Dropped by Mikatan’s blog and the figma blog to see if there was anything new from their end and boy was I happy with what I saw.

Mark (Coffeebugg) and I had ordered the Queen’s Blade PSP game that had a figma exclusive included with the game. All this time, all that was shown were images of the master model and no image of box contents and stuff. The figma blog showed a couple of actual merchandise shots of the box containing the game and the exclusive figma.

The box reminds me of the Saber Lily PSP game box with the exclusive figma that came with it.

I was trying to figure out how Max Factory was going to pull off the torn outfit look for this figma and with this, it looks like the decided to toss in an extra torso to do that. But a closer inspection of the extra torso shows that it seems to be fixed in a certain position. I’m actually not too fond of that discovery. Aside from the melee weapons that we’ve seen in the earlier master model shots, this figma comes with two extra faces. And that’s it.

But I still wanted this because it’s a nice figma design. The detail is awesome.

And torn panties. Yes. Continue Reading

It’s been a long time since I last wrote about the PSP or my piano black PSP for that matter. I think it’s time to brush off the dust and talk about it again, particularly the news that DarK_AleX has recently released the latest custom firmware for the PSP: 5.00 M33. Basically, the 5.00 official firmware adds PSN store access through your PSP, nothing that big or special in my opinion although it’s good to see a newer firmware version coming out since DarK_AleX had skipped two official firmware updates: 4.03 and 4.05. He didn’t release M33 versions of these and just stuck with 4.01 M33-2 until he finally decided to come out with 5.00.

There are still some bugs being reported especially for those who use the PSPs to play PSX games. they were getting some sort of kernel error. The details can be found here.

I currently have 4.01 M33-2 on my PSP and have never used any other custom firmware out there. The suffix on my firmware version has always been M33. I never touched the other CFW versions that released 4.03 and 4.05. For me, if DAX felt that it’s not worth releasing an M33 version for the 4.03 and 4.05 firmwares, then I’m with it.

For those who intend to update their PSPs, here’s a small checklist:

1. Make sure your PSP is running on CUSTOM FIRMWARE. The primary indicator for this is that you see “M33″ at the end of the firmware number when you look at your firmware version in your PSP’s system information.
2. Make sure you’re running 4.01 M33 or M33-2 on your PSP because I noticed that it was indicated in the QJ article that this upgrades 4.01 to 5.00 so I’m not entirely sure if you can convert from 3.71 straight to 5.00. So to be safe, upgrade to 4.01 first before upgrading to 5.00. If anyone out there has jumped from 3.71 M33 to 5.00 M33, then that person can say so in his/her blog. For me, better safe than bricked is my policy.
3. If you’re using Phat and you’re running on 1.50 kernel, switch back to 4.01 kernel before you upgrade.
   
4. Download the 5.00 M33 upgrade and paste the UPDATE folder in PSP\GAME.
5. Run the update. Make sure you have over 78% of battery life and that your PSP charger is plugged in. Wouldn’t want your PSP to die out while you’re updating. But then, the program won’t allow you to update if you have less than 78% battery life anyways. DAX was kind enough to make it idiot-proof.

So there. If you’ve done this yourself before, then you shouldn’t have any problems. As for me, I’m sticking to 4.01 M33-2 for now until I’m confident that 5.00 M33 is already stable. Probably if DAX rolls out an M33-2, then I’d be keen towards upgrading. But for now, I’m happy with my current firmware version.

Hardly see any changes. But Piano Black is still sexy as ever.

So Consolespot.net has put up articles on the announcement of the PSP-3000 and Famitsu has even gone as far as comparing the PSP-3000 with the PSP Slim. So what’s to expect from this new PSP? Is it really any different than the previous ones? Actually not much, but for someone like me who carries around his PSP as a multimedia player, I’m liking the changes A LOT.

