Quite alot has been written about running homebrew on the Sony PSP, and now that Fanjita has the eLoader beta working for Firmware versions 2.01, 2.5 and 2.6, plenty of people who got their PSP for Christmas are trying to get homebrew working.

There are a few guides on the web for getting the eLoader installed and running on your PSP, this one by hackaday is quite comprehensive and easy to follow, so makes a good starting point for those wishing to get homebrew running on their PSP.

I have spent the weekend (apart from rebuilding my PC that died on Thursday night) taking a look at the PSP homebrew scene, and investigated the eLoader and how easy it is to get working. My initial findings were disappointing – the eLoader would work but none of the homebrew, even the items listed in Fanjita’s compatability chart as being tested as working were failing to load.

The symptoms I was experiencing have been echoed around the web – getting the eLoader installed and working using the GTA load game option is fine, but selecting an application or game to run using the eLoader led to a black screen followed by the PSP powering down. I scratched my head to this for quite a while, checking and rechecking the installation of the eLoader to ensure it was correct, trying different homebrew apps to see if any would work, but no luck.

A browse of the web however, threw up this thread on the QJ forums which showed many people experiencing the same problem, albeit with one or two people having success at getting the homebrew working.

The solution to the problem, at least for me initially, was in the post by Adam19, where he states

“Got it working on mine. When you load up the gamesave with the eLoader, where it says are you sure you want to load the gamesave all data will be lost. Wait about 20 seconds before clicking yes. When i did this it loaded up the SnesEmu without a problem.”

I tried this, and it worked. By waiting at each step of the way from the load game screen in GTA, I managed to get PSP Chess working using the eLoader. Great I thought, the solution is a pain, but at least the homebrew works. I then tried the SNES emulator, and that worked as well.

The problem of homebrew not working reappeared the next time I tried to load PSP Chess though, with the PSP again showing a black screen followed by a power down. I then spent a long time trying different wait times and methods for getting the homebrew to load, including wiping the Memory Stick and reformatting it, reloading the software in different orders etc etc. And still the homebrew refused to load.

Eventually I managed to get PSP Chess to load again, but this was on the 9th or 10th attempt after the reformat and reinstall. It would seem that the homebrew does work, but not consistently.

No doubt the eLoader will be available sooner or later with a more stable version, but for now it appears that those PSP owners running 2.6 firmware will have to put up with a slightly hit and miss process of getting their homebrew apps working.

On a plus note, the PSP Chess game is excellent, and when it does work it works very well with no stability issues. The SNES emulator was also good, although you need to overclock the PSP to 333mhz for it to run at a reasonable rate.