Upcoming projects

My first Xbox on the bench, and the most I've paid for a broken console so far. It's an Xbox One X Project Scorpio Edition, the speckled black one with green lettering on the front, and the label on the back says December 2017. It came from an eBay seller in Montréal, in its original box with the foam and the cloth bag, but no controller and no cables. The seller offered it to me at C$135.99, I offered C$120 and they took it, so C$149.46 delivered with tax. The listing never said what was wrong. I asked twice: they got it broken, bought it as-is to resell, never opened it, and it "doesn't feel hollowed out". The warranty sticker over one of the back screws is gone, so somebody has been inside, just not them. The return window is only 14 days, so the first job is the simplest one: plug it in and see what it does.

The first PS3 on my bench, and the riskiest console I've bought so far. It's a first-generation Slim, a CECH-2001A made in December 2009, won in an eBay auction from a seller in Québec for C$5, C$22.29 once shipping and tax were in. The seller had already opened it, blown out the dust and changed the thermal paste, and it still beeped three times and shut off. On a PS3, those three beeps are the famous yellow light of death. When fresh paste doesn't fix it, more often than not the solder under the graphics chip has let go, and that's a repair I don't do. Here's the thing, though: the console keeps a log of why it shut itself off. So before I believe anything, I'm going to solder three wires to the board and ask it. The screws the seller lost are the least of my worries.