PS3 blu-ray drive dead

well i'm going to attempt to fix it myself first out of sheer hatred for sony, so anyone got any suggestions for where to get a good KES-400A? I was going to buy from psxboy for 66 bucks since they have a 30 day warranty...

 

yes i agree with you, there must be a way since the 400AAA is discontinued, maybe someone with a refurb from Sony could open his and check the number on the lens if its the same or not.
but we'll know it when time will come...in a couple of years i must say.
otherwise, there's nothing we can do

 

I wouldn't buy from them. Now that you mention it, that was the place where we saw the diodes.

Strive to buy from someone located in the states. Yeah you can try going to Sony and that's your choice, but I don't think they will work with your unit if it doesnt have a serial, doesn't have a seal, or has been opened. Or perhaps if it has one of these issues, that's when they charge you $150. I wouldn't know because I didn't do that. For some guys this is the better thing if they have tried replacing parts multiple times and money/time is just being wasted.

I can tell you right now that the problem is definitely the KES-400A. I'm certain of that. Cabanon is saying that this part has been discontinued, and I wouldn't know about that since I haven't been dealing with these problems in almost a year, but if that's true then the prices are likely higher than before. Just please don't buy from a seller located in Asia, especially China, like psxboy. So much can go wrong in shipping, but regardless, we have had quite a few guys report short-lived parts from that retailer. I just wouldn't do it.

http://myworld.ebay.com/auctions4aliving/

That's the guy I got my KES-400A from and he is located in Maryland. He doesn't have any more of those KES-400As (although he still has at least a dozen KEM-400AAAs and sells them for $90 shipped), and neither does RichsPSXparts, which would seem to support Cabanon's claim.

Also, I've been looking at the eBay listings and another thing I noticed was that some sellers are saying that their KES-400A units do not work with 40GB consoles. Which is fascinating because mine worked, so there may have been a harware revision. Or maybe they are wrong.

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Replacement...4|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:0|293:1|294:50

That right there looks like a good plunge to me. I'm no expert as I've only done this once but it seems solid, because the guys account is all about selling these things and he has perfect feedback. Personally, I would be comfortable buying from this particular seller. Remember to be careful while looking on eBay for one of these, as many of the listings claim to be US sellers, and maybe the product really is in the states, but they are definitely foreign. Just look at their grammar....

Maybe Sony can re-key the controller boards, but we cannot. Don't even bother. Same goes for successfully installing a KES-410ACA in a PS3 that would normally only accept KES-400A. It's likely that all Sony has to do is flash the firmware on the NAND chips and it will accept the dual-lens carriage, but we are unable to do this currently. Actually, I haven't heard of Sony doing this at all, but whatever. Homebrew/hacker sites are still figuring out the controller board. We are years away from being able to do that, assuming that it's possible at all. If you want a time estimate, I'd say around the time that we have primitive PS3 emulators that can even begin to play a HDD game. Considering that PCSX2 (ps2 emulator) won't be perfected until at least 2011 after the AVX instruction set along with Sandy Bridge and Larrabee enter the market, its obvious that PS3 emulation is a long ways off.

 

Thanks Surfaced for the reply. Just needed some confirmation before I spent 70 bucks. Bought a KES-400A on ebay just now. Will let everyone know how it goes. The fact that Sony keys the controller boards to the motherboard pisses me off...but I guess it's a good buisness model...

 

just wanted to let you all know my ps3 was sent in for a lazer problem b4 my warranty was up, i got my same ps3 back with a new 400aaa in it, that is the one that has burned up on me now, they fix your old one, they do not convert it to the dual lazer version, they did it rather quickly so i assume they replaced the whole lazer and carrige, maybe even the bd, not sure but the ps3 was the same one, when they fixed it it lasted for a year and a half, now fried again its out of warranty, even if the case is popped and the do not remove sticker is missing sony will look at your ps3, they deem it unrepairable if it has aftermarket parts in it, so if you do change your lazer make sure you dont throw away the old one, after i return my "new" lazer and it burns out again i will go to sony after putting the original lazer back in, because i know it will last longer than 2 hours to 2 days if sony is the one fixing it...

 

I'm pretty certain that Sony wouldn't be able to determine whether the KES-400A in a PS3 was a user-replaced unit or an original. It's not like we're using knock-offs.

