Review of the Blackcat USB Device

[garyopa]

When the story first broke about a month ago with the release of the PSGroove, the open version of the original PSJailbreak, the market suddenly was on fire for anything that could be turned into a PSGroove device, and lucky I was able to grab a few of these Blackcat babies for myself and some of my friends.

Today, I finally got around to publishing some of my own personal reviews of these wonderful flashable ATMEL devices, that have so many great uses.

Originally, the Blackcat was designed by TCNiSo to be able to flash firmware chips found in various black boxes, like cable modems, so this device is well stocked by many various resellers online and even at some local smaller hobbist electronic shops.

Since it has lot of previous customers and long history of stable production, I find the product very solid, well-built and good support by the resellers, and it is rare to see issues with the product not working or having weird issues.

It of course uses the common ATMEL AT90USB162 chipset that has 16K of flashable memory, and contains a non-eraseable bootloader, so the device will always be able to be erased and re-programmed on basically any PC with USB support.

You can use either their own Blackcat software and drivers to flash the 16K of memory with your custom code, or the standard ATMEL Flip software.

On the board is a set of two little DIP switches you that you flip to one side for normal USB operation, and the other side for factory DFU recovery operation (erase/read/flashing mode).

Putting the device into Flashable mode is easy, just flip the two switchs, and plug it into your computer and then press the little brown button, and if everything works bang your PC should detect an AT90USB162 device, and then you got to point to directory were you installed the FLIP software, and it will install the USB device drivers for it.

For my review of course, I found a nice PSGroove complied hex using the latest "Hermes v3" PS3 payload.

Once I finished flashing it on my PC, I then unplugged it and plugged it into my PS3 which I used the older larger 40gb model, so only have to flip the power switch at the back, and then quickly press Power and then Eject to put the PS3 into USB JIG scan mode.

The Blackcat has two nice very BRIGHT leds on it, one RED and one BLUE.

When the PS3 starts up, just the RED one lights up, and then once the PS3 has been Jailbroken, the BLUE one lights up also, once the second LED comes on you can remove the Blackcat which is a great feature, since my 40gb PS3 only has two USB ports, unlike the original launch PS3 models that had 4 ports.

Once the XMB came up, I then installed the latest Open Manager and tried out a few PS3 games, and everything worked like it should.

Overall, the Blackcat is nice solid dongle for this usage, even tho it uses the larger USB port that is commonly found on printers, so you need to have a cable to run from it to your PS3, and lucky for me my external USB drive also has the same port, so I just keep one end in my PS3, and then unplug the Blackcat and then plug in my 1tb External USB HDD.

I end my personal review with a list of PRO's and CON's for this device:

PRO's:

* Very bright LED's so you know it is ON!
* Well-Built, Solid, Stable PCB Layout and Design!
* Easy to put into DFU mode to flash on your PC!
* Been on the market for years, so solid resellers & support!
* Has a 10pin header at the back, good for possible future use!

CON's:

* Big on the large side, due to it using the larger USB printer-type port.
* Device has issues with length of USB cable. (Use only 3' or less!)

That's all folks, my thanks to TheoryShare for selling me a few units during the rush to get units out to people when the PSGroove madness hit!

TheoryShare Online Shop: Blackcat USB JTAG Kit PCB v 1.7

Simple Flashing Tutorial: How to Jailbreak your PS3 with BlackCat USB

ATMEL Flip Software: Atmel Products - AVR Solutions - FLIP

[Cowboy619]

Nice review as i am also a owner of a blackcat

[sonnyz]

Great review. I love my blackcat usb.

[alcatel]

Is it also possible to rebuild another device to Blackcat?

My Olimex avr-usb-stk has also a jtag interface,it would be great to also use it to flash.

[abjdiat]

great review, I recently got my board , it's well-built , good-looking one ,, had some problems flashing it on win7, but later switched to linux and flashing was as easy as breese ...using dfu-programmer...
the only "problem" I encountered is the leds, can someone provide hex with proper leds working, blinking then steady when jailbreaking done ?

[ac1d]

great review, I recently got my board , it's well-built , good-looking one ,, had some problems flashing it on win7, but later switched to linux and flashing was as easy as breese ...using dfu-programmer...
the only "problem" I encountered is the leds, can someone provide hex with proper leds working, blinking then steady when jailbreaking done ?

Here you have the hermes v3 with waninkoko mods with leds fixed

[abjdiat]

Here you have the hermes v3 with waninkoko mods with leds fixed

amazing, works like charm, thanx ac1d

[ac1d]

amazing, works like charm, thanx ac1d

No problem, im glad you like it

[DarkPS3]

is it updatable???
does it uses it own playload or AT90USB162 playload???

[abjdiat]

yes it's easily updateable ,,,
you can use any AT90usb162 playload but the leds might not work properly and hence using dedicated hex file to blackcat usb is a better idea ...