if you’re a long time PC games pirate, I’d like to divert your attention to an area you probably haven’t looked at (I know I haven’t) - Playstation 3.
you’re free to look up its history, but in short, it’s tech that premiered in 2006, so def on the old side. nevertheless, it’s still in active use with game development reaching into 2017.
the kicker here is - it’s almost flawlessly jailbreakable, allowing you to play anything that was produced for it, including games for PS1 and PS2! two caveats: a) I haven’t registered nor used a PSN account, as I see no value in it so no idea if network play works and b) I only tried 15 or so games.
they can be had in the $30-50 range, the older models (fat and earlier slim) being preferable because they support the persistent hack, while later slims and superslims are less so, but still hackable with a non-persistent hack (you need to patch it every time it powers on).
the hack is super easy and straightforward and involves no hardware mods of any kind - it wouldn’t hurt to clean and repaste a 20 year old device, though. the new hack with the custom firmware (CFW) is persistent, so it’s there forever unless you decide to flash the original firmware (OFW).
because it’s such an old platform there isn’t super active resistance from sony towards the hack scene, so you should be good on that front for many, many moons. in contrast, the rare PS4 hacks are quickly patched and rendered useless, even though it’s pretty ancient tech from 2012.
I stumbled onto one by chance, found a broken device sans Blu-Ray drive, seemingly useless for normies. thanks to the super-active community at psx-place, I was able to resurrect it, flash the latest 4.91 CFW with a noBD patch, got me a fake sixaxis game pad and an old 500 GB drive and everything works beautifully!
you can get games from dedicated “ROM” sites as well as torrents; I’m not overly familiar with the malware situation but I doubt it’s a serious concern. the games can be transferred over the network using plain ol’ FTP, copied from USB drives or even played directly from those. although it was the primary method of game distribution, I haven’t needed the BD once. there are mods with store-like interfaces that allow you to directly download games from the internet and install them to the disk. also, DLNA is supported, I managed to play movies from my Jellyfin server!
although it won’t hurt it, SSD are probably overkill. the SATA1 interface it has is congruent with transfer speeds of mechanical drives, so you’re fine with repurposing one of those, as they can be had for next to nothing; max size is 1.5TB.
I’ve gotten a cheap sixaxis clone; cost me $10 NiB and it works. I don’t know if I suck at playing dynamic games because it’s shit or because I plain suck (never played with a gamepad before), that remains to be seen. I’m def not buying an original because they cost like $50+, and I’m not getting them used because yuck - who knows who sweated on them and what else they did with it.
a word of warning - you shouldn’t spend a ton of money on them because it’s decade+ old tech that’s on the uptick part of a bathtub curve. the graphics chips they had, especially the early models, are prone to die and repair isn’t viable.
it took me a while to piece together all the info as I’ve never had any interactions with consoles of any kind, let alone the hack aspects of it. if you’re similarly challenged, ask away here or on ps3piracy and I’ll try to help!
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This dude rn
Nice post. The ps3 is great fun if you like to tinker with this sort of thing, are on a budget, or even if you just want to relive some old games that never got ported to future gens.
I picked an original phat model for $20 a few years ago. It came with a 60 gb hdd which I replaced with a 320gb hdd I had laying around that would otherwise just collect dust due to it’s miniscule size. The console made a ton of noise and would get really hot, the thermal compound was completely siezed due to it’s age and heavy work load, so I replaced it with some fresh mx4 and gave the console a good cleaning. I installed Rebug and set the minimum fan speed to 60%, it’s still loud but it doesn’t get hot anymore. Once that was all done I loaded up a 2tb external drive with my favorite games from that generation.
To be honest, I had a lot of fun jailbreaking and tinkering with it, but I can count on one hand how many times I’ve gamed on it since. I should probably give it to someone who will get more use out of it lol.
320gb hdd I had laying around that would otherwise just collect dust due to it’s miniscule size.
i put a 512gb drive in a thinkpad less than a decade ago and thought at the time “boy this might be overkill”
and now i can get 2tb on a fucking microsd for a cheaper data/cost ratio than i did back then, wild.
I want a 1tb micro sd card so badly but i worry it will corrupt after a year or two.
Yeah, I just glanced at the top few drives I’ve pulled from my three NAS (bigger drive in there now) - two 500gb and a 4tb.
I’ve also got a ps3 sitting around, so maybe some weekend fun since I haven’t touched it in years.
To be honest, I had a lot of fun jailbreaking and tinkering with it, but I can count on one hand how many times I’ve gamed on it since.
I thought this was why we do this, I have done a similar hack process to lots of devices (software side) and most of them are sitting in a drawer.
