I was recently asked by someone to look at a PS3 fault. Their childs PS3 wasn’t booting up and they couldn’t eject a CD. Playstation and XBOX consoles suffer from infamous Red Light of Death (RLOD) and Yellow Light of Death (YLOD)
This specific Playstation had the RLOD, when booting up, it would quickly have some HDD activity and then it would shutdown and 3 Red Lights would flash on the console
This is a common issue where the console shuts down to protect itself because of an overheating issue. The processors and connected to the motherboard by a BGA array. A large amount of small solder balls which heat up oven time and solder cracks. This builds up temperature, drying out the chips and thermal paste causing the consoles to shut down to protect themselves
I documented a video of the repair on a Youtube video which you can watch
I had never actually carried out a console repair before, so when I was finished I actually had 2 screws left over. Still haven’t worked out where these were from, so if I ever receive the console back I’ll replace them. Otherwise I’ll use it as a learning experience.
I intend on going more full time with console, phone and computer building and repairs, so plan on improving myself each time in order to develop a better procedure and overall a faster turn around time
