[HN Gopher] The 20 year old PSP can now connect to WPA2 WiFi Net...
___________________________________________________________________
The 20 year old PSP can now connect to WPA2 WiFi Networks
Author : zdw
Score : 426 points
Date : 2025-02-15 03:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wololo.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (wololo.net)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I was under the impression that you needed some sort of hardware
| support for WPA2. Is that not the case?
| cjaackie wrote:
| The thing is - and I tried finding out without success - that
| it's likely an off the shelf either Realtek or Broadcom WiFi
| chipset in the PSP that Sony probably omitted features on for
| stability reasons. Sounds like maybe these folks made it happen
| :) amazing to see
| hiatus wrote:
| Seems like it is Marvell.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20090929182619/http://www.arm.co.
| ..
| noname120 wrote:
| Marvell Libertas 88W8010 + Marvell Libertas 88W8380
|
| More info: https://www.psdevwiki.com/psp/Wlan
|
| Datasheet: https://uofw.github.io/upspd/docs/hardware/Liberta
| s_WLAN_cli...
| londons_explore wrote:
| You normally need _firmware_ support for WPA2.
|
| Obviously the availability of firmware is strongly linked to
| the hardware, and since firmware isn't open source, adding a
| big feature like WPA2 if it isn't already there is very hard.
|
| However, I believe there is also the option of capturing raw
| (encrypted) packets and doing all the encryption fully in
| software.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't think so? Isn't the point of the suplicant model
| introduced in wpa1 that you can upgrade security in software,
| so upgrading to wpa2 should be possible for most things that
| ran wpa1 and had a viable way to get software upgrades.
| userbinator wrote:
| Newer hardware has accelerators for encryption, but that can be
| done in software too. AFAIK the physical layer is the same, and
| WEP/WPA/WPA2 are layers on top, implemented by firmware or host
| software.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Very few of 16-bit PC cards support 11g and/or WPA1, and it was
| supposed to be hardware/firmware limitation, though I'm not
| sure of the details either.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Nope, for Wi-Fi the security doesn't sit on the physical or
| link (radio) layer. It's not an accurate comparison but it's
| similar to how TLS, too, doesn't sit on the physical or data
| link layer.
| petergs wrote:
| 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.
| gyomu wrote:
| 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.
| monkpit wrote:
| 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.
| sky2224 wrote:
| 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.
| Nursie wrote:
| 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.
|
| But there were some gems.
| djmips wrote:
| Cry. Bloodlines was something I worked on and was quite
| proud of. But you can't please everyone.
| Nursie wrote:
| Sorry!
|
| I love the AC franchise and have been playing it* since
| the beginning. I know it was because of the limited power
| of the platform that you couldn't have the usual crowds
| of bystanders etc. I'm sure it was a great game in
| general, it just felt like a bit of a ghost town :/
|
| (* on and off, I took a break around 3/black flag after a
| bit of burnout)
| djmips wrote:
| As I mentioned in other comments we only had 9 months
| from zero to finished original game with no source code
| or help from a very busy Ubisoft other than some
| reference assets (which were completely redone for the
| PSP). If we had more time, another year, bigger crowds
| would have been a high priority!
| spike021 wrote:
| the homebrew scene is what got me into programming. i knew
| some of the great minds back then and really idolized what
| they were able to pull off.
| conradev wrote:
| It was the first handheld device I had with a web browser,
| years before I got my iPod touch
| jolmg wrote:
| That 2.0 update was mind-blowing on its own. Smallest
| device you could browse the web with, I think? Pretty sure
| it was still the time of PDAs, before smartphones.
|
| EDIT: Yeah, July 2005, 2 years before the iPhone came out.
|
| https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/254588/psp-2-0-upd
| a...
