Making your PSP delicious
The PSP may be ten years old, but there’s still a lot you can do with it. This post is documentation for my adventures with custom firmware (CFW) on the PSP.
Why custom firmware?
PSP games
Even if you’re just playing PSP games and nothing else, it’s worth installing CFW. The killer feature is the ability to dump UMDs to the memory stick and play them from there; not only do you not need to haul discs around everywhere, but you get faster load times, longer battery life, and no constant clicking and whirring from the optical drive. On top of that, plugins let you take screenshots, organize your games, apply unofficial patches, cheat, and even save and load state while in PSP games.
PSX games
Yeah, you can play your PSX games on the PSP already – if Sony has deigned to convert them, and you’re willing to buy them again on PSN. With CFW, though, you can convert and play any of your PSX games, using freely available tools.
Emulation
There are a lot of emulators available for the PSP. It’ll replace your Gameboy {,Advance,Colour}, but why stop there? Make a dent in that backlog of SNES, NES, Sega Genesis, and Master System games! If you’re adventurous you can even run some DOS and SCUMM games on it.
Homebrew
The PSP homebrew scene tends to be focused more on utilities and emulators than on stand-alone games, but some of those utilities are pretty handy (like a built in file browser or the ability to push games to your PSP over the network), and it does have a small library of homebrew games as well, both original works and ports from other systems like Powder and Meritous.
Basics
If you already know how to install games, ISOs, and PRX plugins, you can skip this section. Rather than reiterate install instructions for every piece of software below, I’m putting generic install instructions here.
Games & Homebrew
PSP games consist of a directory containing the program file (EBOOT.PBP) and any other files needed. To install one, put the directory into /PSP/GAME/; you should end up with /PSP/GAME/name_of_game/EBOOT.PBP. (The actual name of the containing directory doesn’t matter; the PSP will figure out the name of the program from the information in the EBOOT.) Once installed, the program will show up in the Games->Memory Stick XMB menu.
ISOs
ISO and CSO (compressed ISO) images of UMD games, unlike EBOOTs, go in their own directory: /ISO. Once placed there, they’ll show up alongside the EBOOTs.
PRX plugins
Custom firmware has the ability to load plugins in PRX format. These add new features to the firmware. PRX files, along with any supporting data needed, go in the /SEPLUGINS directory. For the PSP to recognize them, though, you need to add a line to a configuration file; which file(s) you edit depends on what aspects of the system the plugin affects:
/SEPLUGINS/game.txtfor plugins that affect PSP games (both ISO and EBOOT)/SEPLUGINS/pops.txtfor plugins that affect PSX games/SEPLUGINS/vsh.txtfor plugins that affect the XMB
For each plugin, you’ll need to add the line ms0:/SEPLUGINS/path/to/plugin.prx 1; replace the 1 with 0 if you want the plugin to be installed, but disabled.
Once installed, you can toggle plugins on and off from the recovery menu (select while in the XMB, then choose Recovery Menu).
Setup
There are a bunch of different custom firmware options. These instructions are for installing the “PRO” CFW; it’s the one I’m most familiar with, and one of the most widely used in general.
The latest official version of the PSP firmware is 6.61; however, due to the long gap (4 years!) between 6.60 and 6.61, and the fact that 6.61 adds no significant new features, most homebrew targets 6.60. So, although 6.61 PRO is available, this guide is for version 6.60 PRO-C2.
Get the PSP ready
If you’re already running firmware 6.60, you can skip this part. If you aren’t, you need to be; the CFW installer patches your existing firmware, it doesn’t install a complete firmware image from scratch.
If you’re running an earlier version than 6.60, you can just download and run the official 6.60 update. Install and run it like any other PSP game.
If you’re on 6.61, you’ll need a downgrader. Download FW 6.60 as above, and make sure you install it to /PSP/GAME/UPDATE/EBOOT.PBP so the downgrader can find it. Then download and install Chronoswitch 6.1. Run it and it should automatically start the 6.60 installer to downgrade your PSP.
Once you’re done here you can delete both the 6.60 update and Chronoswitch. They won’t be needed again.
Install custom firmware
Download the 6.60 PRO-C2 installer. This comes with three PSP “games”: PROUPDATE, FastRecovery, and CIPL_Flasher.
PROUPDATEinstalls the custom firmware. Once installed, it is no longer needed. It’s signed, so you can run it straight from the game menu even when running stock firmware (you didn’t think that fancy DRM actually worked, did you?).FastRecoveryis used after installation to load the CFW. You need to run it after every boot; if the PSP is fully shut down (not suspended), the CFW will be unloaded.CIPL_Flasherinstalls a CIPL (Custom Initial Program Loader) that automatically activates the CFW on boot. This only works on the PSP-1000, but lets you skip runningFastRecoveryon every boot. The drawback is that if, for some reason, you still want to run the stock firmware, you’ll need to uninstall the CFW.
PSP-1000 with CIPL
Install PROUPDATE and CIPL_Flasher. Run both, in that order. Now you can delete them both; the PSP will boot straight into 6.60 PRO-C2 on startup.
PSP-2000/3000, or PSP-1000 without CIPL
Install PROUPDATE and FastRecovery. Run PROUPDATE. Once it’s installed, you can delete it. After each complete shutdown, the PSP will start out running plain 6.60; run FastRecovery from the game menu to load the CFW. (Until you do so, the rest of your homebrew games, ISOs, and suchlike will either be missing from the XMB or show up as “corrupted data”; don’t panic. They’ll be back to normal once you run FastRecovery.)
Install Plugins
XMB Item Hider
Game Categories Lite
TempAR
PSPStates
Install Utilities
PSP Filer
PSP-FTPD
Install Emulators
NES: NesterJ
SNES: snes9xTYLcm-mod
GB/GBC & Master System: MasterBoy
Genesis: PicoDrive
GBA: UO gPSP Kai or TempGBA
gPSP works out of the box but has some issues (e.g. tutorials not displaying in Advance Wars 2). TempGBA works better but needs a BIOS. You can either use the open source BIOS at