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 »
From ReadMe: PS3 NAND FLOW REBUILDER v3.50 (including ECC Algo by RPS).
This tool allows to unscramble the blocks of a PS3 dumps ordering them in a way that the dumps become readable and extractable!
It also allow you to re-scramble back to the original order once you modified the data you wants, then from now on it include the ECC recalculation algorithm that was private until today.
It's for study and tests purposes, for experienced people only (devs) that this way can manage the files inside the flashes and patch sensible areas.
Goto Hiroshige has received PSX4 spec info from Japanese developer sources who received preliminary spec from SCEI for developer feedback (whom Goto refuses to name due to NDA).
- SCEI has sent rough PSX4 spec to 3rd party developers for feed back. Based on the description, PSX4 is a Wii-tized PSX3, no more than 2X as powerful.
- SCEI wants to beat Xbox 3 to launch. 2011 is the deadline, or sooner.
- SCEI pulled all its engineers from IBM Texas, and there is no new CELL architecture being developed. PSX4 will use same CELL architecture with improvements.
- SCEI will dump XDR and use s... More »
SCEA has announced that they are expanding the availability of the PlayStation Network cards. As of October, the cards will be available from popular retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, and select Sam's Club outlets.
To quote: Today, Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced they're "expanding the availability of the popular PlayStation Network Cards to additional major retailers nationwide this holiday season."
The cards allow you to bypass the Need for a credit card; you simply purchase the Network Card at the retailer (sure, use cash), bring it home, then dump the money into your virtual wallet for the Store.
And starting in October, these Cards will be available at Walmart, Best Buy, and select Sam's Club outlets. Sony will add Barnes & Noble College Bookstores in November, which should come as good news to all you university students out there.
Update: A brief guide and F.A.Q. are available HERE and NDT posted a more detailed walkthrough.
Guys,
I need a little help from the community, if possible i'd like to have from all of you uploaded somewhere (example: rapidshare) the first 2048KB of the HDD partition. Specifically i need a test conducted this way:
Power up the ps3, go to the formatting utility, and format the ps3 HDD with the option of 10GB for the ps3 system.
Power off the ps3, remove the hard disk, attach it to the PC and dump the first 2048KB.
Compress the 2048 with the program you actually prefer (rar, zip whatever) and upload and post a link here.
For the dumping part winhex (for windows) or dd (unix and windows), if any problem or question rise, feel free to contact me or other devs, thanks a... More »
Well this week we have some exciting news that we hinted about last week.
First, a small technical explanation. We were not able to modify any data on the PS3's flash chips due to the ECC. The ECC is a checksum basically, that ensures whatever data is in the block is not changed or corrupted, and if it is it errors.
So, the problem was since when we tried to alter data, the ECC would then in turn be invalid, causing errors, making the system not boot.
We did develop a way around this, however, it was time consuming and quite slow. We used the PS3 to write data to the flash, then dump it, with its proper ECC, then rewrite to where we needed it. This would take hours on end! We were not able to regenerate the ECC since we did not know the proper algorithm.
But now, we can!!
After multiple tests done by NDT to see what the ECC... More »
Some news from Geremia for XBox 360 users, to quote:
Got a drive as gift for testing (thanks Raiden)
Some small update:
It's an embedded spi flash, exactly an MX25L2005 and dosflash1.6 can write it. The bad is that you can access it only if it's completely erased, this seems to be the "check module" mentioned into the patent
About reading the fw, i can just get 3-4 256bytes chunks in a tricky way, but can't have a complete dump this way.
reading dvdkey: ok
reading unique drive data: ok
erasing flash: ok
writing flash: ok
reading flash: missing
This is just a short post to let everyone know we're still alive. Its been a quiet summer, most people were off on vacation (or on holiday, for our friends across the pond), including many of our own PS3 Devs.
However, the summer is over and we all went back to work in full force on the PS3, adding some new and very talented Devs along the way who will be helping out!
For starters, our very own ggparallel spent the past month or so along with NDT testing countless edited PS3 Firmwares on the PS3, and has been able to drastically refine our knowledge of the PS3's bootup procedure.
Below is a clear flowchart of the current theory of operation, the basic procedure is the same as we previously posted, that the system is booted in a "chain" so to speak. LV0 loads lv1ldr, which loads lv1.self (the Hypervisor).
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