Hacking How to avoid bricking a PSP Go?

[UtadaRumiko]

Yes, I'm a newb at this whole PSP business so I'll be asking plenty of questions. Anyway, I'm curious, because I'm really nervous about this whole "bricking" thing (I never had to deal with it when using my DS so this is new). It looks like bricking a psp could screw it up pretty badly. So I'm wondering what exactly can someone do that would result in the bricking of their PSP Go? (or psp in general. I have a Go) Simply downloading CFW and a bunch of games, an emulator or two, as well as some PSX games wouldn't result in it right? (Because that's basically all i'll be doing to it.)

 

[DarkStriker]

Not using pro cfw can result in a brick

 

[s4mid4re]

Nope, those most likely won't cause a brick. Bricks are usually caused when faulty files are overwritten/deleted in the psp's flash. From my knowledge, current LCFWs out there (i.e. PRO) barely overwrite existing files, but instead, usually adds files. Same goes with the permanent patch, which barely has any chance of bricking because it has a test run that will let you know if your psp is capable of installing perma patch (after the test run gives you positive results, you can run the actual installation).

Although I've heard somewhere in the forums that psp Go's tend to have some lag/slowdown during cold booting (boot up your psp from a shut down state; not to be confused with standby/sleep mode) while using perma patch. Permanent patch isn't a necessity, though, so you can opt to boot up fast recovery (a homebrew that is run from your memory stick to boot into 'hacked' mode, which only really makes around 5 seconds' difference) every time you cold boot your psp.

 

[xist]

A Brick generally is the result of something being modified within the Central Nervous system of your PSP (flash0). Generally you're not going to be within a million miles of this if all you're doing is playing some PSP/PSX/Emulators, however, you do have the ability to access it manually and modify it, and some plugins and homebrew is capable of modifying it. Therefore you need to tread warily if you're just randomly running homebrew and plugins of which you have no idea.

Think of it like a set of stepping stones across a river...if you modify or delete one so that it's no longer usable then you can't get to the other side. The PSP needs a set of instructions about how to boot and if you're tinkering with them then you can end up causing a "brick". Installing PRO CFW adds some extra stepping stones (and the perm install of 6.20 does modify one of them hence the element of risk), but once installed it's not modifying your system further, nor will simply gaming.

As with anything if you're unsure about something ASK first, and ensure you get multiple answers before you trust anything.

 

[UtadaRumiko]

Hmm, I'll get back to you guys when I actually try it, but thanks for all the info! It's really appreciated. Anyway, I'm getting the PSP Go today so I'll be back on later. Thanks again guys ^^

 

[UtadaRumiko]

Sucks that I wasn't able to get the Go yesterday night, but I have some other questions anyway. One is that when I download a game, do I just create a folder on the Go's internal memory (name it "Games" or whatever) and drag the game right into it? (After I download the CFW itself of course)

And when I do download games, I notice a lot of them come in multiple parts. Sometimes they're rar files and other times they're not. I heard that when you download a rar game file that comes in several parts and extract it, they combine by themselves usually? Is this correct? Also, how would you combine the parts manually?

Also, regarding PSX ISO's. Do I have to do anything to those? Like convert them or anything? Or can I just drag them into the same folder as my psp ISO's as well? (Or even create a PS1 games folder or something) And I also noticed that you can download "PSN" PSX ISO's as well which seem to be the PSN versions of the PS1 game. (FFVII for example) What's the deal with those?

Sorry for so many questions, but I appreciate the help ^^

EDIT: Ahh. Sorry, but another question. Someone on another forum suggested I use LiteCFW to prevent bricking seeing as how if anything happens I could simply reboot the PSP and nothing will have happened. Do you guys recommend this as well?

DOUBLE EDIT: Oh, apprently Pro CFW is a LCFW...

 

[Ravte]

Sucks that I wasn't able to get the Go yesterday night, but I have some other questions anyway. One is that when I download a game, do I just create a folder on the Go's internal memory (name it "Games" or whatever) and drag the game right into it? (After I download the CFW itself of course)

And when I do download games, I notice a lot of them come in multiple parts. Sometimes they're rar files and other times they're not. I heard that when you download a rar game file that comes in several parts and extract it, they combine by themselves usually? Is this correct? Also, how would you combine the parts manually?

Also, regarding PSX ISO's. Do I have to do anything to those? Like convert them or anything? Or can I just drag them into the same folder as my psp ISO's as well? (Or even create a PS1 games folder or something) And I also noticed that you can download "PSN" PSX ISO's as well which seem to be the PSN versions of the PS1 game. (FFVII for example) What's the deal with those?

Sorry for so many questions, but I appreciate the help ^^

EDIT: Ahh. Sorry, but another question. Someone on another forum suggested I use LiteCFW to prevent bricking seeing as how if anything happens I could simply reboot the PSP and nothing will have happened. Do you guys recommend this as well?

DOUBLE EDIT: Oh, apprently Pro CFW is a LCFW...

The PSP will create the game folders by itself, but that's not the place you place your downloaded Isos (PSP Isos). You have to make a folder "Iso" in the root of your memory stick and there place your hard ripped/downloaded games.

If you wan't to play PSX isos on the PSP, you first have to convert the PSX game from (img,bin,cue) format to eboot.pbp. This is done by an program found in this guide by Jamstruth: http://gbatemp.net/t...-games-for-psp/
All of the steps on how to play them are included in that guide.


I deduce that you're uninformed about CFWs so here's an small help.

