M33? Yes, M33. Not so long ago, I downgraded my PSP to the 1.5 firmware which allows homebrew apps and programs to be run, but I was limited to using DevHook which could only emulate 3.01 firmware, which is why I went and ‘upgraded’ to custom firmware.
I’ll admit that I was fairly worried about doing it at first since it’s easier to brick a PSP installing custom firmware than it is when just downgrading. If you watch videos on YouTube or wherever, it can look more complicated than it really is, but it’s basically 4 steps once you have the following files:
- M33 Custom Firmware
- Official PSP FW 3.51
- PSP Firmware 1.50 File (EBOOT) North America
- Backup the contents of your mem card onto your PC and format it using the PSP (Settings > System Settings > Format Memory Stick™ .. why that’s trademarked, I don’t know).
- In the “M33-3.51-Rel” folder on your PC (that you have downloaded from my box.net account above, the ‘official’ folder is called just ‘m33rel‘), copy kxploitpatcher and kxploitpatcher% folders from “1.50only/” to “/PSP/GAME/“, go to Game > Memory Stick™ and run the patcher.
- Copy the M33CREATOR folder to “/PSP/GAME“, rename the official firmware files as 351.PBP and 150.PBP, put them in the “/PSP/GAME/M33CREATOR/” folder.
- In Games > Memory Stick™, launch “3.51 M33 CREATOR“, when that’s done, go back to Games > Memory Stick™ and launch “3.51 M33UPDATE“.
Done. Once you’ve pressed X to shut down the PSP, next time you turn it on, it will be in 3.51 Custom FirmWare (CFW) and should be able to run homebrew without the need for extra programs like DevHook. A little tip that I keep forgetting to do, if you have any iso/cso files, put them in a folder called ‘ISO’ on the root of the mem card (eg: F:ISO).
So, that’s pretty much all I wanted to blog about in this post, I’m still looking to find any compatible themes/icons, so off I go to search…