Hello everyone! I've been repairing consoles for quite some time now and the usual enigma that i come across is people getting stuck in "infinite update loops" due to their BD being broken, or if the bd gets faulty people usually come across a black screen when they try to enter a game, and since helpful tips and solutions are scattered all over the internet i thought i'd make a guide that explains everything, so that hopefully you can finally fix your looped PS3! Now before we start i should mention that this guide is mainly regarding
PHAT models of the PS3! I've also made a YouTube video where i explain all about the PS3 and which PS3 should you buy in 2020, you can find the video on this link:
If you can stop by and maybe toss a like i would greatly appriciate it! Now lets go back to dealing with a broken BD!
Now, if you already didn't know, in order to prevent people from swapping out the original drive from the console, Sony designed the BD in a way that only that specific original drive that came with the PS3 from the factory is able to work properly meaning that only that specific drive will read discs and etc. We usually say that the drive is
MARRIED to the motherboard. So if anything happens to that orignal drive you'd have to pay a visit to one of their licensed repair shops. Now the way that the PS3 recognizes the original drive is that the actual drive has a little printed circuit board that is attached to the bottom of the drive , this board is called a daughter/logic board and trough this board the PS3 communicates with the actual drive, all data that is read by the laser from a disc goes trough this board, and as you can see this board is super important, as trough this board the PS3 "knows" that the right drive is inside of the console. Now every time you launch game the PS3 sends multiple signals to the logic board to ensure that everything is alright with the BD, so if something goes wrong, for an example, the laser gets faulty or the motor of the laser stops working, trough the logic board the PS3 will see that something is wrong with the BD and you will get a black screen. So lets try to separate the actual drive to two parts:
the logic board and
actual body of the drive(laser, laser assembly, mechanical parts, disk sensor..).
Now if any of these things get faulty, the PS3 will see that there is a faulty drive and give you a black screen.
The same thing happens when you update the firmware, at around 60%-70%, the PS3 will send check signals to ensure that every thing is okay with the drive, and if it isn't you won't be able to go pass this check and the PS3 will continue to restart it self and fail at the exact same spot.
If, by any chance, the fault is not on the logic board but instead somewhere inside of the body of the drive, all you gotta do is find a compatible BD, and swap the logic board found in that working drive, with the logic board of the original drive and boom, the problem is solved! The way that you can find a compatible BD is trough the PS3 devwiki bluray chart:
https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Bluray_Drive
The logic board of the compatible drive, needs to have all the same ribbon connectors that the original logic board of the original drive had. Usually, all BD410 drives have compatible logic boards, even if they have different ribbon interfaces(PATA 60P or SATA 24P) the actual guts of the drive are the same all trough the BD410 range, the same goes for BD400 range. Be aware that you
CAN'T put a logic board from a BD 400 drive inside of a BD410 drive as the entire laser assembly is vastly different, which means that the ribbon connectors on the logic boars are different.
But what happens if the logic board is faulty? Well, then the problem gets a bit more complicated, as now you actually have to get a whole new replacement drive rather than just swapping logic boards. The way that you can be sure that the original logic board is faulty is by doing all the steps from above, and if you still keep getting the same results, then yes, the org. logic board is faulty. Now that you have to get an entire new drive, in order to make that drive able to read discs, you have to
REMARRY that replacement drive to the motherboard. In order to do the remarry process, your console
HAS TO BE JAILBROKEN! The reason why is that in order the remarry a drive you have access something that's called "factory service mode". As the name implies, this was made for servicing PS3's in repair shops, and in order to access it you'd need a jig that contains signed code by Sony that will allow you to access FSM. Now with CFW you do not need a jig as you can access FSM very easily but in theory its supposed to be done this way! Anyway, back to the topic at hand, as i said your PS3 needs to jailbroken in order to do the remarry process.
