Developer's Corner: Dark Alex, the PSP scene's God of War |
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(Developers Corner will serve as a tribute to the pillars of the PSP homebrew community. Basically, we'll be running a series of posts highlighting the achievements of a particular hero of homebrew. It'll be rundown of their major contributions to the PSP homebrew scene, think of it as our online hall of fame for the guys that make PSP a true multi-media device.)
Since this is the very first Developer's Corner post we might as well greet the PSP scene with a bang, and nobody gives a louder bang than hero of homebrew Dark AleX. If I'm to liken DaX to a popular video game character, it has to be God of War's Kratos. Granted he's no Zeus (that's got to be Sony, they made the PlayStation Portable after all), but Kratos has no qualms smiting the mighty God of Gods when he feels like it. That's exactly what Dark Alex is to the homebrew community, the lone force that occasionally kicks Sony between the legs with his PSP firmware hacks. Yes he's a badass, but he's our badass.
So just who Dark AleX really is? He's the guy that sired golden custom firmwares, the very same dude that rescued us from the dark days of various official firmwares, and the man responsible for playable PS1 backups in our PSPs. And yes, he's also the cool guy that's got a marijuana leaf url icon (can't get any more badass than that) plastered in his website.
The Chronicles of Dark Alex
Period I: Downgraders
He bursts into the PSP a year ago carrying the flaming torch of 2.60 downgrader, and since then there's been no looking back. The links below should lead us to posts made during those sweet days (downloads included, I figured taking a peek at them would be fun, at least for the sentimental among us).
June, 2006
Downgrader Test for 2.50/2.60 - There and Back Again
Download: 2.60 Downgrade Test v0.4 - Source Code
July, 2006
2.5/2.6 Downgrader FINAL Released!
Download: 2.5/2.6 Downdater (Downgrader) Auto Final
1.50 -> 1.0 Downgrader in Progress + Forum Announcement + Released
Download: 1.50 to 1.00 Downgrader "Downdater 1.00"
October, 2006
Dark AleX's Generic Downgrader- Now Downgrade to any PSP firmware from 2.71!
Download:2.71 Generic Downgrader
December, 2006
2.71 TA-082 Firmware PSP's Now Able to Downgrade!
Download:TA-082 Downgrader for 2.71 Firmware
Period II: Homebrew Enablers
Back to Kratos reference: Just like how Kratos defeated Ares minus his Blades of Chaos, Dark Alex was resilient enough to find the proper alternative to homebrew-less, then-uncrackable firmwares. Thus homebrew enablers were as valuable to us then as the Blades of the Gods was to Kratos, so these series of useful PSP applications should definitely make our to-look-back list.
September, 2006
Dark Alex's 2.71 XMB Homebrew Launcher! Homebrew from the Game Menu!
Download:Dark Alex's 2.71 XMB Homebrew Launcher Proof-of-Concept (Revision A)
Homebrew Enabler for 2.71 (Revision B) Starts PSP Utopia
Download:Homebrew Enabler for 2.71 (Revision B)
Dark AleX's Homebrew Enabler updated to Rev.C! Now load all your user-mode homebrew in 2.71!
Download:Dark AleX's Homebrew Enabler for FW 2.71 (Revision C)
Dark AleX's Homebrew Enabler for 2.71 - RevD (HEN D)
Download:Homebrew Enabler for 2.71 - Revision D
Period III: Custom Firmware
Custom Firmware is Dark Alex's masterpiece. This is his Blade of Olympus, a weapon even Zeus (in this case, Sony) fears. With CFWs installed in our PSPs, we can enjoy full features of the latest official Sony firmware, along with the ability to load homebrew and PS1 backups directly from the PSP's xmb. This achievement cemented Dark Alex's legacy.
October, 2006
2.71 Custom Firmware SE-A released by Dark_AleX!
Download: 2.71 Custom Firmware SE-A
December, 2006
Custom Firmware 3.02 OE-A released by Dark AleX!
Download: 3.02 OE-A by Dark AleX
Dark AleX's 3.02 OE-B released!
