Modifying PSP??

I went to buy FFT for PSP today hoping it would be out...but no shop had it..
BUT one of the shops said..why don't you modify your PSP so that you can play downloaded games??? and offered to downgrade for me...
He also said that you can still play New UMD games and do everything a Non-modified PSP can do....
Sounds good to me..

Modifying psp??

i just want to know who here has a modified PSP???
and also is modifying your psp safe???
do you think i should do it?
Is this illegal?

That's not a very smart shop keeper by the sound of it. If he was caught offering to modifty it for you by his manager or someone higher up he would most likely have been fired. Esentially he's stopping a potential customer from purchasing from the store as well as stopping future purchases. Modding the PSP is illegal.The choice is entirely yours however, if you attempt to update to the latest firmware you may find that it may cause some features not to work etc. By the way dude, generally on these boards discussing any mods/hacks and the like is frowned upon so I would leave it at my post and stop asking questions.

That's not a very smart shop keeper by the sound of it. If he was caught offering to modifty it for you by his manager or someone higher up he would most likely have been fired. Esentially he's stopping a potential customer from purchasing from the store as well as stopping future purchases. Modding the PSP is illegal.The choice is entirely yours however, if you attempt to update to the latest firmware you may find that it may cause some features not to work etc. By the way dude, generally on these boards discussing any mods/hacks and the like is frowned upon so I would leave it at my post and stop asking questions.

3rd_child

Modifying the PSP is not illegal. Downloading/playing pirated games is illegal. Playing back ups of your games is perfectly legal. I have a PSP on 3.40-OE and it's much easier to dump a few UMDs to ISOs and put them on my memorystick than carry around a bunch of UMDs.

However downgrading your PSP is not 100% safe. Many people have bricked their PSPs trying to downgrade them.

It's illegal. And it could brick your PSP, which means it won't work anymore.:) and you'll have to buy a new one.WSGRandomPerson

That's illegal. why do u want to modify your psp if don't want to play pirated games... beware man... PIRACY IS ILLEGAL.. :evil:

I'm sorta new to this but isn't this considered an illegal topic because it talks about modded PSPs?

[QUOTE="3rd_child"]

That's not a very smart shop keeper by the sound of it. If he was caught offering to modifty it for you by his manager or someone higher up he would most likely have been fired. Esentially he's stopping a potential customer from purchasing from the store as well as stopping future purchases. Modding the PSP is illegal.The choice is entirely yours however, if you attempt to update to the latest firmware you may find that it may cause some features not to work etc. By the way dude, generally on these boards discussing any mods/hacks and the like is frowned upon so I would leave it at my post and stop asking questions.

Salamengel

Modifying the PSP is not illegal. Downloading/playing pirated games is illegal. Playing back ups of your games is perfectly legal. I have a PSP on 3.40-OE and it's much easier to dump a few UMDs to ISOs and put them on my memorystick than carry around a bunch of UMDs.

However downgrading your PSP is not 100% safe. Many people have bricked their PSPs trying to downgrade them.

Modifying PSP is 100% LEGAL in the UNITED STATES.

Custom Firmware violated pattern law, but is certain part of the Pattern law unethical or have loop holes to be unethical? M$ tried to sue Linux for violating 200+ M$ patterns, lots of engineering design and scientific research are modifcation and/or improvement of developed design and/or studies. Custom firmware is considered as modifcation and improvement of the official firmware. Though it does allow unauthorized software content to run; however, homebrew applications does not have authorization from SONY. The point is even though some homebrew that are developedare not ethical, but some are such as TV remote feature and emulators. Emulator does have ethical/unethicalside. You are the one who make that ethical decision -- Ask yourself, are you hurting others.

Backing up games LEGAL or NOT? It's very debatable you know? Even the law says Illegal, but think about what Ipod does. You can "convert" your music CD to your iPOD.... hmm... is that called backing up too? What about SONY Music got sued because they put copy protection which also has some spyware featureson their Music CD and people were complaining that theycouldn't "backup/transfer" their music to anyMP3 players? Is SONY selfish and not customer first? Ethical?

You have to break the copy protection before you backup, but is breaking this copy protection ethical rather than just Legal/Illegal? It really depends on your end purpose. For example, breaking a protection code from a terrorist computer to save the world vs. breaking the protection so you can play free games.

This is a topic more than Legal/Illegal. We are looking into whether it is ethical to backup your games. Does backing up the games going to hurt somebody? It really depends on the purpose. "Thou shall not kill" also applies to software backup. If you backup the game and hurting other's life and you do it even you know it, then possibly you violated not just the legal system but the God. However, if you backup for good and in God's way, you don't need to care too much about man made legal system. Do we have any lawyers here that can provide us a clear view of what's legal and what's not? I want a pattern lawyer's advice.

