Scene youtuber Modded Warfare posted an impressive tutorial video detailing a complete downgrade of his PS4. In the video, youtube upgraded from 6.72 to 10.01, then downgraded from 10.01 back to 6.72.
PS4 downgrade. Important note and disclaimer (seriously, read this first!)
Now, to be very clear: this is nothing new or groundbreaking at this point, the point is that you can only go back to the firmware for which you created a backup (your own console). Also, if your console is jailbroken, it’s much easier to create an initial backup, although it can also be done on a “regular” console.
So, in other words, If you’re on uncrackable firmware (like 10.01 at the time of writing) and want this to allow you to downgrade your console to jailbreakable firmware, then the answer is no, unless you did it while the console was jailbreakable. Preparation.
In my opinion, this means that the guide will most likely be of no use to the vast majority of people who find it, usually by too late. However, it is of great value for a number of reasons. First off, I’m not sure that such a detailed (and well-made!) guide exists until now on how to do this. Second, we’ve been saying on this blog that PS4 downgrades are “Technically possible, but…“, so now it’s easy to refer to MW’s video explaining why it’s difficult at best, and impossible in most cases. As Modded Warfare mentioned, for those who are “blocked” on non-jailbroken firmware but want It might also be of some value to people who want to update to the latest and greatest so they can play games online. Those people can back up their current firmware (hopefully it can be jailbroken eventually) and then update to the latest firmware. Last but not least Just as importantly, this could actually pave the way for easier downgrading methods at some point, especially if some ambitious modder tries to work on a modding chip solution that doesn’t involve any soldering.
All that said, assuming you want to back up your PS4 so you can “easily” move to a newer firmware and then back to a jailbroken console, here are my honest suggestions:
Buying a second PS4, don’t try to follow this downgrade guide.
Look, I’m not kidding, owning two PS4s is probably safer than trying to downgrade, and unless you already have the necessary materials, it might actually be cheaper too. (give or take, you’ll need to own/buy ~$200 worth of hardware to downgrade).This may change in the future if the process becomes easier, or if there are significant reasons to go back and forth (e.g. brick removal), but Because downgrading a PS4 right now is very difficult and risks permanently bricking it, and is more technically impressive than something useful or cost-effective.
All that said, if you’re looking to stick around for a technically compelling video, or to get a personal look, you might be the right audience. At the very least, you might want to watch the video, if just to hear MW sternly say “we’ll pour many times” or “dump well” 🙂
required tools
Note that the process is easier if you start with a jailbroken PS4, which is what MW’s video describes.
Here’s what you need to prepare and perform the downgrade. It is recommended to prepare all these tools (hardware or software) in advance.
required hardware
- Your PS4, running on the firmware you eventually want to return
- This is very important. This is a “restore backup” downgrade method that doesn’t allow you to downgrade to firmware for which you never created a backup in the first place. It doesn’t work to use someone else’s backup!
- A hardware flash such as a Teensy 4 (this is required to get SFlash0 from a non-jailbroken console and copy it back during the downgrade. Also needs to dump syscon)
- Heat gun (to desolder the syscon chip. This is necessary to back it up)
- a soldering iron
- a pair of tweezers
- TQFP board
- A 4 KOhm resistor
- some PCB wires
- switching diode
- USB to TTL adapter
- replace the syscon chip (the model you need to order depends on your motherboard, R5F100LLAFB or R5F100PLA, you can find them on Aliexpress)
- From what I understand this is not required but recommended so you don’t have to refresh these chips as often
- Renesas E2 Lite Programmer, or other flasher
required software
- BwE NOR Validator, this will help you confirm that your backup files are not corrupted (download here)
- An FTP client such as filezilla
- HDD Raw Copy (make a backup of the hard disk)
- Drivers for usb to TTL adapters (such as the drivers for the CP2102 mentioned above)
- Pack file for MW, which contains the software needed for troubleshooting
Prepare backup content for PS4 downgrade
The following data is what you need to backup, restore to downgrade your PS4:
- A full backup of the console’s hard drive
- PS4 SFlash0 (or non-firmware)
- SFlash0 is very easy to get from the jailbreak console as it’s just a file that can be copied from FTP
- PS4 System Controller
As a TL,DR, the idea is that you would back up the 3 pieces of data above, and then should be able to go to a higher firmware, then restore. Of course, Modded Warfare’s video has all the details.