Why not RPCS3? Can almost run it on phones nowadays and a lot less of a hassle to tinker with
sure, that’s also viable. I just never had the console experience, so was inclined to share.
come to think of it, I tried it a few months back but it was pretty slow (tried RDR1 on a R5 5600/RX 570 with Fedora 40 KDE). supposedly it’s way better now
rpcs3 is very CPU hungry. The most demanding games will make any mid budget chip sweat.
You can’t run some games with it (like God of War III if I’m not wrong)
Like arm compatible? Imma have to look into this more dayum
I was being hyperbolic, I don’t think its arm compatible but i might be wrong?
Box64 my beloved (performance my downfall😔)
In regard to controllers, Japan auctions are an excellent source of real-deal OEM controllers in great shape. I’ve been burned so many times by fake controllers in the US, that I just buy lots of them off of buyee.jp now if I need them.
It’s also near impossible to get real controllers here in the UK.
PS3 controllers still remain my favourite but had to switch to using a PS4 pad after getting scammed at multiple places.
I could never get on with the weird shaped triggers.
When I emulated Metal Gear Solid 3 my PS3 controller came in clutch with the pressure sensitive face buttons.
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Your post inspired me to pull my old PS3 Slim off the shelf and give it a shot. Fortunately it is one of the ones capable of custom firmware. I successfully jailbroke it and am now running custom firmware, next I just have to figure out how to do anything useful with it, lol.
awesome! now onwards to romsfun, 1337x, etc. and figure out how to install, transfer, archive, etc. then you get to upgrade the disk and so on, barrels of fun await!
Time to undust my PS3 😂✌🏻wiiU and 3ds are similar awesome piracy devices
Original Wii is a very capable CFW/piracy device as well.
True that, I upgraded from my hacked wii to my hacked wiiU since hacked wiiu includs a hacked wii compatible with all wii hombrew 😇✌🏻
Oh nice. I missed out on the wiiu entirely, so I wasn’t aware it was as capable as it is!
I would like to add: people incredibly underestimate the convenience of having data on Blu-ray rather than on HDD/SSD: Blu-rays last longer and, if purchased cheaply (as in the case of the cheap PS3 game market), have a comparable or superior cost-benefit ratio.
In this case we can say that the console, given its low price on the second-hand market (and if with a working blu-ray player), is incredibly convenient even without the pirate aspect.
It was also a neat gateway to try homebrew development; I have ported 2048 to it as a side project, it was quite different working on it.
it’s almost flawlessly jailbreakable, allowing you to play anything that was produced for it, including games for PS1 and PS2!
Do all models support PS2 emulation? Unlike with official firmware, where only a few models have that support.
the way I understood it is CFW allows all models to play PS2 games. I tried God of War and some Tekken, forgot which, started up without issues. I also have some settings to upscale PS2 games, don’t know if that’s a CFW thing or if that’s standard.
also, some fat models have real PS2 hardware in them, so no need for emulation.
Oh damn. Thank you! I’ll have to do this at some point…eventually lol
I’m hoping we get a persistent jailbreak for the PS4. The current one is not persistent, so I didn’t bother. But I have a 10.50 FW one laying around, just in case.
Mines sitting offline at 11.52…its just staring at me begging to be exploited…literally begging me.
yeah, that was a big dissapointment that it supports only like three FW versions, and even then it’s a tethered JB. but, that would be an awesome machine, very competent hardware, supports large disks, SSDs make a huge difference, newer gen hardware so way less heat related deaths, etc.
I think it’ll happen at some point, nearly always does. I have one locked on an exploitable version and it works great, I think there’s a lot of potential for emulation and homebrew if it opens up more.
I don’t think it’s out yet but there is likely to be semi-untethered hen for PS4 and PS5 soon.
Related question. Anybody got a good source for replacement controllers? Lost mine years ago and the one replacement I did buy is very no good (battery doa).
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I have a hacked ps3,Wii and xbox original. I would only consider a hacked console going forward. The experience is just way better. But these days I just use steam with the steamdeck to support Linux and play my roms in emudeck.
I modded several PS3s back in 2019-2020 and flipped a few on eBay before they cracked down. I really enjoyed taking them apart, cleaning, putting new thermal paste on, etc. Never successfully delidded one, that was always the ultimate challenge in my mind. The last one I did was a gift for my son-in-law back in 2022 ish. I had always loaded games the standard ftp routes, etc. but the one i prepped for him, I experimented with the app linked below - on the playstation 3 itself and it was phenomenal… direct download and install directly from the PS3 itself. Including games, addons, etc.
https://github.com/bucanero/pkgi-ps3
also, NoPayStation https://nopaystation.com/
it would be perfect if the downloadable PSN catalogue was complete, but there are so many games that are available disc only or can’t be downloaded directly from the PS3 itself, so you need to bring games from your pc to your ps3.