Download:3.02 OE-B by Dark AleX
January, 2007
Dark AleX's 3.03 OE-A' released
Download:Dark AleX's 3.03 OE-A
3.03 OE-B Released - Movie Madness!
Download: 3.03 Open Edition Revision B
February, 2007
3.10 OE-A custom firmware out and about
Download:Dark Alex's 3.10 OE-A custom firmware
April, 2007
Dark AleX releases 3.30 Open Edition Revision A
Download: Dark_AleX's 3.30 Open Edition Revision A
Dark AleX update of the week: 3.40 OE-A and 3.30 OE-A'
Download: 3.40 OE-A by Dark_AleX
If you still have any qualms on just how big Dark Alex is, I suggest you go over the links above. The Kratos comparison isn't a stretch, actually Kratos would do well to take some "class" pointers from DaX. Anyway, be sure to give our PSP homebrew God of War some love, and watch out for the next outing of Dev's corner.
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Comments
FIRSTER *****ES
*Cue arguemnts*
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All you tell is true He is a god !
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OE is the future.
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December, 2007
Custom Firmware 3.02 OE-A released by Dark AleX!
Download: 3.02 OE-A by Dark AleX
/quote
it should be December 2006
and not December 2007
and the 2.71 SE series rocked so why is it missing?
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Think about it.
;)
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What about the SE firmwares?
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Oh and what's that i hear? What happened to 2.71 SE? What happened to the 8 versions of the massive DAXZISO loader - the first breakthrough in ISO compression? What happened to the revolution in UMD dumping, UMD Dax Dumper?
Another lack lustre article QJ. You can do better, we all know that.
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Thanks a lot, Dark Alex! You are singlehandedly keeping the homebrew scene alive and helping to make the PSP better than it was ever intended to be.
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His downgraders opened doors into the community. The Homebrew Enabler was an amazing demonstration of pwning the PSP (and for me, was the ticket I needed to get to 1.50).
And then we come the the custom firmwares. These things are awe inspiring pieces of work. They let us do what we want to and they let the PSP show off what it can do.
Team C+D release a FW decrypter. Then comes the downgrader. The comes the custom firmware. And it all happens so fast! Just as Sony finishes one set of security measures, they've already been cracked and Sony need to go back to the drawing board!
And why are they called security measures, 'cos all they succeed in doing is locking away the PSP's potential (albeit recently, only for a few days!!! :-p)
DAX, We Salute You!
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I DONT MEAN HE DOESNT DESERVE CREDITS FOR ALL WHAT HE HAS DONE TO IMPROVE OUR PSP POWER, BUT JUST MIND THIS REASONATION:
IF ALL PSP OWNERS PRAISE DARK ALEX, HE GROWS IF FAME AND REPUTATION, AND THAT MEANS EVEN SONY KNOWS ABOUT HIM,
THIS COULD DANGEROUSLY END IN TRAGEDY, BY ONE OF THIS POSSIBILITIES:
1- SONY AIMS TARGET IN DARK ALEX, CONTACTING THE BEST HACKERS IN THE WORLD TO FORM A PLAN TO NEUTRALIZE HIS WORK (PUTTING SOME DIRTY TRICK, TO BRICK OUR PSP AT THE MOMENT OF USING SOME OF HIS CREATIONS) I KNOW DARK ALEX IS SMART ENOUGH TO DO SOMETHING IN THAT CASE, BUT HE IS NOT ALMIGHTY, AND EVERY MAN MAKES MISTAKES (FOR EXAMPLE , LATEST CFW, 3.40 OE, HAS A BUG THAT CORRUPTS FLASH 1 MAKING THE SYSTEM UNABLE TO LOAD ISOS) I DONT KNOW IF THAT'S SOMETHIN MADE BY SONY IN PURPOSE, OR WHAT...
