exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 May 2023 14:06 I know what part of my bank holiday will be spent doing :)

Fixing it ? :lol: :hide:

exxos wrote: 05 May 2023 14:09

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 May 2023 14:06 I know what part of my bank holiday will be spent doing :)

Fixing it ? :lol: :hide:

Actually, yes, I bought it spares or repair :)

Aaaand I have a PS3 :)


Condition overall is pretty good, but something got quite hot as the grille at the back has gone a bit melty.

Apparently it will power on, which I will try later, probably over the w/e, but I think a strip down to bare bones is in order to see what got soo hot.

So I couldn't resist :)

I powered it on and got a green light!!! Then poweredit off right away as I was getting zero fan activity.

I pulled apart the easy stuff for a quick mooch and found dust bunnies. A lot of them.


And this also gave me a chance to try and spin the fan. It's jammed absolutely solid, so I'm honestly not surprised it's been overheating and powering down.

Looking forward to stage two of the project and pulling apart the rest of the machine to get access to the fan and to get all that dust out. New thermal paste is going to happen!!!

That one certainly has some character! :lol:

exxos wrote: 05 May 2023 16:44 That one certainly has some character! :lol:

I want to say 'Made by Hoover'...

Only a Hoover would have a dust bag!!!

It is promising though, as if I can sort the fan and clean out all the dust, it'll probably be a good console. So far nothing too terrifying here. Well apart from the melted back cover:


Which looks worse in real life, however it is a separate component so I may be able to either melt it back into shape, or replace it.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 May 2023 16:53 It is promising though, as if I can sort the fan and clean out all the dust, it'll probably be a good console. So far nothing too terrifying here. Well apart from the melted back cover:

Is that plastic then ?? :shock: Certainly had some useage and some heat output to do that much damage surely :shock: :shock:

exxos wrote: 05 May 2023 16:55

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 May 2023 16:53 It is promising though, as if I can sort the fan and clean out all the dust, it'll probably be a good console. So far nothing too terrifying here. Well apart from the melted back cover:

Is that plastic then ?? :shock: Certainly had some useage and some heat output to do that much damage surely :shock: :shock:

It is plastic and is where the fan exhausts, so I suspect the fan got slower and slower and the air got hotter and hotter.

I already found a replacement on eBay for £2, just need to check it's the correct model.

Well, it wasn't just the outside of the PS3 that was melty, the fan shroud was quite badly distorted, and that was why the fan was jammed!! Ideally it needs at the very least a fan shroud and back plate, worst case a new case.

So a bit of hot air (hehehe) and manipulation and BOOM!!


It runs!!! First time the fan was not running and it overheated and shut down, but a bit of cleaning of the fan connector and all is well, with the fan spinning and even revving up when it get's toasty. Which it does. Fast.

However, although I re did the thermal paste, I didn't have quite as much as I'd like, but it's good enough for testing and I'll re-do it later.

I do have a theory about how it all got melted too, because despite the obvious initial dust bunnies, it was surprisingly clean inside, and aside from the damaged plastics, there was little signs of overheating. I suspect the last owner simply didn't allow enough airflow around the console, and as a result it created a very hot pocket of air, with the fan finally jamming and the console shutting down due to overheating.

The fact that it shut down probably saved the mainboard and PSU (That was surprisingly clean too), shame about the plastics.

Overall pretty happy but a little work to do still.

Oh, and Sony, it's a pretty terrible physical design...

Ok, so I've hit a bump in the road...

Pretty typical for my projects it would seem. The system update in the previous post failed along the way, after which I got stuck in a reboot loop, so I pulled the HDD and wiped it then followed the instructions to re-install the OS.

The problem now seems to be now that it sits at the 'Checking, please wait' screen when the USB is being checked for the OS file. I did wonder if I was being too quick with it, so let it sit for about half an hour and found a different message telling me if I wanted to format everything to hit start + select for 5 seconds, so I did.

So now back to the 'Checking, please wait' screen...

I followed the instructions from Sony exactly before anybody asks, so MBR FAT32 USB stick, Folders named PS3/UPDATE/ and the file PS3UPDAT.PUP in the UPDATE folder. And yes, I know it's case sensitive and needs to be in UPPER case.

I'm hoping that it is a case of me being impatient, but very frustrating nonetheless. I'll report back later.