PS3 not reading discs. Is it bricked?

[_) (V) (-)]

Hey guys,
A friend of mine asked me if I knew where he could take a PS3 for repairs.
I told him the only place I knew of was Sony, but he didn't like that answer.

Guess they'd been tinkering with it, something about having an 80 gig hard drive in there. Anyway, the thing is no longer reading discs, Blu-ray, dvd or cds.

I suggested they check the internal connections etc...
and if that wasn't it, try and find a replacement laser as that was very common for the older models. 

Any one else have any suggestions or recomendations for service options?
I haven't had one apart yet so I'm pretty much clueless.

Thanks!
_)

[shmokes]

Do any seals have to be broken on the PS3 to upgrade the HDD?  I was under the impression that, while unsupported, a user could get into the hard drive bay and upgrade it with a standard part without even opening the system case.  Can't they just put in the original hard drive and send it back to Sony?

[DJ_Izumi]

Sony has NO rules agianst swapping your hard drive.  So long as it fits you can pull the drive out and swap it with another 2.5" SATA drive.  AFAIK it doesn't void your warrenty and it's as accessable as the PS2 HDD kit (cept that kit required SPECIFIC drives to be used).

The optical drive likely died, like all consoles and even PCs that use optical drives, someties they just die, sometimes it takes years and sometimes it happens soon.

Tell him to call Sony, Sony are the ones that know how to maintance a PS3.

...But just to be save, I'd back up the save games on the hard drive to something else before he ships it to Sony.

[_) (V) (-)]

Thanks for the replays guys,
I'm not sure why it would matter either, but he seemed concerned.

[DJ_Izumi]

There have been no reliable mods for the PS3 either, if the only alteration he did was put in a larger HDD, he's in the clear.  So long as he didn't start installing LEDs and writing his name on the case with a Dremmel or something.