Is there any kind of technical write up of how this was accomplished? Looking at the Git history of the branch that introduced the plugin[1] was a bit rough, but I did find an interesting commit[2]. That commit looks like it patches some other code (apparently some pspnet_apctl.prx module)[3] but maybe all the discussion was in Discord and it's not been written up elsewhere?
It's probably unreasonable to ask for such details without delving into how PSP software images are structured and learning that ecosystem. Also maybe it's obvious for someone with a more low level understanding of the WPA 1 vs. 2 differences. But here I am unreasonably curious. :)
I'm far from an expert, but what is most likely is:
- The underlying firmware for the Marvell WiFi controller that Sony provided when they updated the PSP to support WPA (with AES) also supports WPA2 (with AES).
- Sony never set it up on the userspace side, perhaps for stability reasons or because there was no demand and they preferred playing it safe.
- The patches swap out the userspace bits to talk WPA AES with the ones for a WPA2 AES. The difference isn't huge, it's mostly changing data in some management frames and configuring the key exchange differently.
It's very impressive that that developer found the right things to patch, with the right values.
I'm amazed it was so close all that time and hackers didnt turn it on back then. 20 years ago the internet was just coming into its own as a collaboration platform for large anonymous groups. I remember hackers set up a public website where you could annotate blocks of the PSP firmware as you reverse engineered it.
I remember the cat and mouse game with sony on the swaploit and eventually hacked firmare being released. I remember when the first psp dev kit was released on linux. I had a macbook but tried it bc it was just a huge shell script. Imagine my glee when, after 5 minutes of chunking spinning rust. I was able to compile code for the PSP! Then I remember the first time someone figured out how to send graphics commanda to its gpu and also how to change the cpu speed between 111/222/333 MHz.
I remember the first euro-style demo I saw by Alonetrio, which I modified to create PSPKick. Then came the first Atari 2600 emu and then then the first C64 emu. The spirit of collaboration was lively, jovial, fraternal, and celebratory!
Thanks for that perspective and detail, it makes a lot of sense. The first link also has some very nice establishing context for the environment. I'd still love to read the technical journey of the developer because I agree it is very impressive.
Absolutely love the PSP - it was such a mind blowing piece of hardware at the time. The portables in my life were an iPod and a Game Boy Advance. Then a buddy of mine showed me the model he had just imported from Japan running Wipeout - it was hard to believe my eyes.
It truly felt like the future in a way very few pieces of tech have managed to pull off since. One of Sony’s peak accomplishments.
I had a PSP and also loved it, but I don’t feel like it was that mind blowing. The tricks they pulled made it less impressive IMO. Most games felt like cheap pantomime versions of what you wanted them to be, you’d buy something and then go “oh, never mind”.
The homebrew scene was much more impressive than anything official, if you ask me.
God of war chains of olympus, metal gear solid peace walker, crisis core ff7, test drive unlimited, motor storm artic edge... I could go on.
I don't see a world where a handheld console released in 2005 being able to play these games isn't impressive. And I wonder what homebrew could offer to match these games too.
I could see this as an adult, but as a kid, this thing was killer.
I remember thinking: "Whoa, burnout 3 is something I play on the big screen in the living room, and now it looks the same and I can play it on a handheld device?" (it definitely didn't look the same, but I was about 5 when it came out, so I never paid much attention to the differences. Also sorry if I'm making you feel old).
I also remember it being the first to do a joystick on a handheld. That was pretty cool.
I had a PSP and also loved it, but I don’t feel like it was that mind blowing.
Perhaps you came to the PSP late in its cycle.
I happened to be in Tokyo when the PSP was released. I was on a subway and saw a girl playing Lumines and it completely blew my mind.
As soon as I was done with my daytime obligations, I went straight to Yodobashi Camera and bought one. When I got back to the U.S., showing it to people always blew their minds, also.
Until then, the notion of "handheld gaming" was mostly the early GameBoy series, and maybe Lynx. The PSP was a whole different category.
It was niche outside of Japan but Monster Hunter Freedom/Portable was incredible and wildly more successful than the console edition - the PSP and social monhun parties in Japan validated a brand new IP for Capcom
Admittedly with homebrew it was even more fun when the community patched MHP3 translations and we would have AdHoc wifi parties proxied over the net using a dongle. Good times
Some of the games were awesome. I spent a lot of time playing the star wars battlefront game on there. And armored core formula front, wipeout, a few others.
