Thirsty for Suggestions.

[Wight]

Hi guys,

Long time lurker first time poster and the reason I post is because I have a 3.50 Official Sony Firmware PSP and I now have a chance of hacking the little guy and join the community.

Thing is, I just have a plethora of questions I need answered before I go ahead and downgrade the system and secure a copy of Lumines and was wondering if someone could give me some friendly advice if they had the time. Most of the questions are general queries and I am definitely not looking for technical help.

If you have gotten this far you are probably someone who is interested in helping me make some decisions or get some info... So here I go, questions in no particular order:

1. I plan on using my PSP as a multimedia device to watch Anime, Movies and more. Is there a program available after downgrade that will allow me to watch movie formats of .avi, .divx, .xvid and most importantly .rm? In line with this, does said program have all the options a media player for windows would? (Eg. MPC and VLC)

2. Is some kind of operating system that allows MSN messenger and an email facility be run on the PSP's hardware readily available? Please make suggestions on both if applicable.

3. I would love to play some flash games in my spare time from "Newgrounds.com". Are there any alternate browsers that supply enough cache to handle some of the bigger flash files exceeding 10mb?

Most of my other questions relate to emulators and their functions, with the PSX emulation being the one i'm most interested in.

4. Is there a decent Genesis emulator available for PSP? If so, what is it called and what percentage of games run at "near perfect" quality? Does it have an icon on the main PSP to access, and upon entry an attractive interface that allows you to select an appropriate game without too much "folder modding"?

5. Is there a decent SNES emulator available for PSP? If so, what is it called and what percentage of games run at "near perfect" quality? Does it have an icon on the main PSP to access, and upon entry an attractive interface that allows you to select an appropriate game without too much "folder modding"?

6. Is there a decent GBA emulator available for PSP? If so, what is it called and what percentage of games run at "near perfect" quality? Does it have an icon on the main PSP to access, and upon entry an attractive interface that allows you to select an appropriate game without too much "folder modding"?

7. Is there a decent n6- Yeah I know... Daedelus right? :)

8. Exactly what is the deal with the popstation? From the setup guide I have read, it deals with one specific game and from what I can tell if you want to play multiple PSX roms on the PSP you would need to change foldernames and files everytime... Is there no UI or application to switch between games for an easy transition? Also the same applies for saving games I hear... Can someone please straighten this up for me?


And after those lengthly, boring questions I am about ready to break into the homebrew world. If you could only answer one of these questions, it would be a fantastic help as after browsing the net and these forums for a few hours now none of my questions have been answered, maybe I haven't been looking in the right place?

Thanks in advance for your help and godspeed.

[eatnooM]

I'll see what I can deal with from these. :)

1. There are some programs that allow you to view avi videos, not sure about .rm, however I find there's less hassle in converting then to a decent bitrate .mp4 and playing it through the XMB (Cross Menu Bar, in case you haven't stumbled across the terminology before, basically the main menu :P)

2. There is a fairly good program that is compatible with MSN's protocol as well as that of AIM, ICQ, GTalk and Yahoo called AFKIM. PSPoste is an E-Mail client but I can't give any details about it as I've never used it myself.

3. As of yet, there are no alternate browsers so you're high and dry on that front.

4. DGen is a pretty good Genesis emulator, it's fast and, well, at least every ROM I've thrown at it has worked. (That's not saying much, I only have about 10.)

5. Snes9xTYL is the best SNES emulator available, it's a tad slow but has pretty good compatibility. There hasn't been a new release in a while, but I believe I recall hearing that there will be a final release at some point in the future.

6. gpSP is the best GBA emulator for the PSP, it can run many games fullspeed. Just don't expect to play games by Camelot, as apparently they had lazy coders and making them compatible is a bitch :p. Not perfect, but still pretty damn good.

7. Bingo. :)

8. POPStation no longer requires that you build every EBOOT from the official Hot Shots Golf one from the Playstation Store, many GUIs (The one I use being IceTea) do not require a BASE.PBP of KEYS.BIN file to make a working Playstation game. With said GUI, it's nice and easy to make an ISO/BIN/IMG file into an EBOOT. It also detects game IDs for the ISO you use.

Apparently, you must keep the game ID identical if you wish to use multi-disc games and IceTea assigns a different ID to each disc, that's the only thing you need to look out for in particular. Once you have produced an EBOOT, it simply needs shoved into your PSP\GAME\NAME\ folder (Where NAME is whatever tickles your fancy per game/disc :)) and it'll run. The only prerequisite to being able to run POPS games is that you're on a suitable Custom Firmware (The most recent being 3.40 OE).

Well, hope that helped, otherwise I've just wasted a bunch of time. If ya need to know anything else, just ask in here or gimme a PM :)

EDIT: All homebrew ran from 1.5 or Custom Firmwares is accessible via the XMB and I believe all of the emulators that you listed have ROM navigation menus that let you locate a ROM regardless of how you have them arranged.

[dangee]

thirsty for 'brew?
1. take a deep breath..
2.downgrade to 1.5 - you can always go back to 3.X
main hazard here is no XMB browser..
3. ..so install devhook,Links2 (uggh) , or upgrade to 3.40OE-A
4. ..& breath out, aaahh..

[Wight]

I'll see what I can deal with from these. :)

*Insert heaps of help here*

Thanks Moontea, you have helped so much.

So basically you've answered all of my questions.

To start off i'll downgrade my PSP to 1.50 then upgrade it to 3.40 OE.

After this I can load on AFKIM, PSPoste, dgen, Snes9xTYL, gpSP and popstation, then i'll be sweet :D

Unfortunately I hate the long encoding process so i'll need to find some way to make my PSP play all media files and found a "VLC" alternative for PSP in the forums.

But again, thanks for your help and I apologize for any PM's you may get in future trying to get them to work! (PS Probably won't, I work for an ISP tech support helpdesk and come from a technical background)

:D

EDIT: HOORAY! I found a copy of Lumines 5 minutes down the road for $39.90 (NZD) but the great thing is they have a seven day right of return policy ;D I'll be kicking this into action today.

[eatnooM]

Glad to have helped. Good luck with the VLC alternative, I never bothered with it myself. If you find it's pretty good, I might start using it myself ^^

Oh, and welcome to the scene! :D

[Wight]

Wicked cool.

I have just purchased Lumines and have come back with the good news that the transition went VERY smoothly!

3.50 > 1.50 > 3.40 OE

Stoked! Now i'm going to start off with the Gen emulator you recommended and see what happens.

Cheers!