PS3 Just Died, YLOD.

Leaded solder is less brittle, it doesn't get cold solder joints as easily.

I apparently didn't have the site bookmarked, still waiting for my friend to tell me where he got his system fixed at, as they did the other stuff too. I've ordered things from them (or was about to, don't remember which) way before he told me it. But basically he failed doing the RGH on his 360, sent it to them and they fixed it and finished the hack and sent it back, wasn't too much either.

I kinda wish I had sent them the 360 I failed to j-tag now, instead of scrapping it. (pulled a trace out of the board, don't ask).

Good advice, while the seller does offer a 1 year warranty. Red flag for not using leaded solder. He may be a professional but I don't agree with his opinion on non leaded being better. The most I have ever done is solder a mod chip on a Sega Saturn but that doesn't mean I'm clueless. Read about it and make your own choice. Here is a good video to check out on YouTube.



For PS1 emulation I prefer Zebra or Retroarch Mednafin. Emulation accuracy is the most important thing at least for me over any other functions.

If you don't know what he means by accuracy:


Personally I aim for to play the game (obviously) and ease of use/setup, then probably stability, or maybe alternate those two, fortunately due to the scene a lot of emulators basically only have a few options anymore.

I have honestly never even heard of zebra, I'll have to look that up.

I've used retroarch on my phone and on the nvidia shield (still didn't play ff8 right, but I couldn't get anything to on that hardware), not sure which core, but I tried more than 1 iirc).

I usually just use espxe, mostly because I have it, downloaded and configured already. Although I do have a softmodded PS2, with a network adapter and 160gb drive, it is nice.

1.8 version works like a dream now, I've yet to see any failed functioning from it.

Well maybe I should just send it to that guy in the video, if he still does them. But interesting video nonetheless.

And I've used espxe before, at least I think that's what emulator it was. Only used it to play Tales of Phantasia when the PS1 version was fully translated, but it worked fine. But truthfully, I'd rather just have my PS3 fixed, and avoid having to use emulators at all, except for like nes, sega and snes and the likes, since those are easy to use.

Even if people know about Xebra, it isn't very user friendly. The readme being in Japanese doesn't help either.
I think they have version 1.9 now. ePSXe and pSX used to be the 2 emulators I used while back. I just can't go back to using ePSXe after using Xebra. It's like comparing Higan to Zsnes for SNES emulation.

And here I am with my SNES9X

It's what I use as well, although my friend has talked about some others as well.

Oh man, sad to hear about your issue with the CECHA01 (SONY actually mentioned it's supposed to be read as CECH-A01).

I heard they stopped servicing the original units back in 2012, not "two months ago".

At that point it seems they were still exchanging units under certain circumstances but now they're completely refusing service.

There are a few good options for you:

Repair the unit
Procure a real PlayStation 2 unit
Use a emulator

Repair the unit can only be achieved currently at third party service centers. As I am on a different country than you I can't give you any substantial advice.

A (early)real PS2 unit give some good advantages as you can stuff it with a harddrive and make it a sort of PS2 games jukebox. The only caveat on this approach is that it does not scale the video up. You will need real memory cards, too.

Use a emulator is the easy way out this problem but it creates a few issues with moving the saved data you already had to the emulated system.

Can you use the memory card adapter for the PS3 to move save data from card to PC? :0

Well, I am probably just going to use the guy that offers reballs on ebay. He has a website too, http://www.ps3specialist.com/ and a facebook page as well, so at least it seems credible. But as others pointed out, he uses lead-free solder, which I guess isn't good, and what was used on them in the first place. I'll try to see if he will do mine with leaded solder, but who knows if he will, or if I would even know if he did.

I actually still have my PS1 and PS2 memory cards, I guess in case anything happened to my PS3, I'd still have them if I ever needed them. As for transferring saves back onto the PS2 from the PS3, I don't know if you can. I'm sure there are programs that can convert the PS3 save format to PS2, but I can't get them off of there anyways since it won't come on.

I used http://www.ps3repairshop.com/index.html 2 years ago when my ps3 got the YLOD and its still working great.

This is where Leo would probably have to chime in, as I've never done it.

I believe the PS3's hard drive is at least partially encrypted, you would have to break that to get any data off it. If I remember right, the encryption is also based from the systems hardware (not sure of the exact methods behind it, but I'm sure it's researchable).

If you just want the files and aren't worried about how long the system lasts afterwards I can tell you how I got mine working for a few months. Heat gun (home depot/lowes paint supplies, I believe they're generally used to remove old molding) and some new thermal paste, basically I applied heat to the board in circular motions for a few minutes each on both sides, made sure to give the board support, and not apply heat directly to it, or stationary as it can warp the board, it worked again for a few months, and honestly I think it's dead again from the psu not the chip, due to the fact that I'm certain I heard a cap pop when it died, I just haven't been bothered enough to open it up again.

I will say that taking the PS3 apart is easier than the 360 (nicer), but putting it back together is annoying, as you almost need another set of hands, there's videos though.

That reminds me, I need to take apart that one PS2 I have again and see if I can fix that laser, I mean it will probably be moot, as I'm sure I could get another for cheap, and I already have 2 working, but hey.

looks half decent, but I don't like that the warranty is so short...

Yeah, I was looking at them, but something about them doesn't feel right. This also comes up when I search for them on the BBB.

