Knock off PS3MCA driver
#1
After lightning killed my PS3, I decided to dust off the old PS2 to fill the empty spot on the shelf.  I thought it might be fun to play a few of my games at full speed that my potato of a laptop just simply can't run well.  After the oh so familiar chimes and chords of the boot up I discovered my memory card was unreadable.  Not willing to lose the hours of save data I set out on a journey.

I had one of those cheap Chinese PS3 Memory Card Adapters and from some googling around the web things were grim.  There are no official PC drivers for an official PS3MCA, so I had no hope for a plug and play solution.  Further googling revealed that the Free McBoot community had a driver that worked only with official adapters, but Sony quick DMCAed it off GitHub.  So with a handful of resources scraped from the web, I decided to try my hand at writing my own driver.

And well, I did it.  I have a Python script that will allow me to read, write and erase my memory card with my knock off adapter.  I'm reluctant to post the code online as I don't want to cause trouble for any hosts, but my dms are open for anyone wanting to ask questions.  My card did have a corrupt save at the beginning of the FAT and using the mymc+ tool I was able to extract all the good saves and create a new good image to upload back to my card.

This process also allows for the possibility to alter my save data.  Some games have a simple CRC32 code appended to the end of the file, but Xenosaga has a verification system I can't quite grok.  There are two bytes at the beginning that I'm convinced is some sort of crc code, but there's also a block of data at the end that seems to be random for every save.  I can't tell if it is random or if it's part of the verification algorithm.  I'm at the point where my next step is to isolate the save/load code and analyze what it's doing, but I'd thought I'd ask if anyone has experience with this sort of save before.

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#2
(08-23-2020, 06:19 PM)Maxxus Wrote: After lightning killed my PS3, I decided to dust off the old PS2 to fill the empty spot on the shelf.  I thought it might be fun to play a few of my games at full speed that my potato of a laptop just simply can't run well.  After the oh so familiar chimes and chords of the boot up I discovered my memory card was unreadable.  Not willing to lose the hours of save data I set out on a journey.

I had one of those cheap Chinese PS3 Memory Card Adapters and from some googling around the web things were grim.  There are no official PC drivers for an official PS3MCA, so I had no hope for a plug and play solution.  Further googling revealed that the Free McBoot community had a driver that worked only with official adapters, but Sony quick DMCAed it off GitHub.  So with a handful of resources scraped from the web, I decided to try my hand at writing my own driver.

And well, I did it.  I have a Python script that will allow me to read, write and erase my memory card with my knock off adapter.  I'm reluctant to post the code online as I don't want to cause trouble for any hosts, but my dms are open for anyone wanting to ask questions.  My card did have a corrupt save at the beginning of the FAT and using the mymc+ tool I was able to extract all the good saves and create a new good image to upload back to my card.

This process also allows for the possibility to alter my save data.  Some games have a simple CRC32 code appended to the end of the file, but Xenosaga has a verification system I can't quite grok.  There are two bytes at the beginning that I'm convinced is some sort of crc code, but there's also a block of data at the end that seems to be random for every save.  I can't tell if it is random or if it's part of the verification algorithm.  I'm at the point where my next step is to isolate the save/load code and analyze what it's doing, but I'd thought I'd ask if anyone has experience with this sort of save before.

will PM you.
#3
So there was a bit more interest in the tool than I expected.  I've removed the MagicGate keys from the script, so hopefully that will keep the repo from getting taken down.  I've uploaded the tool to GitHub if anybody wants it.

https://github.com/JasonBrownDeveloper/ps3mca
#4
(01-30-2022, 08:59 AM)Maxxus Wrote: So there was a bit more interest in the tool than I expected.  I've removed the MagicGate keys from the script, so hopefully that will keep the repo from getting taken down.  I've uploaded the tool to GitHub if anybody wants it.

https://github.com/JasonBrownDeveloper/ps3mca
Can you explian how to use the tool and where to find the MagicGate keys?
#5
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