120gb Slim CECH-2001A Looking to downgrade to remarry Blu-Ray Drive

[Ianscape]

Ok this is my first post here, but I have literally spent hours over the last 2 days on this site and others reading up on what everyone has to say, and has to offer, but I just need to get some things clarified. Feel free to flame away if needed! I am new to modding/tweaking PS3's but I am a very big modder/rooting/hacking person on Android phones and what not, so I'm not totally dark going into this.

I don't want to run any customized FW's, hacks or brews. I just want to remarry my logic board, and then be able to upgrade to any OFW that Sony decides to spit out.

Issue. I have a 2 year old PS3 slim, 120gb CECH-2001A that met my 3yo son and his pennies back around April 2011 (yeah yeah I'm just now getting around to it but work has been busy!). Pennies in the drive resulted in busted gears, and a fried BMD-061 drive logic board. Ordered a new 450Rom and BMD-061, and got them all installed. Drive is now functioning properly other than it will not read DVD/BluRay/Game because it is not married to the motherboard. Now with what I would consider my reasonably good soldering skills I ended up royally F'ing up the simple "8 pin key chip remarry", so I now need to downgrade to remarry the new logic board.

I booted my system up and found it currently has a FW of 3.60. From what I read you can not downgrade from this FW. Now is that just you can't downgrade if it originally shipped with 3.60, or you can't downgrade from this PERIOD?
I ran MinVerChk and it told me my system could support 2.70, and checking on PS3DevWiki I find my system most likely shipped with 2.76.

At this point, I'm just trying to weigh my options as if it can be done via QA flag and a flash drive, as if I have to go a hardware mod like Progskeet I'm pondering with my spare time if it is just easier for me to just buy a new or preowned new 120gb system. Sony wants $150 (not including shipping) for me to just send them the system to "look at it".

I just need to get back to fragging my co-workers!

[stussy]

if you want to downgrade to 3.55 for cfw you will need a e3 flasher or progskeet you cant qa flag anything past 3.56
or you could always get a second hand ps3 just make sure it is not past 3.55 or else you will have to flash with one of the 2 flashers
or you could go for new just check the model number on the side of the box then a quick google search will tell you what model firmware it came with will
be like cech-2002a or something like that but dont forget if you want to install cfw you wont able to play online or latest games if you want to play latest
games you will need to get a trueblue dongle there are some new games like bf3 and a hole lot more working on 3.55 just google and you will find

[Ianscape]

Thanks Stussy. Not looking to run CFW's was just looking to go to 3.41 remarry the drives and then back up to 4.00. So it looks like a new/used system to me as by the time I buy an E3 or Prog and then my time I'm right around the price for a used system.