Should I get a Kiosk PS3 for $100?

[CZroe]

I bought my fat 60gb in 2007 so maybe its got different solder joints. I eventually caved and bought a slim after three YLODs. It's fixable but a pain in the butt. Plus I screwed up the bluray loading mechanism trying to extract a rental movie on its last trip to the ER. Maybe not broken but I cant figure out how its supposed to go back together. 😛

Tin alloy solder is fine for low heat components like my iPad or my desktop. Its useless for anything that really pumps it out. RoBS is like so many other environmental programs. Good in theory but has intended and unintended negative consequences. Its the same with electric cars and their batteries. I wonder how many Xbox 360s and PS3s they've sold to people replacing RRoD/YLOD systems. Great way to artificially boost sales.

Still got it? Are you saying that it YLODs and had a broken BD drive? I might be interested if the price is right.

 

[Shawn]

I'd go for it, for $100 something to play with for a bit, who cares if it dosen't have a warrenty, if it fucks up just chuck it. Always fun buying extra bits to play with. If you are specifically looking for a PS3 then I say look elsewhere, if your thinking for $100 I could get a PS3, that I wont use, but might be able to do stuff with on occasion, while I'm playing games on my 360 then I say go for it. It's cheap, you can mod it, take it apart, use it to play blu-rays, etc etc. No risk, no problem.

That's exactly my plan. I ended up buying it. If it breaks I'll just ebay the parts and recover some of the money. I really had no intention of even buying a PS3 until I saw one this cheap. I already have an xbox360, wii, dreamcast, ps1, nintendo ds, and gameboy color. I only really use the 360, but my stepson uses all of them. I'll probably try modding the ps3 and see if i can get games to run off the hard drive. I'll let him play Little big planet on the ps3 or something. But I doubt I'll play much other than PS3 exclusives.

 

[Tom]

And yet we used lead pipes for how long? Yes, we had to stop using them because traces did end up in the water, but it's not like that stuff just dissolves into water in dangerous quantities from normal landfill seepage. I think it had more to do with the notices California would have forced on the packages about "This Product Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Brain Damage and/or Birth Defects." Most PCBs are coated with a resin that prevents oxidation.

In the early '90s, they still sold lead/tin smelting kits for kids to make little metal toys, much like the Creepy Crawlers rubbery silicone kits. Now, THOSE were truly disposable and each little one was probably more lead than in a whole television or stereo. All they really needed to target was lead in disposable devices like one-time use cameras and Happy Meal toys. Electronics have forced recycling in many places now. Even though eWaste recyclers can't wait to get their hands on it, CA even charges an "eWaste" tax at the time of purchase now to "cover" it... they just assume that I plan to throw my laptop or TV away when I'm done with it and that someone isn't going to profit off of it if they willingly take it for recycling.

It sounds to me like a battle taking place on way too many fronts with one in particular having the opposite effect by causing failures and waste.

Also, many water tables are deemed unsafe due to naturally occurring lead and copper. Are we going to ban copper traces from PCBs too?

I have a feeling that when self-replicating nano-tech machines take off and they don't glitch or evolve and start ruling us or killing us all, the metals and minerals in our landfills will be a huge UNnatural resource. No doubt, mining for raw materials will be one of their first purposes, especially considering that they need such materials to replicate themselves and they can find both energy and material resources there.

in the real world products fail because of bad engineering and shoddy workmanship. Plenty of good products are sold that don't fail like xbox 360s do.

It isn't a choice between good products and toxic waste in the food chain that you make it out to be.

 

[CZroe]

in the real world products fail because of bad engineering and shoddy workmanship. Plenty of good products are sold that don't fail like xbox 360s do.

It isn't a choice between good products and toxic waste in the food chain that you make it out to be.

Do you know how the world works? Engineering is based on what is KNOWN. Less is known about the new processes vs. the mature ones. MS expected the BGA packages with the RoHS solder to withstand the heat and PCB flexing that was predicted because THAT'S WHAT ALL THE INFORMATION SAID. The specification wasn't mature enough to consider the effects of volume manufacturing (gaps in the BGA solder) and the brittle joints. It's the same as nVidia's ASIC issue with their mobile GPUs. nVidia designs entirely based on calculated engineering specs because they don't own a fab, so it's all they had to rely on. RoHS comes along and tells them that everything's going to be fine if they follow the guidelines and it wasn't. You want to blame nVidia? Go ahead.

And you know what? You're right. "Plenty of good products are sold that don't fail like xbox 360s do." Like the Wii, which Greenpeace called the most environmentally un-friendly just because Nintendo didn't throw their doors open or prostrate themselves for some San Diego hippie kids to poke around. Yes, they gave it a big fat "0" mostly because Nintendo didn't answer them and... they just assumed it was terrible? No. They wanted to bully them and make an example so that other organizations would play ball.

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

I'd buy it just to say I had one, lol.

