ps3netsrv
ps3netsrv is an open source server designed to share files with a PlayStation 3 running either homebrew or custom firmware.
It is provided by the AldosTools team, as part of the webMAN-MOD homebrew addons for PlayStation 3:
Custom firmware on a PS3, along with ps3netsrv, allows game owners to access their games via network shares even after Sony Online services have been turned off, or optical drive hardware has failed.
This video demonstrates setting up ps3netsrv, using a pre-modded PS3 with mutliMAN and webMAN-MOD to connect to the share, ripping a genuine physical disc to the network share and then playing it back over the network.
Run RetroNAS and navigate to "Install things" and then "ps3netsrv".
Take note of your RetroNAS IP, as you'll need it later for the setup on your PlayStation 3.
Under the RetroNAS top level directory, a folder called ps3 will be created, and below it ps3netsrv. Within it will be the following folder structure:
- GAMES
- PS3ISO
- PS2ISO
- PSXISO
- PSPISO
- BDISO
- DVDISO
If you have other file sharing protocols enabled on RetroNAS (Samba, Netatalk, FTP, etc) you can browse to these folders from other computers.
Each folder must only contain the matching type of data. i.e.:
GAMES can contain only PS3 games in file format (i.e.: contents extracted from games, not ISO images).
PS3ISO contains only PlayStation 3 games in ISO image format. Same for PSPISO, PS2ISO and PSXISO (PSX = PS1).
BDISO and DVDISO are for Blu-ray and DVD video ISO images only.
Your PlayStation 3 must be running tools like HEN (Homebrew Enabler) or CFW (Custom Firmware), and must have an IP address on the same network as your RetroNAS. This guide will not detail those procedures, however many easy to follow guides exist online.
With that in place, download and install multiMAN and webMAN-MOD on to your PlayStation 3:
You can optionally configure this in 2 ways:
Directly from your PlayStation 3:
- open mutliMAN
- Navigate to Settings -> Network Servers
- Select /net_host0 from the list, enable it, and set the IP address to that of your RetroNAS, leaving the port as default. Name it anything you like.
or
Enable webMAN-MOD, use a computer/phone to browse to your PS3's IP address via a web browser:
- Click the "Setup" button
- Select the "Scan for content" drop down
- Tick the first "Scan for LAN games/videos" box, and put in the IP address of your RetroNAS, leaving the port as default.
Ensure to refresh content (or configure the system to refresh content on reboot), and if you've placed the correct image types in the correct folders, games and software will appear on the PS3 ready to use directly off RetroNAS.
With multiMAN installed on your PS3, and ps3netsrv configured, you can back up your PS3 discs over the network directly. Load multiman, and then insert your physical disc into the PS3 and wait for it to appear in the games menu. Highlight it, press Triangle on the controller, and select "Make ISO". Multiman will ask if you want to write the ISO to the local hard disk or a network server. Simply select the network server in the list.
You will be limited by the PS3's optical drive, which can only copy data at around 10MB/s. Reading the data back via ps3netsrv will be faster, assuming you are connected via wired Ethernet to a RPi4 and have good quality USB3 attached storage (or are running RetroNAS on a faster computer or VM).
The writing process often breaks on-disk permissions. To fix this, load RetroNAS, navigate to "Global Configuration" and then "Fix on-disk permissions". Select the ps3 folder and hit enter. This will change the on-disk permissions of that folder and all items below it to be usable by all RetroNAS services.
Support is included for PS1/2/3 to use thise you will need ps3netsrv release 20220330 or greater. RetroNAS will always grab and compile the latest ps3netsrv at installation time.
ps3netsrv release 20220330 included fixes for sub directory parsing which is required to use the cd/dvd directories in the PS2ISO folders
If you have a PS3 that does not support PS2 natively, you will need to use the PS2 Classics launcher and a set of ISO.BIN.ENC encrypted isos. NB: Encrypted isos and/or pkgs will not be compatible with OPL on a real PS2
There are two methods for PS2 on PS3 for these models
- HEN 2.0.2+ added encrypted iso support with the PS2 classics launcher, see PS2 ISOs section
- HAN pkg methods are also supported on these models, pkgs will not be compatible with OPL on a real PS2
You can use WiFi, however it will be VERY slow. The PS3 shipped with an 802.11g WiFi chip with a theoretical maximum of 54 Mbit/s (~6 MB/s), although in reality speeds are about half that. Conversely its wired Ethernet port is Gigabit (1000 Mbit/s, ~100 MB/s) spec, although maximum speeds are somewhat lower in reality, they are still much faster than WiFi (and faster than the PS3 optical drive too).
PS3 hardware by spec:
- WiFi is 802.11g, maximum spec 54 Mbit/s (6.43 MB/s), although about half that in real world environments
- Optical drive in Blu-ray mode by spec is 2X, with a maximum read speed of 72 Mbit/s (8.58 MB/s)
- Optical drive in DVD mode by spec is 8X, with a maximum read speed of 86.4 Mbit/s (10.3 MB/s)
- Ethernet adaptor is Gigabit, 1 Gbit/s (120 MB/s)
- Hard disk connection is SATA1, 1.5 Gbit/s (178 MB/s), only achievable in the 2.5" form factor with SSD.
Some tests:
- Dumping a physical Blu-ray disk to an ISO image over the network, maximum speed was 10 MB/s (capped by the optical drive)
- Using FTP to copy an ISO from the internal spindle HDD to a much faster NAS, I achieved around 300 Mbit/s (around 30 MB/s), which seems the be the real-world limit of a 2.5" 500 GB spindle HDD inside a PS3 (SSDs would be theoretically faster, up to the approximate 150 MB/s of the SATA1 port)
- Loading various games and watching peak network speeds, the data loads seem to hit around 400-500 Mbit/s (40-50 MB/s)
- Using the PS3's Internet browser to download a large, specially crafted HTML file, network speeds seem to hit around 600-800 Mbit/s (60-80 MB/s)
Peak transfer speeds are difficult to benchmark, as they're either capped by the internal hard disk (where some games can copy data from optical disk to hard disk, for example), or by the peak 256 MB RAM of the PS3, which is filled quite quickly by faster transfer methods.
Network load times are certainly faster than optical drive, and likewise seek times are far lower. However it is likely that an internal SSD drive, even at SATA1 limits, could offer slightly faster speeds, with the disadvantage of space limitations. Larger spindle drives in the 4TB+ range can easily push over the 1 Gbit/s (100 MB/s) speeds of both the RPi4 and PS3 Gigabit Ethernet ports, be USB3 attached to the RPi4 (5 Gbit/s | 500 MB/s), and offer comparable speeds to an internal SATA1 SSD with far more space.
If you are having issues with ps3netsrv on RetroNAS the best course of action is
- Reinstall ps3netserv from the Install menu to get the latest version
- Update webMAN-MOD from the ondevice updater ... webMAN Games > webMAN Setup > Update webMAN MOD > Install, then reboot after update.
- Collect as much information about your issue as possible and raise a ticket with us* or the upstream project.
* we may review your information and advise to raise a ticket with the upstream project
May be due to your ps3 failing to decrypt an iso, you can workaround this by first decrypting the iso stored on RetroNAS before trying to load it on the ps3 with a tool like libray
example usage
libray -i input.iso -o output.iso
[*] Searching for PARAM.SFO
[*] PARAM.SFO found
-- snip --
100%|██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 10051520/10051520 [03:41<00:00, 45397.40it/s]
[*] Decryption complete!