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PSP Firmware Downgrader Released
roka writes "SonyxTeam has just released a downgrader for the PSP using the toc2rta 2.0 overflow in libtiff. This has been tested and found working by PSP news sites. This is basically opening all sold models of the PSP to homebrew applications and will boost homebrew software development for Sony's handheld."
What if they release hardware at a loss, hoping you'll pay for other software?
Weird business model, granted, but it's worked in the past...
I dunno, imho web browsers on the psp suck. Definetly not a reason to get a psp. PSP web browsers (im referring to the 2.0 and tenchi no mon browsers) are slow, and run out of memory often when downloading large web pages. :P These browsers are serviceable at best.
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This is very true. A few months ago I started seeing a lot of used psps being sold on sites like craigslist.com. The ones I contacted about why they were selling their psps basically said that games/movies were pretty expensive.
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I learned from Skylark who was part of the downgrade developing group that SonyxTeam was NOT involved in the creation of this downgrade AT ALL. Instead MPH did released it.
:(
Sorry for messing up, please update the story for I don't think SonyxTeam's name deserves to be mentioned in the news
Losing power while down/upgrading will brick the psp, making it transparent to the user would be a bad idea.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
Yes, I know it's less powerful and less sexy, but I'm still waiting for a GP2X. Should be cheaper and DESIGNED to run my own programs. I write silly little games for my laptop (not worthy to be sourceforged, mostly about the level of addictive flash games), and I want to write silly little games to play on the shuttle bus to campus. And I want to run other people's silly little games and Yar's Revenge, which I bought Back in the Day and feel no urge to buy again.
According to PSPUpdates, SonyXTeam has NOTHING to do with this. It is the sole creation of Team MPH.
SonyXTeam is comprised of former members of Team WAB, a group that conned hundreds of people out of their money.
WAB said that they would be releasing a downgrader on September 1, and opened up a Paypal account for donations.
Then members of WAB claimed to have been arrested, and they claimed that their hard drive crashed. If anyone came on their IRC server and asked about the downgrader, they were kicked off. Then the team split up, and the "main coder" of the supposed downgrader went over to SonyXTeam.
This coder, Yoshihiro, is well known throughout the XBox scene as a fake who stole the code of others and claimed it as his own. He is doing the same thing here with the real downgrader.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
as far as piracy of UMD games goes, well that is one of the more boring uses of an 'unlocked' PSP.
the PSP is a rather nice piece of hardware, and you'd be amazed at the stuff that people have got running on it - much more than just 'homebrew pong'.
there are of course the multitude of emulators, so you can have your favourite 8-bit microcomputer, or home console with you on the bus. there is already a good implementation of the SCUMM Virtual Machine, so you can play all (well, most) of your favourite Lucasarts graphic adventures, there's a passable Doom engine running on it, a really promising LUA implementation, DOSBOX, and a zillion other things that are under development right this minute.
slashdot is not condoning piracy with this post, they are simply highlighting the truly creative use of computing hardware - a concept that warms the cockles of many slashdotters!
homebrew != arbitrary code execution.
and remember, each purchased unit belongs wholly and solely to you. you own the chips inside the machine, you own the lcd screen, you own the interconnects, you own the speakers, you own the right to fully access each of them.
calling it "homebrew" does a disservice to the property rights "movement". it makes it sound like you have no business using and programming the chips you paid good money for.
Arbitrary Code Execution, ACE.
using technical means to prevent you using your own property is a crime in my book.
and no, "business model" is no excuse in removing your lawful rights in using your own property any way you wish. sell it for 3 times as much but leave my access alone. i want it to make it illegal to rent products but call it buying. if you want people to have limited access, call it renting and then set prices accordingly. if you want to sell items outright, then behave accordingly. the problem is, they want the benefits of selling with the benefits of renting. that's a commerce no no not to mention unethical and immoral.
please don't use the word "homebrew" or if you feel you must, at least give it some thought each time you do.... see if it matches up with the world you want to live in. words have a lot of power... use it wisely.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Don't forget that games whose source have been released (like Quake) can also be ported too. These people wrote a commerical game for the Dreamcast using homebrew tools. (See Question #10 of their faq for more details.)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I've been following the entire situation as I maintain TehSkeen.net and have first hand experience of what went down. Yoshi did rippoff a bunch of people using PayPal and stole code. http://www.tehskeen.net/ http://www.pspupdates.com/ http://www.psp-spot.com/ http://www.wab.com/ All of these have all of the resources you need to verify my claims including information on contacting the author of the downgrader and the people who assisted him with it.
[ brakken ]
Just an idea...
As we know Sony sell the PSPs at a loss, and make up the rest by selling the games.
So, why don't they sell a PSP at cost + margin that will allow modding and homebrew?
A bit like with mobile phones, free or cheap when locked to a network. Full price if you want to use it however you want.
~www.devnull.co.uk
I was the one who did that hack. :)
The way it worked was, the TI-92 let you send and receive a "backup" -- an image of its RAM starting from a certain address. I sent a super-large RAM image that wrapped around over the top of its memory and into the interrupt vector table, so that the first time an interrupt occurred it would execute my hook (which I put elsewhere in the image).
The downside of this method was that sending the huge backup took a lot of time, which was especially inconvenient for me because I had to resend it every time I changed the kernel. Later I found a more streamlined hacking method; I found a callback function pointer in the RAM image, and modified the RAM image to make it point to my hook.
I later used a buffer overflow in a certain online PC game for non-evil purposes. I released an unofficial patch that exploited this, to remotely disable a cheat for the game I had previous written which had been leaked and abused, and also to allow people to host games with more options using remotely-executed code (the same code would run locally so the options would be the same on all ends). My patch also fixed some bugs in the game, like incompatibility with Windows 2000/XP.
The company that made this game noticed my patch and offered me the job of working on an official patch. This surprised the heck out of me but of course I accepted! :-)
Since then, I plugged the security hole. But had I not been hired, I would've wrapped a security layer around it and used it to further open the game to customization. Having the source code is much better though.