Flashing, Easy As 1-2-3
This is the easiest way to flash a XMB theme, there are other ways and homebrews that allow you to switch between themes. But this way is for those who have no idea how to flash XMBs.
Step 1:
Boot up your PSP into recovery mode. Go to Advanced -> Toggle USB (flash0)
Step 2: IMPORTANTGo to "My Computer" And you should Removable Disk X. Copy EVERY folder in there and paste them in a safe location. You MUST back up your flash0 just in case something goes wrong.
Step 3:
Download any desired theme.
IMPORTANT: Make sure the theme is made for the firmware you have. If it isn't it'll cause a semi-brick.
A good place to get themes is
Clilck Here!Step 4:
After downloading it you should see the following or something along these lines, the files you need are in VSH.
Step 5:
After opening VSH you should see "nodule" and/or "resource", you'll be flashing the files in them to your PSP.
Step 6:
Extract all the files in "nodule" to "X:\vsh\nodule" if your computer asks you if you want to replace blah blah say yes.
Step 7:
Extract all the files in "resource" to "X:\vsh\resource" if your computer asks you if you want to replace blah blah say yes.
Step 8:
Now some themes might have a custom font, you just open up the font folder in the rar and extract everything to "X:\font", and once again say yes if your computer asks you if you want to replace blah blah.
Step 9:
Go to Advanced -> Toggle USB (flash0), to toggle it off. Reboot your PSP. And enjoy!
Step 10: *Optional*
Some themes (like the one in the screenshot) come with backgrounds, just put those into "X:Picture" and then view the background with your PSP, press triangle and choose "Set as wallpaper"
Saving Space, Easy as 1-2
Freeing up some space on Flash0:
If your Flash0 is full or doesn't have enough space you'll cause a semi-brick. You can check how much free space you have on your Flash0 by:
Step 1:
Boot up your PSP into recovery mode. Go to Advanced -> Toggle USB (flash0)
Step 2:
Go to X: right click on a blank space and press properties and voila, it'll give you a pie chart of what is used and what is free =D
You can do the following to free up some space:
We're going to replace gb3s1518.bwfon in your font folder with a dummy file, gb3s1518.bwfon is nothing that important, it's just a foreign font, should be the Chinese font.
Step 1:
Boot up your PSP into recovery mode. Go to Advanced -> Toggle USB (flash0)
Step 2:
Make a copy of X:/font/ltn0.pgf, paste it wherever and rename it to gb3s1518.bwfon
Step 3:
Copy it back to X:/font to replace gb3s1518.bwfon to free up 1 mb =D
You can also do the same thing for jpn0.pgf to save 1.5 mb but there will be side effects for jpn0.pgf:
-arrows at the bottom of xmb "agreement" screens are blank
-some "tm" signs are blank
-Arrow to the right of the On Screen Keyboard is missing.
Nothing big =P
Replacing these two fonts should free up enough space for almost all themes.
Flashing On The Go
Instead of flashing manually, we're going to use a Homebrew to help us out. This is a bit more tedious, but allows you to flash and reflash a theme anywhere anytime. The Homebrew we're going to use is called Slash-N-Flash. I like this Homebrew because if something is not right during the flashing process it'll cancel it saving you the grief of unbricking. There are also a lot of other handy functions such as flashing any file on your memory stick onto your PSP, and it has a function that helps you back up your Flash0. But I'm only going to explain how to flash themes =P
Step 1:
Download the Homebrew here:
Download Here! You should read the readme, the readme covers everything here, I'm just going a LITTLE bit more into writing the data.txt.
Step 2:
Turn on your PSP and go into USB Mode. Extract "SlashNFlash" And "SlashNFlash%" from SlashNFlashV3.zip>PSP>Game to X:>PSP>Game.
Step 3:
Inside the SlashNFlash folder there's a folder called "themes" you can have as many folders within "themes" as you want. BUT every folder MUST have a data.txt Create a folder with the name of the theme you want to flash.
Step 4:
Now I'm assuming you already downloaded the theme you want, extract everything inside the "nodule" and "resource" folder into the folder you created in "themes". So it should be something like this:
Step 5:
Now open up Notepad, we're now going to create data.txt. It's going to tell SlashNFlash where to flash everything, kinda like a traffic cop. Now prx go to "nodule" and rco go to "resource". So in the screenie above, we'll tell SlashNFlash to flash common_gui.prx to flash0:/VSH/nodule/common_gui.prx. To tell SlashNFlash to do that we type it like this:
common_gui.prx, "flash0:/VSH/nodule/common_gui.prx";
The format is:
(Name of file), "path";
So for the above screenie, data.txt willl look like this:
common_gui.prx, "flash0:/vsh/nodule/common_gui.prx";
01-12.bmp, "flash0:/vsh/resource/01-12.bmp";
impose_plugin.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/impose_plugin.rco";
msvideo_main_plug.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/msvideo_main_plug.rco"'
music_main_plugin.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/music_main_plugin.rco";
sysconf_plugin.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/sysconf_plugin.rco";
system_plugin.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/system_plugin.rco";
system_plugin_bg.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/system_plugin_bg.rco";
system_plugin_fg.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/system_plugin_fg.rco";
topmenu_plugin.rco, "flash0:/vsh/resource/topmenu_plugin.rco";
msvideo_main_plugin.prx, "flash0:/vsh/nodule/msvideo_main_plugin.prx";
music_main_plugin.prx, "flash0:/vsh/nodule/music_main_plugin.prx";
paf.prx, "flash0:/vsh/nodule/paf.prx";
vshmain.prx, "flash0:/vsh/nodule/vshmain.prx";
Now save it into the folder you created in "themes" as data.txt
( To flash fonts you do the same thing: ltn0.pgf, "flash0:/font/ltn0.pgf"; )
Step 6: *Optional*
You can create a screenshot of your theme and turn it into a preview for SlashNFlash before you flash the theme. Take the screenshot and save the picture into the folder created for the theme. Save the screenshot as the same name as the theme, make sure the file type is JPG or PNG.
Step 7: IMPORTANTTurn on the homebrew, now before you do anything you MUST do this. Go to "Tools" then choose "Dump flash0 (used for backup)" to back up your Flash0 in case anything happens.
Step 8:
To flash the theme go to "Themes" and follow the onscreen instruction.
To Come: Saving Space on the go =O
