I’ve been following a thread over at PSP-Hacks with interest, as it talks about the latest DevHook version (0.51) and emulating the 3.01 (and now 3.02) firmware versions.

There is a tutorial to help you get it installed and then around 550 comments (at the time of writing) of people either being confused by how to install the DevHook and the dumped 3.01 firmware, or people claiming they’ve got it working, or people simply confused about what the DevHook is and what the concept is behind it.

There are also plenty of pleas asking for help and some decent instructions to get it working, so I thought I’d have a go myself, and write up some instructions with a few screen shots to help everyone out. Unfortunately, I cannot get it working myself, so I can’t write it up.

The problem I’m faced with is that the DevHook menu does not have a ‘Flash ROM’ option, and the option it does have doesn’t include anything to install the ‘dh to f1′. Now I consider myself to be competent in all things technology related, and have had no problem in the past with getting software working on my PSP, so this is bugging me slightly.

At the moment I’m going to hold fire until someone clarifies what needs to be done to get the software installed, as currently there is risk of bricking the PSP that I don’t want to take.

I’ll report back as and when I understand the problems and how to work around them….

Having said all that, I’ve now got 3.01 running on my PSP (native 1.5 firmware) using Tommy’s installer : 3.01 Devhook Firmware Installer [EBOOT].

To use the installer, simply download the 3.01 update, copy the EBOOT.PBP file to your memory stick, and follow the rest of the instructions.

The downside to this install method? It swaps the X and O buttons around, so thats something to get used to I guess, unless someone knows a fix? And I belive there is a problem with game saves, so it might be worth having your current DevHook version running alongside 0.51 if you have games you wish to continue playing with your current save states.

I installed using a clean 1GB card to start with, and have now copied the contents over to my 4GB card and have got DevHook 0.44 (2.71) and DevHook 0.51 (3.01) running side by side. Note: I didn’t need to do anything other than copy the 1GB memory stick contents to my PC, and then back to the 4GB memory stick.

Simply pressing ‘home’ when in 3.01 mode allows you to switch off DevHook 0.51 and return to firmware 1.5, thus allowing you to select DevHook 0.44 (or whatever). This would seem to give full flexibility in DevHook choice, and allow you a choice in which firmware you want to emulate.

So, to clarify :

PSP running firmware 1.5
Clean Memory Stick (Formatted via PSP menu option).
Copy the DevHook 0.51 files to your Memory Stick :
X:\PSP\Game\%__SCE__DH051BETA
X:\PSP\Game\__SCE__DH051BETA
and
X:\dh
X:\fbm
where X: is your Memory Stick root drive.
Copy the EBOOT.PBP file from 3.01 update to X:\
i.e. You Memory Stick should have:
X:\dh
X:\fbm
X:\PSP
X:\EBOOT.PBP
Copy the 301_DH_FW_INSTALLER to your Memory Stick :
X:\PSP\Game\%__SCE__301_dh_fw_installer
X:\PSP\Game\__SCE__301_dh_fw_installer

Start your PSP and go to the Game menu option. Select the 3.01 DH FW Installer option.
Press ‘X’
Press ‘X’ again.
Wait until the process completes (you will see lines of white text as the PSAR data is extracted)
When complete, go to the Game menu option and select DevHook 0.51 Launcher option.
Press ‘O’ when the screen comes up.

This will now load the 3.01 firmware for you.

To exit, simply press ‘Home’ and select the close DevHook option and confirm.

To run alongside a previous version of DevHook, copy all the files on your Memory Stick to another Memory Stick already running a previous version, or alternatively restore from a backup your previous version.

I’ll report back any other issues I come across as I find them.