This is courtesy of PSPmod.com, Sony, and the PSP hacking community as a whole. The guide is largely stolen from this thread. My own contribution to this whole thing is just packaging the zip's with the official 5.03 update and the mod for 1000/2000 series consoles, and a little rewriting.
If you want to do this, don't do the 5.50 update from Sony that came out this week.
This doesn't require any special tools, toys, or crap. You can use any Memory Stick 128MB or larger to do this - and its all you need. Once the whole deal is done, you'll be able to play backup games with no UMD, emulators, and homebrew software.
This works properly on original PSP-1000's and early PSP-2000's only. If things go wrong, you can render your PSP in a non-functional state, use at your own risk. If your PSP is broken by this, you'll need to use a Pandora battery and Magic Memory Stick to fix things. You can get those for under $30, make them yourself, or find a friend whose PSP was successfully modded with this firmware update package to make it all work again.
Download this zip file if you have an original PSP-1000
Download this zip file if you have a slim PSP-2000
Here's an awful video that walks you through the whole process:
YouTube - put cfw on any hackable psp phat or slim without pandora (download links added)
And here's some warnings I'm not going to pretend to understand:
Its indicated that your battery should be fully charged before doing this procedure.hessels92@PSPmod.com wrote:***Dont try this on the psp 3000 or 2000 with TA-088v3 Motherboard*** 4 those who dont know bout this, I've tested this several times on my G.O.W. 2001 TA-088v2 and has worked fine every time.
First things first, you need to format a memory card with the PSP, then connect it to your computer. You need to update the PSP to official v5.03 firmware, so take the UPDATE folder from the zip and drop it on to the memory stick in the PSP\GAMES folder. Stick the memory back in the PSP or unplug the USB and goto Games, and run the update. That should take about two minutes.
Once that's all done, connect back to the computer and delete the UPDATE folder from the memory stick. Take the full contents of the Modified folder from the zip, and drop them onto the root of the memory stick. Confirm the overwrite, and put the memory stick back in the PSP.
On the PSP, go to Photos and open the ChickHEN folder. Scroll down to the last photo, then wait. Your PSP should reboot. (This might take a few tries.) When your PSP reboots, go under System Settings, scroll down and hit X on System Information. It should read "5.03ChickHEN R2" If it does, continue.
Open Games and run PSPident to find out what motherboard you have. If its a TA-088v2 or under, you can install CFW.
Open Games and run Hellcats Recovery. Select install m33 of firmware above. Now wait.
After its done, hit X to shutdown. Turn the PSP back on and you will be on CFW 5.00m33-4. NOW you will be on the newest CFW without any special tools.hessels92@PSPmod.com wrote:***DONT TOUCH NE THING WHILE ITS DOIN THIS. IT WILL BRICK!!!*** (if it bricks then u will need a pandora battery 2 un-brick)also again b4 u run Hellcats Recovery make sure ur battery is charged.
ENJOY your custom PSP. You know where you can get backup games, get emulators here, and other homebrew stuff on forums or whatever. You might need this to launch game backups from memory stick.
Just to be clear, I don't advocate piracy, I only advocate the players' ability to do what they see fit with their own hardware.