 

[Ichinisan]

A 60GB kiosk unit that's been sitting in a hot display case. That's a recipe for disaster. A lot of the launch PS3s are starting to YLOD on people.

Spend $299 and get a brand new slim model. It runs cooler and it a lot quieter. Lack of PS2 BC is a bit of a pain but used PS2s are cheap enough on eBay.

The earliest of the PS3s were actually quite reliable. Afterward, they switched to some solder balls for their BGA components with inconsistent size and produced LOTS of failure-prone PS3s. A proper re-balling (not just re-flowing) is the only real fix...and it works too. I'd say it's worthwhile.

Even this could have been avoided if RoHS spec didn't require CE manufacturers to experiment with new materials and techniques with less quality control.

-Green Peace extorts manufacturers and forces them to comply with initiatives like "ROHS," requiring (among other things) the use of lead-free solder

-At the same time, Green Peace points the finger at game console manufacturers for creating "e-waste" with their "disposable electronics."
I found this scare piece while searching for some other one I saw a couple years back. I never found the video I was searching for, but I just found several others...so it looks like an all-out extortion war against the console manufacturers.

-RoHS is a DISASTER. Millions of consumer electronic devices (laptops, XBOX 360, PS3) are affected by brittle lead-free solder, creating far more e-waste than ever conceived. Tiny, sensitive connections from BGA-packaged CPU/GPU/chipset components can't withstand the normal expansion/contraction/warping that occurs as the component heats up and cools down.

The whole accusation that game consoles are "disposable" is bullshit and based only on the high failure rates of early PS2s. As a result, the failure rates of the XBOX 360 eclipsed anything we could have imagined (most people are in complete denial about the ACTUAL failure rate).

I still play my NES from the '80s. It stays connected to my big-screen HDTV at all times. I played it just yesterday...I even left it on for more than 70 hours straight this week (you can't save progress in Batman).

SNES, N64, Gamecube, my various portable systems, PSone, ... -they all work perfectly. How many of you have actually THROWN AWAY a working game system? Wouldn't you give it to someone or sell it? Game consoles are some of the LEAST disposable consumer electronics by far!


[edit]
What's the point of lead-free solder anyway? Do we eat our consoles? Take them apart and lick the circuit board? Even if this stuff goes into landfills...DOESN'T LEAD COME FROM THE @#$%^ GROUND in the first place?

Holy crap, Ichinisan.

He makes a good point though.

Indeed.

 

[Ichinisan]

I'd buy it.

btw, Lead in landfills leaches into groundwater and makes it's way into your kids and grandkids brains.

Unmined lead is far less likely to end up there.

I dunno. I'd think if you concentrated a lot of toxic waste into one place, it'd be easier to avoid.

I think any municipality knows they better thoroughly test / treat any water that could potentially be exposed to a landfill.

Is lead even water-soluble? I ask because they used to make plumbing with lead pipes.

 

[Ichinisan]

And yet we used lead pipes for how long? Yes, we had to stop using them because traces did end up in the water, but it's not like that stuff just dissolves into water in dangerous quantities from normal landfill seepage. I think it had more to do with the notices California would have forced on the packages about "This Product Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Brain Damage and/or Birth Defects." Most PCBs are coated with a resin that prevents oxidation.

In the early '90s, they still sold lead/tin smelting kits for kids to make little metal toys, much like the Creepy Crawlers rubbery silicone kits. Now, THOSE were truly disposable and each little one was probably more lead than in a whole television or stereo. All they really needed to target was lead in disposable devices like one-time use cameras and Happy Meal toys. Electronics have forced recycling in many places now. Even though eWaste recyclers can't wait to get their hands on it, CA even charges an "eWaste" tax at the time of purchase now to "cover" it... they just assume that I plan to throw my laptop or TV away when I'm done with it and that someone isn't going to profit off of it if they willingly take it for recycling.

It sounds to me like a battle taking place on way too many fronts with one in particular having the opposite effect by causing failures and waste.

Also, many water tables are deemed unsafe due to naturally occurring lead and copper. Are we going to ban copper traces from PCBs too?

I have a feeling that when self-replicating nano-tech machines take off and they don't glitch or evolve and start ruling us or killing us all, the metals and minerals in our landfills will be a huge UNnatural resource. No doubt, mining for raw materials will be one of their first purposes, especially considering that they need such materials to replicate themselves and they can find both energy and material resources there.

Holy crap, CZroe.

 

[BHetrick]

A demo (Kiosk) PS3... I wouldn't waste money on one just because of it being locked and needing special firmware. You'd be fighting with it with every new game you got.

I've seen plenty of used PS3's just on Craigslist for $100~$200. And they'd be a lot less beat on than a demo model.

 

[CZroe]

Can you tell me where I can get a kiosk PS3 for $100? What is your finder's fee? 😀

 

[Shawn]

So I bought it and a week later the hacking community found a way to convert the kiosk PS3s into retail PS3s. Now the price for the Kiosk PS3s have shot way up in price. Glad I jumped on it when I did.