I've recently been thinking of buying a PS3 to catch up on the console exclusives I've been missing, and of course, being the cheap, dirty pirate I am, as well as just being opposed to Sony in general, have to know what degree of piracy I can achieve on it. As well, some nice emulators (PSP?) and other homebrew would be a nice bonus.

Rather than rely on the pieces of information that I found with googling, and since there really doesn't seem to be an up to date guide on how to hack a PS3, I'm going to ask other 'tempers. So, what PS3 SKUs/models, on what firmware versions, can be hacked, in what way, and to what extent? Also, what forms of piracy is available (Can you pirate PSN games? Can you play off an USB HDD?) and what forms of emulation are possible? (PSX, PS2, PSP are the 3 I'm most curious about, since I can do most others well on a PC)

tl;dr: Thinking of getting a PS3, how can I hack and pirate the shit out of it? Also, can I play PSX, PS2 and PSP games on it?

I'm not asking for ROMs and stuff, just, how can I hack it, and how can I run "backups" on it.

Thanks a lot

 

I saw something on google about a CFW 4.30, what's that about then?

Also, does this mean that if I go right now to pick up a PS3 at Wal-Mart, it's completely unhackable?

 

Or buy one already hacked... About back ups, currently just soft mod lets you play PS3, PS1 back ups but PS2 and PSP could be on the way soon. Some one just cracked the Cobra dongle recently. hmmmm PS2 requires a BC unit. They seem to get a good price these days. Might sell mine soon....

Edit : About 4.3 firmware you must be on 3.55 the new firmware is hmmm sort of a fake new cfw its hacked but not the same way as 3.55 hard to explain.

 

No you can't pick up a PS3 at the store and hack it, well unless you can find one that has been sitting on the shelf for a very very long time. If you want a hacked PS3 you pretty much have to buy it used at this point in time.

Next week could be a different story, some one could find the keys for a true 4.X CFW and everything would be good for buying a new PS3 and hacking it. Right now though, it's a big no. Sorry

Edit: And even used ones, you have to watch out for. If they came from the factory with a firmware over I think its 3.65 you cannot downgrade them or they just blow e fuses and brick. (At least that's what I think I remember.... lol)

 

Right now I think like 99% of them yes, I have very little experience with that but I have tested out a couple of games and they did install and run fine. Not sure what the issue is with other ones but I have heard some refuse to be signed...

On the PSN issue since you will probably ask. Right now Sony is banning PS3's left and right running any sort of CFW. If you really know what your doing you can unban your self sort of (New console ID you lose all your friends saves and pretty much everything...) but Sony will just ban again in like 5 minutes....

Mine isn't banned but that's because I imposed a self ban, the way I see it if I am not 100% legit on a console it is best to keep it offline completely.

 

From my understanding, CFW 4.30 can only be achieved from CFW 3.55 first, which can only be achieved from OFW 3.55 or lower. It's important to note that a PS3 cannot be downgraded to an OFW lower than what it shipped with.

If you manage to come across a PS3 on OFW/CFW 3.55, it is recommended to turn on the QA flag before updating to a CFW 4.xx (Rogero, Ermac, etc.) Migrating blindly from kmeaw CFW 3.55 to Rogero CFW 4.30 revision 2 (for example,) is ill-advised as revision 3 can only be installed from OFW 3.55. By QA flagging your PS3, you can downgrade to OFW 3.55 first without any additional hard-modding.

 

I can't answer all those questions but I can tell you that the scene has pretty much moved away from dongles, so yea i'd say its discontinued. Newer ps3s come with 4.3+ so I'm pretty sure they can't be modded. And yes if you want to softmod you need a ps3 with 3.55 or less then upgrade to 4.3 cfw.

Also about backups, If i'm not completely out of my mind multiman currently does ps3 and ps1 backup, and since cobra was hacked recently we may get ps2 and psp as well but we'll just have to see.

 

Yeah, stay on 3.55, it's fun having to get resigned eboots for all your newer games and having to resign game updates yourself.

 

My advice would be to update to 4.21 or 4.30 custom firmware. Needs to be done from 3.55 as the private keys for 3.55+ are not released