A Complete Tutorial to Install Homebrew on PS Vita (PSP) on TN-V8 Exploit

Following my successful attempt to exploit my PS Vita using NumBlast game, I shall now share my experience of installing home-brew (commonly known as emulators) on PS Vita in the form of pictorial.

First thing first, download some homebrews from a sea of home brew listed here.


Extract the home-brew and paste it in following structure in the exact manner. In other words, the folder name PSP and GAME must be CAPITALIZED. I start by creating it in my exploit game saves folder.

[+]  [PSP]
[|-] [GAME]
 [+] [Homebrew Title 1]
 [|-] EBOOT.PBP
 [|-] Any other files from the extracted homebrew
 [+] [Homebrew Title 2]
 [|-] EBOOT.PBP
 [|-] Any other files from the extracted homebrew

[] denotes folder.

Several things to note:

• It is possible to put MULTIPLE homebrew under the same directory.
• Each Homebrew folder must have a EBOOT.PBP or FBOOT.PBP file directly underneath it. They must not placed in nested folders. These are the main binary executables for PSP. You may think of it as .EXE in Windows.

For example, say I'm going to install both gpSP (GBA emulator) and SNES9xTYL (SNES emulator).

For convenience, I moved the two extracted folders into my NumBlast Exploit Game Saves/PSP/GAME. Make sure that the folder directly level below contains EBOOT.PBP or FBOOT.PBP. These CANNOT be placed in nested folder such as /PSP/GAME/gpSP/gpSP/EBOOT.PBP

Verify that EBOOT.PBP is indeed located below the folder gpSP.

Do the same for Snes9x.

Go to the root folder, i.e. PSP, and compress it using your favorite compressor such as WinRAR or WinZIP.

Caution: The compressed file must be named INSTALL.ZIP (all CAPITALIZED) and using the 'Store' compression mode. Double check that it is not named as INSTALL.ZIP.ZIP. To verify, if you're in Windows, go to Control Panel > Folder Option and select Show all known file extensions. You won't have this mistake if you manually type the Archive name as INSTALL.ZIP like shown in the screenshot above.

Copy INSTALL.ZIP to your exploit game saves folder.

Open up OpenCMA and transfer the game saves to your PS Vita. When asked to overwrite, select YES.

Launch your exploit game, in my case, NumBlast, wait for XMB, and select the memory card. You should see it at the top of the list. Note that it will only show a randomly selected homebrew title in the archive file instead of showing all of them.

You cannot launch it by pressing the Circle button since it is still in Archive. Press Triangle button and select Install from the menu.

It might take a while if your archive contains lots of homebrews.

Note: By pressing install, PSP will extract all the contents into your memory stick. To be exact, they will be stored in the following path:

ms0:/PSP/GAME/YOUR HOMEBREW TITLE

Upon finished extracting the archive, PSP will prompt you to delete the archive. Simply select YES as there is no need to keep it.

Note that the newly installed homebrew will not show up immediately on your memory stick. The reason is it is not refreshed yet.



To force a memory stick content refresh, navigate to any menu such as Saved Data Utility and go to view Memory Stick again. The newly installed homebrew will show up there.

Installing PSP/PSX ISOs

Installing PSP ISOs is also done in similar way. In other words, you will placed the GAME.ISO into the exploited game saves folder and transfer it to your PS Vita using OpenCMA. After that launch your exploited game, wait for XMB to launch, go to memory card and press the Triangle button to install. Unlike homebrew, the installation will moved them to ms0:/ISO instead of ms0:/PSP/GAME.

Recommended Homebrew to Install

If you are into Retro gaming like I do, the following homebrews (or I should say emulator) should get you started:
GBA: gpSP
GB/GBC: MasterBoy
SNES: snes9xTYL

Refer here for a list of emulators for download across all generations thus far.

If emulators alone does not satisfy your crave of hunger, visit here for a huge list of homebrews, plugins, and even XMB themes to install.

FAQ

Q: How should I install PSP ISOs?
A: Installing PSP ISOs is also done in similar way as shown above. Pressing Install, however, will moved them to ms0:/ISO instead of ms0:/PSP/GAME.

Q: How should I add more data after installing the homebrew. For example, I had installed the gpSP homebrew (GBA emulator) for PSP and I want to transfer ROMs to it.
A: There are two ways to do this.

Method 1: FTP Access

The most straightforward and less hassle way is to simply access your PSP memory stick using FTP server. TN-V8 already has a FTP server built-in. Simply enable it to launch the FTP server. Then use your favorite FTP client such as FileZilla or WinSCP to access.

After you had login to your PSP via FTP, go to /PSP/GAME/gpSP/ and simply place your ROMs into the ROMs folder.

Note that the file transfer is averaging between 700KB - 1.5MB per second. So this might not be the ideal choice if you want to transfer any large file for more than 500 MB. If you are patient enough, by all means, go ahead. But make sure you disable Energy Saving or Screen Lockout since PSP is default to enter standby mode after 10 minutes, which will break the FTP file transfer. Else, resort to Method 2 below.

Method 2: Copy the files you want to transfer into your Exploit GameSaves and transfer them via OpenCMA.

This method is only suggested if the files that you are going to transfer is really huge such as those exceeding 500MB. The reason is FTP transfer is painfully slow, averaging in around 700KB - 1.5MB per second.

After transferring the files to your PS Vita using OpenCMA, they will be found in your exploit game saves in ms0:/PSP/GAME/SAVEDATA/GAME_TITLE_EXPLOIT. You will then need to move it around using file browser manager such as the famous PSP Filer homebrew (the latest one being 6.6)


Alternatively, you could also try to move things around using FTP access. However, I failed to moved any ISO files from the GameSaves into /ISO folder using FTP.

Q: Could you recommend a list of homebrew to download?
Refer to the Section: Recommeded Homebrews for a list.