Homebrew homie needs help

Hiya.

I borrowed my new friend's PSP to see if he can run homebrew on it (no dice, 3.30 firmware). I looked at both the PSP and the DS and I am heavily leaning towards the PSP for the sweet widescreen (video and all) and the greater homebrew opportunities.

I am looking to purchase a PSP within the next couple of months and I want to make sure that I can run homebrew outta the box. One of my questions is what firmware it comes with out of the box and how I can tell which firmware is loaded on which PSP (I have a guy at a gamestore who can probably hook me up with an exact model per my request).

I want to add any sort of cool functionality that I can, such as text editors, alternative web browsers (Firefox? One day I hope... o_o ), emulators, the capability to play UMD images, etc.

Any and all help would be appreciated. Do not worry about being heavy on the technical terms; I am a computer serviceman and I know my stuff, just not when it comes to PSPs (yet). I could probably wing it and use tutorials but I do not want to risk bricking my PSP.

Ah yes, and the final question: once a PSP is bricked, is there anyway to unbrick it? If so, I would love to know, just in case.

[DarkPacMan77]

Lemme take a stab at this...

1. Good choice on choosing the psp

2. There was once a way to tell what firmware the psp had by looking at a "letter on the bottom of the box - in a square". That is no longer reliable though because Sony DOES switch it up so it can be confusing.

3. There are text editors, though not full feature or anything, but the basics are there. There are alternate web browsers but they aren't that great - and are discontinued. The strong side is the emulators, and playing UMD images, as you no doubt already know.

4. The goal is to purchase a psp with a firmware that has firmware 3.03 or lower. You can downgrade 3.03 if you purchase an "older, and unpatched" version of Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories. The downgrader uses an exploit in that game to downgrade to version 1.50 - the "golden firmware" - where most homebrew was developed. You can also use the version 2.80 downgrader that does not require GTA LCS, if you were to get that firmware.

5. You CAN unbrick a bricked psp in two ways.
a: you can install a modchip to flash a new firmware revision
b: you can downgrade to version 1.50 and then upgrade to a "custom firmware"

A lot of the information is incomplete, but the basics are there

-DarkPacMan77-

Basically the choices lie between an unblocked homebrew catalog with a great game selection (DS) or okay games and excellent video quality (PSP). Depending on how anime looks on my mate's PSP will determine which I will buy first I guess.

Thanks for the help.

[DarkPacMan77]

The only reason the game selection is rumored to be larger with the DS is because it was released first lol. In fact, I think there are more psp games now than DS, but in any sense, there are a plethora of A+ titles for the PSP. There is actually a site dedicated to debunking those rumors, though I forgot what it was called.

-DarkPacMan77-

Mucho gracias. I am converting anime right now using PSP Video 9 to see how it looks (the deciding factor for me). In the meantime, my friend has his PSP here with 2.82 firmware installed. He wants to find out how to use images (and this is something I would like to do as well).

I figure this is going to involve downgrading the firmware probably... and some other stuff that is not as simple as just moving the file to the PSP.

Everything you do on your psp is pretty much just moving files from your computer to the psp itself or vice versa (including downgrading).

What do you mean when you say you want to know how to use images? ...
Are you looking to just place them on the psp?
Are you trying to view them?
Are you trying to make it appear as your wallpaper?
Are you trying to make it into a background image?

No no no, sorry for using a technical term without explaining it better.

Images of UMDs, not pictures. I know how to use the PSP as it stands, it is running game images that is a pain. I would like to know how to rip UMDs and then how to play the UMD images on the PSP (2.82 firmware), as in, what I have to do all in all.

when you get custom firmware (i have 3.03 oe-c which seems to be the one most are using) look up usb-sss. it opens up a virtual drive thatll let you dump a psp iso. also look up umd gen you can edit isos with it so you can compress to cso and what not. pm me and ill give you a site that has tons of isos and psx eboots.

Your going to need to be at a custom firmware to be able to use the program to dump your games as images.

However, I will still provide you with the information you are seeking for when you get to custom firmware.
Just click HERE for a tutorial