Questions about Fanjita's eboot loader

[hockey2112]

I received a PSP v 1.52 from my wife for Christmas. I want to play homebrew, especially NesterJ. I have been poking around on the forums for a few days now, and I haven't really been able to find exact answers to my questions below. If you can help, please reply. I understand if your reply will be brief, but I would greatly appreciate as much detail as you can provide.


1. I have firmware v 1.52. I must upgrade to 2.0 in order to use Fanjita's loader, right?

2. Once I upgrade to 2.0, Would it be smarter for me to downgrade to 1.50 and use other emulation homebrew (instead of Fanjita's)? What will I gain by doing so? What will I lose by doing so? How risky is it to downgrade to 1.50 from 2.0?

3. If I do upgrade from 1.52 to 2.0, and then downgrade to 1.50, will I be able to perform any future upgrades or downgrades? Can I upgrade and downgrade between 1.50 and 2.0 as often as I wish? Or am I permanently stuck with 1.50 once I downgrade to it? If I up from 1.52 to 2.0, then down to 1.50, and then up back to 2.0, will I be able to go back down to 1.50 ever again?

4. In your opinion, how good is Fanjita's new 2.0 loader, compared to whatever I would use to emulate NES roms (NesterJ) on 1.50? Is the compatibility good enough that I would do just as well sticking with 2.0 once I upgrade, or would I gain more freedoms (with emulation and anything else) if I downgrade to 1.50?


Thank you for your time.

[Volksgeist]

1. Yes, you do need 2.0 to run Fanjita's loader.

2. For homebrew 1.5 would defenately be better. Fanjita's loader has some limitations, and can't run all homebrew, most notably UMD Emlators, and more memory intensive programs. So you can't backup your UMDs and run them off the memory stick. Also I've tried Fanjita's loader on my friend's PSP and it is not totally stable, it locks up quite a bit, but certain games especially Grand Theft Auto requires 2.0 to play. So Fanjita's loader is the main thing you're going to have to use for homebrew if you have 2.0.
The method of downgrading may seem scary in execution, and there is some risk. But it definately should come out fine.

3. You should be able to downgrade and upgrade the firmware as many times as you want, but again there may be some risk. And if you want to use some of 2.0 features on the 1.5 firmware such as the web browser or AVC playback, you could use the MPH loader. But you won't be able to run games that require 2.0 like GTA.

4. If you just want to run NES and other emulators 2.0 should be fine. The only problem you might have is just with your PSP locking up while using Fanjita's loader. But if you're gonna do more homebrew stuff, more so than playing games that need 2.0 I would recommend using 1.5

[nu_world_order]

Basically agree with V - I use 2.0 and Fanjita's loader. I haven't had lots of lockups, but quitting apps can be a bit troublesome (a fair bit of 10 second power downs). Basically you can run most emulators (i run nes, snes, pc engine, mega drive, sega master system) and some of the better homebrew games/apps (psp kick drum machine, rrootage 1.5 etc). Oh 1 last thing - if you do want to play homebrew with the loader, always restart the PSP BEFORE loading it - otherwise you will lockup.

I *do* miss 1.5 firmware - you can start/quit homebrew very neatly without ever having to reboot. Having said that - I would not give up homebrew for GTA. But I bought my PSP for GTA and Wipeout Pure, and have never regretted it!

[AtariFreek]

Why Not Get Two Like Most? Use The PSP You Have Now To Downgrade And Get A New One And Upgrade It To 2.XX.

[hockey2112]

Thanks for all of the feedback, this has been very helpful. I think I will give 2.0/Fanjita a try first, see how it goes, and then consider the 1.5 downgrade.

It would be great indeed to grab a second PSP; I just don't have the extra cash for it, though.

Random question: do the roms play full-screen, or are they a lot smaller? I think I remember seeing screenshots of roms on PSP, but they had lots of black space on the sides, and plenty more on the top and bottom.

Thanks again!

[maedox]

Most emulators have the option to stretch the image to fit the whole psp screen.