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Over the months there has been a lot of inaccurate information circulating in regards to how exactly the PlayStation 3's Service Mode works, and as promised in our previous Dev updates here are some of the facts to help separate the rumors and speculation.

It is a fairly simple process as follows.. For starters, the PS3 is powered off, and a special USB dongle, known as the Jig, is connected. The PS3 is then turned on, and then off, once it has detected the Jig.

After this occurs, the PS3 is then turned back on, into "Service" Mode. From here, the PS3 is re-flashed using a Firmware Update on a USB stick, specifically designed to only install from the Service Mode. Once the PS3 is re-flashed with the software, it is then used in conjunction with a PC running customized software, specifically the DEX.exe and CEX.exe's.

There are a multitude of special PS3 firmwares, basically three major ones. The first is a Core System, followed by the Service Sys... More »  


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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 »  


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Since today all the owners of a PS3 with infectus could begin to experiment with the firmware patching. :)

Please share ideas questions and feedbacks in this thread comments, it would be appreciated.

Download: PS3 NAND Flow Rebuilder v3.50 BETA

NDT ;-)

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.

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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 »  


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Update: PS3 NAND Flow Rebuilder v3.36 BETA is now out, which fixes a tiny bug.

This tool, although in beta stage, allows you to unscramble the blocks of a PS3 dumps ordering them in a way that the dumps become readable and extractable!

From now on it also allow you to re-scramble back to the original order once you modified the data you want!

It's for study and tests purposes, for experienced people only (devs) that this way can manage the files inside the flashes.

Download Link: PS3 NAND Flow Rebuilder v3.35 BETA

In this updated version you'll find some good news:

1) It's more compatible, it support a larger number of dumps, please try it with your one and if something goes wrong please let me know (through irc, on Efnet, my nick is NDT).

2) It now... More »  


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For some time now (several years, off and on), GSHI administrative staff and several select members of the scene have been working, in secret, on something tentatively called Project Artemis: a hacking system for the Playstation 2. Details, and the original thread, can be found linked above, or here.

The project is far from complete. There have been quite a few stumbling blocks, and some impressive progress has been made (though, without consent from its authors, not all of it can be shown here immediately - an issue I'm hoping will be resolved in the next few days). Through several primary coders (Sang123, Hit n' Run Games, misfire, Shyam Narain, Xerxes Technologies, cYs Driver), it has been determined that...

A: Hiring a company to design such a system will result in either paying tens of thousands of dollars, or ending up with a company that cannot complete the project, and...

B: Hiring a sol... More »  


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This tool, although in beta stage, allows you to unscramble the blocks of a PS3 dumps moving them in a way that the dumps become readable and extractable!

It's for study and tests purposes, for experienced people only (devs) that this way can manage the files inside the flashes.

As example I included my PS3 dump map, it should help you understanding the dump layout.

Download: PS3 NAND Flow Rebuilder v3.21 BETA

I decided to share the tool early because it need a lot of testing, so, since I'll be in vacation in a few days I thought it would be nice to allow people to begin looking at it meanwhile I return home.

I tested it on like 10 dumps and I noticed that it perfectly worked only on 4 dumps (one was a Debug dump so yes, it works on debug dumps too :), this happen because of the fact I noticed I have to implement another variable in the unscrambling al... More »  


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To quote from Bushing's page linked above: ChipD is a lean, mean, solderin’ machine — I have some of these TSOP sockets, and they are really really hard to solder down to a PCB that you actually care about. Also, they tend to melt if you breathe on them — but maybe that’s just me. I really like the way he made that slick cutout panel for the socket.

Beyond soldering a socket in place of the NAND flash chip, he programmed two spare flash chips with dumps from a PAL Wii and an NTSC/J Wii. He converted those two dumps to run on his Wii using an early version of some of my UnbrickMii project code (”betwiin”).

No news yet on release plans; it still needs a lot of work, but it’s interesting to note that there are absolutely no hardware differences between Wiis from different regions.





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