Adrenaline Project

Adrenaline is two software projects in one: Adrenaline Application (1) and Epinephrine CFW (2).

1. Adrenaline is a software that modifies the official PSP Emulator (PSPemu/ePSP) using taiHEN CFW framework to make it possible to run a PSP 6.61 Custom Firmware (CFW).
2. Epinephrine is a Custom Firmware for the Vita’s PSPemu derived from TN-V CFW that, besides usual PSP CFW features, it helps to get access to PSP XMB and most of the PSP native environment in the PSPemu.

Quick Feature Set Overview

Adrenaline Application

• Compatible with all PS Vita models on firmware 3.60 up to 3.74
• Support 8 graphical filtering options
• Support color filter
• Support to PS1 game overlay image filter
• Support for PS2/PS3 <-> PSP game link
• Configurable vPSP Custom Firmware
• Configurable PSP and PS1 screen scale
• Configurable Memory Stick driver location
• Configurable USB device to use when connecting Vita to devices via USB
• Save states

Epinephrine CFW

• XMB/VSH on ePSP
• Almost entire PSP 6.61 environment available on ePSP (we call it Virtual PSP, or vPSP for shortness)
• Support executing PSP unsigned code execution (homebrew software, PSP/PS1 backups)
• Support executing PS1 custom games with support for external configuration files that allow easy fixing of games.
• Support manual for game images (ISO/CSO/etc)
• Support for game updates and DLC for both game images (ISO/CSO/etc) and EBOOT
• Configurable CPU/BUS clock for XMB/VSH and PSP games/homebrew/apps
• Three ISO image driver options: Inferno, March33, NP9660
• Support for ISO, CSO, JSO, ZSO, CSOv2, and DAX image formats
• Built-in anti-CFW, fixes some protections and bugs in games.
• Built-in CFW configuration and plugin manager on XMB/VSH for easy CFW management
• Support for autoboot software on system launch if enabled
• Extensive CFW API with good compatibility with M33, ME, PRO, and ARK API
  • Resulting in good compatibility with plugins and homebrew apps and/or easier porting effort for projects using CFW API

Adrenaline Key Combos Cheat Sheet

Epinephrine CFW Key Combos Cheat Sheet

Installation & Updates

Installation

It is recommended to do this approach for a fresh installation. Otherwise, use the Update section.

1. Remove the Adrenaline bubble and the ux0:app/PSPEMUCFW/sce_module/adrenaline_kernel.skprx path from the taiHEN config.txt and finally reboot your device.
2. Download Adrenaline.vpk and install it using VitaShell.
3. Launch Adrenaline and press X to download the 6.61 firmware. After finishing, it will automatically terminate.
4. Relaunch Adrenaline; this time, it will go into PSPemu mode. Follow the instructions on the screen.

*KERNEL
ux0:app/PSPEMUCFW/sce_module/adrenaline_kernel.skprx

Update

If you have already been using Adrenaline, you have three update options: Manual, Update PBP, and Network.

Manual

1. Download Adrenaline.vpk
2. Open the vpk file as a zip
3. Copy all files from sce_module directory to ux0:app/PSPEMUCFW/sce_module

Update PBP

1. Download the updater EBOOT.PBP (or updater.zip)
2. If updater.zip, extract and use the EBOOT.PBP inside it.
3. Put the file at ux0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/UPDATE/ directory (create it if needed)
4. Launch Adrenaline
5. Run the update application

Network

1. Launch Adrenaline
2. On the XMB/VSH, go to System Settings > System Update
3. Press X to download the update with the console.

Adrenaline Menu

Adrenaline Menu is a menu that you access Adrenaline information, Adrenaline Application settings, the save state feature, and more.

The Adrenaline Menu

To open the Adrenaline menu, you have to:

1. Hold the HOME button to open the PSVita/PSTV’s Quick Menu
2. Click on the Settings button on the screen

Once opened, you can notice it has four tabs: Main, States, Settings, and About.

Main tab

This tab has the launched application information (title and title ID) and the most basic options, detailed bellow.

• Enter Standby Mode: Make the system enter standby mode
• Open Official Settings: Opens the official PSVita/PSTV PSPemu game settings
• Exit PspEmu Application: Exits the application
• Exit Adrenaline Menu: Closes the menu

States

This tab has the front UI for the native save state feature of Adrenaline. You can find more information on this feature on the Save State page.

Settings

This tab has the Adrenaline App configuration options. You can find more information on each of the settings at Adrenaline Settings page.

About

This tab shows the Adrenaline version and credits.

Adrenaline Save State

Adrenaline has native support to Save States, accessible in the Adrenaline Menu. It supports the creation of up to 31 save states.

What is a Save State

A save state is a snapshot of the current status of a game, allowing you to save and restore your progress at any point. Unlike traditional in-game saves, save states capture everything in memory, so you can resume exactly where you left off, even if the game itself doesn’t support saving at that moment.

Creating Save State

To create a save state, do the following:

1. Open Adrenaline Menu
   1. Hold the HOME button to open PSVita/PSTV’s Quick Menu
   2. Click on the Settings button on the screen
2. Press L or R until you reach the States tab
3. Select an empty state slot
4. Press X, select Save State, and press X to save the state

Alternatively, you can save the state by substituting a previously saved state (i.e. overwriting the save state):

1. Open Adrenaline Menu
   1. Hold the HOME button to open the PSVita/PSTV’s Quick Menu
   2. Click on the Settings button on the screen
2. Press L or R until you reach the States tab
3. Select an empty state slot
4. Press X, select Overwrite State, and press X to overwrite the state

Loading Save State

To load a save state, do the following:

1. Open Adrenaline Menu
   1. Hold the HOME button to open PSVita/PSTV’s Quick Menu
   2. Click on the Settings button on the screen
2. Press L or R until you reach the States tab
3. Select a saved state slot
4. Press X, select Load State, and press X to load the state

Deleting Save State

To delete a save state, do the following:

1. Open Adrenaline Menu
   1. Hold the HOME button to open PSVita/PSTV’s Quick Menu
   2. Click on the Settings button on the screen
2. Press L or R until you reach the States tab
3. Select a saved state slot
4. Press X, select Delete State and press X to delete the state

Adrenaline Application Settings

A tab in the Adrenaline Menu that allows adjusting various settings related to Adrenaline Application.

vPSP Custom Firmware

Chooses the PSP Custom Firmware that is going to be loaded by the Adrenaline Application into the vPSP environment.

The available options are:

• EPI: Uses the CFW that comes with Adrenaline.
• ARK: Uses the ARK CFW.

Graphics Filtering

Applies graphical filters in the Vita/PSTV screen while the Adrenaline App is open.

It offers these options:

• Original: No filtering is applied; displays the original PSP graphics.
• Bilinear: Smooths out pixel edges for a softer look.
• Sharp Bilinear: Slightly sharper smoothing than bilinear and with scanline effect.
• Advanced AA: Advanced Anti-Aliasing. Reduces jagged edges, making graphics less blocky.
• LCD3x: Simulates the look of an LCD screen, with subtle scanline effect.
• Sharp Bilinear without Scanlines: Like Sharp Bilinear, but without the scanline effect.
• Scale2x: Increases the size by 2x of small bitmaps by guessing the missing pixels without blurring the images, making graphics less blocky.
• Scale2x Plus: Improvement of the Scale2x, by using pixel interpolation to decide the color of the pixels.
• Scale3x: Same as Scale2x, but increases the size by 3x instead of 2x.

Smooth Graphics

When enabled, apply a stronger smooth effect filter on top of the filter selected on Graphical Filtering configuration.

f.lux Filter Color

Configures a color filter option that will be applied on top of the other filters.

The available options are:

• None
• Yellow
• Blue
• Black

Screen Scale X/Y (PSP)

Allows to adjust the horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) scaling of the PSP screen within Adrenaline on XMB/VSH and PSP games/homebrew/applications. This allows you to change the size and aspect ratio of the application display to better fit your Vita/PSTV screen and/or the users’ preferences.

