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 DON'T TALK ABOUT PIRACY YOU FUCKSDo you hate warranty's and love console bans? Want to run poorly maintained emulators and video players on your favourite consoles? Homebrew might be for you! In the past year or so there have been some pretty huge advancements in Homebrew for a variety of consoles, and while we have a great Nintendo homebrew thread it seems like a good time to have a general place to talk about the other consoles too. What Jailbreaking consoles has been a thing basically since there were consoles to jailbreak. Once jailbroken, the console is opened as a platform for developers to build all kinds of fun and useful tools, custom firmwares, removal of region locking and more. This is achieved through a variety of means; Hardware, such as modchips and dongles that goof with the console directly (The RGH chips for the Xbox 360 are a good example) and Software hacks, frequently these days focused on exploiting the webkit on the console (The PS4, PS3, the Vita and the Switch). Regardless of the method used, the aim is to gain access to the kernel and allow unsigned code to be run by the machine, once you've got that, you're generally golden. anyway lets talk about consoles and how to hack them Last Gen Xbox 360  Compatible Models/Firmware: Basically all of them The 360 has one of the strongest homebrew scenes out there thanks to it being fairly easy to program for and a pretty powerful exploit that allows custom code to be run at boot. You're either using the JTAG or the RGH method, some details of which can be found over here but the short version is you solder a little chip onto the 360 motherboard that repeatedly shocks the board till it will let you run Super Mario Bros on it. The 360 has a number of options for cool stuff, there's a few different kinds of custom firmware, notably Aurora and Freestyle Dash, both of which offer a whole bunch of skins and custom features, such as heat/CPU monitoring, fan management, cheats, profile editing, FTP and an ease of using custom tools. The 360 also has a shitload of emulators ranging from old Amiga consoles all the way up to the PS1, most of which are either ports of or forks of existing well maintained emulators. IIRC there's also a way to unlock some of the 360s media playback capabilities but I never did that so Idunno Because you need to either solder poo poo to the motherboard or pay someone to do it for you, it's kinda hard or expensive to actually get a hacked 360, but it's got a bunch of utility to it and as far as hacks go is super stable. Unlike some webkit exploits, you don't have to retrigger the exploit every boot, so that's nice. Emulators Tools/Utilities Tutorials PS3  Compatible Models/Firmware: Almost all of them except Superslims The PS3 was for a long time kinda stuck on an early firmware that meant most people couldn't get hack their devices. There's a long and cool story about a guy called GeoHot releasing a bunch of keys for the PS3 that allowed the homebrew scene to blow up overnight, but sony caught him and now he's in a sony black site being forced to play pepsi man till he dies. rip. BUT earlier this year some clever clogs figured out a software method to downgrade all Phat models and most slims to an exploitable firmware. The hack itself is also a pretty basic software hack that involves just installing a custom firmware just like you would a regular Sony firmware, then you can go ahead and install whatever you like. The basic nature of the hack is thanks to having those keys I mentioned earlier, which mean't people could just sign pkgs as if they came direct from Sony. The PS3 can do much of what the 360 can do when hacked - emulators, better media support and some ports of various open source engine games. It can also boot basically all PS1 and PS2 games naively with really really good emulation. The scene isn't as robust as the 360s imo, but the hack is so much easier to do if you have a PS3 laying around you might as well. Emulators and Applications How to downgrade and install CFW What to do after that (yes i know its reddit its a good guide shut up Vita  Compatible models/firmware: Anything below 3.61 The Vita's homebrew scene is pretty strong, bolstered recently by a few releases that has meant all but the latest firmwares are exploitable. It's portable nature and relatively powerful hardware make it a great emulation machine, and it has a ton of very niche homebrew apps, like being able to control the console with a wiimote or overclock it (lol) The Vita uses a webkit exploit, which means you have to load a webpage (or you can host the exploit yourself) which does some magic poo poo then your console is hacked. You used to have to do this every single time you booted up the device, but recently Henkaku Enso came out, which makes the hack permanent. As mentioned, there's a lot of emulators for the Vita, including a port of a DS emulator, but there's also a hack that lets you use standard SD cards instead of the proprietary ones, memory card account swapping tools, an unlock for the PSP/PS1 emulator it has built in and a few other nifty things. You can also do all of this on a PSTV if you're one of the maniacs that bought that (i did) Apps and Tools Emulators Guides and Tutorials Wii/Wiiu/3DS We have a really good nintendo homebrew thread so just go read that one but afaik most Wiis and