I finished the PSP I was working on, had to use some *cough* questionable tactics to get it out the door.

The PSP was firmware version 3.51, I used these guides to downgrade from 3.51 to 1.50. There was a slight hangup, when making a “magic memory stick”, I had to put my PSP in 1.5 kernel mode, else it wouldn’t work. I backed up the battery eeprom, then made it a pandora aka “magic battery”. The flashing went smoothly, no problems.

Afterwards I returned the battery back to “original” mode, so it would work again. I had to load the PSP with the battery removed, go to the Pandora Battery creator app, insert the battery, press L+R to write FROM the eeprom, reset. Then load the PSP with the battery removed again, go to the Pandora Battery creator app, insert the battery, press square ([]), reset, and the battery was good as new.

I then downloaded and flashed with the latest hacked firmware that allows playing backups and PSone games: 3.52 M33. It went really smoothly. I returned the PSP to its rightful owner, all’s well that ends well ;). The whole process took me about 2 hours.

I have PSP #3 in my possession for flashing, that should be happening soon. I anticipate the process will be similar, should only take about a half hour this time.