Screen Scale X/Y (PS1)

Same as Screen Scale X/Y (PSP), but exclusively on PS1 games/homebrew.

Memory Stick Location

Chooses the drive Adrenaline App shows up for the chosen CFW as the Memory Stick drive (ms0:).

The options are:

• ux0:pspemu
• ur0:pspemu
• imc0:pspemu
• xmc0:pspemu
• uma0:pspemu

USB device

Selects the device that will show up when connecting the Vita to a system via USB.

The options are:

• Memory Card
• Internal Storage
• sd2vita
• psvsd

Skip Adrenaline Boot Logo

When enabled, it skips the Adrenaline logo at the start of the Adrenaline Application.

PSP Homebrew Support

Epinephrine support launching unsigned homebrew applications directly from the XMB/VSH, and loading plugins with a powerful configuration format.

All user-mode PSP homebrew since PSP Firmware (FW) 3.71 onwards should work fine. Kernel-mode PSP homebrew, on the other hand, may require a build specifically targeted to PSP firmware 6.60 or 6.61 to work on Epinephrine.

Homebrew Apps

PSP homebrew applications are custom software created by the community that can run on the PSP hardware, ranging from games, emulators, and utilities (like media players and file managers).

Homebrew applications must be live on ???0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/ directory to appear in the XMB/VSH.

Homebrew plugins

Homebrew plugins are programs in the form of PRX files that can add extra features and/or modify the behavior of the PSP system and games.

Homebrew plugins .prx files must be put in the ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/ folder and be added to the configuration file ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/plugins.txt or ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/EPIplugins.txt.

The following pages provide more detailed information on plugins.

Legacy 1.50 Homebrew

There is some support for legacy FW 1.50 homebrew, but it is not very well tested. If you have any legacy 1.50 homebrew, try to find out if it works on Adrenaline.

PSP Plugin

PSP plugins are small programs (usually .prx files) that add new features or modify the behavior of the PSP system or games.

Epinephrine should be compatible with most of the plugins made for classic PSP CFW, but incompatibilities may happen. Plugins that replace the VSH Menu (i.e. System Menu, Ultimate VSH Menu, etc) are not supported.

Launch without plugins

Epinephrine allows launching software without plugins by holding the L trigger while launching apps/games/XMB.

This feature can be useful for quickly checking whether issues with a software are related to broken/bugged plugins or to plugins that don’t interact well with the software.

Adding a plugin

1. Put the .prx file somewhere on ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/ directory (create if it doesn’t exist)
2. Open the ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/plugins.txt (create if it doesn’t exist)

• This is the same file as ARK CFW uses, that will be shared with both CFWs
• Optionally, you can create and use ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/EPIplugins.txt to have a separate plugin configuration file from ARK

3. Add to the configuration line in the general format: ⟨RUNLEVELS⟩, ⟨PLUGIN PATH⟩, ⟨on/off⟩

   • Example: psp, ms0:/seplugins/my_plugin.prx, on
   • You can find detailed information on the format on the next page
   • You can find a configuration example here

Managing Plugins

Epinephrine offers two ways to manage plugins already added.

First method: XMB Settings

1. On XMB, go to the Settings

2. Find the ★ Plugins Manager and the confirmation button, and a list of added plugins will show up

3. Select the plugin, click the confirmation button.

4. Select the state (on/off/remove), confirm with the confirmation button.

   • The remove option will remove the line from the configuration file and restart the system

5. Return to save configuration.

Second method: Recovery Menu

1. Open Recovery Menu
2. Go to the Plugins section
3. Go over your plugins and use ←/→ to select the plugin state
4. Go back to the General section
5. Exit the Recovery Menu

Plugin Configuration Format

The configuration format for the plugins on EPI is composed of three sections per line: runlevel(s), plugin path, and switch state (on/off), separated by a comma.

It also accepts line comments with // and #.

Runlevels

The available runlevels are:

• vsh/xmb: VSH runlevel — Plugins configuration for XMB/VSH
• umd/psp/umdemu: UMD runlevel — Plugins configuration for retail application and games
• pops/ps1/psx: POPS runlevel — Plugins configuration for PS1 application and games
• hbw/homebrew: Homebrew runlevel — Plugins configuration for homebrew application and games
• app/game: UMD + Homebrew — Plugins configuration for any PSP application or game; retail or homebrew
• always/all: All runlevels — Plugins configuration for all runlevels
• ⟨TITLE ID⟩: Application/Game specific runlevel — Plugins configuration for a specific application that has the specified ID
• ⟨PATH⟩: Path-specific runlevel — Plugins configuration for an application or game in the specified path. This is more advanced
• cfw=??: Custom Firmware runlevel — Plugins configuration to only run in the specified vPSP Custom Firmware

You can specify more than one runlevel for a specific plugin by separating with a space character, more on example.

Plugin Path

The plugin path can be an absolute path or a relative path.

The absolute path must be a PSP Memory Stick absolute path, i.e. starting with ms0:/. The relative path starts on ms0:/seplugins/, e.g. if the file is on ms0:/seplugins/my_plugin.prx, you can use my_plugin.prx.

Switch state

The switch state defines whether the plugin is enabled or not. The accepted “On” values are on, enabled, true, and 1; and the “off” values are off, disabled, false, and 0.

# VSH Example
xmb, ms0:/seplugins/category_lite.prx, on

# PSP retail games example
psp, ms0:/seplugins/TempAR/tempar.prx, on

# Homebrew-only example
hbw, ms0:/seplugins/example.prx, off

# POP example
pops, ms0:/seplugins/cwcheat/cwcheatpops.prx, on

# Any PSP (game and homebrew)
app, ms0:/seplugins/example.prx, off

# Always
always, ms0:/seplugins/example.prx, off

# CFW
always cfw=ark, ms0:/seplugins/example.prx, off

# Title ID example
ULES00151, ms0:/seplugins/gta_remastered.prx, on

# Path example
ms0:/ISO/my_iso.iso, ms0:/seplugins/example.prx, off
disc0:/PSP_GAME/USRDIR/ys1.bin, ms0:/seplugins/example.prx, off

# Relative path example
psp, cwcheat/cwcheat.prx, off

# Multiple runlevels
ULUS10505 ULJM06213, ms0:/seplugins/khbbs_remastered.prx, on

# You can also disable plugins for certain applications
# Enable on every game
psp, ms0:/seplugins/cwcheat/cwcheat.prx, on
# This will filter out GTA LCS (US) and GTA VCS (EU)
ULUS10041 ULES00502, ms0:/seplugins/cwcheat/cwcheat.prx, off

Notable Plugins

CXMB

One of the most important plugins for customization. With this plugin you can install custom XMB themes made by the community.

This plugin should be enabled for VSH (also known as XMB) mode only.

Download CXMB Here

xmb, ms0:/seplugins/cxmb/cxmb.prx, on

Game Categories Lite

This plugin lets you organize your games in subfolders where you can more easily find them and have the XMB load them faster. An important plugin these days of high capacity memory sticks that fit hundreds of games, way more than the PSP was supposed to handle with its limited memory.

This plugin should be enabled for VSH (also known as XMB) mode only.

vsh, ms0:/seplugins/category_lite.prx, on

Vshbgm

This plugin allows to execute a user-provided mp3 as a background music on the VSH (XMB).

Music automatically stops for media playback, UMD games, or other sounds. Giving you a smooth audio experience while navigating your XMB menus.

The plugin expects the mp3 file to be in a very specific format. But no worries, as the site provides a way to convert it in the site, not only that, you can provide more than one mp3 source, it also merge the files in a single mp3 file, giving a experience similar to having a mini playlist as background music.

The MP3 file is expected to be in ???0:/pspemu/bgm.mp3.

This plugin should be enabled for VSH (also known as XMB) mode only.