Now if your console is already jailbroken, well that's very good news for you, as all you gotta do is download a specific piece of CFW that's called NOBD CFW, and then put it onto your USB and then wack it onto your PS3! This piece of CFW actually disables all of the Blu-Ray drive checks so even with this you can play games off of your HDD no problem, but our end goal is to remarry a new working drive. Once you have NOBD installed, all you now need is a spare working drive, now this is quite interesting, as you can remarry
ANY COMPATIBLE DRIVE TO YOUR PS3! The great part about this is that the only criteria that makes a drive compatible, is the interface that it uses, or rather the ribbon cable. So if we look at the chart we can see that models from CECHA all the way to CECHK have the same ribbon cables(PATA 60P), which makes all of the drives that use this ribbon cable compatible with motherboards that have this ribbon socket, so if i have CECHG console i can easily remarry a drive that is from CECHH console even though the CECHG uses a BD400 drive and the CECHH uses the BD410 drive. So, now that you have everything you need, you are ready to the re-marry process, and i will link a tutorial for the remarry process that was made by great Louay:
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/how-to-remarry-blueray-drive-on-cfw-ps3-step-by-step.26913/
Don't be intimidated, just follow all the steps patiently and you will get your PS3 to its full glorious working state in no time!
But wait, what if your console isn't jailbroken?! Well than you are in a bit of a pickle, cuz in order to do the re-marry process you will have to do the famous PS3 Xploit which will jailbreak your console and then after you've done that, then you can install NOBD CFW, and then you can re-marry a new drive. You can find the PS3 Xploit guide that was made by awesome MrMario2011 here:
You are probably wondering, how will i be able to the xplot if i can't update my firmware, i will just get stuck in the update loop right? Well, unfortunetley you are right, but if I told you that there is a way to bypass all the BD checks during the update? Yes, there is a way you can bypass all the checks, and the way that you can do that is by putting a specific replacement drive, and that specific replacement drive
HAS TO HAVE the exact same, logic board version that the original drive had, and ofc it needs to be in working order! If you pay attention to the Blu-Ray drive chart you will see that all daughter boards have model labels like this, BMD-xxx. So you will have to take your original faulty drive, dissasemble it, and take a look at the logic board and find the actual logic board model that is written on the back of the logic board, and then come back to the chart and determine which replacement drive you will need (from what model) to find. The reason why this works is that during the update, the PS3 doesn't actually check for the actual married drive, it only checks for the
EXACT SAME version/model drive that was originally married to the motherboard, so if you get the same version as the BD that is married to your PS3 you will get pass this check without any problems. If you look at the chart again you will see that logic also have different controllers on them, so your replacement drive
HAS to also have the exact same controller version on its daughter board. This gets a bit more complicated when you realize that PS3's are also region based, so as you can see on the chart, a CECHG for an examp., has two different versions of the logic boards in the actual drive, CECHK also has different logic boards versions even though the BD drive model is the same! This is due to region policies as these logic boards have different controllers which would probably prevent you from playing certain games. Now if you have CECHH mode, then its a bit easier for you as there are no differences in the logic boards trough out the model range! However, your console might have a different drive in it than the one that's displayed on the chart because somebody else could have re-married a completely different drive before you got the console, or maybe you did!
The only way to be 100% certain of which model of the logic board you need to find is by disassembling the original drive and checking the model number of the board! Now, all of this has been said without taking a certain factor into account, and that factor is that
it could be very hard to find a proper replacement drive as people could have remarried different drives to their consoles and you could buy a certain console model hoping to salvage the Blu-Ray drive but the drive that is inside that model is from a completley different model! As i said, if your console isn't jailbroken, the problem can get a lot worse since it could be very painful to find a proper replacement drive, but it's a risk you have to take in order to fix your console!
Now if you cannot find a proper replacement drive, that meets all the criteria, then all you can really do is use a Hardware Flasher, and flash the NOR/NAND chip which in result will make your console fit to accept CFW, and then put NOBD CFW on it and then do the remarry process with any compatible blu ray drive.
Unfortunately, there aren't any other ways for you to fix your looped console, and you do have to rely on a bit of luck. I have seen people swapping hdd's between a looped PS3 and a normal working one, but since i cannot vouch for the reliability of that fix, i won't be quoting it, but if you guys had any other positive experineces or if there is a method that i have missed, please comment it down below so that it helps out other people including myself! I've fixed 6 consoles that were looped so far and i am always open to learning new things!
I am sorry for such a long post, and i know it could have been shorter without my narrative tone but it is what it is, i apologize again please dont hate me! Also if you can check out my video that i mentioned it would reallyyy mean a lot to me! Thanks and have an awesome day!
