How I fixed my PSP (Part un)

Your Problem should you choose to accept it:

Your newly acquired Sony PlayStation Portable has a fault, the UMD (Universal Media Disc) drive is not functioning and will not recognise any UMDs. Your task is to figure out a way to use the PSP to its full potential by any means necessary.

The first step in working on a problem like this involved me checking out the UMD drive as well as looking up on forums to see how others dealt with the problem. After doing some checks and doing some fiddling with my PSP it seems that the UMD drive can't be fixed at least not without the use of expensive professionals. That would be somewhat at odds with the whole point of picking up a cheap faulty PSP.

Next step then it seems, so I looked up ways into running backups. With the launch of the new slimline PSP it has become clear that this is a possibility but would require changes to the firmware (operating system of the PSP) which can be tricky and potentially fatal to the PSP.

I will talk more about the places I travelled to on the Internet in search of these answers next time.

PSP arrives

YEAH BABY YEAH. Now after all the celebrations the real fun begins. I took some pictures after jogging the half hour to the postal service sorting office to pick up my parcel (I slept through the postmans non-knocking earlier that day).



In case you didn't know I picked it up on the cheap because for all intents and purposes the PSP had somewhat of a fatal error - the UMD drive had a fault. This seems to be a widely occuring problem with PSPs it all seems a bit flimsy back there if you ask me. I lucky for both me and the previous owner knew that the PSP could be salvaged.

Yes your own host using his brains and applying himself to techniques and ideas he had only read about managed to find away to bring this PSP back from the dead. Look for further details in future posts.

Update for the weekend

Just a quick one if anyone is playing around on World of Warcraft with an Alliance character around 12-16 drop me a line and we'll do some quests together.


Paid for my PSP today so should be here before next Saturday so I can have a good play around with it and see how it goes. Got some more Saturn games coming in as well so I will talk about them when they get here.

Waiting for my PSP

A few weeks ago I ordered a 2nd hand PSP from Ebay for a nice price in my opinon. Especially when you look at the prices in the stores from £150 down to £120 with like nothing of worth in the pack. GAME even had the gall to sell second hand ones for over £100.

The one I bought was a steal in comparison but it is a fixer-upper with the UMD drive not working. There are ways around this so hopefully in a couple of weeks look for an update of DIY WITH ME YOUR HOST.

MY FAVOURITE SYSTEM

Has to be the Sega Saturn. Yes yes I know that it is hardly the fastest selling console or the one with the largest library of games especially if you are an unlucky European like us but I was impressed with the graphicalo capabilities of the machine and the games.

The Saturn was the BEST console for fighting games end of. You could hold a good argument that the Neo Geo is but as most of their games got ported to the Saturn by SNK Playmore I think the Saturn got the best of both worlds.

Some of the premier league of games on the Saturn (well the ones that made it to Europe) include Guardian Heroes (A 3 plane side scrolling beat 'em up with RPG elements) Shining Force III (the first part in the epic Shining Force series, a turn based strategy RPG) Daytona Racing (major arcade translation with some of the funniest Japanese English lyrics songs ever heard).

Video Game Vault

My reflections on the Video Game Industry past and present but first a little about me. You can call me Shaft and I am 26 years old currently living in the UK but I used to live in Antigua, West Indies. In my time I have owned a number of game systems over the years starting with the humble NES and through gaming generally and a youth spent working at a home console arcade in Antigua I think at least when it comes to retro gaming I know what I am talking about.

My current colection of consoles that I actually use (probably forgotten half of what is packed away somewhere) are as follows:
PS2 silver slimline UK
Sega Saturn UK Black

Pretty small collection now at one time it was quite large and now I find myself looking to extend my collection especially the more retro stuff.