Download vshbgm Here Convert MP3 Here

vsh, ms0:/seplugins/vshbgm.prx, on

PRO Online

An important plugin that brings back Online functionality to the PSP on many games.

On Epinephrine this plugin is compatible with the “Inferno Cache” settings.

Download PRO Online Here

UCES01250, ms0:/seplugins/atpro.prx, on

GePatch

An experimental plugin for Epinephrine that allows to run a few games in native resolution.

Download GePatch Here

Link to the compatibility list spreadsheet

NPUH10125, ms0:/seplugins/ge_patch.prx, on

Remastered Controls Collection

A collection of plugins for Epinephrine and ARK (on PSVita/PSTV) that enhance the controls of various PSP titles to better use the PSVita/PSTV controller inputs (like the right joystick).

It includes plugins for:

• Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Final Mix
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Tomb Raider: Legend
• Splinter Cell: Essentials
• Resitance: Retribution
• Prince Of Persia: Revelations and Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus
• The Warriors
• Tony Hawk's Project 8

Download Remastered Controls Plugins Here

ULUS10505, ms0:/seplugins/khbbs_remastered.prx, on

TempAR PSP

TempAR is a complete rewrite of the popular PSP cheat device NitePR/MKULTRA, with additional features and improvements created by raing3.

Download TempAR PSP Here

psp, ms0:/seplugins/TempAR/tempar.prx, on

pops, ms0:/seplugins/TempAR/tempar_lite.prx, on

CWCheat

A cheat device compatible with every game. Requires an updated cheat database to recognize most games.

It can be enabled on every game, but should be disabled for GTA games where their specific cheatdevice is preferred.

Download CWCheat Here

Download latest cheat database Here

psp, ms0:/seplugins/cwcheat/cwcheat.prx, on

pops, ms0:/seplugins/cwcheat/cwcheatpops.prx, on

GTA LCS and VCS cheatdevice remastered

A must have plugin for every fan of GTA on the PSP console. Allows for cheats as well as mods.

It is recommended to enable these plugins only on the specific GTA games where you’ll be loading them using Adrenaline’s per-game plugins configuration.

Download CheatDeviceRemastered Here

ULUS10041 ULUS10160, ms0:seplugins/cheatdevice_remastered.prx, on

PSP Playback

Epinephrine allows the user to execute PSP game images, making it possible to play digital copies of PSP games on PlayStation Vita or PSTV. To make it possible, it uses PSP UMDemu drivers, having four available drivers: Inferno 2, March33 2, MinimalEdition 2, and Sony's NP9660

There are three formats of PSP game images: PBP, ISO, and Compressed ISO.

The PBP image format is the official Sony format. It is the format used for PlayStation Network (PSN) digital games, game updates, and game DLCs. For PSN games, Epinephrine CFW always uses the original Sony's NP9660 driver. Usually, PBP files live on ???0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/⟨TITLE_ID⟩/ directory.

The ISO image format is a 1:1 copy of a Universal Media Disc (UMD), while Compressed ISO is an ISO image compressed in some way to reduce space usage. There are a few competing formats for Compressed ISO: CSO, CSOv2, JSO, ZSO, and DAX, each with different tradeoffs. Epinephrine CFW supports all of those formats and allows you to choose between the three UMDemu drivers available. All of those image options should go in ??0:/pspemu/ISO/ directory.

UMDemu ISO Drivers

This is a brief overview of the features of each driver in the versions that come with Epinephrine CFW.

Inferno 2

This is the default UMDemu ISO driver and the one with the most person-hours put into development over the years. This is a small adaptation of the latest work done hosted on ARK CFW, with minor modifications for better code reuse with other drivers and integration with the Epinephrine CFW.

• Support for all ISO formats: ISO, CSO, CSOv2, JSO, ZSO, and DAX
• Emulation of empty UMD drive: Several bugs existed that caused malfunction when the driver was used without an ISO file specified on other drivers and older versions of this driver.
• Improved Compressed ISO read speeds: Usage of a more efficient algorithm, block offsets cache, and a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Inferno Cache: Usage of overall caches as another read-time speedup hack. The amount of cache is configurable in the CFW configuration option, limiting a maximum to allow for enough free space for other features or plugins. It is also possible to configure the cache policy strategy between two algorithms: Least Recently Used (LRU, default) and Random Replacement (RR).
  • LRU: Uses fewer CPU cycles because it will discards the cache slot from the queue that have not been used in a timeframe when new cache item needs to be added.
  • RR: Uses slightly less memory as it doesn’t need to keep track of the least used cache slot.
• Configurable seek and read speed delays: This allows for simulating the disc seek and read time for the drive to behave more similarly as reading from a physical UMD disc, which allows bypassing some forms of anti-CFW checks in some games.
  • By default, it is automatically set for games known to include such checks, but it is configurable in the case a user finds a game with checks that are not automatically handled.
  • This feature is incompatible with Inferno Cache, enabling this will cause Inferno Cache to be disabled.

March 33 2

March33 driver was originally developed for the March33 CFW by the M33 Team. Epinephrine comes with a modified version with ISO and Compressed ISO read improvements and bug fixes; other than that, there were no other significant changes in the source code.

This driver is made available mostly for compatibility reasons, as historically some games had a better time with this driver than NP9660, ME Driver and Inferno. There are many PSP games and PSP modded games out there; there is a slight chance it can still have better compatibility in niche cases.

• Support for all ISO formats: ISO, CSO, CSOv2, JSO, ZSO, and DAX.
• Improved Compressed ISO read speeds: Usage of a more efficient algorithm, block offsets cache, and a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Configurable seek and read speed delays: This allows for simulating the disc seek and read time for the drive to behave more similarly as reading from a physical UMD disc, which allows bypassing some forms of anti-CFW checks in some games.
  • By default, it is automatically set for games known to include such checks, but it is configurable in the case a user finds a game with checks that are not automatically handled.

Minimal Edition 2

Minimal Edition Driver (a.k.a. ME Driver) was originally developed for the Minimal Edition CFW by neur0n. Epinephrine comes with a modified version with ISO and Compressed ISO read improvements and bug fixes; other than that, there were no other significant changes in the source code.

This driver is made available mostly for compatibility reasons, as historically some games had a better time with this driver than NP9660, March33 Driver and Inferno. There are many PSP games and PSP modded games out there; there is a slight chance it can still have better compatibility in niche cases.

• Support for all ISO formats: ISO, CSO, CSOv2, JSO, ZSO, and DAX.
• Improved Compressed ISO read speeds: Usage of a more efficient algorithm, block offsets cache, and a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Configurable seek and read speed delays: This allows for simulating the disc seek and read time for the drive to behave more similarly as reading from a physical UMD disc, which allows bypassing some forms of anti-CFW checks in some games.
  • By default, it is automatically set for games known to include such checks, but it is configurable in the case a user finds a game with checks that are not automatically handled.

Sony’s NP9660

It is the original PSP UMDemu driver from Sony, but with patches to trick it into running ISO and Compressed ISO formats. This driver is also the one used on PBP games; it has guaranteed compatibility with all games that Sony released on PSN.

This driver is made available for ISO mostly for compatibility reasons, as historically some games had a better time with this driver than March33 Driver, ME Driver and Inferno. There are many PSP games out there, so there is a slight chance it can still have better compatibility in niche cases.

• Support for all ISO formats: ISO, CSO, CSOv2, JSO, ZSO, and DAX.
• Improved Compressed ISO read speeds: Usage of a more efficient algorithm, block offsets cache, and a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Configurable seek and read speed delays: This allows for simulating the disc seek and read time for the drive to behave more similarly as reading from a physical UMD disc, which allows bypassing some forms of anti-CFW checks in some games, and some games with synchronization issues due to faster read times of ISO.
  • By default, it is automatically set for games known to include such checks, but it is configurable in the case a user finds a game with checks that are not automatically handled.

