Not much of a status update, but I found a personal white wale of retro tech at the GoodWill this weekend: A nearly fully functional 60GB launch PlayStation 3! For only $40!
I say nearly fully functional as the disc drive was… temperamental. It would read PS1 discs just fine, and occasionally would read a Blu-ray/PS3 disc, but would not read a DVD or a PS2 disc at all.
So, one trip to eBay (and three days shipping) later, it’s now been replaced with a shiny, refurbished drive. The system reads all discs like it was brand new.
While I had it opened I was planning on doing some cleaning as well, but was surprised that the thing was nearly dust free. I have no idea how something that’s about 15 years old is so clean, but I’m not going to worry about it. Considering how clean it was inside and out, and the fact that it hadn’t been updated firmware wise since 2010, I think this probably saw light use before being tucked away for 12 years.
I know this is a weird thing to have as a “white whale”, but the launch PS3 is the one with the good backwards compatibility, because it’s the one with the PS2 chipset included. The first revision went to software emulation for PS2 games and it was… fine, but this was the good one.
I’ve wanted the launch one since my launch system was stolen all those years ago, and I’m stupidly happy to have one again.