You know that eLoader you’ve been waiting for? Well the wait is over, ‘cuz it ain’t coming out. But it’s for the best, just as [one of] the best in the game puts it, Fanjita –

On the one hand, I have to congratulate MaTiAz and Davee for their recent excellent work on the TIFF exploit and HEN. Their project is exciting, and I’m sure we’re all waiting with excitement for their upcoming release. It shows that the PSP homebrew scene has not been defeated by Sony’s latest efforts, and long may the spirit of competition continue. It’s also nice to see so much cooperation within the community. Great stuff.

But on the other hand, this obsoletes the work we were doing on an eLoader for the GripShift exploit – there’s no need for it, since the TIFF exploit should work on all PSPs, with or without the game. We’ve worked hard on it, but so many busy events in our lives (parenting, moving house, pressures of work in the current economic climate) have meant that progress was slower than we’d hoped.

So that’s that. Good lookin’ out Fanjita/N00bz.

- source: noobz.eu

Sony officially announced it for the Slim, the Noobz team officially make it happen — for both Fat and Slims! It’s beta software so please report any problems. See readme.html to get started.

Fanjita notes the audio quality needs some work, the interface needs a makeover, and video calls aren’t working quite yet. Nonetheless it’s usable and demonstrates pure awesomeness. Source code is also available for homebrew developers to advance on. Kudos team!

“Furikup” highlights:

• It’s free software — in both the beer, and speech senses.
• You can use it anywhere in the world, subject to signing-up to a suitable local SIP-based voice-over-IP provider and being near a usable wifi access point. e.g. with SIPGate, in the UK, you can call to your PSP from any standard phone (landline or cellphone) for just the standard local call cost, and from PSP to another SIP phone (another PSP or a PC) for free.
• It runs on both slim and fat PSPs.
• It uses open standards, for maximum compatibility with other phone systems.
• You can use a Go!Cam (Chotto Shot), Talkman microphone, or SOCOM-style headset for audio input. (And even if you don’t have any of those, you can still send audio from a WAV file in a pinch).

This program allows you to use your PSP as a phone, using Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. We got a bit bored waiting for Sony to release their PSP phone offering, so we thought we’d do it for them. Such is the freedom of homebrew.

You can use your PSP to make and receive calls to and from other PSPs, or to other VoIP users, or even to standard landline and mobile telephones, depending upon the VoIP service that you use. Calls are generally free, or at least cheaper than standard landline rates – again, depending upon your VoIP provider.

This is an initial release, currently supporting audio-only calls, and with a very basic user interface. But it works, and that’s the main thing.

The VoIP engine is implemented as a standalone PRX, with a well-defined interface. As well as using our simple phone application, we encourage other developers to make use of this technology for other applications. We’re sure that someone can write a nicer user interface than ours, so please do. There’s also scope for plenty of other uses – such as a CFW plugin for calls within the XMB, or teamtalk-style add-ons for games etc. Go wild!

Download: Furikup – PSP SIP Phone v0.1 (source code included)

- source: noobz.eu

Fanjita of Team Noobz has discovered Sony’s official PSP-110 battery, that of the original fat PSP, can no longer be converted to Pandora. After receiving a new battery from Amazon, it would seem numerous errors occur when using the battery creator, or even when attempting to flash an EEPROM image from an older Sony battery. Drats!

Fanjita says…

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.

- source: noobz.eu

It was promised quite awhile ago, but here it is — a working firmware 3.11 homebrew enabler (HEN) & downgrader — as Noobz put it, “a solution to help people trapped on firmware 3.11 by Sony’s dirty tricks”. With that said, welcome to the new era of homebrew and custom firmwares, young Padawan learners. Note: you still require a UMD copy of Lumines.