Other ISO features

Epinephrine offers a few other functionalities related to ISO and Compressed ISO that are worth mentioning.

Support for game update and DLC

Epinephrine supports launching ISO games with updates and DLC when installed in their usual place (???0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/⟨TITLE_ID⟩/PBOOT.PBP). But, as a downside, having this file without EBOOT.PBP in the same folder causes the XMB/VSH to show duplicated items; to solve that, you can enable the Hide DLCs in game menu CFW setting.

Support for manuals

Epinephrine also supports manuals for ISO games. For it to work, the .DAT file must be in the ???0:/pspemu/ISO/ directory with the same name as the ISO game file.

Execute BOOT.BIN instead of EBOOT.BIN

Epinephrine supports launching ISO games/apps executing the BOOT.BIN inside the ISO instead of the EBOOT.BIN by holding R while launching the game/app.

This feature can be used in the few games that requires usage of the BOOT.BIN to work properly, as it is the case for ISO of demos, prototypes, decrypted and modded games.

Compressed ISO Formats

Compressed ISO is an ISO image compressed in some way to reduce the space usage. There are a few competing formats, each with different tradeoffs. The formats are specified below.

Technical Overview

History: Format Wars

Format wars aren’t a thing exclusive to the movie industry, and Sony is certainly no stranger to them, though they had nothing to do with this one (at least initially, they did end up making their own PBP format for PSN releases).

Back when the first ISO drivers showed up on the console, memory sticks weren’t bigger than 2GB, which necessitated the implementation of a space-saving mechanism in the form of a compression format for ISO files.

Compressing an ISO into a ZIP file would not be enough, as you can’t do random-access on ZIP files; you have to decompress the entire file before you can use it. This works for classic retro console roms as they are small enough that the entire file can be loaded into RAM, but for a UMD that can reach up to 1.8GB, this was not going to cut it.

It was then that two formats appeared: Booster’s CSO and Dark_AleX’s DAX formats. On these formats, compression is done on a per-sector (or per-block) basis, rather than the entire file, allowing for random access directly on the compressed file. The only downside is that compressing small chunks instead of the whole file will always be detrimental to the compression ratio; in this case, even though CSO and DAX use the same compression algorithm as ZIP, an ISO compressed into a ZIP file will have slightly better compression. Though this wasn’t too bad and the compression ratio was pretty good anyway, especially with games that used lots of uncompressed data and dummy files (pretty common in optical media).

Each format had its own benefit, with DAX considered to be overall faster and having better compression, but CSO being much simpler and more powerful (in a great moment of “forward thinking”, CSO could actually work on DVD and Blu-ray ISOs, while DAX was limited to UMD and Mini-DVD). Also, while the CSO format was standardized to having 2K blocks, it was meant to use any block size, meaning if they had gone with 8K blocks as DAX had done, then CSO would have been as fast as DAX while being even more compressed (due to being an overall more space-efficient format).

A little bit after the creation of CSO and DAX, a third competitor named JSO entered the scene. Developed by Uncle Jam, the format aimed at using a faster decompression algorithm, LZO in this case, to improve the speed of the format. This never took off, however, and the format never gained much popularity, even though many PC apps at the time would fully support converting to and from this format. The reason for its failure has mainly been related to the unoptimized usage of I/O present in drivers of the era, rendering the speedup gained with the faster decompression function relatively unnoticeable. Though the format has seen a resurrection with ARK-4’s Inferno 2 driver, as it offers the best tradeoff between speed and compression ratio.

Most ISO Drivers (i.e. SE and OE) for a while would implement support for both formats, though eventually Dark_AleX (the most famous PSP CFW developer of all time) would drop support for his own DAX format when the M33 CFW was created.

Because DAX offered faster speeds and better compression than standard CSO files, even though it went unsupported, the format went on to gain a sort of niche following and an aura of being the “superior even if not popular format”, pretty similar to what happened to Betamax. Interestingly enough, the speed differences between DAX and CSO related to the block size all go away with a properly I/O optimized driver, and a CSO file created using 8K blocks will provide a better compression ratio than DAX.

Fast forward to the end of the PRO era, and a new fourth format arrives on the scene. Created by Codestation, the ZSO format uses the same exact binary structure as a CSO, with the difference of using the much faster LZ4 algorithm to handle compression. The LZ4 algorithm is the fastest algorithm available, though the speed is traded off for compression ratio, having the worst among the different formats. The format, however, reached the same dead end that JSO had found in the day: the bottleneck and main issue that slows down CSO is not the compression algorithm, but the huge amount of I/O calls being issued when reading any compressed format. Once this bottleneck was eliminated, the original CSO format became much faster to use and therefore most people decided to stick with it instead of migrating to ZSO. Where ZSO did find more success was in the PSP’s sister console, the PS2.

Which algorithm to use nowadays largely depends on the use case. If speed is your priority, then ZSO and JSO are good options, while for space saving, you can use CSO or DAX. The format can also depend on the game, with more intensive games benefiting more from faster decompression (such as ZSO with GTA games), while with other games, the slower decompression only results in a bit more loading times but no difference in gameplay and thus CSO/DAX works fine (such as the case of Minis).

Inferno Driver

The Epinephrine version of the Inferno 2 driver is an adaptation from the ARK version of the driver. The ARK version is an evolution of the Inferno Driver found, among others, in the PRO CFW, for which ARK itself is an evolution of.

Evolution of the driver

Several different versions of the Inferno driver were created for different purposes. So let’s look at all of them and try to add a versioning system to them, so we can have an idea of the evolution of this driver. We will start with PRO-C, which we will call Inferno 1.

• Inferno 1: The original Inferno driver as seen in PRO-C. It includes the block offset cache speedup hack that greatly improved speed with CSO format in comparison to traditional drivers such as March33 Driver. It also included an overall cache that could use the extra RAM on PSP slims to improve speed, this is known as Inferno Cache, though it had conflicts with the Force Extra RAM patch.
• Inferno 1V: The original Inferno driver port for PROVITA, used up to ARK-3. It was a stripped-down version of the one in PRO-C, minus the Inferno Cache since the Vita lacked the PSP Slim’s extra RAM.
• Inferno 1S: An experimental Inferno 1V fork that added support for Splitted ISO files (SSO), it was meant to improve the experience of transferring ISO files via FTP, it was scrapped and never used but source code can still be found in the original ARK-1 repository under the name inferno.new.
• Inferno 1D: A port of Inferno 1 to the ME CFW with added support for the DAX file format. It uses two separate algorithms to handle CSO and DAX.
• Inferno 1.5: Available in PRO-C2, 1.5 is one of the greatest updates to a PSP ISO Driver ever made in regards to Compressed ISO reading speed. Thanks to the research of developer Codestation, we were able to figure out a new speedup hack that proved to be the biggest one yet. It uses the fact that whenever a game requests data, the compressed data is always going to be smaller than the requested data, thus the buffer given by the game can be used to read all the compressed data at once and process each block in place, thus hugely reducing the amount of IO calls to satisfy the data request (which for an ISO is only one IO call), to put it in technical forms, the algorithm went from having a linear O(n) complexity (where n = amount of IO calls) to having the same constant O(1) complexity as an ISO. During this research, Codestation also developed a lightweight version of CSO called ZSO, which is structurally identical to a CSO file but data is compressed using the LZ4 instead of the standard DEFLATE algorithm, which offers the fastest decompression speed available, while being identical to CSO in its structure allowed the same algorithm to be used for both formats.
• Inferno 1.5V: A stripped-down version of the newly updated Inferno 1.5 ported over to Adrenaline. It gets rid of Inferno Cache as it was considered unnecessary on PS Vita, and also removes support for ZSO format, while maintaining the speedup hacks for CSO. This was the version that Adrenaline used up to version 7.1.7.

Now that we’ve covered the evolution of the Inferno Driver over the years, we can focus on all the changes made to it in ARK-4 that justify it being called Inferno 2.

