Coldbird and VF, The Big Interview, Part 1
Unless you’ve been living under a Nintendo rock for the past 6 months, you already know these two hackers who have been relentlessly working on a Homebrew Enabler / Custom Firmware for the latest PSP models, including the PSP Go. Known as CFW Pro, this tool is progressively becoming the most used Custom Firmware solution on all PSPs.
Today I had the privilege to discuss with both Coldbird and Virtuous Flame and talk about their ongoing work. In this interview, we talked a bit about their history in the PSP scene, upcoming features in CFW Pro, and their insight on various technical subjects such as the hack of firmware 6.37, or permanent CFW possibilities on unhackable motherboards… sounds interesting? Well, the tasty bits are in the interview, follow me 🙂
Hi guys, thanks a lot for your time today, can you both quickly introduce yourself?
coldbird: Hm.. I’m 20 years old, as of writing this I’m in the 12th grade and studying IT-Sciences… something I really regret nowadays cause it really isn’t what I was expecting it to be when I first started it. With 8 years I got really obsessed with computers after a aquaintance gave me his old broken DOS computer which I patched up… and started hacking DOS-adventure games…
I’ve learned different assembly languages and am now moving onto the database programming / network security sector. Most of my time I spend coding on private things or coding for money / school projects. If I do find some spare time next to that I usually deal with reallife affairs like family problems or I just go take a walk to get some fresh air. As a IT specialist its kinda difficult to get some spare time you can actually spend without computers.
Virtuous Flame: I am a Chinese student. Months ago I came to the PSP scene by chance and got acquainted with Coldbird. It’s some kind of fate I think.
When did you guys get your first PSPs?
coldbird: I still remember when the NDS / PSP first launched and I couldn’t really enjoy playing NDS even though I got one as a present from my sister. I was fascinated with the PSP from the very start and saved a lot of cash myself to get my first 1000 unit. As I was hacking all kind of computers before that, I was of course interested in hacking the PSP too… and kinda got into the whole “how the heck do you get this down to 1.5 hackable fw“-affair.
Eventually I’ve found myself following people like Fanjita back then, up to the first Grand Theft Auto exploit based downgrader… after that I got a lot more involved, and several PSPs followed (different generation models) – which later on died a martyr death while working on my own developments.
So a long story short – I was there from the european launch onwards.
Wololo: Damn, I remember walking the streets of Akihabara like a zombie, looking for an unpatched copy of GTA 🙂
coldbird: Haha. Poor you, I bought one immediately when I heard of the first Fanjita Eloader.
Virtuous Flame: On 2007-10-4 I bought myself a PSP-2K, just shipped with 3.71-M33. That was the golden time of PSP CFW. Since then I became curious on how PSP OFW/CFW works.
So, you guys basically started right away with the goal of using CFW/Hen, etc… when exactly did you start getting “actively” involved in the scene? I mean, as devs ?
coldbird: Hm… as for me it was when the whole Fastloader ISO Loading occured, later on Devhook. I analyzed PRX modules from ISO dumps checking for incompatiblities with Fastloader and tried to resolve them somehow, for some games I succeeded, for some I failed. With Devhook rising, I was one of the first guys to start the whole “Plugin Hype” we see today. I created the first working cheat device for Devhook – one for Breath of Fire 3 in fact, later on one for Valkyria Profile – Parts of my codes and suggestions were then included in CWCheat by Weltall.
Virtuous Flame: I started my “career” by pointing out and temporarily fixing a bug in TN-A. [Note by wololo? you can still find this version in the “older releases” section of our TN Hen page]
Is there an event in the PSP scene that impressed/shocked you when you were a newbie? An impressive hack, for example? Hackers you like?
coldbird: Definitely. Snes9xTYL by YoyoFR. I’m a big SNES fan, and fullspeed SNES emulation on PSP, especially on advanced titles like Starfox or Chrono Trigger / Super Mario RPG were a big surprise for me.
Even today I find myself using that Homebrew a lot, to replay my old classics. 😀
Virtuous Flame: For me, it’s M33 CFW from Dark_Alex. I still remember, when NP9660 iso driver lauched I was wondering how an OFW module turned out to be a hacked ISO driver…
coldbird: Haha, yeah. I remember that… DA discovered the module and how to use it way before Sony launched PSN.