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Smallest device you could browse the web with, I think?
|
| I'd contest that the Blackberry devices were smaller and
| earlier, e.g the 7230 from 2003[0]. Pretty sure some of
| the iPAQs (and other CE devices) arrived with wifi and a
| browser before 2005 as well since Pocket PC 2000 shipped
| with a version of IE 3.1.
|
| [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-evolution-of-the-
| blackberry-f...
| davidron wrote:
| Handspring Trio had a web browser by (before?) 2003 with
| a touchscreen. I loved mine!
| mod50ack wrote:
| It wasn't until 2009 - which is also when my family got
| WiFi (and switched from dial-up) - that I got mine: a
| Nintendo DSi.
|
| Objectively, that browser was terrible, even at the time.
| But the ability to just read text on my own (and not have
| to ask to use the family computer - and to stay up all
| night reading under the covers, which was much harder with
| books) was amazing then! Of course, it would seem so quaint
| to kids today.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Yeah. As a high schooler I just wanted to use AIM on it,
| but all the web-based AIM clients required Flash at the
| time, which wasn't supported in the PSP browser.
|
| So I ended up hacking together a site called AIMonPSP with
| PHP and MySQL that did all the AIM communication on the
| server instead of client-side. Made a decent amount of
| money (for a high schooler) on AdSense banners, and learned
| a lot about software design the hard way.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| what kind of server did you Host it on? local Desktop?
| and how did it manage traffic and bandwidth?
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Started on a VPS and then scaled to a single larger
| dedicated server through a hosting company. It was never
| doing crazy amounts of traffic, maybe 1-2k concurrent
| users at peak, and the frontend was just doing slow
| polling every few seconds.
| djmips wrote:
| I feel a bit hurt. ;-)
|
| I worked on a bunch of PSP titles, my personal favourite was
| Bloodlines - are you not entertained?
| thastings wrote:
| Tell us more! I still beleieve that the PSP is a killer
| platform, those games are beautiful with 60 fps mods at
| high resolutions. I never really stopped playing them, just
| moved them to my phone.
| the4anoni wrote:
| +1, tell us more.
|
| Personally back in the days I had Nintendo DSi, but just
| recently I bought gamepad for phone just to check what I
| have missed by not owning PSP at that time :)
| djmips wrote:
| I can tell you how surprised I was to find out that index
| triangles were slower than triangle lists on the PSP due
| to (I conjecture) a broken vertex cache in the PSP
| graphics hardware (guessing it was rushed out with this
| bug). The huge challenge of clipping triangles on the PSP
| - they had to be clipped on the CPU. I loved working on
| the PSP and wished we could have done more PSP projects.
| thastings wrote:
| Despite the limitations, many games pulled off amazing
| graphics. Many in the thread compare it to the PS2, but
| that's unfair. Doing better than PS1 graphics in a
| handheld was quite an accomplishment back then.
| Interestingly, the quality of the assets in these games
| didn't have a chance to show on the 480x272 screen of the
| PSP. However, many games, including Bloodlines, Gran
| Turismo, both GTA's, just to name a few, look very close
| to PS2 when upscaled. So the work was very much put into
| these titles, and it shows, even after two decades.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I recall Bloodlines as not being a bad game, but not
| particularly good either. I think the biggest problem with
| PSP is that lots of games were just diet ports of PS2
| games. Why play them if you can play better versions of
| same games on PS2? Having said that, there were absolute
| gems in the library, and it breaks my heart that in some
| alternative universe I haven't played Patapon or LocoRoco.
| djmips wrote:
| Bloodlines was not a diet port. It was an original. Given
| what we had to do and the timeframe we had (9 months) we
| had to go from zero to finished game and it was a
| terrific challenge. We had no original source code so
| everything you see, including the mobile version of
| parkour, all the game systems, complete pipeline from
| Maya had to be designed and built as well as getting a
| game finished. I truly believe the project was a AAA
| endeavour but with a AA budget and timeframe. Assassin's
| Creed, the original game has a much larger scope but also
| a much larger team and a four year development time.
| Bloodlines if only given an additional months to a year
| could have been outstanding. I'm still very proud of the
| accomplishment of our team given our constraints.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| As someone involved in the game production, you saw all
| the hard work and miracles that happened. It's your child
| and you love it even if it's imperfect. As audience, I
| compare this game to a different one, without any regard
| to the constrains you had. Heck, I'll give your game a
| bad score simply because I don't like the genre, in which
| case there's absolutely nothing you could've done to
| improve my experience.
