Latest PS3 Firmware Update Requires Hard Disk Wipe to Fix 193
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier today Sony launched firmware V2.40 for the PS3 which is mandatory for online play. To my horror after installing the update my console wouldn't boot, and this appears to be a not uncommon problem affecting all ages and models of PS3s. Although there is rampant fanboy denial over at the official Playstation forums, the Kotaku article details the issue and has a suggested solution if you don't mind yanking your PS3's hard drive."
Which is why... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Informative)
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Rather then just small patches, a lot of them overwrite a lot of the base code
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Actually, Sony does do small patches. Check the history for the frequency of these updates if you don't believe me. Or do you honestly believe that small changes to the system can't have disastrous effects?
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a natural by-product of the upgrade (like the online play server was moved or something
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Or say a protocol was change. Do you know exactly was changed? Because, I'm calling bullshit on what you're saying. That is unless you can show your insider knowledge and prove to me that this change is unnecessarily preventing on-line play.
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But really, upgradable firmware in game consoles is just a bad idea to use.
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Yah, because fixing errors in the OS is a bad idea. Get a clue. We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
But, that's ok. We don't need an evolving set of features or improvements on features or increased stability or... We'll just go back to the old model of a static stagnant system reducing the systems lifespan increasing costs for everyone.
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One reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:One reason (Score:4, Informative)
Given the range of consumer devices you can perma-brick with a botched firmware update, I'd say it's more likely that it's just more expensive to make a fallback bootloader.
One place I've been pleasantly surprised (a bit of a veer, but...)-- I got myself a Sandisk MP3 player (Sansa e300 series) recently, and I was surprised at how brick-resistant the thing is. If you botch the firmware, you can oftentimes still see it as a flash drive, and just drop in a different firmware file. If that fails, you can fall back to a "Recovery Mode" partition and put the new file there, and even if you screw THAT up, there's still a way (using some program that talks more directly to the USB device, I believe) to unbrick THAT.
Now THAT's how software-upgradable consumer electronics should be made.
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Actualy no. several low cost motherboard companies have "dual bios" chips and have a failover to the old firmware when the new one fails on boot.
the ps3 certianly could have had this as well as all other items other there that do the update dance.
Problem is an additional $1.95 per machine = lower bonus for the CEO and therefore is usually left out.
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Same thing with the iPod. There's an hardcoded emergency disk mode in ROM, so no matter how fucked up the upgradable firmware is, you can still fix it. Which is very fun for all those iPod hackers out there (like the Rockbox project), because that means you can mess up the thing to your heart's content, without the fear that you might brick it.
I still can't believe how many consumer electronics don't follow that simple rule.
Re:One reason (Score:4, Informative)
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It's not really the same as what you describe, but from what I've read, Tivos have a separate partition that they load the software upgrades onto. Only after the update is fully done, that partition is set to be the current boot partition.
While it doesn't allow you to fall back to the last version, it at least does hopefully prevent a partially updated and unbootable system.
Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or say a protocol was change. Do you know exactly was changed? Because, I'm calling bullshit on what you're saying. That is unless you can show your insider knowledge and prove to me that this change is unnecessarily preventing on-line play.
What I was saying, is that unless something major was changed to naturally prevent online play like a server address change or a protocol change or whatever, Sony shouldn't prevent people from going online. I'm not saying anything of what Sony did.
Yah, because fixing errors in the OS is a bad idea. Get a clue. We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
But, prove to me that what Sony fixed was some major bug or a major feature. From my experience with my Wii (I don't have a PS3 though I have played one), they release patches for completely trivial things. Things that shouldn't have to risk bricking your console to update.
But, that's ok. We don't need an evolving set of features or improvements on features or increased stability or... We'll just go back to the old model of a static stagnant system reducing the systems lifespan increasing costs for everyone.
But like you said the consoles were becoming more like computers, so how long before I have to upgrade my RAM in a PS3 to play a new game? How long before they come out with different CPU models? This is killing what made console gaming popular in the first place the fact that you didn't need to upgrade the RAM to play a new game, the fact that everyone was equal whether you bought your console on launch or bought it near the end of the console's lifetime you could all play the same games, with the same performance. One of the reasons I don't play many computer games (aside from a few games of Wesnoth here and there and OpenArena) is that you have to upgrade your system every few months to play the newest games. With consoles the big point was you could play every game within the console's lifetime and that being about 5-7 years that was a lot of games. Now tell me, will a stock PC from 2001 play a game released in 2007? No, but a PS2 bought in 2000 will play the games made in 2006 the exact same as a PS2 bought in 2006 will play a game made in 2006. That is why console gaming has increased so much and computer gaming has declines.