If you talk about custom firmware illegal or not, that's another totally different ethical debate as SONY also sent out spys to the custom firmware developers to steal their source code. Our world is full of evil. SONY can be evil, Hackers are too, but both maintain a certain balance.

It is illegal to download software that are copyright protected. Since all PSP games are copyright protected, therefore downloading from unauthorized website are considered as illegal. Playstation Network download is 100% legal.

My old Fat PSP is 3.30 OE-A and Slim PSP running 3.71 M33-2. Both are custom firmware and SONY claim to squeeze out 91gram weight from fat PSP to make SLIM? I now even squeeze out the extra UMD weight, HAHA!

BRICKING the PSP by modifying with custom firmware is HISTORY guys!

I can even UNBRICK any PSP using PANDORA BATTERY and Memory Card. That technique can save your money toward SONY's warranty, why? Because you can 100% backup your own PSP NAND FLASH and 100% restore it back in case your PSP is bricked. That means you don't need to void the warranty. This is also LEGAL because just like Norton Ghost or any other data recovery program to create an image of your storage device as a backup in case something goes wrong. All cooperates have backup servers so they don't need to pay thousands to million of dollars to data recovery service.

So we are in this ethical debate are we? Entering the Gray Area?

I personally like to download the full game of FFT for example then purchase it later in stores. Why? Convenient, and FAST! Because FFT is on the net weeks before the offical UMD release. If SONY wants to fight piracy or make full profit from games sales, they should start selling new PSP or PSP2 games via Playstation Network. I really HATE UMD! Waste my PSP battery physical storage space and makes the PSP heavy because of the UMD slot! Final ethical issue:do you think paying $39.99 for a game that was released back in 1997 plus some slight new video clips worth it? Is SONY charging ethically? With that price at least SONY can or may be able save tiny portion of their lost in their PS3 development. SQUARE-ENIX can also get more $$ to develop FF13 and so on. Love everybody including your enemies. Make your mormal judgement.

Sony should learn more from APPLE's iTunes. Download software content is the future not selling physical storage media. UMD is rubbish!

Modifying PSP is 100% LEGAL in the UNITED STATES.

Backing up games LEGAL or NOT? It's very debatable you know? Even the law says Illegal, but think about what Ipod does. You can "convert" your music CD to your iPOD.... hmm... is that called backing up too?What about SONY Music got sued because they put copy protection which also has some spyware featureson their Music CD and people were complaining that theycouldn't "backup/transfer" their music to anyMP3 players?Is SONY selfish and not customer first? Ethical?

You have to break the copy protection before you backup, but is breaking this copy protection ethical rather than just Legal/Illegal?

This is a topic more than Legal/Illegal. We are looking into whether it is ethical to backup your games. Does backing up the games going to hurt somebody? It really depends on the purpose. "Thou shall not kill" also applies to software backup. If you backup the game and hurting other's life and you do it even you know it, then possibly you violated not just thelegal system but the God. However, if you backup for good and in God's way, you don't need to care too much about man made legal system. Do we have any lawyers here that can provide us a clear view of what's legal and what's not? I want a pattern lawyer's advice.

If you talk about custom firmware illegal or not, that's another totally different ethical debate as SONY also sent out spys to the custom firmware developers to steal their source code. Our world is full of evil. SONY can be evil, Hackers are too, but both maintain a certain balance.

It is illegal to download software that are copyright protected. Since all PSP games are copyright protected, therefore downloading from unauthorized website are considered as illegal. Playstation Network download is 100% legal.

My old Fat PSP is 3.30 OE-A and Slim PSP running 3.71 M33-2. Both are custom firmware and SONY claim to squeeze out 91gram weight from fat PSP to make SLIM? I now even squeeze out the extra UMD weight, HAHA!

BRICKING the PSP by modifying with custom firmware is HISTORY guys!

I can even UNBRICK any PSP using PANDORA BATTERY and Memory Card. That technique can save your money toward SONY's warranty, why? Because you can 100% backup your own PSP NAND FLASH and 100% restore it back in case your PSP is bricked. That means you don't need to void the warranty. This is also LEGAL because just like Norton Ghost or any other data recovery program to create an image of your storage device as a backup in case something goes wrong. All cooperates have backup servers so they don't need to pay thousands to million of dollars to data recovery service.

So we are in this ethical debate are we? Entering the Gray Area?

I personally like to download the full game of FFT for example then purchase it later in stores. Why? Convenient, and FAST! Because FFT is on the net weeks before the offical UMD release. If SONY wants to fight piracy or make full profit from games sales, they should start selling new PSP or PSP2 games via Playstation Network. I really HATE UMD! Waste my PSP battery physical storage space and makes the PSP heavy because of the UMD slot! Final ethical issue:do you think paying $39.99 for a game that was released back in 1997 plus some slight new video clips worth it? Is SONY charging ethically? With that price at least SONY can or may be able save tiny portion of their lost in their PS3 development. SQUARE-ENIX can also get more $$ to develop FF13 and so on. Love everybody including your enemies. Make your mormal judgement.

