5 ms·
The 20 year old PSP can now connect to WPA2 WiFi Networks
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoI was under the impression that you needed some sort of hardware support for WPA2. Is that not the case?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cjaackie 2y agoThe 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 2y agoSeems like it is Marvell. https://web.archive.org/web/20090929182619/http://www.arm.com/markets/home_solutions/armpp/8732.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090929182619/http://www.arm.co...
- noname120 2y agoMarvell Libertas 88W8010 + Marvell Libertas 88W8380 More info: https://www.psdevwiki.com/psp/Wlan https://www.psdevwiki.com/psp/Wlan Datasheet: https://uofw.github.io/upspd/docs/hardware/Libertas_WLAN_client_chipset.pdf https://uofw.github.io/upspd/docs/hardware/Libertas_WLAN_cli...
- londons_explore 2y agoYou 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoNewer 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 2y agoVery 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 2y agoNope, 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 2y agoIt’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 2y agoAbsolutely 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Nursie 2y agoSome 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 2y ago
- danbolt 2y agoSemiconductors 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 2y ago2.4 GHz Only I believe that's a hardware limitation of the radio, which software won't be able to change.
- walrus01 2y agoEven 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 2y agohuh 5ghz existed since 1999
- walrus01 2y agoYeah, 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 2y agoYes and even plenty of 802.11n devices were 2.4Ghz only.
- throwaway173738 2y agoIt was actually the first band that wifi supported.
- walrus01 2y agoIt was not, 802.11 (no letters) and 802.11b were 2.4GHz. the 802.11a standard came later.
- washadjeffmad 2y ago
- joecool1029 2y agoSick, 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 2y agoIs 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/ https://github.com/PSP-Archive/ARK-4/commits/rev160/ [2] https://github.com/PSP-Archive/ARK-4/commit/edcc6f01618e3e45206e9e87c610270bc1e4b989 https://github.com/PSP-Archive/ARK-4/commit/edcc6f01618e3e45... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/comments/1igh5c9/wpa2_support/maweuzk/?context=2 https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/comments/1igh5c9/wpa2_support/m...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ambroos 2y agoI'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://psp-archive.github.io/apps/wpa2.html https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/04/4865-2/ https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/04/4865-2/
- chillingeffect 2y agoI'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!
- UnlockedSecrets 2y agoDamn 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 2y agoSame. 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 2y agoI 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 2y agohttps://brew.psp.place/hb/ https://brew.psp.place/hb/ has an installable channel on the PSP: https://brew.psp.place/hb/HDStore.prs https://brew.psp.place/hb/HDStore.prs
- nektro 2y agowow one of the most ad-ridden sites i've ever seen
- wao0uuno 2y agoublock origin
- waltercool 2y agoThis is good news And finally non-political articles here lol
- pfoof 2y agoWould love to see the same for Nintendo DS but no chance with this tiny SoC
- hassleblad23 2y agoI bought a PSP last year and now its my main gaming device in 2025. I wish Sony brings it back in some form.
- gregjw 2y agoThe PSP was a masterpiece of a device. Glad people still tinker with them.
- forgotpwd16 2y agoWhat 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.
- illwrks 2y agoI 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 2y agoThat's great, I just started using WPA3. As far as my radio neighbors tell me, I'm the only one.
- Avamander 2y agoI 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 2y agoIt doesn't even have an OS. The launcher would have to dynamically patch the games. Not impossible, but a lot trickier, I guess.
- the4anoni 2y agoDS 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 2y agoProblem 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.
- joshuaturner 2y agoI 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 2y agoThis 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.
- palla89 2y agoI 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 :’)
- tobyhinloopen 2y agoGarbage website
- 0xTJ 2y agoWhen 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoyet 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 2y agoThere are two important things about wololo. One they did the jailbreak to PSP. And they made https://github.com/WagicProject/wagic https://github.com/WagicProject/wagic (the best open source alternative to Magic the Gathering).
- mortos 2y agoJust 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 2y agoPlease, do not bother the devs on how to install this on your PSP, the plugin is still on the works. Source: the PSP Discord.