PSP Hacking, and why Sony should leave it open
If you're of a "how it works" bent, every new piece of tech offers up new possibilities beyond the manufacturer's specifications. The PSP is no exception - in fact it could be the best yet. Large companies don't like people using their tech outside the intended purpose, so try their upmost to stop you.
Luckily there are always holes for the dedicated few. Ultimately a soldering iron can be used, but in this world of flashing everything, hacking consoles has taken a newer high tech approach - buffer overruns. The PSP has been exploited with V.2 and below roms. The exploits are currently crude, and Sony has already sent out a flurry of patches to bring it up to V2.5+.
"Please down load this, and get back in your box".
Having a shiny new PSP with a V2 rom, I had to have a go!
First off the process: download a bunch of dubious looking tools from a place called psp-hacks. Then start reading. This is important because its not entirely obvious what you have to do.
The basic exploit works as I see it by loading in a dodgy background - this causes the PSP to crash in a known way, that it can then be persuaded to run code. Then the PSP starts back up looking for something to run - guess what: there's a V1.5 rom waiting for it to install. So it adds it. This rom has been patched in someway so it (alarmingly) crashes on completing the install.
Another reboot and you have an exploited 1.5 rom on your PSP. Now the 1.5 rom is the homebrewer's dream. It gives them full access to the machine. To run games from the memory stick there is a patch to make it say it is V.2. I have found this to be only partially successful. Most games look like they are running ok. You play a couple of levels and then they fall over - a graphic is missing or has been shrunk too much to make it fit on the memory stick.
So am I saving money via piracy? I have a 1 Gig memory stick that cost 50 quid. I have a copy of Lumines and Mercury on it that appear to work properly. It is now full. I have to delete anything else to try. Its a bind. So I have maybe saved 10 pounds. To be honest I was going to look for Lumines in a few months time in bargin bins, and I now know Mercury is not good enough. I tried Ape escape - it crashes about level 5. Xmen Legends no voices, and only the first mission works - and its ~700 meg. Marvel Nemesis was so bad I don't know if it died - it was deleted after 10 minutes of play.
Getting each game to work also involved a merry dance of copying different boot loaders. The ISO loaders seemed to be the best - just plonk the file in the folder and off it loads. The others seemed to need all sorts of files (and inis!!) to make work. Eventually I gave up.
So, so much for piracy. What has the scene been creating? The V1.5 rom even when marked as 2 is missing the webbrowser. Some one has ported one. Cool. Not that useful though, cos without a keyboard surfing the web is still a pain.
Then I got to media players. The standard Sony one requires a sony reencode of the source - like I'm going to do that often. It transcodes it to Sony formatted MP4. The scene has been much more pratical - there are *lots* of DivX, OGG and WMV players out there. Not only that there is a streaming MP3 player - using the Wifi, a port of a crazy number of other platform emulators (interestingly making the homebrew crowd the largest supplier of different games!) and countless useful little utilities - calendars, book readers, weather checkers (?!).
And what has sony actually released for my new toy in the meantime? GTA, SOCOM, some soccer games, and two xmen games. I am sticking with homebrew for the time being. They are doing a better job...
So what's my grip? Well the scene has shown that it wants to develop the PSP it ways beyond just piracy. It's created apps that Sony haven't even considered - and at a tremendous rate. And what has Sony done? These people are evil, they are trying to steal our IP! Kill them!
Sony's problem? GTA does not run without a (currently) unhacked rom (2.1). I was going to buy it - had vouchers and coins and everything. Not any more.
I enjoy GTA games, and even if I wanted to pirate it, it'd cost me 50 quid in memorystick - not really a good trade, for an inferior version. However since upgrading to that rom means I loose the ability to run all the cool stuff other people are making, they can take GTA and stuff it. Sometime in the future (its already looking good according to the news groups) the 2.1 rom will fall. Then the games will need V3, but the older I get the less I care about the newest stuff, especially if it means making a compromise.
I'm not worried: my guess is that after a while an exploit in a savegame will be found. Since its a console they have to support the buggy game - boom, system permanently compromised. That game will sell bucket loads BTW - if there are any software houses reading this...
The original PS had a thriving homebrew scene. Yes the games were easy to copy, but hacking your PS didn't mean you could not longer run stuff. I reckon part of the reason why the N64s lost out the the PS was because of this fact: CDs could be burnt, games could be shared, but ultimately people went back to the shops and bought legit copies of their games.
The Xbox too had utilities - like the excellent XBox Media Player, that MS simply refused to give end users.
This was actually an earlier example of the Apple iTunes phenomenon. Record labels: we will not sell stuff on line, cos people will just copy it and we won't make any money. iTunes: come buy from us, we make life easier than hunting around the warez scene, and we're not really that expensive.
Winner: iTunes, now selling more than the shops.
