Slashdot Mirror
Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models
JohnWilliams writes "The Sony PlayStation Network appears to be inaccessible to older ('phat') PS3 units. Players cannot play games that require a connection, even in single-player, offline mode, e.g. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also, the system date resets to January 1, 2000. Sony is 'looking into it.' Speculation abounds that it is a bug related to 2010 being incorrectly flagged as a leap year. The newer PS3 Slim models seem to be working properly."
I for one, welcome our y2k10 playstation overlords.
I hope Sony gets sued to absolute oblivion over this. Not being able to play games you have paid for is abso-fucking-lutely un-acceptable for any reason other than your console being physically broken. At least in my books.
All these goddamn DRM schemes that backfire and companies never learn.. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my DRM-free games and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!!!
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It reminds me of that OTA firmware upgrade that bricked things....
On my UK PS3, the date was reset to 31/12/1999 (a value you cannot input yourself manually) and then rolled over into 2000 some hours (5?) later.
None of my downloaded PS1 games will start - just gives an "invalid copyright protection" error message.
With the exception of Wipeout HD, none of my downloaded PS3 games will start.
None of my Blu-ray game disks will start.
My PlayTV device is not performing scheduled recordings
VidZone cannot be used, since it requires signing into PSN network to determine what region you're from
At least my brother can calm down, his hardware didn't toast.
He started calling Sony tech support 2 hours before they were supposed to close, apparently they were already closed, almost as if they did it intentionally.
(Please ignore the cheap attempt at inciting a paranoid mob. After all, what possible reason could they have for pissing off their customers on the day they got hit with a hugely visible bug?)
Oh, man, the party is at Balmer's house tonight.
Okay, 2010 was flagged as a leap year (which seems odd - I'd have thought you'd just want to check if the year is a multiple of 4, and you're good until 2100). Why didn't it just report to day as the 29th February?
And why doesn't the workaround of setting the date to 1st Jan 2010 or 1st March 2010 work? What is causing the date to reset? surely this is just a number read from a real time clock.
well sony just blew there 3 nines rating. :(
"modded PS3s"?
Uhm... There are no modded PS3s at this time.
When I said the Millennium Bug would strike again, you all thought I was crazy! Who's laughing now?
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
Potentially could suppliers be forced into higher standards by the fear of consumer litigation?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If this a hardware/firmware issue, then I hope to god for Sony's sake that there's a quick and easy fix that users can apply at home. The problem is that even if they offer everybody a free trade-in to a PS3 slim (which would be cripplingly expensive), then a lot of users, self included, won't accept this. Trading from an original 60 gig PS3 to a PS3 slim is not an upgrade. It's a downgrade.
Why? Because the original first-gen PS3s had full PS2 back-compatibility, while the more recent versions don't. People like me, who got rid of their PS2 when they picked up a PS3, are not going to be happy in the slightest if it turns out we need to start hitting Ebay for PS2s.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just hooked my PS3 up after disconnecting it for a couple of weeks, and noticed the date was off and I couldn't connect to the PSN. Oh well, might as well read Slashdot! And I find this. Someone call James Randi, I think we found a psychic!
My PS3 slim wouldn't stay logged in on PSN yesterday evening, didn't have any issues earlier that day. Not sure what the error code was, and I haven't tried it today (because I'm obviously at work).
Also interesting to see that also games on the PS3 have shitty DRM that requires online activation/presence. Are they really trying to kill gaming on all platforms?
It was refusing to install the Star Ocean Trophy set. I could get it to start Bayonetta, but when it attempted to load the first cutscene it just hung forever. Tried doing a number of things, nothing worked... And it wouldn't let me back up my data as the largest thumbdrive I own is 8gb and after removing ALL game data, installed demos and everything else I could strip, it claimed it still needed another 750mb of space (original claim was over 17gb). And of course it refuses to recognize either of my external USB HDDs as a target for backing up or reading data from...
So I started thinking "HD Failing" (it is an original PS3 after all). Figured I'd have it format the drive then reinstall and repatch my games. Nearly a 5 hour time estimate. Take a nap, wake up, see this.... "oh god damnit."