As you may know, if you have a TA-082/TA-086 motherboard , then if you downgraded your PSP to v1.50, its idstorage keys will have been patched during downgrading to avoid bricking. The latest official Sony firmwares (3.30 onwards) detect this patch, and refuse to allow you to upgrade. Without a hardware solution, this can leave you trapped on v3.11 firmware, with no way to upgrade, and no way to downgrade.

Everything you need to know is in README.TXT.

Thanks for sticking to your guns, Fanjita and Noobz. And of course props to Dark_AleX for his HEN code.

Download: 3.11 Homebrew Enabler & Downgrader

- source: noobz.eu

Fanjita of Team Noobz is waving goodbye to the PSP scene. Fanjita, whom authored & aided in the authoring of many great PSP homebrews, including one of my personal favourites — piKey — has stated on his personal blog that it’s time to move onto various other non-PSP related projects. We here at PSP Hacks wish you nothing but the best of luck with your future endeavors, all the best. And thanks for the great releases!

- source: fanjita.org

Right after we posted about Fanjita’s upcoming PSP unbricker for those that bricked their PSP with a bad copy of the M33 custom firmware, Fanjita and his crew upped the ante releasing a program that UNBRICKS ALL SONY PSPs. Wow a strong kudos goes out for this one. No longer will we need to ship bricked PSP’s off to Sony to have them fixed for a cost.

We told you that we’d be releasing an unbricker for the M33 bricks. But then we got to thinking, maybe that just wouldn’t be exciting enough.

Would you like a super special surprise bonus? How about an unbricker for ALL PSPs? Yep, you read that right. We call it “Pandora’s Battery”.

There’s a larger story behind this unbricker, though, and it deserves to be told. It’s the culmination of years of behind-the-scenes research and development by some of the top names in PSP hacking, under the name of the Prometheus project. This group of people, from various development teams, was dedicated to developing and releasing PSP hacks and exploits, with the aim of improving the status of PSP homebrew, and making sure that it was kept alive.

As always you can grab this file from our psp downloads area or by clicking here. For all the details from Fanjita check this out

Just when you’re thinking to yourself, “hrm… I wonder what homebrew will feature IR keyboard support next?” ZX-81 appears and answers, “none! But here are two memory stick-worthy apps with improved IR keyboard handlers — Danzel’s Away from Keyboard Instant Messenger, and Rob_psp’s PSP-PDA!”

Their names are self explanatory; AFKIM is an instant messaging client supporting AIM, ICQ, MSN, GTalk, and Yahoo! PSP-PDA features a notepad, music player, image viewer, address book, calendar, calculator, and clock. Everything you need!

AFKIM v3.2.1 changes:

• Improve IR keyboard handler, it’s now usable everywhere (menus & window)! Have a look to the file README-irkbd.txt for mapping informations etc…

** NOTE ** : Previous versions of AFKIM (v3.1 and earlier) works fine with the Pikey driver (IR keyboard driver from Fanjita), so if you have Pikey already installed on your PSP, this version is may be useless (more stable?).

If you want to use AFKIM v3.2.1 and you have Pikey installed you should disable it while launching this version.

PSP-PDA v1.3.1 changes:

• Improve IR-keyboard handler!
• Bug fix in theme chooser (but you need now to restart psp-pda to view the new theme)
• Many bug fix in calendar
• New theme designed by ** Vashts121 **

Download AFKIM v3.2.1:
fw 3.xx | fw 1.50 | src code

Download PSP-PDA v1.3.1:
fw 1.50 (binary) | src code

- source: ZX-81’s web site

I was anxiously awaiting the release of a piKey update, and thanks to Bob Joe (for the news tip) I’m now updating my PSP as I write this… piKey 0.3, oh yes! Now supporting firmwares 3.30 and 3.40 OE. Fanjita also mentions piKey 0.3 includes small enhancements to deal with compatibility issues.

