A week ago we posted news that the Lite-On DH-401S can read Sony PS3 game discs!, and today I am adding a brief follow-up to that article.

I grabbed one of the drives last week and it arrived a few days ago, installed it into the PC, and can confirm Jan70's findings- that it indeed reads PS3 Game Discs flawlessly!

Below are a few screencaptures illustrating the drive, dumping Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom for PS3 via DVD Decrypter which took 00:14:10 to copy 8.27 GB (8,880,652,288 bytes) of data. As you can see, the resulting .ISO image file is viewable in iSOBuster and as suspected the disc-based encryption layer is still present as is on dumps done via PS3 Linux/SAK... as illustrated in WinHex below.

In summary, for the low price (under $130) the Lite-On DH-401S drive is very handy for renting and ripping PS3 discs (or backing up your own :p)... however, once again until there is a way to actually run them on retail PS3 consoles the resulting images are only good for examination and archival purposes.

PS3 KeyVault

We have a few PS3 development updates for the new week, including some PS3 KeyVault Project and PS3 Flash news.

To start, resident PS3 Dev subdub has been a bit busy, so he has yet to put the finishing touches on our PS3 KeyVault Server Application. In his absence, both ggparallel and mainman have picked up the slack, and are finishing up the server application. While they are finishing up the app, they are also optimizing the code so it is more versatile as it can auto-update clients, and it will also be able to handle more requests.

Below is a picture of the client application's Web interface that runs on any PS3, including retail consoles via OtherOS. It basically lets you configure the PS3's IP address, check the status of the program, the kernel, and transmitted packets.

Another resident PS3 Dev, who recently received a PS3 TEST unit, is currently awaiting some new hot air rework tools. His PS3 TEST (see HERE) then has an appointment with some solder and wire. We expect to have the flash dumped soon, barring any unforseen circumstances, and then we can analyze the differences in the IPL as well as the mystery detection bits.

Finally, my PS3 Backup Launcher (for Debug units) is at version .002. The menu system was ported over, it is now a nice selectable menu. Due to this change, the graphics library is a bit limited.. so no cool moving background anymore, just a plain grey one.

Also we have noticed some extra checks in a few newer PS3 games that disallow repatching and running from Internal HDD (USB HDD still works fine). We are currently attempting to locate and patch these calls in the newer titles.

In the picture below you see four games, including the disc handed out in Japan at PS3 Launch- the "HD Visual Preview Disc" which is actually a game SELF with two movies! Also in Alpha .002, support was added to boot games from BD/DVD, which works perfectly provided the disc has been properly mastered.

More to come, and hopefully we can get our PS3 KeyVault Project underway soon!

Cyberfix has released the first version of PS3 SAK Export And File Merger. Built off of NZHawk's ISO Backup Merger, this program basically makes it easier to output/copy PS3 games to ISO format (Converts Blu-ray.a files to .ISO)

Good work guys.

No this does not mean PS3 backups are playable.

[Download PS3 SAK Export And File Merger Plus v0.1.0.0]

Source: PS3hax.net