PSP Web Browsing
Shortly after I got my PSP I began receiving links from friends about a hack inside wipeout pure that would allow you to browse the web. However by the time I got around to getting the game and trying the hack the servers needed to run it had been taken down. Well being a bit of a hacker myself I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I found out that all you needed was a DNS server that would report a different ip for ingame.scea.com and then a web server setup to act like ingame.scea.com with the right directory structure and files. So the first thing I did was setup BIND on my Windows box. I usually would do this on linux but my only linux box is currently doubling as a poker bot server, but that’s for another post. The setup was fairly easy only because I had previous bind experience. First time users may find it a bit if a headache and it will probably take you half a day. Anyway once that was setup I setup a web server to think it was ingame.scea.com with the proper directory structure, which was basically a wipeout/index.html file. This is the file wipeout pure tries to grab when you select “Download” on the main screen. Once BIND was setup I setup a connection in my PSP to use my new internal BIND server. You set this connection up like any other wireless connection, except you choose Advanced for the address information and under DNS servers you put in the local IP of the machine where you just setup BIND. Once all three of these are done you simply fire up wipeout pure and select “Download” from the main screen. It will then try to access ingame.scea.com which you have redirected to your own server. The index file I setup was a simple start page with a link to Google and 2Jay:
You can even put google search boxes on there and the PSP browser will pop up a text input interface to input the search terms. From there I clicked through to 2Jay:
As you can see the PSP browser didn’t really understand our CSS only layout but I was able to read all the text on the page. Most sites layout well enough and graphics are supported. This fun little hack assures me that a better browser, natively supported is on the way from Sony. Why this wasn’t included in the release is beyond me. When they add IM and web browsing they can start working their way into the blackberry market, I know a few suits who wouldn’t mind being able to watch a movie or play a game or two on their communications device, plus the wide screen format is great for browsing. This hack is fun just to be able to do it, but not too useful when connecting to random wireless networks. Hurry up Sony and add native browser support!