Sony should learn more from APPLE's iTunes. Download software content is the future not selling physical storage media. UMD is rubbish!

squarejp

Although I disagree with only a few things you said, that was well worded, and I couldn't have put it better myself.

[QUOTE="squarejp"]

Modifying PSP is 100% LEGAL in the UNITED STATES.

Backing up games LEGAL or NOT? It's very debatable you know? Even the law says Illegal, but think about what Ipod does. You can "convert" your music CD to your iPOD.... hmm... is that called backing up too?What about SONY Music got sued because they put copy protection which also has some spyware featureson their Music CD and people were complaining that theycouldn't "backup/transfer" their music to anyMP3 players?Is SONY selfish and not customer first? Ethical?

You have to break the copy protection before you backup, but is breaking this copy protection ethical rather than just Legal/Illegal?

This is a topic more than Legal/Illegal. We are looking into whether it is ethical to backup your games. Does backing up the games going to hurt somebody? It really depends on the purpose. "Thou shall not kill" also applies to software backup. If you backup the game and hurting other's life and you do it even you know it, then possibly you violated not just thelegal system but the God. However, if you backup for good and in God's way, you don't need to care too much about man made legal system. Do we have any lawyers here that can provide us a clear view of what's legal and what's not? I want a pattern lawyer's advice.

If you talk about custom firmware illegal or not, that's another totally different ethical debate as SONY also sent out spys to the custom firmware developers to steal their source code. Our world is full of evil. SONY can be evil, Hackers are too, but both maintain a certain balance.

It is illegal to download software that are copyright protected. Since all PSP games are copyright protected, therefore downloading from unauthorized website are considered as illegal. Playstation Network download is 100% legal.

My old Fat PSP is 3.30 OE-A and Slim PSP running 3.71 M33-2. Both are custom firmware and SONY claim to squeeze out 91gram weight from fat PSP to make SLIM? I now even squeeze out the extra UMD weight, HAHA!

BRICKING the PSP by modifying with custom firmware is HISTORY guys!

I can even UNBRICK any PSP using PANDORA BATTERY and Memory Card. That technique can save your money toward SONY's warranty, why? Because you can 100% backup your own PSP NAND FLASH and 100% restore it back in case your PSP is bricked. That means you don't need to void the warranty. This is also LEGAL because just like Norton Ghost or any other data recovery program to create an image of your storage device as a backup in case something goes wrong. All cooperates have backup servers so they don't need to pay thousands to million of dollars to data recovery service.

So we are in this ethical debate are we? Entering the Gray Area?

I personally like to download the full game of FFT for example then purchase it later in stores. Why? Convenient, and FAST! Because FFT is on the net weeks before the offical UMD release. If SONY wants to fight piracy or make full profit from games sales, they should start selling new PSP or PSP2 games via Playstation Network. I really HATE UMD! Waste my PSP battery physical storage space and makes the PSP heavy because of the UMD slot! Final ethical issue:do you think paying $39.99 for a game that was released back in 1997 plus some slight new video clips worth it? Is SONY charging ethically? With that price at least SONY can or may be able save tiny portion of their lost in their PS3 development. SQUARE-ENIX can also get more $$ to develop FF13 and so on. Love everybody including your enemies. Make your mormal judgement.

Sony should learn more from APPLE's iTunes. Download software content is the future not selling physical storage media. UMD is rubbish!

BurningChimaera

Although I disagree with only a few things you said, that was well worded, and I couldn't have put it better myself.

since when can pandora unbrick a slim psp? :P

btw what was the point of the ipod comparison? its legal to put songs from music cds that you bought on to it, same with backing up games that you bought from the UMD...

It's illegal. And it could brick your PSP, which means it won't work anymore.:) and you'll have to buy a new one.WSGRandomPerson

I hope my post is not violating theForumOperator rule. As unbrick is to revive your PSP but unfortunately it does have some connection with custom firmware. But you have the choice though to choose when you try to unbrick. Finally, those people who claim they can downgrade? That method is outdated. We do UPGRADE with the latest firmware. Do your moral judgement.

Pandora Battery and Memory Card combo is already able to unbrick a slim PSP ever since the FW3.71 M33 version for SLIM PSP came out even it shows a blank screen in the menu due to different LCD display driver. This method re-writes the NAND Flash of your PSP so unless the firmware that is being written is corrupted or incompatible with your PSP, it revives your bricked PSP. Now with FW3.71 M33-2, the Slim PSP can even display the options for unbricking/restoring:

X install 3.71 M33 (Patched Official)
O install 3.71 (Official)
[] dump nand
L+R+HOME+START restore dumped nand (EXTREMELY DANGEROUS)

To unbrick the PSP Slim, select X, O or L+R+HOME+START if you dumped your nand before you bricked your Slim psp.

