SCPH-20401 EL HDD (Pal?)

Got an official hdd, boxed. Its label says PAL and the instructions are marked SCEE, and 2002. Does this lend any weight to possibility that Sony intended to release the HDD for PAL regions or is it the Linux HDD that i think did get a PAL release. can post pics if needed.

 

If you have the utility disc that comes with it, then they really intended to.

 

No utils disc im afraid, just the HDD, mounting bracket and instructions. I tried to get my HDD format disc to boot but it just quits back to the browser.. Could be that its a PAL console though. I need to try it on a Japanese or US one..(Opens browser clicks on Ebay)

 

If it came in a brown box by itself, it's the Linux HDD (released officially in PAL region).

If it came in a box with FFXIII, it's the official game HDD.

-hl718

 

White Glossy box, on its own, no software. At Girlfriends at the mo, will post a pic tomorrow


UPDATE

 

That is so obscure, where'd it come from?

 

I saw some of those on eBay a while back.

 

I'm going to take a guess and say the EL stands for European Linux. The HDD itself is region free and for all piratical purposes can be used in any PS2 . The HDD itself isn't any more valuable than any other retail HDD.

Now the utility disc if you had one would be priceless as well as the contents of that disc. I can guarantee you there would be tons of individuals who would want those contents.

But I would doubt if you had such a disc. The reason being is PAL PS2s appear not to search the HDD when booting. If you have ever used a JAP or USA PS2 one of the things that you would notice is when a HDD is plugged in the PS2 will spin up the HDD and read it before showing the browser (even if there is no software installed or the HDD is unformatted). The PAL PS2s do not exhibit this behavior (at least the ones I have tested with). This leads me to believe that the someone at SCEE purposely decided that Europe was never to have this accessory (at least not for games.)

 

I disagree on this one. At least it is a nice collectible; and if it is an official HDD, it also includes the modified firmware that allows it to be recognized by the HDD-enabled OSD (without ATAD patching).

Yes, indeed. I would be one of them :drool:.

Which consoles did you test on? My SCPH-39004 (0160EC20011004) includes the HDDLOAD module in ROM (which is responsible for activating DEV9+ATAD and reading the MBR) and spins up any connected HDD.

 

Every single PAL "phat" PS2 I had here were capable of booting from the HDD. Unfortunately booting from the HDD requires a certain special kind of Magic Gate encrypted data (KELF) with an format is different from the usual KELF files used on DVD Player updates. So trojan horse like techniques (FMCB) won't work unless an similar file (MBR style) for the PAL region units is found.

Silverbull had a good look on how the MBR stuff works so he knows this subject well enough. I happen to know this too because I helped by providing him with means to deal with the encrypted data for Japanese and US consoles. The analysis was all done by him.


Also adding as additional information:

European PAL units are not the same as Oceania PAL units or Russia PAL units. Each use their own MG keys so they're incompatible with each other even thought they run the same discs.

So in fact the PAL consoles do turn the HDD on and try to boot from it. Since it finds no valid MBR data it just stops the HDD and continues on.

A PS2 will only load anything from the HDD if:

The HDD contains the "sanctioned" firmware with SCEI ATA commands.
The HDD contains a valid APA partition table.
The HDD contains an valid MG encrypted MBR at sector 8192 (value is set on the MBR header so it can vary. 8192 is what the standard OSD uses.)

The MBR which will load the OSD or anything else it has to do.
It could be used for example to auto launch an licensed game for Arcade environment such as it's done with the Konami BEMANI PYTHON 2:

http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=831

 

im not really sure if it's the modchip of my rig but im fairly sure it will spin up the hdd on it when connected upon boot (PAL v9)

i can test that sometime if needed, assuming i'll get arsed to unbox the thing once again.

 

Got it from Ebay. There are two people selling them, one has/had eight left, the other ten+ i think. Only paid £15 for it on a best offer.
It was blank and needed formating. There is no software with it so i used HD Loader to format, then ran the hacked hddosd.
As i said it won't boot the HDD utils disc or PSBBN, for obvious reasons.
I have a PAL SCPH50003 by the way.

If anybody wants or needs it, i have access to PC3000 (at work) and could dump the firmware.

 

The PAL PS2 linux kit we have has the drive in a red box with the code SCPH-20401 E. The drive itself just having the code SCPH-20401.

 

I'd love to have a look on the drive firmware.. YES

Then I have the following drives here:


Seagate ST340015A:


D540X-4D(MAXTOR ROMULUS):


Seagate ST340823A:


Maxtor Fireball 3 (2F040L0):



Which type is the drive you have with you ?

I would try to extract myself a dump of the firmware if I had PC3000 here but I don't (not currently)

I once felt adventurous and poked around with an old russian hacked version of it and made this ROMULUS work on the PS2 without modchip or anything of the sort:



I just had to replace a few modules on the firmware (same FW revision "DAH017K0") and it worked. :thumbsup:

 

Will take to work as soon as...

 

Took to work today and booted up pc3000... then realised i dont know what im looking for or how to back up said files. hey l_oliveira do you know the particular area i need to look.. :redface:

 

Dump the whole firmware (all overlay files) and the bootloader (LDR).

The complete dump for the Romulus should be something around 20MB total I believe...

 

Does PC3000 report which type of microcontroller the drive uses? Might come in handy when trying to understand/disassemble what the firmware does.

 

The SCEI Romulus uses an semi-customized Texas Instruments DSP chip with built in MASK ROM, which is standard on this hard drive family. There's some PCBs with Agere chips too but the SONY one aways use the Texas DSP. The normal MAXTOR retail one (probably due to being older than the SCEI one) uses the same DSP used on the Athena family, but with an "update ROM" onboard. I assume the only difference on these DSP chips is this flash/MASK rom.

The retail MAXTOR Romulus uses D741667BPGF + FLASH.

The SCEI Fireball 3 uses an Agere POKER D8 CPU with onboard flash.

The Seagate ST340823A use an SEAGATE custom chip made by ST Microelectronics and is a customization of the U5 series (rubber jacket model) drive. I have an ST310211A (10GB) which I got from an classic XBOX and has the same PCB as the SCEI (40gb) one.

All the drives use their (otherwise) standard PCBs for their respective families. The fun stuff is aways on the drives overlay sectors. :thumbsup:

Edit:

Not that I recall. It mostly relies on vendor commands to perform maintenance tasks such as repair firmware modules CRCs or dump/overwrite. I don't think the russian folks who wrote the PC3000 software would be willing to help their customers into reverse engineering the drives firmware ... hehehe

 

Tried again friday to dump firmware, but this time it refused to see the HDD even in the BIOS. When i took it home and tried it back in my PS2 the same thing happened.. I think either i have done something to it whilst messing with a program i know very little about or one of my nice co-workers has dropped it or done something else.. I will try to buy another later this month. Sorry.