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.

Working on the software..

All is good on the hardware side of things. Here you see my second revision board connected to the PS3 drive connected and to a USB/IDE converter.

It's also really stable. The drive remains connected and doesn't show any sign of hardware instability. Here is Nero InfoTool, showing some of the drives capabilities.

I'm currently working on the software side of things, more to come..

Revision 0.2..

Here is a picture of the first revision:

Sadly the pinout I used for the first revision turned out to be complete bogus (never trust the internet). Although I found a second pinout on ps3devwiki I needed to be sure this was correct. So I broke the fcc connector from the 3k3y PCB and used a multimeter to follow the pinout to the JM20337 chip. Now I was able to match my own pinout to the one from the ps3devwiki, it turns out that's indeed the correct one.

So here is my second attempt. I'm still waiting for the PCB manufacturer for approval, but it's scheduled for delivery on the 11th, to be continued..

Sorry for the long delay..

Sorry for not giving you an update earlier. I've been very busy, and sorry to say not that busy with this project. In the meantime I've married, sold my wife's house and moved to a different city. And last but not least the 4th of July (honestly) my wife is expecting a baby. How many changes can one handle?

Ok, enough of my personal life, so how's the project coming along? I've shifted from opinion again and have gone back to my first idea which was to build a simple 40/60 pin converter. A brand new PCM/PATA design turned out to be too costly for the amount of PCB's I need to get build.. It turns out there are good IDE/SATA converters available that I'm currently testing:

This gives me way more options in existing HDD enclosures that I can think of. I was also wrong about the JMICRON JM20337. The bug did exist in the reference design of the earlier enclosures that were produced. The enclosures that are available nowadays do not longer have that bug as they've removed a resistor from the reference design. I still haven't decided on the IDE/USB or IDE/SATA/USB combination but it has to perform well and be of good quality. But now I can add SATA enclosures to my list of options, which is great.

So I've decided to go back to my first idea which was easy and quick to build. And today I received my first revision of the prototype I've put together:

The soldering on these prototypes will be done by a friend of mine. He has the skill to solder that small 0.5mm pitch connector by hand. More later..

dumped the LaCie eprom

I received the CH341A EEPROM Programmer today. The kit I ordered contained two PCBs, one to solder the LaCie EEPROM on and one to read/program its contents. After some (de)soldering and finding the correct software I successfully dumped the EEPROM.

The proof is in the binary dump, a short analysis shows me that LaCie isn't doing anything special here (like patching the NEC uPD720133 firmware), so we will simply replace the LaCie strings with something to our liking, update the firmware CRC and go from there..

drawing traces..

A small update.. I've been steadily drawing traces. It's going to be a 4 layer PCB, most of it based on the LaCie design. I desoldered all components from the LaCie PCB and made some high resolution photo's as a reference. Together with my multimeter I've been following the traces, here is where I'm currently at:

Look at the size of P1, that's a regular jumper used for disc ejection, just to give you an idea of the dimensions we're dealing with. Although I know where I'm heading to, it's more work than I expected. It probably also has to do with the fact that this will be my first multi-layered PCB. I'm learning so much while moving forward, I love that. Luckily I know a couple of electrical engineers who will be able to check my work. Anyway I'm not going to rush it, it needs to be done well!

finding components

Finding components is a pain! I found 'almost' all components and I'm currently working on the PCB design:

For example, I've spend over half a day (maybe due to lack of google skills?!) trying to find the PS3 Blu-Ray type power connector. You can help me out by finding the (type) name of the connector (It looks like a floppy "berg" type connector but it isn't..).