PS Vita hack: Dual Firmware Boot prototype by Katsu. Vita downgrade a possibility?

It didn’t take long for Yifan Lu’s investigations to become useful for other hardware hackers! Our community member katsu, guided by Yifan’s precise description of the Vita’s NAND pinouts, was able to hack his PS Vita in order to boot from a previous firmware, technically performing something very similar to a downgrade. Check the video below, it’s cool and full of “electronics porn”, like your favorite cyberpunk movie.


What katsu did was dump his firmware 2.12 (on the NAND), probably using Yifan Lu’s technique. He then copied that Firmware dump to an SD card. In the meantime, he upgraded the PS Vita to firmware 3.01. On the video, you see him inserting his SD card in a reader connected to the Vita. The Vita then reads the content of the SD card (the firmware 2.12 he dumped earlier) instead of its own 3.01 NAND.

What the hell does all of that mean? First of all, that Yifan Lu’s little experiment in the hardware world is proving successful, by providing inspiration and documentation for other talented hardware modders.
http://wololo.net/2014/01/21/ps-vita...a-possibility/