PSP Hacks · Hacks, Cracks, Mods, Homebrew, Utilities

Apparently there’s a PSP modchip in production! Below is the quote from pspupdates:

We have received an email from Team DST to let us know about a mod chip they’ve been working on for the last couple of months. He let us know that the chip does not require any soldering, but you will need to replace some of the wires on the motherboard and everything is included in the package. With this chip you can play any region coded UMD on your PSP, along with homebrew regardless of your PSP’s firmware version.

The picture above displays one of their technical specialists circuit checking the final prototype. The first batch of these chips will only be sold on ebay and they plan to make 100 chips, with more planned if there a success.

The Mod Chip Has The following features:

– Full control Input through the psp’s screen and controls
– Separated From The motherboard
– Custom Interface
– Built In 88mhz Processor
– Dual Memory Cores (allowing For expansion)
– Software completely open source
– Completely internal
– Allows play of import UMD films
– Complete override of software on the psp
1.Homebrew Mode Only Allows software to be run off memory stick
2.Normal Mode Allows of chip’s default features and signed code on the memory stick
– CPU Clocking allows speeds of up to 365mhz which may damage the CPU so we don’t recommend it
– And through an optional cable you can connect a USB hard drive to the chip requires you to use the chips own software you can not use it directly with the psp’s firmware
– Full Instructions
– Requires One standard watch battery which will be included in the package

The first batch will be on sale on EBay for $22.99 USD starting November 19th. We’ll be sure to keep you informed with more news on this as we get it.

This is pure speculation; it may be a hoax - it may not.

Even more bad news, with Humma retiring the other day, Naoneo (aka fluff) has officially posted that PSIX has been “temp-terminated”. I’ve known that he wasn’t working on it for a while, but it is very sad to see a project this good die.
Here is the statement from his site.

Psix project has been temp-terminated, neither me nor Qubitz have the time to maintain and work on the project at this time, may resume in the new year depending on what were up to then but no breath holding, additionally team xanxion has been dissolved, Dual Savours development has been halted and updates to this site will now cease, i have neither the time nor patience to deal with liars, untrustworthy assholes and blackmailers, to the testers that have the beta, feel free to leak it, it wont work on other peoples psp’s anyway.
Feel free to direct your hate mail to someonewhocares@somesite.com

Later all, hope the homebrew scene doesn’t die while i’m gone.

If anyone here has the beta of PSIX, he has said you can leak it. If you email it to Gary13579-at-gmail.com, I will post it for anyone to attempt to hack it.

Update: Fluff (aka Naoneo) has posted on the PSPUpdates forums that he has not truly “cancelled”, more of postponed. He also mentioned a few reasons, which are pretty obvious.
Here’s his second statement

Right, you guys deserve a proper answer so here it is :

Ever since the last escapade with sage a few months back, i havent had the heart to continue with the project so much, qubitz and i decided to revamp the entire project in a way that would make the memory issues a thing of the past, starting with a powerful base engine we planned to refine every last bit of the shell, we started on that and exams time came for qubitz, since he wasnt around muich to code or discuss the project, i plodded on with the development guidelines writing up everything so we both had clear lines of where the project was to go, the older sources (the ones you can see from the video) were discarded, because although they worked, the code behind them was messy and poorly written, qubitz, who i will openly admit is a much better coder than myself, was to write the base, to which we would then both add code to, looking at each others submittions in the CVS branch so we would know fully where each other were, this worked well for a while but as i said, qubitz’s exams kicked in and we gradually stopped working on the project, and as such i finally decided to publicly announce a temporary termination on the development, not because psix is dead, or as most people will say “omg pulled a yoshi and running with the money!”, but so people wont sit there asking where it is when its obvious we both neither have the time nore patience to deal with it.

There are a small small handfull of people who have the 3 eboots from the older code (from the videos), one of which decided that because we didnt have time to work on the project, he’d email me asking “give me the source or i’ll leak the beta”, now really, i don’t give a crap about the old beta so if in the next few hours, or days, that old beta (which even i myself dont have anymore, all i ahve is the files from the CVS trunk), then do not judge psix by the quality of the beta, because the beta is slow, buggy as hell and incomplete.

Myself im unable to work on it much because i’ve been working overtime for various companies with design, the big christmas rush is always a stressfull sleepless time of the year, and when im looking at several design jobs to do just in one morning to give an example, then you can sort of picture how much time it gives me for the rest of the things i do.

I have alot of things to buy in the run up to christmas, partys to arrange, a bike that needs a servicing and engine rebuild, so any time i have free from working is either spent shopping or sleeping, i’m in my 20’s, i’m at the point in my life where its me that sorts out christmas and gets to be santa :P, i cant just sit back and enjoy it like i was nine years old again.

