One Yellow Light of Death (YLOD), best served shaken, not stirred. I’ve got a PlayStation 3 that’s just arrived in the mail, and unfortunately it doesn’t want to play along. No picture, and the familiar YLOD sequence when I try to start it. Not exactly the welcome I was hoping for!

I have to say, I’m impressed by the weight of this thing. It’s a rather substantial console, particularly with the power supply built into the case. I do like that arrangement on PlayStations, and the finish on top looks rather nice too.

Around the back we’ve got AV, ethernet, HDMI and power, along with an actual physical power switch. Very handy! The warranty seal is still intact as well, although that doesn’t necessarily mean nobody has ever opened it. We’ll find out more once I start taking things apart.

I’ve ordered a repair kit from the UK, so hopefully it’ll arrive in a couple of weeks. At the moment I’m considering some shims and checking the hard drive, but I haven’t established exactly what’s failed yet. Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell.

Later technical note: YLOD is a failure indication rather than a diagnosis of one particular component. Shims and hard-drive replacement aren’t universal fixes, and modern PS3 troubleshooting can use SYSCON error logs to help narrow down the underlying problem. I wasn’t using that method in this initial 2013 assessment.

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