PS3 Mods, GameEx?

[RIP-Felix]

Hey, the other day I returned some stuff to the local Goodwill (for in store credit only) and found a PS3 Slim 120GB, model CECH2001A. It was sold "As is, for parts, and untested". It looked like it had taken a ride down a flight of stairs, but It was $24.99 ($12 after my in store credit was applied). So I decided to give it try, I have another one so I could at least use it for parts later. I opened it and discovered why the case was cracked, the previous owner forgot the security screw under the void warranty sticker and forced it open. Then they pried the Blu Ray drive open to retrieve their disc. I fully disassembled it, cleaned it thoroughly, applied new and better thermal paste. Then I serviced the blu ray drive, which had a popsicle stick in it, and glued all the cracked/broken plastic back to the case. I sanded the glue a little and painted it white. I even cut a hole for the fan to cool the system and help prevent the Yellow light of Death (YLOD), if it hasn't already had it. When I plugged it in it started up just fine. I've tested it for hours and it seems to run perfectly. You can see the results attached.

Since I have another PS3 and I don't want to sacrifice it, I can now experiment with this one. Does anyone know if GameEx can be put on a PS3? I was thinking of running linuex, but it requires downgrading the updates to when the PS3 supported the other OS option. And from what I've read that's easier said than done. Has anyone tried this? I'd be curious to hear how difficult it is and what functions can be retained (eg. blu ray, games, and etc.).

[nullPointer]

I must provide a word of caution here that discussion of hard or soft modded game consoles is against the forum rules (where the intent of the mod is to run non-standard software). I don't think you've crossed any sort of line in asking, and the line itself can be a bit blurry sometimes. So where a NES PC is considered to be "safe" being that it's really more of a case mod, discussion of running cracks on modern systems is considered "unsafe". It's particularly tricky with the PS3 since initially that system was a bit more of an "open platform" by design what with the initial inclusion of the "Other OS" option. At any rate Sony has since removed the Other OS option and likewise has been known to be pretty rabid when it comes to protecting their IP. Consequently I thought it best to provide a word of extreme caution before other users jump in. Gots to protect our forum!

So lets say for a moment that we're just talking about Linux. GameEx should run fine under Wine, but it will not run natively on Linux. Running on a machine with ARM architecture would likely prove to be another huge hurtle, and I suspect it would prove to be altogether impossible. It might be more feasible to get SteamOS running under ARM though ... which would also be an interesting experiment.

[Draco1962]

Since SteamOS is a Debian variant, probably not likely to run under ARM. There are ports of Debian proper to this architecture but SteamOS will not be possible.

[RIP-Felix]

Hmm.. Sounds like it will be more trouble than it's worth then. I wish Sony hadn't removed the other os feature, it was why many users bought the PS3 in the first place. Seems like the definition of "bait and switch" marketing to me. It's a shame they don't give us a way to roll back the firmware to previous versions, instead forcing us to using "Unsafe" measures.

Regardless, I'm surprised to hear that GameEx does not run in Linux, at least not natively. Isn't Linux pretty well established as a robust open source alternative now? I would have thought someone would have figured it out by now. I've messed around with Ubunto in virtualbox a bit and it seems like a decient OS, I would just need to get used to how thing work and find a list of programs that work for me. But one I can't do without is GameEx. I've considered making the jump to Linux in the past but something like this always prevents me. Oh well, a $25 blu Ray player is not bad to put somewhere else in the house I guess.

[KRC]

I'm pretty sure that the original ps3 fat had the most potential with running other software (the one that had backwards compatibility with ps2) but only with an early firmware version.

[RIP-Felix]

I have a 60Gb fat too, fully backwards compatible. but there's no way I'm going to risk downgrading on that baby (I modified it to prevent the YLOD also and added a temperature sensor). The one from the goodwill cost me next to nothing, so I figured why not. But it sounds like this is a joyless venture anyway, the thing does plenty natively, and if there are no benefits to modifying it then I'll save myself the trouble.