I have my old PSP 1001. Do you think it’s worth buying a battery for or should I look into a PSP 3000?
Depends on what you’re looking for. To me the 3000 has the best screen, the 1000 has pretty noticeable ghosting. The 1000 might a be better fit for your hands, the screen does not have “scanlines” and the colors are somewhat more accurate.
You can put a replacement into the 1000, but the colors aren’t as good…
The 3000 has more RAM so games load faster and the speakers are placed better.
I’d always go with a 3000, but that’s just personal preference and an argument can be made for each model, I guess (I’d stay away from the street though).
Thank you for your insight!
I don’t quite get it. I love my psps, I rocked my hacked psps for years, the but the pocket sized Linux handhelds have gotten so good and cheap. Way smaller, more powerful, and a better screen can be had for like $150.
Oh absolutely. This was exactly me for the longest time. I review retro handhelds, so I’ve had everything from the entry-level to the high power ones (like the Odin 3 Max). I thought you couldn’t get better than upscaled graphics and save states, but when I got a re-obsession semi-recently with the PSP:
https://gardinerbryant.com/tag/psp/
…I’ve realized that native hardware just has magic to it. The handheld is slim, the design is retro futuristic in the best way (in my eyes), the jailbreak and add-ons are invaluable and the experience is just fun. I’ve just reviewed the Retroid Pocket Nova, am reviewing the Anbernic RG SP, and have a couple more on the way, but that isn’t stopping me absolutely loving WipEout on my PSPs :)
You’re so right about the “magic.” The way you jailbroke the PSP was just the coolest. You hacked the battery! I remember doing that for the first time and I felt like a hacker—my friends looked at me like I was one too—even though I was just following simple instructions.
20 ish years later, I wanna get my hands on some more consoles but wanna try hardware modding to learn how to solder too.
I’d highly recommend modding an xbox 360 if you’ve never done so. Very achievable if you’re somewhat technical, and you get to feel all the hackerman vibes because it requires soldering some wire leads to the motherboard and using a raspberry pi pico to read and write the nand. Most original xbox games also work if you install the compatibility files. So many incredible games from the 360 generation, and the consoles can still be found for around $50. Just make sure you get a “slim” model console because the phats don’t live as long. This site has basically everything you need to know. It’s an extremely good resource.
I’m currently looking into hacking my 360 - why did you go with RGH and not A Bad Avatar/Bad Update?
RGH was the first mod I learned. Back then, you needed to use an ace v3 mod chip. Now with RGH 3, you only need a resistor and a diode for most models. I still prefer RGH because it persists between boots. Mod once and have a cracked console forever.
Honestly I mostly forgot that bad update was a thing while typing that comment. Back when I was still paying attention, you needed a specific game to make it work. Naturally, that game instantly became way more expensive on the resell market. Also the exploit used to take a few minutes to run, but I’m pretty sure that’s much shorter now.
If you have the game you need or it no longer requires a specific game, then I guess there’s no major reason to hard mod as long as you don’t mind running the exploit each time you power up the console. I haven’t done a mod in a few years now, but was planning to do another soon. I’ll probably look into bad update just to familiarize myself, but I imagine I’ll still do RGH 3 because it lets me set everything up, install all the games I want, customize the dashboard, make the menus pretty by getting all the full box art for every game, and then the console just stays that way forever and cleanly boots directly into the custom dashboard with virtually 100% success. I also prefer Freestyle Dash over Aurora which makes makes me somewhat unusual, but I very much prefer having separate categories for 360 games, original xbox games, xbla games, homebrew apps, and emulators (I could only ever find SNES so that’s all I have). Also I just really like customizing the look and feel with the Dream Theme installed on Freestyle. Scrub through that video to get an idea how crazy customizable Dream Theme is. Aurora has one look and one category with all games as far as I know, but most people go with it over Freestyle Dash.
All that to say, I mostly just enjoy doing an RGH mod because it’s fun. I mentioned how the whole process makes me feel like an actual hacker, and that first time you see the xell screen pop up (meaning the hack was a success), it’s worth it for the dopamine hit alone. Also these days if I’m modding a 360, I’m probably doing it for a friend and it’s much easier to give them something that requires no special knowledge to use.
Thank you for taking the time to write that out - those are all good reasons to go for a hard mod. I’m intrigued now, I will most likely pick up another 360 locally on the cheap to tinker with and go the easier route of A Bad Avatar with my “main system” until then. Dream Theme does look amazing and just having the console customized and ready to go right after booting (instead of having to run an exploit etc. every time) is a huge plus. It will be glorious.
No problem. I was concerned I went way overboard so I’m glad it’s helpful. Just be aware that if you also use Freestyle Dash, basically anyone who’s familiar with 360 modding will be like “…why are you using that?” It’s over a decade out of support. Aurora is much lighter and up to date, but I’m old school and I’m nostalgic for Dream Theme. The good news is if you want, you can configure Dashlaunch to have both. You just hold some button you choose on the controller while booting and it will boot into FSD, Aurora, or straight into xexmenu if you want. Before I settled into a preference, I put both FSD and Aurora on all the consoles I modded.
So recently, I spent a fair time chatting with the creator of PSPunk, a website I’m sure many here might have visited. But that chatting (which ended up being an interview) pivoted instead to something a bit different from what I usually end up doing with articles.
Rather than just talking about the website itself, we ended up discussing the people who keep older gaming communities alive. We covered how PSPunk started as a simple custom firmware guide, why preserving guides and community knowledge is just as important as preserving games themselves, the modern PSP homebrew scene, and why the handheld still has such an active community more than 20 years after launch. You might recognize me from a few PSP articles I’ve done these last months, I just…think they’re neat:
It was also interesting hearing from someone who doesn’t consider themselves a developer or a major figure in the scene, just “a helpful user who creates guides.” I think that humility says a lot about projects like this, because every community needs people documenting, organizing and preserving information just as much as it needs people writing the software.
Any love for a PS Vita still? Though tbh, since getting a steam deck it’s not been as appealing.
They are a LOT more expensive and harder to find. Which is why the psp gets more coverage. The ps vita is objectively better in every way.
I absolutely love mine and it lives in my work bag to this day. Killer battery life and unlimited standby.
I should really dig my PSP out and see if it holds a charge still
If it doesn’t, I highly recommend the OSTENT 1,400 mAh batteries. Higher capacity than the original and they work perfectly. 100% the one to choose!
I actually dug out my psp a couple years ago but couldn’t find the battery. I did have the wire to plug it at least but I haven’t managed to use it only with that. Is it known if the battery needs to be inside to get it to start? Should it work without the battery but plugged in? Before I buy a replacement I want to know if it is actually dead.
PSPs do Start without a battery (unlike PS Vitas), so there definitely seems to be something a miss. But if you want to hack your system later on, you’ll need a battery anyway (as far as I remember).
