Brewology

Alright, so I've read just about everything I've found everywhere, which includes most of the tutorials.

here's what I have.
datel service tool (converts batteries to service TOOL mode bats and back again)
silver SLIM psp running 3.80 OFW preinstalled
1gig pro duo mem stick, sony brand

Tried the totalnewbieinstaller, referred by this tut http://pspbrew.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11076 and followed instructions to a T. (except for the hardmodding of the battery, which was unnecessary)

of all the options that might have applied to me, only the last, the universal downgrader/debricker would have applied, which unfortunatley did not work either. upon inserting my tool battery and (modified?) stick, I was just left with a black screen. bummer.

I really have no idea what to do, since a lot of 'easy' installers deal with CFW or OFW 3.60 or lower.

Oh, if you have a black screen, then that probably means you've got everything right and the battery is trying to run a program that is not on your stick.
I would double check to see if all the files are on your memory card and try again.

after messing around with various methods, I managed to brick my psp.

Finally I managed to not only unbrick it, but install the CFW as well.

Some things of importance:

when using the Totalnewbieeasyinstaller, If you are running vista or some versions of windows, for some reason it doesn't like to write to the usb stick.

Using the 'easy' menu, I was able to format the stick, but it couldn't be written to.

To work around this I extracted the uniunbr.rar file (which is the universal unbricker etc, or the 4th option)

and copied the contents of that to my ms. however I still needed to write the msipl.bin.

so I grabbed a copy of the original pandora.zip and used msinst to write the ipl.

popped my ms and tool battery in, powered on... waited... mashed a few buttons... had a smoke... came back
and it shut off. Turned it back on (with the regular battery now) and VOILA! my psp is hacked!!!!

to which I proceeded to gallop around the house shrieking like a madman, scaring the crap out of my family and dog.

EDIT: maybe i'll write a tut for those having probs with the installer like I was.

That sounds awesome!
Glad I was actually right for once!

the entire process sounds a lot faster than it actually was... I probably spent about 5 hours on that, with frequent smoke and rant breaks.

Smoking is bad for your bones.
http://science.qj.net/Cigarette-smoking ... aid/115025


Lmao.
I commented down at the bottum, read what I said!