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Original Sony PlayStation 2 security chip 'broken wide open' after 26 years

285 points · 91 comments · rbanffy

  1. criddell · · focus · HN ↗
    This will be great for preservation of PS2 games. Well done!

    It seems like preservation of games for later consoles is a lost cause. If I pull out my PS5 30 years from now and pop in my Cyberpunk 2077 disk to play, I'm going to have a barely playable game.

    It's better than nothing, I suppose, but I won't be able to re-play the excellent version that I played through last year.

    1. RajT88 · · focus · HN ↗
      In 30 years you may need to modify your PS5 just to get it booting. A lot of retro consoles have to be recapped.

      Also the plastic gets brittle. I was replacing a fuse on a PS2 motherboard and some of the ribbon connector pieces just shattered on reassembly. There are many challenges to preservation. Eventually all that old hardware will be all gone.

      1. klodolph · · focus · HN ↗
        I think what’s worse is flash lifespan. You can recap, but can you find replacements for failed flash? Can you reimage it with the correct data? Can you even access the flash, which may be buried inside a chip somewhere?

        Plastic may get brittle but I think modern plastics do this less than 90s plastics.

        1. chocochunks · · focus · HN ↗
          This has been sort of a problem already in the Wii U community as some units have a less reliable NAND chip. For that console the community has developed the ability to emulate the NAND chip with an SD card. Proper NAND replacements are possible too but obviously more work and more risk and I think you may have needed to dump your encryption keys beforehand. Potentially it can be fixable but for some consoles like the Xbox Series line that we know very little about it may not be.
          1. RajT88 · · focus · HN ↗
            This explains all those lots of "untested" WiiU's I see for sale.
            1. chocochunks · · focus · HN ↗
              To be fair to the Wii U it does need a non-standard power adapter and the Game Pad is necessary to do things like change the video output. It is harder to test than say a PS3 Phat. IIRC the white 8GB Wii Us tend to have more robust NAND chips.
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