|
| I just grabbed my PSP and took a look at the save file of
| Bloodlines. It says "Percentage completed: 0", which is
| super strange, because I distinctly remember playing the
| game as a kid when visiting my aunt. Maybe I actually
| enjoyed the game, but the savefile got fucked, I got
| angry, and never played it again? My memories are hazy,
| but now that I focus, I do remember enjoying it, but not
| much beyond that.
|
| BTW when looking at the save files, what strikes me is
| how few games I actually played. To me it seems like
| there were lots of them, but actually no, I just spent
| lots of time playing same games.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| When you think about it too long, the fact that one day
| you're a kid, and then you're not a kid anymore is super
| strange
| thastings wrote:
| I'm impressed! Bloodlines was the only AC I've ever
| finished completely, and even though the story was odd at
| some points, I found the gameplay and the graphics to be
| spot on for the platform. Very enjoyable for teenager me
| back then, and still holds up quite well. Doing this in 9
| months... Just wow.
| bluesign wrote:
| been long time but I recall playing it on PSP, ( before
| playing the AC game before though ) I have pretty good
| memories, and it was one of the best games I played on
| PSP for sure.
|
| I think maybe Sony created too high expectations with
| PSP.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I loved my PSP and the homebrew scene during that era. The
| biggest area where the PSP felt like it was lacking was
| with multiplayer games. I remember playing some fighting
| and puzzle games with friends on the PSP, but the most fun
| wireless multiplayer experiences were on the DS; and
| primarily it was Mario Kart DS. The real killer feature was
| being able to play with friends without requiring them to
| own the game; I don't think PSP games were capable of this.
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| For some reason the DS didn't take off at all in the area
| I grew up (neither did the original Pokemon games despite
| seemingly being massive everywhere and the cartoon being
| a big hit in my school).
|
| it was only like ten years later when I got to realise
| how great those download play titles must have been for
| some kids. PSP games would have been way too large to
| pull off similar stuff, DS games were often only a few
| megabytes
| Talanes wrote:
| Maybe it's just because it was high school and not
| elementary school, but I remember basically everyone who
| was into games even a bit having a DS, but nobody used
| them as a daily carry portable. It was something you'd
| just notice in people's rooms when you went over.
| thastings wrote:
| There were some games that had a feature called game
| sharing. This let you send a smaller version of the game,
| essentially a demo, to another PSP over wifi, and this
| let you at least try the experience without owning the
| game. Burnout Legends definitely did this, but I also
| remember it on some NFS and sports titles. I just found a
| list of games that did this.[0] Also, there were some
| good shooters as well, like Medal of Honor or
| Battlefront, with pretty nice maps, especially for a
| handheld. And for racing games, Gran Turismo was
| incredible with almost all GT5 tracks and 900+ cars
| present.
|
| [0] https://www.lifewire.com/psp-games-with-
| gameshare-2792549
| chmod775 wrote:
| > I don't think PSP games were capable of this.
|
| They were. You could play Tekken against a friend without
| him having to own the game. It was great.
|
| But in general not many games did this. Since even Tekken
| had pretty high load times, I suspect that the much
| higher graphical fidelity of the PSP made most games just
| too big for this to work well.
| lordviet wrote:
| I remember being so excited for Bloodlines because I had no
| way to play AC2. It was really impressive what you and your
| team managed to accomplish on a handheld. Now knowing that
| you built it from the ground up makes it even more amazing.
|
| Can you share more about the experience, the development
| process, and any other PSP titles you worked on?
| lxgr wrote:
| The PSP was probably the most hyped up gadget in my teenage
| years. It was launched only after a long delay in Europe,
| but even after all that time of waiting and the highest of
| expectations, it delivered. So thank you for being a part
| of that :)
|
| What other games did you work on?
| sky2224 wrote:
| You worked on AC: Bloodlines?!
|
| I absolutely loved that game. I remember playing it on my
| white Star Wars PSP with a decal of Darth Vader on the
| back. I spent so many hours sitting on my bean bag chair
| playing it.