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This is why I stopped playing games on the PC. I just didn't want to spend the $400 a year keeping my system up to the point it could play the latest game. I plan on never buying a video card again, and I'm happy about it.
BTW, The N64 did have a RAM cartridge that you had to buy if you wanted to play a few of the games.
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Having a "personal PC" attached to the main TV only works if there is one person in the house, or if there is another TV that other people can use.
Add a wife, kids, and guests, and appliances like Consoles and TiVos take a more center stage, and a PC with its own monitor becomes more standard.
Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Informative)
>But, prove to me that what Sony fixed was some major bug or a major feature
you could actually look for yourself and see what was in this upgrade. It was a pretty big one
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What I was saying, is that unless something major was changed to naturally prevent online play like a server address change or a protocol change or whatever, Sony shouldn't prevent people from going online. I'm not saying anything of what Sony did.
Do you remember how crappy Sony's initial online store offering was? What they've been doing is moving more and more of the functionality to the client-side. While this drastically improves the user experience (see Xbox Live / Marketplace), it requires careful coordination between the client and server software. In general, it's simply far fewer headaches for Sony in order to ensure there's only one current PS3 operating system to deal with online.
Note: I'm not trying to excuse this f!-up, just trying to
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HUH???
the N64 REQUIRED you to upgrade your RAM or video Ram specifically to play some games.
I have the module in my N64 sitting in the basement. This is not new.
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Required to play * Donkey Kong 64[1] * The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask [edit] Required for major features * Perf
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Perfect Dark, I think?
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I think it was optional for Perfect Dark - you could play without it, but only single player and it looked a lot worse.
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Yep. And Zelda-Majora's Mask could (or had to) use it as well
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As usual, it's on Wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]
Only Majora's Mask and Donkey Kong absolutely require it. Beyond that, StarCraft 64 required it for Brood War content, and Perfect Dark could function without it, but most of the game wasn't available.
Finally, there were a lot of games that could take advantage of it, but I think most of them just used it to support high-res mode, which you'd often turn off anyway because the framerate was too low.
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We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
Why? Why should consoles be "specialized computers"? Why should their feature set change over time? If I wanted a gaming box, I'd go to Newegg and build myself one. I want a console because its guaranteed to just work. By introducing things like upgradeable firmware, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are destroying the only advantage that consoles hold over PC games.
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The Xbox does just work. All I do is power it on, it says update available, then downloads, and reboots. A retard couldn't fuck that up.
Oh, and nothing is guaranteed, explicit or
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The Xbox does just work. All I do is power it on...
Pot, meet kettle.
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But the problem is that we are no longer in the world of 8-bit NES... prior to Windows 95 (Windows 98 even), patches were very few. Why is that? Well, many patches have to do with security. Who cares about security if you have a single NES hooked up to a television? No big deal. With online consoles we now require patches because bugs in software aren't just glitches that game developers have to work around, they are potential security holes that can have serious impact. Once things become connected,
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Actually, Sony does do small patches. Check the history for the frequency of these updates if you don't believe me. Or do you honestly believe that small changes to the system can't have disastrous effects?
First of all, do you /KNOW/ that Sony is /just/ changing the parts it says it is changing ? No, you do not.
Or say a protocol was change. Do you know exactly was changed? Because, I'm calling bullshit on what you're saying. That is unless you can show your insider knowledge and prove to me that this change is unnecessarily preventing on-line play.
Ah, but it works the other way around too. Show me why that particular protocol change was necessary and no backward compatibility was possible. Hint : DRM updates do not count, I don't give a rats ass about it on my legally bought, legally used console with legally owned games that suddenly refuses to boot without a harddrive wipe.
Yah, because fixing errors in the OS is a bad idea. Get a clue.
You both have a point. Your opponent is not clueless.
