[PS3] - Cobra USB

[Demon Cleaner]

Again some news. Hopefully they will support 3.55 soon.

18 - 06 - 2011

We have released Cobra Firmware v2.0 and Cobra USB Manager v2.0, which are both available from the downloads page. Changes in this release include:

- Added the ability to play PS2 ISO backups from CECHC and CECHE backwards compatible consoles. Support for the remaining backwards compatible models, CECHA and CECHB, will come in a future update
- PS3, PSX, DVD and BluRay ISO's can now be played without a real disc inserted in the PS3. Support for discless PS2 backups will come in a future update
- Added an option for those users without a PS2 backwards compatible PS3 (including Slims) to test PS2 original games and ISO backups using the PS2 software only emulator which is by default included with all PS3's. Please note however that as the software only emulator is slow and very buggy, this feature is disabled by default and is only intended as a gimmick
- Cobra USB manager can now make PS3 ISO's from backups in the standard "Jailbreak" directory format, using the copy function
- Cobra USB manager is now less strict with cue/bin filenames
- Bugfix: Cobra USB Manager was unable to get the PSX CD-ROM/CD-R title, and displayed "PSX-CDROM" instead
- Bugfix: Under rare circumstances, Cobra USB Manager could dump invalid PS3 discs

The user manuals have been updated to reflect the changes in the v2.0 release. In addition, we have released a PC-side genps3iso tool which can convert backups dumped in the standard "Jailbreak" directory format to the ISO format supported by Cobra. As mentioned above, this is also supported directly within Cobra USB Manager however the process is faster and in our opinion easier to perform on the PC.

[Harrison]

how much software needs 3.55 to run? And do you know if anything needed 3.6+ yet? we are now officially on 3.65 as of a recent update a couple of weeks back.

[Demon Cleaner]

You can run almost all software, emus, homebrew and stuff on 3.55, only the Cobra USB dongle supports 3.41 so far, but they are working on it to get it running under 3.55.

Latest games need 3.6+, although sometimes a patch is released to get them running under 3.55, but the very new ones still will need 3.6+. Most of them games patches contained 3.55 keys, so they were able to compile a patch for the game, but that changed some days ago, and there won't be 3.55 updates for games anymore. Not every 3.6+ game has official patch with 3.55 or earlier SDK compiled executable.

[Demon Cleaner]

Finally the Cobra USB works for 3.55:

24 - 07 - 2011

The Cobra Team is proud to present the Cobra 3.0 firmware pack, available from downloads section. In this release we enabled the Cobra USB device on 3.55 via use of our own cfw. Enjoy the release and look forward to many new features to come in future releases. Please be sure to read the updated user manual for detailed instructions on upgrading and usage!

Anyone sportin' the Cobra will be happy to know you can now upgrade to their 3.55 custom firmware, letting you take advantage of all the latest features Cobra 3.0 has to offer. Features like what?

Features like this:

Blu Ray Movie region free functionality
Allows you to play Blu Ray movie ISO’s from HDD
Allows you to play DVD movie ISO’s from HDD
Integrated support to play PS1 game ISO’s from HDD
Enjoy PS3 games with files >4GB on external USB HDD
Integrated support to play PS2 ISO's on CECHC,CECHE, CECHA and CECHB backwards compatible consoles.
Partial support on other PS3 consoles to play PS2 ISO's via software emulation
Supports FAT and SLIM PS3 consoles any region
Supports versions up to 3.55
Unique custom Cobra firmware acts as OFW when dongle not inserted
Play PS3 games from internal HDD
PS3, PSX, DVD and BluRay ISO's can now be played without a real disc inserted in the PS3
MCU firmware and flash firmware updatable using easy to use free PC updater
First class customer support and free regular firmware upgrades
No need to open your console, just plug and play
High quality components and materials used throughout
Unique and built from scratch Cobra USB manager featuring slick U.I. and customized options with easy navigation
Actel based encryption engine onboard to prevent device cloning
Fast onboard 2 Mbyte SPI flash for firmware storage
High quality onboard MCU
Easy mode selection via switch (PC update, PS3 downgrader, regular PS3 device mode)
Downgrader functionality included free of charge, allowing users to upgrade firmware to and from 3.41 at will.
Multi lingual user interface (English, Spanish and French as standard with more languages to be supported later)

That's pretty cool. If you're looking to upgrade you can find all the latest downloads on Cobra's website right here. That includes their 3.55 CFW and Cobra USB firmware.

Note: If you do not own a Cobra USB stick, then you need not upgrade to their custom firmware. But know this: Hackers are working to reverse the Cobra, figuring out how it all works, and it is a safe bet it'll be open sourced, flashing its way onto our USB dev. boards ... sooner or later.

The last part might be interesting

[Harrison]

Nice that a disc is no longer needed in the drive to run ISOs. And it is great that they have continued work on this.

If only someone would release something similar for the current 3.6.x firmwares.

[Demon Cleaner]

Some more nice updates:

01 - 09 - 2011

Cobra Firmware 3.1 is out, minor release to fix bugs.

- Fixed stability problems. Cobra users are advised to update to this firmware as soon as possible.

- Fixed compatibility issue with Mortal Kombat.

- Fixed PAL/NTSC issues in psx games.

- Bugfix: some few specific psx titles such as Langrisser Final Edition wouldn't play in other regions.

- Fixed a possible discless bug under very rare circumstances.

- Cobra USB Manager can now understand the ".001, .002, ..." name convention used by hjsplit and other similar programs and rename them automatically to
".0, .1", name convention. Users can use hjsplit or any other similar tool to split iso files in the PC.

- Added functionality to the core to implement a cobra firmware updater in the PS3.

05 - 09 - 2011

Cobra Firmware v3.2 More Features and bugs fixed.

- Added support for PS2 backups in optical discs (CD-R/DVD+-R)

- PS2 original games are now region free too.

- Fixed a bug that caused incompatibility with several PS2 backups in iso format.

- Fixed some remaining PAL/NTSC problems in PSX games.

- Cobra USB Manager will output now a mds file too when dumping a dual layer DVD or PS2-DVD. This file is not used by Cobra at all, but it can be used
for burning to a dual layer DVD+-R while keeping original layer structure. This is mandatory when burning dual layer PS2 dvd's.

[Demon Cleaner]

Some more updates, version 4.0 released:

04 - 10 - 2011

- Added initial support to play PSP games in iso format. Please read the user manual for instructions.
The emulator is not perfect and it currently fails in saving/loading data, but there are several games playable at full speed. We've fixed some bugs in the emulator, and it loads now more games that it originally did. In the future, we will continue to improve the compatibility of the emulator and fix the savedata issue.

- A new version of cobraflash has been released, and is required to install firmware 4.0, that uses a new format. You can find it in the download section. Drivers remain the same, there is no need to update them.
New update format is more secure against bad writes, and it will be compatible with cobra updater for PS3 which will be released along with firmware 4.1.

PSP play could indeed be really nice.