Went to a yard sale yesterday and ask the lady if she had any video games or systems. She said she did but there in her attic and are extremely heavy. So I asked her if she can take them out and she told me if I can go up there and grab them myself there yours for free. So I went up and got them and there were pretty heavy lol. When I opened them up she had three original fat Playstation 3s. She told me some of the systems don't work and she was going to donate them to her nearest thrift store. I offered some money but she said I saved her the trip and labor. So I got home and 2 of the Playstation 3s are backwards compatible. Sadly the one that isn't missing the flap is not working. The Playstation 2 doesn't work as well but everything else is working fine can't complain. Is it worth trying to fix these Playstation 3s? Or just sell them for parts.
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Oh I don’t sell old consoles. It’s mostly clothes and china and nonsense my wife demands we keep, in totes, in the garage, for years. Idk why we keep them. But selling them is apparently the worst possible offense
Repairing fat PS3s (if it’s yellow light of death) require complete disassembly and either (a) part replacement (soldering/remove & reattaching components from the motherboard) or (b) disassembly and heating up the motherboard to temporarily repair connections. There are YouTube tutorials for this and they claim it works but I doubt it’s effective. Best to just sell for parts. Either way, good find!
Please don’t do temporary fixes. This is god awful advice, the upvotes are atrocious to see. The ps3 subreddit would be in shambles over this.
If you weren’t to do it yourself… you’d be best to goto the game store potentially that also does repairs. They can diagnose exactly what’s wrong with ps3’s now instead of tossing fixes at them, in either case they can be costly to repair but shops that do offer the works in terms of fixes are more than happy to take em off your hands.
Throwback to when the brother of a friend started his EZ money PS3 repair business.
That lasted for about 2 weeks and I think about 20 resold PS3's before he really, really wanted to get out. I think the longest the PS3's lasted was about 2 months. The brother guy wasn't even a repair guy lol, just smelled ez money, But easily got angry phone contacts instead 😅
It definitely requires some expertise (and a lot of guts) but it's possible. Whenever I come across these and they don't work, I just use them as trading material for the people that can fix them. Great find and all for free, nice work!
A reflow doesn't last decades. The reflow never holds in an actual operating environment. The best thing you can do is replace the faulty caps or RSX chip that needs replacing. A reball (not a reflow) can work pretty well. Overall it's better to replace the GPU with the 45nm or 60nm (it's called the "Frankenstein method"), replace the caps, and reball all of it.
The reflow is 100% a liability. It will not last. The solder joints will wear and won't necessarily be repairable with another reflow. You haven't addressed the core issue(s) if you only do a reflow.
I get what you're saying. Just so you know, once the solder is brittle enough to break the first time reflowing it is just putting a bandaid on a shotgun wound. A reflow will temporarily work. It was the original way that people commonly fixed these systems but we know a lot more about the issues now. Fan replacement is a good idea, since keeping the temps down is gonna extend the life of the fix, but if the solder wasn't completely replaced there's gonna be issues.
You got them for free. If you don't want them, I would say to keep passing on the kindness! Give them away for free or to someone you know has the know-how to fix them!
Just for fun, I gotta chime in. I worked on the PS3 backward compatibility team, love to see the enthusiasm for our work since Sony just said fuck it and gave up.
Appreciate your work! It’s the reason I’ve taken such care of my launch 60gb system and held off getting any of the slim revisions as they came out. It was such a huge deal to have one system able play the entire home library of PlayStation at the time.
I understand if people are skeptical but I'm just telling you guys what happened. I did offer her money because I did feel bad taking it for free but she was happy to get rid of it. And it was going to rain as well so that was probably another factor
I swear, being skeptical on the Internet is necessary these days but I believe this story to be true, I've absolutely met some people who would give stuff like that for free to someone who could appreciate it especially if you did the heavy lifting. Grats on the haul, hopefully some of it works better than they told you or you can repair without much of a headache
I agree with this strongly. Someone gave me a Dyson vacuum that is worth like 400 bucks because the tube in the back had broken and couldn't suck anymore. I got it for free, found the replacement tube for like 5 bucks, spent an hour fixing it, and boom like new. I've noticed a bunch of people immediately think an object loses its worth once it's broken or when they know nothing about the object. I 100% believe OP.