2- SONY FINDS A WAY TO FIND DARK ALEX'S REAL IDENTITY, AND SEARCHS FOR A WAY OR ANOTHER TO SEND HIM TO JAIL.... (TOO DRASTIC?... IS BETTER TO EXPECT THE MOST UNEXPECTED)
IN WHATEVER OF THIS 2 CASES, IF HE LOSES TO SONY,
ALL OF US LOSE WITH HIM!!
I CANT SAY IM RIGHT IN EVERYTHING, BUT I THINK IS BETTER TO PROTECT HIM BY "NOT MAKING HIM THE POINT OF ATENTION IN PSP'S SCENE.
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or the .co and crap
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this link will be given only for those who buy a a lot
link : http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-4pl0-49-en.html
sorry about put this here in wrong section but this just to let u know
Good Luck.
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So yeah, I'm basically a little pissed that it's taking so long...
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thanks for the link at first it will went to the main page and than u need to make an order they will give u $40 discount on ur order after u makes it
again thanks alot frda
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Do you not think Sony already knows about DAX? There's tons of posts about DAX's stuff on the official Sony PSP forums.
If Sony tried some dirty trick, like you claim, they would simply die as a company. Bricking all our PSPs would be shootin themselves in the foot. Doing something that dirty would surely invoke sum sort of law (like the antitrust stuff), and plus it would be like Sony forcing a hand grenade down their own throats. Who buys anythin from a company that would ***** up their own users?
As for ur comment on 3.40 and the corrupt flash1, u clearly kno ***** all. When u install a custom firmware, it doesnt actually format the flash1. If u format the flash1 yourself, 3.40 OE will rebuild it, and then u can play all ur isos.
Maybe you should consider using ur head, geez.
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You can try and say we should proect him by not bringing up his name, but truth be told hemade his homebrew for a reason, and he deserves everything he gets.
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u never know????
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Being a dev is not something restricted to smart people.
Any idiot with a computer can code.
Retard. Don't yell at the person doing you a favor.
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Dumb *****.
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Custom Firmware.
I'd have never bought it if there wasn't homebrew and an easy way to load it. I got mine at the start of november 06, it was used, and 3.01. I waited 2 months for the downgrader (my psp sat dormant until then) and now I use it for ... well, a lot of things. pspvpn, movies@work (although my nw-808 works well for that too), and, of course, games.
Thanks Dark Alex.
And, by the way, his name is well known (enough), just look for the fanjita radio interview, and his name comes up.
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Think of it: allot of us wouldn't have gotten a PSP if homebrew wasn't possible. I think Sony knows that. And thats why they act like they're doing allot of trouble to stop homebrew, but realy they're thanking Dark-Alex.
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Dark-Alex started steping in the scene at www.elotrolado.net forums with Dax Ziso 0.1, which, in combination with UMDEmulator 0.8 allowed to load a compressed EXIT backup.
Then he started hacking UMDEmulator and converted progressively his Dax Ziso into a complete loader, but lots of mods came around it, as Devhook mods (no umd support) and other mods such as SWUMDEmulator.
Meanwhile Dark_Alex developed the No-Kxploit utility, which was stored in memory and allowed to load no-kxploited hombrew (and this was later added to eLoader and of course HEN and the custom firmwares).
Dax Ziso evolved to Dax Ziso Loader, with full documentation and libs to make your own loader with umdemulator core and dax support. Newer versions had better UI, with customzable screens and cover showing when selecting a game.
In this period UMD Dax Dumper was released, dumping isos trhough USB! This would come later in the first loader with USB support in newer versions of Dax Ziso Loader.
The last thing he did was totally release a C code of UMD Emulator. Humma Kavula, who wasn't really out of the scene, was impressed by his efforts and he released the original UMD Emulator code, written in assembly.
With this hacking, Dark Alex released a patch wich solved a bug in UMdEmulator's core, which made some games unable to load, games that only worked with Fatloader 0.7.
Following this, a compatibility patch with RUNUMD (a memory allocation patch) was released, and taht allowed to load ALL the newest games without having to make individual loaders for each game.