 

I dont know if someome has the same problem as me but when i put in a bluray disk the lens will turn blue then spin for a second(it might not be spinning fast enough)and then the lens will turn red as if its tring to read a dvd,cd.I have the bubble in the corner the hole time. So i dont know if its the lens thats the problem or if its something else.

 

Hey guys, here's my situation...

Although I fixed one of my problems, i have another one and this one seems even bigger....Ok let me explain what happened you see i have (two) ps3s that didnt work to read disc's, a new laser fixed one of them and then i swapped the working dvd rom drive into the other ps3 to see if it would work. Well it didnt work, the laser spins the disc just fine but then i noticed that the flex cable underneath the 2nd ps3 dvd rom drive was borken off the main board. you know that little black tab thing that hold the flex cable down is missing soo now i dont know if it will ever work unless i get a new tab thing....but i dont think that anyone sells them.

Anyhow, here's what dont make even more sense since the new laser worked good in the 1st ps3, I wanted to test it more so I then took out ONLY the laser itself and put it into the 2nd ps3 dvdrom drive, but since the 2nd ps3 is missing the tab to hold flex cable i just removed the whole dvd rom drive itself and took it over to the 1st ps3 to test....so now i plugged in the drive and checked to see if the drive would work, oddly enough it didnt start any discs....but it did spin them again.

So now im not even sure if the 2nd ps3 dvd rom drive will work at all even if i get the black tab thing fixed. I heard that each ps3 dvd rom drive board has different firmware on the nano chip and if it dont match with the same ps3 main board then that could cause problems with it working. I dont get why it dont load even though it should. The new laser works fine but the 1st ps3 system seems to not recognize the 2nd ps3 dvd drive.(Both use the same laser) Maybe the ps3 dvd drives only work for systems there made with???

What do you think? I dont want to fix the tab thing and then buy another new laser if the stupid ps3 wont work cause maybe a faulty dvd drive board. Sorry for the long story lol , but I need that dumb tab fixed to know for sure.

 

Hello all ps3 "lovers".... ;-)
I (or my kids..) got 60 gig ps3 from my neighbour couple of weeks back. It is one of the first ones imported to UK, so it's at least two years old, no receipt or warranty left. He bought a new one cause the blu-ray didn't work any more. I ordered KEM 400AAA from china and installed it last night. All went well and I could play demo football game and play dvd and music with it but I don't have any blu-ray films or game disks so I couldn't test the blu-ray itself yet. After an hour or so I thought I'll watch a film from the hard-drive of it and NOTHING HAPPENED! When I tried to turn the machine on it briefly blinked the green light, flashed couple of times the small orange light underneath the PRO-slot and then just flashed the red light. I'm going start taking it all to bits again and double check all the cables etc. etc.
Has anybody else experienced anything like this after they have dismantled the machine and what possibly have gone wrong?
Thanks very much.

 

Nope, never here. But yeah, checking the cables again is a good start.

 

Oh dear, no luck... Dismantled it again and put it back together to a perfection; checked and doublechecked it all... When I touch it on the green light comes on for two seconds or so but then it turns back to a red flashing light. Should I give up....? :-(

 

No. Not yet.

The PS3 will start up even without the controller board, it just wont play any games (regardless of whether they are disc-based or downloaded). Try removing it completely. See what happens then.

 

I've been reading about this kind of problem from the internet for last hour or so and it looks like "YELLOW LIGHT OF DEATH"!!!! I saw couple of youtube films showing exactly the same problem. Oh Lord! Why did it come to this then ---- byaaaahhh! So many people in here have managed to fix theirs by changing the KEM400AAA, so why did mine die for me instead??? NOT FARE :-((((((

I've read from the internet that you can't fix "YLOD", so I quess I must give up with this one then. Such a shame, but I suppose it would had been too good to be true to have a fully functioning PS3 for just £60... Can't afford a new one cause I'm unemployed single mum of three...and now horrified of telling the bad news for my lad, poor thing, he played hours and hours with the football demo... ;-(

Thanks for your help anyway. Keep on the good "work"!

 

oh man, I was afraid that was what you were talking about but you never mentioned the color yellow so I assumed it wasn't so bad.

Yeah that truly sucks... I haven't heard of any incidence where a user successfully fixed a PS3 with the YLOD. But that definitely is unfair. I hope you can resolve that without too much drama! Peace man

 

Ok so this is my third time to post in here lets see if I get a response this time. I hope it has nothing to do with my username as that would be quite pathetic.....

