It is not good because you have to disassemble game cart.
I admit that this is not the best approach, so feel free to advice. Schematics and plugging into prototype board. This adapter can be easily made with some pin headers.Ĭonsider looking at pics/pic5.png to see how it should look like. This will be required for further usage of any prototype board.
Since hanging connector is not a very portable solution you can glue the female header so that it is directly inside the hole.įinally you will have to create 1x10 2mm male -> 1x10 2.54mm male adapter. I have soldered 1x10 2mm female header to the pins because it fits the hole for game cart in PS Vita body. You may see at pics/pic3.png that motherboard also has LED1 and place for one more led that is not soldered. I have chosen first approach with desoldering game cart slot since at that point I did not know all the schematics. R3, R4, R5, R6, R7 - these are pull-up resistors for DATA and CMD lines.ĬLK line does not and should not have pull-up resistor. If you want to use second approach - consider looking at pics/pic2.png Resistors are marked as R* (though I am not sure they are really resistors, they can be other smd parts)Ĭ1, C2, C3 - these are most likely supply filter capacitorsĬ4, R2 - these can be RC circuit for generating game cart insert impulse If you want to use first approach - consider looking at pics/pic1.pngĬapacitors are marked as C* (though I am not sure they are really capacitors, they can be other smd parts) I did not have any spare PS Vita motherboard from which I could remove solder mask. It was obtained by using only multimeter. This schematic should not be considered complete. This is overall schematic for game cart slot and surroundings with all markings that you will need. On the opposite side you will see game cart slot. First of all you will need to disassemble PS Vita body and take motherboard out. You can solder to test pads, located on motherboard.You can desolder game cart slot and solder wires to internal pins.There can be multiple ways to access game cart data lines on motherboard.
There were also some software dumps and decryption originally made by Mr.Gas and game modding/decryption made by Major_Tom.
I hope I will be adding more and more details in the future.
This readme should not be considered as full or complete at current point. PS Vita game carts have hardware CMD56 protection which helps PS Vita to identify original carts. I also should say that at current point you will not be able to use any different type of card like SD or MMC. Process of writing content to PS Vita cart is not established yet, though I think it can be done. And such dumps have multiple levels of encryption protection.Įven if there was any possibility to play the dump - from the hardware point of view you would need to write the dump to some spare game cart. These dumps are the same dumps that you will acquire through Henkaku. However this does not mean that you will be able to play cartridge dump on different instance of PS Vita. You should be able to do it if you complete all the steps of this readme. So the good news are that carts actually can be dumped. On the other hand - this approach does not have any firmware dependency since it is not related to software hacking.Ĭurrent version of the board is constructed from DIP components but I think in the future I will create PCB layout and smaller board. I think I should indicate that this research has no relation to Cobra Black Fin project and team.Ĭurrently the process of dumping PS Vita carts is quite involved because you have to create a custom board. PSVCD stands for Playstation Vita Cartridge Dump.īasically this project summarizes my half year research on the ways to do a hardware dump of PS Vita cart.