|
| Thank you for making my childhood more fun :)
| djmips wrote:
| I appreciate that! It was a really fun project to be part
| of.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| 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.
| djtango wrote:
| 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
| spookie wrote:
| I do not agree.
|
| 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.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Homebrew made the PSP a killer emulation machine way ahead
| of its time. You could emulate the original PlayStation,
| which was how I got around to playing the original Final
| Fantasy 7 (although I think this also had an official
| release, my memory is fuzzy). And it could emulate the
| SNES, which was how I got around to playing Chrono Trigger.
|
| Funnily enough, I remember some rumors going around about
| some people trying to develop an N64 emulator which never
| got released or went anywhere, AFAIK. I have a vague memory
| of a guy going by the ID PSDonkey or something like that.
| tripflag wrote:
| I played a bit of Super Mario 64 using an early version
| of Daedalus, so it was more than a rumour :>
|
| Granted, it ran at about 80-90% realtime speed, and audio
| was a no-go, but maybe that improved in later releases.
| circuit10 wrote:
| As someone who modded my PSP a few years ago I can
| confirm that Mario 64 now runs fine with working sound,
| and you can even force it into widescreen
| goosedragons wrote:
| FF7 did get an official PSN release playable on PSP. You
| could play FF1-9 on PSP by the end of it's life once the
| port of the DS version of FFIII arrived. There was also a
| PSN release of the PS1 version of Chrono Trigger, which
| is actually how I played through it (although perhaps on
| Vita).
| lxgr wrote:
| PS1 emulation on the PSP is actually mostly a native Sony
| feature! Sony has always been very interested in
| backwards compatibility; initially to solve the chicken-
| and-egg problem of a new console not having many titles
| available at launch, but later largely focusing on
| additional revenue by selling people digital downloads
| for games they might well already own (because they
| removed native media compatibility...)
|
| For the PSP, media compatibility was obviously never a
| possibility, but as I understand it, the native PS1
| emulator on the PSP essentially works with completely
| unmodified PS1 ISOs in some sort of container file
| format, which homebrew developers have then quickly
| reverse engineered.
|
| The emulator itself is technically quite impressive, and
| apparently largely runs unmodified PS1 MIPS R3000 code on
| the PSP's MIPS R4000, although the GPU is emulated [1].
|
| [1] https://www.eurogamer.net/investigating-the-psps-
| psone-emula...
| psygn89 wrote:
| Grand Theft Auto 3 (Liberty City Stories) running on the
| handheld... mind blown.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| The homebrew scene is why I still have no idea if the UMD
| drive in the PSP that I bought new a million years ago has
| ever worked.
|
| 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.)
| lxgr wrote:
| To be fair, Sony released an UMD-less model themselves!
| Many titles, especially later in the system's life, got a
| digital/PSN release in addition to the UMD one, and some
| were even digital exclusive.
| ezconnect wrote:
| 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.
| roboror wrote:
| It's a cool device but the display was terrible.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| thastings wrote:
| I got a PSP-3000 during high school, and loved it. In
| addition to playing native and PS1 games, it was a very
| powerful media player as well. Much more versatile than
| most phones at the time, especially with its nice, though
| not very hi-res, screen. The PSP wasn't very common in our
| area, but I managed to get some friends to get one, and we
| had a lot of fun with multiplayer too.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Wipeout Pure was a absolutely mind blowing in 2004. Nothing on
| mobile platforms came close to it. It was indeed a portable
| playstation.
| cmxch wrote:
| In the right circumstances, Wipeout Pure also was a decent
| web browser.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Wow! I had no idea about that. Looks like it shipped with a
| web browser built-in indeed:
|
| https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/920780-wipeout-
| pure/204...
| freedomben wrote:
| 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
| jolmg wrote:
| I mean, it's a PS2, but portable, so more difficult to make
| and more usable...
