PS3 and a controller at Goodwill for $25, it doesn't work

[7800fan]

When I try to power it up, I get yellow light for a second then flashing red light. Nothing else comes up, no response to disc eject (looks like disc inside?), no picture or sound at all. I can hear the fan running and that's all.

 

Dead? It's a fat PS3, I think the second version as it has 120GB hard drive.

[KrazyKaiju]

It's the yellow light of death. Happens when the soldier holding the GPU to the motherboard cracks. You can send it off to have it 'reballed' but it'll run around $100+ to have it done professionally and it'll probably break again within 6 months. At this point, I'd never buy a used Fat PS3. They're all at 'end of life,' even the ones that have been babied.

[7800fan]

Guess I'll keep it for spare parts when I come across another PS3 that works. Fan, power supply, some components, and hard drive can be exchanged. BD drive seems to be tricky as the drive board seems to be married to PS3's mainboard.

[7800fan]

On the second thought, a newer version of PS3 is less likely to have problems and since I have nice working PSOne and PS2 there's almost no reason to get fat PS3 for BC.

[Algus]

fat PS3 BC is really meh. I have the 80 GB one that dropped the GPU and just did software emulation and I have to many games that don't work on it at all. I just bought a PS2 Slim to replace my phatty PS2 and haven't looked back. PS2 Slim is a great little machine and easy to find space for

[Jess Ragan]

Yeah, the YLOD is bad news. You can have the system reballed but it's expensive and probably more trouble than it's worth. Do you really want to pay $150 to have this energy-sucking behemoth revived? You're probably better off just getting a new PS3 and sticking with your PS2 for old games.