Then Dark_Alex took a break to return with an even more impressive work: 1.5 Custom Firmware (Proof of Concept), known as POC. This custom firmware featured some things like the famous recovery mode, autobooting and pluggin loading, and was open source, so other custom firmwares came out, as lots of pluggins did.
I have to say that personally, in that time when this was released I said: "The future is a 1.5 and upper firmware mix" and people said: "1.5 is the future" and "A firmware mix is not possible, some people already tried with no result".
Then Dark_Alex moved to the downgraders, with the discovery of the kernel mode under GTA:VCS bug (bug present until 2.70 firmwares).
When the downgraders where released, lots of psp bricked, but that allowed Dark_Alex to improve them.
When no downgraders where needed anymore, he started working into HEN for 2.71 PSP, a good utility for consoles with the cursed motherboards (TA-082).
HEN evolved into 2.71SE Custom Firmware, which leaved all of us marveled, but TA-082 users where still dummed, so Dark_Alex, with the help of other developers, such as Mathielu (sorry if I writted it wrong) released the 2.71 TA-02 downgrader.
Following this, and this is NOT Dark_Alex work, the 2.80 kernel bug was discovered, with the downgrader, of course, but that lasted a little more.
Well, now the only things remaining are the next custom firmwares, which are done with the help of the decrypters, from which Dark_Alex is beneficiated, but Dark_Alex also make soe decrypting work on 2.80.
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Gonna take pollution down to zero,
He's our powers magnified,
And he's fighting on the planet side
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But otherwise i don't think there is a true god of homebrew (as DAX is one of the best, but not THE best). They all supplied some GREAT features that the psp can run.
Think about those emulators, CWCHEAT, Devhook, IRshell, PSPradio, Pimpstreamer, GPS by Deniska, Fanjita's work with recent Pikey and all the E-loaders (without them no user mode), the XMB hacks by Vulpix, and very noticable the decrypted fw's and on an on.....
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anyways un español se chingo a todos ustedes culeros jajajaja!!
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"Dirty tricks would be like stuffing a grenade down their throat."
Agreed.
But you guys need to stop putting Dark_Alex down. You guys that are doing that and enjoying the benifits of his kick ass firmware are retarded. Without DAX, our PSP's would all be on 1.5 or running e-loader. us homebrewers anyway. Now we CAN play the best new games, have all the homebrew capabilities of older firmwares, AND boot ISO's right off of the memory stick, recover bricks, open the flash1 and flash0 with usb, thus the ability to customize without x-flash or any other potential brick, we can also have web portals in the browser, and still have regular homebrew.
Not to metion the revolutionary DAXISO loader. And the DAX UMD dumper.
See, without great developers like him, we wouldn't be able to enjoy our PSP's to their full potential.
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I JUST WANTED TO SAY WE SHOULD EXPECT ANYTHING, AND TRY TO TAKE OUR OWN PRECAUTIONS, BECAUSE PSP'S SCENE ALREADY SEEMS JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE (HAVEN'T U HEARD ABOUT "IT'S A BEAUTYFULL DAY, BUT SOMEONE WILL COME TO ***** ON IT"?
AND ABOUT 3.40 OE THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED:
I UPGRADED TO 3.40 OE (FROM 3.10 OE) AND ALL WAS GOING WELL, BUT SUDENLY MY BUROUT DOMINATOR BACKUP DIDNT RUN ANYMORE, I FORMATTED THE MEMORY STICK, AND IT WAS WORSE, CAUSE' ALL ISOS DIDNT WORK, (EXCEPT WITH DEV HOOK) SO I USED FLASH 1 FORMATTER (FLASH 1 IS FOR CONFIGURATIONS) BUT FIRST I DOWNGRADED TO 3.30OE , AND THE PROBLEM WAS SOLVED. (3.40 WRITES CORRUPT FILES IN FLASH 1 OR THATS WHAT I HEARD) I KNOW DAX WILL CORRECT THIS PROBLEM, BUT UNTIL THAT TIME I WONT UPGRADE TO 3.40 OE AGAIN.
I DONT' MEAN OFFENSE TO ANYONE.
