The sony PSP (pay station portable) is a great piece of hardware, a nice big screen with a decent processing power along with a some good controls and a fair amount of software features right out of the box.
In my opinion the biggest competitor to the PSP is the iPhone and the iPod touch, though there are not directly equivalent.
The problem with the stock firmware is that it’s locked to sony signed apps, running an alternative firmware will let you run homebrew code. There’s a plethora of conflicting info on how to flash the psp, There is a maze of prerequisites and a weird upgrade path. Here’s my notes on the easiest way to get the latest firmware as of March 2009.
The key is to have a jig-kick battery, it’s basically a standard battery that has it’s serial number changed. When the psp is booted with it in, it runs any eboot (program) on a specific part of the memory card. This also could un-brick your psp if it has been flashed with a corrupt firmware.
How do you get this magical battery? If your already running an older custom firmware you can use the Pandora tool to flash your current battery into this mode, if it is compatible. If you don’t have the capability and you don’t know anyone with a psp that can flash it for you, you can buy a psp battery tool for not too much.
Once you’ve got the battery in tool mode, and you have not yet got your memory stick ready you’ll have issues booting with the battery in, the solution is to boot with the the charger cord in and battery out.
Once you have the battery in tool mode, you can put your new firmware in the right spot. I used the Pandora Deluxe app to format me memory stick and get everything in order, it also has a bunch of other goodies that make things easier, including Despertar del Cementerio which you’ll need to run to format your flash and then install the new firmware (M33 5.00). You’ll also need a copy of the “official” version of the firmware.
Once you have the software, all you have to do it trigger it when the PSP boots. If your using the default Pandora settings it’s the LTrigger. Once your in the Despertar menu, just pick Install and your good to go.