The difference between LCFW (Light/Lite CustomFirmWare) and an permanent CFW is that:
Each time, after an hard boot (turning the power down completely) you have to run a launch program which starts the customfirmware - this takes about 10 seconds or so to do. With permanent CFW you don't have to do this, but then again with LCFW you can just turn the PSP on standby/sleep mode (swiftly press the power slider up) without having to use the launcher to start the LCFW again.

Xist already answered your question about permanent/light cfw bricking:

A Brick generally is the result of something being modified within the Central Nervous system of your PSP (flash0). Generally you're not going to be within a million miles of this if all you're doing is playing some PSP/PSX/Emulators, however, you do have the ability to access it manually and modify it, and some plugins and homebrew is capable of modifying it. Therefore you need to tread warily if you're just randomly running homebrew and plugins of which you have no idea.

Think of it like a set of stepping stones across a river...if you modify or delete one so that it's no longer usable then you can't get to the other side. The PSP needs a set of instructions about how to boot and if you're tinkering with them then you can end up causing a "brick". Installing PRO CFW adds some extra stepping stones (and the perm install of 6.20 does modify one of them hence the element of risk), but once installed it's not modifying your system further, nor will simply gaming.

As with anything if you're unsure about something ASK first, and ensure you get multiple answers before you trust anything.

PS. PRO has both permanent and LCFW

 

[DarkStriker]

1. IF they come in ISO format, then you drop them on a folder called ISO that should be at the root. If it is not there, then manually create it. EBOOT.PBP should be inside psp/game/InsertName/EBOOT.PBP (Format your memory card so they automatically create the folder for you)
2. IF they come in lots of parts, is usually in rar format which you can use winrar to combine. Simply open the first file which is usual GAME.001.rar or something and drop the file inside some place with enough storage. Winrar will do the rest. ITS REALLY RARE that you see splitted files that is not in rar format, but if they do which i highly doubt. You can use hjsplit to combine them. If they are winrar and you use hjsplit, then ur fucked.
3. Feel free to conver them to EBOOT.PHP, but like i said on 1. Drop them inside a folder called ISO at the root. And those "PSN" PSX ISOs are games taken directly from the PSN store. Before that we had programs that converted PSX games into EBOOT.PHP that were compatible with the PSP. Those "PSN" PSX ISOs comes in EBOOT.PBP format so you have to still drop them in psp/game/InsertName/EBOOT.PBP
4. Go can make the LCFW permament by making it boot up right away at the start. Or else you have to boot up the hack each time you turn off the PSP. Reverting it is also easy.

 

[prowler]

>WinRAR
>HJSplit
Lol, 7zip > *.

Most likely the first part will be recognized as an archive, the rest will have 001, 002 extensions. If you have 7zip, you can just right click any one you want and extract it.

 

[Ravte]

Oh yeah, about the multiple zip parts.
If you're using WinRaR(like I do):
You just need to select all the zip parts (ctrl+left click to select more than one at a time, remember to keep ctrl down till you've selected them all.)
After selecting all parts, right click mouse and select option "Extract to XYZ" (XYZ being the file name).


E* 100th post, woot! Time to start stalking Trading Forum! =)

 

[Arras]

Oh yeah, about the multiple zip parts.
If you're using WinRaR(like I do):
You just need to select all the zip parts (ctrl+left click to select more than one at a time, remember to keep ctrl down till you've selected them all.)
After selecting all parts, right click mouse and select option "Extract to XYZ" (XYZ being the file name).


E* 100th post, woot! Time to start stalking Trading Forum! =)

You don't even need to do that. Just right click any one of the files (although WinRAR will only recognize them separately up to .r30 or something) and select "Extract Here" or "Extract to [something]".

 

[Ravte]

Oh yeah, about the multiple zip parts.
If you're using WinRaR(like I do):
You just need to select all the zip parts (ctrl+left click to select more than one at a time, remember to keep ctrl down till you've selected them all.)
After selecting all parts, right click mouse and select option "Extract to XYZ" (XYZ being the file name).


E* 100th post, woot! Time to start stalking Trading Forum! =)

You don't even need to do that. Just right click any one of the files (although WinRAR will only recognize them separately up to .r30 or something) and select "Extract Here" or "Extract to [something]".

That's odd, what OS are you running/premium winrar? - because mine didn't do that atleast from what I can recall. (don't have any multi zips at the moment on my comp, can't test this out) Since for some reason I recall myself swearing out loud when I accidentally only unzipped part 3 of a game and wondered why it didn't work.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

If it's in a format such as archive.r**, most programs will look and try to start from archive.rar and proceed from there. If it's split in such a way as archive.part*.rar, you'd probably have to start it at archive.part1.rar and hope it chain-decompresses without you having to hold its hand.

 

[Arras]

WinXP, free WinRAR. I just tried compressing and extracting a split file myself, and I could start at file.part31.rar without any problems.

 

[DarkStriker]

WinRAR>Everything else.
Winrar can do that too. I can start from the last file if i felt like it. Heck if i start midway and name the first file different, it will also work as long as i direct it to the right file when it ask for it.

 

[UtadaRumiko]

Thanks a lot guys. You all a very helpful. (I really like this community) When I get the Go (which might not be as soon as I thought), I'll be sure to refer back to this topic. And don't mind me if any more questions pop up. I just want to be sure I'm doing everything right. Anyway, thanks again ^^

 

[DarkStriker]

Just to save you sometime on this question:
How do i install pro cfw?
http://gbatemp.net/topic/293978-how-to-softmod-hack-your-psp/