• Dynamic Patching: all static offset patching done to the isofs library has been replaced with dynamic patching algorithms. This makes Inferno capable of working on a wide variety of configurations, including the original PSP, unmodified PS Vita Emulator, Adrenaline-patched PS Vita Emulator, and PSP Toolkits such as testkits and devkits.
• Emulation of Empty UMD Drive: On older versions of Inferno, as well as other UMDemu ISO Drivers, it was never intended for the driver to run without an ISO file to be mounted, thus several bugs existed that caused malfunction when the driver was used without an ISO file specified, this prevented emulation of an empty UMD drive, which was needed on PS Vita to run certain homebrew that checked for a UMD. The main bug was in the implementation of the function sceUmdCheckMedium, a boolean function used to check if a UMD is inserted in the drive. On the ISO driver, this function was hardcoded to always return true, except if an ISO driver is not specified, then it was hardcoded to wait in an infinite loop until one is (which never happens). The solution used by eCFW, such as ARK (up to ARK-3) and TN-CEF (including Adrenaline), was to include a small dummy fake.cso file to mount when no ISO file is specified. On the new Inferno 2 driver, among other things, this function has been corrected to behave exactly like the original, simply returning False if no ISO has been specified, thus allowing the ISO driver to simulate an empty UMD drive by loading it without an ISO file specified.
• Completely revamped Compressed ISO Reader: The CSO driver available with the original Inferno was heavily hardcoded to work only with CSO and only with the PSP. The entire reader was completely rewritten from scratch with much less and lighter code, much more portability (it has been ported to PC, PS2/OPL, and Wii/Nintendont), as well as a much more generic and configurable structure, allowing for easily adding support for other formats without changing the core reader.
• Improved Compressed ISO Read Speeds: Not only is the algorithm written with efficiency in mind, it also implements a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks seen on Inferno 1.5.
• Support for other compressed formats: The new reader was also made to be easily configurable and expandable to support other formats, having been given support for not only CSO and ZSO as seen on Inferno 1.5, but also adds support for DAX as seen on ME’s Inferno update as well as early SE/OE CFW, as well as the rarely seen before JSO and CSOv2 formats. The driver also supports different block sizes, with 2K and 8K being more common (the higher the block size, the better the compression, but also the more memory used by the driver and thus less available for plugins). All formats benefit equally from the speedup hacks, meaning that performance is mainly left to the decompression algorithm they use.
• Improved Inferno Cache compatibility: Issues between Inferno Cache and Force Extra RAM have been resolved, including being able to use it with PRO Online, as well as allowing the use of Inferno Cache on PS Vita and PSP 1K.
• Physical UMD seek and read time simulation: Configurable option to simulate the seek time and read time of reading a physical UMD to bypass the anti-CFW checks of some games, or fix games with synchronization issues due to faster read times.

March33 Driver

The Epinephrine March33 2 driver is an evolution of the March33 Driver of the classic, and very popular, M33 CFW.

Evolution of the driver

The March33 driver was originally developed by the M33 Team for their custom firmware M33 CFW. The detailed evolution of the driver can’t be known besides release notes from the M33 CFW, as back in the day, closed-source development was the norm, and, according to Dark_AleX, the team had other reasons to maintain their software closed-source. So let’s do a quick dive and try to give an idea of the evolution of this driver. We will start with 3.51—M33-3, which was the debut of the driver. The following version is a ludic version number; we will consider all reported changes as the last release of the same base OFW version.

• March33 1.0: The original March33 driver. Debuted on 3.51—M33-3 in July 2007. It had support for ISO and CSO image formats and was the version that the later version of M33 CFW would improve upon.
• March33 1.1: An natural evolution fo the March33 driver. Released in 3.51—M33-7, in the same month as the 1.0. The release changelog indicated improved loading speed of ISO and CSO.
• March33 1.2: Pretty much only bug fixing and some compatibility improvements. Released on 3.71—M33-3 in November of the same year.
• March33 1.3: Increased compatibility with games and bug fixes. Released on 3.90—M33-3 in March of 2008. There were no further notable mentions in the changelogs of versions after this one. This release is the most important as it is the version that was open-sourced years later, in 2017, after all members of the team agreed to release it.
  • Since there were no further notable mentions on the changelogs, we are considering the binary version used on later CFW is this one, or very close to it, patched to work on later versions of the PSP Firmware.
  • The Epinephrine version was initially based on this version.
• March33 RE: A reverse-engineered version of the March33 driver made available in the ME CFW with added support for the DAX image format.

Now that we’ve covered the history and evolution of the March33 Driver over the years, we can focus on the changes made to it in EPI that justify it being called March33 2.

• Support for other compressed formats: The new reader was also made to be easily configurable and expandable to support other formats, having been given support for not only CSO and ZSO, but also adds support for DAX as seen on ME’s March33 update, as well as the rarely seen before JSO and CSOv2 formats. The driver also supports different block sizes, with 2K and 8K being more common (the higher the block size, the better the compression, but also the more memory used by the driver and thus less available for plugins). All formats benefit equally from the speedup hacks, meaning that performance is mainly left to the decompression algorithm they use.
• Emulation of Empty UMD Drive: On older versions of March33, as well as other ISO Drivers except Inferno 2, it was never intended for the driver to run without an ISO file to be mounted, thus several bugs existed that caused malfunction when the driver was used without an ISO file specified, this prevented emulation of an empty UMD drive, which was needed on PS Vita to run certain homebrew that checked for a UMD. The main bug was in the implementation of the function sceUmdCheckMedium, a boolean function used to check if a UMD is inserted in the drive, on ISO driver this function was hardcoded to always return true, except if an ISO driver is not specified, then it was hardcoded to wait in an infinite loop until one is (which never happens). The solution used by eCFW such as ARK (up to ARK-3) and TN-CEF (including Adrenaline) was to include a small dummy fake.cso file to mount when no ISO file is specified. On the new March33 2 driver, among other things, this function has been corrected to behave exactly like the original, simply returning False if no ISO has been specified, thus allowing the ISO driver to simulate an empty UMD drive by loading it without an ISO file specified.
• Improved Compressed ISO Read Speeds: Not only is the algorithm written with efficiency in mind, it also implements a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Physical UMD seek and read time simulation: Configurable option to simulate the seek time and read time of reading a physical UMD to bypass the anti-CFW checks of some games, or fix games with synchronization issues due to faster read times.

Minimal Edition Driver (ME Driver)

The Epinephrine Minimal Edition 2 driver is an evolution of the Minimal Edition Driver of the popular, Minimal Edition CFW also known as (L)ME CFW.

Evolution of the driver

The ME driver was originally developed by neur0n for their custom firmware (L)ME CFW. It started as a reverse engineer of the March33 Driver when it was closed-source, but then it started to evolve as the ME CFW was being developed. Back then, the ME CFW also called this driver as “March33 Drive” for it’s history of the March33 driver reversed engineered. The following version is a ludic version number; we will consider all reported changes as the last release of the same base OFW version.

• ME Driver 1.0: A reverse-engineered version of the March33 driver made available in the ME CFW.
• ME Driver 1.5: An natural evolution fo the MinimalEdition driver by the latest release of the ME CFW.

Now that we’ve covered the history and evolution of the MinimalEdition Driver over the years, we can focus on the changes made to it in EPI that justify it being called MinimalEdition Driver 2.

