Talk:Syscon Hardware

Main table problem

Syscon_Hardware#Retail assumes that each PS3 model does have an unique Syscon associated with it, but that's not true. Every syscon within a series (CXR, SW, SW2, SW3) is backwards compatible, e.g. every CXR Syscon works on the COK-001, but only -202GB and newer on a COK-002.
The SoftID (Syscon firmware build id) is a 1:1 mapping to the suffix -XXXGB. So each -XXXGB does have a unique SoftID (in case of retail chips).
The actual platform configuration which defines the board on the which Syscon resides is stored in the EEPROM (CXR) or Flash data section (SW), it can be mapped to the platform id.

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For the sherwoods i been thinking in creating another 2 more tables with the same style, based in the package we have 3 groups: all the "mullions BGA 200 balls" (this is confirmed in many ways, all the mullions shares the same pinout, we have the COK-001 and COK-002 refurbishements with the latest mullion versions CXR714120-303GB and CXR714120-304GB, a metal gear solid special edition COK-002 with a CXR714120-301GB, and the COOKIE-13 and other prototypes with a CXR713F120A), "Sherwoods SW & SW2 QFP 128 pins", and "Sherwoods SW3 QFP 100 pins". The point of grouping them this way is because indicates which ones can be replaced by each others, also im guessing the members of each group are "pinout compatibles" with each others
The other reason is because in the actual table style im keeping the names of the "syscon model", "motherboard model" and "PS3 model" to leverage a bit the skills required to read the wiki pages. With the actual table style the group for the "mullions BGA 200 balls" requires to display the names of 5 retail motherboards in the same table row (one more for the "F"), "Sherwoods SW & SW2 QFP 128 pins" is composed by 5 motherboards, and "Sherwoods SW3 QFP 100 pins" by 8 motherboards. That numbers are fine for splitting the table in 3 groups, otherway if we joing together all the sherwoods it would be needed to have 13 columns 5+8) for the motherboard names and the width of the table would be excesive--Sandungas (talk) 11:58, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

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I like the new table. I don't know if it makes sense to include the ports into the table since Sony never changed them. In theory even the SW(1) chips work on Mullion boards if you adapt them. The "F" syscon problem is interesting, since that model is only used on prototypes and the marking XXXGB doesn't map to a particular firmware (especially since they reuse the chips). We would have to somehow get the TMU-510, TMU-520 and all the prototype boards into the table or just say that the "F" model does support both the retail firmware and then list the known prototype firmwares, this would mean that we only need to add the TMU-520.
Sherwood would need 3 tables since the SW and the SW2 are not interchangable (because of the CEC handling which uses hardcoded HDMI stuff), but I like that idea.
So about the "SoftID" and the platform id: Sony never uses the CECHXxx code internally, the same for the motherboard label (e.g. COK-001), the only thing which they use to identify the hardware is the platform id, which contains the chassis id SKU_Models_Nonretail#Prototype_model_names. On prototype units it's not only stored in syscon, but also on a label on the board and part of the board_id inside cISD1.
So how they do it is start with the platform id, then get the chassis id which then maps to the numeric model code (1000, 1200, 1300...) and the model type byte inside the IDPS. The actual SKU name then gets assigned based on what they want it to be marketed as. That's why I think the SKU name and board name are maybe misleading if you don't know how Sony works with them. The platform id is mapped 1:1 to your actual hardware, the SKU codes (especially for the early models) are all over the place. For example there're CECHA/DECHA with COK-001, COK-001 (with COK-002 syscon) and COK-002, also models certified as CECHE are sold as CECHA in some regions. The CECHM either had a VER-001 or DIA-001, completely different architecture and I wonder how many of these cases we haven't identified yet...
M4j0r (talk) 13:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

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Mullions done, please review the affected pages--Sandungas (talk) 00:51, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

VER-001 with syscon SW-301 or SW-302

It seems VER-001 is the only PS3 motherboard that was shipped from factory with 2 posible syscon models, either SW-301 or SW-302. If we stick to the random reports in wiki and forums it seems the SW-301 was the more commonly used (and it was also the first retail sherwood) and the SW-302 should be some kind of minor revision
If we keep in mind the special syscons made specifically for the frankensteins COK-001 refurbs with 40nm and 65nm RSX maybe something similar happened with the sw-302. The point is... maybe the SW-302 adds support for a newer revision of one of the critical components of the motherboard
And that component could be CELL... the info we have in wiki about the CELL revisions used in VER-001 is not so clear, but it seems the CELL was upgraded from 65nm to 45nm inmediatly after VER-001 (or in the last produced VER-001 models) It seems the production of VER-001 lasted for long because it was used in CECHLxx, CECHMxx, CECHPxx, CECHQxx, if we find someone reporting info about one of the newest produced VER-001 motherboards with the sw-302 the next thing we should ask is about the CELL revision to see if this theory is correct

Sherwoods table backup/wip

The rebuildinig of this table is going to take some time (days?), right now i cant figure how is going to look the final version of it, and i dont want to break the table in frontpage indefinitivelly while rebuilding it, so... is better to do the carnage here, feel free to suggest some improvements or critics

Sherwood Syscons

Syscon								PS3 model & Motherboard compatibility by Platform ID										Notes
Model	Rev. / Ver. / Year	Package	Memory					Prototypes Non-retail	CECHLxx CECHMxx CECHPxx CECHQxx	CECH-20xx	CECH-21xx	CECH-25xx	CECH-30xx	CECH-40xx	?	CECH-42xx	CECH-43xx
			ROM	FLASH	EEPROM	RAM		VERTIGO-02	VER-001	DYN-001	SUR-001	JTP-001 JSD-001	KTE-001	MSX-001 MPX-001	NPX-001	PPX-001 PQX-001	RTX-001 REX-001
See: 101	0658 / ?.??.? / 2008	QFP 128	No	512KB	No	50KB		Yes, factory	YES	YES ?	YES ?	YES ?	No	No	No	No	No
SW-301	065D / 0.17.0 / 2008							YES ?	Yes, factory	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
SW-302	???? / ?.??.? / 2008							YES ?	Yes, factory	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
SW2-301	0832 / 1.11.0 / 2009			768KB				YES ?	YES ?	Yes, factory	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
SW2-302	08A0 / 1.16.0 / 2009							YES ?	YES ?	YES	Yes, factory	No	No	No	No	No	No
SW2-303	08C2 / 1.21.0 / 2010							YES ?	YES ?	YES	YES	Yes, factory	No	No	No	No	No
SW3-301	0918 / 2.3.0 / 2011	QFP 100						No	No	No	No	No	Yes, factory	No	No	No	No
SW3-302	098F / 2.12.0 / 2012							No	No	No	No	No	YES	Yes, factory	Yes, factory	No	No
SW3-303	???? / ?.??.? / 2013							No	No	No	No	No	?	?	?	?	?
SW3-304	09A4 / 2.21.0 / 2013							No	No	No	No	No	YES	YES	YES	Yes, factory	Yes, factory