Those older models were notorious for getting that "red ring of death" as they call it. Some kind of heating malfunction or something I think. The original PS3s had the same problem (the "yellow light of death") which occurred because the system would overheat so much eventually that the solder joints would crack and it could no longer function. It happened to a friend of mine and I was able to repair it by taking it apart and "reflowing" the processors (using a heat gun to re-melt the solder essentially) but it was only a band-aid fix. I believe the newer versions of both systems pretty much eliminated those design flaws -- it's just a shame they got rid of the backwards compatibility on the newer PS3s.