• Support for other compressed formats: The new reader was also made to be easily configurable and expandable to support other formats, having been given support for not only CSO and ZSO, but also adds support for DAX as seen on ME’s March33 update, as well as the rarely seen before JSO and CSOv2 formats. The driver also supports different block sizes, with 2K and 8K being more common (the higher the block size, the better the compression, but also the more memory used by the driver and thus less available for plugins). All formats benefit equally from the speedup hacks, meaning that performance is mainly left to the decompression algorithm they use.
• Emulation of Empty UMD Drive: On older versions of ME Driver, as well as other ISO Drivers except Inferno 2, it was never intended for the driver to run without an ISO file to be mounted, thus several bugs existed that caused malfunction when the driver was used without an ISO file specified, this prevented emulation of an empty UMD drive, which was needed on PS Vita to run certain homebrew that checked for a UMD. The main bug was in the implementation of the function sceUmdCheckMedium, a boolean function used to check if a UMD is inserted in the drive, on ISO driver this function was hardcoded to always return true, except if an ISO driver is not specified, then it was hardcoded to wait in an infinite loop until one is (which never happens). The solution used by eCFW such as ARK (up to ARK-3) and TN-CEF (including Adrenaline) was to include a small dummy fake.cso file to mount when no ISO file is specified. On the new ME Driver 2 driver, among other things, this function has been corrected to behave exactly like the original, simply returning False if no ISO has been specified, thus allowing the ISO driver to simulate an empty UMD drive by loading it without an ISO file specified.
• Improved Compressed ISO Read Speeds: Not only is the algorithm written with efficiency in mind, it also implements a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Physical UMD seek and read time simulation: Configurable option to simulate the seek time and read time of reading a physical UMD to bypass the anti-CFW checks of some games, or fix games with synchronization issues due to faster read times.

Galaxy Controller

The Galaxy Controller is the software that tricks Sony’s NP9660 Driver into executing ISO and Compressed ISO image files.

The Epinephrine Galaxy Controller is a mix of the Galaxy Controller of ARK-3 and M33 CFW since version 8.0.0. On previous versions of Adrenaline, it came with a binary source of M33 Galaxy Controller.

Historically, there were many versions of Galaxy Controller created. Most of them seem to have come into existence in their own way, except for the ARK-1/2/3 version, which was a direct continuation from the PRO CFW version. That doesn’t matter much for this plugin, though, since all of them do pretty much the same thing, and the performance differences came down to the reading speed of PSP image formats being dependent more on the image-reading implementation of each project than on the patches to the NP9660 Driver.

The current Epinephrine version reuses the image-reading code for all ISO drivers (and also to show the images on XMB/VSH); for that reason, it contains all the improvements related to reading PSP image files in the NP9660 Driver once Galaxy Controller patches it.

• Support for other compressed formats: The new reader was also made to be easily configurable and expandable to support other formats, having been given support for not only CSO and ZSO, but also adds support for DAX as seen on ME’s March33 update, as well as the rarely seen before JSO and CSOv2 formats. The driver also supports different block sizes, with 2K and 8K being more common (the higher the block size, the better the compression, but also the more memory used by the driver and thus less available for plugins). All formats benefit equally from the speedup hacks, meaning that performance is mainly left to the decompression algorithm they use.
• Improved Compressed ISO Read Speeds: Not only is the algorithm written with efficiency in mind, it also implements a more aggressive form of the speedup hacks.
• Physical UMD seek and read time simulation: Configurable option to simulate the seek time and read time of reading a physical UMD to bypass the anti-CFW checks of some games, or fix games with synchronization issues due to faster read times.

PS1 Playback

Epinephrine allows the user to execute official PS1 games and custom PS1 games/applications on PlayStation Vita or PSTV.

A custom PS1 game/app needs to be in the PSP EBOOT.PBP format and be stored on ???0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/⟨TITLE_ID⟩/ directory. Once added, the game/app can be launched from the XMB without any further configuration.

Adrenaline and Epinephrine comes with a set of added features tailored for better game experience and better support of custom PS1 games/apps.

Fast-forward

Adrenaline can increase the speed of a running PS1 app/game. You can toggle this feature by pressing L+Select while a PS1 app/game is running.

This feature is more often used to speed-up repetitive gameplay, or skip slow sections & cutscenes.

Overlay Image

With Adrenaline, you can include an extra overlay filter based on an image that can be used to decorate the empty space on the sides of the game or custom scanline textures.

One image overlay per PS1 game can be set. The image should be 960x544 pixels to work properly. And the image must be stored as ???0:/pspemu/overlays/⟨TITLE_ID⟩.png.

CDDA Support

CD Direct Audio was one of the methods (along with the proprietary XA format) to encode sound in PS1 games. Games that use CDDA are usually separated into different tracks, with the first one being the main data track and the rest being CD audio tracks. Many regular CD players were capable of playing these audio tracks when a PS1 disc was inserted.

The PS1 emulator was originally coded to use CD audio tracks packaged into the EBOOT itself, however on later firmware revisions, Sony decided to replace those CDDA tracks with equivalent tracks encoded (and compressed) in AT3 format, which the PSP could also decode and play, this was done to drastically reduce the size of some PS1 games that used a lot of the disc space for CDDA.

Though Sony replaced CDDA with AT3, they didn’t really remove the ability to play CDDA-encoded games; they just disabled it. A plugin known as cdda_enabler developed by theFl0w was released to re-enable CDDA functionality in the PS1 emulator, allowing games encoded with the older format to be playable with full working sound (whereas before they would produce no sound).

The patch to re-enable CDDA has been added to Epinephrine’s PopCorn module (the custom PS1 driver) from the start of the project, meaning that it is not necessary to use the cdda_enabler plugin on Epinephrine.

Custom POPS Configuration

The PS1 emulator for PSP/Vita (POPS) allows for custom configuration to be injected in the structure of the PBP, allowing per-game fixes. This is used by some titles officially released on the PSN version.

With Epinephrine, you can implement these custom patches in a single external file CONFIG.BIN, stored alongside the EBOOT.PBP of the custom PS1 game/app (i.e. ???0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/⟨TITLE_ID⟩/), without the need to be injected into the EBOOT.PBP file; as the CFW will do that for you on-the-fly.

Anti-LibCrypt patch

Epinephrine contains a patch to defeat libcrypt protection for known games without requiring rebuilding the custom PS1 game/app PBP file.

This patch is applied automatically to games that are detected to need it and does not require any configuration from the user.

Epinephrine VSH Menu

VSH Menu is a menu that can be accessed while on XMB/VSH. It contains the most common CFW configurations that users of Epinephrine change with more frequency and quick commands.

To access this menu, click the Select button while on XMB/VSH.

Available features

• Modify the CPU/BUS speed for the XMB/VSH
• Modify the CPU/BUS speed for PSP Games
• Modify the ISO driver to use when launching ISO games
• Quick option to suspend the device
• Quick option to restart the system in the Recovery Menu
• Quick option to restart XMB/VSH

Epinephrine Custom Firmware Settings

Epinephrine CFW has several settings options that modify the behavior of the system. The settings can be split in two categories: General Settings and Advanced Settings.

You can use the XMB or the Recovery Menu to easily modify the CFW settings.

General Settings

CPU/BUS clock speed in XMB

Configures the CPU/BUS clock speed on when the system is on the XMB/VSH.

Options:

• Default: Same as 222/111 option
• 20/10
• 75/37
• 100/50
• 133/66
• 222/111
• 266/133
• 300/150
• 333/166

CPU/BUS clock speed in PSP game/app

Configures the CPU/BUS clock speed on when the system is running a PSP game, PSP app or PSP homebrew.

Options:

• Default: Game/app dependant
• 20/10
• 75/37
• 100/50
• 133/66
• 222/111
• 266/133
• 300/150
• 333/166

UMDemu ISO driver

Configures the UMDemu driver to use with ISO and Compressed ISO games.

Options:

• Inferno
• March33
• Sony NP9660

Skip Sony logo on coldboot

When enabled, skip the “Sony Computer Entertainment” logo when starting the system.

Skip Sony logo on gameboot

When enabled, skip the “PSP” logo when starting an PSP game/app.

Hide corrupt icons in game menu

When enabled, hides corrupt icons in the game menu.

Corrupt icons happens in the case a game folder does not contain an EBOOT.PBP file.

