so my super-slim PS3 died late last year. when i try to turn it on, it gets stuck in a loop of trying to install a system update that i'm afraid will never happen. this is error code 8002F1F9, and apparently lots of people online have experienced it.
there are, however, video tutorials from people who claim that disassembling your PS3, removing and replacing its battery, and then reassembling it (with some hard drive chicanery thrown in) will get it out of this loop.
well, i did disassemble my PS3, following one of these tutorials. i was a little scared, because i'd never taken apart a console before, but when i put it back together, it still booted up... and into the same system update loop.
so am i in the market for a new PS3 now? has anyone dealt with this? i'd like to recover the PSN stuff i had (mostly PS1 and PS2 games, but also a few other PS3 exclusives and nice-to-haves).
I feel like PS3s are so cheap these days that you’d be better off buying another one and re-downloading all your PSN stuff. Unfortunately however the HDD is linked to the console it came from, so unless things have changed in the last few years, the data/saves can’t be recovered.
in case anyone's interested, this is the video i watched
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucGBKxN7fZA
i'll tell you what i had a heck of a time with! some but only _some_ of the screws in the PS3 are star-shaped! well i am not the kind of fancy fellow who has a star-shaped screwdriver, so i had to watch a different video to find out what to do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j_DCUY6wSc
yes, i used the very side-tip of a flat-head screwdriver to painstakingly remove those ones.
and that is why my taken-apart but still working (but not really working) PS3 is still disassembled, and sitting in a large tupperware container.
It‘s true that the hard drive is locked to the system with a key, and that key is only accessible through custom firmware. I’m not really up to date anymore but I hear people are jailbreaking their super slims with PS3HEN which isn‘t exactly the same as a cfw so I don’t know what it offers.
I think if it were me I would try to get a new console built before 2011 (some CECH-2500s and earlier) but also see if I couldn't still get that super slim fixed. The right screwdriver will go a long way!!
@“connrrr”#p57340 i sure don‘t! i’m completely new to dismantling hardware. it was fun and rewarding, even though the results were negligible.
specifically, i was referring to removing the hard drive, powering the system on without it (and receiving a warning about a hard drive being missing), then reinserting it. that was supposed to help resolve the error, according to some guy on some forum. but it didn't work for me!
@“whatsarobot”#p57341 that could be because the drive is busted! If you got a bare 2.5" drive that you know to be working and don't mind having formatted by the PS3, that might solve the whole issue.
In the meantime, if you have a SATA to USB cable or enclosure, you could run a test to see if the drive's borked with something like [HD Tune](https://www.hdtune.com/) or [HDAT](https://www.hdat2.com/download.html).
troubleshooting the hdd is a good idea, yeah. i saw a forum thread, probably the same one, where they‘re talking about disconnecting and reconnecting the hard drive during the update process, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me - that might just work for some people for some coincidental reason that isn‘t really addressing the issue. but there’s no harm in doing what you can to check that the drive isn't causing issues.
the error code you're getting specifically refers to the wifi/bt according to [the ps3 dev wiki](https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Error_Codes), that may not be 100% accurate and i know you weren't experiencing connectivity issues prior to the attempted update, but it seems plausible that flashing firmware related to the wifi/bt could trigger a failure that wasn't happening (yet) during everyday use.