It is not a bug, it is the Sony timer.
The PS3's RTC is part of SYSCON (the microcontroller that handles general system control stuff, power sequencing, etc.), which is believed to be an ARM architecture chip. As far as I know, its firmware can be updated. I bet this bug originates in this firmware (it'd be rare for a hardware, dedicated RTC chip to have such a catastrophic leap year bug), and I bet Sony can update it to fix it (i.e. they wouldn't even have to work around this issue at the OS level).
It is not preventing you from playing games because of DRM. It's a bug, the main bug related to offline games seems to be the trophy-sync operation, rather then failing in it's usual way when you're offline, it is crashing. As for the DRM'ed network games, if you want to buy a game that doesn't need the internet, don't buy playstation network games, buy something with a physical disk. Games you buy over the Playstation Network need you to be properly signed in to use, which is where the problem lies.
Problems happen. Whether or not this was preventable is a very, very difficult question. Before anyone shouts EVERY PROBLEM IS PREVENTABLE has never spent any time in real life. Hell, I've even had the OS give me an error message for a completely different file then what I was trying to run.
Not everything is knowable or preventable.
What matters here is how long it takes to fix it. Until now, I've never had a problem with the Playstation Network, (other then failures with my i-net connection).
I can't sign into PSN on my US 60GB, so it's looks like I'm affected by this... :(
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Guys, it's really not that hard:
GregYear <- (appropriate year for start of Gregorian era in locale)
IF (month = 2 AND year MOD 4 = 0 AND (year < GregYear OR year MOD 100 > 0 OR year MOD 400 = 0))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 29}
ELSE IF (month = 2)
{MaxDayForMonth <- 28}
ELSE IF (month IN (4,6,9,11))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 30}
ELSE
{MaxDayForMonth <- 31}
(pseudocode style adapted for Slashcode)
I ran into this problem last night trying to watch Netflix on the PS3. the Netflix disc gave me a cannot connect error.... Being a slashdot reader my first though was I'd done something weird with my router ports.. So Mucked with those for awhile first making sure I hadn't done something weird. Then I noticed the system date was wrong on the PS3. I tried "Set Time via Internet" which failed, then I Set time manually and tried Neflix again and it works as normal. I'm sure the Servers figured that a 10 year old packet was "timed out" and didn't respond (or the PS3 won't respond to communication from 10 years in the future).
Worked for me, didn't try any games yet though.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
There, I just pulled the above code out of my ass, and it's so damn simple! I don't claim any copyrights to this! Go ahead, copy 'n paste it into any of your products as you like (also commercial and closed source, I don't even want a mention!), if that is really to hard for you, you lame ass tinkerers!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM, there is no - and neither should there be, any reason why a game should be dependent on any date.
Then why do the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Nintendo DS even have a clock? Consoles have clocks for at least four reasons:
Copyright infringement is prohibited by law. Computers/consoles/software are not guaranteed by law to work all the time.
I beg to differ.
They aren't going to fix dick. Mark my words. Anyone who tries to roll their own fix will get sniped with a DMCA, and Sony will just tell everyone to buy a new console. Gamers will begrudgingly buy one, but if as long as they buy new stuff then Sony is happy.
Talk about timing: I downloaded Flower for my 5 year old, who loves just flying around in the pretty fields, and the game won't start because of this error. A single-player game, that has no multiplayer aspect, that doesn't even keep score, and it can't be played because it can't connect to the network.
I guess it's because Flower has trophy support, but really...you can't store the trophy information locally and then transmit later? I couldn't sit there, looking at the error screen, then trying to explain to my daughter why she can't fly around the field, and not feel like there was an awesome lesson to be learned here.
So we pulled out a pack of Go Fish cards instead.
My thoughts exactly, I mean...
It fails the FIRST TEST, that is, ((year % 4) == 0) for leap years. Guys, 2010 % 4 == 2, I mean
the mind boggles
how long until
Maybe this is a sneaky way for Sony to block the hypervisior exploit in fat PS3's.