There are 2 main changes for compatibility:

1. You can configure πKey to be disabled for v1.50 kernel homebrew (ie. homebrew running from the GAME150 folder, or GAME if you have OE configured to run GAME as v1.50). This may be easier for some users than changing the config in flash.
2. You can configure a hotkey that will disable πKey when the PSP reboots. So, if there’s a homebrew or game that has problems, just hold down the hotkey (configurable as any key or combination, but SELECT by default) while the Sony logo is showing, and πKey will unload itself until next rebooted.

Huh, what’s piKey?

A keyboard driver for the PSP developed by Fanjita and harleyg. piKey aims at providing full keyboard control anywhere — games, homebrews, the XMB, etc… Supported are various infra-red keyboards and the ability to wire one via the PSP’s serial port (the headphone socket). Have a look at the included user guide (docs/user_guide.html) to get started.

Download: piKey 0.3

- source: Noobz

Update: After downgrading back to 3.03 OE-C, from 3.30 OE-A’, I am proud to say piKey 0.2 works flawlessly with my Palm Universal Wireless Keyboard!

The N00bz Team, Fanjita and harleyg, have released an update to their PSP keyboard driver — πKey! piKey aims at providing full keyboard control anywhere — games, homebrews, the XMB, etc… Supported are various infra-red keyboards.

v0.2 comes bundled with a series of fixes & additions; below are the major updates:

• A new keypress mode, which allows more natural use of the keyboard in action games etc. The default mode is now keypress mode, and the keyboard will switch automatically to text input mode when required.
• Custom key-to-button assignment – so now you can define WASD buttons for FPS game movement, as well as cursor keys for XMB movement, for instance.
• Support for mapping keypresses to analog joystick movements.
• Support for converting keypresses into Danzeff OSK presses – so now you can use your physical keyboard with homebrew that uses the Danzeff virtual keyboard – e.g. AFKIM.
• Installer now fixed to correctly install to flash0, to support GAME150 homebrew.
• Palm UW keyboard ought to at least partially work, but I can’t test it myself.
• Optional on-screen status information.
• Various minor bugfixes.

I can personally confirm the Palm Universal Keyboard still doesn’t function quite yet, on 3.30 OE, that is. :(

Ensure you read “readme.txt” & “docs/user_guide.html” for complete changelog history and instructions.

Download: piKey 0.2

- source: N00bz!

It’s no Becks, but it is Kriek, and it’s awesome! Firmware 2.80 users will be happy to know Kriek supports… *sips his Becks* ah… forget it, here’s the changelog from the Noobz website:

1. The biggie – support for v2.80 firmware. v2.80 is still only user-mode support, and there are some minor syscalls that can’t be resolved. But in general, the vast majority of user-mode homebrew works fine.
2. Another biggie – this release includes an experimental new way of using eLoader, called xLoader. xLoader allows you to run homebrew directly from the PSP’s XMB menu, just like on a v1.0 PSP. Usage is a lot like Dark Alex’s HEN C, but the underlying technology is very different. Because it’s experimental, and a lot of work to fix up for each firmware, it’s currently only supported for v2.80 firmware, and compatibility is a little lower than standard eLoader. Make sure to view the README file (displayed during installation) for more information.
3. You can now use the power switch to enter suspend mode in any homebrew that normally supports suspend mode on v1.5 firmware. This works in eLoader on firmwares 2.5-2.71, and in xLoader.
4. The built-in PSP on-screen keyboard now works in xLoader.
5. The Installotron is now included in the eLoader installation, so that in principle, you may never need to manually install any homebrew ever again. Installotron also now includes an option to automatically modify EBOOTs to make
   them suitable for xLoader.
6. Stability and compatibility is mostly improved over v0.99, although some homebrew is less stable, especially on v2.00 firmware. You may want to keep 0.99 and 0.995 side-by-side on firmwares that can run both.

Beautiful! Now, download it, and enjoy! The README covers the remaining details.

Download eLoader 0.995 “Kriek”
- Windows installer
- ZIP (Manual install)

- compatiblity list -

- source: Noobz