And as to why i don’t wish to release the source, 3 reasons ;
1) we’ve spent this long on it, we don’t want to give it up so freely
2) it would just create 20+ clones, just like what happened with LUA shells (lame)
3) I don’t want to wake up at some point next week to see Yoshi and SXT releasing “SXT-OS beta” and claiming “omg its all our code we just used fluffs idea!” :P

Lastly to point out again, psix is not dead, its just temp-terminated, we’ll be back to finnish it when we both have more time to work on it.

He has also decided to release an older beta source code, which you can download here
I haven’t tested it yet, but it looks like the same demo that was on the site ages ago (PSP OS, not PSIX).

Soon GTA LCS won’t be alone in requiring genuine 2.0 firmware on your PSP. The Hustle: Detroit Streets an upcomming billiards game is reported to require the 2.0 firmware as well. Is this a sign for all future games to come? Luckily the 2.0 is downgradable but who knows how long until games require 2.50 to play? Hopefully we will have a working launcher that can handle these new hurdles.

Today is a very sad day for the PSP scene. Humma Kavula has stated that he has stopped production of all programs on all systems, and this includes the beloved UMD Emulator.
Here is his statement

Hi everyone …

long time no talk, and this will even be the last from my side, just came here to inform you peeps … i completely dropped dev’ing on PSP for personal reasons, infact my PSP is already packed and stored deep in one of my boxes of unuseful hardware somewhere … after about 2 decades of coding on everything which has a CPU inside i completely stopped it for now, because i cant find any thrill in it anymore … i wish all people good luck which keep the dev’ing up and running, especially the lowlevel seekers, may the right bits be with you …

- R.I.P. Loader - R.I.P. Humma Kavula -

I will miss you a lot Humma, but if you are going to leave, then I thank you so much for everything you have already done.

To anyone who says “Humma sucks, he can’t make another update so he quit” or anything else along these lines, I will try my hardest to get you banned. This is a place to say good bye, NOT to flame.

PSPU has posted a rather funny video of a PSP imitator.
Not much else to say, so download it here.

Update: fart_sniffer from our forums has discovered a simple way to handle track conversion with your existing MP3’s using a combination of a few tools. You can check out his guide here.

Thanks fart_sniffer! :)

Update: Well it seems you’re able to burn your mp3’s onto a cd [as an audio cd - not data] and use the Rockstar Custom Tracks converter to convert the tunes to .gta format. A bit wasteful, but hey - it works!

Ok, now it’s official.

Rockstar has released a ‘Custom Soundtrack Converter’ for GTA:LCS.

Grab it here

Unfortunately this is noted…

A couple of notes are of interest regarding this Custom Tracks application. First, although GTA is all about rhyming and stealing, Rockstar has made the decision to focus exclusively on purchased music. You can only convert music from a store-bought CD — no tracks downloaded from a music blog, no tracks ripped from your buddy’s CD collection. This also means no tracks bought and paid for from services like iTunes or Napster yet, but it could be possible that future versions of the Rockstar Custom Tracks feature might support alternative audio formats.

Before you convert, you must also have at least one GTA: LCS save file on your PSP’s Memory Stick, or else the custom tracks cannot be imported. You must also have a USB cable to transfer the music from a PC to the PSP, and there is currently not an application for Macs to make Custom Soundtracks.

Download Rockstar Custom Tracks

source: psp.ign.com

Apparently the custom soundtrack support for GTA:LCS has not been fully implemented yet. According to this article over at gtapsp.com, the Rockstar officials stated it was added “last minute” and to keep checking the official GTA website. Perhaps a patch or something of that nature will be made available in the near future.

On the other hand, some folks are saying you’re required to complete a certain mission in order to enable the custom soundtracks.

Again, this is all pure speculation at the moment.

Quote from gtapsp.com:

My good friend Laz of GTAUnderground.com has just gotten off the phone with Rockstar, who confirmed that the Custom Soundtrack support in Liberty City Stories was added at the “last minute” and that they don’t have any information on it at the moment. He was advised to “keep checking the official site” which leads me to belive that Rockstar will be issuing some sort of patch for the game which enables the custom music.

This may even be the reason for the European delay - what if the UK promoter decided it’d sell better with custom soundtracks in? It is a possibility that they’ve held it back to allow the patch to be added to all UK copies, although that would suggest that an American patch would be available now.

Patches and addons for PSP games aren’t uncommon, with many first party titles having additional content made available via the internet, like Wipeout Pure’s Gamma Packs. Hopefully we’ll know just how to get our own music into the game soon - I know a lot of you aren’t particularly fond of the current Liberty City Stories soundtrack!

For those who love going on rampages and blowing shit up, or seeing how many stars they can obtain before getting wasted, here are some GTA:LCS cheats to aid in the fun!

