actually on the sixthaxis they said it's the slims that brick:
With all the news about breached security, homebrew and Sony taking hackers to court, the underlying allure of installing custom firmware on the PS3 is still something a lot of people are interested in. Whether they simply want to return OtherOS to their machines, mess around with emulators or pirate games is beside the point. We here at TheSixthAxis do not recommend dabbling about in the custom pond for one simple reason: you could irreparably damage your console.
Case in point, the recently released CFW 3.55 which, according to the very community that are driving custom firmware development, appears to have bricked a number of consoles. Hacker Waninkoko (hackinblack on Twitter) announced today:
Yay! It’s coming! Custom Firmware v3.55 for PS3 released!
Only to be followed 19 minutes later with:
Do NOT install in Slim consoles! Looks like users are reporting bricking issues. That’s weird as the CFW was tested on both models. Well… I don’t know if those problems are real or just jokes. As I said, some testers tried this and worked in both models.
Brickage was confirmed a few minutes later when an apology was also issued:
I’m sorry for all the consoles that have died, this was unexpected :S
The coding elite over at NeoGaf, watching from the sidelines as the nightmare of PS3s dying around the hacking world unfolded, have chimed in, warning interested parties of the inherent perils of going rogue.
Apparently the guy who made this messed with lvl2 to make it accept a bigger payload, this is why random consoles are killing themselves. lesson = let the guinea pigs go first.
Sure, it’s early days yet and, who knows, it’s very likely the hacking community will iron out these issues and create a safe, robust custom firmware. Then all you have to worry about is Uncle Sony nuking your PS3 from orbit. Seriously, there will always be those who get a kick out of circumventing security measures; the challenge of cracking what is perceived as the uncrackable sublimely attractive.
For the rest of us, be aware that you not only risk losing your PS3 altogether (either now or in the future when your CFW may be detected) but will likely spend more time updating and tweaking your console rather than what it’s actually intended for: playing games.
TheSixthAxis does not condone piracy and does not recommend the modification of your console – doing so is against the Terms of Use of the console and is possibly illegal.
source: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/01/17/why-you-shouldnt-install-custom-firmware-on-your-ps3/
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
- George Orwell, ‘1984’
