Console Hacking

[Maypews]

Decided I'd make a thread for this because I think it's a fun topic. Console modding is one of those things that I've always enjoyed. When I was younger I remember seeing people hacking on Mario Kart Wii with item and VR cheats and thinking it was the coolest thing ever but I was sadly too young and stupid to figure out the process for myself. Letterbomb and Wii hacks in general give me a lot of nostalgia as a result and I've hacked most of the consoles I own that can be hacked at this point.

In my current arsenal I have (of course) a hacked Wii, 3DS, PS3, and I had a hacked Switch but it broke on me out of the blue. As far as mods/homebrew go I have CTGP (the default MKWii mod, restores TT leaderboard funct), PMex Remix (HUGE brawl mod that builds off project M), Retro Rewind (more casual MKW mod with online funct and the majority of all nintendo tracks ever made in it as CTs), and some other small things like Nintendont for emulating GCN games and Wiistation for PS1 (works better than youd expect).

My PS3 setup I already pretty much talked about, you can find that here. I don't use my 3DS a ton tbh but I have TwilightMenu and lots of CIA files on it. I used to use my hacked Switch a lot especially for reading visual novels and Moonlight. But now I don't have a hackable model unfortunately. Also have one of those carts for modding my Saturn but I think my cartridge slot is broken and as such I can't get it to work :( would also really like to buy a DreamPi one day and play PSO1 online

So what modded consoles do you have? Would love to hear all the details! Talk of custom/revived servers for games are welcome here too, I really like hearing about those as someone who's very active on one myself.

[capstasher]

Thinking of getting a PSP and jailbreaking it. It has been one of my dreams since I was a kid and saw classmates use them on school trips. Any suggestions for which model? I am aware the 2000 and 3000 models are better, due to more ram and the such, but I heard some rumours that PSP 3000 is more difficult/risky to jailbreak. Is this correct?

Does anyone have any experience with hacked PSPs? Any recommended software once I do have one? I loved seeing what capabilities the my hacked Wii, playing around with the weird software on the Homebrew Channel (found a radio at some point , and some stations were still available, sadly I don't think any worked when I checked back last year ). Does the PSP have an equivalent of the Homebrew Channel? It does have wifi, so I would imagine someone would have made something of the sort already.

[Duk3]

Thinking of getting a PSP and jailbreaking it. It has been one of my dreams since I was a kid and saw classmates use them on school trips. Any suggestions for which model? I am aware the 2000 and 3000 models are better, due to more ram and the such, but I heard some rumours that PSP 3000 is more difficult/risky to jailbreak. Is this correct?

Does anyone have any experience with hacked PSPs? Any recommended software once I do have one? I loved seeing what capabilities the my hacked Wii, playing around with the weird software on the Homebrew Channel (found a radio at some point , and some stations were still available, sadly I don't think any worked when I checked back last year ). Does the PSP have an equivalent of the Homebrew Channel? It does have wifi, so I would imagine someone would have made something of the sort already.

Something I'm actually knowledgeable about!! Warning for long reply and sorry for grammar.

>Any suggestions for which model?
I recommend a 2000, it allows for video out along with the ram and such. I would recommend it over the 3000 because the 3000 has that weird integer line thing that make the screen looks like crap in my opinion. I personally use a 1000 but that's mostly because I like the thickness. Regarding the rumors of the 3000 being harder to jailbreak, maybe in the past but with the modern cfw I didn't have trouble with it. I recommend going with the Ark-4 firmware since it's still currently getting updates.

>Does the PSP have an equivalent of the Homebrew Channel?
It has something called PSP Homebrew Store, I can't really speak to the quality of it or if it even still works. I usually just download the homebrew off of gamebrew then upload it onto my PSP. A bit of a note on wifi, being able to connect to modern home networks without using work arounds(like mobile hotspot) is a more recent development so it might require some actual tweaking in you home wifi settings.

>Any recommended software once I do have one?
So the PSP has two types of software, Plugins and then regular applications. Plugins are stuff that go on in the background of the PSP like a Boosted Volume plugin. For plugins I recommend:

Hold+: Mostly if you want to use your PSP as a mp3 player, this allows you to shut off your screen and lower the CPU usage to save battery while the PSP is in hold mode. There's other stuff that it does like fixing the hold function and adding a extra brightness setting on 2000+ models.

Category Lite: Allows you to organize games into folders on the xmb, I primary use it so separate my PSX, vns, games, and homebrew from eachother.

Prxshot: Lets you screenshot your games. Other than in PSX games the PSP doesn't let you take screenshots by default.

