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[bitblt]

That's right, anyone can now unbrick a PSP without needing mad soldering skillz. You will need access to a working hacked PSP, a spare Memory Stick Pro Duo, and need to sacrafice a PSP battery pack.

News Source

A project promulgated under the collective Noobz - more officially branded as N00bz! - has given birth to another monumental development in homebrew: a PSP unbricker for every Sony PlayStation Portable. A universal PSP unbricker/downgrader by the Prometheus project, also
known as Team C+D. In short summary, it would perform the following:

1. You run a program on a homebrew-enabled PSP that will convert a standard PSP battery into a jigkick battery. Note that you can't then use that battery normally - so you should use a spare one.
2. You run a program to generate the unbricker memory stick image, built from the v1.5 update EBOOT (note that this, and the custom IPL, means the release is completely free of Sony copyright materials).
3. You run some programs on a PC to install the image to your memory stick.

Download

(from the readme.txt)

Code Select Expand


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       /\  _`\    /\ \    /\  _`\
       \ \ \/\_\  \_\ \___\ \ \/\ \
        \ \ \/_/_/\___  __\\ \ \ \ \
         \ \ \L\ \/__/\ \_/ \ \ \_\ \
          \ \____/   \ \_\   \ \____/
           \/___/     \/_/    \/___/

              PANDORA'S BATTERY
              =================
A universal PSP unbricker/downgrader by the Prometheus project, also
known as Team C+D.

REQUIREMENTS
- A spare PSP Battery. Any make will do. Using a spare is best, as it
  will not be possible to boot the PSP in its normal state with the
  modified battery.
- A spare Memory Stick Pro Duo of less than 4Gb. (256Mb should be
  enough for all applications).
- A PSP with a Custom Firmware such as OE, M33 or WC, or a PSP with
  the 1.5 original kernel.

INSTALLATION PROCEDURE
- Connect the PSP to the PC with the Memory Stick inside via the USB
  Connection.
- Format the Memory Stick using any utility.
- Use mspformat to format the Memory Stick logically.
- Remove the Memory Stick and disable the USB connection.
- Connect the Memory Stick again via the USB connection of the PSP.
- Manually create the PSP/GAME (optionally PSP/GAME150) folders on the
  Memory Stick.
- Copy the "battery" and "installer" programs to the PSP/GAME
  (optionally PSP/GAME150) folder.
- Copy the 1.50 official updater as UPDATE.PBP to the root of the
  Memory Stick.
- Remove the Memory Stick and disable the USB connection.
- Run "installer" through the firmware on the PSP. This application
  will create the firmware files on the root of the Memory Stick, as
  well as msipl.bin.
- Connect the Memory Stick again via the USB connection of the PSP.
- Execute "msipl" application on the PC with the msipl.bin to write
  the IPL to memory stick.
- Remove the Memory Stick and disable the USB connection.
- Execute "battery" application on the PSP to modify the battery.
- Congratulation, you are now in posession of a "Magic Memory Stick"
  and a "JigKick Battery".

USAGE
- Insert Memory Stick into the PSP
- Remove power cord and insert the JigKick Battery into the PSP.
- A menu appears when the PSP boots. Follow the onscreen information
  and instructions.

NOTES AND RESTRICTIONS
- The firmware in the Memory Stick is not a full 1.50, but a minimal
  subset. Therefore, not all applications (such as flashers, or
  recovery apps) will load.
- Only Memory Stick Pro Duo are compatible. Memory Stick Duo
  (e.g. 32MB sticks) are not supported.
- The IDStorage cannot be totally restored, as there is no known way
  to regenerate it properly.
- It is strongly RECOMMENDED to make a flash dump of the PSP before
  any downgrading operation.
- There might be a BSOD at the end of the downgrade. This is normal,
  and happens on the standard downgraders.
- All hardware revisions known at this day are supported.
- This release contains no Sony-copyrighted material.  All required
  Sony data is generated from the v1.50 update files.

CREDITS
- Please do not edit or remove these credits...
- All work done by the Prometheus team aka Team C+D:

  Adrahil (VoidPointer)
  Booster
  Cswindle (Caretaker)
  Dark_AleX (Malyot)
  Ditlew
  Fanjita (FullerMonty)
  Joek2100 (CosmicOverSoul)
  Jim
  Mathieulh (WiseFellow)
  Nem (h1ckeyph0rce)
  Psp250
  Skylark
  TyRaNiD (bockscar)

- With thanks to everyone who has contributed to the PSPSDK, without which
  nothing would have been possible.

[dai_uk]

sounds awesome but what a headache

lol i guess infolithioum battery has a overflow bug - at least they dont catch fire this time!

[bitblt]

at least they dont catch fire this time!

lol

Yeah, it's pretty weird stuff. Apparently the "jigkick" is a PSP recovery technique developed and used by Sony to recover bad PSP firmware updates. There has been firmware code and circuitry in all Sony PSP's to perform "jigkick" recovery since PSP was introduced. However there was no public knowledge of the technique until a video from Japan was leaked (several months ago) showing a PSP being recovered. Many people though the leaked video was a hoax. However team Prometheus took the video seriously and reversed engineered the technique, and without access to the official software or hardware. The key challenges they had to be overcome to make this work . . .

- Reverse engineering of the service (unbrick) mode
- Development of a technique to change an ordinary battery into a service mode trigger battery (and back)
- Development of custom IPL code along with a technique to sign that code as authentic

Noobz salutes the members of the Prometheus project, namely Adrahil, Booster, Cswindle, Dark_AleX , Ditlew, Fanjita, Joek2100, Jim, Mathieulh, Nem, Psp250, Skylark, and TyRaNiD - who should also be recognized in their Create and Destroy (C+D) identities as follows:

Mathieulh = WiseFellow
Tyranid = bockscar
Fanjita = FullerMonty
Joek = CosmicOverSoul
Dark_Alex = Malyot
Chris = Caretaker
Adrahil = VoidPointer
nem = h1ckeyph0rce

[tennisgy]

On a different forum, someone said that this means any psp can be downgraded...Do you purposely brick your psp then recover it?  How do you make a recovery battery without a homebrew PSP before you brick yours?

[bitblt]

That's a really good point tennisgy. The  "jigkick" technique can be used to downgrade any version PSP, and no you don't have to brick your PSP first. Maybe the new PSP lites can even be downgraded using this technique? That would be really cool.

[DeVS]

Just a guess here but I would guess the alteast the first batch of PSP Slims will be mod able via this technique. The PSP Slim launches in just a matter of weeks so you got to assume that Sony has already produced quite a few of these units already.  Unless it was a hardware design that was already going to be changed, chances are atleast this first batch of the PSP Slim's will be able to be moded this way too. I know I for one am going to be watching and the first successful downgrade story of a PSP Slim will be enough to get me to upgrade,lol.

[dai_uk]

Yes we're quite fortunate to not have this chicken and egg situation on the DS

[bitblt]

In related news, Fanjita co developer of the PSP jigkick, is retiring from the PSP homebrew scene.
News Source

In a shocking development, PSP homebrew icon and pioneer Fanjita has announced his retirement over at his website Fanjita.org, citing trust issues as the main reason.

While no specifics were mentioned, the famed developer did say that "the betrayal of trust that preceded the Pandora release was extremely hurtful." This, he says, left him to unable to fully trust the people he previously enjoyed working hard with.

"I'm tired of the continual pressure and idiocy of the PSP scene - long gone are the fun days of pioneering amongst like minds, in a mutually supportive and gentlemanly environment," he says.

"The Pandora Battery therefore marks my last major PSP project," says Fanjita. "I expect that Team C+D and Noobz will continue to release stuff without me, and I still hope to finish up some of the non-exploit projects that I'd been working on (Installotron, piKey etc.).

Fanjita says that the he will now concentrate on fatherhood as well as non-PSP projects that he wants to explore.

[Vapourstreak]

ouch, that really hurts...  so many developers from the psp scene are leaving.  im starting to think sony's doing something

[Perseid]

Yeah, but while so many of these people say they're leaving we're seeing some of the biggest exploits in PSP history. I think a lot of these guys are going into hiding and assuming new nicks.

Anyway, I just did this today. It works. Very funky, but works. I used my M33 PSP to run the memory-stick flasher and the battery flasher(yes, you flash the battery. WTF?). Then put the battery and MS in a Sony 3.51 PSP, it booted(booted off the battery. WTF again), flashed, plugged the system in and turned it on with NO battery(didn't know you could do that) and then plugged the battery in, ran the flasher and put it back to a normal battery.

Worked fairly flawlessly but it was one of the stranger things I've done to a piece of electronics.

[anuarbin]

Yeah, but while so many of these people say they're leaving we're seeing some of the biggest exploits in PSP history. I think a lot of these guys are going into hiding and assuming new nicks.

Anyway, I just did this today. It works. Very funky, but works. I used my M33 PSP to run the memory-stick flasher and the battery flasher(yes, you flash the battery. WTF?). Then put the battery and MS in a Sony 3.51 PSP, it booted(booted off the battery. WTF again), flashed, plugged the system in and turned it on with NO battery(didn't know you could do that) and then plugged the battery in, ran the flasher and put it back to a normal battery.

Worked fairly flawlessly but it was one of the stranger things I've done to a piece of electronics.

Can ds do that?(boot from battery)

[roger860]

i get write error in the command propt window when trying to format the memory card

[DeVS]

roger if you do it this way you can't re-use the battery like I was talking about in the previous post.

[roger860]

but its what the readme file said