A leap year miscalculation is no worse than the skewed random shuffle bug reported in Microsoft's browser selection screen yesterday. If that's the problem with these PS3's (which I doubt), it could be something similarly brain dead:
Somebody tested that on 2001 through 2009 and declared it good enough.
My 60gig now says its 1/1/2000 guess thats what Sony ment by a 10 year plan.
I sure hope this bug is fixed soon. I own a fat 80GB model which meets the description but I haven't played it in the past 3 days or so. Other people I've read say that some 80GB models are unaffected and seem to work fine for now, but it still worries me. If it is indeed a calendar issue and we cannot connect to PSN or even the internet, how are we to receive an update?
Headline should be changed. Not all old 'phat' PS3's are effected. Mine is a launch 60GB model and it's had no issue whatsoever.
2 months ago my PS3 died (i've replaced it since)... so I decided to show to my kids what kind of games we played when I was a kid. So I dug out of the basement my old ps1, my sega genesis and my 30 years old mattel Intellivision... All of them worked. I didn't expect anything else! (now I remember why we were playing real hockey outside ...) But it make me wonder, will my ps3 still be working in 15 years (or maybe 30)... A simple drm check and everything is down... I have COD warfare 2, and it has to connect to the net ?? I didn't know that.. And I sure would'nt have buy that game if I knew that...
What if the current ps3 network is not compatible with the network in 30 years.. what if sony's servers are down next year?
I have a serious question here, are we really all going toward this kind of drm in everything (tv, blueray, fridge, beds (whatever..)) or is it dying (like for the mp3s) ?
No, the biggest failure is, to reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there are libraries out there that are literally tested for decades, and knows to work properly.
When you don’t know exactly that you can and will do it better, always use the standard library! :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
How many other systems have this y2k bug?
Players cannot play games that require a connection, even in single-player, offline mode, e.g. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Good.. that's what they get for buying that PoS anyway.
Bullshit. I haven't modded my console, and I'm seeing this bug.
Its funny, I don't have this problem with computer games. Doh! Slam!!!!
They are taking down the US military's ps3 supercomputer rig! http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/213076/u-s-military-building-ps3-supercomputer/
I have a "fat" PS3 and it is not affected. It is the most recent model they produced before switching over to the slim body style.
Everyone remember this post, where sopssa is clearly defending SONY, next time he makes sense but is accused of being an "M$ troll."
Some of our linux PS3s are set to reboot a 3AM everyday. cron log shows normal shutdown and startup: /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.daily) /etc/cron.weekly) /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 28 03:11:31 mouth crond[1544]: (CRON) STARTUP (1.0)
Feb 28 04:01:01 mouth CROND[1635]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Feb 28 04:02:01 mouth CROND[1639]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Feb 28 04:02:01 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[1642]: starting 000-delay.cron
Feb 28 04:22:01 mouth CROND[1653]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Feb 28 04:22:01 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.weekly)[1656]: starting 000-delay.cron
Feb 28 05:01:01 mouth CROND[1669]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Feb 28 05:02:35 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[1671]: finished 000-delay.cron
Feb 28 05:02:35 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[1674]: starting 0anacron
Feb 28 05:02:36 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[1682]: finished 0anacron
Feb 28 05:02:36 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[1684]: starting 0logwatch
Feb 28 05:02:36 mouth anacron[1680]: Updated timestamp for job `cron.daily' to 2010-02-28
Feb 28 05:02:48 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[2076]: finished 0logwatch
Feb 28 05:02:48 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[2078]: starting cups
Feb 28 05:02:48 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[2083]: finished cups
Feb 28 05:02:48 mouth run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[2085]: starting logrotate
And then things went awry:
Feb 28 22:01:01 mouth CROND[5146]: (root) CMD (run-parts /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly) /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 28 23:01:01 mouth CROND[5154]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Mar 1 00:01:01 mouth CROND[5161]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Mar 1 01:01:01 mouth CROND[5169]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Mar 1 02:01:01 mouth CROND[5176]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Mar 1 03:00:01 mouth CROND[5184]: (root) CMD (/sbin/shutdown -r +10 "CRON: the system will restart in 10 minutes, save your work and exit!!")