Virtuous Flame: …until I reversed galaxy and finally understood 🙂
Wololo: Ok, I have a few other questions about your background, but I’ll come to them later, I want to talk a bit about the present and the future 🙂
so let’s move on to your current work… why did you guys decide to start working on a Hen/CFW ?
coldbird: I can’t talk for my mate here but I did it because 5.XX CFWs were getting old. Not in the “oh its boring way” but “oh its a pain to work on it” way. Also, Sony keeps pumping out new hardware revisions of its console. Old OFW modules weren’t compatible with new models, so we required something that made the newer models exploitable…
The biggest plus for PRO cfw / hen is it’s hardware compatiblity: OFW is not compatible to the new 9g models, while 6.35 is, making ours the most compatible CFW. Also, for ISO playback… it started to become a big pain on older Firmwares due to driver problems (mostly ME-related). Also PSN dealt a lot of trouble, because sony coded a new psn downloader.
Basically – a new OFW moduleset was required, to keep compatiblity up for OFW components / newer models.
Virtuous Flame: Initially, we were just curious to know how the kxploit worked on 6.20.
As soon as we completed a HEN-like prototype, we felt it could be upgraded to (L)CFW, to meet everyone’s needs.
Was the 6.35 Hen your first work together, or did you guys already work together in the past?
coldbird: our first major work together was 6.31 HEN actually. We later – when Sony updated ofw – found out that 6.31 and 6.35 posed absolutely no difference, so we upgraded our code.
Wololo: Ah, true. You guys started on 6.31, and moved on to 6.35 later on
Virtuous Flame: Yes. We even have a 6.36HEN for those guys who upgraded their FW just for MHP3
The main purpose of this HEN is to downgrade
coldbird: Yeah… for downgrading purposes. 😀
Actually, some people keep asking me about 6.36… so your advice for them would be, run this Hen to downgrade to 6.35, right ?
coldbird: Yup. 6.35 + version.txt fake + 6.35 update file. I didn’t test it myself, as the 6.36 hen was a quick recode from my mate here, but this should work. At least it did for him. 😀
Virtuous Flame: Yes. Since 6.3x removed old decrypt support. It couldn’t go down to 5.xx kernel until Davee released his downgrader.
coldbird: Actually 6.20 was even blocked…But Davee added the missing decrypt keys. So up to 6.36 you can change between 6.20, 6.35 and 6.36 freely.
On 9g models however, you can only go down to 6.30, because of driver issues… So you see the downgrade to 6.20 is not possible on those units.
So, back to CFW Pro, many hackers work alone, why did you two decide to work together on this project?
Virtuous Flame: basically we were introduced by a common friend a while ago, and discovered we were working on similar projects. That friend got us to cooperate and we came to like each other and trust each other…
ok, give us a few hints, what’s coming in the next release of CFW PRO? (I’ve seen the blog post with a list of changes, can you give more details ?)
coldbird: Well… all the things mentioned in the changelog plus PSP Go Hibernation Fix for High Memory Applications. And… you wanna mention it VF? 😉
Virtuous Flame: Not to the public 🙂
coldbird: Well. Atleast get our mate Wololo ***. lol
[…] <– [I promised I wouldn’t reveal this bit… let’s say that it will be a very nice addition to CFW Pro :)]
So Let’s sum this up, CFW Pro B4 will have the following new features:
- New ISO Driver “Inferno” (boosting game compatiblity by a lot)
- Version.txt Display
- Improved Plugin Compatiblity (NID resolver changes + other fixes)
- Custom PSX Manual Compatiblity
- Parental Level Check for ISOs
- Anti NBGI Fixes (fixes a bunch of “broken” games)
- PSP Go Hibernation Fix for High Memory Applications
- A nice additional surprise…
That’s it for the first part of this interview. In the next parts we will discuss FW Pro-C and its online features, permanent CFW on new PSP models, and hacking the firmware 6.37, Stay tuned 🙂
Enjoyed the read so far? Head over to part 2 of the interview.
o men i cant wait for the other interview!!!
Great interview!!!kepp on the good work CB and VF!!!!!!
Hey, Wololo. Thanks for asking Coldbird and VF for an interview! And thank you CB and VF for accepting and answering all the questions honestly and in a polite manner!
I love reading interviews. They’re much more fun than “Oh, here’s the changelog, be excited (No offense, CB+VF lol).”
