TUTORIAL: Make a Pandora's Battery without a homebrew PSP!

Trying to get homebrew running on your PSP? Want to add a screen light to your Game Boy? Trying to figure out how to work your GP2X? By popular demand, discuss it in here! (This forum is for pre-built handhelds, NOT custom made portables!)

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blackbox_dev
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TUTORIAL: Make a Pandora's Battery without a homebrew PSP!

Post by blackbox_dev » Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:38 am

Search Google for the TOTALNewbi MS Installer. This will create the files you need for the memory stick. It's much more versatile then the files I have previously been distributing.

Ok, so you want to unbrick or downgrade your PSP but don't have a PSP capable of running homebrew apps. No problem! In this tutorial I will show you how to modify the battery's hardware to make it activate service mode.

This is our victim. Please note that while this concept may work on non-Sony batteries, only official batteries are guaranteed to have the same internals, so we recommend using one.

STEP 1:

The first thing you need to do is obviously crack open the battery. Surprisingly, the battery isn't very hard to get in to. In this picture you can see that I'm just using a guitar pick to slide in through an edge and slide around the perimeter of the battery to seperate the two halves.

STEP 2:

Next, we need to locate a certain chip. The chip has the model number S93C56 printed on it. We are going to need to desolder pin 5 and lift it off of the board. Here is a magnified viewof the board, which shows where the chip is and which pin needs to be lifted.

Newer batteries have a much smaller board with a different layout. The same chip needs to have the pin lifted, but the chip is in a different position. Once you've located chip S93C56, the rest of the instructions are basically the same. This has been confirmed with the 2200 mAH Official Sony battery.

STEP 3:

If you are not confident in your soldering skills, have a less than steady hand or have a larger-than-optimal sized tip, please desolder the cell pack from the battery first. If you make contact between pins 5 and 6 then you will short ground to +3.6VDC! Not good! When desoldering the cell, only keep the iron on long enough to melt the solder. If you can, use a higher wattage iron so that the tip will be hotter, but you won't transfer as much heat to the cell pack. Remember that heat + Li-Ion battery = large explosion (t3h sux0r5, unless you get in on video. :twisted: Seriously though, this operation is not for the faint hearted, and should definitely not be your first soldering experience. I recommend trying your hand on lifting the pins on an N64 CPU chip. Surely if you spend enough time here you have a couple killed N64 mobos laying around. :P)

Now is actually desoldering the pin. There are a few ways you could do this, but I think my method is the best because its less likely to damage components near by. Use an Xacto knife with a sharp tip and try to put it underneath the pin. Get somebody to hold a soldering iron (WITH A VERY FINE CONICAL TIP!) on the pin. When the solder melts you can pop the pin up with the knife. Be sure not to hold the iron on the board too long to avoid the lithium battery from getting too hot and exploding. When your done it will look something like this.

STEP 4:

Finally, close the battery's casing. Use some Krazy Glue to keep it closed, or just use electrical tape around the edges like I did. I don't actually recommend the electrical tape as it makes the battery very snug in the compartment and it takes a bit of force to get it out. You can use the battery just like a regular Pandora's battery. As for getting the Memory Stick files, I can tell you that they are out there and you can find them after a bit of Googling. However, I can't tell you exactly where to find them as they contain copyrighted Sony code, and sharing them is illegal.

How does this work?

The pin that we just lifted was actually the ground pin of the EEPROM. Removing this pin effectively shuts off the EEPROM. When the microcontroller inside the battery tries to read the EEPROM, it will think the EEPROM contains all 1s (in binary). This is because of the pull-up resistors on the data lines. So the microcontroller returns a serial number of 0xFFFFFFFF to the PSP, which then goes into service mode.

Thank you for reading this, and if you have any questions, make sure to post and I'll try to help you!

-iam
Last edited by blackbox_dev on Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:50 pm, edited 7 times in total.
I'd imagine right now you wish you were a cuttlefish...

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Post by underclocked » Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:52 am

I have a question about upgrading after using the pandoras battery unbricking. When i try and upgrade to any firmware weather it be a custom firmware or an official it bricks again. the only firmware I've been able to upgrade to is 2.71 without it bricking. Any ideas why this might be happening?

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Post by blackbox_dev » Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:03 am

That's kind of weird. It's possible that you have a corrupted idStorage. This pagedoesn't show the same symptoms as what you listed, but it's worth a try.
I'd imagine right now you wish you were a cuttlefish...

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Post by jeroen » Tue Sep 04, 2007 12:34 pm

Figured this out yourself iam. Great job in both cases! :o (we need to discuss some more jab ;-))

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Post by Harshboy » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:26 pm

This is awesome...although I'd rather not blow off my hands :P

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Post by jedi knight » Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:00 pm

This is awesome! I'll have to try this soon.
Meh, I don't post much.

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Post by XPCportables » Tue Sep 04, 2007 2:52 pm

I assume re-grounding it will return it to a standard PSP battery?

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Post by Kurt_ » Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:00 pm

Looks like it, if that's all that you do.
Hey, sup?

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Post by timmeh87 » Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:27 pm

XPCportables wrote:I assume re-grounding it will return it to a standard PSP battery?
heres an idea: install a switch.
Image

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Post by XPCportables » Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:07 pm

That's what I was thinking. I have some friends who want their PSPs downgraded and that would be the easiest way for me to do it.

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Post by Kurt_ » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:44 pm

Umm...once you do this, is your battery gone? I found enlightening information that says so. Do you just need to do what the 1st post on HAD tells you to? Or do you just need to resolder the pin?

People who have done this, please.
Hey, sup?

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Post by Harshboy » Tue Sep 04, 2007 7:14 pm

Re-soldering the pin should work, but I think a switch would be the best way ;)

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Post by blackbox_dev » Wed Sep 05, 2007 6:24 pm

Resoldering the pin should work, although I haven't tried it. If not, than you can rewrite the EEPROM once you downgrade and resolder the pin. That should clear up any potential problems.

-iam
I'd imagine right now you wish you were a cuttlefish...

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Post by vb_master » Wed Sep 05, 2007 8:03 pm

Just to let you know, if you actually do this, the PSP battery may get as hot as 2000 degrees Fahrenheit if you short the GND.

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Post by blackbox_dev » Thu Sep 06, 2007 4:45 pm

Right, so you need to be really careful when you do this. You may actually want to desolder the battery attached to the board before you do this. I didn't need to however, and the battery pack obviously didn't explode or even smoke.

-iam
I'd imagine right now you wish you were a cuttlefish...

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