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PC Keyboard Connected to PSP
An anonymous reader writes "A hardware engineer has managed to successfully connect a full-sized PC keyboard to the Sony PSP handheld. It looks as if the hardware modification was done with several different xlink cable connectors modified to interlink with each other. Obviously, the software side of things is not complete, but this is still a very interesting modification." The real question is what killer apps will come out of all this PSP hacking. There has to be more than just MAME emulation.
The only real point to this is to show that it "can be done," which isn't a bad reason to play around with things. But as for any real "killer apps," the keyboard attachment sort of kills the PSP's original "killer app" of portability in the gaming arena,...
maxconsole have linked directly to the images so coral cache is useless. check out the mirrordot link to the story instead.
Yes, I'm going to talk about the DS in a PSP thread. No I am not trolling.
The reason the PSP is getting quick ports of things like emulators is because they can unthrottle the cpu from 222mhz to 300mhz, and run everythign in the cpu, and not worry about optimization. In reality, little is actually known about psp homebrew. Doom, Doom II, Quake etc have been ported, but hell, Quake needs a 100mhz cpu, with an OS running (albeit MSDOS 5.0) theres already the pocketquake project, which makes it a breeze. It's surprising no one has taken the ARM port of pocketquake and put it onto the DS, because it's completly possible.
Alot of the DS homebrew crowd seems preoccupied with cracking the WiFi and adding TCP/IP to dslinux. There's already drivers I do believe for a Palm foldup keyboard to hook up to the DS via USB, and a few other things have too (Bluetooth antenna, SD card...)
dslinux however, isn't getting much attention. It was written by one guy, and now he's bored of it.
The PSP's USB port is a slave port. It could not by default supply power to an attached keyboard. It has been surmised that the port CAN be used as a master to talk to an attached device or peripheral; to prevent any damage to a computer or the like attached when this is done, the port is likely unable to supply power. The screw terminals on either side of the USB port are reported to supply power to an attached peripheral (or the peripheral can use its own internal power supply)
This configuration as shown relies on the PSP's USB port being able to supply 5V to the keyboard, which is highly unlikely according to people who know a lot more about it than I do. If the guy wanted to make a better 'fake, he should have run some dummy wires over to the screw terminals or mentioned something about supplying power to the keyboard or talked about USB master vs slave.. The absense of him addressing any of these problems makes the thing smell very much like a crappy hoax.
The only reason people do this stupid stuff is because idiotic editors REPORT IT.