for the first part of your post, i suggest
you find a way to use its blu ray player, or maybe even use its hard drive as an external.
as for the second part, well there's not much ways to inspect the internal state of a ps3, it all comes down to previous owner's care for the device, for example the blu ray player may be defective, lens damaged or maybe if it was dropped on the floor and was damaged,
you can try out different discs to inspect the drive's functionality, play some HD content on it, test the hdd transfer speeds, ask the owner if he faced any hardware problems with it such as crashing, overheating...
You could try to take it apart and check for any signs of damage but i wouldnt recommend it unless you know what you're doing.
in my humble opinion 180$ is generally a low price to ask for a ps so maybe there's something wrong with it or the owner is desperate for some cash.
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