Wiius are hackable rn and can do Stuff CURRENT GEN Current gen hacking is obviously a bit behind the efforts of last gen. Sony, MS and Nintendo are (kinda) actively working against groups that are hunting for exploits and when those exploits are made public, the programs and tools that utilize them are often buggy or unstable. Crashes are frequent, you're often giving up a fair bit of functionality to do these and there's an ever present risk of losing your user profiles, saves or even bricking your device. ANYWAY Xbone  Compatible models/firmwares: None Not hacked yet. MS did a pretty good job of locking down the system and no one has released anything for this yet. It'll probably happen, but not yet. You CAN active Dev Mode, and use a code you got from here which lets you run SOME unsigned code, but there is no real scene to speak of and basically nothing interesting works right now. PS4  Compatible Firmware/Models: 5.05 and below The current front runner in the homebrew scene, the PS4 has been exploitable for years now, but only on very early firmware models that basically nowhere had, then last week some hackerbois called qwertyoruiopz and SpecterDev released a 5.05 exploit which covers basically every new PS4 out there right now. The exploit uses a webkit vulnerability, so you'll be opening a web page whenever you boot up the device. It also uses the webkit to deliver payloads that allow you to do various things with the console, at least until they figure out some way to install CFW and do all that stuff without the browser. As it's still in its infancy, there's not a great deal you can do with the console right now. There's some mod menus and cheats for various games (notablely GTA5 has a fairly extensive mod menu being ported over to 5.05), there's some save backup utilities and there's one or two pretty pisspoor emulators kicking about. The various devs are working on a tool called Mira that should allow a whole bunch of extra poo poo like offline remote play and an open development library to allow some better homebrew development on the console, expect more apps and tools when that happens. There's also currently rumors that this hack will corrupt your saves and your app database and burn your house down, so, you know, look out for that Tutorial Switch  Compatible Firmware/Models: All currently The Switch shipped with a tegra x1 chip, which had an unfixable bug in it that has allowed homebrew devs to exploit the system and run basically whatever they want on it. This hack requires you temporarily short out some pins on the joycon rails, but its basically foolproof and safe. Basically everyone is just treading water and experimenting with nonsense till Atmosphere, a custom firmware and framework for development, comes out sometime Soon™ The Nintendo Homebrew thread I mentioned further up has more info on this, but the hack is very easy to do, unpatchable and probably the one I'm most excited about. The switch's portability and hardware could make it this generations Vita but like, way way better. There's even some rumors about getting it running android apps natively which would be incredible. There's also some emulators Nintendo released for the Tegra over in China that might be reversable, that'd allow the Switch to run Gamecube games native. This is all speculation but even if we just get the normal set of Web Browser, Emulation and Media Apps, I think the Switch is going to be a very cool device to have homebrew on. The only downside is that most firmwares will always have to do the fairly complicated hack process every time you boot it from it being powered down. You can do this from an android phone though so, its not so bad I guess. OLDER poo poo Basically every console pre-360/PS3 is exploitable or hackable but very few have anything interesting going on with the exception of the OG XBox, which was kind of the first big console homebrew scene thanks to its hard drive and relatively easy hack. I'll do a writeup about that later on but you can google any console and "Hack" or "CFW" and find something interesting. The wild poo poo you can do with a PS2 is really cool, running Gameshark programs off of its memory cards and poo poo.
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Jun 5, 2018 18:09
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Useful Links There's a million places that report on hacks and advances and stuff and most of them are bad, but some are ok. Wololo - A really good blog that focuses mainly on the Sony side of things, but reports on major Switch stuff too. The person who runs it used to do some Vita/PSP hacking and often presents info in a really easy to digest way for people who don't spend hours reading up on esoteric terminology. Mostly posts the big news that you might give a gently caress about PSXHax - All about the playstation, and basically posts whenever anyone in the scene farts particuarlly loudly. Not always useful and sometimes posts rumors as news but still p good GBATemp - Often where most Nintendo homebrew gets posted first but the forums are a cesspool by and large. Some of the posts post real quality stuff and research but also a whole lot of dinguses saying dingus poo poo all day long I'll post more stuff here when I can/if people recommend sites
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Jun 5, 2018 18:19
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