Let’s start with the minor cosmetic changes, shall we? The PSP-3000 sports a redesigned Home button as well as the Start and Select buttons. The Sony name moves from the upper right to the upper left and the PSP logo disappears. At the back, the ring around the PSP name is thinner than its predecessor. But pretty much Sony claims that the 3000 still weighs and feels the same as the 2000.

Mmmmm...strawberries!

Not much on that department, neh? So why bother with a new release? I’m not really sure if there’s any other new stuff like motherboard or RAM or whatnot but what’s definitely known is shown in the picture above.

The PSP on top is the 2000 while the one at the bottom is the spankin’ new PSP-3000. Notice any difference? Yes, the new PSP-3000 comes with a better LCD display. No more squinting when you’re playing your PSP udner direct sunlight. It has a wider gamut range and its reaction time is claimed to be far better than that of the PSP-2000.

Like I said, I like it since I carry my PSP around to watch movies and anime episodes on the go.

The PSP-3000 is supposed to be released this October of this year and comes in three colors: Black, White ang Silver. It will be released as bundles that come in at 199 Euro or 199 USD depending on where you live and a Basic Pack will be released…at a cheaper price, of course.

Now the question is this: recently there have been claims and problems with regards to pandorizing newer PSP motherboards. Would this new PSP have the same problem or would it still be just as easy to convert the PSP-3000 from OFW to CFW as the Slim and the Phat?

I guess no one will know until someone tries, right?

I’ve finally finished flOw. It’s not large feat, actually. It’s easy to finish this game. It’s just that I rarely find time to play a game non-stop and finish it so this was special for me. Plus, I had problems with the online flash version of flOw.

This game gives you access to several creatures. I now have access to all of them after I finished the game. Note: I forgot to include one of the creatures but I’ll talk about it later.

The first creature is the basic creature that is snakelike in form and its ability is to just speed up. Nothing special but it helps you escape some of your larger enemies fast. The second creature is a round creature that spins its, what I like to call, life orbs around. What it does is that it attracts the smaller organisms when it spins its life orbs making it easy to consume them. The third one is the one that I forgot to take a screenshot of. It’s a fish-looking creature. The tail contains its weapon: dash bursts. Each dash burst that it uses shortens its tail and eating smaller organisms replenishes the number of bursts that it can use. The fourth is my second favorite. It’s also a snakelike creature that has the ability to paralyze its opponents and then consume the enemy’s life orbs without retailiation. But my favorite is the last creature that you can get and use. It’s ability is to jump/dash straight at an enemy’s life orb and multiple presses of the button triggers multiple dashes allowing to quickly dispatch the enemy.

It’s a fun game.

Before reading on, this update is only for those who are already using 3.90 M33 or are at least using 3.52 M33-3 or higher. And please READ or RESEARCH.

So Dark~AleX has once again released a CFW update for the M33 series. This is a minor update but for others, perhaps Slim users, this could be a big help.

3.90 M33-3 update basically enhances the performance of the No-UMD M33 Driver. You can find this driver when you go to your VSH menu (pressing Select while you’re in your XMB). Usually, it’s either you’re using Sony NP9960 driver or M33 Driver. Certain games do not run properly when using the M33 Driver like Patapon where itonly stays in the Loading animation and never proceeds to the actual game. This update improves the M33 driver’s game compatibility and allows more PSP .iso and .cso backups to be played with this driver. No-UMD also means that you can run these backups without having a dummy UMD or a blank UMD present in your UMD drive, reducing the times that your UMD drive would be spinning adding to its lifespan.

Basically, it makes life easier. Here’s the excerpt from the readme file included in the download which you can find here:

3.90 M33-3
Requirements:
- 3.52 M33-3 or higher
Instructions.
- Copy UPDATE folder to /PSP/GAME and run the program.
If you are in 3.90 M33, that’s all needed.
If you are in previous version, you need to download 390.PBP and put it in same folder or let
the program to download it for you.
Changes:
- March33 noumd driver compatibiilty has increased to support games like Coded Arms, Patapon, Harvest Moon Innocent Life and probably others affected by same errors.

