Hacking the PSP Blog

New 32 GB PSP memory stick? (w00t!)

Sony and SanDisk revealed a new version of Sony’s flash media last week. The PRO-HG series will theoretically be capable of capacities up to 32GB, with write speeds of up to 60MB/sec. PSP owners can celebrate that HG line is backwards compatible with the regular PRO series of cards, meaning you’ll be able to buy an HG card and use it in your PSP. You won’t get the same speed advantage, but you will be able to use the card’s ridiculous amount of storage.

The idea of a 32GB PSP is awesome. Hopefully they will be priced reasonably. Not likely, but we can hope.

Source: PSP News

TUTORIAL: Make a Pandora's Battery without a homebrew PSP!

Via iam7805@Benheck Forums (and via PSP News)

Ok, so you want to unbrick or downgrade your PSP but don't have a PSP capable of running homebrew apps. No problem! In this tutorial I will show you how to modify the battery's hardware to make it activate service mode.

This is our victim. Please note that while this concept may work on non-Sony batteries, only official batteries are guaranteed to have the same internals, so we recommend using one.

STEP 1:

The first thing you need to do is obviously crack open the battery. Surprisingly, the battery isn't very hard to get in to. In this picture

STEP 2:

Next, we need to locate a certain chip. The chip has the model number S93C56 printed on it. We are going to need to desolder pin 5 and lift it off of the board. Here is a magnified view of the board, which shows where the chip is and which pin needs to be lifted.

Newer batteries have a much smaller board with a different layout. The same chip needs to have the pin lifted, but the chip is in a different position. Once you've located chip S93C56, the rest of the instructions are basically the same. This has been confirmed with the 2200 mAH Official Sony battery.

STEP 3:

If you are not confident in your soldering skills, have a less than steady hand or have a larger-than-optimal sized tip, please desolder the cell pack from the battery first. If you make contact between pins 5 and 6 then you will short ground to +3.6VDC! Not good! When desoldering the cell, only keep the iron on long enough to melt the solder. If you can, use a higher wattage iron so that the tip will be hotter, but you won't transfer as much heat to the cell pack. Remember that heat + Li-Ion battery = large explosion (t3h sux0r5, unless you get in on video. Seriously though, this operation is not for the faint hearted, and should definitely not be your first soldering experience. I recommend trying your hand on lifting the pins on an N64 CPU chip. Surely if you spend enough time here you have a couple killed N64 mobos laying around. )

Now is actually desoldering the pin. There are a few ways you could do this, but I think my method is the best because its less likely to damage components near by. Use an Xacto knife with a sharp tip and try to put it underneath the pin. Get somebody to hold a soldering iron (WITH A VERY FINE CONICAL TIP!) on the pin. When the solder melts you can pop the pin up with the knife. Be sure not to hold the iron on the board too long to avoid the lithium battery from getting too hot and exploding. When your done it will look something like this.

STEP 4:

Finally, close the battery's casing. Use some Krazy Glue to keep it closed, or just use electrical tape around the edges like I did. I don't actually recommend the electrical tape as it makes the battery very snug in the compartment and it takes a bit of force to get it out. You can use the battery just like a regular Pandora's battery. As for getting the Memory Stick files, I can tell you that they are out there and you can find them after a bit of Googling. However, I can't tell you exactly where to find them as they contain copyrighted Sony code, and sharing them is illegal.

How does this work?

The pin that we just lifted was actually the ground pin of the EEPROM. Removing this pin effectively shuts off the EEPROM. When the microcontroller inside the battery tries to read the EEPROM, it will think the EEPROM contains all 1s (in binary). This is because of the pull-up resistors on the data lines. So the microcontroller returns a serial number of 0xFFFFFFFF to the PSP, which then goes into service mode.

Thank you for reading this, and if you have any questions, make sure to post and I'll try to help you!

-iam you can see that I'm just using a guitar pick to slide in through an edge and slide around the perimeter of the battery to seperate the two halves.

skyPSP Webcam Suite (Neat!)

News/release from Califrag (via PSP News):

Webcam Client and Server Suite for the Sony PSP

I am proud to announce the release of the skyPSP Webcam Client and Server suite for the Sony PSP.

What is it?:
The skyPSP Webcam Suite is a pair of applications which transform your PSP into a mobile webcam studio.

These homebrew applications are written in C and do not use HTML or the PSP's web browser.

Server Application - Controls and Other Information:

The server application turns your PSP into a mobile webcam, using the GoCam!/ChottoShot camera for the Sony PSP.

FTP server and the GoCam!/ChottoShot camera ARE REQUIRED for the SERVER application.

Edit the skyPSP.cfg file and add your own ftp login information.

Run the program, it will connect to the first network.
Once it has connected to the network, it will prompt you to connect the camera and press X.
Upon doing so your memory stick and wlan LEDs will flash wildly (saving the cam image, uploading it).
Visit your FTP via whatever url to your domain: the image will be saved as www.yourdomain.com/skyPSPcam.jpg

Video of Server Application:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh7cks5SawQ
Client Application - Controls and Other Information:


The client application allows you to view webcam streams on five of the seven continents, in over ten countries.

