so there I was about to get the details from some dude about dodging rockets and the system shut down.

no biggie, i thought, Bethesda games have a habbit of annoying system bugs so I sighed and pressed the power up again.

(i do realise that the fact I was playing FO:NV was probably just a co-incidence)

green light turned yellow briefly then three beeps and a flashing Red Light of Death.

thinking it was overheated I left it for a few hours in the path of the aircon, still same problem.

Luckily i managed to disassemble the BR drive and get my game out, and I gave the system a good cleaning at the same time, which did not help. so three years of happy gaming literally came to a crashing halt.

now the problem at hand - do i bother with a repair/replacement or do i sit my ass in the car, buy a slim, and assign a new role as doorstop to my old phat?

It only does everything! Except play Fallout New Vegas!

Actually that sounds like the common problem with launch PS3s I think the fix has to do with the heat sink, not really sure as I haven't looked into it, but there are a few threads on it here somewhere lol but these problems are why I always wait to get a non launch model of Sony products, my PS1, PS2, and PS3 have held up like tanks because of it.

When my 60GB crapped out in 08 (about two years including about 6 months of non-stop 24/7 Folding) I just bought a replacement since the PS3 saw daily use. About two months later, after I got tired of looking at my $600 doorstop, I sent it in and got a refurb back. Now I have a back up.

If you have data on your HDD that you didn't back up and want, you might consider doing the reflow fix so you can get your videos and game saves off (manually, no back up as it won't work on any other console). Eventually it will break again though so it's pay for a refurb or just buy a new one and sell your brick for parts on Ebay.

the launch PS3's also have a lot higher wattage PSU which causes more heat. I forgot it was originally like 350W and then they revised it to 250W. Probably off on the wattage to the exact amont.

Also the GPU, and CPU's were revised to 65nm from 90 nm making them run with less power, and less heat.

call Sony about trading them your PS3 and some cash for a new slim, they usually do that with the b/c models. If they don't, then just buy a slim. There is no point in repairing it for 150$ IMO.

Yep each revision has been a bit more solidly built, I heard of a couple of issues (very rare) with initial slims but thats the only other issue I've heard of.  Mine is a 40GB btw.

lol thanks guys

got hold of Sony's autherised agents. they won't bother repairing it but are prepared to give me a replacement model for...wait for it...the equivalent of $285. gotta love the third world.

Doorstop and/or ebay it is.

luckily, there's nothing in there thats too vital that i keep, all movies etc. are on external hdd anyway so i only lose saves and have to redownload any game content again.

sucks a bit, but that's life i guess!

might also give the reflow fix a try but i think it's the I2C (linked to the temp sensors) on the mobo that's packed it in.

I hope it does'nt kill my b/c 60gb ps3,when I get this game sometime next month.lol

Yup, it stinks.

Metal of Honor killed my PS3. I would have always thought it would have been a long session from a good game that would have killed it, not a few hours of that crap.

Remember there was the lawsuit about FFXIII breaking consoles? I wonder what became of that.

Anyhow, it kinda seems older PS3 models tend to have problems.