PS3 and the Yellow Light of Death (YLOD)

Sometime last year, Dad went to turn on his Playstation 3 and was greeted by the infamous Yellow Light Of Death. It's tough to find a good description of what the YLOD is, but this forum thread is somewhat comprehensive. Essentially, the PS3 does nothing but show a single LED. Apparently there are a number of possible causes. Dad had just bought a new game it was stuck in the Blue-Ray player and no amount of coaxing was getting it out. With a repair price of about $150CAD (+ shipping) Dad simply bought a new Playstation ($300).

tiny ribbon cables galore
I had some spare time a couple of weeks back and Dad had found a suitable heat-gun to attempt the, by now, common "re-flow" repair. We watched this very good YouTube video (which is in two parts) and took the plunge. If it failed I was planning to at least crack the Blue-Ray drive to get the game which was M.I.A.

Death by a million screws.
One of the biggest challenges in this process is remembering where all the parts go and not having "extra" screws left at the end. I've taken apart quite a bit of tech in my time, and the PS3 ranks up there with a really full lap-top disassembly. My iPhone was invaluable for this reason. The YouTube video was great, but didn't cover re-assembly! Copious pictures of each stage and fingers pointing at the pieces in question really made putting it back together a snap compared to other jobs I've done. After completing the repair, I just started swiping backwards through the pictures and zooming in where I needed. I neglected to take any pictures of the actual "re-flow" process, since I was just hoping to use the pictures to put the damn thing back together again.

It took a couple of hours, but in the end we were successful. It was a lot of fun and some quality bonding time too.

As usual, all the pictures with informative captions can be found below...

PS3 reflow disassembly photos

Comments

rainswept said…
So there's now another functional PS3 at Caer Parentval?

If so, the shortage of HD TVs is becoming acute.
1:11 pm
captainorange said…
That's right. We haven't done anything other than remove the disk yet. Dad wants to find his cooling fan so we can keep it alive for as long as possible.
1:14 pm
Ian said…
Tempted to tackle the shattered glass on Anna's iPhone 3G, but I have a feeling the raw parts will be pretty expensive..
5:21 pm
captainorange said…
Sounds like fun ('cept for the expense part)
10:44 am
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