Howdy folks. I'm a long-time owner of a 1000 model, picked up just after they were released over in the US and have spent a great deal of time enjoying the emulators and apps that are enabled with the magic of CFW. Unfortunately, I went through an extremely busy time of my life about a year and a half ago leading up until now, during which time the old faithful sat untouched in a drawer.

Having dug it out the other day, I was dismayed to note that the dark and perhaps occasionally damp method of storage had resulted in some funky sort of dark growth within the screen itself, rather than something easily cleaned inside of the faceplate or the like. I was also forced to note the accumulation of dings, scratches, and general wear and tear the years had visited upon my poor PSP.

This, combined with hearing of the supposedly amazing screen on the 3000s, was enough for me to pick up a new system. Alas, I learned too late that the Pandora battery and CFW magic don't work on these new models, and that my board in particular (09g) couldn't even be downgraded further than 6.35.

So... with search results returning ancient hits and irrelevant material, I'm turning to you guys for some 'what now' advice. By reading the odd forum posts dug up by Google elsewhere, I've heard that you just can't use 'permanent' CFW on the 3000s, but what does this mean? Is there a way to load CFW from a memory stick or something? What should I be looking for? Having downgraded to 6.35, should I go back to 6.39 before doing any of this?

Sorry for asking the basic questions, but the stickies here are outdated and I spent hours last night digging up what little I know about the 3000 scene as it is. At this point, I'm hoping someone can at least point me to something to get me started in the right direction, or if I should just return this thing and write it off as a misadventure.

Thanks in advance.

This does seem to have put me back where I wanted to be, for the most part.

A quick question though. Will I still be able to make use of emulators for GBA, SNES, and whatnot? A quick trial (after moving the lot over to the GAME subdir from GAME150) has them all appearing in the memory card list, but a 'game could not be started' message greets me right after an immediate crash back to the XMB.

If they're still playable with this card-loaded CFW business, I'll just get to the business of trying to figure out what's been updated and is still useful nowadays.