Hacking the PSP Blog

PSP gets drawn in MS Paint

Microsoft Paint isn't the most useful image manipulation program in the world. In fact, it's so primitive that it becomes a real challenge to do anything substantial on it. That hasn't stopped RANDISALBION from recreating an entire PSP in Paint. Seriously. Just watch ... but be careful! Your jaw might hit the floor.

Andrew Yoon
February 26, 2007

Check out the video here...

Source: PSP Fanboy

Fanjita Addresses Screen Brightness Issues

Some PSP owners have reported problems with the display brightness after using the Noobz 3.03 downgrader. Fanjita has posted on the Noobz site to explain why these problems occur and what can be done about them. Here's what he had to say:

After using the downgrader, some people have had problems with their screen brightness.  This article explains why, and what you can do about it.

The problem seems to occur only for recent TA-082 / TA-086 PSPs, that came originally with firmware 2.71 or later.

The problem is that Sony changed the display hardware in some of the recent PSPs, and the firmware needs to be aware of how to handle that.

This means that if you run a lower firmware than v2.71, then the display isn't given the right brightness signals.  Where normally you would see a bright screen, and it would go dark after a while of not pressing any keys, now it is normally dark, and goes bright if you don't press anything for a couple of minutes.

The best fix is obviously to install a firmware that can control the display correctly.  Fortunately the OE firmwares, e.g. 3.10 OE, will do this.  The only drawback is that, when running homebrew in the 1.5 kernel mode, you will get the old screen behaviour.  But you should be able to work around this by pressing the 'screen' button a few times.

It's also possible, for advanced users, to make a hybrid firmware that will use the later screenhandling code in the 1.50 kernel mode of OE.

For lots more technical information, there's an excellent thread in the lan.st forums, here.

Source: Noobz.eu

Pink PSP £99.99 @ Amazon UK

Amazon UK has dropped their price for the pink PSP to £99.99 (about US $196) and is also offering to bundle it with the pink deluxe accessory pack for a total of £116.98 (about US $230). Head over to Amazon UK and pick one up for yourself.

The rise of the handheld console

Announcing Sony's plans to enter the portable gaming market, he claimed the PlayStation Portable (PSP) would become "the Walkman for the 21st Century".

At that time conventional wisdom dictated that any attempt to break into the handheld market, dominated for so long by Nintendo, was doomed to failure.

To suggest that Sony's console would not only make an impact on the market, but also match the success of the 1980s cultural icon that was the Walkman seemed to argue a self-confidence bordering on arrogance.

After all, Sony shipped more than 50m Walkman units in the first ten years of production, reaching a total of 150m units produced by 1995.

The name Walkman has even joined that select group of brands like Hoover and Xerox whose name defines the product.

So four years down the line has the PSP lived up to "Papa" Kutaragi's prediction? Has it succeeded in breaking Nintendo's apparently unshakeable hold on the market?

Read the full article here...

Diarmuid Mitchell
February 27, 2007

Source: BBC News