Here's my situation: I have a CECHG01 that works in all regards *except* the BD drive. I know the laser in the drive is shot, so I bought a new (KES-400A) laser off ebay, unfortunately it seems to have been stuck in Canadian customs for 3 weeks now
That's not the least of my worries, though, because while I was fussing with the drive (I opened it up and did the clear disc test to see if anything was happening with the laser diodes) I must have not properly reset the drive, because it made a rapid loud clicking noise and would not (after I put everything back together again) eject a disc. It takes discs in no problem, but pushing eject just makes the blue light flash for about 15 seconds. I thought I borked the mechanism in the drive or something, so now I had to find an actual drive body as well as wait for my laser to get here. I got this PS3 for $25, but it was rapidly looking like not such a good deal any more...
Fast forward to today, I saw an ad in kijiji some guy had a "broken ps3" and he wanted $50 for it. I emailed for details, it was a 1st gen 60GB that just has a blank screen, no YLoD, the light stays green, but nothing happens. I researched a bit, and found that this machine uses the same BD drive as the CECHG01, so we haggled a bit, and I traded a repaired RRoD 360 straight across. I honestly thought maybe I could just get this one going and dump the other one, I mean, the 60GB launch console was the best PS3, period, right?
Anyway, I got it home, plugged it in, and tried all the reset tricks I know of, nothing would make it boot. I suspect a bad firmware. I took it completely apart and inspected everything, the EE chip seems a bit discoloured/scorched, but everything else looked fine. I tried cleaning everything up and used Arctic Silver to reseat the heatsinks, etc. Still wouldn't boot, so I took the BD drive out and swapped the controller cards with the CECHG01 to try the drive in the other machine. *still* didn't read discs, and, here's the worst part: it wouldn't eject it. This makes me think the controller card on the 'G01 is borked, and seeing as they're mated to the console, I really don't know what to do with this thing. Is it possible to repair a BD controller?
And as for the 'A01, is there any route I could take with it? All I get for search results is a billion pages telling you how to reset the video or get safe mode to restore the system... neither of these work, I'm thinking this console had a failed firmware update and is completely bricked, but I just can't seem to find information anywhere about possible remedies. I read GaryOpa's guide, but it doesn't apply to me because I don't get any display or anything, not to mention I have no idea what firmware this machine was on. It's not (I don't think) a desoldered chip, because it's not YLoD. Here's everything I tried, and the results:
1) fan test - does nothing. The fans work fine though, I tried blocking a grill for a few minutes, and they sped up in cycles.
2) video reset (from off (red light) press and hold button until second beep)- it turns on, about 5 seconds later beeps again and turns off
3) safe mode (as above, but keep holding the button until it beeps once more and turns off, then repeat)- machine turns back off after 2nd beep, so it's either pre-2.60 fw, or the fw is corrupt.

I can't afford/don't need to send these to Sony, I'm thinking of just dumping them back on kijiji or ebay, but I'd really *really* like to get the 60GB launch console going... any hardware gurus in here have an idea?