A while back there was a discussion that took place in our forum. The issue at hand was that someone was wanting to make a request for a (user friendly) way to be able to easily change your XMB customization(s)/ themes.

Your wishes have been granted.

Using this new handy bit of homebrew is sure to be able to make a few lives a little bit easier. With XMB Theme Cycler, you are able to cycle between 3 different themes (perhaps more supported in later versions) and apparently turning off and on the psp will also automatically change your XMB theme! Good? – Bad? – well, that is for YOU to decide!

For more details, please check out the readme.txt included with the download.

Download XMB Theme Cycler

Ok… perhaps 15 hours is over the top for most of the mainstream public, but how many of you have had the psp die out on you before? For most people, the power/ battery light gets covered up by their thumb as they are playing the psp and don't ever realize that it is running out of power before it is too late. Well those days are long gone! Check out this new battery from Blue Raven. This battery, while being a bit on the large side, offers a very boastful 15 hours of battery life. Now you can feel free to take the psp on a long road trip without the need of multiple batteries. It's priced quite well too at about $100 US. That may seem steep, but keep in mind that a new battery along with a battery charger can cost $80+. Anyways, below are some statistics.

• offers 7x more battery life
• charges in roughly 5 hours
• connects to the psp easily and smoothly
• has 4500 mAh capacity as opposed to 1800 mAh

The really large downside is that this battery is a little on the large/ bulky side. However, it can be argued that this battery is setting a new standard in terms of battery life. Now you could use wifi and not worry about the psp running out of life, or perhaps this feels more comfortable in peoples' hands than normal. The one thing to make note of is that this battery is large, so fitting it in the soft stock psp case is probably not an option.

The amazing psp developer StrmnNrmn has hopes for releasing the latest and greatest Nintendo 64 emulator, Daedalus R11 next weekend. He has been working hard the past few weeks and has results to show for it:

* Streamlining the N64-format-to-PSP-format texture conversion process has halved the memory resources required for each texture, StrmnNrmn reports. Slightly faster than the previous approach, too.

* A "very simple one-line change" to the texture cache code makes the cache "100% leak-free" and a surprising 4-5% speedup.

* Last significant change is that he set a hard limit to how much memory the texture cache used. "This change means that if the limit is ever reached, I just display white textures until some texture memory is freed up a little later. Previously Daedalus would just keep allocating RAM until it ran out of memory and crashed, so the new solution is much nicer."

With the changes that he has done, StrmnNrmn says that he "can can permanently allocate 8MB for the Expansion Pak, and not worry about running out of memory(which caused crashes). A welcome side-effect to all the texture changes I've made is an approximate 5-10% speedup over R11." Strmn Nrmn has a bit of work left to do but hopes to release R11 by next weekend.

Well, you heard it right. Sony has updated their firmware (once again) in a desperate attempt to stop the homebrew scene from having fun on the psp. Psp-hacks.com is supposedly keeping score over who is "winning" between either Dark_Alex or Sony. Sony, according to psp-hacks, is leading 17-16. Is such a thing worth Dark_Alex's time to try to create a downgrader or custom firmware for?….well…. not quite. The firmware is pretty much a security patch from what most sources have been able to tell.

The Sony site has not been updated to accomodate the new firmware, but the firmware is available via network update feature. Also, pspbrew must stress the important issue of homebrew. Homebrew is not available on version 3.40. If you update, you will not be able to downgrade/ install custom firmware/ use homebrew – so update only if you understand the repurcussions.

You should all be familiar to the way this works by now. See, a firmware of Sony's gets decrypted incredibly fast by a wise dev or dev team and sooner or later we see a wonderful little custom firmware created by the magical psp God.. errr, I mean Dark_Alex. In any sense, I introduce to you 3.30 oe-a. Now, it is pretty easy to admit that 3.30 oe-a doesn't offer a significant extra that's worth dying for, but the changelog is, for the most part, hinting that 3.30 oe-a offers a few pretty important bug fixes.

One should make note that the popsloader is not backwards compatible with other versions of custom firmware – go figure… but anyways, a new popsloader fix will be out soon for sure. Custom firmware 3.30 oe-a offers:

• Updated from psp firmware 3.10 to 3.30
• Fixed a bug that could have caused instability in 3.10 OE after recovering from sleep mode.
• Patched a protection that prevents the firmware to load higher firmware modules.
• Apparently the pops emulator supports many updates as well!

Download 3.30 oe-a – you will need the 3.30 eboot and 1.50 eboot as well to upgrade.

So maybe you've been looking for a way to easily access the usb connection on the psp… MAYBE you've been looking for a way to access the 4th level of brightness by simply pressing the screen brightness button… or heck, maybe you haven't. Either way, this plugin is definitely going to bring some convenience to PSP users that are using custom firmware 3.03 oe or 3.10 oe. This plugin, USBon, will keep the usb toggled to on at all times so all you would need to do is simply plug in the usb cable (while in the psp menu) and viola – instant access! As a side bonus, this plugin will also unlock that fourth level of brightness for 3.03 oe users. If you need extra help then make sure to read the readme.txt file for further details.

Download USBon plugin

Do you guys remember hearing of a new PSP modchip besides the Undiluted Platinum released a while back? Perhaps you have, but even if you have, you may be wondering why you still haven't seen it available for purchase. To add comfort to worry, listed below are a few screenshots as well as the newest release information for the new PSP mochip, the Devolution (left: front/ right: back). More pictures are available on the psp-devolution website as well!

Features:

• Flash your PSP using the internal USB Port
• no additional USB Port required
• latest ACTEL ProASIC 3 technology
• NO power consumption
• doesn't touch the battery power in any way, powered by USB for the time being used to flash the PSP
• preassembled hi-tech flex pcb for easiest possible conection to the psp mainboard
• works on all available PSP versions incl. the new TA-082 and TA-086
• custom BIOS with a lot of cool additional features (tba)

Source: psp-devolution

It's been out for less than than 24 hours and it's already causing a huge uproar in the homebrew community… yes, that's right, it's StrmnNrmn's next release of the notorious Nintendo 64 emulator, Daedalus.

After toying with this new release you will be BEGGING for more, and if you are, head on over to StrmnNrmn's blog to send your praise. Download Daedalus R10 for PSP below

Daedalus R10 (version 1.00)
Daedalus R10 (version 1.50)
Daedalus R10 (source code)

Looks like Square Enix has given us a new sneak peak at possibly PSP's best new sprite RPG?

As you can see from the picture Square has definately enhanced the sprites from Playstation 1's remake,

as well as the GBA's remake. The sprites, the environment and the lighting also has been remade to perfection!

The due date is expected for early or late June 2007. For the PSP version, the only new additions besides the graphics

and possible sounds, is a new dungeon (like in the GBA version, we had Soul of Chaos) while in this new PSP version, we have

"The labyrinth of Time".

Judged by its name, heres what PSPUpdates are judging:

"In this new dungeon, the player will suffer from a continuous HP decrease. Were not 100% sure since we cannot

read japaneese, but it seems that maybe the use of Magic and Items will not be available either. Also the ability

to run may be disabled. It seems that to survive the dungeon you must make it so the deepest part until

the timer has run out."

Were expected to have no new monsters or anything as of now but you can never be too sure!

via PSPUpdates