Weapon Set 1
UP, SQUARE, SQUARE, DOWN, LEFT, SQUARE, SQUARE, RIGHT
Brass knuckles, knife, molatov, 9mm, shotgun, tec-9, AK, flamethrower, sniper rifle

Weapon Set 2
UP, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, DOWN, LEFT, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, RIGHT
Katana, remote grenades, revolver, sawn-off shotgun, uzi, M4, rocket launcher, sniper rifle w/laser scope

Weapon Set 3
UP, X, X, DOWN, LEFT, X, X, RIGHT
Chainsaw, grenades, revovler, combat shotgun, SMG, M4, minigun, sniper rifle w/laser scope

Money Cheat, Get $250000
L1, R1, TRIANGLE, L1, R1, CIRCLE, L1, R1

Armor Cheat
L1, R1, CIRCLE, L1, R1, X, L1, R1

Health Cheat
L1, R1, X, L1, R1, SQUARE, L1, R1

These cheats have been tested and confirmed working. Thanks to Jennifer for ‘em!

tedzero has released a new version of the Tedzero Browser - version 2.3.3!

Those unware, the Tedzero Browser will enable you to easily share files between your computer and PSP. Your PC will need to be running the server [supplied in the zip archive], in which the PSP connects to.

Changes include:

1. New MP3 Player Module, This runs in background.
2. Multiple Config File.
3. User Profiles.

Details..

• Server Config file name and format changed..
• Filename = sconfig.cfg
  ;PORT= 9898; < -- This is the server port
  
  ;USER= ADMIN= teddy= C:; < -- UId= Pwd=Virtual Folder
  
  ;USER= GUEST1= teddy= C:\Temp; < -- UId= Pwd=Virtual Folder
• Client Config files (You may have many config files on PSP with file extension “.cfg”) Filename = <>.cfg
  ;SERV= 192.168.1.2; < -- Server IP
  
  ;PORT= 9898; < -- Server port
  
  ;RCON= Conn; < -- Static connection
  
  ;SUID= ADMIN; < -- Uid
  
  ;SPWD= teddy; < -- Pwd
  
  ;DRIV= C; < -- Virtual Drive.. (Obsolete.)

Download Tedzero Browser v2.3.3

As I am sure most of you already know, the new GTA came (Liberty City Stories) was released yesterday. I’m confident that this will be one of the best selling PSP games of the year, just because of the name behind it (meaning I haven’t played it :D).

The bad thing is, it isn’t 1.5 compatible. It uses the new video codec of 2.0 (the AVC codec) to play movies (this is what I think it is, and what many reliable sources on IRC have been saying).
If you rip the ISO to your memory card, I am sure there will be a ripkit coming out soon that will remove the movies and allow playback on v1.5.

But what about the movies? Surely you want to play the game with cinematechs. This is where UMD Emulator comes into play.
I am confident that it will be possible to use the flash emulation to emulate certain video/audio PRX/RCO files so that the game will play, however, only time will tell.

Until then, if you only have a 1.5 PSP, think hard before buying this game.

Before you all go “OMFG this noob is so stupid”, I will mention it.
You can upgrade to play the OFFICIAL UMD, but you cannot play it back upped off of the memory card. Also, there is the fact that you will have to use the downgrader.
I am all for downgrading, but the long-term affects are still unknown. There are some rumours going around that certain UMD movies stop working after downloading. I don’t know if this is true.

On a semi-related note, I was looking through the ISO a little bit ago, and noticed that the game is partlyusing Lua (yes, Lua, the program you all think sucks for the PSP) to code certain aspects.
There is a folder PSP_GAME/USRDIR/LUASCRIPTS, where the few scripts are held. The rest of the game is coded using the normal C++.
The lua scripts are compiled, but it is possible for someone to de-compile (or decode) the scripts, and figure out how to alter them. This would mean a few things in the game could be changed just by coding a little bit.

Update:
Thanks to FRAKISTAN (comment #65) for the following, this is a statement from Naoneo (master of the firmware ;))

As it stands i’ve taken the better part of the past 5 hours analysing things, testing various methods for both my retail umd and my on personal iso dump, and i’ve come to the following conclusion.
GTA:LCS REQUIRES the v2.00 firmware to operate, both the eboot and prx’s are encoded in v2.00 fashion, this means that no ammount of file swapping or ‘patching’ of the boot.bin, far short of recompiling the original sources from scratch, is going to make a shred of difference, because the v1.50 firmware simply cannot execute or run v2.00 encypted data.

This leaves only 2 possible choices :
Upgrade to 2.00 and play the retail game
Someone (im looking at you humma), gets firmware loading nailed down solid, allowing the complete v2.00 firmware to be loaded up with the umd, or iso set in memory to load, it will then execute from either umd or iso without any issues.

This is far more than just differently encoded video or audio files, every bit of the code has been compiled and encoded for the v2.00 firmware, and as such until a way to successfully load the v2.00 firmware without issue arrives, only those owning a v2.00 psp and a legitimate copy of the game, will be able to play GTA:LCS.

Great work sony, i must say.

You can read more about how the EBOOT was compiled, and how they are trying to fix it here.