Hacking is not enough: Reverse engineering the PSP
Monday, March 14, 2011
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Interesting job being done bythis guy. He's trying to reverse engineering the old original PSP. I'm not sure what he try to accomplish. Recreate his own PSP hardware maybe :)
The original PSP may be old news but there is an interesting relic of a website (translated) dedicated to the reverse engineering of a PSP (and exploring Saturn?). To determine the true capabilities of the PSP they desoldered most of the ball grid array chips and then hand soldered 157 jumper wires to allow for direct memory access. In later pictures it shows the PSP hooked up to external hardware for on the fly memory modification. Unfortunately the details are sparse and it doesn’t appear as if they will be updated anytime soon because the website has been “deleted and freezed because of spam. may ineffaceable curse prevail on the spammers.” Still this doesn’t detract too much some very impressive soldering.
Google Translated:
Stepping stone to explore Saturn, the moon base was set-up. PSP全体の理解に向け、実質的に何も分からない状況で行った、最初のハードウエア的解析。 PSP for understanding the overall situation we know practically nothing, the first analysis of the hardware. メインボードのチップを取り外し、メモリチップらしいものに配線を強行、157本のワイヤーを手作業でハンダ付けする。 Remove the tip of the main board, memory Chippurashii forced those wires, and wires soldered by hand 157. 端子は0.8mmピッチ。 0.8mm pin pitch. 内蔵されたNAND flashメモリからデータを読み出すための試み。 NAND flash built in an attempt to read data from memory.
* 本来であれば、専用基板を作成しBGAパッケージをリボールして実装するのが順当。 If true, create a special board to implement the orderly BGA package Riboru. その方法とここで採用した方法を比較した結果、ダメ元で後者を採用。 Comparing the method and the method adopted here is adopted under the latter can not.
* パッケージ内には、NAND flashとDDR-DRAMが内蔵されているとされており、まずは各端子が何に接続されているかを推測することから始まる。 In the package, NAND flash and DDR-DRAM that has been built, begins to guess what that is connected to each terminal first.
* 続いてNAND flashのピン配置を決定する必要がある。 NAND flash then you need to determine the placement of the pin. 容量的・ピン数的に似た品種を参考に、ブルートフォースにより各ピンの意味を理解、アクセスのプロトコルを同定する。 Referring to the variety and capacity similar to a number of pins, each pin understand the meaning of the brute force to identify the access protocol.
* それら結果に基づき、フラッシュメモリの内容を読み出した後、各領域の使用目的やフォーマットを推測。 Based on these results, after reading the contents of flash memory, format and purpose of the estimate for each region. ファイルとして取り出して、ソフトウエア的解析に移行する。 Remove the file as a transition to software analysis.
* これにより得られた結果は、初の自作ソフトの作成に大きく貢献している。 This results has contributed significantly to the creation of the first homebrew.
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