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The PS3's "Yellow Light of Death"
Xest writes "More and more reports are appearing about PlayStation 3 consoles failing in a similar way to the earlier models of the Xbox 360, except for Sony, it's the 'Yellow Light of Death.' The BBC has an interesting article which suggests the problem could be almost identical to that which caused the Red Ring of Death — poor soldering connections. From the article: 'Several of those businesses have told Watchdog that the vast majority of consoles they see with the "yellow light of death" can be repaired by heating up specific parts of the circuit board. This process is called solder re-flow. By heating the connections between the components and the circuit board to temperatures in excess of 200 Celsius, the metal solder joints melt, just like they did when the device was first assembled. Console repairers say that this process method is commonly used to repair fractured connections, or dry joints.' But that's not the only rule from Microsoft's playbook Sony has been following; while they have admitted 12,500 out of 2.5 million systems have failed (a convenient 0.5%), they refuse to release full figures of failure rates, citing them as being 'commercially sensitive.' Unfortunately, Sony does not appear to be following Microsoft's lead with regard to an extended warranty, stating that if a PS3 fails after 12 months, it is not their problem. In the UK at least, the Sale of Goods Act would disagree with that statement."
I worked at an independent repair center that had the highest status you could get from Sony. We could extend any warranty for any reason and fax it to the president of Sony and they would approve it within 24 hours. This was before the console craze when Sony made excellent quality products. It's been a while but I think they were called 'prime' servicers and there were not many of them.
That business is long gone due to the son of the owner embezzling enough money to collapse the business.
I've checked and I don't see any mention of a prime servicer in this area anymore.
I morn the lost of the "One and only" because it's made in a third world country now like everyone else.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The problem is mainly thought to affect the 60GB launch model
This doesn't exactly help me much. First thing I did was replaced my hard drive when I bought it. It's now a 160GB PS3. (upgraded because I upgraded my laptop to a 320GB drive, and the 120GB drive was just sitting around)
According to Wikipedia there were two different 60GB models. One for North America and one for Europe.
So which one is it? Europe? North America? Both? (note the article is from the BBC == Europe)
Not sure how they are on failure rates, but when it comes to customer service, they are awesome! Nintendo DS failed on me and they didn't ask for a receipt, date of purchase or anything; shipped me another right out at no cost with a label to ship the failed one back for free.
So from reading the title and skimming the summary I thought 'ooh, lots of faulty ps3's. Must be the new slim version. Guess I won't touch that then.'. But only 0.5% failure rate? And nothing to do with the slim? It seems to be a subtle slander piece. I wonder why the program producers would make it?
I'm not a fanboy for the Xbox360 or the PS3 but the simple fact is that a high failure rate is so-far a feature exclusive to the Xbox360.
P.S. There's a long 18 point reply in the comments from the Sony Computer Entertainment's UK Managing Director Ray Maguire.
Hence the industry push to move from BGA to CGA on high pinout packages for the greater robustness in handling thermal stress. That change alone would solve their problems.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I borrowed Banjo-Kazooie from one of my cousins many years ago. While giving it back to her, we had a snowball fight and it fell out into the snow somewhere.
Next spring, we found it on the lawn and dried it out. The damn thing still worked fine. A year or so after that, they had brought it on vacation. Their houseboat *burned down then sank*. They recovered it.
To this day the game works fine.
There's a story in one Nintendo Power from ages long past about a kid who lost his GB in the yard once. It got mowed over twice and rained on and still worked fine, although there was a crack in the screen I think. They had a picture of it too. Impressive craftsmanship.
I still have my original Gameboy, which my father bought for me when the machine launched in the US. (Incidentally, I got a Gameboy FIRST. I got an NES later.) It still works, but like many original Gameboys it eventually suffered from the Screen Rot of Doom problem, and it's lost probably 25% of its vertical columns of pixels on the left and right edges of the screen. So it works for only suitably small values of "works." Despite a couple of decades of being abused, getting dropped, smashed, sat on, having batteries left in it for years on end, being locked in closed cars, etc., etc. It's surprising that the screen rot problem (which seems to be a function of oxidation and not mechanical failure) is the only thing that's wrong with it.
I also have a Gameboy Pocket which is not quite as old, but if it were alive it'd be easily old enough to get a driver's license... They corrected the screen rot problem from the Gameboy Pocket on up and mine works flawlessly. Despite the same abuse.
Come to think of it, even my original front-loading NES still works. It developed the same fatigue problems with the cartridge connector as every other front-loader in the universe, but all I had to do was bend all the pins back and smear a little dielectric grease on them and it works better than new... I don't even have to push the cartridge down anymore.
My SNES, Genesis, N64, and oodles of Gameboys... All still working great. Even both of my Atari 2600's are still trucking.
Meanwhile... One of my Playstations: Broken. One of my PS2's has a dead laser, and the other one is in the process of dying. Original Xbox: Dead. One of my Dreamcasts: Dead. Etc., etc. The pattern? Things with moving parts have finite lifetimes. The sad fact is, it seems that optical disk based consoles are just predestined to fail because their piddly little lasers, spindle motors, and tracking assemblies wear out. ROM/cartridge based machines can be made to last forever, partly because the older ones are bog simple machines that barely generate any heat, but also because you can ALWAYS find a way to bodge electrical contact between the cartridge pins and the CPU.
For this reason I predict that the DS will be the last classic console. Your 30+ year old Atari will probably game on forever, but your 2 year old Xbox, PS3, or Wii can never be expected to.
Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddos.
I can second that, I had left a DS lite in my pocket...forgot it was there and went four wheeling...cracked both screens. It was only a couple months old but was clearly my fault. I called Nintendo and told them what I had done, they thanked me for my honesty told me the price to repair and then said they would share the cost. The entire replacement cost $50 and was done in less than 10 days.
Compare that to my PSP which spontaneously just stopped reading umd disks. It had never left my house and was kept in a techshell case since day one. I had it less than 6 moths, the Sony rep told me that I must have dropped it since they didnt just fail on their own. I was then told it would be $95 to repair since it was in their opinion abuse and not covered under warranty. I love sony's products but I buy them with full knowledge that they are disposable items.
having worked with RoHS boards myself i can attest to this. Additionally the paste tends to be more difficult to work with, the formulations i've used dry out faster and when producing large batches of product you can end up with cake-y paste that doesn't adhere well to the contact pads on the boards when they're applied via stencil. Also Different formulations of RoHS paste tend to reflow differently requiring a different temperature model. I can see it would be very easy for there to be consistency issues.
BGAs (the aforementioned Ball Grid Arrays in the GP) are definitely more finicky than your typical IC, the smaller contact area requires a better pass when being stenciled fresh paste is definitely a must for BGAs. i do find it surprising though to see this leve of failure with the Xbox and the Play Station. in the time that i spent making PCBs we had some very sophisticated tools to verify paste volume on each pad before reflowing to curtail these issues (especially with BGAs) so that the board could be wiped and re-printed. we used x-ray after the boards were reflowed and washed to ensure the joints were solid, and then there was electronic testing as well. and we were a fairly small operation that did mostly prototype stuff in small batches, not one of these large producers.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.