Latest News: It appears we have another successful downgrade to 1.0 by another member of our forums. After looking over the similarities/differences between the PSPs that were bricked and the ones that were not, we noticed that GENUINE 1.5 PSPs (ones that were never upgraded OR downgraded) are the ones that work. We are trying to find out why it works that way at this time, but we would like some more testers that have ORIGINAL 1.5 PSPs to test this firmware flasher out. If you do decide to try it on your original 1.5 PSP, please make sure to get video of the process from start to finish for us. And once again, no responsibility for brickage here, so do it at your own risk. As usual, all testors, whether their PSP bricked or if the downgrade was a success, will get special props from SXT when it is released. Thanks!

---
Old news:

OK. My PSP is bricked. Which sucks. Which will slow down some of the projects on PSP 3D until I can get a new one, which most probably won't happen anytime soon as I am no way in hell rich enough to buy another.

SonyXTeam and Yoshihiro sent me a new BETA of their firmware flasher which they wanted tested (don't get me wrong, they are good coders). Two people tested the BETA, a PSP 3D forum member, Suijiet_Tsui, and me.

The firmware flasher flashes a 1.5 PSP to 1.0, and removes region coding from the firmware. But MOST importantly, is that it opens doors to the world of CUSTOM firmware.

So what did we get as results? 2 times bricked, 1 time successful (aka 33.3% success rate).

Here is two videos showing what happened to MY PSP.
Part 1
Part 2

As you can see at the end of part 2 (I had to use two different 32 MB memory sticks during the video recording, as I ran out of space on the first), my PSP is dead.

On the other hand, Suijiet_Tsui, got some interesting results. FIRST time he ran the firmware flasher, everything was smooth sailing. It completed, I sent him a copy of a Tetris EBOOT (which he didn't know about) and I asked him to run it on his now 1.0 PSP to see if it worked. He told me that it was indeed Tetris, and it ran without a hitch. Great news.

SECOND time that Suijiet_Tsui ran it (he reupgraded to 1.5, and did it again, this time trying to capture the process with video. But this time, he said, about a few seconds later into the flashing, it said "Press home to complete" and a bunch of other French stuff, like what it said for me. He did so, and his PSP bricked.

What does that mean? Get past the "Press home to complete" thing and the firmware flasher works, 100%, no problems, and opens doors to custom firmware and no region blocking, and 1.0 firmware, the most hackable firmware out there.

What a day. I need a new PSP.

You can grab the file to test it on your own (warning, we are not responsible for any possible damage/brickage to your PSP) at here.

To use it, put the two folders in the /GAME/ directory of you 1.5 PSP. Put the .bin file in the ROOT of your memory stick. Run the EBOOT from your PSP.

__________________