You DO NOT need an FTP server, or the GoCam!/ChottoShot camera for the CLIENT application.

Snapshots will be posted to my own FTP server and can be viewed at:
http://www.califrag.com/skypsp/

Holding the L button when the program starts will save EVERY image to the ms0:/PICTURE/skyPSP/ folder.

Otherwise, if you would like to save a picture, press R anytime to save a snapshot into the ms0:/PICTURE/snapshots/ folder.

The folders will automatically be created so don't worry about that.

If you set up the FTP server information in the .cfg file, the snapshots will automatically upload to your own server.

If not, you can view snapshots at:
http://www.califrag.com/skypsp/
Note that everyones snapshots will be posted here and you'll have to browse through them.

Press R Trigger to take a snapshot (as described above)

Left and Right will change to previous or next webcam

Up or Down will enable webcam auto-cycle which will either go to the next or previous webcam after each refresh.

Press Triangle to stop the webcam auto-cycle.

Press X to enable "Theatre Mode"

Press O to switch between grayscale and color mode.

After startup, pressing the L Trigger will toggle between 1 and 2 second refresh.

There are over 40 webcams included in this release:
(and more to be added in future releases!)

Spoiler for Webcam List:

North American Webcams
NA, US - New York, New York: Hawaiian Tropic bar and catwalk
NA, US - New York, New York: Hawaiian Tropic restaurant
NA, US - New York, New York: Hawaiian Tropic front desk
NA, US - New York, New York: Hawaiian Tropic front entrance
NA, US - Los Angeles, California: View of Los Angeles skyline
NA, US - Los Angeles, California: View of downtown LA
NA, US - Los Angeles, California: View of LAX airport
NA, US - Long Beach, California: View of the Queen Mary
NA, US - Burbank, California: View of Burbank
NA, US - Las Vegas, Nevada: View of the street
NA, US - Provincetown Massachusettes:
NA, US - Los Angeles, California: UCLA BruinCAM, Live picture of Dickson Plaza and Royce Hall
NA, US - San Francisco, CA: View of The Golden Gate Bridge
NA, US - San Francisco, CA: View of Alcatraz Island
NA, US - Maui, Hawaii: View of Waileaelua Village
NA, US - Unknown, Unknown: View of Sergio's Coffeeshop

African Webcams
AF, EG - Hurghada, Cairo: View of Colona Hurghada Jetty
AF, EG - Sharm El Sheikh, Sinai: View of Helnan Marina
AF, MU - Beau-Bassin, Mauritius Island: View of the street
AF, MU - Flic en Flac, Mauritius Island: View from a balcony

European Webcams
EU, FR - Paris, Île-de-France: View of Eiffel Tower
EU, UK - London, England: Trafalgar Square
EU, UK - London, England: Aquarium Sharks
EU, UK - London, England: BBC Radio 1 Studio A
EU, UK - London, England: BBC Radio 1 Studio B
EU, SZ - Geneve
EU, UK - London, England: Norfolk
EU, UK - London, England: Manchester
EU, UK - Leeds, West Yorkshire: View of Millenium Square
EU, UK - London, England: View of Abbey Road Crossing
EU, FI - Helsinki
EU, FI - Tempere

Australian Webcams
AU, AU - Perth, Western Australia: Webcam 1
AU, AU - Perth, Western Australia: Webcam 2

Asian Webcams
AS, CN - Wolong, China: Wolong PandaCam
AS, RP - Manila
AS, KO - Hong Kong: View of Victoria Harbor
AS, KO - Hong Kong: View of Causeway Bay
AS, KO - Hong Kong: View of Victoria Park
AS, KO - Hong Kong: View of the skyline
AS, KO - Hong Kong: View from the Peak

This uses pgeFont engine by Insert_Witty_Name, which I've modified slightly (and released the modified source at psp-programming).

The graphics aren't polished as this is a BUILD 1 (alpha) release.

Also, due to the varying nature of the internet, when a webcam goes down and does not post images, it will cause the program the crash when you try to access that camera. Just wait and try it again later or on a different day. Unfortunately webcams aren't maintained as regularly as they should be.

Any webcams with images larger than 640x480 will crash the PSP. I plan to fix this and add scaling to future releases.

Please let me know if you have any troubles connecting to your networks
It will only connect to the first access point in the list.

Any questions please comment here or send any questions or comments to skypsp@califrag.com.

EDIT:
I've also attached an updated EBOOT for anybody experiencing issues with the network connection.
It bypasses the sceUtilityCheckNetParam() calls which check to make sure a network even exists in the configuration.
This should solve some issues, but may open more up, as if you do not have any connections in your list, it will still try to connect and will ultimately fail.

I've also increased the timeout from a 5s timeout between connection states to 10s.

Please let me know if this helps solve any issues.