Over clocking your PS3 Blu-ray drive?

Something like over clocking. This article from ZKG seems too outlandish to be true, but if you can over clock a CPU, why not a Blu-ray drive? The premise of the article is that Call of Duty: World at War can destroy the PS3’s Blu-ray lens.

“They [a former employee of Infinity Ward] said that the way that Treyarch’s code is executed and organized causes the disc to spin too fast in the PS3 thus blowing the Blu Ray lens and that is what causes all those disc read errors.”

The article is well written, informative, and worth a read. For a few minutes I started to wonder if one of my PS3 games f’up my lens, but then I remember that the toddler stuffed in three discs. Same results, different article.

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Life without a PS3?

Any longtime readers of this humble site have realized for a while that I lost my gaming jones. As the NFL draft was approaching I decided it was high time to get in some Madden. Imagine my surprise when I could not insert the disc. After a while I realized that my youngest son decided he wanted to play a game, so he tried to help himself. To the tune of loading up the PS3 with three discs!

I have no idea how he accomplished this feat, but none the less, three discs were in the PS3. Dragon Tales (original PSX – this must have been what he wanted to play), Crazy Taxi (PS2), and Gran Turismo 4 (PS2). What to do? I was awfully pissed off, so I went outside so as not to take out my frustrations on my family.

The lovely and talented Mrs. Calvert decided to appraise the situation, and tweezers in hand, she removed Gran Turismo 4. Of course it was broken and completely ruined. I guess that is one game that I have an excuse not to complete at 100%. That was all she could do.

After I calmed down, I came back inside and attempted to get the other disc out. At the time I had no idea that my son jammed in three games! Good grief. After numerous attempts to eject, turning the system on and off, Crazy Taxi finally emerged (I have no idea if this one still works; lots of scratches). Finally, my son’s prize emerged – and of course as luck would have it, Dragon Tales still worked.

The PS3 did not survive the forced gameplay process. Results were mixed. Often when inserting a disc, it makes a horrible noise, and does not recognize the disc. After several attempts 5-10, a disc will finally be show in the XMB, and will actually play. Last weekend I did get in a couple of games of Madden, and a few older PS2 arcade type collections (kids love the Midway collection with Rush 2049).

Earlier in the week, the new Star Trek Season 1 collection arrived, and seemed to work OK, after the above process of multiple disc inserts, turning the system on/off, etc.

I realized that the PS3 was on its last leg; something in the blu-ray insert, load, read mechanism is badly jacked up (you know you like these technical descriptions). Last night the system decided it would not play any blu-ray movies would not work, and they sure as hell would not eject. After 10 minutes, the PS3 finally gave me back 300. Thanks.

So now I have to decide if I want to attempt my own repairs, taking about the PS3, and disassembling the blu-ray drive in order to clean the lens and maybe see if I can align the mechanism that moves disc in/out of the device. Or I can send in the PS3 for repairs.

At any rate, after a long sabbatical from the PS3, now that I am starting to feel the jones again, I have to prepare for life without a PS3. I do not really want to spend $150 on repairs, and I sure as hell do not want to buy a new PS3.

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