Fried PS3 motherboard options help?

[IslaTurbine]

Ok I'm in need of some help and can't seem to find an answer that fits my situation.

I've got a CECHA fat console running Rogero 4.3. I keep it in a well ventilated area and off of the floor. Unfortunately I experienced YLOD in October and took it to a reputable repair shop. They fixed it with a reflow.

3 days ago it gave me RLOD and wouldn't turn on. I took it back to the shop, they attempted to fix it, and are now telling me that it still won't work. They're claiming that the motherboard is fried.

They offered to give me $50 for the system if I bought a refurb for $200 but I told them no thanks.

What are my options at this point?

Thanks for any insight.

[Liongooder]

If i were you, i'd accept the offer, better than losing the dough over & over again.

[IslaTurbine]

Yeah I guess my issue is that I lose all the contents of my internal HDD. Looks like I'm screwed unless someone can temporarily revive my current RLOD.

[Azrial]

Ask them to swap out the HDD for your old one.

[IslaTurbine]

Unfortunately the system will format any/every new HDD that it sees for the first time. Your HDD is basically married to your motherboard, if my understanding is correct.

[dropfry]

I just fixed a RSOD by going into recovery mode and installing a 3.55 NOTHEROS patched PUP, then installing and running rsodfix.gnpdrm.pkg. Fixed it right up, until I tried upgrading to Rogero 4.30 2.05, RSOD again. I'm going to try and downgrade to 3.55. If it works, maybe you can do the same. My model, however, is CECHL.

Here's the theory I read:

• Seems to appear mostly on consoles with Samsung NORS (CECHL**-CECH20**)
• May be caused by an error being thrown while writing to NOR (this is theory)
• Mostly caused by a corrupt area of flash called VTRM

I know that's not your model, but I think it's interesting. Can you swap your harddrive, downgrade to 3.55 NOTHEROS, install and run rsodfix, upgrade to Rogero 4.30, then put your original harddrive back? Or would it still require a format?

Also, does anybody know if you could swap bad memory out? I've got scrap boards and SMD/BGA rework stations.

Update: I couldn't downgrade. Ran into another RSOD on the way down. So I'll probably get a progskeet and some chipquik. There's a thread here saying people have swapped them before. You just need to backup and dump the memory. I'm guessing that as long as recovery menu works, you can downgrade from 4.30 to 3.55 without running into a RSOD.

[IslaTurbine]

Thanks for the ideas but unfortunately I have RLOD, not RSOD. I only wish I could get mine to power on and stay on....

I think I'm gonna try another repair shop to see if they can revive it. If not, it looks like I'm hosed.