When Sony wake up and realize that, they will stand a chance against the XBox 360, as MS don't see the world this way either. The PS3 could really benefit from a thriving underground scene, as in a straight fight its going to be an uphill struggle looking at the next gen Xbox live...
Luckily there are always holes for the dedicated few. Ultimately a soldering iron can be used, but in this world of flashing everything, hacking consoles has taken a newer high tech approach - buffer overruns. The PSP has been exploited with V.2 and below roms. The exploits are currently crude, and Sony has already sent out a flurry of patches to bring it up to V2.5+.
"Please down load this, and get back in your box".
Having a shiny new PSP with a V2 rom, I had to have a go!
First off the process: download a bunch of dubious looking tools from a place called psp-hacks. Then start reading. This is important because its not entirely obvious what you have to do.
The basic exploit works as I see it by loading in a dodgy background - this causes the PSP to crash in a known way, that it can then be persuaded to run code. Then the PSP starts back up looking for something to run - guess what: there's a V1.5 rom waiting for it to install. So it adds it. This rom has been patched in someway so it (alarmingly) crashes on completing the install.
Another reboot and you have an exploited 1.5 rom on your PSP. Now the 1.5 rom is the homebrewer's dream. It gives them full access to the machine. To run games from the memory stick there is a patch to make it say it is V.2. I have found this to be only partially successful. Most games look like they are running ok. You play a couple of levels and then they fall over - a graphic is missing or has been shrunk too much to make it fit on the memory stick.
So am I saving money via piracy? I have a 1 Gig memory stick that cost 50 quid. I have a copy of Lumines and Mercury on it that appear to work properly. It is now full. I have to delete anything else to try. Its a bind. So I have maybe saved 10 pounds. To be honest I was going to look for Lumines in a few months time in bargin bins, and I now know Mercury is not good enough. I tried Ape escape - it crashes about level 5. Xmen Legends no voices, and only the first mission works - and its ~700 meg. Marvel Nemesis was so bad I don't know if it died - it was deleted after 10 minutes of play.
Getting each game to work also involved a merry dance of copying different boot loaders. The ISO loaders seemed to be the best - just plonk the file in the folder and off it loads. The others seemed to need all sorts of files (and inis!!) to make work. Eventually I gave up.
So, so much for piracy. What has the scene been creating? The V1.5 rom even when marked as 2 is missing the webbrowser. Some one has ported one. Cool. Not that useful though, cos without a keyboard surfing the web is still a pain.
Then I got to media players. The standard Sony one requires a sony reencode of the source - like I'm going to do that often. It transcodes it to Sony formatted MP4. The scene has been much more pratical - there are *lots* of DivX, OGG and WMV players out there. Not only that there is a streaming MP3 player - using the Wifi, a port of a crazy number of other platform emulators (interestingly making the homebrew crowd the largest supplier of different games!) and countless useful little utilities - calendars, book readers, weather checkers (?!).
And what has sony actually released for my new toy in the meantime? GTA, SOCOM, some soccer games, and two xmen games. I am sticking with homebrew for the time being. They are doing a better job...
So what's my grip? Well the scene has shown that it wants to develop the PSP it ways beyond just piracy. It's created apps that Sony haven't even considered - and at a tremendous rate. And what has Sony done? These people are evil, they are trying to steal our IP! Kill them!
Sony's problem? GTA does not run without a (currently) unhacked rom (2.1). I was going to buy it - had vouchers and coins and everything. Not any more.
I enjoy GTA games, and even if I wanted to pirate it, it'd cost me 50 quid in memorystick - not really a good trade, for an inferior version. However since upgrading to that rom means I loose the ability to run all the cool stuff other people are making, they can take GTA and stuff it. Sometime in the future (its already looking good according to the news groups) the 2.1 rom will fall. Then the games will need V3, but the older I get the less I care about the newest stuff, especially if it means making a compromise.
I'm not worried: my guess is that after a while an exploit in a savegame will be found. Since its a console they have to support the buggy game - boom, system permanently compromised. That game will sell bucket loads BTW - if there are any software houses reading this...
The original PS had a thriving homebrew scene. Yes the games were easy to copy, but hacking your PS didn't mean you could not longer run stuff. I reckon part of the reason why the N64s lost out the the PS was because of this fact: CDs could be burnt, games could be shared, but ultimately people went back to the shops and bought legit copies of their games.
The Xbox too had utilities - like the excellent XBox Media Player, that MS simply refused to give end users.
This was actually an earlier example of the Apple iTunes phenomenon. Record labels: we will not sell stuff on line, cos people will just copy it and we won't make any money. iTunes: come buy from us, we make life easier than hunting around the warez scene, and we're not really that expensive.
Winner: iTunes, now selling more than the shops.
When Sony wake up and realize that, they will stand a chance against the XBox 360, as MS don't see the world this way either. The PS3 could really benefit from a thriving underground scene, as in a straight fight its going to be an uphill struggle looking at the next gen Xbox live...
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