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Hardware Hacking Programming Entertainment Games IT Technology

PSP Hackers Go Retro 69

Posted by Zonk from the hi-mom dept.
ByteWoopy writes "Hello World!' That's the traditional phrase that programmers display when they create their first piece of software for an unfamiliar operating system. Owners of Sony's handheld PSP game system were delighted to hear May 5 that a hacker had managed to write a small program that displayed those words on a PSP. They wondered what would be next. As it turned out, it only took hackers five days to go from 'Hello World' to Mario World. On May 10, sites like PSP Hacker reported that a Japanese hacker known only by the name Mr. Mirakichi had developed a program called RIN that let the PSP play software written for the original black-and-white Nintendo Game Boy system.'"
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PSP Hackers Go Retro More

PSP Hackers Go Retro

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  • This is a little bit of old news but looks like the mainstream is picking up on it.

    The real news will ben when the new firmware is cracked or a hole is found outside the firmware to run unsigned code. But with all othter things its only a matter of time.
  • ...people would hack just about anything. Not that the PSP is exactly "anything"; it's immediate envy whenever I see one (waiting for the price to go down, if ever) and besides, I had read of the earlier browser hack and other things. Maybe this should be in CmdrTaco's because-you-can dept. instead.

    Side note: ByteWoopy?!? Just as Michael Bolton wondered about that PC Load Letter, so I wonder about that, uh...name. (Not that game kid is any less odd...)

  • But can everyone benefit from this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pnice ( 753704 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:56AM (#12747564)
    I thought running these applications was limited to just the Japanese V1.0 firmware. The rest are unable to run any of these programs. This kind of limits the cool factor to me. If this one particular firmware didn't have the loophole/exploit (whatever you want to call it) would the PSP be moving along as fast as it is...well, for those with the right PSP/firmware?

  • Getting started (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The PS2DEV forums [ps2dev.org] is currently the best resource to get started hacking your PSP with 1.0 firmware. There's even the beginnings of a PSP GCC toolchain: http://www.oopo.net/consoledev/files/psptoolchain- 20050603.tgz [oopo.net].

  • Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @11:59AM (#12747608)
    Is it just me or does anyone else think that if you could emulate and play Gameboy (and eventually Gameboy color and advance) games on a PSP that it really negates any reason for buying a Gameboy Advance or DS?

    It's like buying a PSP and getting a gameboy for free. Granted it is illegal, and the ROMs won't play as well as the originals, but how much will people notice or care?

    • 1. It's illegal
      2. It only works on Jap 1.0 firmware
      3. PSP is teh ghey
      4. PSP is *not* powerful enough to emulate the DS and all its hardware, emulation isn't easy at all, even pentium 4's cant emualte DS at fullspeed (not implying DS is anywhere close to the power of a P4, just explaining how difficult emulation is)
      5. You couldn't control/view DS games properly.

      I know I loose any chance at getting modded anything but troll for the 3rd reason, but oh well, at least im still 80% imformative :)
      • 1. A lot of people do it anyway

        2. For the time being

        3. That's your opinion

        4. I said GB games, not DS games. There really aren't too many DS games worth emulating at the moment anyhow. Not to mention I think it uses a similar processor to the N64. I've seen a PC do a pretty good job emulating an N64.

        5. Once again, I said GB games. That's regular, color, and advance.

        • I said GB games, not DS games.

          "negates any reason for buying a Gameboy Advance or DS?"

          Well, I'd figured DS games were implied. To answer your original question, then no it doesn't because people by DS's to play DS games (well, at least they will when they start coming out :) )

          It uses a similar cpu as the n64, but theres more to it than that. It has to emulate the dual core 2D chip, the 3D chip, the ARM7 CPU and the ARM9 CPU, the audio chip, the wireless chip etc etc etc. Also, last time I checked n64
          • I think that Nintendo mostly doesn't care about whether or not someone has hacked the firmware because people aren't using it to pirate games. When it comes to protecting their games, Nintendo takes the cake. The N64 used carts which no one wants to steal, the GC uses non-standard discs that Nintendo apparently controls the distrobution of. The DS uses carts as well if I'm not mistaken. Because no one goes around selling blanks and a machine to write data onto them, they're not to concerned.

            Now if some

            • Wow. Uninformed.

              You can buy blank carts for sale, and the right hardware to flash them (i.e. write to them)
              DS doesn't have any avaliable yet, but soon.
              There are many DS emulators for the PC. DSemu, Dualis, iDeaS, and Hyper-something-or-other. They're getting pretty close to being able to start running retail games.
              People actually do use blank carts to pirate games.
              GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks, so that's why pirating is hard (I think even nonexistant at this point)
              Saying that N64 emula

              • GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks

                MYTH. FALSE.

                GameCube discs spin clockwise viewed from the label side, just like CDs and DVDs. Turn on a game in your PS1 (which uses CD-ROM), then turn off the machine and open the lid. Watch it spin down clockwise. Now repeat the process with the GameCube and observes that it spins down the same way.

                The difference lies in the spiral. The spiral of a CD or the first layer of a DVD goes from center to edge, while the spiral of a GameCube disc or the

              • 99.9% of people might not have enough skill to mod a PSP or read a tutorial on how to do it, but 100% of people are easily capable of sending their system to someone who can.

