Hacking Looking to buy a PS3 in order to CFW and have a few Qs please.

[Deleted member 42501]

What should I look for in order to ensure I can get a console that can run CFW?

What is the best guide/process to install CFW via software without hardware downgrades/addons?

What is the quality of emulators like on the PS3 as that is my main reason for getting one?


Thanks

 

[Deleted User]

1. Any CECHA 2501B or lower model, preferablly on OFW 3.55 or lower.
2. You need to be on OFW 3.55 or lower to install CFW. There are no downgrade methods via software. They all require a flasher.
You can either find any of the models listed above and they can be downgraded via a flasher. You can probably find someone to do it for you locally.
3. What kind of emulation? PSX/PS2 are taken care of by the unit (BC models can play PS2 fine, non-BC have hit/miss compatibility). Retroarch on PS3 is pretty meh. If you're looking to play old console games, it works, but there's a lot better options.

If you just plan on playing old console games, why would you buy a PS3? [nes,snes] If you go that route, just buy an old Wii for $20 and softmod that to play emulators. Most work better if not just as good as the Retroarch PS3 port.

 

[Deleted member 42501]

1. Any CECHA 2501B or lower model, preferablly on OFW 3.55 or lower.
2. You need to be on OFW 3.55 or lower to install CFW. There are no downgrade methods via software. They all require a flasher.
You can either find any of the models listed above and they can be downgraded via a flasher. You can probably find someone to do it for you locally.
3. What kind of emulation? PSX/PS2 are taken care of by the unit (BC models can play PS2 fine, non-BC have hit/miss compatibility). Retroarch on PS3 is pretty meh. If you're looking to play old console games, it works, but there's a lot better options.

If you just plan on playing old console games, why would you buy a PS3? [nes,snes] If you go that route, just buy an old Wii for $20 and softmod that to play emulators. Most work better if not just as good as the Retroarch PS3 port.

I'm actually using the original Xbox at the moment for emulation and its pretty good but wanted to upgrade and thought the PS3 was the best of the newer consoles as it has more grunt ergo would have been able to emulate more accurately and without frameskip.

What would you recommend as a good emulation station please?

 

[Kayot]

Raspberry Pi3 and the RetroPie setup. Screw all the console emulators that require hacking the system. I've heard that you can use a USB Bluetooth dongle and wire in a PS3/XB wireless controller though I haven't tried it. Plus it has 1080p out. I setup a Pi2 with a wired Gravis Gamepad (and an adapter for N64 games) to see how it would work. It works well enough and a Pi3 is stronger than a Pi2. A Pi3 costs 35$, a case is 10$, a 32GB SDHC micro SD card is 8$ from Microcenter, other parts cost more. Buy your HDMI cable off of Amazon for 6$, it's a digital signal which means it can't get better as long as it gets to your set. You will need a computer to flash the SD Card, but it seems you won't have a problem with that. Check out the link for Petropie for more information.

If you really want an Emu Station, build a i5 6k computer with a 960 4gb Nvidia card and a SSD to remove load times. Then you can emulate Wii/GC, PSP, and PS2 games at 1080p. I use that. A lot of classics are showing up on Steam now and play even better than emu.

Note that hacking a PS3 right now would be expensive as hell for anything other than PS3 games were you can use an optical drive emulator.

 

[Deleted member 42501]

Raspberry Pi3 and the RetroPie setup. Screw all the console emulators that require hacking the system. I've heard that you can use a USB Bluetooth dongle and wire in a PS3/XB wireless controller though I haven't tried it. Plus it has 1080p out. I setup a Pi2 with a wired Gravis Gamepad (and an adapter for N64 games) to see how it would work. It works well enough and a Pi3 is stronger than a Pi2. A Pi3 costs 35$, a case is 10$, a 32GB SDHC micro SD card is 8$ from Microcenter, other parts cost more. Buy your HDMI cable off of Amazon for 6$, it's a digital signal which means it can't get better as long as it gets to your set. You will need a computer to flash the SD Card, but it seems you won't have a problem with that. Check out the link for Petropie for more information.

If you really want an Emu Station, build a i5 6k computer with a 960 4gb Nvidia card and a SSD to remove load times. Then you can emulate Wii/GC, PSP, and PS2 games at 1080p. I use that. A lot of classics are showing up on Steam now and play even better than emu.

Note that hacking a PS3 right now would be expensive as hell for anything other than PS3 games were you can use an optical drive emulator.

Many thanks for that, I'm looking to keep it as cheap as possible. The Pi3 setup looks interesting but I'd always heard that it was a bit underpowered. One of the things I liked about the Xbox (mine has 128MB RAM upgrade) was that it emulated so smoothly and with no frameskip.

I'll look into the Pi3 option and see. Obviously an i5 would ace it but the cost is a bit high, have you seen the Odroid C2:


* Amlogic ARM® Cortex®-A53(ARMv8) 2Ghz quad core CPUs
* Mali™-450 GPU (3 Pixel-processors + 2 Vertex shader processors)
* 2Gbyte DDR3 SDRAM
* Gigabit Ethernet
* HDMI 2.0 4K/60Hz display
* H.265 4K/60FPS and H.264 4K/30FPS capable VPU
* 40pin GPIOs + 7pin I2S
* eMMC5.0 HS400 Flash Storage slot / UHS-1 SDR50 MicroSD Card slot
* USB 2.0 Host x 4, USB OTG x 1 (power + data capable)
* Infrared(IR) Receiver
* Ubuntu 16.04 or Android 5.1 Lollipop based on Kernel 3.14LTS

http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

$40 and it seems very powerful, I think I may end up using that instead and installing retropie on it. Also what do you think of an Nvidia Sheild TV? I mainly want to emulate dreamcast and PSP?

 

[Kayot]

Looks like a nice low budget system. It's more powerful than the Pi3. I don't know anything about the Nvidia Shield TV. Remember, an over built custom PC will crush everything else.