So i recently got a PS3 phat. When i turn it on, though, all i get is the startup thing and then its just the blank background. The fan revs up and the system shuts down. Does anyone have an idea of what i can do? If it matters there is no hard drive in the system.
The system shouldn't start up at all. The PS3 needs systems settings on the HDD to start up. If there's no HDD present it'll say something like "The correct hard disk could not be found". Then do nothing, but it shouldn't turn itself off. May need a reball.
IIRC, the older fat models with 256MB NAND memory (rather than the later fats and all the slims that use 16MB of NOR memory) are capable of storing the basics internally instead of on the HDD, but I've never tested exactly how far they'd boot up without any HDD in them.
Addendum to my prior post: If I pull the HDD out I get the background screen for about 30 seconds with nothing loading before it tells me the storage can't be found, as opposed to my slim PS3 which I believe just loaded to a black screen immediately with a similar message. It doesn't shut down or rev the fan, though, so there's more than just a missing HDD at play here. If you have a spare HDD it probably won't help; the PS3 would probably have to do a full boot and write the settings (as Devin said, unfamiliar drives will be formatted even if they have PS3 data on them), which it sounds like your PS3 won't be able to do.
Okay, so i turned it on, and as you said it gave me the "storage can't be found" message. Turning it off, i tried it again, and the fan revving commenced.
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