Today I carried out a refurb and a Frankenstein mod on rare NTSC-U/C All black PS3. These units are getting very hard to come by. This unit I imported from the United States in faulty condition. The fault with the console was once standby power is supplied it just beeps 3 times with a flashing red LED and you were unable to even attempt to turn it on.

This indicates an error in the csum of the Syscon and is very rare to have this issue without physically changing something you should not have. This unit had no evidence of any tampering in that sense.

First thing to do was access the Syscon in internal mode so the eepcsum could be corrected. The pic above is of corrupt areas of the Syscon. I went ahead and recrified these so it was possible to attempt to turn on the console.

Once rectified I tried booting the console,only to be met by the YLOD, which I was expecting. The syscon error pinpoints a communication issue between the CELL and the RSX. The majority of the time this issues requires a reball of the RSX. Today I decided to FRANKENSTEIN mod it with a 65nm RSX, rather than reball its 90nm RSX.

First up we need to disassemble and prepare for removal of its default RSX. The board gets mounted to a frame for rework that keeps it nice an straight and prevents the board warping. Time to remove the RSX

All in the same stage I delid the CELL so it is ready for nee thermal paste.

The new RSX needs installing next

After this you need to apply the resistor mods that are required for the system to utilise the new and different RSX. Here are a couple of pics of the resistors that are removed and replaced where needed.

Next I partially assembled to test the new RSX but first the syscon needs adjusting to suit

Once all of that is done,it’s time to turn it on. The mod was successful and now it is time to do some preventative measures to ensure its longevity and replace a few other components

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These are another component that commonly fail so while we have it apart it’s time to replace them with some Tantalum capacitors. I also replace the misc power rail mlcc’s as they are a frequent failure also,blowing fuses and causing the YLOD

Once all of the preventive work is carried out it is time to reassemble the unit,replacing the thermal paste along the way

Once all the work is done,It’s time to test it. All went well and the console boots and runs.