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Broken DRMs: Thanks to the efforts of the PCSX2 team over the years, PS2 emulation is now a “solved” problem. However, retro enthusiasts are still pushing the old gaming hardware to its limits in an effort to extract even more secrets from its chips.
Reverse-engineering enthusiast “DiscoStarslayer” recently announced that the MechaCon security chip used in PlayStation 2 consoles has finally been dumped. The “secret” chip is now being fully documented, which should help developers with modding projects designed for original hardware.
DiscoStarslayer said that the MechaCon chip has now been broken wide open. The developer worked for four years on the project, decapping the physical chip and optically dumping the firmware hidden within it. DiscoStarslayer worked in partnership with another developer named “Libby,” who found the exploit used to dump the firmware data.
DiscoStarslayer said that dumping MechaCon was his personal Moby Dick project, as no one had been able to achieve the same result in 26 years. “There is always something else,” the coder said, but dumping MechaCon could nonetheless be a significant win for the modding and reverse-engineering community.
The MechaCon chip was tasked with managing several functions related to security, authentication, and encryption for the PlayStation 2’s software and hardware accessories. The chip decrypted memory cards, ROMs, and discs encrypted with Sony’s “MagicGate” copy protection, parsing and reading the content stored on original game discs.
DiscoStarslayer promised that a full write-up about the arduous task of dumping MechaCon will be available soon. For now, the game preservation enthusiast is sharing metadata and firmware hashes for all the dumps obtained so far. Furthermore, the coder and his “partner in crime,” Libby, are working to improve exploit compatibility with later revisions of the MechaCon chip.
Dumping the MechaCon chip is a significant milestone for reverse-engineering efforts focused on the PS2. However, the resulting dumps and documentation will likely provide very little help toward significantly improving software-based emulation of Sony’s legendary console.
PCSX2 can now be considered a tried-and-tested, almost-perfect software replica of the PS2 on modern PC systems, with more than 98% of all PS2 games now in a “playable” state according to the emulator’s compatibility data. However, documenting the MechaCon chip might help hardware modders, or even lead to a proper optical-drive emulator for the original console. PS2 fans have been waiting for something like this for years.
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