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.
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)