                I recall the PS2 being somewhat difficult to put a mod chip into, mostly because you had to solder at over 30 points and most people weren't willing to take the chance of having a "slip of the wrist." I'm not sure exactly what it cost, but I think people usually tended to charge around $30, plus whatever it cost to ship the system t

              • I agree with most of your points but have a few corrections:

                GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks

                No, they spin clockwise just like (practically) every other optical disc under the sun. The ARE different in that the data is read from the outer edge toward the center -- the "start" of the disc is on the edge, and if it's only half-full, then it's the center portion that will be blank. This is uncommon among optical discs, but it makes sense -- for any modern drive, read spead increases as you
              • > GCN's cd's spin backwards relative to normal disks, so that's why pirating is hard (I think even nonexistant at this point)

                As others told, the discs do not spin backwards. Also, there is a working and publicly available Modchip for GC, but only since a few months. IIRC its called Viper.
      • 3. PSP is teh ghey

        Um... Wow.

        4. PSP is *not* powerful enough to emulate the DS and all its hardware, emulation isn't easy at all, even pentium 4's cant emualte DS at fullspeed (not implying DS is anywhere close to the power of a P4, just explaining how difficult emulation is)

        This is total bull. If the low-level specs for the hardware were available, it would be emulated on a modern PC fairly easily. Your comment can't help but remind me of the people saying you'd need a 1 Ghz machine to emulate an N64
    • I only like Gameboy and Nintendo for a few of their games. If I could get those few games on other machines, I would buy them instead. Nintendo is going to the wayside soon me think.
      • What? And what games on the PSP are so great that warrant the $250 asking price?

        As far as Nintendo going by the wayside, that is the most rediculous opionion to be had by a gamer. Nintendo isn't going anywhere. They are the most profitable of all the game companies.
    • As long as you buy your ROMs (yeah right) it wouldn't be a big deal. Most hardware is built at cost or loss to turn you around for buying the games.

      Emulation doesn't kill platforms, piracy does.

  • Anyone else annoyed... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tickenest ( 544722 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @12:19PM (#12747861) Homepage Journal
    by the fact that the author writes "from Hello World to Mario World" when the Game Boy version was called "Super Mario Land" (note: I'm fine with leaving out the "Super", but changing "Land" to "World" just to get a cute line is cause for making a declaration of shennanigans.) Still, the ingenuity of those who manage to hack the PSP and similar systems never ceases to amaze.
  • This s very outdated news. Not only is this little "hello world" program far from the first things hacked onto a PSP, but its crap compared to the impressive feats that were created on the first day it was released, such as the PSPIRC program that lets you chat on IRC anywhere you have a PSP and a hotspot. PSPIRC was created within 24 hours of the PSPs US release, just on a whim of "wouldn't it be cool".
    • the early "hacks" were really just finding clever ways to use the web browser built into wipeout. they weren't actually running any proper code on the PSP itself, and you had to stay near a proper PC or laptop to use them

      these hacks are *actualy pieces of code* being run *directly on the firmwire*...

      i'll be really impressed when I see linux boot, but i'm waiting for linux on a DS far more

      (before anyone says "why the hell.." - the DS is a dual processor, touch screen system - it would make a great cut pri

  • Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @01:30PM (#12748913)
    I read last week that you could get homebrews to run on the 1.0-J firmware, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't news even then. After RTFA, this is the same thing that I already knew.

    Wake me up when this works on a current US firmware release.

    Now that my rant is done with, I will say that I expect the PSP to be broken for homebrews eventually, probably through some kind of buffer overflow exploit like the one in 007 Agent Under Fire (?) for Xbox. You may have to carry a UMD of some particular game around and use it every time you want to run a homebrew, though.

  • Wasn't the original gameboy kind of dark grey and greenish color?

  • Here's the current list... (Score:5, Informative)

    by wheresdrew ( 735202 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @05:33PM (#12751900) Journal
    ...of emulators that'll run on a J1.0 PSP:

    Gameboy/Gameboy Colour - Rin, Rin Unnoficial
    GameGear - SMS PSP
    Genesis (Megadrive) - Megadrive for PSP, Generator/PSP
    MAME (Arcade) - XMame PSP
    Master System - SMS PSP
    MSX - fMSX, Hitbit
    Neo Geo Pocket - NGPSP
    Neo Geo CD - NEOGEO CD
    Nes - InfoNes, Famicontest, Nes for PSP, Nesterj PSP
    PC Engine - PCEP
    Snes - UO Snes9x PSP, Snes9x PSP, Snes9x Optimised
    Wonderswan - Oswan PSP

    They're not all running at full speed, but some of them are great pieces of work. Rin, for instance, is damned near perfect (and getting better with each release). I use it to play the Zelda GBC games and they look (and sound, and play) great.

    The work on them is continuing at a rapid pace - a lot of the emulators are getting updated several times a week - and they're just going to get better.

    The one I'm waiting for (that hasn't shown up yet) is a GBA emulator. I think that's the one that's really going to get people's attention.

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