ahh man I feel for you, mine RROD'd once, and had a disc drive error too. Problem was on the disc drive error, they sent it back still broken.
I've been running clean since then, I checked out the specs of my console and it looks like they replaced mine with one of the newer patched versions, which also had a new kind of disc drive.
But going for a PS3 Slim isn't a bad idea either, I think I might get one anyway down the line, so I can pretty much play any good game that comes out.
