Guides for repairing your PSOne (Original PlayStation, PSX), and PS2 consoles

I recently picked up a PlayStation SCPH-1001 at a flea market. I heard a little rattle inside, so I talked the guy down to five bucks. I got it home, and sure enough it didn’t work. I scoured the internet and found some old links that were all dead on guides for repairing the consoles. Although I just recovered these guides and I haven’t had a chance to try them myself, forum goers of years past seemed to universally agree that these guides, originally hosted on cyber-mag.com, were some of the best. I’ve pulled them out from the good folks at Archive.org and made a few PDF’s of some of the most useful guides.

Bungie after Halo? Pre-Order DESTINY now

Bungie has posted a ViDoc for their upcoming game Destiny. The ViDoc is titled Pathways Out of Darkness, and can be seen below:

Amazon has already posted the preorder page so you can get preorder Destiny for Xbox 360. At the same time, since Bungie will be teaming with Activision this time around, and not directly with Microsoft, you’ll be able to preorder Destiny for PS3 as well.

A Parents' Guide to Gaming


Today, according to the American Library Association, is National Gaming Day at your Library. As a person who has grown up gaming, I see the confusion in some parents’ eyes as they try to determine what games are right for their children.

Your kid already knows what they want – but just because it’s a game doesn’t necessarily mean you should cave in, especially if you’re the type of parent that pays close attention to the movies your child watches or music they listen to. Why should video games be any different?

So today, I’ll be at my local library presenting, for parents who wish to attend, A Parent’s Guide to Gaming. I will be discussing ESRB ratings, as well as how the individual consoles handle their parental controls. For those unable to attend (the extreme majority of the people who view this website), I’ve prepared a few links that might help you.

Below are videos from the Entertainment Software Association of Canada – now these videos are a little old, but the majority of the information is still the same. I wish I had the ability to record today’s demonstrations, which will all show case the latest revisions of the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii. Since you can’t attend, below the videos are also step-by-step guides from the manufacturer’s themselves, describing in detail how to manage the Parental Controls of each console, with their latest updates.

Video Demonstrations
Configuring Parental Controls video for Microsoft Xbox 360
Configuring Parental Controls video for Sony PlayStation 3
Configuring Parental Controls video for Nintendo Wii

Written Guides
Setup Parental Controls step-by-step guides for Xbox 360
Setup Parental Controls step-by-step guides for PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Setup Parental Controls step-by-step guides for Wii

Sony's Webmaster Insulting you, or PlayStation.com hacked?

Visitors to this URL (http://us.playstation.com/PS3/dearplaystation/) today have been greeted with a the above message, insulting your computer comprehension.

The message, telling you to “stop wasting [the webmaster’s] time,” shows up whether you have javascript and/or flash enabled or installed, respectively, contrary to the error message itself. The message is extremey blunt, rather than a helpful message intructing you on how to fix the issue, or linking you to the Adobe Flash website, the message simply insults visitors.

At first I began to think a self righteous webmaster is tired of troubleshooting other people’s problems. Based on that train of thought, I’m sure it was thought that the message would never be seen by Sony’s customers, but after all of the problems they’ve been having with the PSN this weekend, this just seems like the wrong time to be offending the people visiting your website for information.

Then I looked at the web address, and the message… “Dear Playstation, get flash and/or enable javascript and stop wasting my time.” The message could have been left by someone else. But if that’s the case, that means it was left by a website hacker. Even if it was done with some basic script hacking, SQL injections, whatever – it makes you question the security of Sony’s website – and therefore the security of your information. Sony prides themselves on their regular currency transactions, but that may of course mean you have your credit card on file with the PSN. How do you feel, now?

Potential data (trophy) corruption, PlayStation network being down and causing problems with games, and now a hacker loose on PlayStation.com? Bad form, Sony. Bad form.