Hack Your PSP – What Is The Easy Way? – Part I

The Portable PlayStation of Sony in Market has been an easy target of hackers. With heavily built hardware and sleek screen for handheld devices, lots of PSP owners have cracked their devices. Now Sony has released about dozen of updates and many hardware revisions so as to make harder for hackers to hack PSPs.

Though single hack does not work for all PSP but few PSPs are totally not hakable. However there is one easy method which works on most consoles that will be illustrated in this article.

How to check my PSP for hacking?

Hack not requiring any modification in hardware carries two limitations:

One – It does not work with PSPs of 3000 series. To know easily which hardware-revision your PSP is in better check the sticker at the bottom that may say like “PSP-1001”. If the number that follows “PSP” starts with 3 then you don’t have luck. No one has developed hack for 3000 series PSP.

Two – If the firmware installed in more recent than version 5.03 then the hack will not work. The firmware installed on your PSP can be checked by turning it on, then going to Settings, next to system settings and then to system info. If your firmware version number is more than 5.03 you are not in position to use this procedure to hack your PSP. To hack more recent firmware there are ways but are more difficult that may involve modification of hardware which is beyond the scope of this article. To know how that can be done you need to do web search for “Pandora’s Battery”.

The method to do PSP hacking

Plug in PSP and assure that it has been charged fully. This is very important because when you are loading firmware into PSP, losing power or shutting of PSP during the flash process will prove to be fatal for your precious handheld.

Next check for memory space, it should be large enough to run the hack. The memory space should be minimum 512 MB on the memory stick. For loading with homebrew applications, still more space is required. You can upgrade PSPs to 4 or 8 GB as memory sticks of that magnitude are available in the market. It costs from $15 to $30. If you buy a new memory card then format needs to be done before the start of procedure. That can be done by inserting the memory card into PSP.

If your Firmware is below version 5.03 then you have to upgrade that to 5.03 Firmware. For that 5.03 firmware update is to be downloaded. Next your PSP is to be connected to computer and from Settings Menu get into USB mode. Now you can access PSP on your computer just like USB drive. Place EBOOT.PBP file downloaded earlier into the folder /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/

Now PSP is to be disconnected from the computer. To run version 5.03 update go to Games menu to select Memory Stick. You need to agree to terms of service to proceed further. The PSP’s firmware will start updating to version 5.03.  As updating of version is going on don’t try to do anything with PSP as that will damage your PSP.

This is the preliminary preparation for flashing hack on your PSP.