Brewology

Ok, so I've heard all the people saying that a bricked psp cannot be fixed. Could some1 please explain what happens to a bricked psp. What is deleted/corrupted and why can't it get fixed. Thanks.

It can get fixed. Dont know what those people were smoking.
Using recovery mode or a mod chip will un brick it. Mod chips can be found on the internet (google).

when a PSP is bricked, you leave the PSP under your pillow and the brick fairy will lave you a quarter in the morning.

Mod chip is not fixing it. Lets say that I want to keep the standard factory default hardware. A mod chip is something completely different.

EDIT: What's recovery mode though?

EDIT;EDIT: Could some1 go into the technical part of the bricking of the psp. Ok u get a blue screen, ok u can't do anything. What happens inside the hardware. I hear that the firmware is deleted/corrupted and there is no way that it can be flashed into the psp? Comments...?

What has gone wrong is that a file has either gone and been deleted or corrupted by a flashing device, if there is any way you could access the motherboard to repair the flash then it would work again.

First let me thank u 4 a better answer than the fairy one Anyway so ur saying that there is a chip (something like the BIOS or a pc), problably a ROM chip that needs to be refleshed with the proper non corupted firmware in order 4 the psp to work again. The bricking of a psp doesn't do anything to the hardware itself except to the ROM chip that contains the firmware itself. So, supposably that some1 can download the information from that ROM into a pc as a backup. Try whatever he likes and in the case of bricking can get the firmware back onto the psp he could try the whole process again. I'm seriously looking into finding a way of doing this... Thanks again and please reply if u have any more information.

i was playing around with my 3.1 oe and i flashed a topmenue_plugin.rco without backing the original up, so i bricked. but thanx to DA and his 3.1 oe customfirmwares ability to acces flash0 through recovery, and a quick google search, i wa able to put in the original topmenue and unbrick. so if you can acces flash0, and have a complete dump of your most recent WORKING firmware, then in theory, you could unbrick

no, because there is no way to access the motherboad without a USB connection active, and there is no way to activate the USB unless the firmware is working in the first place.

Let's say that the firmware is on a chip. If u unsolder that chip from the motherboard, and connect it to a "speciall device" that can read it and maby write to it, it is teoretically possible. Just a thought...

We can already dump the firmware so there is no need to go into those steps. The firmware "is" on a chip, it's just that we know all of the information that is on that chip now

To unbrick a psp, you would typically have a custom firmware installed. The custom firmware has a recovery mode that can "recover" your psp back to version 1.50 and still have 100% factory hardware.

If you don't have a custom firmware, the only way to "fix" the brick would be to install a modchip into the psp. You mentioned earlier that doing so will not "fix" the psp, but in actuality it does. It enables you to reflash the "bios" or "firmware" as we call it.

You could unsolder the chip. You could probably connect it to some type of device to read off of it. You could probably even flash it from there... but is it worth learning how to do that? I'd say no. If you are stuck with a brick and don't have recovery mode I'd try to bring the psp back to the store you purchased it at. If you don't have the warranty still, I'd suggest either sending it to Sony (they will update it to a high firmware, but I am confident in hackers now so I wouldn't mind getting a free psp ) or you could also opt to take the psp apart and sell the parts individually on eBay or another online action site as "replacement parts". People will even buy bricked motherboards KNOWING that they are bricked. Most people make about $300 when they take the psp apart and sell it for parts (or so I read from maxconsole forums about 3 months ago).

best of luck

-DarkPacMan77-

Ok I c... Thanks for the explanation. Just one question though. Lets say that I wanna get a custom firmware... That has the recovery option in it. Doesn't that mean that I'll need to downgrade to 1.5 first? That's the whole point. What if I brick it while downgrading Where's my recovery option then? BYW: Do u know how the recovery mode actually works? I'm really interested now.

the recover mode is in custom firmware in is able to flash back to 1.50 if there is an issue and you partial brick. a full brick will not allow you to access the recovery menu. it basicly works just like a downgrader or an update it over writes any files on the flash with 1.50 files its just that simple.

...right....


in more technical terms:

The Recovery Mode is a static elf file that is written onto the PSP's Flash0. by means of a modded VshMain.prx, it is able to be launched even if the PSP is bricked (as long as the Vshmain.prx has not been tampered with or corrupted).

thanks for filling in the technical blanks for me supashy