Hi, A few months back my 80GB PS3 went down with the Yellow Light of death. I couldn’t afford to do anything with it at the time but I am going to be taking it into a service repair shop soon. Has anyone ever had this problem before and what should I know if anything before I take it in. Normally I would send it directly to Sony but I’ve heard that when they send it back they will not include the original HDD and naturally I would like to maintain my game data etc.

Also I have heard that the newer model PS3’s are not backwards compatible which has turned me off to the idea of investing in a newer model.


Any help would be greatly appreciated…

well my friend got one and he said it was beyond repair.he said like a general malfuntion or something like that. have you googled it yet?

big fat cat : I have looked on Youtube at a few videos including some of those infamous “Do it yourself” types and based on everything I was able to look up it can be repaired but I am wise enough to go to a repair shop that will replace the parts with OEM parts rather than try to do it myself or have a friend do it. Part of the reason I’m going this route is A it would cost me $150 to send it to Sony and B I have a game in the disc drive. If it was just the mere console I probably would send it to Sony but I will try this first before I spend that kind of money.


Based on what I was able to look up this happens when the system over heats but has nothing to do with the actual system or Hard Drive.

I would suspect that doing it yourself might void the warranty, but I actually never knew the PS3 can breakdown too like the Xbox 360. Good luck on getting your PS3 fixed, I hope it don't break again too.

TheOmegaDragon : Well, although I have heard of the Xbox red light of death I don’t know if there is a difference between that and this. What happened months ago was I was playing Fight Night and it happened in the middle of gameplay. Now when you go to turn it on it still has the red light after you hit the switch in the back but when you tap the power it briefly boots up, then the light turns yellow and it beeps twice and blinks until you either tap the button or shut it off from the back switch. It doesn’t show anything on screen so it’s preventing the system from booting up.


From everything I was able to look up it seems to happen when it gets over heated which has never happened before. The only thing I can think of that might have caused that is a lack of AC in my home which might have caused it to heat up more than it would if the AC were working properly. The good news is the AC recently got fixed but I don’t know if that could have contributed to the problem or not.


Does this sound similar to the Xbox RLOD?


I might have to look on youtube tonight and see if I can find a video on the Xbox so I can see what difference there is if any. What makes me reluctant even more than the fact that Sony will not keep the original HDD in the system if I sent it to them is my copy of Fight Night is still in the disc drive so I want to maintain that for obvious reasons