I feel your pain, my launch 60GB PS3 died today as well. Similar symptoms, with the exception that I can launch games and play for around 5 minutes until the system overheats and crashes. The crash starts with the 3 beeps and a yellow light, and then the system powers down with a blinking red light.

The system obviously was out of warranty, so its going to cost me $150. The cardboard coffin is on its way. :(

anyone got an answer?

It's not the HDD; I replaced the original with a 320GB drive a few months ago.

I swapped the original drive back in place with the same load up error sequence.

At least I was able to get R2 out of the drive (FYI: on red solid light, hold eject for ten seconds for emergency eject, even on a dead console).

From what I've been hearing, Sony has been replacing original 60GB units with 60GB units. Don't know if they're refurbished, or old stock maintained for just such occasions. Figure with a 1% rate of failure, they didn't have to keep too many on hand for this.

I wouldn't mind an 80GB refurb even, so long as it played old MGS and SF games, which are really the only PS2 games I still play (okay, God of War, FF games...).

Worst case scenario, I still have a working PS2 sitting in a storage crate (a 2000 year original model no less).

I'd almost rather have a quieter, lower power consumption unit though.

No moving parts, plus the processing power of a pocket calculator. Cell phones have more processing power these days (and not just smart phones).

My SNES still works, but it never saw 5,000 hours of use, even when it was the community college dorm console.

I have not logged that many hours on any console I've ever owned.

As I said before, I'm not surprised it gave up the ghost.

ure electric bill must be pretty high lol

I got a 60GB model still runs fine, but I don't think I have near as many hours on mine then you had. Hope it's a cheap and easy fix.

ouch ur one of those .3 people whose ps3s break

I wonder if the towel trick works for the PS3?

It's funny you should mention that because my bill did go up noticeably the following month after I bought the PS3 and the LCD display. I think it was about $20 or more a month over the previous billing cycle.

I don't think too many PS3 users anywhere logged that many hours on their console unless they're doing what I did for about half a year (leave it running 24/7).

I'm checking the various "home remedy" fixes that don't require cracking the case open (at which point Sony will not accept the console for repair).

I'll probably just end up having it fixed for $150.

And just like many Xbox 360 RRoD winnahs, I'm actually planning on buying a second console anyway. Pointless? Yes! Why? BECAUSE I LIKE IT THAT MUCH.

Google search PS3 fixes and you will find out how to fix it that is assuming the console is older than 1 year and Sony would not bother fixing it.

Hate to hear that. I have one of the new 80GB. Only bad thing about that is you can't play PS2 games on it. I was so disheartened when I discovered this. I made the mistake of assuming all current get machines played last gen titles. If I was you, I would probably just send it in. Is there a possibility that it's still under warrante?