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  1. #1
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    Current state of the PSP world (custom firmware)

    Much has happened recently in the PSP world so I thought I would bring you all up to speed in case you haven't been keeping tabs on the progress.

    Many updates this year


    Sony have been very busy with firmware updates so far this year. Some of these are to update existing features, adding such things as support for more music formats and higher resolution video files. But also the firmware updates have been to add more support for the PS3. Already the firmware releases have progressed from the 3.03 firmware at the beginning of the year to the current 3.51.

    Revised PSP announced!

    In addition the long running rumours about a revised PSP were finally confirmed at the E3 show. Sony has confirmed that it is to release a revised edition of the Sony PSP worldwide from September. It still have the same sized screen and accepts UMDs just the same, but it is 33% percent lighter and 19% slimmer. The battery is touted to be more efficient and games should load faster. But the biggest new feature is that the portable console will now have the ability to output high quality video as demonstrated on a Sony BRAVIA television set. It will also be available in a range of colours including ice silver!

    Here is a picture of the revised PSP:



    As you can see the revised PSP doesn't look that different from the original. The most noticeable difference is that the two audio holes have moved from being each side of the screen at the bottom, to towards the top of the screen just above the controls.

    All of the other rumours about additional analogue sticks and other features seem to have just been fan made rumours and nothing more. Making the console thinner and lighter, and the battery usage more efficient is definitely a more logical revision for an existing console. Think of this in a similar way to Sony's previous PS1 and PS2 revisions, just redesigning the existing system to make it smaller, cheaper to make, and as up to date as possible. This is also similar to the update Nintendo made to their DS with the DS lite.

    Custom Firmware

    The famous PSP firmware hacker Dark AleX continued to work on development of his OE custom firmware for the PSP. The last release of his firmware was 3.40 OE-A, giving users the abilities of the newer firmware, while retaining all of the homebrew and ISO game image benefits of the famous 1.5 firmware.

    Dark AleX leaves the PSP scene!

    Dark AleX recently announced that he was leaving the PSP scene. This came as a huge shock to the PSP homebrew community as it meant an end to his great custom firmwares, and meant that the current Dark AleX firmware 3.40 OE-A is the last we will see from him.

    This was a bigger shock because the official 3.51 PSP firmware was already released by Sony so the current Dark AleX 3.40 firmware was already out of date. meaning that some newer games would not work that required 3.50 or 3.51 firmware.

    Russia save the day!

    But all is not lost. In a big surprise a new Russian group suddenly appeared on the scene called the M33 Team. And what did they release? The Custom firmware called 3.51 M33

    This firmware contains everything great that the Dark AleX OE firmwares contained and brings it up to the current 3.51 firmware release allowing compatibility with newer games and the additions this current firmware adds, plus they have added their own custom recovery menu and many other additions and improvements over the older DA firmwares.

    I've just upgraded my PSP to this new 3.51 M33 custom firmware and can confirm it upgraded smoothly and works perfectly for homebrew emulation and ISO game images.

    In addition the M33 team seem to be working hard on this firmware, possibly quicker than Dark AleX ever did. As soon as a bug is found in the firmware the M33 team release a patch to help fix this. These bugs have so far included an issue with WiFi which fixed it, compatibility with some games in NoUMD mode and a few other updates and fixes. They have already released 5 updates for the M33 firmware and they haven't required the complete update procedure common with DA updates. Instead they have just required the update copied to the PSP and then executed to patch and update the firmware. And best of all these patches are cumulative so using the latest one adds all of the patches released to date.

    The current version is now 3.51 M33-5

    And this custom firmware is very easy to setup and install. If you are running PSP FW 1.5 or any of the Dark AleX OE firmwares than you can easily update to the 3.51 M33 firmware without first needing to downgrade. If any of you would like a quick guide to upgrading your PSP to this custom 3.51 M33 firmware please let me know and I will post one. It is very easy.

    New Downgrade exploits found

    Until recently anyone with a PSP had limited options for downgrading their PSP back to FW 1.5 so they could then use homebrew software, emulation, or upgrade to a newer custom firmware. That has now changed.

    Any PSP owner with an official Sony firmware of 2.80 or older have been able to use a selection of downgraders to revert their PSPs to FW1.5. But anyone with a PSP that has a 2.81 or newer version of the official Sony firmware have been limited to one option, the Grand Theft Auto downgrader exploit. This required finding the original unpatched release of the game, upgrading the PSP to firmware 3.03 and then using the game to downgrade to 1.5. The problem was that the original unpatched version of GTA is very hard to find, and as soon as this exploit was discovered the cost of the game shot up on ebay. Also it meant that any PSP with an official firmware newer than 3.03 could not use this and the owner was stuck.

    Now the good news is that another exploit was found in the official firmware 3.50 using any version of the game Luminies. This makes it much easier for people to find a copy of this game to use to downgrade their PSP, and even the re-released platinum version of the game will work! You just need to upgrade your PSP to firmware 3.50, download the 3.50 hen downgrader and obtain a copy of the Luminies game that is then used to initiate the downgrader.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


  2. #2
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    I recently ordered a PSP, and would be quite interested in running hacked firmware on it. It hasn't arrived yet, but when it does I'm sure I'll need some help in downgrading and running the custom firmware.

    Out of interest, how likely is it that something will go wrong when downgrading/upgrading the firmware?

