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Is the memory stick format capable of reading any information other than movies, music and pictures? Do you think that in the near future we are going to be able to load NES, SNES, MAME and other various emulators onto the memory stick to play on the PSP? Or perhaps some of the great homebrew stuff floating around like over at zeldaclassic.com for example? I don't want to debate the ethics or legality of something like this just whether it's possible, I guess...

IMO: I doubt because of the popularity of the device that you'll be seeing anything like this anytime soon. As long as there's legit, revenue-building software coming out, Sony would probably quelch any type of homebrew/emulation development.

Look at Nintendo with the GBA, it's possible, but hard to get around (the Lik-Sang suit, et al), but then you can look at the NGage and the post-death Dreamcast, where such development has become commonplace.

I actually asked Banky about that last night.. I asked him how long before someone made a third party program to rip entire games onto a memory stick.. he says two weeks, I say a week and a half.

The Dreamcast had absolutely no piracy detection. You can literally burn a game on a CD-R, pop it in, and play. No mod chip needed, no boot disk, nothing. I heard rumors that they fixed it later in the run, though. I have a first generation DC ($199.99, baby!) and it plays burned games (Half-Life~!) and my NES rom CD.

I think it will happen. Can't see why it wouldn't. It has happened with just about every other console.

Scorch: you can't just burn a DC game and play it on the system.... there are special boot programs needed for the game to work...

Originally Posted by DreamSymphony Scorch: you can't just burn a DC game and play it on the system.... there are special boot programs needed for the game to work...

Sort of correct. Some of the games need a boot disk but the majority of them don't.

Or a self bootable program burned onto the disk with the game.

I hope someone figures it out - not for converting PSP games to the memory stick but just for things like Mame...

i'm betting that someone already has some code lined up for this sort of activity considering the psp's japan launch 6 months earlier. is there a diffence between the two?

Anything's possible. I'd be surprised if (1) no one ever found a way to run emulators off of the PSP (without having to mod even) and (2) if we saw anything along these lines in the first several months. I think it will take some time.

Someone found a way to have the xbox run linux without any modifications...never under-estimate the power of the mod scene programmers and hackers. There's some pretty creative people out there.

I read that the memory stick reader/usb is setup apart from the game cpu so that it cant read games from a memory stick.

Yeah, Scorch asked me about this yesterday. While I'm not advocating it, there are people who live for the thrill of cracking new hardware/software. I think it'll be just a matter of weeks before someone breaks it.

Then again, also like I told Scorch, if it's been out in Japan this long and it hasn't been done yet, it may not be done so quickly.

It took years to crack the Xbox

Originally Posted by WhipSmartBanky Yeah, Scorch asked me about this yesterday. While I'm not advocating it, there are people who live for the thrill of cracking new hardware/software. I think it'll be just a matter of weeks before someone breaks it. Then again, also like I told Scorch, if it's been out in Japan this long and it hasn't been done yet, it may not be done so quickly.

Good point, maybe it won't be that surprising if someone cracks it close to the US launch.

Originally Posted by Kayden It took years to crack the Xbox

Years? The Xbox has only been out like 3.5...how many years are you talking about?

Originally Posted by Michaellvortega I read that the memory stick reader/usb is setup apart from the game cpu so that it cant read games from a memory stick.

There's got to be a way around this since you must use the PSP buttons and stuff to navigate the memory card. I don't even think you would need the game cpu to run an emulator but then again I don't know what I'm talking about.

Originally Posted by WhipSmartBanky Years? The Xbox has only been out like 3.5...how many years are you talking about?

Somewhere between 1.1 and 3.5 years....

i don't know exactly how long because I didn't give half a damn about the xbox until recently... and even now its only .75 of a damn... but I do remember there being a large competition for cracking the xbox with a 1 million dollar reward.

Originally Posted by Kayden Somewhere between 1.1 and 3.5 years.... i don't know exactly how long because I didn't give half a damn about the xbox until recently... and even now its only .75 of a damn... but I do remember there being a large competition for cracking the xbox with a 1 million dollar reward.

That was a contest to get linux running on an Xbox without any modifications.

Originally Posted by Kayden Somewhere between 1.1 and 3.5 years.... i don't know exactly how long because I didn't give half a damn about the xbox until recently... and even now its only .75 of a damn... but I do remember there being a large competition for cracking the xbox with a 1 million dollar reward.

That was for a means to run unauthorized software without modifying the hardware. Modchips for Xbox were out within months.

The PSP is a bigger challenge. Going inside and doing any surgery is non-trivial, especially if you need space for an additional chip.

The primary problem is similar to getting the full screen resolution from video files on Memory Stick. Sony has puposely crippled the function. Unlike the codec that sees UMD data, the codec available for Memory Stick use is limited in its profile support to only supporting file formatted to 320x240. The PSP is set up to treat anything on Mem. Stick as data only. If you can't get it to look at stuff as code you cannot get applications running.

This is almost certainly just in the firmware. It would be a lot of added hassle to make it enforced by the hardware itself. This opens the door for hacked firmware but Sony games will likely scan for such and refuse to run on altered PSPs or even 'fix' the firmware was an approved version.

I doubt any emulators will show without the need for modding or hacked firmware, as serious as Sony is about digital rights I'm suprised they backed down on playing MP3s on the PSP..

There will probably be an XBlive style system of checking where by you wont be allowed to download game updates if your firmware has been altered to fix movie playback or play emulators.