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Playstation Wallet Wont Take Credit Card

I was like a little kid on Christmas, I turned on my PS3, downloaded the update and BAM, now I can get movies and TV shows too! Sony finally started to offer full length movies in HD and Standard format for both rent and purchase.  I whipped out my credit card and attempted to post $3.95 to see the Harold and Kumar movie.  I don’t typically rent movies ( I am a bit OCD about other peoples gunk in my DVD player), but this process worked for me. Well it would’ve worked…

My credit card was rejected, it said to check my account settings and then call tech support. No number provided. Hmmm… I tried it again, no luck. I thought maybe it was just something w/ the formatting of the address on that credit card.  So I tried another one… again denied.  I Googled it to see if others have had similar issues. I did find something about not putting your apartment number on the second address line, so I tried that.  Again no dice.

WTF?!  Okay, fuck Harold and Kumar then, it’s not worth the aggravation.  I checked my bank account and the other credit card account and I had about 7 hold charges for $1.00 from Sony.  Okay… obviously you are validating this card because you put a hold charge on it.  I went to bed angry.

Next day, I tried it again. This time a new movie… Then on to the billing section of my account. Still nothing.  I updated all of my settings to match the exact name and address used on my credit card, no luck.

So I grabbed the manual. Called tech support as suggested and after a pitch for the Grand Turismo Prologue and at least 3 “press this or that” prompts, I got deferred to another number. Not transfered, just given the number twice and then hung up on.

Ten minutes of hold time later, I got a rep. She had obviously been through this with lots of other people. She suggested completely omitting my apt #.  I tried it and told her it didn’t work. She explained to me that I have to wait 24 hours because my account was locked. Apparently, if it denies you, you have to wait 24 hours before trying it again. What a shit service.

I assume if you’re reading this you are either A) Bored or B) Having the same problem.  Has anyone found a solution? The rep suggested I go guy a Playstation 3 Network Card at my local rite aid.  I have no idea where Rite Aid is… and I don’t care to find out. 

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How to Add an External Hard Drive to a Playstation 3

Article Republished with permission from wikihow.com

If you have the 20 gigabyte PS3, which is no longer produced, you may want to have a bigger hard drive. It was quickly found out that you can replace the internal hard drive in it using a standard laptop hard drive, but they are overly priced due to their size. It has been figured out how to add an external hard drive (which is much cheaper) to the Playstation 3 and still get all the benefits of having it all internal.

Steps

Purchase your external hard drive. Most hard drives will do, but some may have incompatibilities. Western Digital is one that works fine.

Once you have your external hard drive purchased, use the USB cord provided to connect it to a COMPUTER (not your Playstation 3).

IMPORTANT* Once your external hard drive is connected to your computer, go to START, CONTROL PANEL, ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS, COMPUTER MANAGEMENT, and select DISK MANAGER on the left hand side options. Select the external drive and read the “File System” type. If it says “NTFS”, right click the disk and select “Delete Partition”.

A. The reason you needed to delete the partition is because it MUST be FAT32. However, Windows XP will partition a hard drive into FAT32 but only in 32 GB partitions. Go to start,settings, control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management in the new box that opens. Using an open source OS like Linux will allow you to use the built in Gparted to partition the hard drive in most file structure formats with no size limit like on XP. This way will allow you to partition a drive into FAT32. You must instead go to DOWNLOAD.COM and search for “Swiss Knife”. Download the program that comes up (CompuApps SwissKnife V3 x.xx) and install it when the download completes. Once the install is complete, run the application and select the external hard drive you need to partition. On the top select the following settings: (Partition Type: Primary), (File System: FAT32), and (Volume Label: [whatever you want]). Then at the bottom, select “Create” and you’re done.

Alternatively you can format using the command prompt: format h: /FS:FAT32 (This works if you are running Windows Server 2003.)

If you are on Mac OS X, open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app, pick the drive, and click on the ‘Erase’ tab. Pick ‘MS-DOS (FAT)’ for the file system type, and click on the ‘Erase’ button. This will reformat the drive in FAT-32.

Once you are SURE the partition is FAT32, open “My Computer” and double-click on your empty external hard drive. Now, you will want to create a folder system identical to that on the Playstation 3. Right click to create a new folder and name the first folder “Photo”. Do this for “Music”, “Video” and “Game”. When you are finished, you should have 4 folders total in the hard drive. Each folder should (at this point) be empty.

Now, you can load all the music you want into your music folder, all the video you want into your video folder, and all the photos you want into your photo folder. Your game folder should still be empty.

At the bottom right hand corner of the screen, left click the green arrow in your icons list and select “Safely remove...” Once your computer tells you “XXX drive can now be safely removed”, unplug the hard drive from your computer.

Now, you can connect the hard drive to your Playstation 3 and use the extra space to save information and access all your extra content saved on your external hard drive.
Congratulations, you now have turned your 40, 60, or 80 gigabyte Playstation 3 into a much larger one for all your multi-media needs. Enjoy!

Tips

Adding an external hard drive to your Playstation 3 does not void your warranty.

It is unknown if there is a maximum size limit that the Playstation will be able to recognize. A 1000GB HDD has been proven to work, however the maximum size is probably much higher.

Information had to be gathered from several sites before these steps were successfully completed, so this is some of the best information you are going to find on how to do this on the web.
If you want to play video on ps3, you can use Aimersoft PSP Video Converter, it fully support output of PS3 Video(480p, 720p, 1080i) MPEG-4 perfectly:http://www.aimersoft.com/psp-video-converter.html or you can use Red Kawa PS3 VIDEO 9 which will do exactly the same thing as the Aimersoft converter :http://www.redkawa.com/videoconverters/ps3video9/

PS3 now supports DivX movies, so if your movies are in DivX format, you do not need to convert them.

Alternatively, or in addition, you can replace the factory installed internal hard drive with a 2.5” mobile drive of any desired capacity.

Warnings

Do not try to connect an external hard drive formatted in NTFS to your Playstation. It will not cause any kind of damage, but your Playstation 3 will not recognize the drive at all if you do. Also, if you lay your Playstation horizontally, do not place the external hard drive on the right side where the exhaust fans are aimed. The air coming out of the Playstation is very hot and will surely cause your external hard drive to malfunction… possibly permanently!

Related wikiHows

How to Change the Wallpaper on a Playstation 3
How to Burn a Playstation Disc Using Nero

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Add an External Hard Drive to a Playstation 3.  All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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