I picked up a PS3 at a flea market today. Guy said its $5 and went on to say it worked but they lost the cables or something. I ignored all of that because i knew for $5 it must not work but was worth the risk. All it came with was composite cables and the console. I have plenty of pc power cables so that is ok. I bought a NIB aerosmith guitar hero for ps3 a few years ago for like $8 so i can use that controller to navigate the system menus. I can get into PSN no problem, cant get it to load CDs, DVDs, or a  PS3 Game. Anyone have any suggestions about it? I have no idea what issues PS3 usually has, im guessing the blu ray drive is dead?

It's a bad disck drive, cost about 65 directly from Sony.

im sure people here can fix it for you at a pretty nice price
sounds like you have a dead drive or your heat shield is blocking the games from going into the system
thats how mine was

Odds are almost sure it's a bad connector or the disc drive itself going on there. As he said above it's a $65 part. If you think you can do it yourself (not hard once you're inside as it's like installing PC parts) order it and make a nice deal out of it. If not, people locally tend to do stuff like that for a little labor on top (maybe like $80-100.) Considering what they go for used you did nicely if that really is all that's jacked up with it.

Thats a great deal, and fixing it shouldn't be that hard.

bad drive, easy fix, nice score.

Bad diode to be exact. Just have to figure out which diode type yours has and replace it. I got my PS3 the same way and it was a $25 part. Nice score!

 Dont know if this helps to know exactly what is wrong, but it does take in the discs and eject them perfectly fine. Just nothing happens after that. Discs dont spin at all, when i eject it the label is facing the same way as when i put it in. It is a CECHG01. I did system restore to default and opened the console up and cleaned it, including the dvd drive. Most of the console was extremely dirty and dusty inside, the dvd drive wasnt so dirty inside though.

Well still it's probably the laser on the drive despite the fact the mechanical parts seem to be moving (tray at least.)

you could try the PS3 recovery menu and re flash the drivers to see if that works. My PS3 stopped reading games and I did that and now it works.

Yeah thats the next thing i wanted to try. I could get it to start to go into the menu for that but it said plug a controller in with usb and press the PS button. The guitar hero controller is just wireless, and pressing the ps button on it did nothing. Was at walmart last night and the controllers were like $55, i'll have to try to find a used one i guess. Hate to spend $55 on it if im not 100% Sure i can get it working. I did see that walmart had some off brand controllers that were wired only for like $15 , does anyone know if those are good or just complete junk?? I've had some really bad experiences with some 3rd party controllers before. Although $15 isnt too big of a risk.

when i got my ps3 bundle it was super checp because it would not read any disk at all
i took it apart and the heat sheild was bend so it was touching the disk and stopping it from stitting flat on the disk motor
after i replaced the heat sheild , it worked like a champ

your 5$ system is a soldid deal
even if you just use it for Netflix and a media player , very much one of the best deals

Oh yeah for sure. I figured if nothing else i can put videos on a USB stick so i can watch videos on it. Defintely have no regrets about getting it. I'm sure i could even sell it for parts and make money, really hoping to get it to work fully though. I just got a wii not too long ago, really have been wanting a PS3. I dont even have a Blu Ray player for my HDTV so it would be really nice.

Which option did you use ? It has the following :
1 Restart System
2 Restore Default Settong
3 Restore File System
4 Rebuild Database
5 Restore PS3 System
6 System Update

I went ahead and bought the cheap $12 snakebyte controller from walmart so i could try this. I tried #3 and #4 but it still wont read any discs. Option #5 Restore PS3 system, does that do the same thing as doing it from the regular OS menu?  I did that yesterday, took  like 2hours and 30 min but didnt help anything.

EDIT : I put a PS2 game in, and it said This model PS3 cannot use Playstation 2 software. So i finally did see some sign of life from the disc drive, nothing happens with a regular DVD even though the PS2 game did get something to happen.

Wouldnt play my dvd of "the pianist" but i just tried a couple more dvds and those do work. The PS3 games and audio CDs still dont work, ps2 games bring up the message that it cant use ps2 software. still wont do a ps3 game or bluray movie or audio cd

Can't beat $5, even if it's not working. If you don't feel like fixing it yourself you could also just sell it as a non-working console.

Yeah, i had no hesitation in buying it for $5, even though i was 100% sure it wouldnt be working. Hoping i can get it fixed though, i was thinking of getting a bluray player anyway, wanted a PS3 but couldnt afford it.

Great deal! Even as is, its worth more than $5.

So i guess this is the part that i need ? http://www.ebay.com/itm/BRAND-NEW... . Has anyone here installed these? Is it very difficult?

If that model on it matches your system model then yeah that would be the laser/drive mechanism. I'm sure you can find pics/youtube online that show it being installed but I can't imagine it being really any harder than popping in a drive to a real computer more or less once you're inside the frame of the system.

I have the CECHG01 so i guess that should work. Hopefully those are easy to put in, Thanks!

Have you tried using a PS1 game? to see if that works and if you did try the recovery menu it may just be a bad drive.
Sorry

Yeah i tried but nothing happened when i put a PS1 game in. I also tried a PS2 game but it said this model of PS3 cant use PS2 games. I guess this model just doesnt play PS1/PS2 Games. Plays DVDs fine though. I tried just about all of the options on the recovery menu and it didnt help it play bluray movies or ps3 games.

All PS3s play PS1 games only the first model PS3s played PS2 games. (the old 20,60,80,160 Gig and they had a bay that flipped up to revile a SD card reader)

i did not know that they all do ps1 games, the ricky carmichael motocross game didnt load but i put another ps1 game in and it worked fine.

EDIT: Its pretty picky. TNN 4x4 racing worked great, ridge racer does nothing. the mummy works. so half of them i tried work, half dont