Onto Homebrew, I'll order it in game > emulator > utility:

Touhou Mohofu PSP: A really neat full fangame, theres a english translation for it here.

Super Mario 64 PSP: Full port of SM64, runs pretty well aside from rare graphical glitch and slightly fucked up audio.

Cave Story PSP: It's Cave Story.

Pico Drive: Genesis emulator, runs really well and has pretty good features. Sega Cd works fine with some settings tweaking, I haven't tested 32X support though.

TempGBA & gpSP kai: From my testing, TempGBA emulator when it comes to running certain games like Mega Man Zero 2 without glitches is good. gbSP kai beats it out in every other sense like in settings and features. What I recommend for GBA emulation is using gpSP as the primary emu and if you run into issues, use TempGBA instead.

Masterboy: Does Game Gear and Game Boy emulation, it's hard to fuck up those systems so it runs well

NesterJ: Similar to Masterboy, it's hard to fuck up NES emulation lol.

SNES9X Euphoria: I really don't recommend playing SNES games on the PSP, the emulation isn't good and would probably make for a painful experience to actually beat games due to crashing and general shittyness. If you still want to try though, this is the best one from what I've used.

CM File Manager: The only utility I use honestly. I'm pretty sure it's not even needed since in the Ark-4 custom launcher there's already a file browser.

Those are some from the top of my head, I of course recommend you go through gamebrew and see what interest you. Some couple extra notes I have is compressing your game isos into cso with YACC, it will save you a lot of space in the long run. Reha's Archive has a bunch of PSP themes to try. And regarding Vns, there's not a lot of English translated ones but there's a couple of fan made ports of various quality. RetroGameTalk has a collection of them, but you need a account to access. RGT has a good archive of games in general so I do recommend making one.

[capstasher]

Something I'm actually knowledgeable about!! Warning for long reply and sorry for grammar.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this reply! It will all be very helpful in this journey! I'm glad to hear the 2000 is the preferred option, as it's slightly cheaper from what I see.

I suppose the only thing left to do is to buy it, and see how it works out! I will buy it likely at the beginning of next month, and will post updates regarding everything, so look forward to my Supa PSP Hacka journey!

[Duk3]

Something I'm actually knowledgeable about!! Warning for long reply and sorry for grammar.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this reply! It will all be very helpful in this journey! I'm glad to hear the 2000 is the preferred option, as it's slightly cheaper from what I see.

I suppose the only thing left to do is to buy it, and see how it works out! I will buy it likely at the beginning of next month, and will post updates regarding everything, so look forward to my Supa PSP Hacka journey!

No problem! Good luck on it, I look forward to updates. If you run into any issues or have anymore questions, feel free to ask.

[capstasher]

>Any suggestions for which model?
I recommend a 2000, it allows for video out along with the ram and such. I would recommend it over the 3000 because the 3000 has that weird integer line thing that make the screen looks like crap in my opinion. I personally use a 1000 but that's mostly because I like the thickness. Regarding the rumors of the 3000 being harder to jailbreak, maybe in the past but with the modern cfw I didn't have trouble with it. I recommend going with the Ark-4 firmware since it's still currently getting updates.

Alright Duke, the PSP (2000, Ceramic White) is on its way. Thoughts on what things I should buy for it? I saw some conflicting results as to what the maximum storage capacity is.
So far I have in my basket the following:

• 1x Micro SD card, 128gb
• 1x 3600mAh PSP 2000/3000 battery
• 1x Micro SD to Memory Stick Pro Duo adaptor (single slot)

It already comes with one of those barrel to USB power adaptors, unsure if they are reliable, or proper ones are preferred.
Was quite surprised to see the camera go for as much as the PSP itself, I suppose it has an "aesthetic" tax now due to the influx of people using it to take stylistic photos. Will have to see if I can get a good deal on it on something like Facebook Marketplace.

[Duk3]

>Any suggestions for which model?
I recommend a 2000, it allows for video out along with the ram and such. I would recommend it over the 3000 because the 3000 has that weird integer line thing that make the screen looks like crap in my opinion. I personally use a 1000 but that's mostly because I like the thickness. Regarding the rumors of the 3000 being harder to jailbreak, maybe in the past but with the modern cfw I didn't have trouble with it. I recommend going with the Ark-4 firmware since it's still currently getting updates.

