January

3rd of January 2010
We(PS3HaX) reported here about what appeared to be a spectacular ISO Loader for the PS3, it was reported that it came all the way from Korea, after all the disappointments and fakes, it wasn’t surprising that most of us called fake, here is a video of it in action:

Guess what…..it was another fake, which wasn’t really a surprise, but still it was a disappointment to some.

23rd of January 2010
GeoHot announces that he has finally hacked the PS3, here is what he said at that time:

“I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I’ve also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip.”

But he also said this

“As far as the exploit goes, I’m not revealing it yet. The theory isn’t really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder.”

April

April 1st 2010
Seen the release of the infamous 3.21 firmware, this was the OtherOS killer for all fat PS3, after Sony promising, to keep on supporting us fat PS3 owners who had OtherOS, they lied and basically kicked us in the face, at the start, this firmware was dubbed “optional” by Sony, thus being you could keep your OtherOS but loose PSN and the ability to play on-line or you could give up OtherOS and keep PSN, this of course was dirty underhanded tactics by Sony, but why should we be surprised, after all the PS3 is the only console in history that i know off to downgrade with each SKU, Sony claimed the OtherOS removal was for security, they may have thought they succeeded, but in reality this is what set of the time bomb, this is what gave the hacker’s/circumventors the extra determination.

7th of April 2010
GeoHot hit back at Sony and showed a video, where he had restored OtherOS to firmware 3.21

The method to fix the OtherOS function, was a type of Custom Firmware, which GeoHot dubbed 3.21OO, which he promised to release soon.

Via his blog he stated:

“Note to the people who removed OtherOS, you are potentially turning 100000+ legit users into ‘hackers’,”
“There was a huge (20x) traffic spike to this blog after the announcement of 3.21. If I had ads on this site I guess I’d be thanking you.”

The first two weeks of May 2010 saw a very bored madshaun1984, who was missing PSN, due to sticking with the 3.15 firmware, successfully compile and run XBMC on PS3 Linux, this was a quite stable install, it wasn’t painfully slow either and it could have been a great thing if more people raised their hands and offered Shaun some help, but nobody was interested and unfortunately it had to be put on hold, here is a video of it in action:

July

July 14th 2010
GeoHot leaves the scene, he most likely did this because he was fed up with the impatient, ungratefully people who tended to troll, his blog and harass him on Twitter, before he closed his blog and Twitter account, here are a few of his final tweets at the time:

* it was a cool ride, and i’ve learned a lot about a lot. perhaps one of these days i’ll do a more formal goodbye.
* I didn’t fully realize most of the current scene don’t care unless they are getting something. Now I do.
* The real reason behind no release isn’t technical. It’s just that it will never stop, after blackra1n, people demand unlock, after blacksn0w, people demand untethered. I miss the days when jailbreaking and unlocking were difficult, it attracted a much higher caliber crowd.

August

11th August 2010
The PS3 is officially released in Brazil, the 120GB slim model cost an extortionate $1,130

19th of August 2010
PSX-Scene announced that the had been in contact with “PS Jailbreak”, they claimed that they were able to prove this as they had a working dongle, of course we had the same scepticism as usual and who could blame us, after all the fakes and let downs, but things seemed different this time, we had a reputable website, that had been in the PS2 scene for a very long time telling us they had sample dongles, we also had a reputable mod chip seller show us this video:

Here is what PS Jailbreak was promising:

PS Jailbreak is a USB plug and play solution that installs in seconds, keeping your valid warranty seal in tact.

Easy to use installer and GUI takes you step by step.

Compatible with all production models FAT and SLIM. Supports all regions: USA, JAP, PAL and KOREA

PS Jailbreak disables forced software updates and will never brick your console.

Supports all games (it does not allow backups of bluray movies , dvd movies , or past consoles games)

Backup games to your internal hard drive or external hard drive through USB, and boot directly off GUI. Eliminating the need for expensive blueray burners and costly blank media.

Play backups off your hard drives 2x as fast as off the blueray drive. This eliminates lags and glitches to provide you with smoother game play.

Open up your console to a new generation of homebrew applications. Load homebrew apps/games off any USB hard drive/flash drive.

Fully updatable with new features/updates by connecting PS Jailbreak to any computers USB port.

Sounds like Belzar and Zpack doesn’t it, well it wasn’t long until, some of the PS3′s scene main guys were on to it, RixhDevX and Mathieulh both confirmed it was the real deal, this was Sony’s Armageddon, though there was one slight problem, the device cost $130+, but a device that allowed you to play backups and homebrew overwrote the extortionate price for some, for others, that couldn’t afford, nor was willing to pay such a device, it was a waiting game.

26th August 2010
The PS Jailbreak device is Reverse Engineered by Gamefreax

31st of August 2010
PSGroove is released, for Teensy++ USB Development Board or AT90USBKEY, it was released by Mathieulh and his team, it is an open source, free version of PS Jailbreak.

September

Whilst PSGroove was for DEV boards and later dongles, people with mobile devices were left out, on the
3rd of September 2010
KaKaRoTo released his own code, dubbed PSFreedom, it had its début on the Nokia N900.