Mar 1 03:01:01 mouth CROND[5189]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Dec 31 18:48:29 mouth crond[1544]: (CRON) STARTUP (1.0)
Dec 31 19:01:01 mouth CROND[1632]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Dec 31 20:01:01 mouth CROND[1640]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Dec 31 21:01:01 mouth CROND[1648]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Dec 31 22:01:01 mouth CROND[1655]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Dec 31 23:01:01 mouth CROND[1662]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Jan 1 00:01:01 mouth CROND[1669]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Jan 1 01:01:01 mouth CROND[1676]: (root) CMD (run-parts
Yeah, and you'd think Microsoft would know how to shuffle too, right? ;-)
Sony must have gotten schooled by Microsoft about "encouraging" their users to upgrade.
Still, I'm sure a simple root-kit would fix the problem.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I moved the date forward on my PS3. Didn't help. Downloaded games don't work (flower, flow, nobi). Except pixeljunk eden works for some reason.
I didn't try any ps3 games but ps2 games played fine.
I personally hate the need for an internet connection to play games. I think its more of a time thing than a pure internet connectivity thing. (my machine isn't always on the internet and I've had no problems till now)
Clearly a stupid bug.
"And the only reason I can think of why someone would want the date sync'd or the game made non-working due to changed system date was because of some form of DRM."
You haven't thought of a reason, or an explanation. You've got a boogey-man you'd like to blame something new on, even though you have no basis for it, and you've concluded that it must be true because you can't think of anything else. You could equally conclude that it's a failure in the flux capacitor, since nothing else makes sense.
+5 Insightful just ain't what it used to be. You can get it by using the reasoning of a five year old.
"Quick! Find an excuse to issue a patch that disables OtherOS!"
I have one of the older 'phat' 60GB that runs PS2s with the hardware instead of software emulation and have not run into the problem (logged it/out) last night/this morning (US date Feb 28th as well as March 1st) and have not had any problems. Do we know exactly what systems this affects? Should I be worried (how can I avoid?), or because I'm still going as of this morning it might not affect my particular model?
No way. Apply Hanlon's Razor to the situation: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
If they wanted to disable OtherOS, they could do it easily enough by making the latest hot game need a firmware update that did it. That's what many companies have done, including Sony on the PSP. Annoying millions of their customers by making the games they've already paid for not work? Companies - even Sony - have done some stupid things out of greed, but that's a whole new level of moronic.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I am pretty sure somebody at MS is smiling at this. Not at Nintendo, they are still out cold from laughing to hard all the way to the bank.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Had PS3 for a couple of years and the blu-ray is bust (errors when loading disk). It worked great untill I started playing Unchartered 2. Now the blu ray's worn out? I knew Drakes fortune was using the reader a lot as you can hear it spinning more than other games, and I understand after investigation that Drakes Unchartered 2 runs ALL of the disk, so by logic, this WILL wear down your blu ray reader faster than say GTA IV, that installs a lot to HD.
So thanks to shoddy hardware or Unchartered, I can only play games saved on HD (downloaded from the PS3 store).
I may be wrong but it seems that think Sony's business model included re-couperating costs, by making a game that wears out the blu ray. Then trying to make sure this happens AFTER the warranty, then they can charge £128 to get a new diode, or to clean a lense (something simple and inexpensive).
I say this becasue you can't download many (popular) games at all, even though this should be possible, especially for titles that Sony produce (like Drakes 2). The annonying thing is that everything works (CD, DVD, downloads, PS2 games, internet etc). So I can't bring myself to get it repaired and feel really dissapointed with Sony and blu ray. In fact I would go as far as to say I am worried about how Sony are operating.
This pseudo-code is not optimized. You should instead first test for the most common cases.
