An update..

Lot's of things happened and are happening. On the hardware side of things.. I found a proper quality 3.5" HDD/ATA enclosure with a good quality PCB (Initio chipset). It includes a power adapter and proper shielded cables. I also found a distributor who is able to deliver the needed amount, they even have stock in Europe.. I'll be placing my order next month. Of course my adapter (as seen in my previous post) still needs to be modified in order to fit this PCB, but there will be no problems there.

I also received my first "sample" batch of 10 x PS3 BluRay drives. Although the laser lenses are all brand new and they actually all seem to work, the enclosures look a bit rough on the outside.. So I have a second batch of sample drives coming from a different supplier. Which actually claim they have brand new PS3 BluRay drives in stock. Let's wait and see. Btw. import taxes are a pain!

Software is going well too. I have portable (Linux/OSX/Windows) prototype code working (borrowed from glevand's Linux code) that does drive authentication. Without drive authentication you won't be able to read anything from the drive, this is the first step in the authentication process. The second is SACD disc authentication. Last year I refactored the anergistic emulator from the fail0verflow team and I'm now able to do native PS3 SACD/BluRay handshaking on the PC. After the handshaking procedure has finished running within the emulator. I'm now able to extract the AES key/iv from SPU anergistic emulator memory and resume with native AES decryption on the PC. I've also written portable drive firmware update routines (again borrowed from glevand) which are needed for disc authentication to work on the latest SacModule (PS3 module that is responsible for handshaking). Yesterday I also wrote and tested some routines to select the SACD layer (this code is actually missing from the current PS3 ripping software). In my prototype I'm now actually able to extract SACD's on the PC! If this all sounds to complicated for you, don't worry the GUI will have all this functionality behind the click of a button.

Although I'm making progress, I'm aware (from reading the last posts) there is negativity flowing around on the computeraudiophile forum. If you have "committed" yourself to this project but you're tired of waiting, please send a mail to mr_wicked@hotmail.com I'll remove you from the list.

I also read about that Toshiba SE-506, my advice is not to waste any time on that. Drives that are able to read SACD's is nothing new and this has already been done in the past. Drives that are actually able to decrypt SACDs are non existent (at least that I'm aware of, off course with the exception of the PS3 BluRay drive).

fyi. My wife gave birth to a beautiful and happy baby boy the 9th of July.