  3. #3
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    It's not that likely that anything would go wrong during downgrading/upgrading firmware. As long as you first charge the PSP to 100% battery and have it connected to the mains power throughout the process there is little that can go wrong.

    As it is a new PSP you might have quite a new firmware version on it. This would require using a copy of the Lumines game. I've not tried this downgrader myself, but might shortly to downgrade my girlfriend's PSP so can let you know how it goes.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


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    Lumines doesn't look like a game I'd usually spend money on but if a lot of people are buying it simply to use to downgrade perhaps eBay might be flooded with them and I can get it cheap off there.

    It's probably worth buying if it allows me to sample games before deciding which to purchase. How does it work once you have the custom firmware? Do you put the ISO image on a Memorystick along with some application to run it? Am I right in thinking a 1GB card will provide enough capacity?

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    Here is a big thread about running software on the PSP, discussion between Harrison and Submeg.

    Better get a 2GB memory card, as UMD is 1.8GB, so you can also put ISOs of bigger games on the stick to run them, otherwise you won't be able to do so. And as you can also put several games on a memory stick, getting a bigger one is always an option.

  6. #6
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    Lumines doesn't look like a game I'd usually spend money on but if a lot of people are buying it simply to use to downgrade perhaps eBay might be flooded with them and I can get it cheap off there.
    It is more likely to work in the opposite way. Because most people are trying to obtain the game so they can use it to degrade their systems sellers will increase their prices as the game is suddenly in high demand. This happened with GTA:LCS. Before the GTA downgrader existed GTA sold for £10-15 on ebay. Once the downgrader was released the price shot up on ebay to £22-50. And I can see the same happening with Lumines, although unlike GTA where only a specific version worked, with Lumines all versions are meant to work so it might not be so bad.

    As for the game itself, Lumines is a great puzzle game. When you first play it you wonder what the fuss is about, but after playing it for an hour you realise why. It is very simple but good fun to play. Kind of like a cross between tetris, blocks, columns and a few other puzzle games. Some great music and graphics too.

    How does it work once you have the custom firmware? Do you put the ISO image on a Memorystick along with some application to run it?
    It ised to be the case that you needed a complicated application to run game ISO images from memory stick, but not any more. Now with custom firmware you don't need to use any applications to run them. You just copy the game ISO files onto the memory stick in the ISO directory, then on the PSP navigate to the game section and all of the game ISOs you have on the memory stick will be listed ready to play. And because the ISO launcher is built into the firmware you just select the game and it loads and runs.

    A big advantage of running games from memory stick is a huge saving in battery power. As there is no UMD spinning in the drive the system is not using any power to read discs. On my system, running a game from UMD the battery lasts maybe 3 hours or so, but running games from memory stick I've managed over 10 hours between charges.

    Also of note is the "No UMD" mode in current firmware. The original ISO loaders for the PSP used a method where a real game was always in the PSP's UMD drive and when the loader booted it would use the real disc to trick the PSP firmware that it was booting a real disc, and then would switch to the ISO image to continue loading the game. With current firmware there is a "No UMD" mode. This means you don't need a disc in the drive to run ISO based games from the memory stick. The only problem is that the No UMD method isn't 100% compatible with all games so for some you do need to switch to using the older method (which is also built into the firmware) where it uses a UMD in the drive to boot the ISO images.

    Am I right in thinking a 1GB card will provide enough capacity?
    Yes and No. Although UMDs have a capacity of 1.8GB I've so far I've not seen any game ISOs larger than about 900MB, so a 1GB memory stick is fine for running any current games. But I would recommend you get at least a 2GB memory stick as having a larger memory stick means you can fit more on it at once and have more games available at once to play.

    It also means you can fit other stuff on the stick at the same time as some games. Such as music and videos.

    I also recommend you stick with official Sony memory sticks and don't buy third party sticks as they are not as reliable and don't carry the 5 year warranty of the Sony ones. On all of the PSP forums I visit I've read of many people having problems with third party sticks from companies such as Sans, Lexar and others.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


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    Looking at play.com they're doing Sony 2GB for £17.99 (£9/GB) or 1GB for £13.49 so with the 2nd GB costing just £4.50, it makes sense to go for the higher capacity.

  8. #8
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    Space Invaders Champion, Flash Sprint Champion, Seconds Of Madness Champion, BMX Park Champion Submeg's Avatar
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    About the downgrade, it was easy, I did it and it worked, so it was ok. About Lumines...if you wish to borrow it, I have the game. I could always mail it to you for you to use to downgrade
    Check out my blog - submeg.com/

  9. #9
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    Looking at play.com they're doing Sony 2GB for £17.99 (£9/GB) or 1GB for £13.49 so with the 2nd GB costing just £4.50, it makes sense to go for the higher capacity.
    That is indeed no big difference, I would also get the 2GB in your place. I never looked for memory sticks like this, but it seems they dropped a lot in price recently.

  10. #10
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    Memory sticks have definitely dropped in price a lot this year, although they are still more expensive than alternative flash memory such as SD cards which cost about half the price of Sony Memory Sticks.

    BTW, if any of you are interesting in seeing more pictures of the new slim PSP and the documentation about it, someone on a PSP forum found this interesting link which contains PDFs of images and all of the specs of the new revised PSP. Quite a cool find.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


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