This… is… PSP!!!

I’m going to reveal a bit of a history here – when I first bought my PSP, the trick to enjoying Custom Firmware was to find one with firmware 2.00. It contained the exploit allowing the user to pass to the dark side. Unfortunately, my first PSP was a Japanese one with firmware 2.60, so I sold it and went out to hunt. Since I was aware of the screen differences back then already and wanted PSP with better screen, I had to find such combination (rare firmware plus good screen) – not an easy task, especially here in Poland, where PSPs were not a popular commodity (early 2006) and shop clerks were very reluctant to allow me to play with the console for a while to see it in action. I eventually found one, bought it and couple months later firmwares up to 2.60 were hacked using GTA exploit… Story of my life.

Later on we’ve seen a couple of breakthroughs, including creation of Pandora battery and Lumines exploit. The last one was an interesting story: at first exploit was found and Hello World program was made, then Homebrew Enabler appeared, in the meantime Lumines price sky-rocketed and some folks began selling it on ebay for huge money, causing Fanjita (the man behind the exploit) to publish a rant on how it’s nasty (read more about it here).

It seems like the history indeed likes to repeat itself, as the new exploit’s story follows the same pattern: at first the exploit is found and proof-of-concept Hello World program is shown to the public, then a simple game gets created (in case of GTA exploit it was GTA Tetris), Fanjita and Team Noobz start working on a proper downgrader and/or homebrew enabler, some enterprising individuals start selling game for huge money…

Okay, this time it’s a bit different, since this exploit will supposedly allow PSP-3000 users downgrade their machines, but we’ve seen hardware issues overcome in case of TA-88 mainboard and later when PSP Slim appeared, so it’s neither entirely unexpected nor all that shocking. So if you have just recently bought PSP-3000, there’s a high probability you will be able to use homebrew and enjoy custom firmware quite soon.

I’ve forgotten to mention that this exploit has been named Sparta exploit due to text used in Hello World (or rather This is Spartaaaa!) program, hence the title of this post and accompanying image.

Update: More drama. Sheesh.

Linux cluster from Hell

I am a supporter, user and a fan of free 3D modelling, animating and more software – Blender 3D. Honestly, being a student or a small development house, there is no better option. It’s totally free and has a huge number of features that should be enough for anyone below the level of Pixar. Which means most of the world.

But rendering of 3D scenes is a long process requiring immense processing power and in home conditions we, poor everymen, can only leave our computer for long nights of render… right?

The answer is no, you don’t have to. For a price of a full-blown high-range PC you can have a do-it-yourself Linux cluster with 24 cores and 48Gb of RAM. The name is Helmer, as it comes from hell, obviously. Actually the name comes from IKEA cabinet that the whole cluster is sitting in. Read more on the project webpage on how to make it at home. If I ever become more obsessed with 3D graphics, that’s the way I’m going to do it.

And here are plans for Helmer 2 and 3. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

PSP Faker

…or how to fake orgasm firmware (yes, I have a sense of humour of a 12 year old, I know).

Remember how I wrote an angry rant on Sony forcing me to pirate their downloadable games? I actually oppose to pirating games and if I like a game, I buy it – yet Sony assumed that since I have Custom Firmware, I already am a thief.

Apparently I was not the only person annoyed by this issue and the help unexpectedly came from Dark Alex himself. He has written a plugin for Custom Firmware that emulates having regular firmware, so that Sony installer can install the game on the PSP when we buy it from Playstation Network Store. You can download it from DA’s page or from PSPUpdates.

Beats and flOw didn’t impress me, but it seems like I’ll have to shell a couple of dollars for that incoming Super Stardust Portable…

On PSN DRM and piracy

The big news is that Sony PSN games DRM was hacked. Don’t know what I am talking about? To put it simply in plain English: downloadable titles from Sony online store are now cracked and can be played on any PSP. Although the creators of this hack made it for the use of people owning downloaded titles (their program checks for licence files when decrypting eboot files), apparently some people didn’t bother and shared it with everybody.

You might be curious if I am going to bash them or actually enjoy it. Well, it is complicated. Let me elaborate a little more on this topic.

I really wanted to play these titles legally. I went through the whole registration process on the Sony online store, including checking my credit card information, then I installed some silly program to put the downloaded game on my PSP and when I finally wanted to buy Beats! – I was denied the right to do it. Sony didn’t like my Custom Firmware and wanted me to revert to their official one, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to play the game. Of course I did not do that, but I was cursing Sony under my breath when waving bye-bye to Beats. This really annoyed me. Why can’t I play the game if I want to buy it?

I have written numerous times that I do not encourage piracy. Yes, I do download game isos, but I always buy the games I like. I often carry iso images on my Memory Stick after I have already bought the game, too, in order to cut down loading times (such is the case with Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony) or simply not to bother with taking UMD cases with me (Lumines and Every Extend Extra, which I play every now and then in short bursts – their images are relatively small).

Nevertheless, while I admit using and downloading isos (I am too lazy busy to rip them myself), the main point of using Custom Firmware is homebrew. The homebrew applications are the selling point of the PSP for me, enabling additional functionality well beyond the scope of what official PSP firmware can do. They give me freedom of choice in what I want to do with the damn device.

Thanks to homebrew I read books in PDF (a feature that Sony might one day chose to implement in their firmware), I repeat my Kanji lists, I revisit 8-bit games through emulators and I rearrange files on the Memory Stick without using PC (PSPFiler, which I have not yet described on this site). My coworker amuses himself with creating music on the go and uses his PSP as a GPS terminal – while I feel no need for these functions, for him they are what makes PSP his weapon of choice. Oh, and one more thing, very important for a Linux-infected mind like mine (coming from poor country counts too) – it’s all free.

Hence, Sony decides to punish me for using Custom Firmware by not allowing me to play their games legally. Well then, tough luck, I will do it illegally. Not my call, but hey, as the French would put it: “Tu l’as voulu, George Dandin“.

And Sony obviously didn’t learn anything after the very similar thing happened with PS1 emulation that got deciphered by smart hackers, making PSN Store virtually unnecessary, since anyone could just make PSP eboot of their old PS1 game by themselves. The pattern was the same – overly restrictive approach, which in turn resulted in a torrent (actually, many torrents, hint, hint) of converted PS1 games. Since people were asked to pay again for the possibility of playing games they already own and paid for, no wonder they started searching for alternatives, even less legal ones (ahem, I am a bit of a socialist myself, I am afraid it shows here).

This time the case is different, but the outcome is even more annoying. I want to play the game they sell and give them money for it, even though they complicate the procedure of buying it to the point where only really devoted Sony zealot will have the patience to follow it. Sony, however, assumes that since I use Custom Firmware, I am probably pirating their games and won’t sell me the game I want, trying to force me to comply and give up on my CF. I am not a pirate, but Sony knows better. Hence, the result is that I actually will be pirating PSN games, because I am denied the right to play them lawfully. Paranoia worth of Kafka.

Therefore my final opinion on the subject is: yes, I am glad someone cracked it. You asked for it Sony. I will definitely download and play them this very afternoon. Personally, I will remember to pay for these titles, should I ever have the chance, for example if Sony changes the procedures for buying PSN games, but for now I will be a filthy pirate (Arrrr!) and everybody doing the same thing is fine in my book.

So people, download and enjoy!

PS. Down with the corporations and so called intellectual property! Working masses will prevail! We shall overcome!

PPS. Ahem, disregard that. I was actually born in the communist Poland, so some residuals of early brainwashing might have remained.

On PSN DRM and piracy

The big news is that Sony PSN games DRM was hacked. Don’t know what I am talking about? To put it simply in plain English: downloadable titles from Sony online store are now cracked and can be played on any PSP. Although the creators of this hack made it for the use of people owning downloaded titles (their program checks for licence files when decrypting eboot files), apparently some people didn’t bother and shared it with everybody.

You might be curious if I am going to bash them or actually enjoy it. Well, it is complicated. Let me elaborate a little more on this topic.

I really wanted to play these titles legally. I went through the whole registration process on the Sony online store, including checking my credit card information, then I installed some silly program to put the downloaded game on my PSP and when I finally wanted to buy Beats! – I was denied the right to do it. Sony didn’t like my Custom Firmware and wanted me to revert to their official one, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to play the game. Of course I did not do that, but I was cursing Sony under my breath when waving bye-bye to Beats. This really annoyed me. Why can’t I play the game if I want to buy it?

I have written numerous times that I do not encourage piracy. Yes, I do download game isos, but I always buy the games I like. I often carry iso images on my Memory Stick after I have already bought the game, too, in order to cut down loading times (such is the case with Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony) or simply not to bother with taking UMD cases with me (Lumines and Every Extend Extra, which I play every now and then in short bursts – their images are relatively small).

Nevertheless, while I admit using and downloading isos (I am too lazy busy to rip them myself), the main point of using Custom Firmware is homebrew. The homebrew applications are the selling point of the PSP for me, enabling additional functionality well beyond the scope of what official PSP firmware can do. They give me freedom of choice in what I want to do with the damn device.

Thanks to homebrew I read books in PDF (a feature that Sony might one day chose to implement in their firmware), I repeat my Kanji lists, I revisit 8-bit games through emulators and I rearrange files on the Memory Stick without using PC (PSPFiler, which I have not yet described on this site). My coworker amuses himself with creating music on the go and uses his PSP as a GPS terminal – while I feel no need for these functions, for him they are what makes PSP his weapon of choice. Oh, and one more thing, very important for a Linux-infected mind like mine (coming from poor country counts too) – it’s all free.

Hence, Sony decides to punish me for using Custom Firmware by not allowing me to play their games legally. Well then, tough luck, I will do it illegally. Not my call, but hey, as the French would put it: “Tu l’as voulu, George Dandin“.

And Sony obviously didn’t learn anything after the very similar thing happened with PS1 emulation that got deciphered by smart hackers, making PSN Store virtually unnecessary, since anyone could just make PSP eboot of their old PS1 game by themselves. The pattern was the same – overly restrictive approach, which in turn resulted in a torrent (actually, many torrents, hint, hint) of converted PS1 games. Since people were asked to pay again for the possibility of playing games they already own and paid for, no wonder they started searching for alternatives, even less legal ones (ahem, I am a bit of a socialist myself, I am afraid it shows here).

This time the case is different, but the outcome is even more annoying. I want to play the game they sell and give them money for it, even though they complicate the procedure of buying it to the point where only really devoted Sony zealot will have the patience to follow it. Sony, however, assumes that since I use Custom Firmware, I am probably pirating their games and won’t sell me the game I want, trying to force me to comply and give up on my CF. I am not a pirate, but Sony knows better. Hence, the result is that I actually will be pirating PSN games, because I am denied the right to play them lawfully. Paranoia worth of Kafka.

Therefore my final opinion on the subject is: yes, I am glad someone cracked it. You asked for it Sony. I will definitely download and play them this very afternoon. Personally, I will remember to pay for these titles, should I ever have the chance, for example if Sony changes the procedures for buying PSN games, but for now I will be a filthy pirate (Arrrr!) and everybody doing the same thing is fine in my book.

So people, download and enjoy!

PS. Down with the corporations and so called intellectual property! Working masses will prevail! We shall overcome!

PPS. Ahem, disregard that. I was actually born in the communist Poland, so some residuals of early brainwashing might have remained.

Illuminated by Lumines

Although this isn’t exactly fresh-out-of-the-oven news, I definitely cannot pass on it. Plus, there’s a few interesting twists and turns to this story, now that we look at it from three weeks perspective.

Fanjita and Noobz team managed to find an exploit in one of the first games for PSP – Lumines. At first they provided only the proof of concept in the form of Illuminati-themed Hello World equivalent. Hence, it has been nicknamed the Illuminati Exploit.

Two days later the team brought us full HEN (homebrew enabler) and downgrader for any firmware up to 3.50, using any Lumines version (EU, US and JP). One could see video tutorials around, such as this YouTube movie. The sales of Lumines have sky-rocketed after the exploit was found. My personal guess is that this makes it the most popular PSP game in the world. I have mentioned it many times that Lumines should be the game that every PSP owner should have (my prophetic skills never cease to amaze me), so now there’s one more reason to.

Unfortunately, this has also caused some people to buy it only for speculative purposes. As a result of this and also in order to underline the fact that downgrading itself is not a bad thing, a couple days later slightly embittered Fanjita published a rant on morality of downgrading.

I totally agree with what he writes there- I myself admit publicly that I use game isos, but I am against piracy. Therefore, when I see the game that I am interested in, I will download and play it. If it turns out good, I buy it, if it doesn’t I delete it. Taking into account that a new PSP game can easily cost above 200PLN (more than 72USD) in Poland and the fact that game demos are few and far between, I feel justified in my actions. And I have a whole set of games on my shelf to back me up. Oh, and I also use isos in order not to carry all my UMDs around and to speed up loading.

Unfortunately, Sony reaction to the whole Lumines affair was fast as lightning, too – almost immediately a new firmware was released with exploit hole patched and no new functionality added. Also, there are rumours on the web that there is a new, patched version of Lumines out there. This wouldn’t be the first time something like that happens – it was the same with GTA : Liberty City Stories.

Together with the news of Dark Alex leaving the scene, this puts the future of homebrew in rather grim perspective. Personally, I have to admit I have my fears concerning Dark Alex ever since I saw the black ribbon on his webpage. Remembering him mentioning that “I’ve lost two family members this year because of cancer [...] PSP programming [...] was a hobby that distracted my mind of the darkness of life” and remembering Cyblade, I can’t shake off bad feelings. Dark Alex, wherever you are, I hope you are safe and sound.

Nevertheless, despite this sad accents, the facts for the time being are such that we have homebrew capability for almost every firmware available so far, great OpenEdition firmwares, superb quality games that don’t require firmware upgrade just yet and a ton of great homebrew of all kind. Let us be happy about it for now and worry about potential troubles when they arrive!

Illuminated by Lumines

Although this isn’t exactly fresh-out-of-the-oven news, I definitely cannot pass on it. Plus, there’s a few interesting twists and turns to this story, now that we look at it from three weeks perspective.

Fanjita and Noobz team managed to find an exploit in one of the first games for PSP – Lumines. At first they provided only the proof of concept in the form of Illuminati-themed Hello World equivalent. Hence, it has been nicknamed the Illuminati Exploit.

Two days later the team brought us full HEN (homebrew enabler) and downgrader for any firmware up to 3.50, using any Lumines version (EU, US and JP). One could see video tutorials around, such as this YouTube movie. The sales of Lumines have sky-rocketed after the exploit was found. My personal guess is that this makes it the most popular PSP game in the world. I have mentioned it many times that Lumines should be the game that every PSP owner should have (my prophetic skills never cease to amaze me), so now there’s one more reason to.

Unfortunately, this has also caused some people to buy it only for speculative purposes. As a result of this and also in order to underline the fact that downgrading itself is not a bad thing, a couple days later slightly embittered Fanjita published a rant on morality of downgrading.

I totally agree with what he writes there- I myself admit publicly that I use game isos, but I am against piracy. Therefore, when I see the game that I am interested in, I will download and play it. If it turns out good, I buy it, if it doesn’t I delete it. Taking into account that a new PSP game can easily cost above 200PLN (more than 72USD) in Poland and the fact that game demos are few and far between, I feel justified in my actions. And I have a whole set of games on my shelf to back me up. Oh, and I also use isos in order not to carry all my UMDs around and to speed up loading.

Unfortunately, Sony reaction to the whole Lumines affair was fast as lightning, too – almost immediately a new firmware was released with exploit hole patched and no new functionality added. Also, there are rumours on the web that there is a new, patched version of Lumines out there. This wouldn’t be the first time something like that happens – it was the same with GTA : Liberty City Stories.

Together with the news of Dark Alex leaving the scene, this puts the future of homebrew in rather grim perspective. Personally, I have to admit I have my fears concerning Dark Alex ever since I saw the black ribbon on his webpage. Remembering him mentioning that “I’ve lost two family members this year because of cancer [...] PSP programming [...] was a hobby that distracted my mind of the darkness of life” and remembering Cyblade, I can’t shake off bad feelings. Dark Alex, wherever you are, I hope you are safe and sound.

Nevertheless, despite this sad accents, the facts for the time being are such that we have homebrew capability for almost every firmware available so far, great OpenEdition firmwares, superb quality games that don’t require firmware upgrade just yet and a ton of great homebrew of all kind. Let us be happy about it for now and worry about potential troubles when they arrive!

How I bricked my PSP…

Long time since I last wrote about PSP here, so to catch up I’ll tell you a thrilling story of suspense.

As you know, I updated my PSP firmware to 3.02OE when I’ve heard about all the marvelous possibilities it opens (meaning PSX emulation). A few days later Dark_Alex released another version of his custom firmware, version 3.03. Its two main features were fixing a bug regarding region-free UMD playing and adding support for compression in PSX isos.

As you can see on the image above, I finally managed to do it. Unfortunately, after launching the firmware update I was soon confronted with a bricked PSP. Imagine my horror when I saw that after turning it on there was nothing but black screen and only Memory Stick access diode would keep blinking…

(plus, I was about to fly to States and would be deprived of gaming on that long flight – scary)

If it happened to you too, don’t worry. If that little green light still blinks, it means that your system is not dead yet. It is not actually even bricked, but semi-bricked, so to speak. Think of it as a coma, rather than death. Click below to read detailed instructions on how to restore your firmware.

First of all, you should have used original Dark_Alex firmware, not one of these stupid easy installers. If this is not the case, download it here.

Secondly, you will need to unpack the RECOVERY folder that is included in 3.02 OE-A zip file. You’ll also need to download the 1.50 firmware,rename it to UPDATE.PBP and put it in the RECOVERY folder. Perhaps you have already prepared all (or some) of it, but not necessarily (especially if you had used one of the abominable easy installers) and if you did not, now is the time to do it.

Thirdly, connect your PSP to your PC using the cable. You then need to reboot your PSP holding down R button – you should see a recovery menu. Find Toggle USB option and click the button. Now your PSP is connected and you should see the contents of Memory Stick as a new USB drive (I will refer to it as X:, but in your case it is probably some other letter, so use that letter instead of X).

Consequently, copy the RECOVERY folder to /PSP/GAME folder on Memory Stick so that you have X:/PSP/GAME/RECOVERY. Then in the recovery menu choose option Run program at /PSP/GAME/RECOVERY/EBOOT.PBP. Everything should be good now (so it was in my case).

If you still get a black screen after that, well, that’s more complicated. I didn’t have that problem, but while googling, I found this piece of information :

You’ll also need the systemctrl.prx file for 1.50. Google for it. Then when in recovery mode: toggle USB and place the systemctrl.prx file in X:/REFLASH, go to advance options and choose Flash->Systemctrl (1.50). When done, go back and try to run the recovery option again. If it works, you’ll be in firmware 1.50 again, then you can try reupdating again.

I cannot guarantee, however, that it is 100% accurate. I quote it here nevertheless, because maybe someone will find it useful.

If the above instructions helped you, please let me know via comments.

How I bricked my PSP…

Long time since I last wrote about PSP here, so to catch up I’ll tell you a thrilling story of suspense.

As you know, I updated my PSP firmware to 3.02OE when I’ve heard about all the marvelous possibilities it opens (meaning PSX emulation). A few days later Dark_Alex released another version of his custom firmware, version 3.03. Its two main features were fixing a bug regarding region-free UMD playing and adding support for compression in PSX isos.

As you can see on the image above, I finally managed to do it. Unfortunately, after launching the firmware update I was soon confronted with a bricked PSP. Imagine my horror when I saw that after turning it on there was nothing but black screen and only Memory Stick access diode would keep blinking…

(plus, I was about to fly to States and would be deprived of gaming on that long flight – scary)

If it happened to you too, don’t worry. If that little green light still blinks, it means that your system is not dead yet. It is not actually even bricked, but semi-bricked, so to speak. Think of it as a coma, rather than death. Click below to read detailed instructions on how to restore your firmware.

First of all, you should have used original Dark_Alex firmware, not one of these stupid easy installers. If this is not the case, download it here.

Secondly, you will need to unpack the RECOVERY folder that is included in 3.02 OE-A zip file. You’ll also need to download the 1.50 firmware,rename it to UPDATE.PBP and put it in the RECOVERY folder. Perhaps you have already prepared all (or some) of it, but not necessarily (especially if you had used one of the abominable easy installers) and if you did not, now is the time to do it.

Thirdly, connect your PSP to your PC using the cable. You then need to reboot your PSP holding down R button – you should see a recovery menu. Find Toggle USB option and click the button. Now your PSP is connected and you should see the contents of Memory Stick as a new USB drive (I will refer to it as X:, but in your case it is probably some other letter, so use that letter instead of X).

Consequently, copy the RECOVERY folder to /PSP/GAME folder on Memory Stick so that you have X:/PSP/GAME/RECOVERY. Then in the recovery menu choose option Run program at /PSP/GAME/RECOVERY/EBOOT.PBP. Everything should be good now (so it was in my case).

If you still get a black screen after that, well, that’s more complicated. I didn’t have that problem, but while googling, I found this piece of information :

You’ll also need the systemctrl.prx file for 1.50. Google for it. Then when in recovery mode: toggle USB and place the systemctrl.prx file in X:/REFLASH, go to advance options and choose Flash->Systemctrl (1.50). When done, go back and try to run the recovery option again. If it works, you’ll be in firmware 1.50 again, then you can try reupdating again.

I cannot guarantee, however, that it is 100% accurate. I quote it here nevertheless, because maybe someone will find it useful.

If the above instructions helped you, please let me know via comments.

Say hi to 3.02OE-B

As promised in the previous post, I spent this day upgrading my PSP’s firmware to the newest and coolest one by Dark_Alex – namely 3.02OE-B – and playing with PSX (or PS1) emulation.

It took me some time, because first of all I needed to find all the appropriate files (no brickers, please), read HowTos and testimonials on forums to know what I’m doing, then I continued with converting my Final Fantasy VII isos to PBP format readable by Pops (the PSX emulator found in the 3.02 firmware), only to spend another hours struggling with YouTube and my camera (the result can be seen below).

Final Fantasy VII on Barts’ PSP.

There were a couple of hiccups here and there – for example I have learnt the difference between PAL and NTSC (resulting in corrupted display of my PAL FF7). Fortunately I managed to correct it with a program called Zapper (you can find it here), but it took some more time. As for YouTube and recording video from PSP – don’t even get me started.

But the efforts were well worth it. The PSX emulator runs smoothly and does its job very well in case of most games. The custom firmware is great, eliminating the need to use DevHook both for UMDs requiring higher firmware than 1.50 (meaning most of them) and for ISO emulation (done on the flight, user can run ISOs straight from game menu). Homebrew programs can be run both in kxploit versions (for 1.50) and normal ones (for 1.00). All the goodies from 3.02 firmware are there (visualisations, RSS and so on).

All in all, I am very pleased with my new firmware and the new possibilities it opens. This is truly a great Christmas present for the PSP community.

I promise to post more details anytime soon (such as which HowTos are good, what tricks there are and so on), but I thought I’d share the impressions together with a movie to show you how great it is.