Since… hmm.. always I wanted a slim PS3. Not because I needed a reliable PS3, since I made both a 40nm and 65nm Frankenstein BC console and have multiple other fats and super slims, but it’s the only model I was lacking in my collection. Maybe, just a tiny bit, because of the power board LED mod I wanted to do. But then, I saw an occasion, a 2504 slim, 0C date code and a not original controller (great, just what I wanted, but hey, I’ll take any freebie I can get). Broken? Kind of. Seller stated that it had a broken Blue-Ray drive. Broken to the point of destroying discs, but otherwise working. Let’s see what’s wrong, shall we?
Controller
Just to build the hype up I’ll start with the controller. Not genuine, with a broken analog stick – it didn’t want to spring back to the centre, as shown on the picture.
I hope these pictures reflect the absolutely flawless nature of this controller. It just scrams “quality“!
Man, I was expecting low quality, but this… This is kind of reasonable. There is obvious cheapness just screaming at me as soon as I took off the rear cover, but at least there is okay-quality back PCB, dual vibration motors and a pretty heavy battery. I’m not sure how much of this weight is sand or lead pellets, but I hope it’s 0 grams.
I have replaced the broken analog stick with a used one from a Xbox 360 controller I refurbrished. Overall this was a very easy fix, and the original parts should last quite a while longer than the knock-offs.
Controller is back together and both analogs work great. Obviously there is no Sixaxis, so forget about recharging your light in TLOU and triggers are horrendous, so your Mazda RX-7 Spirit R in GT6 either is redlining or idling.
Console
The console was indeed working, it has fully working Marvell BT+WiFi chip, didn’t overheat, HDD wasn’t clicking. I, fortunately, didn’t try to use the disc drive, but more about it later.
I immediately installed CFW, as it’s one of the last PS3 SKUs to be able to use CFW, and tested it in games. Nothing came up, no YLOD, no RSOD, no crashing… Kind of dissapointing, I was hoping for some action 🙂
Either way, I had to open it to look at the drive and change the battery. For first issues I didn’t have to wait long.
Yay, my favourite! Liquid damage!
Fortunately it only stained the case and cables, as I didn’t find any more liquids inside. Did You catch what I wrote? I didn’t say that there wasn’t any corrosion.
Motherboard looks flawless at first glance. On second one though…
Yuck!
There was no corrosion though on the socket though. That’s the end of problems, at least for now.
I chose not to delid this console, because thermals were in check, as well as fan speed. I noticed that the thermal pads for VRMs and SB were quite dry, so I decided to replace them, as well as the thermal paste. This console was already opened before I got my hands on it, but original TIM was still on the RSX and CELL, weird choice, but OK. I didn’t take any pictures, but obviously each part got dedusted before reassembly.
Disc drive, let’s jump right into it.
Each time I “go under the hood” of these drives I’m amazed how complicated, yet pretty they look.
Gee, I wonder what’s wrong here… Maybe the laser lens is dirty…
But for real, how do you even get to this point? Why do you shove coins into the BD drive? I was half expecting no laser assembly at all, but this?
At this point I obviously removed the coin, cleaned and luibricated the drive. I didn’t find anything more wrong with it, so I closed it up and hoped for the best.
Power board
It’s a HSW-001 board, which means that it has a red and blue LED inactive on the far left side. There is place for two more, as well as a place for the second transistor. I decided that I want it lit always, red on stand-by and blue when it’s on.
As for the transistor, it’s package is smaller than SOT-23, I believe it’s SOT-523, but I haven’t measured it. I didn’t have one on hand, so I decided to steal one from a dead DIA-001 motherboard in similar package. While I was at it I also stole blue and red LEDs, which I had to later rotate, because I wasn’t looking at polarization and soldered red one backwards.
As for the resistors, I decided to steal them from a Falcon Xbox 360 motherboard, all 1K resistors. Red LEDs are naturally dimmer, so in the end they aren’t obnoxious. For the wiring I used a guide on psdevwiki, link is at the bottom of this page.
One of the images shows the troubleshooting I was doing when only one red LED worked. I’m usually not the one to have my electronics light up like a Christmas tree, but I think this mod looks neat.
One last test for good luck.
I love the end result. Light is not bright, but it’s noticeable. It’s a gimmick, but I like it.
And even disc drive works! It’s not very strong, the laser probably has some wear and tear on it, but it read the disc and I could play the game just fine. I’m not really going to use the drive, since I can play games from the HDD, but it’s always good that everything works.
Last thing to say is that the paste I used, the known and loved MX-4 is somehow worse than original one – temps are similar, but the fan spins ~5 percent points faster. I know that the MX-4 is quite thick and needs high mounting pressure to be effective, but I never expected it to perform worse than 10 year old original one. I’ll probably reapply a different paste, just to see if there will be any difference.
Link to the power board mod: https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/HSW-001
Thank You for reading!