Help me hack the PSP I just bought.

[deepruntramp]

I got a PSP today thanks to the ludicrously exploitable tradein deal FYE is running right now.

I booted it up and learned the following:

-It's firmware version 2.71.
-It's got a TA-82 model motherboard.

I have next to no desire to actually, you know, play PSP games on this thing. Outside of maybe one or two. Point is, I bought it to hack the everloving crap out of it and hopefully transfer over some PS1 games I've been hoarding for such a day (I mean, I wasn't going to get around to playing Unholy War or Persona 2 unless it was in portable form...)

Plus there are all those fancy emulators. I heard there was a near flawless SNES one, is that true? Which other emulators are flawless or near-flawless? MAME? Genesis? SCUMM VM?

I apologize if this is a no-no topic. Careful legal review of the Forum Rules and FAQ threads didn't say one way or the other.

[worm]

http://pspupdates.qj.net/index.php?pg=49&aid=74132

I haven't done this personally. Though I know HEN is supposed to take special measures for the newer motherboards.

http://dl.qj.net/Homebrew-Enabler-for-2.71-Revision-D-(HEN-D)-PSP/pg/12/fid/11444/catid/114
If that link doesn't work, here's a direct link to the download.

[charmtrap]

It looks like a PITA, but it turns out to be pretty easy...what you need is a downgrader for 2.71. This'll downgrade you to firmware 1.50. From 1.50 you can upgrade to the hacked firmware (I use the hacked 3.03, but there may be newer hacks), which will enable all the homebrew and emulators and stuff. The Homebrew Enabler only allows you to use homebrew if you're not running the hacked firmware, and I couldn't get it to work...

(I'd link, but I'm not sure about the policy either and I don't wanna get in trouble...a Google search should sort you)

[Warning]

If you want a more step-by-step, nearly idiot-proof walkthrough, I'd follow these guides (which is what I did):

To downgrade: http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psp&message.id=2792391

To install the custom firmware: http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psp&message.id=2748114

The guides also contain links to the necessary downloads.

Read everything over a couple times so you are familiar with the procedure and make sure your PSP is charged fully before you begin.

[Nathan]

The process I did was upgrade to 3.5, downgrade to 1.5, then re-upgrade to 3.4OE, which required the 3.4 and the 1.5 bios files. Makes my head hurt trying to follow it all, but it worked. Now I'm using my PSP again!

[Gendal]

The process I did was upgrade to 3.5, downgrade to 1.5, then re-upgrade to 3.4OE, which required the 3.4 and the 1.5 bios files. Makes my head hurt trying to follow it all, but it worked. Now I'm using my PSP again!
This I believe requires a copy of Lumines though. I need to pick up a new PSP because mine's umd loader is busted. Luckily I have a launch copy of Lumines so I can hack a new one no problem, till they start shipping with 3.5.1 anyways.

Overall it's a pain in the arse to hack but absolutely worth it, if only for loading time improvements. Never mind the wealth of emulation and homebrew/sdl apps.

[Nathan]

Oh, yeah. I bought Lumines with my PSP. I guess I just assumed everyone had it. Sorry about that.

[mouselock]

Since we're posting about hacking one's PSP, and since I have a nice big new 4GB MS Pro Duo I bought on sale for $50, anyone have any pointers for how to rip one's UMD to mem stick to make them faster (and also to make me not have to carry around the discs)?

[deepruntramp]

Since we're posting about hacking one's PSP, and since I have a nice big new 4GB MS Pro Duo I bought on sale for $50, anyone have any pointers for how to rip one's UMD to mem stick to make them faster (and also to make me not have to carry around the discs)?
Where'd you find a 4GB for $50? The cheapest $$/GB ratio I saw was the $30 for 2GB EBGames sale...

[deepruntramp]

If you want a more step-by-step, nearly idiot-proof walkthrough, I'd follow these guides (which is what I did):

To downgrade: http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psp&message.id=2792391

To install the custom firmware: http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psp&message.id=2748114

The guides also contain links to the necessary downloads.

Read everything over a couple times so you are familiar with the procedure and make sure your PSP is charged fully before you begin.
That's Sony's official boards? And those threads haven't been deleted?

Crazy...

[mouselock]

Where'd you find a 4GB for $50? The cheapest $$/GB ratio I saw was the $30 for 2GB EBGames sale...

