PS3mageddon
This is undoubtedly the biggest F*up in console history.
If you haven't turned on your phat PS3 in the last few days you may not know what I'm talking about. You can no longer log into PSN. You can no longer play games with trophy support (ex: MW2). You can no longer play any game that uses the internal clock for any reason (ex: Heavy Rain). You can no longer play games that you have DLC for. Almost any game you downloaded from the PSN is now a demo or unplayable. You'll find many of your themes corrupted. If you try to save a game that you can still play there's a good chance you'll corrupt your save files. Check your date, you'll find that its gone back ten years or so. I could go on and on. It's effecting every phat PS3 including those that have never been online and debug and developer models.
Sony is claiming this is due to a PSN error and that they're working on it. It's not a PSN error. I hope to god they're playing dumb due to PR reasons, otherwise most of the engineering staff needs fired.
It's a hardware error. The ARM CPU has a bug in it where it thinks this year is a leap year. The ARM CPU is going to Feb 29 while all the other CPUs with clocks are going to Mar 1. Normally this wouldn't cause a huge problem as the ARM doesn't do anything important. It turns on lights, handles the on/off and eject switches, sleep mode, and other simple stuff like that. It would just mess up your internal clock and some games that use it.
Now for the good stuff. Sony's insane "uncrackable" security. As soon as the ARM CPU's timing went off from the rest of the unit Sony's anti-piracy measures went off. To make a long story short, your phat PS3 thinks its security has been breached and it's locking down on all kinds of stuff. Like games with DLC, Connecting to the PSN, playing downloaded games, trophy support, and anything else evil pirates might try to mess with. Yup, the PS3 won't even turn on a blinky light without a security check.
Sony MIGHT be able to release a firmware patch but a lot of the security that's going bonkers is hardwired into the units. This will be one doozey of a patch as it will have to rewrite a lot of security code and may take a while to be released. But who knows, with tens of millions of screaming customers they may have it out later today (they stopped taking calls btw).
If you can't wait for the update (which may not even come out), there's a "simple" fix. On Mar 2 or later take your PS3 apart. Look for a little black box with a sticker on it somewhere behind your usb ports with a red and black wire going into it. That's the ARM CPU's battery. Unplug it. Wait 15 minutes. Plug it back in. Reassemble PS3. Play and enjoy. You won't have any further issues like this until possibly the next even numbered non-leap year.
*UPDATE*
Okay, the problem has seemed to have fixed itself as the ARM CPU goes from Feb 29th to March 2nd all on its own, thus resyncing the clocks and ending the security lock-up. Damn, could have made me a lot of money. lol
*END UPDATE*
Oh, and the PSN got hacked this weekend as well. lol
If you haven't turned on your phat PS3 in the last few days you may not know what I'm talking about. You can no longer log into PSN. You can no longer play games with trophy support (ex: MW2). You can no longer play any game that uses the internal clock for any reason (ex: Heavy Rain). You can no longer play games that you have DLC for. Almost any game you downloaded from the PSN is now a demo or unplayable. You'll find many of your themes corrupted. If you try to save a game that you can still play there's a good chance you'll corrupt your save files. Check your date, you'll find that its gone back ten years or so. I could go on and on. It's effecting every phat PS3 including those that have never been online and debug and developer models.
Sony is claiming this is due to a PSN error and that they're working on it. It's not a PSN error. I hope to god they're playing dumb due to PR reasons, otherwise most of the engineering staff needs fired.
It's a hardware error. The ARM CPU has a bug in it where it thinks this year is a leap year. The ARM CPU is going to Feb 29 while all the other CPUs with clocks are going to Mar 1. Normally this wouldn't cause a huge problem as the ARM doesn't do anything important. It turns on lights, handles the on/off and eject switches, sleep mode, and other simple stuff like that. It would just mess up your internal clock and some games that use it.
Now for the good stuff. Sony's insane "uncrackable" security. As soon as the ARM CPU's timing went off from the rest of the unit Sony's anti-piracy measures went off. To make a long story short, your phat PS3 thinks its security has been breached and it's locking down on all kinds of stuff. Like games with DLC, Connecting to the PSN, playing downloaded games, trophy support, and anything else evil pirates might try to mess with. Yup, the PS3 won't even turn on a blinky light without a security check.
Sony MIGHT be able to release a firmware patch but a lot of the security that's going bonkers is hardwired into the units. This will be one doozey of a patch as it will have to rewrite a lot of security code and may take a while to be released. But who knows, with tens of millions of screaming customers they may have it out later today (they stopped taking calls btw).
If you can't wait for the update (which may not even come out), there's a "simple" fix. On Mar 2 or later take your PS3 apart. Look for a little black box with a sticker on it somewhere behind your usb ports with a red and black wire going into it. That's the ARM CPU's battery. Unplug it. Wait 15 minutes. Plug it back in. Reassemble PS3. Play and enjoy. You won't have any further issues like this until possibly the next even numbered non-leap year.
*UPDATE*
Okay, the problem has seemed to have fixed itself as the ARM CPU goes from Feb 29th to March 2nd all on its own, thus resyncing the clocks and ending the security lock-up. Damn, could have made me a lot of money. lol
*END UPDATE*
Oh, and the PSN got hacked this weekend as well. lol