It didn’t take Sony long to respond to this 6th of September 2010, Sony released a compulsory firmware update, that disable PS Jailbreak and all the variants, there was nothing that could be done, those that were unfortunate enough to update, were bang out of luck.

7th September
The very first Homebrew app is released, it was an FTP server released by CJCP, read more here

15th of September
Sony releases its answer to the Wii, a device known as PS Move, here are some specs:
PlayStation Move motion controller
Three-axis gyroscope
Three-axis accelerometer
Terrestrial megnetic field sensor
Colour-changing sphere for Playstation Eye tracking
Bluetooth technology
Vibration feedback

PlayStation Move sub-controller
Built-in lithium-ion rechargeable battery
Bluetooth technology
2 DUALSHOCK or SIXAXIS Wireless Controller replacement capability.

17th September 2010
Comgenie releases Comgenies Awesome Filemanager, now you can browse your PS3′s system files/HDD, without the need of FTP, plus this is the fastest option for transferring games, etc, you can find that great Filemanager here

21st of September 2010
Sony release firmware 3.50, this firmware disables many unlicensed USB controllers.

27th of September 2010
NZHawk releases his Awesome MountPoint Manager.

October

1st of October 2010
Developer AerialX releases PSL1GHT, an Open Source PS3 SDK:

PSL1GHT is a lightweight PlayStation 3 homebrew SDK, provided as a temporary way to compile user apps to run from the XMB using the open-source PS3 toolchains available.

Environment
A GCC toolchain that supports the PowerPC 64bit architecture is required to build PSL1GHT and its samples. This is the only toolchain that I test with and can guarantee support for. PS3Chain probably works just as well, as should marcan’s AsbestOS toolchain. Some toolchains will probably already use newlib, and will make the included newlib unnecessary.

Building
Run make install in the psl1ght directory to build it all, and make sure to set the environment variable $PSL1GHT to the folder where you wish to install it to, for example…

cd /path/to/psl1ght.git
export PSL1GHT=/path/to/psl1ght.git/build
make
make install

… for a local build of it. Ensure that $PSL1GHT is set when you are building any of the examples or other apps that use PSL1GHT.

Status
At the moment, PSL1GHT has basic libc support, with stdout debugging, file access, etc. You can call lv2 syscalls and do some fun stuff with that, but it doesn’t link to PS3 dynamic libraries yet which is where all the exciting functionality comes in. Also, a make_fself equivalent is still missing.

10th of October 2010
NZHawk release Awesome Peek Poker.

21st of October 2010
NZHawk releases Awesome Update Finder, to download or find updates on his app’s, visit his site here

31st of October 2010
AerialX releases PS3Load

As an example I wrote a program called PS3Load. PS3Load allows you to run SELF programs (homebrew) over your wireless or wired network; it uses Wiiload, for those familiar with it and the Homebrew Channel. To use it, simply run Wiiload (download) with a .self file, and point it to your PS3′s IP address.

November

4th of November 2010
CodeZombie releases Pongus a homebrew game based on the Pong game.

7th of November 2010
Sconsole for ps3 is released by Scognito

12th of November 2010
PSEye support added to PSL1GHT

12th of November 2010
The people behind PS Jailbreak, release information on PS Downgrade, this would enable anyone who upgraded to 3.42/3.50 to download to 3.41 or lower.

16th of November 2010
NZHawk releases PSL1GHT Logger & PSPoke v1.0

24th of November 2010
Seen the release of the most anticipated PS3 game, after fours years of making and postponed releases GT5(Gran Turismo 5) was finally released.

24th of November 2010
stoneMcClane releases PS3FTP

A minimal PlayStation3 FTP server written with the help of PSL1GHT

29th of November 2010
Seen the official release of PS Downgrade, you still needed the $100+ PS Jailbreak Dongle to use it.

29th of November 2010
“anonymous” releases PS3SX a PS1 Emulator

December

3rd of December 2010
E3, released their version of Downgrade.

5th of December 2010
Waninkoko releases information on PS3mlib a high level library that provides application programming for PS3, including all types of basic features for video, audio, controls, camera, events, etc.

6th of December 2010
Sony respond to the Downgrade method, by releasing firmware 3.55, which blocked it.

7th of December 2010
PS3Yes and PS3Key release their version of Downgrade
Also on the 7th of December 2010, zAxis releases PSGrade, this was an open source version of PS Downgrade and would work on any Jailbreak device.

8th of December 2010
Has reports that Downgrading blocks Blu Ray movie playback.

8th December 2010
klutsh releases psfServiceMod, it is the downgrade equivalent for several android devices

8th December 2010
gliitch releases a brick fix tutorial, to help those that were unfortunate to brick their consoles during downgrading, anyone still in the need of it, visit here

9th December 2010
graf_chokolo Release his lv2 Decrypter.

11th of December 2010
b0xloader release SELF Loader 1.0, now you can decrypt .self and .sprx.

12th of December 2010
JaiCraB and ps3mrenigma, release Mount_Alejandro, an app that enables write access dev_flash.

13th of December 2010
With Mount_Alejandro released, people start playing with dev_flash, gliitch posts a tutorial on how to change the boot sound of the PS3: