A little help from anyone who can?

I used to be really into the entire PSP scene, when there was a new release i knew about it. Unfortunately i used the official playstation forums as my choice to keep up with the latest homebrew news.

As some of you may or may not know, sony no longer allows discussion of homebrew on their forums (and haven't for quite some time now).

As such, i really didn't have an immediate way to keep up with news. So now i decided to get my PSP up to date, and so i have a few questions before i do, beucase it seems as though alot of things have happened since i have left.

Anyone kind enough to answer my questions i would greatly appreciate it...

1. Why is dark alexs' site now merged with M33s?

2. I currently have 3.52M33-4 is it worth updating to their latest 3.71M33 firmware?

3. I read the readme and it doesn't say anything about needing the 1.50 eboot anymore, do i still need it or is it somehow no longer necessary?

4. I see something about some package (El Despertar del Cementerio v3) that supposidly comes with 3.71M33-2, what exactly is this package besides an unbricker? how does it work and why can't i just use recovery menu to do the same thing?

5. Why does the readme tell me that the 3.71M33 update uses the actual sony updater, can anyone explain to me exactly how they managed to get that working? And if possible, WHY they are using the official sony updater instead of their own?

6. Last but not least, whatever all of these new developments are (new unbricker, different installer, different patches during installation to fix idstorage keys etc) have the odds of bricking increased at all since 3.52M33? do all of these new features increase my chances or are they about the same as long as i follow instructions?

I know this could be found with a search, that i am aware of, however if someone knows the answers to these questions this would REALLY help me out beucase im completely clueless after just 2 months of complete absence.

heres some answers
1. dark alex said he quite cfw and a new team called m33 started up. it turned out that m33 was dark alex

2. if you want to play newer games you might and now there is a 1.5 kernal addon for fat psps

3. no you dont need the 1.5 eboot but you do if you want to install the 1.5 kernal addon

4. i think there was a problem that if you mess with your recovery menu you will get a brick and loose the recovery menu. i do not guarentee this its a guess

5. dunno but it works like a charm

6. well if you make a pandora battery with the right files you can unbrick any psp so u never have to wory

hope this works

1. Dark Alex = M33

2. I didn't like it cause I couldn't put my custom theme, and trying to go back is a real pain in the ass, I tried recovery eboot, it didn't do anything, just wrote some extra files from 1.5, then flashed a backup I've made from 3.71M33 then brick, until today, unbricked by Pandora, but It wont work as a downgrader on a clean 3.71M33
Actual features: playing music while watching images, video scene search, can use official sony themes

3. You don't need it

4. Only unbricker wich will install 3.71M33-2

5. It's really funny to see sony installer installing a Custom Firmware (no sarcasm)

6. Are about the same or a little minor, but flashing things to flash0 is a lot more dangerous once you're on 3.71M33 (DO NOT TRY TO REPLACE ANY FILE, IT WILL BRICK)

Note: The only way of going back (if you want to) is erasing everything on flash0 and flashing manually a backup from 3.52M33-4's flash0
So better think about it for some time

Ok, wow, thanks alot you guys this really helps, im much more informed and caught up now XD

i had no idea dark alex was M33 i'll bet it was crazy when that was announced...

anwyays yeah im going to hold off on the 3.71M33 update for now although i beleive i saw a downgrader to 1.50 for it. For now 3.52M33 is still doing just fine, thanks for all of your help both of you, and good luck with your PSPs ><

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mike_jmg

Note: The only way of going back (if you want to) is erasing everything on flash0 and flashing manually a backup from 3.52M33-4's flash0
So better think about it for some time

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Er. What are you smoking? There's at least two different ways of downgrading back to 1.5 posted on the news page.

2. I currently have 3.52M33-4 is it worth updating to their latest 3.71M33 firmware?

The main reason is for playing newer games that may require it. It doesn't offer anything huge.

4. I see something about some package (El Despertar del Cementerio v3) that supposidly comes with 3.71M33-2, what exactly is this package besides an unbricker? how does it work and why can't i just use recovery menu to do the same thing?

It's just an updated firmware image to use with Pandora. Should you ever need to use pandora, then you might need it, but if your PSP is already running a custom firmware, you don't need it.

5. Why does the readme tell me that the 3.71M33 update uses the actual sony updater, can anyone explain to me exactly how they managed to get that working? And if possible, WHY they are using the official sony updater instead of their own?

From what I gather from reading some of the forum posts, I believe Dark_Alex has found some way of signing his code so that the Sony updater will run it. Don't quote me on that. It does give a bit of perverse pleasure seeing the Sony installer doing all the work. :)

6. Last but not least, whatever all of these new developments are (new unbricker, different installer, different patches during installation to fix idstorage keys etc) have the odds of bricking increased at all since 3.52M33? do all of these new features increase my chances or are they about the same as long as i follow instructions?

There isn't any increased risk, no. Just don't dick about with your flash and you'll be fine. Almost all of the bricks involve messing with flash, and for some reason now it tends to brick the PSP beyond the ability to run recovery. I'm sure I won't need it but I'm making myself a pandora's battery just in case.

thanks for the reply spooforbrains... i wish i had been there when dark alex figured out how to get his code signed to be run by official sony updates... that was probably a HUGE announcement... thanks again for the answers everyone. i may update in time but right now im good at 3.52M33.

Q5. The reason the sony installer works is that sony included all this custom stuff i.e. custom top menu, iso loader etc in their own official firmware but locked it all with the exeption of the custom themes DA found a way to unlock it all and just do little tinkering to add the recovery menu and vsh menus thus allowing sony's own installer to do all the hard work (sweet, DA you rock)