I LOVE MY PSP AND RESPECT ALL PSP HACKERS (DAX SPECIALY), SO, LONG LIVE PSP!!
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http://krazyhacks.bravehost.com/ go there now an u can get anytin in RS!!
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i know you are psp god but pls make a 3.11, 3.30 or 3.40 dg
cause i love your homebrew/custom fw
but i cant use it cause im stuck on 3.11
thanks
love
adoring fans
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The true measure of a GOD is to put Linux on the PSP, until then everything is an exercise of futility. PSP community should stop being infatuated with XMB icons moddification OMFGBBQ!!! Cut it out with decrypting firmware, OMFGBBQ!!!111one
Guys be a real MAN, (programmer) and put linux on this puppy!!!
Any effort put on $ony shyet is a waste of energy and time.
by suxers...
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but it also needs to keep it as a hurdle, they want to make it tough for the average buyer who picks up a psp to make it, so those who buy it solely to hack, they make money off, and those who buy it for the games, they still make money and sell games to.
its actually market strategy and cost benefit, it would cost too much if they actually spent the resources to wipe out homebrew, and it would be detremental.
so captain caps, stop thinking that there are aliens in the world who just think "OH ILL MAKE MOST MONEY BY SENDING ALL TO JAIL" because any half intelligent person would understand that would cost more then it would achieve. Immagine if they did send DAX to jail? the public relations for sony would be terrible "WE SEND THOSE TO JAIL WHO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX" thats not what sony wants people to think. they want to pretend to be an organization who them themselves think outsid the box. "Innovative" you may have heard in relation to sony. The hipocracy that would be implied would cost the organization bottom line profits. Thats not what shareholders want, thats not what sony wants.
Its not until you create a seprate organization "(like the fiaa or whatever it is in america) that you need to worry, that way organizations like sony can hide behind the identity and pretend its hands are clean. and for most people that once removed personality is enough for them not to directly blame sony itself.
did you learn anything?
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the fact that you did not research is nobody's fault but your own.
yelling at people who out of goodwill help out many is just arrogant.
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i owe him hundreds of hours of enjoyment since i bought my psp solely because of his downgrader, and back in the day, the ability to play my snes and nes games on the psp (although those emulators werent his fault, it wouldnt have been possible for me without him).
thank you.
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having the skills to block that for an long period of time (firmware 3.10).
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It's not GTA: Vice City Stories. It's Liberty City Stories.
But anything else is completely right.
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The BIG problem is to find a bug in the Sony firmwares. If you're unlucky Sony made these firmwares without any bugs. Then the only thing you can do is to wait until Sony brings another Firmware with bugs that they overseen.
( MAYBE THE ANNOUNCED UNHACKABLE 4.XX ???)
I wonder when this will be released
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Sites like these only praise those who benefit the users, what about praising those who benefit the dev's??
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hash_mat@hotmai l.com
thx
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plzz can anyone help me?? i really really need a help.. i really want to upgrade my PSP but i dont know how..im sOrry if i im a nOob..Pls help me..
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im having a very very big problem bcoz i only know about this OE-A and Homebrew juz nOw while im surfing..
and before that i already upgrade my Fw into 3.50 juz a couple of minutes ago..so dark alex im a big fans of you..gudluck..enn do youre best im only here waiting you to create a downgrader for 3.50..
EmO_rhaLp
|\m/|
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I'm counting on you DaX
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I'm counting on you DaX
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You noob
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so if u r i hope u can release i soon....
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I have this group of files that all make up a Naruto game for my PSP, but i don't know how to make them work, with the others i can just put the file in my ISO folder but this is not the case... I am running DAX 3.40 OE-A and the files are as follows:
barH-Naruto.001
barH-Naruto.002
barH-Naruto.003
barH-Naruto.004
barH-Naruto.005
barH-Naruto.006
barH-Naruto.nfo
barH-Naruto.sfv
Please help me as I am new to this whole thing and I would really like to learn^^;
Thanks a lot
Confused PSP owner
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