IF (month IN (1,3,5,7,8,10,12))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 31}
ELSE IF (month IN (4,6,9,11))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 30}
ELSE IF (month = 2 AND year MOD 4 = 0 AND (year < GregYear OR year MOD 100 > 0 OR year MOD 400 = 0))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 29}
ELSE
{MaxDayForMonth <- 28}
I've had one Dreamcast since 9/9/99 that's run flawlessly to date. In that span I've had: -2 N64's (#1 from '96 croaked in '02) -2 PS2's (#1 died after 1 year) -1 Lonely Gamecube -2 Xboxes (okay they both work, but #1 is sounds like it's on its deathbed...) -4 or 5 360's (#1 broke in a week, RROD gave me 3 or 4 different 360's in Spring/Summer '07) -2 Wii's (1st was broken out of the box) -1 PS3 (although it was sidelined last fall after a Sony 'update' broke it, and demanded $150 to fix. A user fix resolved the problem and it's been ok til now). But that system from going on 11 years ago (and a launch day system at that) is still going strong. Long Live the Dreamcast indeed.
Lucky for me I read up on this before using my PS3 at all today. I seem to have circumvented the issue to a degree. I unplugged the power my wireless router and then fired up my PS3. From there, I noticed my date/time was set to 12/31/2000. In the system settings, I disabled internet connection and reset the time manually to 3/1/2010. Now that internet was disabled, I plugged my router back in. I tested a few games, and all worked. Granted, this does not solve the issue of trophies and getting into PSN, but at least I can play single player games until they come up with a fix.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
No, the biggest failure is, to reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there are libraries out there that are literally tested for decades, and knows to work properly.
You've heard of GPL Allergy. There's something older than that called NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). A symptom is over-dependence on clean-room practices.
And I've used software written in the 1980s that never expected to still be in use in the 1990s so only a single digit, stored as ASCII, was used for the year. 1989 was followed by 198: (nineteen eighty-colon). But at least it was just cosmetic and still worked.
The update that fixed it also sent a copyright notice with every disconnect of the modem to the caller for the software the interpreter was sold with, even if completely different software was being run.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Grr... I reformatted my PS3 last night... I think the onion called it
Does this smell like Chloroform to you?
Why is it we cannot get a calendar right? The mayans were able to make a calendar that went to 2012 without skipping anything...and they only had rock and chisel. I think intelligence is on a downward spiral if people cant geit their shit in order.
Well, look on the bright side. If they have to replace your console, at least it will have the side-effect of fixing your disc reading problem too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here is a monday afternoon post from playstation detailing issue and serving warnings to not even turn on affected units http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/02/playstation-network-status-update/ updates to problem will be on their Twitter page http://twitter.com/sonyplaystation
Got to Date and Time Settings Set Manually (you will notice it will be off a day) Back out and go somewhere else on the PS3 Go back in to Date and Time Settings and Set by Internet Back out again and do something else Go back in manually and make sure date and time are right You should be fixed!
Just logged into PSN with my CECHE that was affected by the bug, my PSN downloads have the owner name back, my theme is working, yadda yadda yadda.
It works now (Slovakia GMT+1 2:51). But the trophies from Demon's souls game which disappeared yesterday are still gone. Trophy sync didn't help because i did not sync them before the date glitch.
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You really don't need A LIBRARY to know if a certain year is a leap year...
Time libraries are really useful and should be used thoroughly (especially for thing like - what's the week day of 400 days from now)
how long until
I was so proud that I bought two original PS3 units. I wanted to write programs for the advanced hardware within. Of course that might mean unauthorized software that Sony would not have control over. I don't like where this is going. I am simply not going to buy any more Sony products. The Sony rootkit episode should have put me on notice. I am not going to buy any more closed hardware. There is no need. Alternatives exist. If GPUs are your thing, there is CUDA. I am sure I would be more pissed off about this if I had an investment in time and money with games, and I was concerned about my on-line status. I was thrilled about the impending release of the HOME product, but after a couple of years of waiting, I gave up. My two original PS3 units are collecting dust, and I remember them being pricey at the time I bought them.