We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
This depends ENTIR
Re:Which is why... (Score:5, Interesting)
What is needed (I don't know if there is) is a "failsafe" boot image stored in ROM that does not get flashed. If a firmware upgrade screws the OS, the system will boot from this image and be able to get online and retrieve a fix. Or maybe revert to the old one.
Or maybe even read the fix from a disk and apply it.
Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Informative)
As you guessed, you can't use the PS3 until you've upgraded, if you've got a network connection. When you start it, it sees that there's a new update and refuses to allow you to play games until you've updated.
Sure, you can fix it by wiping the hard drive and reupgrading. Great. There are only a few problems with that:
1. You lose all your save games.
2. You lose all your installed games. Games like DMC4 require a 20+ minute install before you can play them, and repeating that is NOT fun.
3. You lose all your downloaded content. I'm told you can redownload content without rebuying it, PROVIDED IT'S STILL BEING SOLD, but I really don't want to test that.
So, obviously you should back up first, right? Well, guess what:
1. While MOST save games can be copied off the console, some CANNOT.
2. Installed game data CANNOT be copied off the console.
3. Downloaded content CANNOT be copied off the console.
In short, you can backup CERTAIN save games, but not ALL save games.
And most firmware updates don't *need* to be done in the first place, and the makers certainly shouldn't prevent you from online play if you don't upgrade unless it would be a natural by-product of the upgrade (like the online play server was moved or something).
To be fair on this front, they did rip off Xbox Live's Achievement system in this update, so presumably some aspect of online play has changed.
'Course, I'd imagine that would only affect servers and NOT clients, so there SHOULD be no reason for clients to update, but...
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I was thinking about this a few days ago... basically the best solution (to me) would be a ROM-based bootloader (not upgradable) which attempts to load the latest firmware, and if the system doesn't boot with a success code within a certain timeframe, it automatically restores the previous firmware with a warning message saying that the upgrade failed. If it boots successfully, the previous firmware would then be purged.
This allows for full OS upgrades (except for the low-level bootloader), without bricked
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Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wrong. The Xbox ran a modified version of Windows 2000 [wikipedia.org], for example. They're just not general purpose operating systems and contain only what's needed to make games. Otherwise, every single game would need to write filesystem access code and drivers to access the harddrive and whatnot.
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As its name suggests, firmware is somewhere between hardware and software. Like software, it is a computer program which is executed by a microprocessor or a microcontroller. But it is also tightly linked to a piece of hardware, and has little meaning outside of it.
So would the Xbox OS be considered firmware, yes as I can't just fire that up onto a non Xbox platform and have it work. Same with the Wii's OS, and the PS3's OS. They are all OSes but they are firmware just the same.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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That's odd, because the Xbox and Xbox 360 SDK documentation mention that the kernels are based upon the Windows 2000 kernel.
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"but Xbox runs a custom operating system built from the ground up"
Microsoft hasn't written anything "custom" "from the ground up" since the 1970's or so.
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The XBox ran a custom OS, not a modified version of Windows. People thought it was a tweaked Windows because the APIs were similar to DirectX.
Re:Which is why... (Score:5, Informative)
Since this problem can be fixed by simply reformatting the HD, obviously the actual firmware is fine, it's what has been installed on the HD that's borked..
My system was fine with the update btw *shrug*
Re:Which is why... (Score:4, Funny)
Your definition of "fine" is one i'm not familiar with.
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The system update is not a 'firmware' update, otherwise you wouldn't have to download the system updates again after reformatting the drive. I know from experience that you do indeed have to do this. That's all I'm trying to point out.
If putting in a fresh formatted drive fixes the system, then the problem is with the code that was on the HD, not in the firmware. Saying that the firmware is broken is like saying your BIOS is broken because a Windows startup file has been corrupted.
Seems a lot of people here
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"Since this problem can be fixed by simply reformatting the HD"
"Simply?" Spoken like a man who has no idea how long it takes to fully update a fresh Final Fantasy XI install.
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Nor will I ever know. System updates, GT5 Prologue, GTA4 and MGS takes ages to install too, but I can go eat, go out, go to bed, watch TV, whatever, while that's happening. If your system is that badly fscked up then what do you expect? Is a restore of your data on an already working system going to be any quicker than installing Final Fantasy whatevertheheckversionitisnow? It's not like you have to do it every day too. Wow people are impatient these days..
