have you got a phat or a slim? i guess to say you got a phat...

have a look thru the guides & tutorials at quickjump and pspmods. you will either employ the chickHEN & Hellcat's Recovery Flasher method or the pandora battery and magic memory stick method to install cfw. i think that there is also a GEN flasher method as well.

you're choice will be either to go for 5.00m33-6 or to go for Gen-D3 Final for your cfw. which cfw you go is a matter of personal preference. there are methods where you can directly go to the Gen-D3 but there is also the method of going to 5.00m33-6 first, before going to the latest GEN-X CFW.

ok. some say 5.00m33-6 is more stable while others will state the gen-d3 plays the latest homebrew without decrypting (etc.). since i have not run into any issues with my 5.00m33-6, i haven't been bothered fixing something that ain't broke & i leave updating to GEN-D3 until i run into issues...

final point, i reckon you are better off buying a pre-fab'd PB (i.e. from dealsextreme DX at HK), rather than soft-modding your original PSP battery - but again, that's a matter of personal preference. also, i think although you could use 'fake' memsticks and larger capacity memsticks - get a genuine Sony or Sandisk 'magicgate' memstick of 1 or 2 gb capacity, to make the MMS.

the developments in the psp homebrew scene is fluid - so make sure you read up on the latest articles, rather than some articles written a while back...

true. i noticed he already had cfw.

i suggested he might want to get his hands on a PB, for the just in case scenario. a pb is handy to have to recover from semi- or totally bricked situation... furthermore, the op may decide to update the ofw to the latest version - depending on his psp model, a pb would be handy to downgrade and then install cfw from the later OFW version.