Hide DLCs in game menu

When enabled, hides DLC from showing up as duplicate games when you have DLC installed for your ISO game.

Hide PIC0/PIC1 in game menu

Controls whether to stops displaying PIC0 and/or PIC1 images on XMB, allowing quicker response time to show the game list.

Options:

• Disabled: Do not hide PIC0 and PIC1
• Both: Hides both PIC0 and PIC1
• PIC0 Only: Hides only the PIC0 (“Title/Information image”)
• PIC1 Only: Hides only the PIC1 (“Background image”)

Hide MAC address

When enabled, hides the MAC address from the Settings > System Settings > System Information.

Hide CFW files in PSP games

When enabled, hides the CFW files from being seem or modified by PSP games.

This is not applied to homebrew games/apps or custom updater, even if the option is enabled.

Autorun /PSP/GAME/BOOT/EBOOT.PBP

When enabled, the system automatically launches the game/app int the ???0:/pspemu/PSP/GAME/BOOT/EBOOT.PBP.

Fake VSH Region

Modifies the perceived region on XMB/VSH, allowing to unlock region-specific apps and features.

Options:

• Disabled
• Japan
• America
• Europe
• Korea
• United Kingdom
• Mexico
• Australia/NZ
• East
• Taiwan
• Russia
• China
• Debug Type I
• Debug Type II

Extended screen colors mode

Modifies the system to use a extended color space based on the configuration.

Options:

• Disabled
• 02g: Use the same color space as the PSP-2000. More vibrant colors, cooler color tone.
• 03g: Use the same color space as the PSP-3000. More vibrant colors, warmer color tone.

Use Sony PSP OSK

When enabled, makes the system to use the PSP On Screen Keyboard (OSK) instead of the VITA/PSTV native OSK.

Memory Stick Cache

When enabled, the system will use a cache in I/O operations of the Memory Stick drive (ms0:) to improve speed.

NoDRM engine

Controls whether to patch the DRM engine of the PSP system.

When enabled, the system will allow to launch application, homebrews and games without a valid license.

XMB Control

Controls whether to load the extra CFW menus on XMB/VSH.

When enabled, the menus will show up in the XMB in the Settings section.

Recovery color

Configures the color of the Recovery Menu.

Advanced Settings

Advanced settings are called that for a reason. They provide powerful options that can significantly alter system behavior, stability, or compatibility. These settings are intended for experienced users and tinkerers exploring the best set of configuration for cases of bad compatibility with apps and games (anti-CFW checks, slowdowns not solved by general settings, etc).

Incorrect configuration may lead to unexpected issues, so proceed with caution and consult documentation or community resources if unsure.

Force high memory layout

Controls whether to force the unlock extra RAM space for the user-space RAM partition, that can be used by games and apps.

Options:

• Disabled: With this option, no specific memory layout is forced.
  • By default, user RAM partition gets the standard 24MB.
  • Homebrew games/apps can request other layout by using the MEMSIZE in their SFO information or by using the CFW API.
  • Plugin author can use the CFW API to request changing the layout.
• Stable: The stable amount of extra RAM is made available to the user RAM partition, a total of 40MB.
  • When this options is set, it truly forces it, any requests to modify it will result in it being “ignored” (the CFW API returns an error informing that is not possible to modify the memory layout).
• Max: Makes the maximum possible of RAM available to the user RAM partition, a total of 52MB, at the cost of potential instabilities.
  • When this options is set, it truly forces it, any requests to modify it will result in it being “ignored” (the CFW API returns an error informing that is not possible to modify the memory layout).

Fake max free memory

Controls wether to limit the reported maximum free memory and how much to limit from sceKernelMaxFreeMemSize on a title.

Any option other than Auto will always use that value, regardless of existent game patches and fixes.

Options:

• Auto: Disabled by default, but also can change based on automatic game patches and fixes (often related to high memory layout instabilities)
• 16MB: Set the maximum value to 16MB
• 24MB: Set the maximum value to 24MB (Maximum User RAM)
• 32MB: Set the maximum value to 32MB (Max Kernel + Max User RAM)
• 40MB: Set the maximum value to 40MB (Max Stable high memory layout User RAM)
• 48MB: Set the maximum value to 48MB (Max Kernel + Max Stable high memory layout User RAM)
• 52MB: Set the maximum value to 52MB (Max “Max” high memory layout User RAM)
• 60MB: Set the maximum value to 60MB (Max Kernel + Max “Max” high memory layout User RAM)
• 64MB: Set the maximum value to 64MB (Max PSP RAM, probably not very useful)

Use Graphic Engine 2

Controls wether to load an alternative implementation of the Graphic Engine module, i.e. loads ge_2.prx instead of ge.prx.

This is a CFW option made available to tinkerers to explore possible improvement options for apps/games (considering that native PSPemu has similar options for compatibility with officially released PSP titles on VITA). But it is also an advanced option as it may also cause regressions and/or issues with apps/games.

Use Media Engine 2

Controls wether to load an alternative implementation of the Media Engine module, i.e. loads kermit_me_wrapper_2.prx instead of kermit_me_wrapper.prx.

This is a CFW option made available to tinkerers to explore possible improvement options for apps/games (considering that native PSPemu has similar options for compatibility with officially released PSP titles on VITA). But it is also an advanced option as it may also cause regressions and/or issues with apps/games.

Execute BOOT.BIN in UMDemu ISO

This configuration makes the the system to execute BOOT.BIN file instead of EBOOT.BIN when launching ISO game/apps.

In the case of the ISO game/apps not having a BOOT.BIN file, it will fallback to EBOOT.BIN.

Inferno ISO cache policy

Configures what cache policy the Inferno UMDemu driver will use for its overall cache (also known as Inferno Cache).

Options:

• LRU: Least Recently Used policy. Uses less cpu cycles because it will discards the cache slot from the queue that have not been used in a timeframe when new cache item needs to be added.
• RR: Random Replacement policy. Uses slightly less memory as it doesn’t need to keep track of data related to cache slots usage. It can be beneficial for uniform or streaming reading patterns.

Inferno ISO cache number

Configures how many caches the Inferno UMDemu driver will use for Inferno Cache.

This could improve the execution of a game/app at the cost of using more memory.

Any option other than Auto will always use that value for all ISO games and apps launched with the Inferno driver.

Options:

• Auto: Uses the default value 32, but also can change based on automatic game patches and fixes, including totally disabling Inferno Cache.
• 1
• 2
• 4
• 8
• 16
• 32
• 64
• 128

Inferno ISO cache size

Configures the size of cache the Inferno UMDemu driver will use for Inferno Cache.

This also could improve the execution of a game/app at the cost of using more memory.

Any option other than Auto will always use that value for all ISO games and apps launched with the Inferno driver.

Options:

• Auto: Uses the default value 32KB, but also can change based on automatic game patches and fixes, including totally disabling Inferno Cache.
• 1KB
• 2KB
• 4KB
• 8KB
• 16KB
• 32KB
• 64KB

UMDemu ISO seek time delay factor

Epinephrine’s UMDemu drivers have the ability to simulate the seek time for the disc reader reach to an disc offset before reading and retrieving data that would happen when reading a physical UMD.

This setting allows to control a factor of how much slower is that seek time simulation.

This can be used to bypass the anti-CFW checks in some games and fix desynchronization issues on some other games. Epinephrine automatically sets for games known to have those checks and/or desync issues when both seek and read time are set to Auto.

Option:

• Auto: Disabled by default, but also can change based on automatic game patches and fixes. If UMDemu ISO read speed delay factor is different than Auto, it is interpreted as 0x (i.e. no seek time delays).
• 1x
• 2x
• 3x
• 4x

UMDemu ISO read speed delay factor

Epinephrine’s UMDemu drivers have the ability to simulate the slower read speed of a physical UMD.

This setting allows to control a factor of how much slower is that read speed simulation.

