Thanks to http://pspupdates.qj.net, where I got this info...
This guy has a good Idea, it's basically to make a dual-flash PSP, so ifyou brick 1 side, you can copy the flash from the good side back to the bricked side.... BUT this does no good for those of us/you who are already bricked or have updated past 2.00... That's where MY project will come in handy.
But, after seeing this, I think this may have to be an option of my project... How about a PSP with 1.5 on one flash, and the newest sony CR*P update on the other (thereby giving you the best of BOTH worlds....
Here's the complete post, with all the followup posts too:

TEE Chip Research - Broken Firmware Restore? Two Firmware On One PSP? Possible!






McZonk, the leader of Team Emergency Exit, has sent us a message of his research on the PSP.

With the help of some university lecturer I have removed the flash chip from a psp board. Neither the board nor the chip are damaged. My idea is to build a PSP with 2 flash roms. If I brick one, I can restore it with other one.

Everybody how has a bricked PSP can help Team Emergency Exit with giving us the board. I also need some money for build a circuit board to attach two on.

PSP Flash Chip Facts: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good Facts

The chip is a standard chip from Samsung: K5E5658HCM. There is nothing secret with the chip. Everybody can buy it, if you take 1000



The Bad Facts

The chip is not only the flash rom (256 mbit nand rom). It is also the ram (256 mbit ddr ram). If you read though the datasheets of the chip, you will find there figures. The flash is built from nand gates. It won't be as easy as access nor gates. So direcly writing into the flash is not easy.

The Ugly Facts

If you look at the board, you will see the wire loops from processor to the flash/ram chip. These wires are made to keep all wires in the same length. This is important for the timing of the ram and timing is very very cirical. If I brought back the flash/ram on the board with just some small wire brigdes, it could disturb the timing of the ram. The flash is not critical, but the ram is.

I will also try to build a two flash psp.

This is a great news to hear. Keep it up, McZonk!

Anyone who is interested in helping Team Emergency Exit with this project, please contact him through mczonk[at]teamemergencyexit[dot]com.

P.S. There will be another cool news from TEE soon, we will keep you updated ;-)


posted by Jeff Chen at 9:00 AM

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27 Comments:
awesome

By The General, at 3:59 AM

OMG,
it has a battery attached to the board o.O what hapens when this buttoncell runs out of power?

Is it corect that the chip has no 'legs' so that you have only soldering points?
how do you detach such a chip??

Looks like hours of work for a person with expensive exquipment for me, but keep it up, this wil be verry interesting!

By Loonix, at 4:17 AM

I'm assuming that the battery on the motherboard supplies a low level of current to maintain the clock and calendar even when your battery is completely drained (similar to the battery for the CMOS on a PC motherboard). This prevents you from having to reenter all your settings every time you unplug the battery or let it drain completely. With such intermittent use, coupled with the fact that it requires a minute amount of voltage, the battery will last for years and years. Even after it runs out, all that will happen is you will have to reset the clock if you remove your PSP's battery.

By psxer2600, at 4:42 AM

thank you

sounds logic, considering my wristwatch runs for years also, without even getting the chance to take a break while another main battery is at work ^^

i just remembered an old PC where i needed to reflash and set the BIOS each time when i pulled the plug.
(early 90's and even then quite an old mashine)

By Loonix, at 5:02 AM

So is McZonk basically making an unbrickable PSP? (restorable)
This would be an excellent tool for hackers to explore PSP without the fear of bricking it!

By Sulpher Dragon, at 6:38 AM

This is the stuff I want to see.
Dual firmware would be great.
One bank to flash to the latest version and another with v1.0 for homebrew.
Great man. Hope you guys makes this happen.
Set up a paypal donation account.
/g

By Grimmyn, at 8:06 AM

This will probably end up nowhere as this McZonk sounds like a bit of an amateur. I.e. help needed to remove a chip. Also the two-chip thing sounds a bit lame, undoable. However, hacking the hardware. modding etc. is certainly the way to go in the future for PSP. As I've said before, we'll probably get som hardware-gizmo out of Asia that allows for custom firmwares, and selectable original firmwares with protections removed etc.

