There have been numerous posts on the PSP forums and plenty of emails asking ‘how to get homebrew working on my PSP’, to the extent that I thought I’d write this post with the aim of it being a simple guide to installing and running homebrew applications and games on your Sony PSP.

Homebrew is the name given to the software and games written by developers and hackers, generally produced in bedrooms around the world, and is not digitally signed by Sony to run on the PSP. In other words, homebrew is software written by people at home to perform specific functions that the PSP wouldn’t normally be able to.

This guide is intended for those people whose PSP has firmware versions 2.01+ (currently 2.01, 2.5 and 2.6).

1. First and foremost, you need to own the PSP game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (GTA:LCS). Without GTA:LCS you will not be able to run any homebrew applications or games on your PSP as the mechanism for running homebrew uses an exploit in the Save Game function in GTA:LCS.

GTA:LCS is available from most PSP game retailers, or online from places such as Amazon (Aff Link) or Play. Please note, the game is rated as an 18 certificate (for a reason). The homebrew is not loadable using any other PSP game, it must be GTA:LCS.

2. You need to play GTA:LCS and ensure that you make a save game. I won’t go into the details of how to actually play the game, just ensure that before you go onto point 3 that you have gone back to your house in the game and saved your progress. Please note that installing the software below will overwrite any save game in GTA:LCS slot 5.

3. If you have satisifed condition numbers 1 and 2, you will then need to download and install on your PSP’s Memory Stick some software which will load the homebrew applications and games.

The software is called the eLoader, and is currently on version 0.9.5, codenamed ‘Brown-Ale’ 0.9.6, codenamed Bière d’Alsace 0.9.7, codenamed Super Bock. The eLoader (sometimes referred to as the GTA eLoader) has been developed by two people who go under the names Fanjita and Ditlew. The eLoader became possible after a guy called Edison Carter found a bug in the GTA:LCS save game function and managed to exploit it.

The eLoader is available from a number of places, I’ve linked it below but as newer versions of the eLoader are released these links will no longer be valid, or if they are they will not be the latest version.

• Fanjita.org
• eLoader Downloads @ QJ.net

4. Ok, you’ve bought GTA, you’ve played it a bit and saved your progress, and now you’ve successfully downloaded the latest eLoader software. Now you need to install it. If you are not using windows you will have to manually copy the files across to your Memory Stick Duo, but I will assume if you are able to use a machine not running Windows (ie MacOS or Linux) you probably won’t need help installing the eLoader.

If you are using Windows, connect your Sony PSP to your PC using the USB cable and ensure your PSP is recognised and is showing as a removable disk in Windows Explorer. If not, please refer to you PSP manual for details on how to link your PSP to your PC.

Double click the eLoader software you downloaded in point 3 and it should automatically find your PSP and install the eLoader software for you. At this point its probably worth mentioning that if you are planning on running alot of homebrew applicatiosn and games that a reasonable amount of free space on your Memory Stick would be useful.

Once the eLoader has installed, its time to check that the software has installed correctly and you have a working eLoader.

5. Disconnect your PSP from the PC and load up GTA:LCS. If the auto-installer process has worked correctly GTA:LCS should load up your last save game automatically as if nothing has changed. You then need to hit the start button, select ‘game’ and then ‘load game’. In the list of available save games should be the eLoader, in slot 5. Select the eLoader to load and confirm by selecting yes.

If the eLoader has installed correctly, after a short delay you will see the eLoader screen. At the moment you have no homebrew applications or games loaded so the list that normnally appears on the left will be empty.

If the eLoader does not work, you have a number of options, the main one being to try reinstalling the software. The eLoader installer is fairly robust and should work without any problems.

If the eLoader loads as soon as you load GTA:LCS it means that the date/time stamp on the eLoader installed in slot 5 is newer (more recent) than any other save game. This can be recitified by reconnecting your PSP to the PC and moving one of the proper save games off your memory stick and then putting it back on to force the data/time stamp to update. (Perform a cut/paste, not a copy/paste to make sure). The save game data is in the savegame directory on your Memory Stick Duo.

6. Assuming you have followed all the steps so far and you have the eLoader installed and have checked it has worked, now you need to install some homebrew software. At the moment there appears to be no central listing of all the PSP homebrew software, along with its compatability with the eLoader other than the one on Fanjitas website (link below).

Remember there have been mechanisms for loading homebrew on the PSP since version 1.0, so not all homebrew works with all firmware versions.

If you do not know what homebrew you want to install, the compatability list on Fanjita’s website is a good place to start (click the ‘working eboots (GTA)’ link). This lists the homebrew that has been tested with the GTA:LCS eLoader, with links to download most of the homebrew applications and games. Those that are not directly linked can normally be found using google.

Homebrew falls into 3 main catagories:

• Applications, such as PSPRadio, PSP Notepad, PSP Reader, PSP PDF etc
• Games, such as ThrottleX, PSP Chess, PSP Suduko etc
• Emulators, such as Homers RIN (Gamebuy/Gameboy Color), DGEN (Sega Genesis) etc

7. Most of the homebrew software comes with a readme.txt file that tells you how to install the software, but most are written with firmware versions 1.0 and 1.5 in mind. In principle, for firmware versions 2.01+ the application/game/emulator needs to be placed in its own directory in the GAME folder on your PSP Memory Stick Duo.

