The very first modified firmware for retail PlayStation 3 consoles has been released, allowing any PS3 owner to install their own programs onto the XMB.

Open source developer Youness Alaoumi (hacker alias: KaKaRoToKS) released the first proof of concept last night. The release takes the form of a script that adapts the existing Sony releases of official firmware (3.41 and 3.55 definitely work), modifies them, and then re-packs them ready for installation on any PS3.

Alaoumi himself doesn't call this a custom firmware, more a "modified" one. It is a simple adjustment to an .xml file within the firmware updater that adds an "Install PKG" option to the XMB options - PKGs are the containers used by Sony for patches and PSN downloads. PSJailbreak added the same option but there are a number of differences: firstly, the new firmware mod doesn't allow for the installation of unsigned, unencrypted code in the way that the Jailbreak did.

Secondly, the hooks and patches added to the PS3's GameOS, which re-routed hard drive traffic through the Blu-ray channels, have also not been included. This means that the existing tools for piracy - and indeed "backup" software - do not work. Adding support for these to a modified firmware is not trivial - proper reverse-engineering is required here, as opposed to adjusting the base .xml, and none of the established hackers will support such a release.

The notion of extracting, adjusting and re-packing official firmwares isn't new - it's thought that PSJailbreak did something similar with its downgrader, while Geohot demonstrated his own custom firmware a while back that retained OtherOS support - however, this was never released, leading some to believe it was a fake.

There has been a range of homebrew titles released for the PS3 in the wake of PSJailbreak. DOOM, Heretic and Hexen have been ported across and a number of emulators have been released. In addition, a few genuine, original hand-written games have also surfaced. These will not work on the new firmware without being signed and encrypted using the keys unearthed by Fail0verflow's work, but it is just a matter of time before this happens.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...are-blog-entry ...

Over at Superufo.com the official site of Blazepro (who are well known for making their own controllers and accessories for every console released in recent years), have today released the first i presume Unofficial PSOne handheld, heres a screenshot



Product Features

Play PS1 Games
Support RM,RMVB,AVI,FLV Videos
HDMI Out
Support up to 32G MicroSD

Sadly no other details, although it looks very PSP Like in design, lets hope it truly does play PS1 Games perfectly, its priced at USD 77.16 so about 45 quid for anyone in the UK, if it truly is a PS1 handheld then HDMI support could make it very interesting. ...

News via http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/...kEkilXedrX.php

Team FSD released a new W.I.P. build of FreeStyle Dash v2.0, the alternative dashboard for homebrew/JTAG 360s.
Today they released RC1.5 (Rev 2032), available as independent download or if you already have FSD2 you can use the build-in updater.

What's new/fixed:
(Fixed) Issue where unavailable button presses would still produce action in saved game scene
(Added) Kinect Blue Preview Images
(Added) Kinect Gray Icons to KinectBlue Icon List / Requires Data/Skins folder deletion
(Fixed) Astroboy placeholder in copyDVD now says Preparing Operation
(Added) All the options to the SQL Database and made them work.
(Added) Settings for download restrictions, http security bypass, and http username/password
(Added) Set Screenshot Path import
(Fixed) a few warnings
(Fixed) up fsd data paths, and setup screenshots
(Removed) ScnAvatarRenderer from project
(Updated) ScnTeamFSD to new Avatar Renderer format
(Fixed) Issue where recently played stopped working after 10 games
(Updated) iRenderObserver to not require all functions
(Updated) SignInMonitor to be more proper and handle direct profile switching
(Fixed) Gamer Pic not always displaying properly
(Fixed) Screenshots and Debuglog not saving properly to PC from HTTPServer
(Added) New AvatarRenderer class
(Fixed) Mixed Marketplace Urls for Screenshots - all screenshots should work again
(Fixed) Container and Xbox Classic Icon Not Returning When Refreshing Assets
(Fixed) Signin Flag on ScnMain
(Added)File type check to http for supported file types
(Updated)Embeded Scns (ManagePaths/Updater) buttons remain hidden unless they have focus
(Fixed)Back button crash on ManagePaths
(Fixed) USBMU scan paths
(Fixed) USBMU Title Update Paths
(Fixed) CopyDVD Bug
(Added) Test for USBMU serial
(Added) kinect flags in xex
(Fixed) Game List Title Token to display based on configs
(Added) Connection to Settings for HTTPBypassSecurity
(Added) More Scene Title Customization for HTTP Server (to match game list)
(Added) Ability to customize gamelist captions within skin.xml
(Updated)Replace SS now knows the proper index to replace
(Added)Check to make sure img is loaded before trying to add/replace
(Added) Ability to add screenshots up to set maximum in HTTP Webserver
(Added) Ability to replace screenshots in HTTP Webserver
(Added) Media id is injected into containers that are made with iso2god
(Added) Made settings work (without saving)
(Added)Forms for Screenshot management on http
(Added)Fullsize link to Screenshot preview image
(Added) Asset Download Options (scene interface only- SQL back-end incomplete)
(Added) Ability to download Preview Videos from MarketPlace, currently no way to view them.
(Added) Screenshot / Trainer Manager icons
(Added) Ability skeleton to replace and add screenshots for available content
(Fixed) Bad bug causing xbox to hard freeze
(Added) Limit of 20 Screenshots
(Added) Method to bypass security- setting needs to be done for it
(Added) Screenshot Viewing To HTTP Webserver
(Fixed) Importing existing TUs into system.
(Added) New Title Update engine to handle new Title Updates
(Updated) Moved Manage Paths inside Settings
(Updated)Setting Scn transitions to remove flicker
(Added) Kai Metrics Icon (Equinox)
(Added) Completely Revamped Settings (Wondro)
(Fixed) httpserver crash on debug listing content table
(Changed) ftp server no longer prevents default.xzp overwrite (quickfix)
(Increased) Speed of initial gui loading.
(Added) 3 Configurable Game Background Transition Effects
(Added) Transparent To Game Background Fade In
(Added) Black To Game Background Fade In
(Added) Game Background slide in transition
(Fixed) FTP issue (rarto360 should work again)
(Fixed) Drumkit Screenshot Spamming