I intensionally bricked my Slim PSP by restoring another NAND dump from a slim PSP with a different serial number. Then restore the Slim PSP back to normal 3.60 official firmware. I then upgraded from 3.60 to 3.71 official firmware via Network Update. Then again I used the Pandora Battery/Mem Card and reloaded the nand dump. It went back to the exact condition before I upgraded. It even restored my WIFI settings so I don't need to input again. I think the whole restoration process took me less than 3 mins.

In conclusion:
For those of you who have conscience and want to go back to official firmware, a Pandora Battery / Memory Stick is a must for Slim PSP. I strongly recommend people who owns a slim psp or any original PSP to back up their NAND FLASH. You don't know when your PSP will fail even you just upgrade the official firmware. I know a guy who is using official firmware and for some reason his psp bricked, and I know he never uses custom firmware.I unbricked for him using Pandora and he is now as happy as he was before. Form a good habbit and start backing up your PSP NAND FLASH now! It will save you$80+ for out of warranty service. Moreover, sending PSP for warranty sometimes take weeks, and can you imagine you have no PSP with you during those days? 3mins self restoration vs.$ +weeks of waiting, you gotta decide.

This only applys to firmware, problems if the PSP has physical problem, then you gotta open it up yourself or send back to SONY.

With Pandora Battery Method, it's 100% safe and in case you bricked your PSP, you can 100% restore it back to normal as long as you create an image of your PSP nand flash before you do any upgrade even official firmware. As what I have mentioned above, you can also use this latest Pandora combo to always install 3.71 to your PSP whenever you brick it or simply just love 3.71 THEME feature.Since gamespot operator does not allow people to discuss on modification, i suggest you google the following keywords:

3.71 M33-2, Pandora Battery Memory Stick, PSP NAND Flash Dumping.

Do a wikipedia search on it too. I'm sure you get a lot more detail answer.

If you know how to read chinese. There are plenty forums mainly discuss your issue.

You're misunderstanding something, the world is all about choice. Just like you can steal a car or a game console from others does not mean it's right to do it. You can kill anyone in the world with self-defense or hatred, it's your call.Are theymorally correct? Depends, God knows.
Same as PSP, you can play downloadable games purchased from SONY Playstation Store LEGALLY and it's Correct too, but you can also download and playpiratedgames on your customized PSP. Note that customized PSP can play everything from original UMDs, PS1 games and backup games. Finally no matter what you do justask yourself are they morally correct rather than is that Legal or not. Sometimes when there are loop holes within the man made legal system, people love to abuse it and this becomes a slippery slope.

It's your own ethical decision. It's not what you can or cannot do, our world is flexible.

My personal opinion, I like to download import games like FINAL FANTASY VII: CRISIS CORE and try it before any US release. The reason I don't want to pay is because I know very very little Japanese and I can't fully enjoy the game but just to fullfill my hunger for FF7CC reviewing Zack's heroic tragedy in detail. When the game comes out in US, I'm definitely buying it even though I HATE UMD and I kind of tried out the japanese version.

Gray Area:
So far Asia is lacking lots of game localization in Chinese Languge even though Chinese is one of the most written/spoken language in the world. The only way gamers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China can fully enjoy games like FINAL FANTASY is via unofficial Chinese Translation. They distribute the game not by UMD, but only in the form of ISO. Is that pirating? Unfortunately, yes, but gamers from those region had no choice. Sure they can buy the Japanese edition and a lot of people still do that and read chinese translated strategy guide for more than 20 years. But you know this is not a good way to enjoy RPG. Not until recently, there are finally some official chinese localization games coming out like Blue Dragon, Halo 3, Gears of War, Crackdown, or most of the Microsoft Games. I still haven't seen a single Final Fantasy title has an official chinese language release, hope they do that soon.

after all this talk...is still dont get somethings...
will this brick your psp??
and
I cant play downloaded games if i mod my PSP cuz its illegal right??
chewie1125

the whole thing about cfw isn't a moral issue it's a legal one ..... since sony doesn't approve cfw use on the psp it isn't legal, psp games aren't legal either since they didn't come from sony. Copying games violates copy protection again if Sony doesn't allow it it's not legal. Sony offers no tool for UMD dumping so getting an ICO is illegal no mather the means used to get the copy ..... (ok now on the gray side if you dont tell and they dont ask....) getting a copy from the net is illegal.

Really until Sony offers this feature it's illegal ( but again if they dont ask and you dont tell ...)