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| 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...
| have-a-break wrote:
| 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.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Yeah PSP got the most play time even vs the DS
| chongli wrote:
| 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.
| goosedragons wrote:
| 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.
| jorvi wrote:
| > 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.
| keyringlight wrote:
| The impression I have is that 'game playing devices' coming
| out now are picking points on a speed-quality-cost style
| trilemma triangle, except it's desktop PC/couch+TV
| console/portables. All the different products are picking
| different points in the triangle to see if there's a
| market, if laptops are a step away from desktops, then the
| GPD Win is a second step towards portables, the steam deck
| is third. The software side also answers another desire
| that a lot of people have which is to have PC games with a
| more console-like management experience, and the desire for
| the steambox to do something similar for HTPC form factor
| never went away.
| lxgr wrote:
| > It seemed way too fragile and complicated
|
| 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.
| kotaKat wrote:
| > just imported from Japan
|
| Lik-Sang? Good ol' Lik-Sang, before Sony threw them into the
| ground. So much Japanese video game console eye candy for
| grabs.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| >It truly felt like the future in a way very few pieces of tech
| have managed to pull off since.
|
| For me it was the Nokia Ngage, and ipod video. And then the
| airpods.
| danbolt wrote:
| Semiconductors are a magical thing, and I've always felt like
| their quick obsolescence is a bit sad.
|
| It's really lovely to see that we can keep making them useful and
| relevant.
| userbinator wrote:
| _2.4 GHz Only_
|
| I believe that's a hardware limitation of the radio, which
| software won't be able to change.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Even the much newer first generation PS4 from 2013/2014 is a
| 2.4 GHz only wifi device.
|
| 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.
| nicman23 wrote:
| huh 5ghz existed since 1999
| walrus01 wrote:
| Yeah, but certainly wasn't common until 802.11n 5GHz stuff
| shipped and became in common consumer use. The target
| market for a psp would have had 802.11b or .g 2.4 GHz only
| home routers/APs. Think Linksys wrt54g and similar.
| felixg3 wrote:
| Yes and even plenty of 802.11n devices were 2.4Ghz only.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| It was actually the first band that wifi supported.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It was not, 802.11 (no letters) and 802.11b were 2.4GHz.
| the 802.11a standard came later.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| We had a fleet of PCMCIA cards for wardriving in the early
| 2000s, but only one for 802.11a.
|
| It was rare to find, but the networks were left weirdly
| open, presumably because it was rare, limited range, and
| they didn't care to troubleshoot security on top of
| connectivity.
| Aachen wrote:
| Not with that attitude you can't. Simply overclock the CPU to 5
| GHz and connect an antenna to pin 8!
|
| (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)
| xg15 wrote:
| This is amazing! Saved.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Ham here. This is _nuts_, thanks.
|
| 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...
| noname120 wrote:
| 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.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| 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.
| opello wrote:
| 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. :)
|
| [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...
| Ambroos wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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/
| chillingeffect wrote:
| 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!
| opello wrote:
| 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.
| noname120 wrote:
| Yeah so basically the Marvell Libertas 88W8380 supports 802.11i
| (also known as WPA2) out of the box:
| https://uofw.github.io/upspd/docs/hardware/Libertas_WLAN_cli...
|
| The module patches the PSP kernel WPA module to make it use the
| native WPA2 capability of the chip/firmware instead of WPA.
| UnlockedSecrets wrote:
| Damn it's been 20 years since the PSP.... loved that thing
| growing up.... So much Monster Hunter Freedom Unite... grabbed
| mine off the shelf after all this time just to feel it again and
| the battery is almost 1 inch thick.... Guess it's time to go
| through some of the old electronics and recycle the batteries
| before they either off gas, or catch something on fire...
