Brewology

Hello recently I have been attempting to use the pandora battery method, after, recently downloading the firmware can you guess it? 5.03. I have been told that I cannot use homebrew, weather it be emulators to custom programs. Is this true? Do i have to suffer through pandora-ing my psp (YES i have seen the tutorial by darkpacman) pr can i just get on with my first homebrew! (yes i am a noob)

A little history lesson for you...

Before the days of Pandora, the only way for us to run homebrew was to find a security hole in Sony's firmware and use it to run unsigned code, i.e. non-Sony programs. From there eventually came custom firmware. Sony's official firmware could be modified then flashed to the PSP. This way your now hacked PSP can natively run homebrew/unsigned code.

Well, these flaws usually required something to be able to exploit them... and they usually come in the form of game saves. This would require you to buy a certain game and use a hacked gamesave to start the process. If anything happened in the middle of the process, wham, bricked psp. And these exploits only worked on THAT ONE firmware version. It wasn't universal.

Then came pandora. We could now flash custom firmware onto ANY PSP (pre-psp3000 days). All you needed was a properly formatted memory stick and a modified battery, both that could be made at home and would work in any psp. It could raise your PSP from the dead because the hack no longer needed a game or anything to run. Because of this development, there was no need for hackers to run through all the lines of Sony's code looking for a security flaw to exploit. The days of the old flashers and downgraders are dead. It's Pandora's time now.

So if you have Sony's 5.03... you need Pandora to flash custom firmware if you want to use homebrew. There's no other method.

I thank you for the information,but i have 2 questions of pandora if answered i could finish it.
1. After memory stick is formated, and such, do you need to do weird battery thing?Or is it just for reverting to old firmware?
2. I am currently on the step where i type mspformat f in command prompt, (all steps done prior that are required) it says are you sure...erase data..ect. I type y and it gives my this error,Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6000]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\DICK>cd c:\psp\mspformat

c:\PSP\mspformat>mspformat f
You are about to format the drive f.
All data will be lost. Do you want to continue? [Y]y

Open error (read).

c:\PSP\mspformat>

(psp is folder on OS instead of pandora)

am i just doing something stupid? or is there an error?

Thank you

Answer to Questions
1) You Need The Pandora (Weird battery thing) Yes. The Pandora Battery Allows the PSP to boot in a recovery mode, which you can move back to an old firmware, and flash it , to make it Custom firmware, which will allow you to play homebrew/ISO's

2)If your having troubles formatting the memory card like that, Format it from your PSP, Just go to System Settings, and go down to format memory stick. [its roughly the 7th one down] click it, let it do its thing, wont take long inless you have alot of crap on there, Then you just remove the memory card from the PSP and put it back in. and it will be formated. Remember that last step though! and its good to go. Put all your files on it, Write the IPL and your Good.

If your having any trouble i suggest Watching some videos on youtube by a guy named zzk2001 theyre very informative, and take you step-by-step through the Process of changing your PSP to custom firmware.

And one more thing, Make sure Your PSP is NOT a PSP-3000, or a Newer PSP-2001
PSP-3000 cannot be hacked yet, and some PSP-2001's are un-hackable Like The Blue Madden PSP is un-hackable.

So Make Sure and check, and if its a Phat (psp-1001) your freaken set

Good Luck!