Red Screen of Death - what can I do about it?

[Doomlord_uk]

My wife's Japanese 80GB PS3 is now giving us the Red Screen Of Death. This is apparently not that common, apparently and there are very few credible fixes online, beyond some expensive software from Australia... The two "fixes" I've found online that I've tried so far haven't worked: (1) try flashing the firmware from a USB drive - sees the drive, but never goes to any load menu or anything, and (2) re-seating the HDD. THere is a (3) but it involves buying a TI-84+ calculator and those things are not cheap... about £75 if I'm lucky... or a PSP which can't be any cheaper.

The PS3 is well out of warranty so what I'm wondering is whether there is a cheap way to get it serviced, or should we flog it for parts on eBay and get a new one? Supposedly - and there is not a concensus on this online that I have noticed - the RSOD is due to corrupted OS files on the HDD, so if I could put a new HDD in would it be possible to re-install/re-flash back to 'new'? (I realise I'll lose our data, but that's unavoidable now I think).

 

[RottenFox]

The red screen is a either a Cell SPU failure, or some think it's related to a corrupt NOR, but there's really no fix, other than to get Sony to replace the motherboard/replace the PS3 with a refurb, to be honest.

 

[Doomlord_uk]

What's an NOR? Looks like we'll be parting this out on fleabay then, I guess. Oh well. My brother just gave me his Xbox 360 so that's something...

 

[RottenFox]

Flash memory..like it's been corrupted, possibly.

 

[Doomlord_uk]

oh, you mean a NOR gate?? just one gate in an entire IC can bring it all down?