Just a quick note to say I installed the latest custom firmware from Dark-Alex (5.00M33) and it went perfectly smoothly. I went from 3.93M33 to 5.00M33 and then upgraded to include the 1.5 Kernel.

I didn’t deactivate any plugins, simply copied the upgrade to the memory stick and ran it. Only issue so far is that CXMB doesn’t appear to work anymore – switching the plugin on through the recovery menu stopped the PSP working. Hopefully it will be fixed and allow me to return to the inacor XMB theme.

PSP firmware 5.0 see a change to the XMB background wave – its now more subtle and looks much better. Its a shame some of the XMB icons are not done in the same style as the original XMB – additions such as Playstation Network, Playstation Store and Go!Messenger all use colourful icons that don’t match the overal style of the older icons. I guess Sony are trying to harmonise the Sony look across all systems, but this does seem a shame.

Dark-Alex has also released the 1.5 Kernel add-on for PSP Phat/Fat/PSP-1000 owners. This allows owners of the oldest PSP to continue using the older homebrew titles.

Grab the files from Dark-Alex.

Quicker than you can say ‘I wonder how long it will take before Dark-Alex releases a custom firmware version of 5.0?’ comes the news that Dark-Alex has released a custom firmware version of the latest official Sony firmware 5.0.

You can grab the files from Dark-Alex, installation procedure is to download and copy the contents of the 5.00M33.rar into PSP\Game on your PSP memory stick, copy the 5.00.PBP to the same directory and then run the 5.00 M33 updater from the PSP Game menu.

I’m about to perform this update now, as I’m a few steps behind the release schedule, so I’ll let you all know how I get on…