In the pantheon of PlayStation hardware, the Japan-only PSX surely stands apart as a unique slice of history.
While it was sold as a high-end digital video recorder when it launched in 2003, it contains an integrated PlayStation 2 console, making it a popular choice for hardcore Sony fans over the past two decades.
However, the system is facing an uncertain future due to the fact that the built-in HDD is already functioning well past its intended operational lifespan – and there's currently no option available when it comes to replacement.
Thankfully, the community is rallying to prevent this dark future from happening—and, somewhat ironically, key members of the Xbox modding scene are leading the charge.
Milenko is famous for his work in the realm of original Xbox hardware, but he has put aside any platform affiliations to give more exposure to a campaign – started by another Xbox modder, Derf, on the Console Mods Discord server – to save the PSX.
"As you may know, there is an ongoing concern with PSX hard drives failing, and there is currently no low-cost option to replace them," says Milenko in a social media post.
"Our favourite professional data recovery engineer, @SkyeHDD, has joined the efforts to understand the PSX drive firmware and break open the encryption. Skye has previously used her expertise to help the Xbox community with methods to safely and more easily unlock stock console hard drives for data preservation."
Skye is a professional Data Recovery Engineer who has spent a considerable amount of time figuring out how to unlock Xbox hard drives without access to the unique passwords, which are specific to each system. Via her efforts, long-lost DLC has been recovered and preserved.
If anyone would be generous enough to be able to send any **working** HDDs from PSXs it would help immensely. Firmware work is model specific so the more the better. Something common like the 7200.10 would be idea since those drives are common and go up to 750GB.
It warms our hearts to see the entire retro community coming together in the name of preservation. If you can help this noble venture, be sure to contact either Milenko or Syke.
[source x.com]
Comments 11
Wholesome news. Wishing the best of luck for the modding community.
I've never heard of the PSX before...
@Spider-Kev Amusingly its what a lot of people called the original playstation. IE the ps1. I can't remember why, then they made an actual psx just to confuse people more lol.
I'm curious as to what the issue is with the hard drive replacement? Surely its just a standard IDE drive?
Fingers crossed that they are very successful! The PSX is a really cool part of PS history, so it would suck to see it die of a disease with no known cure as it is currently slowly but surely doing.
@MysticWangForce PSX was the codename for the PS1 during its early development, I think? Well, 'PlayStation-X' was, at least. I'd imagine this was to set it apart from the earlier SNES PlayStation project.
@MysticWangForce
Yeah, I remember the PSX being used for the original.
Then Sony actually released a PSOne which was the super slim white PlayStation
@MysticWangForce Don't know the story with this one but usually these console drives are linked to the console & encrypted with special signing keys. The PSX console may also expect a specific undocumented file-system on the drive too. None of this info would be public and need to be reverse-engineered
As it has the PS and X in the name it makes sense that it would bring the two communities together in harmony!
@MysticWangForce It is an IDE drive, but because the PSX is a digital video recorder, they locked it down. The regular PS2 official HD system was cracked years ago, this is another thing entirely.
I imagine the Xbox guys are on this because the OG Xbox HD was also locked down and each drive was locked to the specific motherboard it shipped with. That was cracked very quickly back in the day.
I always called it the PSX back in the day, but should I have been calling it the PS-Cross?
@MysticWangForce yeah I never understood why the PS1 was called the PSX at the time. Every single magazine called it the PSX for short and I was only a kid so I didn't know what they were even talking about at first.
They only began calling it the PS1 when the PS2 was announced and was being discussed in these magazines (I used to get Powerstation and the Official PlayStation Magazine UK, I wish I still had all my copies of it from back in the day, I would re-read them if I did).
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