Feel free to add your own care and repair tips and repair stories.
I found crowd sourcing can work well on Tech Talk if you know how to organize information.
I am going to cover some repair tips for various consoles.
How to care for your console and what to do and not to do to make your console last longer.
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[]Debunking myths on the PS3 and Xbox 360.
[]Cover the wrong way to Repair the Xbox 360. Towel trick, X-clamp, heat gun ect…
[]The right way to repair RROD, YLOD and so on.
[]Aftermarket PS3 and Xbox 360 parts
[]Repairs on Retro Consoles
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Console Care and preventive measures.
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[]Never place you console on top of carpet, a towel or any fabric as that can block air flow and the lint can get inside and effect air flow and get into any moving parts.
[]Have your console on top of a clean, dry, flat and hard surface. Like wood, glass, metal or plastic.
[]Do not place you console in a enclosed space. I do understand some entertainment hutches have cabinet space with closing doors for electronic appliances. This is a NO. The Enclosed space blocks and restrict air flow.
[]Maintain at least 3 inches of space on the sides and 6 at the rear of your console for air space.
[]Do not use console “cooling fans”. It might sound like a good idea at the time, but many of these fans impede or restrict the existing airflow leading to over heating. They can also void your warranty.
[]Clean your console with a lint-free cloth or lint-free paper towel and avoid any cleaning products or solvents. For difficult areas small amounts of rubbing alcohol applies of a cloth or cotton swap is alright. Compressed air, as in low pressure air compressors and Compress air aerosol cans are fine for cleaning up dirt from gaps, vents and crevasses.
[]Never place anything over your vents
[]For both disk and cartilage type games, avoid leaving the game in the system when not in use.
[]Keep your system Horizontal. Many consoles wear out the CD/DVD drive out too soon in the vertical position. Also some Xbox 360 models are known to scratch disk beyond readability while vertical. This also applies to a lesser extend to some Hard drives.
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Xbox 360’s Product support Page and Knowledge base
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/settings-and-initial-setup/console
PS3 Product support Page and Knowledge Base
http://support.us.playstation.com/
http://support.us.playstation.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4694
What is a Xbox 360 RROD?
3 Red lights, the 1st, 3rd and 4th lights are on and red, are known as a general hardware failure. There is no error code display on the screen
Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death Repair Myths
The Towel trick
What is it:
Wrapping the Xbox 360 in a towel and turning the system on for a length of time to intentionally over heat the machine to re-melt solder back into place.
Why it does not work:
The Xbox 360 is most likely heat damaged, forcing more heat into the system will not fix the underling damage inside.
The X-clamp repair
What is it:
Reseatting the heatsink on the Xbox 360 CPU and GPU with a heavier and tighter clamp/bolts.
Why it does not work:
You are forcing more pressure on what easily could be already broke and damage solder joints. Forcing more pressure on broken joins might fix the problem intermediately but ultimately you are forcing the damage to become worst.
Heat Gun to reflow solder
What is it: Using a Heat gun to reflow solder. This should repair broken solder joins or reflow solder back to the components completing there necessary circuits
Why it does not work:
Same as the towel trick, your forcing excessive heat into a heat damaged system. The heating is also uneven thus causing whats called thermal shock, and possibility causing more damage.
Pennies on the Ram chips
What is it: replacing the heat dispense tabs (looks sort of like double sided foam) on the underside chips, so that the pennies act as small heat sinks and force more pressure on the Ran chips.
Why it does not work:
Those thermal pads are there to provide thermal conduction with the bottom half of the Xbox 360 RF shield using the metal as a heat sink and cooling of the ram. Pennies do not touch the contracts they should thus proper heat exchange do not occur. They also put unnecessary pressure on the ram. Also most pennies tricks calls for electric tape which insulates heat not disperses heat.
Just adding new thermal paste to the CPU and GPU.
What is it:
Adding a fresh/ better thermal paste between the CPU, GPU and the heat sinks.
Why it does not work:
If you are preventing a future RROD that has yet to occur, this is fine as long as the system is reassembled correctly and the paste applied correctly. But in a RROD occurrence this is like putting a band-aid on a gun-wound. Proper reapplication of thermal paste should be done after a proper re-flowing of the motherboard.
**Correct way to Repair a **RROD, YLOD and other general hardware error.
A Full Solder re-flow station, the whole board is heated evenly to avoid thermal shock as all the solder is reflowed and allowed to slowly cooled.
This sometimes includes
[LIST]
[]Re-balling: this is the replacement of solder balls followed by a re-flowing.
[]Re-applying new fresh thermal paste
[*]Installing better cooling fan. Often a aftermarket fan, the idea is to install a fan that is more efficient/ powerful fan inside the stock fan.
* 12 volt fan hack: The Xbox 360 cooling fan only runs off 5 volts, this hack gets an aftermarket fan running at the potential full speed
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There is no full guide posted here on how to reflow a Xbox 360 main board as a professional reflow station cost thousands of dollars , $6000 and up. So its economically cheaper to pay some one else to do the repairs or buy a new console.
If you are still determined to reflow your Xbox 360 here is an Instructible guide on how to do so.
No where on the guide it mentioned the cost of tools, and this is not a beginners project.
This is an advance repair job
PS3 Repair Myths
Petty much same as the above, except the YLOD is not nearly as common as the RROD.
YLOD is a 1 out of 10,000 chance, and mostly occur with older consoles that have it’s thermal paste dry up.
Aftermarket Parts
Where to find aftermarket replacement fans for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
There a few brands I trust, Talismoon is the one I used the most. They have decent Fans and replacement shells for consoles.
You can find Talismoon parts easily on eBay or Amazon. Some online retailers that specialize in console repairs/ mods will also carry Talismoon parts.
I do avoid XCM like the plague, you can read how bad there Converters are on the converters thread.
For parts talismoon don’t carry, most other parts can be found on ebay.
Accessing the PlayStation 3 Recovery Menu
This is copied from the official PlayStation Community forums
How to Access Playstation Recovery Menu
- Turn off Playstation®3.
- Hold The power button down; The system will turn on and turn off once again.
- Once the System has been shutdown, re-press you finger until you hear 2 consecutive beeps
- When you hear the 2 beeps take finger off power button.
- You will be promted to plug in your controller via usb and then hit the PS button
- The Recovery menu will pop up.
NOTE:
Please keep in mind this will ONLY work with an Official Sony Six Axis or Dual Shock 3 game pads, no 3rd party controllers, adapters or PCBs will work. The Sony Six Axis or Dual Shock 3 pad has to be connected via usb cable.