Circuit City had them on sale for $50 a couple weeks back.

Outpost.com has been running specials off and on on 4GB Lexar MS Pro Duos.. the most recent price was $30. (Mine was a Sandisk)

Just need to keep your eyes open. Check out www.cheapassgamer.com regularly to actually catch the deals while they're still valid.

[deepruntramp]

Hm. Well, I upgraded to 2.80, now I'm trying to downgrade to 1.50, but it keeps freezing or crashing on the HEN step. Anyone run into that problem?

[deepruntramp]

Nevermind. Took upwards of 50 tries.

Come on, I could program a better stack exploit than that...

[Brakara]

The process I did was upgrade to 3.5, downgrade to 1.5, then re-upgrade to 3.4OE, which required the 3.4 and the 1.5 bios files. Makes my head hurt trying to follow it all, but it worked. Now I'm using my PSP again!

What instructions did you follow? The links in this thread are all for v3.03 or lower.

[deepruntramp]

What instructions did you follow? The links in this thread are all for v3.03 or lower.
http://www.noobz.eu/joomla/news/downgrader-for-psp-v3.50-firmware.html

There you have it. You'll need a UMD copy of Lumines.

Downsides? Lumines is incredibly hard to find now, and is $40 USED on Amazon.

Also, rumor has it that patched copies of Lumines (ie, ones that prevent the downgrade exploit) are starting to appear in Japan. So be careful.

[deepruntramp]

It worked! Little scary in there for a bit, I thought I'd bricked the system but it turned out it was a stupid brightness issue that rendered the screen unviewable.

Now, on to actually getting some (good) programs. Anyone got a link to a list, or have any recommendations?

[Gladguy]

I'm keen to hear more about this "ludicrously exploitable tradein deal FYE is running right now."

[DavidKaye]

Likewise.

[eternus]

I picked up a couple of brand new 4Gb sticks on ebay for around $50, just had to wait almost 3 weeks to get them from China. Good price, they work great.

I am holding onto my Lumines disk since this last hack came out, but I'm hesitant to downgrade. Everything post 3.30 has downgrader detection and prevents you from ever getting right with Sony again (at least as I understand it.)

I know the ins and ours of downgrading, but I'm trying to find some solid site that really shows all the advantages of downgrading. Will I be screwed when GoW comes out and requires 3.51 or some such? I actually play games on my PSP, so I don't want to lose that just to get some homebrew stuff.

[Warning]

Downgrading your firmware isn't a permanent decision. Any of the custom firmwares are reversible to Sony's 1.5 firmware. Once you've reversed back to that you can upgrade to the most current "legit" firmware.

[fuzzyslug]

I am holding onto my Lumines disk since this last hack came out, but I'm hesitant to downgrade. Everything post 3.30 has downgrader detection and prevents you from ever getting right with Sony again (at least as I understand it.)

Really? That sounds incredibly stupid.

[deepruntramp]

I'm keen to hear more about this "ludicrously exploitable tradein deal FYE is running right now."
Til the 17th, you can get 45% more store credit for trades. +20% from a promotion, +25% for taking store credit instead of cash.

45% more credit allows funny things to happen, like buying games for less than they trade in for. Enchanted Arms for the PS3 is the current cash cow -- $20 new from EB or Gamestop, and trades in for ~$39 store credit at FYE/Sam Goody/the rest of that chain.

There's also a $30 mail-in rebate on any PSP Core, or a $20 MIR on a DS Lite. And that combines just fine with the tradein deal.

[eternus]

This is as close as i've found to coverage on the topic...

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psp&message.id=2945644#M2945644

(just found it today)

It sounds like, if you're prepared then you can recover back to official firmwares, but it isn't as simple as "just downgrade to 1.50."

[deepruntramp]

This is as close as i've found to coverage on the topic...

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psp&message.id=2945644#M2945644

(just found it today)

It sounds like, if you're prepared then you can recover back to official firmwares, but it isn't as simple as "just downgrade to 1.50."
It really is. The custom firmware has something called a "recovery mode" that's akin to the BIOS frontend on PCs. You hold down R on boot and you get a little BIOS menu that can do all sorts of stuff, including activating USB prior to the frontend actually loading.

This lets you do stuff like downgrade to the official 1.50, as well as recover from the vast majority of bricks.

Anyway.

Played around with some homebrew today.