By Extremist, at 8:14 AM

Of course multiple bios is possible. The simplest way would to be have a basic switch system (like a basic KVM). Remembering of course to power down PSP before switching the switch. As for it coming out of asia, how on earth do you think they make the first proto-types. duh it's the same way. Also I work closely with surface mount components and I know (being certified and qualified to do so) removing surface mount compenents like this can be a bitch. So give the guy a break...

By Rasor, at 8:31 AM

Do not think of this as a way for the usual homebrew user to be able to switch flash roms to play homebrew or the latest game. I do not believe that this is intended that way. Instead, it gives developers a way to try more advanced and potentially dangerous software on the psp to give us the tools to make sony-like software. Once they are able to do this, they can give instructions for other electronic-savvy users to do the same, allowing developers to take giant leaps instead of baby steps in the homebrew community. Great job TEE!

By MasterQ, at 9:20 AM

This is great! I regret from updating to firmware 2.5 for all the great homebrew out there. And now they can add on 2 firmwares? This is great! I wonder how these guys fugured out that that chip was the flash, where to get it etc.. Very very intellegent. But as said, they need the money for the parts, so they are probably just a small unknown team untill now. Just a question, would your mem card
split into 2 sections, or would it just be combined with the two firmwares? And, it doesn't look like you could fit another chip onto there, unless you make it hang out of the psp. Great job, though!

By footray, at 10:44 AM

Extremist... you really need to do research before you say stuff like that. McZonk and his team have released a ton of complex programs for the PSP. He is definitely not an amateur (at least as far as the world of PSP hacking goes)

By Yeldarb, at 12:01 PM

Hey extremist!


You're an assh0le man, Team emergency exit made PSPset, which is probably one of the most advanced things that one can use thats ever been released on this site or any other for that matter

I mean do YO Uever release anything?

I mean Im sorry if some PSP enthusiast was smarter than you to think of this and it hurts your already low self esteem to see people doing well when you're a loser and never going to do anything with yourself except critisize people with OBVIOUS talent.

That was probably THE dumbest thing I ever read anyone post on this site, and I've been following it for like 6 months


WOW are you an idiot!





Now as far as team emergency exit goes....


THESE GUYS RULE! PSPset is tha Sh1t! I love my new menu, I LOVE my new gameboot.pmf that I would NEVER have been able to flash in had it not been for them

I LOVE being able to make my X nd O buttons switched so that all my homebrew and menu functions have the same config.

and THIS means that they'll be able to brick 1000 psp's a day and learn everything there ever was to learn ever


so FU*K YOU EXTREMIST!

By Illegal Machine, at 12:16 PM

AND BY THE WAY....



for any of you that think these "teams" are like professional racing teams with corporate sponsorship and lots of money...



WAKE UP!


these guys usually don't know each other, are probably corresponding through email, and DON'T want to pay through the nose thousands of dollars to be bricking psp's and making a pile of bricks just to release freeware programs for YOU


so stop calling these guys amateurs you fuck1n n00bs


at this point, if you havent read all the posts for the last 2 months, just shut the fu*k up!

By Illegal Machine, at 12:23 PM

for any of you that think these "teams" are like professional racing teams with corporate sponsorship and lots of money...



WAKE UP!


these guys usually don't know each other, are probably corresponding through email, and DON'T want to pay through the nose thousands of dollars to be bricking psp's and making a pile of bricks just to release freeware programs for YOU

So true.

By Creativethinker77, at 1:01 PM

WO!!!


Someone's got anger management problems...


I didnt know what TEE was either... I thought it was some new team called TEE and i thought 'what a weird name'

I did not relate TEE to Team Emergency Exit as i had never seen it reffered to as TEE...

Extremist made a mistake, and easy mistake to make...

So calm down, calm down and see an anger management person...

By fraseybobo, at 1:04 PM

I mean all that to Illegal Machine btw

By fraseybobo, at 1:05 PM

Sounds awfully like the MultiBios for the SegaCD. Which is of course, a very good thing.

By Kirbysuperstar, at 5:57 PM

This is simply insane! (in a good way)


"Do not think of this as a way for the usual homebrew user to be able to switch flash roms to play homebrew or the latest game. I do not believe that this is intended that way. Instead, it gives developers a way to try more advanced and potentially dangerous software on the psp to give us the tools to make sony-like software."
By MasterQ, at 9:20 AM

While it may not be intended for this purpose, I beleive it would still ba able to work this way. As it said on the bottom, "I will also try to build a two flash psp" Of coarse, the average psp user likely would not be able to create such a device (or be too scared to try).