I’m waiting for the next interview. Keep it up Wololo.. 🙂 And will you interview TN in the near future?
Y’know, I’ve moved from 6.20 TN-D to 6.35 PRO-B3, and it seems to crash… Constantly…
Exiting USB Mode, Returning to XMB from a Game, Loading an ISO, Exiting the Music Player screen, all crashes the PSP ._. …
Probably to be a problem on my end, since no one else seems have any problems :/. I look forward to the next release of PRO-C :).
the only time I’ve had problems with 6.35 pro is when i had a bunch of plugins on. notably cxmb and cwcheat. I disables cxmb and haven’t had any problems since
im using PRO-B3 too and I don’t experienced any crash or things that you said.. its very smooth and perfect CFW, maybe you just messed with your plugins because you just moved from TN-D 🙂
I have no plugins on vsh except Hold+ :/
I experience many crashes on my psp 3000 too, although I have a few plugins (some would say a lot), I doubt they’re the problem
Pls support Virtuous Flame and Coldbird’s fanpage on Facebook,.
https://www.facebook.com/virtuosflame?ref=ts
I have a psp go and a 3k. I had them both at TN D until now:
I love my pspgo so I upgraded my 3k to 6.35 with the hen. The first bad thing I came across was the puny vsh menu, didn’t even have usb charge on there… next was when sometime on the xmb’s columns, like game, music, video… after browsing my collection, the hen would crash! I was kind of dissapointed then, until I noticed that plugin and homebrew compability were pretty much the same, and iso and psx support was better… lol ran out of space
Typing this on my psp go, cant get to my laptop atm, is why I ran out of space
Anyways, just fix the crashes, and get abetter vsh and recovery menu is the only reason holding me back from upgrading my pspgo to pro b3 like my psp 3k is, otherwise, I’ll still be hoping/waiting for tn-e, please consider my opinions… c:
tn-e is not coming out. tn-d is the final
http://www.pspking.de is Total_Noobs home forum(which makes perfect sense considering he’s German and it’s a German forum), it’s the forum he posts in and the ONLY one that should be trusted….. too many fakes have come from other forums and too much false information.
TNs most recent post on pspking.de was
“TN-D has a bad PSone Support ^ ^, but I will improve in the next revision.”…….. go look for yourself if you don’t believe me.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pspking.de&sl=de&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
So, unless you have proof of what you are telling us…… your information should be regarded as fake.
Sorry, heres the link
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?ie=UTF8&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.pspking.de/forum/showthread.php%3Ftid%3D37860%26pid%3D432988&usg=ALkJrhjyiQXvXwhBQqcZUFbT5MrnqK4Kvw#pid432988
why using hen when there is pro-b3
It’s just a matter of preferences. I respect how hard at work are CB and VF, but I have all I want in TN HEN, so I’ll be waiting for the TN-E version.
@Wololo: Any word from TN to you? Just wondering.
SWEET! i think ill go to 6.35! im currently on 6.20, but these guys are rapidly updating their stuff.
yea that would be better because total_noob isnt going to update anymore. and plus 6.35 probably has more plugin compatibility by now, and its already got psx support
Wrong, TN is working on TN-E right now, and has not said that he will stop updating his HEN.
I do like that 6.35 Pro status is more publicly available for everyone to see, but TN hasn’t stopped updating…… just not communicating as often.
yes my other plugin works well now on 6.35 and also my favorite snes emulator works fine as well.
Ummm, so where did these rumors that VF and Liquidzigong were the same person originate? And i guess this interview confirms that those rumors are not true?
Liquidzigon=VF
wow, amazing i wondering what are that adittional surprise, but seems really amazing the next Pro, i waiting for it
i wonder what the surprise is going to be
wololo your 35 years old?
29 actually 🙂
So Virtuous Flame ISN’T Liquidzigong? Because Liquid has been here for quite some time.
I think they are the same. Liquidzigong some time ago anounced he’ll retire from the scene, but looks like he cannot. In fact I’m Dark Alex and I’m using this nickname and acting like a noob to deceive everyone 😉
damn. reading this took me way back to the days of devhook and gta downgrader. i remember i had to borrow gta from my cousin because was the only person i knew that had it. oh were those awesome days.
As the admin of this website is working, no doubt
very shortly it will be well-known, due to its quality contents.