Got this theme from Consolespot.net. I thought it was just some usual remodel of the previous Windows-ish/Vista-ish themes but apparently, there was more than meets the eye even though this WAS based off the Aero theme of Vista. Also, when the cold boot played, I got a nice surprise: a PSP icon with the Philippine flag as its colors. Go Pinoy!

Personal Byte: This theme and wallpaper also matches my Piano Black PSP Slim so I might hold on to it a bit longer before I sell it for a different color.

Update: The theme was having severe problems when loading a save file so I had to temporarily revert to my previous theme until Llewelyn, the creator, finds a solution for this.

Update 2: Llewelyn has released an update to this wonderful theme. I’ll put it on when I get home.

Definitely my kind of theme. And the wallpaper is called Segredos from a chap in Deviantart named *tumb.

I did not really think I would be able to wake up early today for an errand that I had to run for my youngest brother but I did. Not without help from my fiancee and my colleagues though. The day started with a startling phone call from one of my subordinates who was at the US Embassy for a visa interview because she and three other team members will be heading for Chanhassen, MN early February. She told me that they did not let them into the embassy because they had handwritten DS-156′s when it should be typewritten copies of the form. That definitely woke me up. So Plan B was to go to a nearby net cafe and fill up the form from scratch and print it out then line up again. Thankfully, two of them have already confirmed that they passed the visa interview. I have not yet heard from Greg and I have been trying to call his mobile but it was always busy. During this whole “ordeal”, my fiancee was on the phone telling me that everything is going to be just fine. I love her. She calms me down quite well.

So the errand I ran for my brother today was to have his white PSP Slim unbricked. It was getting those weird screen lines during video playback and gameplay and then just recently, it finally conked out and would no longer open any games. It would always hang, freeze and then shutdown. It’s now up and running again on 3.71 M33-2 custom firmware and we’ll upgrade it to M33-4 when I get home. Thanks Walter!

Now, I am back at the office working on updating some files and folders on Sharepoint. There is an up and coming theme by blessedhands which is based off the Windows Media Center program. Really nice theme by the screenshots alone. Should be interesting to see the final product. I’m definitely loading that and replacing my current Organ 3.80 theme.

Not much on the gunpla side today or at least none that really interest me. There’s been quite a lull plus Bandai’s been releasing MG Zakus left and right. I heard they put up a survey for which Gundam they’d like to see on their Speed Grade line. They should do that with their MG line as well. I can bet one of the first to come up on the list would be a UC mobile suit or Sinanju from the Gundam Unicorn franchise. Or Nightingale!

So until I pick up the first of my two MG Unicorns, I’ll be reading some of my books to eat away my time. Books! Yes! I just remembered! I bought several books over the past couple of weeks. Some of them are mine. Some of them are Chil’s. I got Dragons of the Dwarven Depths and Dragons of the Highlord Skies in paperback: two of the Lost Chronicles trilogy that resolves the time gap between the first trilogy of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I also purchased Brothers in Arms which is the sequel to the popular novel about Raistlin: Soulforge. Last but not the least (and the first among the bunch that I finished) is Mitch Albom’s For One More Day. I’m a mama’s boy. This book made me cry. I loved it!

Minor edit: I changed my theme. I originally changed it to the Twitter-like Prologue but then I realized that my pages are now missing so I went to Digg 3 instead. I’m liking it~!

Dark_Alex has done it again in record time. He has recently released the 5th installment of his 3.80 M33 updates. You can get your copy here. The changelog is as follows:

It’s time to update those hand helds. Dark_AleX has just released 3.80 M33-5. You know what to do. Enjoy!

3.80 M33-5 changes:

[*]Fixed custom CPU clock not working in games

[*]CPU clock has never (in any SE/OE/M33) be set at all in games that restarted using sceKernelLoadExec to use a subgame or reload themselves, after said restart happened (e.g. Castlevania). Fixed.