If they get that to work, however, we could update all we want on one chip and then use homebrew on the other.

By InflamedSpirit, at 6:05 PM

THIS WOULD BE SOOO SWEEEET!! imagine turning on the PSP and being able select 1.5 or 2.6! play homebrew, play UMD? THSI WOULD BE THE BEST AND SPNY CANT STOP IT IF IT WORKS, mybvey sue, bt they have no real case towards modding a system. i hope this research gets somewhere

By RaiderX, at 6:49 PM

I'd like to see the data sheets for this chip, can you post them or a link to them? When I called Samsung regarding info on this chip, I was cut off abruptly with them simply stating they 'Would not violate Sony's Non-disclosure agreement with regards to their custom designed hardware.' This chip is NOT available for purchase by anyone but Sony (or so I was told), and they refused to give me so much as a pin-out for the chip.

For what it's worth, there's a couple of people that have been working on doing this exact thing for quite a while now, and I think they've run into some obsticles... You might do a search in the forums and contact them so you don't destroy PSPs doing something they may have already determined won't work.

By Psycho, at 8:13 PM

"This chip is NOT available for purchase by anyone but Sony (or so I was told), and they refused to give me so much as a pin-out for the chip."
By Psycho, at 8:13 PM

not true... i have searched the internet and there are places to buy this chip. plus, if you read the original news post...

"The chip is a standard chip from Samsung: K5E5658HCM. There is nothing secret with the chip. Everybody can buy it, if you take 1000 "

By MasterQ, at 8:33 PM

Can you post a link or two of somewhere I can buy one (or more) (that's not just an electronics surplus shop)? I can't seem to find them myself... But, I'm sure you can probably buy them from someone, but you can't buy them from Samsung.

But, more important that getting the chips is getting a datasheet for it... Anyone have one?

By Psycho, at 8:43 PM

One place you could get them is bricked psps (as TEE is asking for). Goto ebay and check it out, they're all over there.

As for a datasheet... samsung?

By InflamedSpirit, at 10:25 PM

Yeah, I know you cannibalize PSPs and get them, I'm talking about buying brand new ones never soldered to a board.

Samsung won't give out the datasheet for this chip becuase it would violate their non-disclosure agreement with Sony. This chip is made SPECIFICALLY for Sony, no one else has a legitimate reason for having the datasheet, that's why I'm curious where TEE got it... The pinout for the this chip doesn't match any of it's close relative chips at all, Samsung has deliberately designed this chip differently than their other similar chips.

By Psycho, at 12:58 AM

I'm going to have to agree with Extremist. McZonk may be a great PSP programmer but it doesn't sound like he knows much about hardware.

Even if he were able to create some sort of flash chip switcher it will be extremely difficult for even advanced users to install such a thing, much less the average modder (unless, that is, we each have our own university professor to help us like McZonk does...)

By cheesy, at 1:55 PM

Just popped in to see if there was any responses, and boy where there...

It's not my intention to talk crap about McZonk and his team, I just don't have much hope in this going anywhere. I'd be the first one to cheer if I'm proved wrong, I just don't have too high hopes...

@cheesy: thanks for having a thoughtful response, some guys here explode in anger and rage whenever they read something they don't agree to, ie: illegal machine

@yeldarb etc: McZonk and others may have produced many great progs, however I'm talking about their hardware hacking abilities which is a completely different world. Btw. I'm 37 years and have worked as a computer technician for about 15 years so I'm not a complete n00b...

@rasor: When I said it's probably gonna come some hardware out of Asia, it's just because that's where most of these gizmos usually comes from. Of course I know they have to hack the same hardware etc. it's just asians seems to do this faster / better, brobably cause they got all those cheap expendable chips etc.

@the angry mob: sorry for stepping on your toes conserning your favourite group... I'm not saying they haven't done / will do great things, I'm just a bit sceptical to this particular project. Live with it!

-Peace out!

By Extremist, at 5:17 AM

..nice to see my idea being accepted and now implementeed. great work! =D

By demologik™, at 3:37 AM

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