Half Byte Loader – Status

I’ve received lots of emails, PMs, read lots of forum posts on various websites all over the world. I’m really happy with the overall positive reaction we got, but I’ve seen the same questions asked very often so I think it’s important to give a few general answers. First of all, I apologize, I can’t reply personally to all the PMs and emails I’ve received in the past days, there’s just too many of them. OK, let’s go with a FAQ. This FAQ is valid as I write it, and some parts might become obsolete extremely fast.

What’s Half Byte Loader?

HBL is a Homebrew Loader. A program that can load Homebrew games on an Official Firmware PSP through a game exploit. It currently works with the recently released Patapon2 exploit, but is intended to be easily portable to other game exploits.

Where can I download it?

The “Valentine project” (adaptation of the HBL to the Patapon2 exploit) has been released in a rush after some of our work was leaked. Because of that, it is NOT in a shape that would be useful for the end user. However developers who are interested in helping can get the sources on our SVN at: http://code.google.com/p/valentine-hbl/

I’m a programmer and I want to help

Get the sources, compile them, run the HBL and run a homebrew. From there, try to improve the HBL code and send a patch to me or m0skit0. If your patch is a good improvement, we’ll open a write access to the SVN for you. We recommend a PSP with 5.00 m33 and PSPLink to test for now.

I don’t know how to code but I want to help

Sorry, the HBL is not in a state where non coders can help right now. We have more testers than we can wish for, and they’re currently going way faster than what the devs can handle. Please just be patient.

I’ve seen videos of Homebrews working with it, it means it works, right?

Right now it’s a lot of hit and miss. From a end user perspective, you’d rather consider that it just doesn’t work at all yet. Let’s say that if you’re lucky, you might manage to run a few homebrews, but nothing that I would call a “nice” user experience.

Does it work on Firmware X.YZ?

In theory this works on all firmwares up to 6.20. Practically, we’ve only tested it on 5.00 M33 and we don’t know yet if it will work directly on other firmwares, but we’ll get there. If you’re not a programmer, see my answer above: HBL is not ready for you yet.

Does it work on the PSP GO?

See my answers above. In theory yes, but right now it’s not in a state where PSP Go owners should care

Where can I see a List of Homebrews that work?

See my answer two questions above. Currently the Loader is not in a state where you can consider that anything works.

I read it was more stable on firmware X.YZ, Should I upgrade?

NO. If what you want is homebrews, NEVER upgrade unless you are 100% sure it will be worth it. The HBL in its current state is not worth the risk. Who knows, a better exploit might be discovered on an earlier firmware…

When will a stable version be released to the public?

We don’t know. We all have a real life to deal with, and this will all depend on the help we get. My own experience with Wagic shows that it sometimes depends on only one guy with enough motivation to do stuff.

Will this run ISOs?

No. Don’t ask about that. Not only do we not support piracy, it would be technically difficult to run ISOs with just a user mode exploit. Anyways that’s not the goal of an eLoader

Will this run PSX games?

Most likely not

Will this allow to have a HEN or a Custom Firmware?

No. A Hen requires a kernel exploit. we work in a much more limited environment. And Custom Firmwares are not technically possible on the new PSP models (ta 88v3, PSP 3000, PSP Go)

I hope this answers some of the questions people may have.