TZP2

Hi, its my first post on the website but it is going to be fairly lengthy.

I have been looking to get a mp3 player of media device for some time, I have looked at the Archos Gemini Line of products and the PSP and other things. My friend is a techincal jargonist and I was talking to him about ways to extend the PSP's capabilities by adding a hard drive. He tells me that even if you did you would not have a drag and drop capability and auto conversion you have with the Archos line. I was talking to him about possible ideas for cheap ways of making a media player (one idea was to get a refurbished pocket pc and attach a hard drive, he knows how it is done, not me but I could ask if anyone is interested.) but we never came up with anything I really thought was worth the money (but we are going to finish our Portable Gamecube tommorow :twisted: )

Now I know that people have been making it so their PSP can read other memory sticks and have hacked that but I wanted to know if what he said was true. He said that first off the PSP can not read compressed MP3 files and that only in November will Sony release something to allow PSP owners to do this. He says that I cannot fill up my PSP with the most stuff because of the fact that I would not be able to compress MP3s. So is there a way to change this so if I bought an SD card I could get the most bang for my space.

The other thing was that he said even if we could put a hard drive on the PSP via the usb cord or duo slot we would have to convert things frame by frame to get it to work on the PSP's sysytem. What I wondered is that if it was in MPEG4 wouldn't there be some type of converter somewhere to at least make the process quicker? He said he would only help me hack if I could find a faster converter. So I guess I want to know if there is a converter and if anyone wants to throw around ideas for a way to add a hard drive to the PSP. I even asked him about putting windows on the little bugger and replacing the PSP operating system but he said it would take him forever to do this.

Anyone have anything to add or help me with about this? If I can find a converter he might be able to help me add a hard drive to my PSP and if that is possible I can post how to do this right here.

NSD

It is technically absolutely impossible to hook up a HDD to the PSP. It's like putting a gamecube DVD in your living-room player, and actually expecting it to work. As long as psp runs its own operating system it WON'T happen. When guys get linux on it (somehow) maybe...but don't get your hopes up. Can you imagine carrying something like a hdd after you ... ? Memory stick is and will be the way to go, and prices will go down.
And what are you saying ? That the psp doesn't play mp3s ? I didn't quite udnerstand that... It does play them.

__________________
Forza Steaua

pride

with USB devices you need to connect them to a USB controller (hub) in order for them to function or connect. Since the PSP is not a USB controller you cannot (at this time) connect devices to it for the PSP to read. The Archos Jukebox is also not a controller, so you would be putting two devices together that have no way of communicating since one needs to be the master controller and the other needs to be a slave.

NSD

It's somehow like pride said it. Devices are either "host" or ... "device". Since the PSP connects to your computer (the host) ... then it's a device. And it can't be two things at the same time. There is one more way - OTG, but it's sill being looked into.

pride

thanks for clearing that up, I really did a hack up job of explaining that.

TZP2

Thanks for the help and clearing that up for me. It was speculation anyways, I was just hoping not to shell out so much money for a memory stick, just me being cheap. Thanks for the help, maybe in the future.

ProjectGSX

It would appear that the USB 2.0 "On the go" technology has made it possible to connect a hard drive to the PSP.

This device:

http://www.supermediastore.com/apacer-share-steno-cd311-with-40gb-5400rpm-notebook-hard-drive.html

Is designed to connect to cameras, mp3 players, etc, and allows for transfers of files to and from the device. Since it has an lcd display and an on-board user interface, you can use it to transfer files to and from the memory stick on the PSP.

Two people over at psp411.com are claiming to have them working. Seems legit to me, if you read up on it.

Newegg.com carries the enclosure without the hard drive for $49.50. Its out of stock currently. As soon as it comes in, Im going to pick one up and give it a shot. I already have a spare 40gb laptop hard drive, so I dont want to drop $150 on the link above.

EDIT - Weird. The URL where people claim to have it working is (Mod Edit: Link Deleted. Defender has filtered it out for a reason. PM the poster if you want the link) For some reason the forums are parsins my message and changing that URL.

simplygriff

So do you add your own harddrive?

Interesting. It'd be cooler if you could use any USB harddrive as I already have a 20GB and a 160GB external drive.

Thanks for the info ProjectGSX!
-G

chrislee149

Really interesting. The only problem is that it would only really help those 512/1gb stick users, since transfering back and forth on just about anything less would probably become too annoying. I wish a company would make something like this specifically designed for the PSP. It could just mount onto the back of the PSP.

ProjectGSX

Agreed, you need atleast a 512mb memory stick, in my opinion, for this to be useful.

Any 2.5" HDD will work with this enclosure. If you already own an external drive, you can buy the bare enclosure for $50 and swap the drive from your existing enclosure to it. Saves you $100 anyways.

And again, just to reiterate, I havent personally verified that this works. It does look legitimate, though.