I have an 80gb ps3 from hong kong that worked fine for about 6 months, then stopped reading everything.

I replaced the laser, still reads f-all.

I then came to the conclusion that it was either the Driver IC or the board itself.

I read through here but I would love some clarification for my peace of mind;

If the blu ray board has comitted suicide do I have to Swap the BGA chip to a new board? I have seen recent posts from people saying they wanted to swap the whole drive but if the board is keyed to the system surely this would not work?

Do the symptoms of a faulty driver IC fall into my dilemma?

If you could help point me in the right direction that would be fantastic as I miss my online play so much!

 

Just got a used PS3 60 GB and mostly everything works perfect. It reads PS1/PS2 games and DVDs. The problems is that it doesn't read PS3 games. Bought 2 PS3 games a couple of days after receiving the PS3 (WWE SvR 2008 & WWE SvR 2009). Here comes the funny part of the situation. Tried both games and it wouldn't read them at all on the first day. But the next day, it read 2008 but not 2009. Since then, it's been the same. It only reads one of the games and not everytime too. I have to insert it a couple of times to finally get it to read the disc. I have a couple of guesses to what the problem could be. First one is that the blu ray drive must be dirty and the lens need to be cleaned. Second, something else in the drive must be malfunctioning. And third, something else other than the drive is malfunctioning (which I think is very unlikely). I have opened the PS3 already since it came with no warranty sticker so I took a look at it. Got as far as seeing the blu ray drive. A couple of screws were missing but the drive cover was still intact. I don't want to open the drive yet 'cause I've heard you have to be very delicate with it so I don't want to **** it up and make the situation worse. If any of you guys could give me some tips or maybe explain something that I've overlooked, please respond it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Im going to tell you about my experiences in the last few months. First I had a launch NTSC 60 gb PS3. It was a victim to the YLOD. Well before it died it also lost the ability to read discs. I listened to it and it sounded like the disc did not load right. I reset it, gave it a little bump on top, and popped a disc in and it worked. I have since acquired a Motorstorm 80 gig PS3. When it arrived it was doing the same thing not reading discs. I restored the PS3, didn't work. Well I listened to the drive load and it didn't sound right so I did the same thing as my previous 60 gig and guess what, works flawlessly. Listen to the drive real close. You will now what it sounds like between the disc loading right and not. It is almost as though the disc wasn't positioning right.

 

round 2, i have previous posts on page 26 and after, i purchased from ebay a complete carrige and lazer, it worked for 2 hours, then the blue ray diode burned out, exchanged it, got new one, does everything except blue ray, and the blue ray diode is firing, so advertised "new", ebay seller yallstore, would not recommend, am returning and going to get a refund, then ill leave some feedback for this powerseller, hope this warns you buyers...

 

Upon updating my PS3 system to the latest software upgrade, the system rebooted, I continued playing Modern Warfare until I began losing ambient sound and voice-com. At the end of the first match played, the server switched maps and my system locked up as the scoreboard fades out and your system begins loading the new map. There was no "loading" reference, just black screen. Could not shut down system conventionally, was able to hear the laser assembly moving along the rails repetitively, and had to perform hard reset with rear switch. After this event, all Blu-ray functionality (games as well as movies) loaded, began to play, and seized about 5 minutes into usage. However, CD and DVD/PS2 format media played as usual.

I first opened up my blu-ray drive and cleaned the lens, since the system initially does play the blu-ray media, I figured it was dirty, but I was incorrect. Observing the operation of the drive with the cover removed, the disk spun up, both red/blu lasers were visible during disk check, blue laser remained illuminated and focused, MGS4 launched, and 5 minutes in, the disk slowed and the laser assembly moved up and down along its rails attempting to focus until the laser darkened and the disk stopped. At this point, I began to look to the firmware update as a cause of the problem, meaning that the IC on the sisterboard is to blame.

To test this theory, I borrowed a working blu-ray unit from a friend's PS3 system (both with the latest software version), removed his sister board, and installed my system's sisterboard on it. I then installed the drive in my PS3, and the blu-ray functionality has returned. I installed his sisterboard on to my blu-ray drive, installed in his system, and his system now demonstrated the issues I am having. Ran a blu-ray movie through my system twice to test prolonged function, it performed without problems. I can now rule out that the firmware upgrade was the root of the problems, instead, it was a coincidental failure of the optics within my blu-ray drive.

