Well, the jailbroken PS3 is... a mixed bag.
It seems to copy my PS1 games and play them just fine. Yay! Now they're all on the hard drive... only sometimes the naming system doesn't work, and Multiman thinks I have like, 4 copies of Quake 2 installed for some reason. Refreshing the page usually fixes that, and it doesn't usually happen when the disc drive is empty. Minor glitch, doesn't really stop me from doing anything... whatever.
PS2 games... this one is really a wonder. I do not have a backwards compatible PS3, it's a 120GB Slim model. Yet, after jailbreaking and installing Rebug CFW, I can play my old PS2 games. Pop the disc in and play? Nope, need to copy the disc first and mount the ISO for some reason... which is the preferable method anyway, I did it for my PS1 games... but I thought I'd just try and see if the plain disc worked. But the ISO actually runs... and runs well, even in complex games like Mercenaries, despite my PS3 not even being backwards compatible. But...
It's not uncommon for the console to freeze. It freezes in Multiman sometimes, but it freezes a lot while playing PS2 games. Interestingly enough, bringing up that whatever menu with the PS button while running a PS2 game displays the temps of the Cell and RSX chips. They're both under 75, with the Cell often running a little hotter than the RSX. More on this later.
So I was playing Mercenaries, finished a contract, saved the game and quit. The system froze at the XMB screen, but this time, I heard a click and it shut off. Every subsequent restart resulted in the same... it would run for a few, sometimes make it to XMB, then click and shut off. What's that clicking? I'm thinking it's the hard drive... so I rip it out of the PS3, and test it on my computer with WinDLG. Even a full long/extended test passes clean. I put the drive back in the PS3 and attempt to start it... seems to start up fine. We'll see where it goes from here.
Now when I got this console, it had a bit of a history. It would shut down all the time I guess, unless it was stood up and a box fan was blowing on it. It was only really useful for streaming Netflix and stuff, not so much for games. When it was offered to me, I said "I know what to do!". I'm a PC guy, and an overclocker none the less. Knowing what I know from that, and also knowing that the PS3 (and Xbox 360) often suffered faults due to overheating, I tore it apart. I cleaned the dust up, repasted the chips, and I even drilled holes in the top cover where the fan is, so it can easily draw in cool air from the outside.
Not a problem. I played through The Last of Us relatively easily. In fact now that I think of it, I think I remember trying to play it with the console as is, and ran into weird glitches in the game here and there, and that's when I tore the system apart, cleaned, repasted and drilled holes. After that it was fine. Then it sat around for a while with some light use here and there playing PS1 games on it. Then I found the Killzone Trilogy, picked that up, and played through all 3 titles faultlessly.
Then I found out there was a new method for jailbreaking that didn't require a hardware flasher. I've long been interested in jailbreaking my PS3, but I didn't want to pay for hardware flashers or pay for someone else to do it... whatever. The idea sat on the backburner for a while until I read about this new method I could do myself without paying for anything. I ran the patch, installed the latest Rebug CFW, and here I am with a jailbroken PS3.
Only it's glitchy. Multiman causes it to freeze sometimes, and PS2 games seem to freeze a lot (though I've only played Mercenaries for any meaningful length of time). The last freeze was really bad. I've had it freeze before while making an ISO, and the only way to get it to come back was to unplug the power, hold the eject button, plug the power back in and wait to hear the fan kick up to 100. It does this for about 10 seconds and shuts itself off. Then I can unplug the power again, plug it back in, and restart the console. Only last time that didn't help. Only after sitting around for a while (while testing the allegedly clicking drive in my computer) did it start back up.
Now I'm wondering what's going on. Never had I had the PS3 freeze or shut itself off before I jailbroke it, but admittedly it's seeing much more use now than it ever has in the time I've had it. I'm wondering if the hardware simply isn't failing, as it's known to have overeating issues in the past. I played a lot of Killzone immediately before performing the jailbreak, and though that experience was faultless, I wonder if it didn't just push it that much closer to death...
Or, it could be entirely the fault of running a potentially buggy CFW after applying a potentially buggy new hack that let me install the CFW in the first place. There's settings all over the place in Multiman and the Rebug Toolbox I don't understand. All these toggleable lvl 1 and lvl 2 patches that I don't know what they mean, what they do, or what they're there for. Other settings I don't understand.
More on the temperatures. Oddly enough, only when pressing the PS button while running PS2 games (PS1 games don't show this) does the temp info appear. I thought running in the mid 70s might be a little high, certainly not my comfort zone, especially for an old PS3 that's known to have issues in the past with overheating. The fact that a lot of other PS3s broke due to overheating doesn't help with that, either. So I installed a fan controller package. There's an option for this "payload" mode that's supposed to be a modified fan curve that's a little more aggressive than the default one. After running that, I checked my temps in Mercenaries every so often. Seemed to stay in the mid to low 60s. But then, that's when I saved and quit the game and it froze hard in XMB prompting me to test the hard drive...
Worst part about it is I can't even register at the site I found the hack at in the first place because registrations are currently closed... :/
/ramblings of a madman
so Killzone was refreshing.