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1.50 Downgrader for 2.50/2.60 PSPs Released

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jul 01, 2006 04:33 PM
from the now-you-can-play-real-games-on-the-psp dept.
Cyraan writes "PSP owners rejoice! Hot on the heels of the recent exploit discovery & bricking that resulted from early test versions comes a confirmed working downgrader. The method uses a GTA eLoader that will turn any version 2.50/2.60 PSP, with the exception of those with a TA-082 motherboard (how to check without opening/voiding warranty), into a version 1.50 capable of playing all forms of homebrew. One thing that may not be mentioned specifically in the article: it is recommended you NOT use the 32mb Memory Stick that came with the PSP, as the process creates alot of log files that can fill it up, possibly causing a brick."
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[+] Homebrew Community Blends Gamers and Hackers 87 comments
MSNBC is running an article on the gaming homebrew community. They examine the 'do it yourself' attitude of the folks that make mods, knockoffs, and emulations possible. From the article: "So lively is the homebrew scene that some PSP fans -- it's impossible to say how many -- say they don't buy or play new games because they don't want to upgrade their gadgets and lose their homebrew software. There's even a circulating joke slogan: 'Friends don't let friends upgrade their PSPs.' Unable to break through recent versions of the Sony software, PSP homebrewers have moved on to another trick: downgrading their PSPs to earlier versions."
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  • by buffer-overflowed (588867) on Saturday July 01 2006, @04:40PM (#15643442) Journal
    to play Nintendo games on Sony hardware continues...

    Join us next month for the release of 2.7 with Loco Roco, and the following month for yet another crack.
    • Re:And the quest (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, the ISO is out and runs just fine on 1.50 using devhook 0.41d.
  • Amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kinocho (978177) on Saturday July 01 2006, @04:46PM (#15643466)
    It just amazes me, but I have no idea wich one the most...

    Stupid companies stopping customers to do what they want with legally owned hardware or

    People buying a piece of drm'ed shit that will, by all means, try to prevent it's logical uses and full potential.

    (ok, not exactly drm, but you know what I mean...)

    What, do they thing that we only have rights to the usage of the machine now? Play with it, but don't "play" with it, the new motto...

    (fuck them all)
    • Re:Amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aim Here (765712) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:03PM (#15643514)
      What do you mean 'not exactly DRM'? What you have is a machine that is allegely yours but won't run binaries that you wish to run, merely those that someone else wishes you to run.

      That IS exactly DRM.

      Otherwise, yes.
    • What most people want to do with the system is to make it run illegally downloaded games, most of them meant for other systems and many still being made and sold by their rightsholders. This hacking is also contraproductive since it makes sure there is no real market for a handheld without these restrictions since people just buy a PSP and crack it.
      • I wouldn't qualify that with "most". MOST of us(ok, I'm not one, I refuse to buy anything by Sony at this stage of the game) actually like playing with hardware and making it do things it wasn't originally designed to do. MAKE magazine is a shining example of this attitude.
      • But some of us actually enjoy expanding this cool little device with things like audio/video streaming (PSPRadio,Pimpstreamer), using the psp a universal remote (iR Shell, iTunesremote, PSPVNC), reading other media file formats than those allowed by Sony (PMP Mod, PSP Media Player). Check the full list here : http://psp-homebrew.eu/listall.php?filter=category [psp-homebrew.eu]
        Oh and we still purchase games for it too (but no way am I buying a UMD movie ...)
    • Re:Amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jawbreaker4Fs (974108) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:14PM (#15643548)
      Just buy a gp2x and be done with it.
      • I'm selling my ipod to get one of these. A few reasons why:
        1: Cool factor. No one else around here will have one
        2: Its open and runs linux, +1 cool factor
        3: The only thing I do with my ipod is plug my head phone adapter into my stereo in my car.. this will do the same
        4: It will do more than my ipod with less hacking and costs less.
          • by Rob Simpson (533360) <bertsimpson AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday July 01 2006, @06:20PM (#15643732)
            Anyone interested in what software is available for the GP2X should look here: http://www.gp32x.com/ [gp32x.com]

            There are plenty of emulators, freeware games and utilities. There is also stuff for the previous-generation GP32.