[*]Added setting to recovery to hide PIC0.PNG and PIC1.PNG in the XMB game menu. By default off, when on you will probably notice a faster browse in XMB games. This setting only applies to any kind of apps/games (pbp, iso) that load from MS, but not to UMD’s.

I’ll be updating mine soon and will post if there are any changes with regards to the lag issue on .cso’s.

Update:

I tried running Ridge Racer (.cso) after putting in the 5th update. There was still some noticeable lag but not as bad as it was in ver. 4. I then edited the CPU and BUS settings on cWCheat 0.2.1 to maximum and the performance also improved but the lag was still there. I’ll try using the M33 driver instead of the Sony driver for this and will post the results here.

Loading time definitely improved. That’s a plus!

Quick bugfix for M33-3.

- galaxy.prx was changed to a new version that is giving problems with slow memory sticks.
Reverted back to previous versions. This didn’t only affect decrypted isos running in NP9660 mode.

3.80 M33
——–Requeriments:

- Installation requires a PSP with 3.52 M33-3 or higher. In the future installation using
pandora battery will be released.

Instructions:

- Copy the UPDATE folder into /PSP/GAME/
- Get the 3.80 sony update from somewhere (HERE), and put it in same folder, with name “380.PBP”.
- Run it, the update will be done by Sony updater. At the end when you are asked to reboot the
PSP pressing X or O, do it.

Changes:

- HEN core: user mode can load now signchecked files from flash.
- recovery: flash1 format will create flash1 directories after format.
This could fix some flash1 issues with the previous versions.
- Network update from dark-alex.org page. By default is enabled.
You can turn it off in recovery (when off, network update will download sony updates as usual).
- Nids resolver for various kernel libraries.

Comments:

In 3.80 sony has changed (again) kernel nids. The nids resolver will resolve a lot of nids from firmwares 1.50-3.60
(traditional nids) to the ones of 3.80 kernel.
In general, 3.71 nids will NOT be resolved to 3.80 ones. However, to compatibilize 3.80 M33 with prx’s programmed for 3.71,
a few very 3.71 nids that were found in some 3.71 plugins will be resolved too.
More info about what is resolved in nidsresolver_status.txt.

Thanks to the combination of the nids resolver and the user libraries possibility in kernel mode added back in 3.71 M33-3,
some programs that stopped working in 3.30 M33 may work again now. One of them is PimpStreamer 0.90.

Finally, popsloader plugin from 3.71 will not work in 3.80 M33 due to its system dependancy. A new one will be rewritten for 3.80 M33.

File Description
3.80 M33-2Requeriments:
3.80 M33

Instructions: Copy UPDATE folder to /PSP/GAME folder

This update fixes a couple of issues.

- Function scePowerGetClockFrequency/scePowerGetClockFrequencyInt was not resolved properly due to a
confussion between the two nids applying to the same function. Fixed, this update is necessary
for plugins and kernel homebrew reporting psp cpu speed.

- PSX EBOOT.PBP that have a icon of 80×80 pixels will not be replaced by Dracula icon in savedata.

Explanation of icon issue:
In 3.80 pops, Sony has introduced a bug that causes a crash when the icon of the pbp is not 80×80,
like those of psstore. To resolve the issue, M33 was replacing the icon in ram by the one with Dracuala image,
what caused the side effect of ps1 save games having Dracula icon.

Now the behaviour in 3.80 M33-2 is to replace the icon in ram only if the one in the file is not 80×80.

I haven’t updated to 3.80 M33 or M33-2 yet for two reasons:

1. I’m still happy with my current theme and I hear a lot of people saying 3.71 CXMB’s aren’t compatible with the new firmware
2. I’m not using anything that urgently needs the new firmware plus I’d rather wait till the plugins have been converted to 3.80 before I convert

So it’s more of waiting for all this to stabilize before I start converting. Nevertheless, I’m very thankful to Dark_Alex for coming back to the community and making this wonderful custom firmware again! Cheers!

News from Consolespot.net. You can also download your copy of the custom firmware there.