Sony official update v4.90 is live!
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Official Changelog:
- This system software update improves system performance.
Real Changelog:
- Blu-ray keys updated (AACS encryption key, even after changing the texts in rco in 4.89, suggesting they probably wouldn't be updated anymore)
- LV2 Kernel has been heavily changed because it was compiled using an old source code identical to 4.80 as stated by @Joonie.
- VSH has been changed as well, maybe the same reason as LV2 kernel, + QR codes additions. (Speculation by me)
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The PS3 firmware is modular (composed by hundreds of .sprx modules)
The modules are executable files containing compiled code, usually that code requires to load resources (images, sounds, texts for all the supported languages, etc...), and that resources are located inside .rco files (resource containers)
Additionally the .rco files contains the definitions for most of the "objects" that you see in the screen, this includes his position and sizes relatives to a grid with the coordinate origin (X=0, Y=0, Z=0) at the center of the screen
The .rco format was originally used in PSP where the screen size is always the same, but it was not good enought for PS3 because the PS3 allows to configure the display settings for different resolutions (1080p, 720p, 420p, 272p)
So they updated the .rco format to load the position and sizes (and scale factors) from external .txt files codenamed "XMB layouts", this .txt files contains a huge list of values (1 value per line) and are intended to be loaded by the .rco files selectivelly for every display resolution
The XMB layout .txt files are generated automatically without human intervention, is part of the official firmware compilation enviroment (a collection of tenths of scripts and tools intended to create the PS3UPDAT.PUP)
Basically, the .txt files are linked with the whole collection of .rco files (and the rco files are dependant of .sprx files) so we can deduce the .txt files are generated sequentially
Everytime a new rco is compiled the scripts creates new lines in the txt files (as much are needed by that specific .rco)
In OFW 4.89 sony introduced a bug that "breaks" a couple of lines in the .txt files, we can fix them easilly because is just a .txt without any security, but i guess the official developers have very strict rules of the kind of fixes they can apply and modifying the .txt files manually (with a text editor) is not an aceptable solution, because the root of the problem is in the scripts that generates the .txt files
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The first accurate report in this forum about the official bugs (that boosted my interest) was this post by LuanTeles
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/4...the-firmware-update.37203/page-10#post-332535
And the solution was published a few days later
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/4...the-firmware-update.37203/page-17#post-333560
If you are curious enought read our conversation in between that 2 posts, i tryed to explain it in more detail, but my post of the second link is the resume of the story
Compiled date:
- 2022-12-14.
Current Status:
- HFW: Hybrid Firmware 4.90 Released by @Joonie .
- CFW: Custom Firmware 4.90 Released by @Evilnat .
For more information and detailed guidesImportant Notes:
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/e...ash-writer-is-back-in-4-90.39772/#post-357503
- Bgtoolset by @bguerville is up again and supports fw 4.90.
- HEN flash patcher by @lmn7 released.
Software Update Bypass: (Use at your own risk, even though we've never had reports of bans from using this method for years.)
- Install the latest version of webMAN MOD by @aldostools and download this ps3-updatelist.txt.
Copy the file to /dev_hdd0/ps3-updatelist.txt and reboot.
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