SmoothWall vs. PlayStation 3

A few days ago I wrote about my installation of SmoothWall on my home network. Tonight I guess was the first time I tried to use my PlayStation 3 because I saw an ad that the demo of MAG was posted on the PlayStation store for public beta. I couldn’t login to the PlayStation store with error 8002A535 and it was not clear why. A Google search didn’t help me out. Eventually I found a reference to the IM Proxy in SmoothWall being the source of the issue. Through elimination I found that it is the “Jabber and Gtalk” filtering specifically that breaks the ability to login to the PlayStation store. You may leave the other filters on although I do not use the man in the middle option so I did not test if enabling that breaks things. If you use it and this doesn’t fix you then turn off the man in the middle option and it will definitely fix you.

I had been playing my XBox 360 a lot since the SmoothWall. The XBox does not have the same issue. It should be noted that for either system you want to enable UPnP support in Networking -> Advanced or I suspect neither system will work.

 

It’s dead Jim! Tales from the XBox darkside

So my X-Box stopped wanting to read discs all of a sudden. Some games worked, but others would never work. All the time I’d get this stupid message telling me that the disc was dirty. There was no dirt, but like a lemming I would scrub the disc with a non-abrasive cleaner, and pop it back in hoping for a miracle. A quick Google brought me that miracle. I found Llamma’s XBox Page where they actually sell replacement DVD drives for the XBox. $80 and 3 days later a little box came in the mail. 10 minutes later the new drive was installed and I was in business. The website even has tutorials if you don’t know how to open your XBox up. Every game works flawlessly now. No more meaningless errors. It’s a wonderful thing. They really rock.