Good luck on the technomancing. My original PS3 died after years and years of faithful service. It was my all in one entertainment device, and had many of my PS2 saves still inside it. Most of the best ones I had backed up, but I lost a bunch of minor saves as well as most of my Ar Tonelico playthroughs. It also died with disc 2 of Azumanga Daioh inside it as well (which Sony sent back to me). I attempted to look at it myself, but I had no idea what I was doing and settled on trading it for a refurbished model.
I was never angry at it, though. That thing put in so many hours of service I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did, and it would play DVDs that wouldn't work in anything else. Even my newer PS3 isn't as good as that. As far as my saves, I guess losing them was as good a reason as any to play a few games, and I still have a PS2 so I wasn't out a machine to play them on. I did enjoy the backwards compatibility, though.