Official Site: http://www.teamfsd.com ...

News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....es-2011-01-04/

Well, first off: A happy new year to all of you!

I hope you had some nice, relaxing holidays.

I was personally slowing down a bit, first off, I catched myself a flu which MADE me slow down a bit, and second, I was pretty much worn out (I guess that also was the reason for the flu... cold weather and too much work doesn't go well together).
Craig also had some chest infection and had to take antibiotics (ouch), but now we both recovered and are now back to work.

The first 350 Pandora PCBs have arrived on December 29th and most of them are already assembled and now being tested and flashed.
We want to do thorough testing with these first units with new nubs, so it takes a bit longer.

Meanwhile, CC in Texas was also busy and managed to finish another 400 boards even though there were holidays. I don't know whether they are shipped already or not yet, but seeing progress there is nice.

400 more LCD cables are on the way to me, waiting to get speakers soldered. With those, the next 1000 units can be built

Nubs production is also going on. We don't have any exact numbers but hopefully the next 2000 will be ready before CC runs out of them.

A lot of people have asked about the daily videos:
Well, they take A LOT of time. For some videos, I needed about 4 hours per day - and doing this besides my normal work is eating up my time.
I also said from the very beginning that those videos will be continued until the deliveries start again - which should be within the next days.
Ther WILL be more videos, no worries, but no daily videos anymore. I'll rather use the time I've left to continue to work on the OS. There are still a lot of tweaks and fixes to be done, and now that more users will get Pandoras, a more polished OS is more important in my opinion.

Finally, things are moving again. Let's have a good new year ...

[Hunter Davis] is playing games like Contra, Monkey Island, and Quake 3 by running them on a Seagate Dockstar. We were shocked after seeing how well these run in the video after the break. [Hunter], who used the ZipIt for game emulation in the past, added a couple of hardware peripherals to get everything running. For sound he picked up an inexpensive USB sound card which was no problem to get up and running. Next he picked up a USB to DVI adapter and fired up the Linux USB DisplayLink driver. With the peripherals running he loaded up Fluxbox and the rest was history.

http://hackaday.com/2011/01/02/class...-the-dockstar/ ...

News via http://www.gp32spain.com/

DrPocketSnes is an emulator for Super Nintendo (SNES) for GP2X and Gizmondo. I have taken part for unilateral SquidgeSnes PocketSnes and a new emulator. After I introduced my menu system on it and gave it a new name." (Translation of the readme.txt provided with the emulator

http://www.gp32spain.com/foros/downl...o=file&id=2898 ...

News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=932301

submitted by Farox @

I have updated (to version 0.8) the Runtime for sdlBasic available at new page http://www.sdlbasic.net/web/

With this runtime you can run some examples included in the archive and available here.

