Mainman has updated his PS3 NAND Extractor/UnPacker to v0.4 recently! Changes to the latest revision include support for multiple dumps. The NAND Tool now scans for files, versus using a fixed position making it much more robust with extracting files.
It includes BETA support for the 40gb PlayStation 3 flash, however, we are still working out a few major bugs prior to a public release.
As mentioned above, extraction now dumps the files, plus additional data including the IDL section. It extracts the MAC Address, and also dumps the asecure loader section. More on this soon..
In other news, we are waiting for the InFeCtuS Team to update their program to support the new Samsung Flash revision, so we can experiment more with our recently discovered PS3 downgrading technique. Until then, not much new to report on this area yet.
Finally, we have been successful with running PS3 Retail ... More »
A bit of unexpected news on this LEAP YEAR DAY indeed.. a nice guy has leaked PS3 Debug Firmware 2.15 today! A picture of it on my TEST console is below, and also there is an unpacked FileList of it for those interested. It adds a new "vm" folder to the PS3 HDD among other things, but we have yet to thoroughly look through it.
This is VERY cool news mainly because (as we all know) even the retail PS3 Firmware 2.15 isn't available yet from Sony!
For other PS3 Devs to examine, we will be adding the 2.15 Firmware to our PS3 Downloads this weekend as it's a bit sizeable weighing in RAR'd at 103 MB (108,852,452 bytes).
A lot has gone on, and nothing has gone on lately. Let's start with the nothing part first since it's shorter... we really have no monumental progress to report at the moment. Why? Simple, everything the resident PS3 Devs are working on is still a work-in-progress... when there is news we will post it.
So what is the "a lot" part that has gone on lately? Mostly stuff that may eventually lead to newsworthy progress. I myself have recently acquired nearly 1GB of new Sony goodies to play with, and I have been spending much of my freetime examining a lot of the included documentation.
One interesting thing we recently found out is that Sony has released a NEW model PS3 TEST. It is the DECHJ00J/DECHJ00A. It is supported in SDK version 2.17 and later, and features a 40GB Hard Disk Drive, and two USB ports. Like its retail counterpart, it also lacks PS2 hardware, so it can not play PS2 games.
I've also been working with another PS3 Dev on getting Pr... More »
While we await the start of our PS3 KeyVault Project for retail PS3 consoles, below is a screenshot of something else I have been tinkering with recently via Debug.
As hinted by PS3News already HERE, it is a Backup Launcher for a PS3 Development Unit as shown. At the moment it it still pre-Alpha and very incomplete, however it allows:
- Boot PS3 Games from HDD
- Boot PS3 Games from DVD/BD-ROM
- Copy Original PS3 Games from DVD/BD-ROM to HDD
- Patch the executable on some games to run from HDD
Note: This will ONLY work on a DEVELOPMENT CONSOLE, not a RETAIL PS3 unit!
To be added soon:
- Read PARAM.SFO for name/titleid, patch to menu (Alpha is hard-coded)
- Support for deleting games from the menu
- Support a few more games to start (Alpha is hard-coded for four)
- Po... More »
“Why isn't the PS3 broken already?” We hear this every day. Someone somewhere thinks they can write a better media player with HD support. A guy wants to release his game but needs the RSX for the amazing graphics it can generate. Why can't we just tear open the PS3 solder a few wires and be done with it? The answer is both simpler and more complicated than you might expect.
The PSP, the Wii, even the Xbox 360 have all been hacked and can run homebrew applications so everybody thinks “the PS3 should be just as easy.” The PS3 in some ways is as easy, in fact easier. No other console let you install Linux and run anything you want to. Sure Linux on the PS3 is great. You can write your own code and use it. You have the largest collection of applications anywhere (thats right, WAY more than Windows). It's all free (or at a very low cost).
But it's limited. You can't touch the RSX (The very powerful graphics chip in the PS3), you can't use the ... More »
We hinted on this in previous PS3 Dev postings, but now it deserves a post of its own. We have successfully obtained the decrypted ELF file from an encrypted SELF that we ran, then dumped using the PlayStation 3.
As you can see in the image below, there is an ELF file, totally decrypted from the retail game disc! This removes BOTH the disc layer of encryption on the EBOOT.BIN, as well as the file layer of encryption.
In other recent PS3 Dev news, we have managed to successfully downgrade a PlayStation 3 without utilizing a previous flash dump backup of the console. Normally to downgrade your PS3 you first need a copy of the original firmware (made with Infectus). However our method does not need any flash backup, as it uses the PS3's updates to downgrade for us.
Keep in mind it's still a work in progress, but expect additional details on this project as they become available. Look for more information coming this w... More »
We have a few PS3 development updates for the new week, including some PS3 KeyVault Project and PS3 Flash news.
To start, resident PS3 Dev subdub has been a bit busy, so he has yet to put the finishing touches on our PS3 KeyVault Server Application. In his absence, both ggparallel and mainman have picked up the slack, and are finishing up the server application. While they are finishing up the app, they are also optimizing the code so it is more versatile as it can auto-update clients, and it will also be able to handle more requests.
Below is a picture of the client application's Web interface that runs on any PS3, including retail consoles via OtherOS. It basically lets you configure the PS3's IP address, check the status of the program, the kernel, and transmitted packets.
Another resident PS3 Dev, who recently received a PS3 TEST unit, is currently awaiting some new hot air rework t... More »
As promised, below you will find a video of our PS3 TEST SD Launcher. The quality is not great nor was there sound, but it's the best capture from the old camera we have so we improvised and added a tune in the background.
A video capture of the PS3 would have been much clearer, but we wanted to show the PS3 in the video as well. It starts from the XMB, and allows non-NPDRM SELF's to be executed from SD card.
In the video you can see the SD Launcher loading and booting to the select screen. There is the ability to "move" throughout the list, and upon hovering on your slot of choice, pressing X.
At the moment the titles and locations are hardcoded, we need to add in support for reading either a filelist or the PARAM.SFO's.
The real impressive part of the video is in regards to the Ridge Racer 7 Demo. We obtained the Ridge Racer 7 Demo from an Official PlayStation Magazine Demo Disc. Upon r... More »
The retail counterpart is rumored to be released during mid to late June, however, recently we had a chance to check out PS3 Debug/TEST Firmware v2.40 (116 MB - 122,268,311 bytes).
Below is a video of it in action, displaying some of the new features. As expected, we can confirm from 2.40 onwards, the system software can be called any time during the gameplay. It appears the in-game XMB does not work while playing PS2 titles, probably the same with PS1 titles as well although we didn't have a PS1 game handy to try.
The video is slightly better quality than the previous PS3 TEST SD Launcher 1.00 Video as video capture was used this time instead of our old camera... as there is no need to view the TEST PS3 in the video this round.
We announced this notice some time ago, now I would like to show you a picture of the tool I compiled to do the job. You need the Infectus mod-chip on your PS3 to downgrade. This mod-chip allows you to take a backup of your current PS3 Firmware that can be restored.
The news is that before it wasn't possible to downgrade without a previous dump of your own PS3 console's Firmware, but now things have changed. :)
Using this tool you can modify a NAND backup in order to let the console think it has a lower Firmware version, so later you can use an official Sony upgrade PUP file to "downgrade" to the version you need.
It has been tested to patch all PS3 Firmware dumps up to 2.10 so far, but is a work-in-progress as we still need to test re-updating more thoroughly.
I would like to thanks to Gigi and Mainman for their support in this tool, and all the other PS3News Devs for helping us in ... More »