You’re not wrong that a lot of them felt hollow. Like that assassin’s creed game that had virtually nobody walking around on the street and felt like a dead world as a result.
It was mind blowing at that time because it felt solid and you can even watch movies on it. Too bad Sony abandoned it. The form factor was amazing even Nintendo and Steam copied it.
I just never felt like there were games worth buying for the PSP. I only ever got three - Crisis Core, FFT, and God of War Chains of Olympus. The system collected dust mostly. My DS got a lot more use, because Nintendo is just better at making games imo.
I was lucky enough to travel with my PSP and played Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I have no clue how it would detect which country I was in, but you could capture mercenaries and every country I visited seemed to have distinct "soldiers".
Still remember catching a ton of max-leveled soldier's when I was in Russia.
I never had a PSP but also didn’t really want one after seeing my friend’s. It seemed way too fragile and complicated, not rugged and simple like Nintendo portables.
It also had a bigger problem in that it seemed to be designed for (and built a library of) ports from regular consoles. I’ve always believed full console ports make lousy portable games because they’re not designed for stop-and-go play sessions. I’m not interested in playing through some epic boss battle in God of War while waiting in line at the grocery store. On the other hand, I’m totally fine with playing a few moves in a quick adventure/puzzle/strategy game on a DS.
And that’s the crux of it. PSP seems to be designed for portable play only around the house. In that case I’d rather just have a regular console.
> I’ve always believed full console ports make lousy portable games because they’re not designed for stop-and-go play sessions.
I realized this after purchasing a Steam Deck. Initially I installed things like Apex Legends (rip) and Doom Eternal, but even with gyro and trackpads, it's just didn't feel great on a small screen. I will admit playing through the entire Master Chief Collection over various transits made my inner child kind of giddy. But Halo's chapter format and slow-paced combat makes it kind of an unique fit.
On the go I now mostly use my Deck for things like Slay The Spire, Ori, Okami, Hollow Knight, Tails of Iron, Stardew Valley, Baba is You, etc; Docked with a TV, playing the aforementioned FPS is fine. Or party games like Heave-Ho :-).
To be honest, I do kind of wish for a Vita-like, running SteamOS, with enough horsepower to run previously mentioned OTG games. Key factor is to be 'pocketable'.
> And that’s the crux of it. PSP seems to be designed for portable play only around the house. In that case I’d rather just have a regular console.
Sometimes the TV gets relinquished to the other half, in which case its nice to stil snuggle up instead of sequestering yourself to the study.
The thing is an absolute tank. I vividly remember the horror of dropping mine onto a concrete floor from a significant height – with no consequences, other than a minor paint chip.
And the thing features an optical disk drive! Between that and MiniDisc, I'm still convinced that Sony's mechanical engineers are wizards.
I feel like with sleep mode on the DS, PSP and later handhelds that became mostly moot anyways. There are still great OG Game Boy games I probably wouldn't want to play in the grocery store line (e.g., Link's Awakening) but with sleep mode it doesn't really matter. You just stop whenever, pick up whenever. Arguably the PSP suffered from not going all in on console style gaming with just a single analog stick. SO many games on there suffered from that.
The PSP was definitely more complicated, and perhaps more fragile but it felt incredibly futuristic in early 2005. Graphics basically as good as my home PS2, you could watch really high quality movies, music on the go, browse the web.
I couldn't stomach the cost. At the time you could get a PS2 for the same or less money, do I could never justify a PSP. Nowadays I'm not broke so maybe I could though, but that ingrained mental block of "too expensive" is hard to get past
It's the only machine I ever got at launch. Utterly gigantic purchase for 14 year old me
This was more than a small part due to the calculation that early models were more likely to be hacked and I'd save myself a lot of money emulating snes games instead of buying new ones...
I have my own special experience with the PSP, totally unrelated to games. Back in 2009 I was deployed to the middle east. At the time, connectivity was difficult: we used phone cards to call back home. One alternative was that you could use Skype on the PSP, and the cost of a call was very cheap. I remember hanging out in random cafes (probably the Cinnabon outside the Navy base in Bahrain) using their Wi-Fi to call home. Thanks for the reminder of a great memory!