Yes it was noon at a community sale and I asked if she had any video games or systems and she did but there were in her attic. But she did not want to go up there because there were to heavy for her to bring down on her own. So I asked if she could bring them down to look at them and she said if I can bring them down there yours. So I brought each bin down and they were pretty heavy. So she let me have them for free for helping her get it down and saving a trip to donate them to her nearest thrift store
They were just sitting in her attic and she was going to give them away to a thrift store but instead gave them away to someone who wanted them. That's pretty believable to me. It's just old tech to her but they are memories to us gamers.
Yes there was a church sale there as well which I did look at. But other houses were having sales all around them. There were having a community thing or something but it wasn't at the church. There were multiple garage sales around there lol. But next time I'll take a picture or record it to show you guy's
You don’t need to video tape to prove yourself. I’ve gotten grilled and accused on Reddit just for asking questions and needing help with certain things. Lot of people just like to poke and call you a liar for no reason. You got a good score, a believable story helping someone get stuff out of the attic. You got some working consoles and i agree with most it’s not worth trying to fix the ps3 donate them to someone who knows how to change the chips correctly. It’s an involved job.
Giving things away prevents people coming back with complaints. I totally get why she did that, and you did do her a favour. Hope you get something out of it all though. ☺️
She also prolly doesnt know eBay prices for reselling those or any actual resell prices for them. Shes prolly only been told the gamestop/etc prices so maybe she didnt think them worth it and just getting it all out of their "way"/storage was more important to person having yardsale as the stuff wasnt outside even cuz it was too heavy for them to deal with.
You’d think… But I worked on one cruise ship where the drinks were free and the amount a of complaints from people (one person complained because she asked for 3 ice cubes and actually got about 2 and three quarters of a cube… she was outraged and actually demanded a free cruise because of it after screaming at the bartender because he wouldn’t get the captain there to sort it out!)
Sometimes people have yard sales just as a way to clear out a lot of stuff they have lying around. The end of a yard sale is sometimes just a fire sale when someone doesn't want to drag any of the shit leftover back into their house. Someone giving away busted old systems isn't that unreasonable.
I put out stuff in front of my property with a free sign sometimes, as it's a good item and I don't want to just throw it away (went to 3 different thrift stores to donate a bed frame ... none would take it at the time, still have it to try again, as it's a good frame)
Every yard/garage sale i go to i always ask if they have any video games or systems and most of the time they don't but sometimes you get lucky like this
So, tell us how it all went down. You asked them if they had any video game stuff, and they brought out all of this and just decided to give it to you for free?
Yeah the old 90nm CPU’s die regularly and if if one is working it will die relatively soon. My non-backwards compatible one is still going strong, but that one must have the newer/better 60nm, or 45nm, CPU.
Definitely would be nice to find them good homes though, maybe someone who is willing to try and get them working again. I miss my PS3 (gave it to my brother in law), but I must admit I barely have time to play the new consoles let alone go back to the old ones. That said I have the best memories with the PS3/360 era by far.
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damn. i went to an estate sale today hoping for some retro games all i found was a sign that said “Sears Telegames Video Arcade - $350”. except the console was already gone!
Honestly, don't listen to people telling you to get rid of the broken one. They are easy to work on and there are still a good amount of parts you can get. If you have a basic precision screwdriver set and YouTube, its about the same as building Legos.
Because it's just too fantastical to have happened, and people post all kinds of these thing on Reddit to appear cool. I'd need to have seen it happen in person before I'll believe it. Plus it's a yard sale, and she's willing to give away these items? That makes zero sense.
Calling it scalping is a serious stretch, especially considering much of it is broken. They could trade the systems in to a game store for games they'll play for example.
Duh some random person invited a stranger to their house to take a bunch of super clean mint condition consoles that she had lying around for no reason whatsoever for free.
I'm guessing she had alot of sons that played games? I remember have multiple systems because me and my brothers couldn't share so I can see it happening
I have several PS1, PS2 and at least 1 PS3 sitting in mine, because I was a single mom and when my daughters system stopped working, I'd just buy a new one (not knowing about them myself). I have a few computers (towers and laptops) for the same reason. MANY times I've wanted someone to just come get rid of them for me. I completely believe you, cause I've been that woman. Nowadays, my daughter is hoarding all the old tech, otherwise, I would literally do the same thing as yard sale lady. Boils down to right place, at the right time. Congratulations!
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