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).
Can you feel it coming? With less than a month until Conan's release, the pressure cooker of excitement building for the new MMOG by Funcom is about to blow its load. At least part of this excitement stems from the fact that Age of Conan deals with mature themes.
Unlike the cartoony World of Warcraft and cutesy Hello Kitty Online, Age of Conan is embracing what they call a "dark, decadent, twisted and corrupt version of Euro-Asian history." Aside from the prominent head lopping and blood letting we're also getting a side dish of sex; something we haven't really seen before in a prominent, commercial MMOG.
The idea of sex in video games is not new. You can go as far back as text based adventures like Farmer's Daughter on the Commodore 64, crude, arcade-style games like Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600, or the multi-platform adventure game series Leisure Suit Larry that first kicked off back in 1987. Many early titles were so graphically crude that they left... More »
We recently purchased a new 80GB PlayStation 3 console, and our very own PS3 Dev Courier dissected his new system.
The item that peaked his interest the most was that it had one single 56-pin Flash chip, the S29GL128N90TFIR2, and was 128MB in size in contrast to older PS3 consoles utilizing dual (2x256MB) 48-pin chips totaling 512MB. So, he bought a new adapter, and some blank chips and proceeded to pull the 56-pin flash, and dumped it.
To our surprise, he was unable to dump more than 16MB of it! At first, we believed that the other blocks in the flash were protected via password, however there was something else brewing.
He took the 16MB dump that was made and flashed it onto a completly blank chip, and reinstalled it in the PS3.
To our surprise, it worked!
Now, if you recall, newer version PS3 Firmwares have ask... 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 »
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 »
XVISTAMAN2005 has discovered a method HERE which allows Retail PS3 console owners to install PS3 Debug Firmware on them... however, before considering attempting this PS3 "HDD Swap" be sure to read below.
Upon following the instructions your retail PS3 console will update to a partial Debug/Test console. Partial is stated because upon doing it the PS3 will possess what is pictured below, specifically non-functioning Debug options.
Debug PKG files won't install, port 1000 is open but you can't connect to it, and the PS3 no longer plays Blu-ray movies. Additionally, the Sony S... 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 »
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