If you were one of the handful of people running OtherOS on your big black box of Blu-ray, I hope you haven’t updated to firmware 3.21 already. Why?
True to his hacker word, George Hotz has gotten the feature running on Sony’s latest PS3 firmware – which was intended to remove the ability, citing “security concerns.â€
Furthermore, George Hotz says his “custom firmware†may actually enable the feature on PS3 slims, which shipped sans OtherOS – and that it doesn’t require the unit to be opened at all. He recommends waiting until he releases the hack – which will be when it’s ready, you impatient bugger – before trying to update.
George Hotz is still adamant that his custom firmware will not allow for piracy – so don’t bother waiting for the hack if that’s your nefarious intention. What I wouldn’t mind – and I’m sure many of you would agree – is if the custom firmware could allow for setting the unit to be region free. the PS3 makes a pretty damned excellent upscaling DVD player – and I have a whole stack of DVD’s from other regions I wouldn’t mind watching again.
You can read more over at his blog.
Last Updated: April 8, 2010
Al360
April 8, 2010 at 13:24
awsome !!!!!
RSA-Ace
April 8, 2010 at 13:42
I’m all for this. Sony made a mistake with getting rid of the OtherOS. I’ve never used it and never would, but don’t go removing it because of piracy. All that happens is you paint a target on yourself and there are way to many egohot (not a typo) guys that want the recognition.
Now this post in his blog is a little worrying though
“geohot [Moderator] in reply to scepticalviewer
It’s just like the jailbreak scene. No legit websites distribute the firmwares themselves, they distribute the program used to create the firmware, like pwnage, or a program to do the modifications on device, like blackra1n. Clearly I won’t distribute firmwares
The method is simple, it’s hybrid firmware. The system is running an older kernel + hypervisor (Core OS), and the VSH (Visual Shell) aka XMB is 3.21. The trick is to also replace the module which displays the Other OS menu option, with one that displays it.”
WitWolfyZA
April 8, 2010 at 15:48
maybe this will motivate more modders to write their own custom firmware for PS3 giving it more features or adding more to the system. Interesting that Geohot actually writing the whole update without bricking the console in the process. nice
RSA-Ace
April 8, 2010 at 16:21
Well at the moment the other modders can’t do much. They’ve just recently dumped the level 2 OS (GameOS) – but not fully. Once that’s been fully dumped people will start looking for holes…
There is a really weird feud going on in the ps3 dev scene. Geohot has had the gameOS dump for a couple weeks already but hasn’t shared it with anyone (except some random guy). Some of the dev guys are just waiting for geohot to release something – just so they don’t reinvent the wheel twice and waste there time.
WitWolfyZA
April 9, 2010 at 07:53
Well I guess Rome wasn’t built in a day. I wonder if PSN will go on banning consoles because of this. It is breaking the terms and conditions after all.. I’ll take the back seat and see how this plays out.
Never used the “Other OS” anyways so i couldnt care less anyways
russ
April 23, 2010 at 12:06
Im still on the 2.0 updates – i had to update to play a game but the ps3 server cut the connection when i tried – lucky i didn’t knowing i would lose linux – sony is making ps3 less useable – soon you wont be able to change your hard drive as that would break its terms