With some homebrew you will find that the downloaded software contains two folders, one with name, the other with name%. This was done to circumvent some protection Sony put in place with a firmware update. For our purposes, I have found the standard folder without the % at the end works ok, so I have ignored the % folder.

The homebrew you download will normally contain a file called eboot.pbp, this is the core of the software and should sit no more than one folder deep within the GAME folder. ie //GAME/PSPChess/eboot.pbp

The eLoader has a configuration file, which details configs for specific homebrew software. This file should be studied to see if you need to name a game folder a specific name to get it to work. Not all homebrew software is in the config file, if they software you are trying to run is not, and you cannot get it to work, have a look at the config file to see if adding an entry for the homebrew helps.

8. Assuming you have managed to download some homebrew that you wish to install, extract the contents (the download will normally be zipped/compressed) to your PC. Look for a readme.txt file. These normnally contain some instructions on installing and using the software. If there is no readme.txt file, or the readme.txt file is out of date and refers to firmware versions 1.0 and 1.5 only, you will need to do some guess work.

If the contents of the download consists of one folder with the eboot.pbp file in it, transfer the folder and contents to the GAME directory on your Memory Stick Duo. If there are multiple folders, one ending with a %, copy the folder without the % to your Memory Stick Duo.

Disconnect your PSP from the PC and load up GTA:LCS. Go through the load game process to load the eLoader. Once the eLoader is running, the left side of the screen should be populated with a list of the homebrew applications and gmes that you have installed. Select the Homebrew that you wish to run and press ‘x’. The eLoader will now attempt to load the homebrew software. If you are attempting to run a game, you should see a splash screen and the game running, if you are running an application or an emulator, you should see that softwares menu load up.

If you PSP has a blank (black) screen and does nothing for a while, its may be that the homebrew does not work with the eLoader. You can reset your PSP by holding the power button up for 10 seconds, or by dropping the battery out of the back of the PSP for a moment or two. If the homebrew refuses to work after a few more attempts, and its listed in the compatability list as working, its time to hit the internet and do some research. It may be that the eLoader config file needs changing, or the software needs patching. This information is normally readily available. A good starting point is the PSPUpdates forum over at QJ.net.

9. Emulators. There are a number of emulators available for the PSP, covering everything from the humble Spectrum to the Gameboy Advance. The emulators themselves are available for download from a number of websites, and downloading/using the emulator itself has no moral or legal consequences. However, all emulators require something called a ‘rom’ to work. A rom is the name given to a game image, created from an original game disk or memory chip. The rom is effectively the game itself, and should only be used by someone who owns the original game. For more details on roms, check out the Wikipedia entry. If you do install an emulator, don’t expect it to be perfect and work at the same speed as the device its based on. Although the PSP is a solid little machine, when you are running an emulator it takes up system resource that would otherwise be available to run the emulated game. For this reason many games appear sluggish and slow even when the PSP is overclocked to 333mhz.

The question of where to obtain game roms comes up on the PSP forums a number of times a day, and the answer is always the same – no one can tell you where to get them from, and no one will upload or make available game roms for download as it is illegal. Roms are available on the internet however, a quick search on google should present you with a number of options for obtaining them. You must make up your own mind on the legality or otherwise of obtaining and using game roms for a device/game you do not own an original copy of.

10. All things being equal, a piece of homebrew software that works on the PSP running firmware 2.6 should work on all PSP’s running firmware 2.6. Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world, and all things are not equal. This means that homebrew flagged as being useable for a particular firmware version may not work on your PSP even if you have the same firmware version and eLoader version.

Why is this? Well, it may be that you have downloaded an out of date version of the software you are trying to run, or you haven’t downloaded the latest version. It may be that the software is not compatable with other software on your Memory Stick Duo, or your Memory Stick Duo has become corrupted. It may be that its a Thursday and you’ve got red socks on. There really is no way to tell why something isn’t working the way you hope it should.

If some homebrew isn’t working, make sure you check the readme.txt, check the version number, check the internet for other people with the same issue (if other people have reported the issue, don’t add to the noise with a ‘me to’ unless you have some constructive input to give), try formatting your Memory Stick Duo (back everything up first), try re-installation, try standing on one foot with the PSP held high in the air.

I haven’t got the magic answer to the ‘why does xxxx not work’, all I can suggest is you research the matter and keep trying.

11. The homebrew community is resourceful, if you find a genuine bug in any homebrew software, let the author know, along with details of your firmware version so that it can be fixed in the next release.

12. Nearly all the homebrew that is flagged on the compatability list as working has worked for me on my PSP running firmware 2.6. where it hasn’t worked and it should I’ve normally made a silly mistake, such as naming the folder incorrectly, using an out of date version, or sometimes even using the wrong software (note that some emulators have two or three ‘rivals’ that do the same thing, hunt out the one that works best for you).