News

News from Torch:

What does Hold+ do when the switch is enabled?

* Switches off the LCD backlight.
* Switches off the actual LCD screen.
(This is important because the backlight and actual screen are two different things. You can have an image being displayed on the screen while the backlight is switched off, such that you can see the image if you use a flashlight. You can also have the screen switched off while the backlight still illuminates the powered off screen.)
* Underclocks the CPU to 61MHz
(Sony has changed the clock speed functions such that only certain combinations of speeds work correctly. Simply trying to underclock to arbitrary values will result in the CPU simply running at the stock speed. I have verified that Hold+ successfully underclocks to 61MHz.)
* The original screen brightness and clock speed are restored when the Hold switch is released.
* Prevents the PSP from going into suspend mode if you accidently push the power switch too far when turning off Hold mode.

caliarbor updated his MP3 audio player application. The download is a bit hidden, you need to read the first posting careful.

Release notes:

Slight change increases heap size, doesn’t check for cover art being greater than 170×170, and instead of only showing info of playing track shows info of highlighted track in browser

SeanPaul223 comes up with a Mario & Luigi themed racing game called Mario Kart 64.

Features:

# 3 Tracks for a “Best time Challenge”
# 2 Characters (Mario and Luigi)
# Officials Musics And Sounds
# HighScores Manager System

Vong stands for “Vertical Pong” and is a Pong game for Atari 2600.

Release notes:

In this new version, the background colors change every 2 seconds until you press reset to start a game. You can see that before you start a game, there is a blank space where the cpu score goes and a 1 where your score goes, That is the game variation number. Variation 2, which in not in this version will be 2 player.

Here is a new release of AFKIM (Away From the Keyboard Instant Messenger), the instant messaging application for PSP written by Danzel and improved by ZX-81.

Release notes:

This version fix graphical glitches under xfw 4.01-m33 on PSP SLIM (If you have cfw < 4.01 or a PSP FAT, then no need to install this new version).

Python-PSP is a port of Python to the PSP.

Release notes:

29/06/2008: New release. The sceSircs function has been wrapped in the pspos module (ticket #377). A whole new set of classes for image manipulation. The API reference is now generated using epydoc. Some bug fixes, thanks to patches provided by “MagerValp”.

Thanks to http://www.dcemu.co.uk for the news.

Alek wrote an article about how to port PSP homebrew over to the latest 4.x kernel.

Quote:

As we spoke some days ago the 1.50 kernel would probably disappear. Therefore, we spoke about migrating homebrews to 3.xx kernels, and i linked to this post on ps2dev.

So, what’s new when porting to 4.xx kernels instead of 3.xx ones? Following the same guide as CpuWhiz on his post;

1. Homebrew must be in prx format. To do that, after the PSPSDK includes (include $(PSPSDK)/lib/build.mak), add this two lines:
BUILD_PRX = 1
PSP_FW_VERSION = 401

The last line (PSP_FW_VERSION) isn’t really needed in this case, just for the compilation when making #ifdef branches or not; but as 4.00/4.01 hasn’t included anything relevant on that affairs, you can skip that line.

2. Homebrew must be in user mode. On your main.c code, for the proper pbp compilation,
PSP_MODULE_INFO(“module1”, 0, 1, 0);

Remember that the PSP_MODULE_INFO system goes like this -> PSP_MODULE_INFO(“module_name”, mode, mayor_revision, minor_revision), and we put an “0” on mode for user mode; meanwhile 0x1000 would be for kernel mode. And also, add this line;
PSP_HEAP_SIZE_MAX();

Considering that you have a newer PSPSDK that can compile within it.

3. That would be enough for what it takes. Got any problem within running it, once compiled? Re-check latest steps from that ps2dev post to check for your kernel calls.

So, to sum up, due to the poor changes from 3.xx to 4.00/4.01, you just need to keep on the prx format, AND the user mode on the pbp code. Probably some of you already knew this, but bleh, this can’t be bad to have in mind, as one user commented on the “Bye Bye, 1.50” post.

Thanks to http://www.dcemu.co.uk for this interesting article.

Akop Karapetyan has updated his port of fMSX for Playstation Portable.

New features:

* Bugfix – many games, especially MegaROM games did not load correctly in the previous version (thanks Victor)
* Added Fast Forward button mapping – while disabled by default, you can map any button to fast-forward emulation in the Controls menu
* Custom mapper types can now be embedded in source code. This version includes built-in support for Zanac Ex and Mon Mon Monster. Contact me if you’d like to add additional mappings

Thanks to http://www.dcemu.co.uk for the news.

PXL Installer allows you to install official PTF themes and unofficial CTF themes on your PSP.

Changes:

– Bugs correction.
– Superposition of the Wallpapers with the icons of the XMB for a better preview.
– Improvement of the scrolling.
– Improvement of the CXMB Software Installation.

Sleepper & M@x released an minor update to the recently released update of PSPKVM. This application will allow you to run / play mobile java games on your PSP!

Release notes:

Bug fixes:
1) HTTPS connection always fail
2) On Screen Keyboard fail to open
3) Virtual Keyboard cannot input 4 and 6
Input symbols and numbers while Chinese Input is open
Improve performance of FileConnection InputStream.skip()

Thanks to http://www.dcemu.co.uk for the news.