In the last entry I wrapped up the testing of the system following its modding and found everything was in good shape – the project was, as far as I’m concerned, a complete success, and I had a European PlayStation 3 with a US power supply, modded to be able to play any game I’d want to on it – PlayStation, PlayStation 2 or (of course) PlayStation 3 software from any region! Barring some games having issues with the emulated Emotion Engine in the particular model of PS3 I had, PlayStation 2 software runs great — all in all, a win for sure, especially for no actual cost to me beyond time. It was a run project, though.
It’s been 3 weeks since I actually did the mod process and I’ve noticed a few little quirks that I thought were worth sharing here. For starters, the system fan ramps up decently when running PlayStation 2 software, enough to be mildly annoying. I figured turning it down just a bit would be okay, and it defaults to 40%. I figured 20% would be fine. Nope. A few minutes into a game the fans ramped up to full speed but the system didn’t actually overheat and shut down — the fan speed ramp up did its job and then some. Of course I went on and set the fan back to 40% and just decided to deal with it — perhaps down the line I’ll tweak it by lower values until I find a safe value, but we’ll see.
Unrelated to performance itself, I’ve still been curious as to just where this system came from, and I think I’ve got an answer from the time settings and the default PlayStation Store location. When setting the system up, it defaults to either GMT+1 or GMT+2 — I can’t recall which, but in either case these would be the time zones for middle and Eastern Europe. In the PlayStation Store, when one goes to set that up, the system defaults to Bulgaria, leading me to believe that may have been its originally sold location, or at least where it was intended to be sold. I could of course be completely wrong on the exact location, but given this is a CECHC04 model unit that implies “Europe / Middle East / Africa” so no matter how you look at this thing it is really odd for it to be here in the middle of the United States, but here it is.
As for the nature of Custom Firmware itself and taking “full advantage” of this thing beyond just running games I already own from ISO’s and not dealing with region lockout, I’ve not done much else with the system. I want to try running Linux on it at some point, but I need to really read up on and get a good guide to the process as it relates to this model system and current CFW options as I (naturally) don’t want to fuck up anything. I know it’d be incredibly inefficient, but the idea of doing a “PowerPC Challenge” with this machine would be a unique one. Maybe one day, but not now.
So, for now this thing is living at my desk as something to play when I feel like it. Right now I’m working through Vice City Stories and having a pretty good time with it after work. All in all, this was a pretty good project.