To confirm the theory of the mother/sister board matching, I installed each sisterboard on to its original blu-ray drive. Knowing his was fully functional, I installed his original assembly into my system. The drive was not recognized, and dowloaded demos were unplayable, confirming the pairing theory. Both systems are updated to the most recent software, however, the hardware revision number stamped on his card ended in 01 whereas mine ended in 04. Based on this information, I cannot completely rule out that all sisterboards cannot be considered interchangeable. If an individual could find a sisterboard with the same hardware revision and (probably) the same software versions, it may be possible to interchange parts in this very unique situation.

Although I would have liked to pull his laser assembly out of his blu-ray unit and have swapped it with mine to further narrow down the problem, I realized that it was non essential. By installing my sisterboard on to his drive, and having blu ray functionality return, possibilities of any IC, firmware, or sisterboard malfunctions were ruled out. Meanwhile, noticing that on my original drive the disk does indeed spin up, that the laser assembly does indeed move about its rails, that the red and blue lasers both illuminate on my drive, and that red laser function is not interrupted, that the problem probably resides in the solenoid (single lens laser assembly) or even more probable, the blu ray diode.

My plan of action is to purchase a new laser assembly which would solve the problems of both the solenoid and diode. I have chosen this route because I am not certain what the particular component within the laser assembly is at fault, since it can in fact read the and play the disk momentarily, only that that the fault resides within the laser assembly. If out of stock, I'll order a functioning blu-ray drive entirely, and just swap out the sisterboard with my own.

I suggest to anyone seeking advice that if you are under warranty, use it. If you purchased your PS3 system with a credit card, check your credit card's T&A because you may still be covered under their own warranty. If you are out of warranty, call Sony first and explain the fault. Although I tried this to no avail, I have read posts of individuals calling and receiving a functioning system without paying the $150 out-of-warranty cost. Diving into your system may end up costing you more than $150 or worse, rendering your PS3 completely useless. If through your research you find that the sisterboard is the root of your problems, I would definately eat the $150 bucks because the time and money you will spend to attempt repairing this unit is not worth it, and you may still end up with a heap of useless PS3. If you can definatly narrow down the problem to your laser assembly, replace it with only the same hardware type installed in your system. A bit of information:

KEM prefixes indicate laser assembly and mechanism.
KES prefixes indicate laser assembly only.
400 series refer to the laser units with single lenses (pre 2008 PS3)
410 series refer to the laser units with dual lenses (post 2008 PS3)

You CANNOT interchange 400 with 410 series laser assemblies and vice-versa. You CAN interchange blu-ray drives amongst the various HDD size PS3's (40, 60, 80, etc) It is the same piece of hardware, as long as the laser unit within the blu-ray drive matches that within your original blu-ray drive. This is because you cannot simply swap out sisterboards. I will try to explain. Sony designed the PS3 system in such a way that each sisterboard is uniquely paired with the PS3 Motherboard. The portion of the PS3 that controls the operation of the blu-ray drive is located on the sisterboard, not the motherboard. This was most likely implemented to increase device and media security and increase the difficulty of creating any type of PS3 emulation. Because the sisterboard and motherboard are paired, you must always use the original sisterboard with any replacement blu-ray drive you install. Since you must install your sisterboard on the replacement blu-ray drive to maintain this pairing, the blu ray drive must utilize the same laser assembly in order for the IC chip on the sisterboard to operate the drive it was programmed for.

I hope this information is useful to anyone out here with these problems. It's a shame that such a wonderful piece of machinery that is the PS3 has had such a high number of its users all dissapointed in its craftsmanship. We are all loyal to Sony, Sony needed not do anything to earn our dollar. They created what we all wanted. I only ask that Sony delivers to us a product quality that justifies our $600 investment in them.

 

I'm not going to quote all of that, but Rzgrz1 nailed it on the head. What he said covers the extent of everything we are 100% certain about at this point, and also addresses the best options for console owners who are experiencing read errors.

It's too bad we can't edit that into the 1st page of the thread since that's pretty much the apex of this discussion. Considering the current rate at which the hacking scene is reverse-engineering the PS3's hardware and the encryption on the HDD, it will be years before any consumer successfully repairs a unit by means of re-pairing a controller board (or sisterboard, as it has been called) with the motherboard.

Hopefully, others who are new to the PS3's disc read errors will see your post and get a good idea of what they are faced with. Big kudos.