Ever see a dying PS3 do this?

[InfinityDevil]

Well that was fast. After I took an additional video of the Mercs2 flashing texture glitch I'd left it running while editing the video. It just shut itself down with the 3-beeps and flashing red light, same as it did with UT3.

Now it won't start up anymore, it starts, flashes a yellow light (this is I guess the yellow light of death) then shuts off with the blinking red.

Dang, I'd hoped to deactivate it from the PSN.

[InfinityDevil]

So, in the end, 35 days later my experience was over on June 30th and I have a "factory recertified" 60GB PS3. Not a refurb, the Sony guy says. Mmmm ok buddy whatever.

My full story is here: http://www.farbot.com/node/4418

The new system's fans will actually get really loud -- I think my old system was faulty for a long time I never remember it going into high speed fan use when the system is really busy -- and I can see now why the slim is coming. These machines run really, really hot and I'll bet the number 1 failure state for them is overheating, with number 2 being the new-technology-ness of the blu-ray.

The Games:
Unreal Tournament III and Mercenaries 2 show no texture flashing or odd effects.
Saints Row 2 runs really well, no hint of physics problems at all, and I'm horribly addicted to it now.

So if your system is showing really odd behavior, buckle up and hope you don't have a Target service plan or it will be a while.