Alright Duke, the PSP (2000, Ceramic White) is on its way. Thoughts on what things I should buy for it? I saw some conflicting results as to what the maximum storage capacity is.
So far I have in my basket the following:

• 1x Micro SD card, 128gb
• 1x 3600mAh PSP 2000/3000 battery
• 1x Micro SD to Memory Stick Pro Duo adaptor (single slot)

It already comes with one of those barrel to USB power adaptors, unsure if they are reliable, or proper ones are preferred.
Was quite surprised to see the camera go for as much as the PSP itself, I suppose it has an "aesthetic" tax now due to the influx of people using it to take stylistic photos. Will have to see if I can get a good deal on it on something like Facebook Marketplace.

>Maximum storage capacity
128gb should be fine, from my knowledge the PSP can support higher than that but those cheapo sd adapters can't handle above 128gb. I personally use a 32gb just because that's what I had laying around at the time, and with csio compression it was more than enough. If you really want to play it safe go with 64gb but as I said, 128gb should work.
>PSP Battery
I would recommend you go with Ostent specifically since from what the community has tested, those are considered best. A thing I forgot to note in my original reply, make sure you turn off overclocking in the vsh menu after modding. It really drains the batteries and isn't really needed unless the load times are too much to handle or emulation gets a bit choppy.
>Power Cables
Those work fine, I use a similar one I had lying around that has a multi-connector for different handhelds. Like most cheap cables, it'll wear out over time, but I don't think it's something you need to replace immediately.

For additional accessories, the only ones I can think of is a video out cable(kinda obvious), and maybe one of the clear protective case things plus a music remote(both not necessary). The camera is way to expensive as you said to warrant getting immediately and same with the GPS attachment.

[dokyun]

Alright I figured I might as well document the steps I took to load backups on my Wii U for those of you who might be unfortunate enough to also own one. Cause the scene is full of pussies that don't make it immediately obvious what you need to play games once you mod your console, I'm going to give it to you straight.

First, you have to mod your console (duh). You need an SD card, 32GB is probably the best. Follow the instructions in https://wiiu.hacks.guide/ and then copy https://github.com/marco-calautti/Sigpa ... atches.rpx to /wiiu/environments/aroma/modules/setup on the root of the card. The sig patch will let you actually install and run your games once you've prepared them, so don't forget it. You'll also want to install the Homebrew Appstore and use it to get a program called WUP Installer GX2.

Spoiler

The first tool that'll show up when you google how to load backups on your console is called UWUVCI. I tried running it but it doesn't work in Wine so it's dead in the water for me, and the crack-smoking faggot running the show wants me to join his discord and pay $3.00 for a build of his up-to-date fork. I'd just build it myself but I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than set up a Windows dev environment. Nobody who makes decent software these days only builds for Windows. Luckily, I found another tool that works just fine for my purposes. But if you can get it to work you might want to use that instead since it can prepare roms from other consoles, not just Wii and GC.

Download https://github.com/piratesephiroth/Teco ... jector.zip and unzip it, it's just a standalone .exe. If you're running Wine you'll need to run "winetricks dotnet35sp1". If it gives you grief during install just kill the offending process in taskmgr and it'll keep going. This will also install Gamecube games too apparently but I haven't tried it, you need something called Nintendont to play GC games.

Oh yeah, you also need a game. Get the .WBFS or .ISO from your favourite torrent or romsite. The tool will automatically fetch the icon/banner images for you too.

You can skip the rest of the tabs and go straight to Build Title. The tool will ask you for two keys, and to save you the goose chase I've copied them here. I hope May isn't afraid of having a couple numbers on his site.

Code: Select all

Wii U Common Key
D7B00402659BA2ABD2CB0DB27FA2B656

Rhythm Heaven Fever [USA] Title Key
04EACEF7657422E61606FA7FC7DCD73D

When the requirements are complete you can hit BUILD. You need to make an /install directory on the root of the SD card for WUP Installer to recognize it, so take out your card and make it and set that as the destination directory for the build. Building will take a while, so go do something else or crack a beer and come up with your own theories as to why the console modding scene is full of so many anal-retentive manchildren.

Once this process is done, you can put the card back in your console and boot up WUP Installer GX2. If everything went right, the game will show up and it'll let you install it. It will give you the choice to install to NAND or the SD card, and if you have the black Wii U with 32GB of NAND storage that's plenty enough for several games assuming you haven't filled it up already. If you have the shitty old white model with only 8GB you might want to install to your card instead, but it'll probably be a lot slower.

I don't know who this is for, but I feel better at night knowing that someone might not have to retrace the same steps I did. Nothing pisses me off more than these fuckheads that wanna make it hard and pretend that the main point of console modding isn't free games.