EDIT: This is the reply I got back from the guy on ebay about leaded solder, and stress testing the console once he reballs it.

"Well, if you want leaded solder then no problem, just leave a note when you buy the service, but anyway the leadfree solder is the material that lasted with you since you bought the console and you can count yourself how many years is that and compare that to the warranty you will get from the best one uses leaded solder which is probably 90 days at the most and you will know why they give such a very short term warranty if their claim about leaded solder is right. you can also search Ebay for both 0.6mm leaded solder balls and the 0.6mm leadfree solder balls which is the material we use and you will find that leadfree solder is much more expensive material and explain yourself why I would use a more expensive material unless it would give much better result. you can also google the melting point of both materials and find yourself that the one with higher melting point would be the better material, After all the material has a very little effect on the repair result, the most effect would be on the thermal profile used and the hands that will perform the procedure, non of the people you hear from has even one of a hundred of my experience in these repairs or repaired a fraction of the number of consoles I repaired, I don't care about repairing your console if you choose to go somewhere else but if you care about your console's repair and the repair quality then you should do your homework and decide, I also don't need to stress test every console I repair, I do that with the consoles I sell because they mostly sell overseas and shipping the console back and fourth would be very costly but for domestic customers I have no need to stress test every single one of them unless there is a problem with my machine or my profile was modified otherwise they all will have the same repair quality and stress testing one of them is like stress testing all of them."

lolwhat

I seriously question if he even replaces the solder if he doesn't know that 1. leaded solder is more durable 2. leaded is cheaper because unleaded is RoHS compliant (environmentally friendly). 3. the unleaded is what caused the issue in the first place because it's more brittle and can't handle being heated up/cooled off as often as leaded can without forming cold solder joints, it's a well documented and known issue...

seriously want to just smack the guy who sent that email for spouting such nonsense...

Well Jet, if you think you can fix it, I'll just send it to you instead lol. The guy said he will use leaded solder balls for me, to just leave a note when I buy the service off of ebay. And it's cheaper for him to use them anyways he says, and he would send me pictures of it to prove that he is using them, and reballing it I guess.

If I had the equipment and knowledge to use it I sure would, it doesn't discount that unleaded solder is more brittle than leaded solder and that it's a well known fact.


I'm not saying that he can't do the job, that he's telling you bad information.

I was involved on that being possible. -_-;

He got a C&D letter from SCEA within six hours from the source code being uploaded to a public source repository. He had to comply and it was removed from the internet lol.

PS3 HDD is encrypted with a fixed per sector crypto (the sectors are not chain encrypted) but the keys are stored on the "EIDs" section of the flash. In turn the said EIDs are encrypted with a PER CELL BE unique key.

Only way of getting ***out of that HDD is resurrecting the machine or having it hacked before it failed so you could retrieve that information in a usable form (decrypted EIDs).

Not even SONY can retrieve stuff from a PS3 HDD whose host unit had "a total death" (for example the CPU failed or flash memory data is completely lost).

I've already back it up a day or 2 before it died, so I'm not necessarily concerned about that. I guess my concern would be, lets say I just bought a slim or something, could I still restore from the backup? What would happen to all the PS2 saves on there? Would they still be restored on the system even though the slim can't play PS2 games?

I had to format a spare hard drive I had to FAT32 just to back it up since it was almost 84gb of data. I just used a hard drive enclosure, but it worked fine.

Restoring a backup on a different PS3 will likely get you the PS2 saves back, but you won't get any contents that were bound to that console (PSN paid downloads of all kinds, Trophies, saves for PS3 games which have trophies) restored on the new recipient console.

Edit: you have better chances of recovering your data if you buy a new PS3, have the old PS3 temporarily repaired and use the Ethernet transfer method. That way everything will copy over.

Not for nothing but if you got one of these you wouldnt have to worry about YLOD

They never break and you never have to worry about Firmware updates or patches :X

Can you transfer ps2 saves to a slim? If so, you could use a ps3 adapter and just transfer the saves to a normal memory card and use them on a regular PS2

I do have one of those actually, minus the boobs. Haven't used it in years though, but I'm sure it still works.


That was kind of my point. I don't know if a slim or super slim can read PS2 saves, like how you can make internal memory cards. If I restored my backup, would those PS2 saves even show up on a slim in the memory card section?

You can. Whenever you can use them for anything useful. That would be the point for discussion here.

The CECHZM1 adapter obviously work fine on PS3 slim.

@op: Don't worry, your PS2 saves will be visible and accessible on the recipient PS3.

Well that's good to know at least, however I still plan on trying to get it fixed first. But good to know there are still other options out there.

actually my friend just had to fix his SNES a few months back, basically some caps were blown, so it was acting wonky.

So as to the File transfer. You can transfer all data via a thumb drive from 1 ps3 to another; however, you will not be able to play PS2 games on a non-backward compatible PS3.

ANY ps3 with serial CECH-A01 CECH-B01 and I believe CECH-C01(MGS gray model) can play PS2 games. That is of course if you're worried about playing your physical PS2 games.

NOW, if you're talking about playing Digital media you've downloaded from PSN all you have to do is to copy onto a thumb drive all the data. Create a PS2 memory card onto the "NEW" PS2 authorize it as a "master" account. Download the games you want and then grab that thumb drive and transfer over any saves you have.

Ninja edit:

I do also believe that all PS2's have USB access so the above will also correspond :X.