Well, the man that just can’t stop is giving us even more with Bypass.md! Bypass.md is a way to swap memory cards on two Vitas on different FW versions, the way it works is by making the id.dat file read only. So you won’t get that annoying need to update or format prompt, just to swap memory cards around.
Bypassing Version Check
The Vita will always write the current system version to the SVR field in the file. This means if you have two Vitas on different FW versions, and you put the memory card from the newer FW Vita into the older FW Vita, it will prompt you to update. To bypass this, you can make the id.dat file read only.
SceIoStat stat;
stat.st_mode = 0x00002004;
sceIoChstat("ux0:id.dat", &stat, 1);
This will make any attempt to write to id.dat fail including attempts to update the SVR field.
As a side effect, though, every time you boot the Vita, it will rebuild the database. So be aware of that if you have any mods there.
If you would like to try this you can go here and try it for yourself.
https://gist.github.com/yifanlu/0514e60610c552e8da583fbbd8791d67
Now developer Smoke has put everything together for you in this homebrew called memcardswap.
- Added crappy text menu
- Added a new option to make id.dat read only (and another to restore write access)
Now you can swap your memory card from 3.60 to 3.61+ and back without formatting because the SVR field (system version) in doesn’t get updated
Download: memcardswap.vpk
Thanks for reading and keep doing it for the love of the game.