Release: VitaRW gives us write access to Vita’s protected partitions (where’s my downgrader?)

wololo

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73 Responses

  1. Wrozen says:

    Last

  2. Kaitou797 says:

    I wish there is a way to downgrade to 3.60, my little brother update the Vita by mistake.
    Wish you all the best guys <3

  3. Gambikules says:

    Lol

  4. Sansibar says:

    WOW! First

  5. nope says:

    Someone made a good point on Reddit, will this allow write access to gro0:? If so, that would be amazing.

    • nope says:

      I kind of doubt it, but wouldn’t hurt to ask. I have a feeling it will eventually be possible, but might not be as easy as this method.

    • StepS says:

      I doubt it. Think of it like non-rewritable CDs. It’s most likely a hardware limitation (hence the “ro” in gro0:).

      • KeybladeSpirit says:

        Aren’t there a few games that keep save data on the cartridge? I’m willing to bet at least those particular games could be written to.

        • nope says:

          Exactly this, this is the only reason I was thinking it could maybe be possible.

          • Rhodderz says:

            these are more than likley a seperate partition on the cartridge itself (or even a completley different chip on the cartridge)

          • Crzo says:

            Games that save in the cardtridge have a ROM and a small re-writeable memory for the savefile only, so you could write in there…

            So you wouldn’t be able to write in the whole cardtridge but just the savefile, which there are save editors released already already.

        • Salt says:

          IIRC, there’s actually a separate RW partition on the carts for this purpose.

        • Salar says:

          That is another partition i gues , grow or grw or something like that

        • StepS says:

          Those games use a separate read-write partition for saving data (hence the “rw” in grw0:). See the Vitadevwiki article linked in the blogpost.

        • Cypherous says:

          Those have a different partition for the save area, i believe its called grw, for read/write, its going to be a small space and not really of massive value

      • MBA says:

        The reason non rewritable CDs work that way is because of the material it is made of. That’s not the case with Flash memories, and the save partition is another proof of that. It’s simply a “partition”, certainly not a whole new “volume”.

    • ant1012 says:

      Just had a look and it’s giving “failed to retrieve directory listing” in filezilla rather than showing the encrypted files.
      Doing a full dump to my PC now just in case I *** something up while I’m exploring, plus I’ll be able to see which transfers still fail

  6. Aurizen says:

    This is awesome!! Another stepping stone to a CFW

  7. Zeke says:

    Hello hello… just when I think all the good HENkaku stuff is out, this little gem drops on us.

    So, a sign we’ll finally be able to get “under the hood” and change critical system files, eh? Well isn’t that nice. The moment pspemu (with PSP and PS1 support) is back, I’m upgrading my main Vita to 3.60, no question. The fact this article has posted when early attempts have been made is just hugely encouraging.

    I look forward to the next updates on this rolling out… thank you to Major_Tom. Use HENkaku and may Yifan’s love be with you eh? (Ugh that’s a forced reference if ever there was one *groan*)

  8. bfka says:

    Wololo, we love you, but please don’t delete replays! I hope Majot Tom does not share the fate of Hykem!

  9. Aranor says:

    I will have wet dreams when AVLS can be permanently turn off 😀 Stupid *** from Sony (AVLS) makes me angry every time when I turn on Vita 😀

  10. cracker says:

    I hope this will result in a perm-Henkaku.

  11. Brunolab says:

    Jammed my Vita in the toaster. Did not downgrade it either in any way. Please donate for a new Vita

    • nope says:

      You fool, you forgot to throw it in the washing machine first and put it in the oven to try after. If you miss those steps of course finishing it up in the toaster won’t work… People have also mentioned drilling a hole through the screen had the best chance of success but I haven’t tested yet.

  12. Johnson223 says:

    Omg i hope sson we can play ps1 and psp games :3

  13. AlexxLopaztico02 says:

    OhohOHOH THIS IS FUC*ING AWESOME!!!

  14. Shikhar says:

    Keeps getting awesome. First ?

  15. TheRealSlimShady says:

    downgrader?? nice……update to latest, download games from psn, play online, downgrade again and play homebrew ! XD

  16. meysam25 says:

    we going some where know .
    keep up to good work guys

  17. Pirate Cat says:

    I don’t know about a downgrader but, this ought to lead to other interesting things.

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  18. poec says:

    Behold, a new wave of bricked vitas!!!!

  19. Kay says:

    I just badly want to play MH3P on my vita. My work takes me on the road often and I love MH, would be a match made in heaven.

    • Teddy312 says:

      :0 i have the japanese version for the road but would be nice to play it in english again. Its the first game i am gonna download to my vita when it becomes possible. Just like it was my first ever psp game i played for 20 hours straight…

  20. Gaze says:

    I hope someone tries to place older pkg installer, pspemu, and maps onto 3.60. Would be interesting to see if it would have an effect.

    • StepS says:

      I think someone has already tried doing it with the pkg installer and it didn’t work. It’s most likely that the limitation comes from elsewhere in the system.

  21. Salar says:

    Nicely Done Major 😀 We Salute you 😀

  22. PsxPwn says:

    Custom xmb mods here we come

  23. solidsnake says:

    Its just like having the hammer, nails, saws and wood. But you need the carpenter to build the house for you.

  24. thisisme says:

    That’s cool. Does that mean we can run linux on vita?

  25. Dbzgts says:

    I was thinking new exploite comes from the gr0. So maybe the cartridge could be replaced with another game. But, wait.. piracy born from this method probably?????

  26. Vitamon Go says:

    Keep it up.. great job Major Tom.. let’s take one step at a time.. no hurry.. u guys have till Christmas for the vita cfw.. XD

  27. froid_san says:

    Or maybe re-enable old eploits?

  28. shopao says:

    thank god, ill be waiting in that psp emu going to be back again now using that new discovery. i just want to play Initial D Street Stage on my vita so bad. keep up the good work you guys!

  29. ScorpionGamer37 says:

    when they believe they will come out tn-v, or ecfw ark?

  30. OllieD says:

    “There’s always two copies of this for redundancy and updating will only update the inactive partition and the active flag is swapped.”
    Any way we can manually swap the active flag?
    This could potentially allow ‘Downgrading’ to the previous firmware version?
    Flipping to a lower firmware and updating would potentially then update only the inactive partition?
    This way we could keep a low firmware version for Henkaku and an updated firmware for PSN Access?

    • 0x0FFFFFFF says:

      I don’t know if that’s a good idea. We’d need someone to make sure that the configuration for the newer firmware is compatible with the older one. You don’t want to brick your Vita now do you? I don’t think it’s as simple as swapping flags. Updates exist for a reason, and we don’t know how the Vita will react to configuration files doing things that don’t exist in older firmwares. Of course this can be fixed if developers look into it with care, but just swapping back and forth sounds like a bad idea.

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