-Genesis emulation (DGen) is fantastic. Almost no unnatural slowdown. Gunstar Heroes runs like a dream. Haven't tried any of the Sonics yet and don't really intend to as I've played them all to death.

-SNES emulation (SNES9x_TYL ME) is disappointing. Nothing runs smoothly by default, and you have to put up with frameskip for smooth play.

-There are PSP versions of TOME, Angband, and Nethack (the latter with tiles!). They're all great, though the virtual keyboard takes some getting used to.

-PS1 emulation is incredible. So far I've ripped and converted my copies of Symphony of the Night and Diablo -- both run perfectly with nary a flaw, slowdown, or frame skip. It's unreal. The rip of my copy of Persona 2 didn't work, sadly, so I had to hunt down a torrent.

-There's a PS1 version of X-COM. And the emulation is perfect.

[Warning]

Bookr (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookr/) is a great text viewer with a slick UI. It can do text and PDFs.

There's also a great Gameboy Color emulator that runs perfectly. It's called RIN. Portable Zeldas and Dragon Warrior 1-3 are crack.

[Gendal]

-There are PSP versions of TOME, Angband, and Nethack (the latter with tiles!). They're all great, though the virtual keyboard takes some getting used to.

I need to update them to the latest SDK and release zangband also, but that might be awhile. Been thinking about implementing a different keyboard too, not sure what all is out there now.

[worm]

-SNES emulation (SNES9x_TYL ME) is disappointing. Nothing runs smoothly by default, and you have to put up with frameskip for smooth play.
Yeah, further,The ME version is a special version for people who were running with the GTA exploit, it won't give you kernel mode to suspend your game, which is infuriating. It does run some games fine without frameskip, but it seems really odd what it runs and what it doesn't. As far as I know the project has been very recently picked up again and there's a beta up on qj as SNES9xTYL++. I think it's really a problem with the code more than anything else. Since I have an N64 emulator that's playable. I've also heard that CPS1 and NeoGeo are fine too.

I'd recommend Dosbox, and the N64 (http://pspupdates.qj.net/StrmnNrmn-s-emulator-blitz-Daedalus-R12-released-today/pg/49/aid/96096) emulator, it has some hiccups but I'm playing through Mario 64 with it currently. Other than that, it's what you expect, everything is still getting worked on now and then there's pretty much an emulator for everything and the GBA emulator can't run ham-ham heartbreak, before you ask.

If you really want to get into stuff there's IR keyboard (http://pspupdates.qj.net/index.php?pg=49&aid=92548) capability and an instant messenger (http://pspupdates.qj.net/AFKIM-v3-2-1-Live-Skin-with-MP3-support/pg/49/aid/96142). However, the real problem is that the psp can't handle some of the more complex wireless protocols. I imagine that sony is going to do an update eventually, however, I don't see what's stopping these guys from porting some wpa_supplicant that can be loaded in with devhook or a plugin.

[Kryten]

PSPSSH is fantastic for running screen+IRSSI to keep an eye on IRC channels and the like, the virtual keyboard isn't overly clunky if you *really* need to type something from it.

Also, the OpenTTD port for the PSP (now up to the 0.5 release) also runs very well and plays surprisingly easily. If you're an addict like me, that is.

[deepruntramp]

Sadly Persona 2 and the PSX emulator don't get along. The game runs fine until you need to press X to advance dialog (or go into the menu), and then it begins to steadily run slower and slower (as if there were some kind of memory leak).

[Aaiiee]

There's also Quake (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=158726).

[Marcus]

The NEOGeo Emulator runs great.

[Kryten]

-There are PSP versions of TOME, Angband, and Nethack (the latter with tiles!). They're all great, though the virtual keyboard takes some getting used to.


Do you have any links to the latest versions of these? My Google-Fu is failing me :(

[worm]

The NEOGeo Emulator runs great.
That's why I just cannot imagine that the SNES emulator problems are hardware based. Unless I'm missing something key about the emulation process.

Sadly Persona 2 and the PSX emulator don't get along. The game runs fine until you need to press X to advance dialog (or go into the menu), and then it begins to steadily run slower and slower (as if there were some kind of memory leak).
Ah, there is a plugin around to let you try the different popstations from different firmwares, you might want to look around to see if that fixes problems.

[Moore]

It should I seem to recall getting it working at one point using that, but never got into the game prior to wiping the large stick for mp3 storage for my cross country move.