Of course this isn't great on Sony's part, I can't
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"but I can go eat, go out, go to bed, watch TV, whatever, while that's happening"
If that's so fun and exciting to do, why not do it while the PS3 is working? After parting with the currency I dropped on the console, I'd like to actually use it from time to time.
"Is a restore of your data on an already working system going to be any quicker than installing Final Fantasy whatevertheheckversionitisnow?"
Going through a PlayStation Store download, 5 disks, and 6 hours to download 6 years worth of patches is jus
I know who can help! (Score:3, Funny)
Backup early, Backup often (Score:5, Insightful)
Yikes. With consoles becoming more complex and more like computers with each generation, it looks like issues like this will become all too common. How long before someone brings a PS3 backup utility to market?
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Re:Backup early, Backup often (Score:5, Informative)
PS3s have USB ports and the built in OS lets you back up your saved data easily to them. You're just spreading unecessary FUD without knowing what you are talking about.. I don't want to be overly critical because I end up doing similar things from time to time, but you just end up looking silly if you make baseless accusations like that.
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A bunch of your saves/downloaded content will be tied to your console in various ways.
Sometimes your save file is locked down so you can't even move it off of the system.
All thee platforms have this problem to various degrees.
Welcome to the next generation.
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Well I haven't had that problem with the games I own so far. I transferred my guitar hero save over to a friend's console, and also transferred all of my saved data when reformatting the HDD. I certainly wouldn't place all the blame on Sony if a game developer has asked that save data be non-transferable for some weird reason..
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By this point, "backing up" saved games should be a non-issue. There should be a partition on the PS3 hdd that ALL saved games get saved to. And those files should be saved twice, in case one fails. And there should be the option (on by default) to save the saved games to a online "userspace". And all of this should be automatic
I should also have the option of manually backing up the game data to anywhere at anytime of my choosing. To a network share. To a USB key. To a myps3backups.sony.com site.
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I was only talking about backing up the saves, all of which have been fine for me so far, and basically I don't even need the saves either.
Even my saved game data isn't that important to me at the moment: I can complete all the guitar hero songs apart from the battle against the devil and Through the Fire and Flames on Expert, and my Battlefield Bad Company profile data is just held on the EA/DICE servers. I was thinking about restarting MGS from the start anyway now that my skills and confidence have impro
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Yeah I know, I was just pointing out that that's the OS, not the firmware. I take 'firmware' to mean the actual code that is held on the mobo somewhere and nothing to do with what is on the HD. I'd say this is the equivalent of messing up your Windows installation and not having a CD to restore/repair from.
I'm aware that the thing is essentially bricked unless you take it apart, but for most slashdotters that's quite an easy fix and certainly doesn't require you to send the machine away or buy a new one lik
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I don't see why that wouldn't work for a PS3 HDD. Though I have not tested - anyone actually know?
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Re:Backup early, Backup often (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Backup early, Backup often (Score:4, Insightful)
Err, the PS3 ships with one built into its system. You can, at any point, have it do a backup to a memory card (assuming you have a large enough one) or a USB-connected external hard drive.
Would mod you up if I could. It's true the PS3 has a backup/restore function build right into it. I've used this function to backup while trying to upgrade my hard drive. However I've never gotten the restore to work even though I've backed up to several external hard drives. Thinking about it now the hard drive I'm upgrading to came from a laptop and has a 4GB "recovery" partition that I wasn't able to remove in Windows. I assumed the PS3 would remove this partition and create one for the entire drive when I formatted it but honestly never checked. I'll have to plug it in when I get home and see how many/what size partitions it has on it.
Re:Backup early, Backup often (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Backup early, Backup often (Score:5, Informative)
If you're having trouble with a stubborn partition that nothing seems to be able to remove for you, install it in a computer, boot up a Linux live cd, and try this from the command prompt:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=1M count=5hdX in the above refers to the hard drive. You may have to watch the boot messages to find out which value to use depending on how you connected it. It could also end up being sdX instead.
That command will write 16 megs of zeros directly to the beginning of the hard drive, which will nuke the boot sector and partition table. After that, any partitioning tool will see it as a brand new, unpartitioned drive, and shouldn't give you any more grief.
