Hacking PS3 hacking newb needs help

[Blaze163]

Lali ho.

Finally dug my old PS3 out from exile in the depths of the cupboard and I'm wondering about hacking the damn thing. Mostly because I want to use custom DLC for Rocksmith and my laptop's about as powerful as Belgian Special Forces. On their day off. In their underpants. So I have a few questions;

1) It's an old 80GB 'fat' model and when I booted it up it updated to the latest firmware, which must still be fairly old by now. Is this model actually hackable?

2) If I were to hack my system and Sony bans it somehow, would that just affect my PS3 or would it be my whole account that gets destroyed as I use the same one for my PS4 and Vita as well (yes, I own a Vita, take photos of the rare appearance, there aren't many Vita owners left in the wild). I won't bother if it risks my entire setup getting shafted.

3) If all is clear with those two points, how hard is it to hack a fat PS3? Are we talking a piece of piss like my old PS2 using a custom memory card, or are we talking actually opening the damn thing up and chopping away at bits because I will almost certainly screw that up and break it.

4) Is it worth it? What can a hacked PS3 actually do these days?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hayato213]

1) Take a look at the table in the picture, check your model #

2) If it is linked, one system get banned, the rest get ban.

3) Hacking ain't too hard, there is a chance of brick if not done correctly.

4) Free PS3 games, PS2 games if it fat model and emulator stuffs like Retroarch

 

[Blaze163]

How can I avoid getting my account banned, aside from just not hacking the system?

 

[cyfaws]

If you have a phat it is most certainly hackable (or downgradable to a lower, exploitable, firmware version, rather). The question is whether or not Sony patched out the most recent exploit in the 4.83 update. Since I hacked mine at 4.82, I haven't really been keeping up with developments that's been going on since.

If 4.83 has no working exploit you might have to get a nand programmer to accomplish a downgrade. I'm a bit hazy on the details, I'm afraid, but here you can see an overview of what's needed for different models of the PS3.
http://www.psx-place.com/threads/chapter-ii-hardware-needed-for-ps3-downgrade.336/
(That site is also a good resource for PSX hacking stuff in general).
There are stores that does it for you, for a fee of course. At least here, I would be very surprised if that's not the case in the UK as well.

To avoid getting banned there are applications that do the job, spoof firmware versions, clear logs and stuff like that (PSNinja I think it's called, at least one of them, there are probably others). As far as I know it does it reasonably well. I only tried it once, and I had no issues. I have since removed the PSN account as it's pretty useless now that the system is busted wide open.

As to what you can do, as previously mentioned you can play JB (jailbroken) scene releases, or backups you made yourself from your or your friends discs, regionfree, directly from the harddrive; can install all PSN titles, you can use a better mediaplayer that doesn't suck as hard as Sony's own crap - no more converting or remuxing mkv's to mp4. Play PS2 and PS1 images directly from the HDD as well, and emulators. In my mind there are absolutely no downsides to hacking a PS3... but then again, I don't care about online or multiplayer stuff. If that's very important to you you might want to think twice about doing it, since there is a risk of getting banned no matter how careful you are.

Hope that helps a little.

 

[Hayato213]

How can I avoid getting my account banned, aside from just not hacking the system?

Don't play online lol