Hack48.Hack the PSP s Background Images

Hack 48. Hack the PSP's Background Images

You already know how to get your favorite color in the background of your PSP, but wouldn't you rather put your own custom images in there?

Thanks to the great movement of homebrew software for the PSP thriving on the Internet, you can now replace the default color backgrounds [Hack #4] on your Version 1.01.5 PSP with pictures of your choosing. Be warned, however, that if you choose to employ this method, there is no turning back. Changing the images is a permanent change. You can replace them later with newer images, if you like, but if you want to return the PSP to its default background set, you're either going to have to do some slightly more advanced hacking to back up the original images before you do this hack, or dig around on the Internet for someone else's copies of the images.

If you have a PSP with Version 2.0 of the firmware, Sony has added a Wallpaper setting to your PSP so that you can do this without any hacking. Simply navigate to Settings Theme Settings, hit the X button, scroll down to Wallpaper, hit the X button again, and choose Use. Navigate to any picture under Photo on your PSP and hit the X button to view the photo. While viewing, hit the Triangle button to bring up the control panel. Navigate to the second control on the top row, "Set as Wallpaper," and hit the X button. The image you were viewing is now the wallpaper image for your PSP.

6.2.1. Things You'll Need

• A Sony PSP running Version 1.5 of the firmwareuntil the homebrew community figures a way past the roadblocks Sony put in place in later versions of the firmware, this hack will only work on PSPs running v1.5.

• PSPersonalizethis is the homebrew app that makes the hack work. The file doesn't have a home page on the Web, but you should find it easily enough in the popular PSP homebrew sites; a quick Google search for "PSPersonalize" should turn it up, and you can also look for a link to the files on the site I've set up to go along with this book (http://www.psphacksthebook.com).

• A Memory Stick and some way to copy files from your computer to your Memory Stick [Hack #2].

• Some basic image editing software.

• Some images.

6.2.2. Prepare Your Images

For this hack, you're going to need 12 images (one for each month of the year). If you want your background image to stay the same year round, you're still going to need 12 separate, but identical, image files (or you will need to continually keep changing the date on your PSP to the one month containing the background picture you want).

You will need to use whatever image editing software you have on hand to convert your images to 24-bit Windows bitmap files less than or equal to 300 x 170 resolution. I've seen recommendations online stating that you need to keep the images less than or equal to 150KB in size as well; this is probably the ideal, but I've made this work with a few files weighing in closer to 200KB in size. The main issue here is that larger file sizes will take longer to load on your PSP, and the larger the size, the more you risk the image either not loading or, worse, crashing your PSP.

Once you have converted the images into 300 x 170 pixel images, you will want to rename them with two digits followed by .BMP for each of the 12 months of the year. For example, whatever image you want for January needs to be named 01.BMP, and whatever file you want for November needs to be 11.BMP. You should have files named 0112, all ending in .BMP, when you are finished.

6.2.3. Everything in Its Right Place

Now that you have downloaded and decompressed PSPersonalize, and you have all of your images in the proper format, it's time to get them on the PSP and ready to go for the transfer. Take the two PSPersonalize folders (one should be named "PSPersonalize%" and the other "PSPersonalize)" and place them inside /PSP/GAMES/ on your Memory Stick. Take all of your images and put them in the root directory of your Memory Stick, so that PSPersonalize will be able to find the images.

After you have finished transferring the files to your Memory Stick, either place it back into your PSP or unmount your PSP from your computer and disconnect the USB cable.

6.2.4. PSPersonalize

On the PSP, navigate to Game Memory Stick and hit the X button. You will see PSPersonalize and a file called Corrupt Data next to it. Ignore the Corrupt Data file, select PSPersonalize, pause for a moment to notice the cool background and audio for PSPersonalize (see Figure 6-1), and then hit the X button.

Figure 6-1. PSPersonalize

The same PSP animated screen that plays whenever you run a game will be displayed. After this graphic is displayed, a black screen with white and yellow text will appear:

copy

ms0:/01.bmp

to

flash0:/vsh/resource/01.bmp

are you sure?

O= OK, X = Cancel

The first location, ms0:/, is the root directory of your Memory Stick, and the second location, flash0:/vsh/resource/, is the folder where the background images are stored on the internal flash memory of your PSP. Hit the O button to replace January's graphic with the picture you have named 01.BMP and placed in the root directory of your Memory Stick.

After you hit the O button, "please wait…" will appear momentarily in the upper-left corner of the screen while the file is copied over, and then you will be returned to the previous screen, only now it will read 02.bmp as the file is being copied over. Continue hitting O at each screen until you have replaced all 12 files. Once this is done, a small note will appear in the upper-right corner of the screen, reading "finished…". Hit the Home button on your PSP. A prompt will come up asking "Are you sure you want to quit the game?" Select Yes and hit the X button. You will be returned to the main menu of your PSP.

Now all the new images should be copied over to your PSP's internal flash memory, so the next time you mount your Memory Stick on your computer, you can feel free to delete all the .BMP files that you placed there for the transfer.

Remember, if you want the same background year-round, simply make 12 copies of the same file and name them 01.BMP through 12.BMP. Likewise, if you want the background graphic to change only in July, make just one file, 07.BMP, and hit X each time you are prompted by PSPersonalize to copy the file until it asks whether you want to copy ms0:/07.bmp. Now that you know how to use PSPersonalize, you can replace the images of individual months whenever you like.

6.2.5. View the New Backgrounds

The background of the current month should already appear changed when you return to the PSP's main menu. If it doesn't, or if you want to test to make sure that all of your images work, navigate over to Settings Date & Time Settings and hit the X button. Select Date and Time from the list and hit the X button again. Change the month and hit the X button.

If the screen turns bright white, don't panic (see Figure 6-2). The PSP is only allotted so much memory for displaying the background images, so if the image that is currently loaded is a little larger than normal, and the new image that you are trying to load is also a little too large, the PSP won't be able to handle both images simultaneously, and the bright white screen can be the result of its failure to load the image. This shouldn't happen when the date normally changes between monthsonly when you force a change using this method.

Figure 6-2. You will get a white background if the image fails to load

Hit the X button again to bring the month back up, and hit the X button a third time to confirm without changing the date. If the picture is properly formatted, it should load now, since it no longer has to compete with another image for that memory space. If it doesn't load, make a note of which image it was so that you can replace it with another image the next time you run PSPersonalize.

Keep switching the date month by month, as shown in Figure 6-3, to make sure all the background images you created or downloaded off the Internet properly load. If they don't load, simply set up some new images and run PSPersonalize again. Keep doing this until you have all of the different months on the PSP loaded with your favorite background pictures. Enjoy!

Figure 6-3. Mac OS X's Aqua background on the PSP