Yeah I've ruled out the whole video setting reset thing, actually it wont even let me do it, when you hold your finger on the power button instead of beeping again and resetting the video it just turns it off, which seems to me that its not getting further past the initial power on self test.
I was REALLY hoping someone would say "probably a power supply issue now" since thats a $30 fix.
As far as the fix,
this is what I followed, and I read through it multiple times before deciding to go through with it. I used to run a Play N Trade and am still friends with our repair guy, we discussed this repair and remembered that back then we couldnt get the heat gun method to work for longer than a month or so because it warped the board.
Honestly, I've got a mcboot mem card for my ps2 still and a 500 GB HDD in it, I no longer really need the old model, but I'd like to get it working again so I can sell it (this one was a refurb on amazon, worked for about 4 months before it YLOD'd). Would like to have gotten everything off the HDD (it has a 500 GB in it as well, filled to the brim). But after all the shenanigans of this, I'm all for selling it for parts on ebay and buying a slim. Do those have nearly as many issues as the old models?
Edit: on that note, does anyone know if Gamestop takes borked systems?