You've probably seen the news that MaTiAz and FreePlay have found an exploit in the ancient game GripShift, which works on all PSPs (including PSP3000) and up to the latest Sony 5.02 firmware.

This is great news, it's been a long time since a new game exploit was published, and it opens the way for at least user-mode homebrew on the PSP3000.  Here at Noobz we saw the bat-signal calling for "someone who has experience in progressing exploits" to help out with developing this one further, and I'm glad to announce that we'll be joining forces with FreePlay and MaTiAz.

The exploit already includes an SDK to allow porting of homebrew by devs, but that's cumbersome.  Our initial focus will be to make it easier to run standard homebrew via this exploit,  by adapting eloader to it.  This will be restricted purely to user-mode homebrew, since there is currently no public kernel-mode exploit that could be used here, and compatibility is likely to be patchy due to the security measures in the later firmwares which make determining all the syscalls almost impossible.  Still, you can expect that at least some emulators and other popular pure user-mode homebrew will run.

Beyond that, if anyone finds a usable route to kernel-mode then a HEN and downgrader ought to be doable, but we're not focussing on that at this time.

Pre-announcements aren't normally the Noobz way, but in this case it seemed worthwhile to let people know, in case anyone was thinking of doing similar work.  We won't predict timescales, especially as everyone is very busy at the moment and there's a fair amount of work to be done - so please don't ask.

Sometimes it's important to assert the dominance of homebrew features over Sony's lacklustre official firmwares.

Take the forthcoming PSP phone functionality.  According to various rumours, Sony will shortly announce (in a few regions of the world) some new software to allow you to make and receive phone calls with your PSP via wifi, which may or may not be based upon the popular Skype platform.

That's nice, but there are a few flaws:

1. It's not yet clear how much it will cost to obtain the software, to subscribe to the service, and to make calls
2. It's not likely to be available in all countries
3. It's rumoured to only run on the PSP Slim - what about all those loyal early-adopters? :(
4. It will probably only support a limited subset of possible voice platforms - e.g. maybe just Skype, which is notoriously bad at interoperating with other networks.
   

Here at Noobz, we're fans of freedom.  So we thought we'd release our own PSP Phone software - and here it is, codenamed "Furikup" (it's a geeky protocol-based joke, don't worry about it). 

Those of you that have tried out Sony's version of the USB charge feature are probably a litle bit dissapointed that you are unable to charge the PSP whenever the PSP is plugged in. Well now you dont need to be as we have developed a plugin which allows the PSP to charge whenever the PSP Slim is connected using USB.

Download UsbSlimCharge.zip

File Size: 3.87 Kb Downloads: 115721

This is a little utility to help all of those who are too lazy to manually change their MAC address back to the correct value. This can be of use for people that have changed Wifi boards in the PSP, or if they have changed the MAC address manually.

Hopefully this will make life easier for others.

Download MacFixerUPDATED.zip

File Size: 67.96 Kb Downloads: 44594

I recently received an official Sony PSP-110 battery (the original fat PSP battery), as new from Amazon.  It seems to be a completely genuine Sony part, but it can't be successfully converted to Pandora - the battery creator shows lots of errors, even when flashing an EEPROM image from an older Sony battery.

The only difference from the older battery is that the old battery was made in China, the new battery is made in Japan. 

It wouldn't be surprising for Sony to have patched their batteries so that they're Pandora-proof.  If this is true, then it still shouldn't be a big problem - I'd recommend buying a new, large capacity battery to use as a regular battery, and using the original battery that came with your PSP for Pandora.  And of course, you can always use Booster's multi-IPL loader to use your Pandora battery as your primary battery, if you want.  Just don't go buying new Sony batteries for use with Pandora.

As we promised a long time ago we have now finished a version of eLoader which can be run from a custom firmware and HEN.

I know that a lot will probably wonder what the use of this is now that we have Pandora out so that anyone can downgrade, well the main reason is the PSP-Lite. As a lot of people are finding out the PSP Lite is unable to run 1.50 kernel, this means that old homebrew games are not able to run on the PSP Lite custom firmware, however eLoader makes it possible to run some of these older games without needing to recompile them. So I hope all you new PSP Lite owners enjoy getting to see some of the old homebrew games running on the new device.

For further details on how to install and use eLoader v1.000 see readme.html in the ZIP file.

For a list of homebrew that is reported to be working with this release, see the PSP homebrew database .  And please, if your favourite homebrew is working (or not), then add a report to the database so that other people can see your results.

Download eLoader v1.000 ZIP

File Size: 608.35 Kb Downloads: 283944

You've probably already seen the news that Datel are selling a clone of the Pandora battery.  You may even have been excited by their marketing information:

"Special TOOL version of our PSP battery works in exactly the same way as a standard SONY PSP battery but has the ability to put your PSP into service mode for custom firmware use."

You might have thought that this means that you no longer need a homebrew PSP to be able to get started with Pandora.  Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.  And Datel don't seem to be in any hurry to put you right.

This product is useful, in that it allows you to skip the step of needing a homebrew PSP to modify an existing battery.  It even comes in a nice fire engine red colour, so you don't get it confused with your other batteries. And it's not a bad price.  But you still need a homebrew PSP to create the files to place on the memory stick.  Without the special memory stick, Pandora is useless.  And no-one is able to legally give you the files required to prepare that stick without a homebrew PSP.

When you buy the TOOL battery, you get just the battery.  No instructions, no indication that you even need a memory stick, let alone how to prepare it.  Datel seem to be happy to let the buyer make the mistake of thinking this is all they need, and they don't even help you figure things out once you realise your mistake.  I think that's pretty crappy, and relying on the community to do their customer support for them is rotten.

Incidentally, it also seems that the quality control is pretty poor - we've heard tales of at least 1 TOOL battery that just didn't work, apparently because it had the wrong serial number. 

You can read the tale of woe that led to this article in the Noobz forum discussion thread here.  Please note that in the Noobz forum we cannot legally tell you how to generate your memory stick files if you don't have a homebrew PSP.