't clean or anything, but it's my first time trying and doing something I knew absolutely nothing about just 2 weeks ago.
So I just wanted to share some photos below of my project for anyone else who is a fan of this system as much as me or just curious:
It's hard to overstate how incredible the original PS3 was. The system at launch was capable of running a full Linux operating system (specifically Yellow Dog Linux) which would turn your PS3 into basically a full computer with printer functionality, internet, and everything else you would expect from a Linux system. The system had an insanely powerful processor which arguably cost Sony more than it was worth in the long-run b/c the R&D costs for the CELL processor were insanely high estimated at numbers close to half a billion dollars and this alone made the PS3 cost over $800 to manufacture. For those of you interested in the unique applications the Cell processor was used for at the time including cluster computing check that out here: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)." For those who don't remember the PS3 when launched went for $500 for the 20GB model and $600 for the 60GB model. People said the console was very expensive at the time, BUT people forget or didn't account for that fact that the PS3 had a Blu-ray drive and at the time the PS3 when it launched made it also the most affordable Blu-ray player available.
On top of the Linux functionality, Blu-Ray playback, and more the PS3 also had full PS2 and PS1 game playback. I remember at the time also using my PS3 as a media server in my home streaming movies from my computer over to the PS3 in the living room.
Anyway, I am going off on a tangent here but I guess COVID has gotten me really into trying new things around the house I haven't before and acquiring a launch edition Model CECHA01 version of the PS3 has always been something I've wanted to add to my game collection. Historically speaking the launch versions of the PS3 ran quite hot. There were also some questionable quality choices made by Sony regarding certain elements of the PS3 including the capacitors, and the thermal solutions for the CPU and GPU. In short, when starting down this path I discovered that a very large majority of the launch backwards compatible versions of the PS3 would certainly fail due to faulty capacitors which would over 80% of the time cause the dreaded YLOD or "Yellow Light of Death." I experienced this personally with my launch PS3 years ago when I had it, and at the time I had to send the PS3 into Sony to have them fix it for a fee. In any case as I was researching this I found a lot of helpful info online about this problem, and the general consensus is that if you truly want to fix this problem you have to start with replacing the faulty NEC/TOKIN capacitors. So not knowing anything about sawdering I started watching YouTube tutorials, and spent a little money and bought a simple sawdering kit. I purchased some really nasty fat PS3s locally and while some of them were simple fixes, two of them are so bad in shape that I decided to use their motherboards as practice boards and practiced removing their caps and just sawdering lines and things on them.
So I went to an electronics website and ordered capacitors that were recommended to me and others as being the best replacements for the ones on the PS3. Once I got those in I was ready to go. I fiddles for 3 hours on the placement of the caps only to end with no confidence in any of the work I did and not even sure it would power on. Well it did power on, and not only that but it stayed on... I left it on a running game for hours and I was shocked that it stayed on. I fixed it! I couldn't believe it. I was so proud of myself. Granted my work isn't clean or anything, but it's my first time trying and doing something I knew absolutely nothing about just 2 weeks ago.
So I just wanted to share some photos below of my project for anyone else who is a fan of this system as much as me or just curious:
