How to hack your PSPFollow

I wanted to create a post about this, and I've gotten a good start but this is by no means done yet. However, some people were interested in the battery I got to hack my PSP so I thought I would put up what I have so far with links to the battery so you could at least order it if you were intending to do so.

As with every other guide on this, there is a risk to your PSP. It's not a great risk, especially with the Pandora battery method I'm using, but it's still there. I'm not responsible for anything that may happen to your PSP as a result of this guide. In fact, if you wait until I'm done to try this I'll actually put up a video of me hacking my PSP so you can see how it's done before you try it. There are numerous other videos out there on the subject as well.

Lastly, this guide is long, I know. I could have made it much shorter but I'm the type of person who likes to know why I'm doing things, not just what to do. If you have any opinions on how to make things clearer (other than formatting, I'm working on that) I'm all ears. And here we go...

*************************This guide is under construction*************************

Considerations:

• Pandora Battery FAQ
• When buying a battery, either get the appropriate battery for your type of PSP (Slim or Fat). I'm using a fat PSP (I left my slim on the official firmware for playing UMD's) and so my links are to fat PSP batteries. There are slim versions on the sites as well.
• As UMD's are updated to use newer firmware, you may find that some games will require you to update your firmware to play them. This will undo your modded firmware. You could also check the Qj.net forums to find updated hacked firmware that will allow you to play your UMD's.
• Some of the newest PSP's cannot be hacked even using a Pandora battery. This link outlines the details. What I recommend is getting yourself a nice used original PSP (fat) and using it for your homebrew and emulation, as I have done.

A) Requirements:

• Pandora Battery
• Memory Stick (I used a 1gb stick, I hear there are issues with larger sticks for some of these steps)
• Software

B) Pandora Battery:

Where to find: These can be created by someone who has an already modified PSP. However, since this guide is assuming that you don't have access to one, and that your firmware you currently have is un-hackable, you will have to spend a tiny bit of money on this. However, it is completely worth it. Here are some options:

Deal Extreme Pandora Battery: $9.66.
This is the one I bought, shipping was free, I had it in 2 weeks. $10 and your PSP's abilities are GREATLY enhanced. Totally worth it . The only downfall is that it will stick out of the back of your PSP if it's a slim style, but since you won't be using this for anything else, it's forgivable.

Max Power PSP Slim Tool Battery $24.99
This is a slim battery, same thing. More expensive at $25 and so not quite as attractive as the DealExtreme battery.

C) Software Required:

• 7zip: This is needed for opening some of the files as they are compressed in a .rar format. You can download winrar if you want, but it's not free and 7zip is an excellent free archive utility.
• Universal Unbricker: This is needed as it contains the boot files necessary that the Pandora battery uses to re-flash your PSP and load the custom firmware.
• Partition Mover: This makes your memory stick bootable.
• seplugins These are what are used to emulate different firmwares. Various PSX games run better on one firmware versus another.
• Offical 4.01 Firmware Needed for part of the upgrade from the initial firmware installed after hacking.
• 4.01 M33-2 hacked firmware
• 1.50 Addon for PSP Homebrew
• 1.50 EBOOT Offical 1.50 firmware

D) Creating your Magic Memory Stick:
The Magic Memory Stick tells the Pandora battery to boot from the memory stick rather than the PSP. This enables you to hack your PSP. This requires Windows XP at the moment because of the FAT formatting not being available in Vista. Here are the steps I had to take as well as some error messages and possible ways to resolve them. There are 2 sections, setting up the memory stick and moving the partitions.

Note: If you have game saves on your memory stick, I would recommend making a backup of the files first as these steps will obliterate anything on the memory stick. To do this, plug in the PSP to your PC using the USB cable, put it in USB mode, and copy the entire contents of the memory stick to a folder on your PC somewhere. I will go into restoring this data later on below.

Setting up the Memory Stick:

1. Put the memory stick in your PSP.
2. Plug your PSP into your PC using the USB cable and power it on. Go to USB mode.
3. After your computer recognizes your PSP, go to My Computer, right click on the drive that represents the PSP, and choose Format (This is the step that will wipe all contents from your memory stick so make sure you've backed it up if necessary). I used the FAT format, I suggest you do the same.
4. Download the Universal Unbricker (See link above). Extract the files from the archive, and place everything into the memory stick. You should have: 3 Folders ("PSP", "kd", "registry") and 4 files("150.pbp", "340.pbp", "371.pbp", "msipl.bin").

Moving the partitions:

1. Download the Partition Mover (See link above).
2. Extract msinst from the archive to your C:\ drive.
3. Click on Start, then Run, type CMD and click Run.
4. Type "cd c:\msinst" and hit enter (No quotes)
5. In My Computer, take note of what drive letter your memory stick is assigned.
6. Type "msinst <drive letter here> msipl.bin (No quotes, and replace <drive letter here> with the letter of your memorystick). Example: msinst H msipl.bin if your memory stick is drive H.
7. Confirmation message here

I got an error message when attempting to do this in Vista. Something like this, or really anything other than the confirmation message above is a problem:


I believe this can be resolved by formatting the memory stick in Windows XP using the FAT format.

E) Hacking the PSP itself:
Provided you followed my steps up to this point, you should now have a working Magic Memory
Stick.

• pull out the battery for your PSP (and unplug it if it's plugged in)
• Now put in your Pandora battery
• If everything was done correctly, you should see your access lights light up (by the Wi-Fi switch if you have an original PSP). The screen may not light up, mine did.
• Once the lights stop flashing the firmware has loaded. At this point, press the square button to dump your NAND flash memory to a file in case you need to recover from a bricking. Make sure you have at least 64mb of extra space on your memory stick, if you're using a 1gb stick or higher you should be fine.
• Once the dump finishes (lights stop flashing if you don't have anything on your screen), you will need to reboot. Press X, and when your lights stop flashing, pull out the Pandora battery and then put it back in. Again your lights will flash as the software on the stick is loaded, and hopefully your screen will light up (if not just wait for the lights to stop flashing).
• Press X to install the hacked firmware. Once the lights stop flashing you need to reboot again by pressing X. Once that is done then remove the Pandora battery and make sure the PSP is completely powered off. Then put in your regular battery and power it back on. You should be on hacked firmware now.

F) Updating Firmware to 4.01 M33-2:

G) What to do now?

• Resetting your memory stick
• Loading Homebrew
• Playing PSX games on your PSP

Well the problem with making your own battery if you don't already have a hacked PSP is that it requires some technical know-how and even then you could still end up breaking the battery. Trust me, with no shipping costs that DealExtreme battery is a bargain.

I plan to expand this as well to go over how to make your own EBOOTs of PSX games to play on your PSP, from your own disks

Yep, it's our 6th wedding anniversary tomorrow so I probably won't get anything done until later next week.

Instead of fooling around with the battery or ordering a pandora battery, I found it easier to use the PSP Battery Service Tool. It is usable on any PSP and puts the PSP into service mode. Doing so only requires you to download the files to turn a memory stick into a magic memory stick.

Seriously though Wint, you made this more complicated than necessary. Once I got my service tool, I was able to downgrade and update to custom firmware in about an hour. Now I have a memory stick full of SNES, NES, Genesis, GBA, and GB games.

Boredom doesn't exist. Now if I only had time to actually play my PSP.

Edited, Oct 13th 2008 5:34am by Paskil