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You're right, it will. I generally do 16 meg for no other reason than habit. When I typed the command above, I originally had 16 there, then lowered it to 5 since 16 is overkill (but, so is 5 for that matter....). Apparently I neglected to edit the corresponding number in the paragraph below. In truth, 1 meg would do the job for you.
Basically, rather than having to memorize exactly how many bytes the boot sector and partition table take up, just blast a few megs of zeros onto the beginning of the drive
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You can back up your saved games easily to a USB flash drive from the main menu. You don't really need to back up anything else really, you can reinstall games from the original disc, and you don't actually need to have any media on the PS3 since you can stream it. I might consider backing up my save data next time I do an upgrade though :s This particular one was fine on my PS3, as were all the ones beforehand. The only time I've reformatted my HDD so far was to create a Linux partition.
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Yikes. With consoles becoming more complex and more like computers with each generation, it looks like issues like this will become all too common. How long before someone brings a PS3 backup utility to market?
Why? All you do is plug in your usb disk or Flash card (if you have the model that supports this) and backup (selected from the XMB). Recovery is no issue as well (also selected from the XMB).
Like anything with storage you should back it up regularly.
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Turns out backing up doesn't help since whatever causes the problem is saved in the backup data. Someone had the problem, formatted and got things working only to have the problem again when he restored the back up data.
See the persons's post in the Playstation blog comments (#261) [slashdot.org]
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Oops, not sure what happened to the link, but here's here's the correct one [playstation.com].
Here's a bit of advice (Score:4, Interesting)
Next update, do a backup, then accept the update. Worse comes to worst, wipe the disk and restore the backup. The snag is that you _can't_ format the drive inside of the PS3 as the XMB menu doesn't come up.
Still, I'm pretty surprised that Sony doesn't have better QA on something like firmware updates. One mis-step and they can end up with millions of bricks in the wild. They should have a "restore previous firmware version" at a very low-level in the firmware. Something triggered by holding a button or two during power-up.
Re:Here's a bit of advice (Score:4, Informative)
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Check a prev post, they revealed that the PS3 does indeed keep the latest and the last 2 bios updates, it first tries to post one, then if it fails goes back through them till it starts.
At a guess this is something they fubared further up the tree than just bricking the post.
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In this case it turns out backing up doesn't help since whatever causes the problem is saved in the backup data.
Someone had the problem, formatted and got things working only to have the problem again when he restored his backup data.
See comment #261 [playstation.com] at the playstation blog entry on 2.40's delay.
No problems here (Score:3, Informative)
Did the 2.4 update on my 80GB (MGS bundle) this morning. No problems whatsoever.
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Same here, updated with no problems and all the new features work as advertised. I also have Linux on a separate partition, so that at least is not causing the problem.
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Ditto, 80GB MSG bundle with a Linux install, 2.40 is working fine.
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I found that in-game XMB does not work with PS1 and PS2 games. You can only stop the game and if you want you can change the virtual memory card or even select a different controller then get back to the game, however you have been able to do this for PS1 and PS2 games for quite some time now.
PS3 Firmware Update (Score:2, Informative)
I updated our PS3 last night and it works just fine. The kids like the new features also.
Breaking: The update's been pulled (Score:5, Informative)
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http://kotaku.com/5021575/sony-pulls-ps3-240-firmware-after-reported-problems [kotaku.com] Looks like it needs a bit more QA.
In the comments I could not find anyone who had a problem. There are plenty who are upset and nervous about upgrading or just waiting on a so called "fix", but I could not find anyone who's PS3 had been bricked.
The 2.40 firmware has been pulled (Score:5, Informative)
The firmware has been officially pulled by Sony for review. Even though it affected a minority of users, it must be pretty bad for Sony to do that.
See the KB link [custhelp.com].
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I believe he meant "pretty bad" as in the error itself, not Sony's decision to pull it.
Yes that's what I meant.
Rampant..? (Score:5, Interesting)
'Rampant denial'? I updated last night and had no problems. I don't know that any of my PS3-owning friends had problems. I guess that makes us 'fanboys'.
Point #1 - Any firmware update has the potential to go wrong, especially when it's as large as the PS3 firmware is (130Mb) and can be downloaded over flaky links and installed from potentially faulty hard drives.
Point #2 - Wiping the drive shouldn't be an issue if people are running backups like they should be. Sony *do* provide a backup utility for this. Don't read this as an excuse for Sony - if the firmware is flawed, they should have done more testing, but EVERYBODY should be backing up their data if they care about it!
Re:Rampant..? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, that doesn't fly. Checksums have been a known quantity for decades.
Again, doesn't fly. Rollbacks and non-destructive upgrades have been a known quantity for decades. And you have zero excuse when your update is less than one percent of your smallest target harddrive.
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And yet firmware updates routinely brick a small percentage of every device - be they consoles, video cards, routers, you name it. There are update precautions in every hardware manual I've ever seen.
All I was trying to say was 'it's dangerous, and before you do something dangerous you should back up your data'. Obviously I didn't make that clear enough, it was buried in my second point.
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A
Point #2 - The firmware should automatically make a backup of settings when doing an upgrade and user space data should NEVER be wiped.
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Talk about overkill...the PS3 doesn't use a P2P system, does it? It probably just downloads from a single TCP connection, so a simple hash or even a signed hash is all that would be needed. They probably already use one anyway, so the flaky download/disk drive argument is likely a red herring.
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The beauty of hash trees is that you don't need the whole tree to verify the file, you only need the root hash and then if it turns out they don't match (meaning the file or the hash itself somehow got corrupted) then you can request the rest of the tree.
Torrent files were just one
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Strangely enough, at least one game, MGS4, has a built in bittorrent client for updates.
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Point #1 - Any firmware update has the potential to go wrong, especially when it's as large as the PS3 firmware is (130Mb) and can be downloaded over flaky links and installed from potentially faulty hard drives.
Point #2 - Wiping the drive shouldn't be an issue if people are running backups like they should be. Sony *do* provide a backup utility for this. Don't read this as an excuse for Sony - if the firmware is flawed, they should have done more testing, but EVERYBODY should be backing up their data if th
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Regarding point #1, I would expect they probably are, but hey, this is Sony, and Sony are bad and evil, right? :)
On point #2, you don't HAVE to update when Sony tells you to - you can back up before installing the new firmware, or just ignore the firmware update altogether (although by doing so you'll lose PSN access). So it's not impossible to plan at all.
I'm not suggesting a daily backup - only backup when you don't want to lose whatever's been stored since the last time, same as a computer. In my case,
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Fair enough, I should have read the thread to confirm. The fact that I didn't should be read as a self-preservation instinct rather than laziness - I loathe console forums.
Anonymous FUD? The hell you say!?! (Score:3, Funny)
Who would have thought an anonymous submission would be not entirely accurate.
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PS3 sucks.
Xbox 360 sucks.
Wii sucks slightly less, but sucks in several other ways, so it still sucks.
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I have all of the above.
The PS3 makes a fine blu-ray player. But most of my gaming takes place on the Xbox 360 or Wii.
None of them suck. They just feed different interests.
--AC
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For a number of reasons, these operating systems are treated like firmware because they're embedded into a single image onto an IC. It's not (safely) possible to reflash portions of the image on the fly so the whole thing is written over for each change.
Some UMPC's and handheld media players and stuff, usually working off GNU/Linux, do this too, then save configuration and stuff on hard drives or other storage.
This is generally cheaper, faster, and less vulnerable to user error.
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For a number of reasons, these operating systems are treated like firmware because they're embedded into a single image onto an IC. It's not (safely) possible to reflash portions of the image on the fly so the whole thing is written over for each change.
So who on the Sony team failed to foresee a failed flash? Motherboards have been out f'r a while with the "Dual BIOS" feature; other than cost, why couldn't this have been implemented in the PS3?
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The PS3 for the most part is a fine machine. To say they don't give a rat's ass about the consumers is a huge generalization. The whole 2.4 patch was due to feedback from PS3 users. Most large companies have problems with keeping high standards throughout. While Sony is not the same as they used to be, they still have good products out there.
PS: I updated with no problems.
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Yeah, because Caucasians are too damn tall.
Re:Any reason to update? (Score:4, Informative)
You need to update to use the PSN network (for multiplayer gaming and the PSN Store), so it's almost mandatory unless you're not networked.
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