180w ago - We recently got a chance to explore the new PS3 Debug 3.15 firmware, and discovered that contrary to PS3 Firmware 3.10 the 'PSPemu' PSP emulator folder in /dev_flash of version 3.15 is no longer hidden.

The 3.15 PSPemu folder filelist is below, and is a bit interesting.. In the root of the folder contains the emulator, psp_emulator.self, the translator psp_translator.self, a folder labeled release, and of course a folder labled flash0.

For anyone familiar with the PSP, flash0 is of course the flash. It contains basic folders, with fonts, logos, and user PRX's.

The release folder contains different SPRX's requried for the emulator, from system, to umd and even network files.

To of course, quell any giant "we can make a CFW for the PSP work on the PS3" - it's not going to happen any time soon, things will still be signed from PSN, ala a PKG, which we can not edit - so sadly any luck with trying to inject our own code will be useless for now.

PS3 Debug Firmware 3.15 PSP Emulator FileList:

*/dev_flash/pspemu/flash0
*/dev_flash/pspemu/list.txt
*/dev_flash/pspemu/psp_emulator.self
*/dev_flash/pspemu/psp_translator.self

264w ago - 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 receiving, we decrypted the SELF, rebuilt and patched it. This patching allows us to run the SELF from other devices. We picked this Demo as it was small, around 500MB, as our largest SD card on hand was 1GB.

However, there is an issue with newer games. It seems there is an additional "check" that we have yet to pinpoint. But this does work...

265w ago - As we promised earlier this week, we are going to explain a PS3 game's boot process, as well as explain why the PARAM.SFO is so important.

The Flowchart in the image attached below explains a PS3 game's startup procedure from insertion to its execution.

Most of it is self-explanatory upon viewing the chart, however, there are a few notes. Any Retail SELF on a Blu-ray disc is flagged so it can only be decrypted and executed from the disc, and nowhere else.

Furthermore, the PARAM.SFO is also of importance... Upon insertion, the PS3 reads the Title ID of the disc in the PARAM.SFO and inserts it into the DB. Once the game is executed and decrypted, the Title ID is checked yet again to make sure it matches. If it does not (think a disc swap), the PS3 will silently error, and return to XMB.

In a final note, our PS3 Devs have been digging through numerous documents and patents, and came to the conclusion that the PS3 uses AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) as a base! See Wikipedia for more details on the format.

Later this weekend, we will have more details and a video for those interested on how to run some PS3 games on a Debug/TEST PS3 from an SD card! As most are aware, PS3 games aren't designed to...

265w ago - With all of the recent news of PS3 retail "trickery" going on, this post got postponed (mind the pun) until today.

The image below is a snippet of the FULL PS3 Flash FileList for the PS3's /dev_flash. It should be noted that the PS3 also has a /dev_flash2 and /dev_flash3, which upon rare occasion is updated, however we are not able to access them yet due to some pesky Kernel/Hypervisor issues.

The list is quite juicy, as you can see there are plenty of RCO files, XML files, as well as assets. Even the PS3 Startup sounds are in the flash! Alongside the assets are plenty of SPRX's as well as a few SELF's.

In regards to dev_flash2 + dev_flash3, we can only speculate what is held on there, but the Kernel and HV need to reside somewhere, don't they?

In other news, watch later this week for something cool. We ripped an Official PlayStation Magazine Demo Disc, extracted a Demo of Ridge Racer 7, and after patching it, successfully got it running solely off an SD card, using the PS3's SD card slot.

And a note to those claiming to know why the Retail to Debug HDD Swap Method...