Something like this :

The Beast demo


Here the Readme:

[quote]sdlBasic Runtime version 0.8 GP2X/WIZ Edition by Farox
==================================================

sdlBasic is a small, efficient and multiplatform basic interpreter aimed to game creation using the power of SDL library,
it was inspired by the old and glorious AMOS.
sdlBasic is open source software.
This means anyone is welcome to download it at no charge, including the source code if you need to make special changes.
Developers can get involved and help make sdlBasic even better.

It runs on Linux, windows (9x and nt-XP based), macOSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, MorphOS, AmigaOS, GP2X F100/F200, WIZ.

The basic interpreter come from wxbasic by David Cuny ("http://wxbasic.sourceforge.net") distribuited under lGPL.
The graphic system is based upon SDL graphics libraries family("http://www.libsdl.org")distribuited under GPL.

This software is subject to lGPL license and is free as every program used to create it.

For sdlBasic commands and syntax list i suggest to read full documentation for more details.

Authors: David Cuny (wxbasic)
and
Roberto Viola <[email protected]> (sdlbasic)

I (Farox) have recompiled the latest version 0.8 of this package available at http://www.sdlbasic.net/web/ .


Changes from the last version from __vroby__(version 0.7) :

include fix done by gersen also available on http://www.basicprog...g.org/sdlbasic/
10-11-09 Exit sub and Exit function now work. Fix to eval.c
09-11-09 Funtion Atan2 added. Additions to builtin.h and builtin.c

Farox work:

Recompilation on latest SDL version 1.2.11 (by senorQuack) on gp2x, before was recompiled with 1.2.9
Compiled with standard GPH toolchain on WIZ.

Fixed some #defines in order to compile a lite version with base feature (no SOCKET, MPEG, SQLITE support) and
an advanced version with SOCKET and SQLITE support for the gp2x.
I wasn't able to build a version with MPEG support on gp2x (sorry).

On wiz the base version have MPEG support, and the advanced have added the SQLITE feature.
I wasn't able to build a version with SOCKET support on wiz, due to lack of SDL_net library (sorry).

Compiled all (.a static) libs and runtime with this option on gp2x:
-fomit-frame-pointer
-ffast-math
-msoft-float
-mcpu=arm920t
-mtune=arm920

and

on WIZ i have compiled all the (.so shared) library and runtime with:
-ffast-math (exept for libsqlite3.so where fast-math is not supported i think)
-fomit-frame-pointer
using -msoft-float give some compilation error on wiz like for example
(ERROR: obj\unzip.o uses FPA instructions, whereas bin\libunzip.so does not)..so i have dropped it.

I have also added a dir with the libs if needed to run on wiz .
This dir is named "extra_libs_for_wiz".I don't know if you need also the SDL or any other libs to run.


Also have adapted some of the available examples to run on GP2X console (also for Wiz but is not tested ).

On the archive you will find under the gp2x/ (or Wiz/ in the wiz version of this package)) dir :

directory BIN/ where you find the runtime sdlBrt (with base feature) and a new directory SQLITE_NET/ where you find
the runtime version with SQLITE and SOCKET support added .For normal task use the minimal version and use only
the advanced if you need to test SQLITE and SOCKET feature.
For the Wiz version under MPEG_SQLITE/ dir you can find the advanced version. The MPEG feature is present
also on the base version, on the advanced i have added the SQLITE support.

directory SHARE/ where is stored the fonts needed to execute the runtime.
Note that the runtime works well also if you place the font directly in the examples directory.


directory DOC/ where are all the docs that are also available online. This dir is not needed to execute the runtime.
Look here if you want to port/code something.

others directory .. this dirs contains all the examples adapted to run on gp2x/wiz.
In order to execute SQLITE test (for gp2x) and MPEG test (for Wiz) you have to change the
sdlBrt runtime with the advanced version, or copy directly on the example dir.
You may need to change the *.gpe file to run it.

Copy the entire structure contained inside GP2X/WIZ dir on SD card as is (you can omit to copy the DOC dir if you need space).

Please report if WIZ version is working and/or need some other libs to run. ...

News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=932523

submitted by Mdashdotdashn

Hi all,

Just a quick post to announce that I made the first port of littlegptracker to the caanoo. LittleGPTracker is a sample based tracker (music program) optimized for game consoles. It is based on the famous lsdj for gameboy.

The first beta of the port is available at

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/323652/lgpt_caanoo.rar

And will be updated offically on the lgpt site as soon as I finish polishing the angles. ...

News via http://emu-russia.net/en/

Sega Saturn emulator for Windows has been updated. Changes:
- changed bus wait processing;
- fixed bugs.

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~phantasy/ssf/index.html ...