There has been, for as long as I can remember, a rumor that Sony were going to make a PSP Phone. That is, a phone that is also a PSP. Nothing has ever come of it, but every now and then some pictures will surface that suggest what this new device could look like.

The above is yet another attempt at guessing what the device could look like. The article is in Portuguese, but apparently the last part states there is a 35% chance of it being made. Or 0% chance.

While the theory is nice, and if Nokia get their gaming phone back up and running successfully something that Sony might give serious contemplation to, but in the meantime, its very unlikely to happen.

One of the key issues is battery life – phone users don’t want to have to charge their phones every four hours, so until someone comes up with a better, longer lasting power supply, I can’t see this working. Then there is the size. To retain any sort of compatability with the PSP, the device needs that lovely 480 by 272 pixel screen. But its big – too big for phone once you add in the control interface. This isn’t the eighties anymore, no one wants a phone the size of a house brick.

The only thing I can see working is a mini-PSP’esq style phone, with cut down games on a cut down screen, that uses less power and is not compatible with the current PSP system.

Dark-Alex has been busy generating something very exciting for PSP owners wishing to experience the joys of older firmware versions on their newer PSP’s, by generating what has been dubbed the ‘TimeMachine’.

Effectively, this program allows PSP owners to experience the delights of older firmware versions, such as firmware 1.50, 3.40OE and 3.60OE via the use of a Pandora battery. In a similar way to Devhook, the Pandora interface allows the PSP to run different firmware versions without physically installing the firmware to the PSP.

The TimeMachine will allow a bricked PSP to boot, even if the internal firmware is beyond repair. The main idea here is to allow developers to try out their developments across multiple firmware versions easily, without the need for separate test machines, or the constant flashing and re-flashing of firmware versions using Pandora.

Currently the timemachine can install the following firmwares:

- Original 1.50 (can only be loaded on the phat)
- 1.50 with some 3.40 hw modules. Can be loaded on both, phat and slim.
- 3.40 OE (can only be loaded on phat)
- 3.60 M33 (can only be loaded on slim)

Rest of cfw will be added in the future.

Reqirements for time machine:

- The timemachine itself doesn’t require any firmware, only a pandora battery.
Timemachine nand boot in slim, requires, however, 3.90 M33-2 or greater.
- The timemachine installer requires 2.71 SE or higher.

Instructions: Copy the TIMEMACHINE folder to /PSP/GAME and run.

All firmwares can be installed on whatever PSP (slim or phat), but they can only be used in the psp indicated in the option.

This is great news for PSP owners, and with more firmware versions to be added, it means that any software you want to run that does not work on your current custom firmware version should be accessible via Pandora and the TimeMachine.

Dark Alex has released an update to custom firmware 3.90M33, taking the current version to 3.90M33-2.

You should be able to download the update using the network option if you are already on one of the later custom firmware versions, or alternatively grab the files from the Dark Alex website.

- Improvements in plugins loading code:

* Fixed some problems with problematic cards due to filesystem not mounted.
* Now plugins should read the faster.
* Problem fixed with lines with spaces at the end.

- Added the rest of regions to the recovery option fakeregion.

- (PSP SLIM): Added patches in nand ipl to allow Booster multiploader and TimeMachine iploader to boot from nand.

Note: only 3.90 M33-2 and higher can be booted from nand in slim with those ipl loaders, not official Sony firmwares or previous versions of M33.

Changes in updater:

- The 3.90 eboot downloading code is now more stable, no more freezes after selecting AP
- Memory stick write in the 3.90 downloading code is delayed the maximum possible for faster operation (the system prefers big chunks of data written at once).

Download from Dark-Alex.