I wonder what a RPi 2040 could accomplish with its dedicated realtime components. Add a variable (center frequency and bandwidth) bandpass circuitry to filter out nasty harmonics and I'd guess you can at least go for purely software transmitting CW (morse code), FM and the various digital modes like DMR that are AFAIK all variations of either straight FM or FSK.
FPGAs are too expensive / require too niche knowledge to pull it off, and regular GPIOs suffer from hardware interrupts...
The other question of course is how to receive, but I guess for that you can use an RTL-SDR...
I wonder if the Marvell Libertas 88W8010 chip could be replaced with one from the same family but with 5 GHz support. That would require additional patches but probably not a whole rewrite.
It’s a beautiful thing that people are still keeping the homebrew PSP scene alive. PSP homebrew is what got me into programming and security in the first place.
Sick, I still have mine and now I won't have to turn off security on my hotspot for the PSP to connect. Last year I spot welded a panasonic prismatic cell from a toughbook onto the original psp batt board to get a decent batt. The chinesium ones wouldn't last and my original was long dead.
Readit News
It's probably unreasonable to ask for such details without delving into how PSP software images are structured and learning that ecosystem. Also maybe it's obvious for someone with a more low level understanding of the WPA 1 vs. 2 differences. But here I am unreasonably curious. :)
[1] https://github.com/PSP-Archive/ARK-4/commits/rev160/
[2] https://github.com/PSP-Archive/ARK-4/commit/edcc6f01618e3e45...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/comments/1igh5c9/wpa2_support/m...
- The underlying firmware for the Marvell WiFi controller that Sony provided when they updated the PSP to support WPA (with AES) also supports WPA2 (with AES).
- Sony never set it up on the userspace side, perhaps for stability reasons or because there was no demand and they preferred playing it safe.
- The patches swap out the userspace bits to talk WPA AES with the ones for a WPA2 AES. The difference isn't huge, it's mostly changing data in some management frames and configuring the key exchange differently.
It's very impressive that that developer found the right things to patch, with the right values.
Looks like it has been in the works for a while.
https://psp-archive.github.io/apps/wpa2.html
https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/04/4865-2/
I remember the cat and mouse game with sony on the swaploit and eventually hacked firmare being released. I remember when the first psp dev kit was released on linux. I had a macbook but tried it bc it was just a huge shell script. Imagine my glee when, after 5 minutes of chunking spinning rust. I was able to compile code for the PSP! Then I remember the first time someone figured out how to send graphics commanda to its gpu and also how to change the cpu speed between 111/222/333 MHz.
I remember the first euro-style demo I saw by Alonetrio, which I modified to create PSPKick. Then came the first Atari 2600 emu and then then the first C64 emu. The spirit of collaboration was lively, jovial, fraternal, and celebratory!
The module patches the PSP kernel WPA module to make it use the native WPA2 capability of the chip/firmware instead of WPA.
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It truly felt like the future in a way very few pieces of tech have managed to pull off since. One of Sony’s peak accomplishments.
The homebrew scene was much more impressive than anything official, if you ask me.
God of war chains of olympus, metal gear solid peace walker, crisis core ff7, test drive unlimited, motor storm artic edge... I could go on.
I don't see a world where a handheld console released in 2005 being able to play these games isn't impressive. And I wonder what homebrew could offer to match these games too.
I remember thinking: "Whoa, burnout 3 is something I play on the big screen in the living room, and now it looks the same and I can play it on a handheld device?" (it definitely didn't look the same, but I was about 5 when it came out, so I never paid much attention to the differences. Also sorry if I'm making you feel old).
I also remember it being the first to do a joystick on a handheld. That was pretty cool.
I worked on a bunch of PSP titles, my personal favourite was Bloodlines - are you not entertained?
Perhaps you came to the PSP late in its cycle.
I happened to be in Tokyo when the PSP was released. I was on a subway and saw a girl playing Lumines and it completely blew my mind.
As soon as I was done with my daytime obligations, I went straight to Yodobashi Camera and bought one. When I got back to the U.S., showing it to people always blew their minds, also.