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Same. Mine had expanded so much it almost popped the battery
| panel off. Thankfully replacements are quite cheap! I went
| through and replaced old ones on my PSPs, DSs, etc and now keep
| em all charged (with a mess of cables) to hopefully keep em
| semi healthy and not cause a bonfire in my closet.
| hx8 wrote:
| I wonder if we'll start to see services that allow you to
| download home-brew directly onto the PSP now (similar to Vita
| services), instead of having to transfer everything over SD
| cards.
|
| The PSP is fantastic, I use mine often.
| noname120 wrote:
| https://brew.psp.place/hb/ has an installable channel on the
| PSP: https://brew.psp.place/hb/HDStore.prs
| nektro wrote:
| wow one of the most ad-ridden sites i've ever seen
| wao0uuno wrote:
| ublock origin
| waltercool wrote:
| This is good news
|
| And finally non-political articles here lol
| pfoof wrote:
| Would love to see the same for Nintendo DS but no chance with
| this tiny SoC
| hassleblad23 wrote:
| I bought a PSP last year and now its my main gaming device in
| 2025. I wish Sony brings it back in some form.
| gregjw wrote:
| The PSP was a masterpiece of a device. Glad people still tinker
| with them.
| illwrks wrote:
| I still have mine (PSP 1000 ), such an amazing piece of tech. I
| did an IPS screen mod over covid, it made it 10 times better - no
| more ghosting of the display and vibrant colours!
| INTPenis wrote:
| That's great, I just started using WPA3. As far as my radio
| neighbors tell me, I'm the only one.
| Avamander wrote:
| I wish someone did this for the Nintendo DS or added WPA3 support
| to 3DS. I haven't seen any public RE effort going into
| replacement WiFi modules of those.
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| It doesn't even have an OS. The launcher would have to
| dynamically patch the games. Not impossible, but a lot
| trickier, I guess.
| the4anoni wrote:
| DS games didn't even worked with WPA.
|
| Only DSi Enchanced and 3DS games supported WPA2 at best. Your
| best bet is using older router with OpenWRT to make WPA3 to WEP
| bridge.
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Problem is that from what I've read, the system firmware is
| embedded in a module that also serves as WiFi. There is a
| chance that the firmware could be hacked to enable WPA2, but
| probably not WPA3.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| What is more impressive, that Moment fella solved that 20y,
| considered very hard evident by the in Discord's bot's response,
| issue within 3d after joining the scene.
| joshuaturner wrote:
| I love seeing old hardware kept alive by community effort like
| this.
|
| Would love to see similar for the Sidekick, although I know
| hardware limitations will make that much less likely to
| materialize anything meaningful.
|
| I just want to flip it open to respond to a text message one more
| time.
| agentkilo wrote:
| This is impressive!
|
| I still have my PSP 3000 (bought over a decade ago), which is in
| great condition, despite the frequency I whip it out and have fun
| playing the classics.
|
| I mostly just play vanilla single-player games on it, so there's
| rarely a need to bring it online. But when that occasion appears,
| it can be really cumbersome. I keep a cheap mobile hotspot around
| and have it work in WEP mode, just for bridging my PSP to other
| WiFi networks. I will definitely try this instead.
|
| That said, I think a great feature of PSP (and other old-gen
| handhelds) is, it can work great while being completely offline.
| I think I will keep it forever, or until they stop making new
| batteries for it.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Garbage website
| palla89 wrote:
| I can't think enough how amazing it is: so much time invested in
| a 20 years old console without any money reward!
|
| PSP was so great that just seeing the screenshot of the WiFi
| networks trigger in me a nostalgic tear :')
| 0xTJ wrote:
| When I had a DS Lite when I was younger, it was annoying to me
| that I couldn't connect to the Wi-Fi at home. (IIRC) It only had
| WEP, instead of WPA(2?).
| stn8188 wrote:
| 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!
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| yet another celebration of something that would be banal if there
| were any attention to true open source movement (no, bsd and mit
| not n included)
| mdtrooper wrote:
| There are two important things about wololo. One they did the
| jailbreak to PSP. And they made
| https://github.com/WagicProject/wagic (the best open source
| alternative to Magic the Gathering).
| mortos wrote:
| Just in time for WPA3 to begin to be all but required, as WiFi 7
| MLO requires strict WPA3.
|
| This is pretty awesome though to see new life breathed into these
| devices. I know the Vita has a big community around homebrew and
| emulators.
| gatane wrote:
| Please, do not bother the devs on how to install this on your
| PSP, the plugin is still on the works.
|
| Source: the PSP Discord.
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