Best way to get a homebrew/downgrade friendly PSP?

Yeah, yeah... I'm late to the scene (not exactly, I've done all the PSP hacking stuff on my bro's PSP already).

I was wondering what the best and cheapest way to get a 1.5 PSP, or any other version PSP that I would be able to downgrade would be. I've seen them on Ebay for 150 bucks and under, but I'm werry about getting one there as I can't find much info on the firmware.

Are there any PSPs that AREN'T downgradable? Could I just walk into a Wal-Mart or whatever and buy one, then downgrade it when I get home? Or should I find an older used one on Ebay, because the earlier generation PSPs are easier to downgrade?

I heard a while back that a new slew of PSPs weren't able to downgrade (they had a certain chipset or something on the motherboard). Is this still a problem?

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help!

Well, now that the 3.50 hack is out, my answer is "with a copy of Lumines." Just go out, find a PSP for a decent deal (just try to make sure it doesn't say "latest firmware" in its description, to avoid 3.51), get a copy of Lumines (it was dirt cheap for a while, but either way, it's a game that's worth owning) and downgrade it. Of course, if you're lucky enough to end up with 2.00 or earlier, you won't even need the game (but it's still worth buying).

So the Lumines exploit works with all PSPs? Guess I gotta go find a used copy of it. Without getting ripped off for it, lol.

yep the lumines exploit worked on my 3.50 psp no problems i then used team reigns easy installer to get up to 3.40oe-a :)

game station had lumines for £6.99 (was in edinburgh princess street branch) :)

doesnt matter what mainboard the psp has if its one of the dodgy ones the installer will simply patch the flash to enable downgrading :)

i used the winstaller for 1.5 recovery once i had 3.40oe-a on it unfortuantaly the readme for recovery told me to run option 3 in the recovery menu so i ended up back to 1.5 :P

just ran easy 3.40oe-a installer agian and sitting at that with recovery mode i think :)

just make sure you read all the info in readme files about 5 times if theres any thing your unsure of ask or research it dont try downgrading or installing custom firmware if theres one thing in readme your not sure of to avoid bricking :)