Until then, the notion of "handheld gaming" was mostly the early GameBoy series, and maybe Lynx. The PSP was a whole different category.
Admittedly with homebrew it was even more fun when the community patched MHP3 translations and we would have AdHoc wifi parties proxied over the net using a dongle. Good times
Most of the games still hold up and emulation is very easy to run. Probably the best handheld of its era.
Only limited by it's controls. KZ was great, they even had to patch in the last chapter, but it was an amazing game.
You’re not wrong that a lot of them felt hollow. Like that assassin’s creed game that had virtually nobody walking around on the street and felt like a dead world as a result.
But there were some gems.
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Because while I definitely bought a PSP, I definitely have never bought a UMD-based game to play on it.
It was quite amazing at the time, and (IMHO) it remains a spectacularly-good handheld for playing whatever games with an emulator or whatever.
(Am I the reason why we can't have nice things? Yes, perhaps. Perhaps I am.)
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Still remember catching a ton of max-leveled soldier's when I was in Russia.
It also had a bigger problem in that it seemed to be designed for (and built a library of) ports from regular consoles. I’ve always believed full console ports make lousy portable games because they’re not designed for stop-and-go play sessions. I’m not interested in playing through some epic boss battle in God of War while waiting in line at the grocery store. On the other hand, I’m totally fine with playing a few moves in a quick adventure/puzzle/strategy game on a DS.
And that’s the crux of it. PSP seems to be designed for portable play only around the house. In that case I’d rather just have a regular console.
I realized this after purchasing a Steam Deck. Initially I installed things like Apex Legends (rip) and Doom Eternal, but even with gyro and trackpads, it's just didn't feel great on a small screen. I will admit playing through the entire Master Chief Collection over various transits made my inner child kind of giddy. But Halo's chapter format and slow-paced combat makes it kind of an unique fit.
On the go I now mostly use my Deck for things like Slay The Spire, Ori, Okami, Hollow Knight, Tails of Iron, Stardew Valley, Baba is You, etc; Docked with a TV, playing the aforementioned FPS is fine. Or party games like Heave-Ho :-).
To be honest, I do kind of wish for a Vita-like, running SteamOS, with enough horsepower to run previously mentioned OTG games. Key factor is to be 'pocketable'.
> And that’s the crux of it. PSP seems to be designed for portable play only around the house. In that case I’d rather just have a regular console.
Sometimes the TV gets relinquished to the other half, in which case its nice to stil snuggle up instead of sequestering yourself to the study.
The thing is an absolute tank. I vividly remember the horror of dropping mine onto a concrete floor from a significant height – with no consequences, other than a minor paint chip.
And the thing features an optical disk drive! Between that and MiniDisc, I'm still convinced that Sony's mechanical engineers are wizards.
The PSP was definitely more complicated, and perhaps more fragile but it felt incredibly futuristic in early 2005. Graphics basically as good as my home PS2, you could watch really high quality movies, music on the go, browse the web.
Lik-Sang? Good ol' Lik-Sang, before Sony threw them into the ground. So much Japanese video game console eye candy for grabs.
This was more than a small part due to the calculation that early models were more likely to be hacked and I'd save myself a lot of money emulating snes games instead of buying new ones...
For me it was the Nokia Ngage, and ipod video. And then the airpods.
I believe that's a hardware limitation of the radio, which software won't be able to change.
(This comment was inspired by this actually functional crazy project: https://web.archive.org/web/20220104163626/http://www.icrobo... | HN discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Pi+fm)
I wonder what a RPi 2040 could accomplish with its dedicated realtime components. Add a variable (center frequency and bandwidth) bandpass circuitry to filter out nasty harmonics and I'd guess you can at least go for purely software transmitting CW (morse code), FM and the various digital modes like DMR that are AFAIK all variations of either straight FM or FSK.
FPGAs are too expensive / require too niche knowledge to pull it off, and regular GPIOs suffer from hardware interrupts...
The other question of course is how to receive, but I guess for that you can use an RTL-SDR...
It's exceedingly unlikely to find something from the time of the psp in 2003/2004 that has 802.11a 5GHz and isn't a business laptop.
It’s really lovely to see that we can keep making them useful and relevant.
PSP was so great that just seeing the screenshot of the WiFi networks trigger in me a nostalgic tear :’)