              • by Rob Simpson (533360) <bertsimpson AT yahoo DOT com> on Sunday July 02 2006, @02:22AM (#15644797)
                You're looking in the GP32 (the previous model) section. The GP2X has superior (and built-in) mp3 and video support, is much faster - it has two processors, each of which is twice as fast as the old model's CPU. My GP32 can play Phantasy Star 4 (Sega Genesis) and a bunch of Turbographix games flawlessly, among other things. Apparently the GP2X has excellent emulators for Genesis/TG16/SNES, though can't say for sure since I haven't received my GP2X yet. :) But since it has considerably better hardware, it seems reasonable. The only emulation that is supposed to be buggy and slow on the GP2X seems to be PSX (because of the 3D) and DOS emulation.
  • by erroneus (253617) on Saturday July 01 2006, @05:18PM (#15643554) Homepage
    Backdater. Downgrade seems like you're making something worse which is actually the case with some "updates" that are provided by some makers. Examples of this includes TiVo updates that remove features like commercial skipping. It would most certainly not be an upgrade. And to go back to something with better features once removed or modified would not be a downgrade. But to go back to a previous version that is more useful in some way, I would call "backdating." (please, no gay jokes)
    • The PSP OS is undergoing a transformation to a previous version, even if it wasn't originally installed, the PSP community should stick with established computing jargon. The PSP has a motherboard, video display, cpu, input devices, memory for temporary and long-term storage and an OS that is updated periodically. Smells like a computer to me.
    • 1.5 Didn't have the web browser that the later versions have. There are some other things too, like I think Sony added an RSS readers.

      In this case, it is a downgrade.

      • Not really. DEVHOOK makes it almost trivial to use the 2.0/2.5 firmware features from 1.5, and only adds maybe 10 seconds to the time it takes to get things up and going.

        Going back to 1.5 doesn't mean you lose all those features anymore.
  • Personally (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bongo Bill (853669) on Saturday July 01 2006, @06:00PM (#15643668) Homepage
    I'm waiting for that modchip to be released. That or an exploit that doesn't involve owning GTA.
  • by Croakyvoice (986312) on Saturday July 01 2006, @06:39PM (#15643783)
    The person who submitted this article carefully linked to the PSPUpdates/qjnet spam machine which charges it uses 3 dollars a week to view the forums with no ads, on the newsposts them selves they have not linked to the real coders sites or indeed release threads. This network have been banned from digg for these actions of spamming and well i hope slashdot do too. If your looking for better PSP News Sites that actually link properly then check out these sites: PSP News - http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/ [dcemu.co.uk] PSP 3D - http://psp3d.com/ [psp3d.com] PSP Hacks.com - http://www.psp-hacks.com/ [psp-hacks.com]
  • by British (51765) <british1500@gmail.com> on Saturday July 01 2006, @09:49PM (#15644223) Homepage Journal
    I went out and bought specificially a 1.5 to enjoy the homebrew. I ended up playing the homebrew stuff more than the pricey games.

    But looking at the downgrader instructions and such, AND knowing the risks of "bricking" your $250 game system, I'm glad I traded it in for a DS.

    While the PSP may have a bunch of fun features, getting to the homebrew stuff with Sony's anti-blessing is just a hassle. A lot of the homebrew stuff is about as fun as recompiling a linux kernel..on a video game system. I won't try to make any Linux technobabble / PSP technobabble comparisons since I've heard nothing but good things about the GamePark.

    So if you like fighting against Sony, the complications of Linux(upgrading/downgrading/copying files), the risk of malware(bricking your PSP, ie worse than any Windows malware), pricey games, and a failing media format(UMD), the PSP is for you!

    • by Anonymous Coward
      Overreacting much? [imageshack.us]
            • "I could care less" irritates me also, but I think it originally meant I could care less.

              The worst thing is when people say literally when they don't mean it.
              • could care less
                - and -
                I couldn't care less

                mean the same thing


                No! That's just not true. One means that there are things about which you care more, and the other means that there are not. People use the phrase(s) almost universally the same as "that doesn't matter to me." Meaning, it's at the bottom of the list of things they care about. Meaning, they could not care less about the matter at hand. Except, when trying to say that, they say the opposite - that they could care less. It's just lazyness,
    • by Firehawke (50498) on Sunday July 02 2006, @01:25AM (#15644689) Journal
      Note that the program was on beta 5-- the previous four test versions bricked PSPs, period. They were outputting a whole lot of debug data about each stage of the flash, it seems, since there are some complex steps to get things to the right point. It's not just writing bytes-- this downgrader apparently actually borrows chunks from the official PSP updater and does some interesting tricks to bypass various protection mechanisms.

      The logs were there purely to figure out where things went wrong; nobody expected this version to work.