7 Bit Arcade

..is like the death of a friend.

So there you are….It’s 10 minutes past midnight, some fox is getting raped outside and your sitting in front of your beloved PS3 just 7000 XP points away from “prestige-ing” on COD MW:2.

You’ve waited weeks for this moment and just as you are blitzing the last few seconds of Terminal…..*beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeep* The little known, “Yellow Light Of Doom” (or YLOD for short) and your PS3 says it’s last goodbye with a whimpering succession of beeps. Basically the YLOD indicates a major hardware problem, causing the system to refuse booting up until the issue is fixed.

Honestly, It’s like losing a friend, we’d been through a lot together, GTA IV, endless games of COD, Pro Evo and of course who was always there for me when i needed to escape the nagging of my ex? That’s right good old Old P.station. From the day of release there was some kind of weird connection going on between us, and now it is over!

My initial deep sense of dread was toward my saved games. I knew for a fact that every PS3 HDD is formatted on insertion into the machine and is at that point paired with that systems unique ID, in other words that HDD isn’t going into anything else without being re-formatted due to Sony’s overly extensive encryption. So essentially, all my saved games are DOOOOOOOMED! As you can imagine this is a terrifying prospect, with hundreds of hours of Fallout 3 and varying incarnations of COD played through, it was essential I get to the bottom of just what I can do to retrieve my data.

So after a lovely conversation with a Sony representative, who to be frank was about as useful as my PS3 currently; I discover that it is infact “impossible to decrypt the PS3 HDD onto any other device be it PC or another PS3″ This leaves me with one option, repair the PS3 long enough to firstly recover my copy of Modern Warfare 2 and of course vitally, back up my save games in preparation for a new system.

So what do you do with an out of warranty PS3 that according to a Sony representative is “pointless repairing to be honest, sounds like its dead” ?
YOU REPAIR IT YOURSELF!!

This process involves the following:

1 x PS3 complete with YLOD
1 x HeatGun
1 x Sachet of Heatsink Thermal Compound
1 x Torx screwdrivers
1 x Lump of Bravery
1 x Pinch of stupidity
1 x Electronics expert who shares his knowledge on YouTube

Basically in brief what will happen is The complete dismemberment of my PS3, removal of dust etc followed by the re-flowing of the cpu and gpu, basically the main cause of YLOD is the melting of the solder on the main board due to multiple overheating, so the reform of that solder is 99% sure to fix the issue.

So the adventure begins, i’m about to rip apart a loved-one, its like performing brain surgery on my dog. If it works I will be delighted. If it doesn’t I will have A LOT of explaining to do.

Wish me luck

YOUTUBE EXPERT

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