This can be used to bypass the anti-CFW checks in some games and fix desynchronization issues on some other games. Epinephrine automatically sets for games known to have those checks and/or desyc issues when both seek and read time are set to Auto.

Option:

• Auto: Disabled by default, but also can change based on automatic game patches and fixes. If UMDemu ISO seek speed delay factor is different than Auto, it is interpreted as 0x (i.e. no read time delays).
• 1x
• 2x
• 3x
• 4x

TTY redirection

Controls whether to redirect TTY stdout to VITA-side.

If enabled, the stdout of the vPSP-side is redirected to the VITA-side. There, they can be used for remote logging (CatLog and similar homebrews), for example.

XMB plugins

Controls whether to load plugins on XMB/VSH.

GAME plugins

Controls whether to load plugins on PSP game/apps.

POPS plugins

Controls whether to load plugins on PS1 game/apps.

Epinephrine Recovery Menu

The Epinephrine Recover Menu allows the user to modify the Epinephrine CFW Settings, work as a plugin manager and extra features.

There are two ways to enter in the Recovery Menu. Either on XMB, by opening the VSH Menu and selecting the RECOVERY MENU option, or opening the Adrenaline Application while holding the R button.

The Recovery Menu has three sections: General, Advanced and Plugin.

General

This section is more focused on the General CFW Settings. But it contains a couple of extra itens detailed bellow.

Toggle USB

Switch the state of USB connection while on Recovery Mode.

Exit

Exit the Recovery Menu and restart the vPSP system.

Advanced

This section is more focused on the Advanced CFW Settings. But it contains a few extra itens detailed bellow.

Button assign

Configures what button is used for confirmation/enter system-wide.

Options:

• ⭕️ is enter
• ❌ is enter

Import classic plugins

Imports the classic plugin configuration (/seplugins/vsh.txt, /seplugins/game.txt, /seplugins/pops.txt) to the new format at ???0:/pspemu/seplugins/plugins.txt.

Activate WMA

Enables WMA playback without connecting to the internet.

Activate Flash Player

Enables Flash Player without connecting to the internet.

Reset settings

Resets the CFW settings to the default values.

Plugins

This is the Recovery Menu plugin manager. Here you can select a plugin and change its value to Disabled or Enabled.

XMB CFW Menus

Epinephrine adds extra menus to the XMB that allow the user to change CFW settings and work as a plugin manager.

★ Epinephrine CFW settings

This menu can be found in the Settings section of the XMB. It allows modifying the Epinephrine CFW Settings.

Some options may require that the system be restarted before taking effect. This will be informed in the menu (third image).

Advanced settings are marked with the ▲ symbol at the start.

★ Plugins Manager

This menu can be found in the Settings section of the XMB. It allows modifying the plugin configuration directly from the XMB.

Once opened, it will show the list of plugins, their runlevels, and their path. Clicking the enter button allows to select the state of the plugin entry (On, Off, Remove).

The Remove option will remove the configuration line related to the plugin configuration file and restart the XMB.

Contributing to Adrenaline

Contribution to the project is always welcome. The process is straight-forward:

1. Create a fork of the project on GitHub
2. Commit your changes (remember to do good commit messages)
3. Send a Pull Request (PR) to the project

This is the gist of it, but you will need to be able to compile the project to test before sending a PR.

Project parts overview

Adrenaline Application (a.k.a. VITA-side)

• bubble: The bubble launcher for Adrenaline
• user: The userspace plugin that patches the PSPemu and allows extra communication between the VITA-side with the PSP-side
• kernel: The kernel plugin that do the necessary patches to fix the double launch bug
• usbdevice: The USB mass storage plugin
• vsh: The plugin that patches VITA VSH for Adrenaline

Epinephrine eCFW (a.k.a. ePSP-side)

The Epinephrine eCFW part can be separated in two parts: The core parts and the extra parts.

The core parts are essential to support the most basic functionality of a CFW. The extra parts are not necessary for the CFW, but might provide quality of life features for end-users.

Core parts:

• cef/systemctrl: The heart of the eCFW, therefore it’s name SystemControl. It provide patches for unsigned code execution, handles anti-CFW protection in games, and provides extra libraries API that serves the rest of the eCFW module and third-party plugins.
• cef/pentazemin: The Pentazemin module patches the necessary system modules and old homebrew modules to make the vPSP environment to work. It also works as a compatibility layer for other PSP CFW to run on Adrenaline more easily (like ARK).
• cef/vshctrl: The VshControl module handles the main patches for the XMB/VSH to allow launching unsigned applications from the XMB. It also provides extra API for plugins meant to be run on XMB/VSH contexts.
• cef/galaxy: The GalaxyController module provide patches to use ISO and Compressed ISO with the Sony’s NP9660 driver.
• cef/inferno: The InfernoDriver module is the custom driver that allows executing ISO and Compressed ISO.
• cef/march33: The March33Driver module is the custom driver that allows executing ISO and Compressed ISO.
• cef/popcorn: The PopcornManager module allows the PS1 emulator (POPS) to launch custom PS1 images.
• cef/recovery: The Recovery Menu module. It provides the Recovery Menu, that can be used to configure the eCFW, or reset it in case of bad configuration/plugins making the system not boot-up correctly.
• cef/kermit_idstorage: A custom implementation of sceIdStorage_driver that enables the vPSP environment to work properly.
• cef/payloadex and cef/rebootex: Handles the actual injection of the CFW in the (re)boot process. Payloadex is used by user to launch Adrenaline CFW, while Rebootex is set to relaunch it during a ePSP reboot.

Extra Parts:

• cef/satelite: Provides the VSH Menu to the eCFW, allowing to quick access the most basic configurations in any place of the XMB.
• cef/xmbctrl: The XMB Control module provides access to CFW configuration and plugin management directly from the XMB Settings section.

Setting up the development environment

To be able to build the project, you will need to setup the necessary development environment parts. Adrenaline depends on four thing: VITASDK, PSPSDK, PSP CFW SDK, Python3 and psp-packer.

For the VITASDK and PSPSDK, follow their instructions to install it in your system.

For the PSP CFW SDK, prefer to install from source, as CFW development and updates to the CFW SDK move hand-in-hand.

Python3 installation will depend on your system and setup. Google is your friend on this one.

For psp-packer, either install via cargo or install from source.

Once everything is installed, you can build the project.

Building the project

First, you need to compile the eCFW (ePSP-side) code:

make -C cef -j1

Then, you have to build the VITA-side part:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

For every change, you must recompile the project for the changes to take effect. This may be obvious for many programmers, but absolute novice in compiled languages may not understand this right away.

Manually testing the project

After building the project, you have to install it. For that you can follow the manual update instructions.

You need to reboot the system if there was any modifications on the vsh or kernel code.

Test things your code change affect.

Logs

On the ePSP-side, you can pass next the definition to the make call that enables logging on the subprojects that form the Adrenaline ePSP CFW. The ones available are:

• GALAXY_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/galaxy module
• INFERNO_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/inferno module
• MARCH33_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/march33 module
• KERMIT_IDSTORAGE_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/kermit_idstorage module
• RECOVERY_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/newrecovery module
• POPCORN_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/popcorn module
• SATELITE_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/satelite module
• SCTRL_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/systemctrl module
• VSHCTRL_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/vshctrl module
• XMBCTRL_DEBUG: Enables logs only on the cef/xmbctrl module
• DEBUG: Enables logs to all subprojects with the same level

It is recommended to use the specific ones. Another recommendation is to avoid using more than level 2 unless really necessary, as the excessive logging message can make the vPSP system very slow.

make -C cef -j1 SCTRL_DEBUG=2 VSHCTRL_DEBUG=1

On the VITA-side, we don’t have something super well stablished, you can use sceClibPrintf function, and the messages will show up in the tty, that you can access through log homebrews (we recommend catlog).

Accessing the logs

You can access in real-time and in your computer all logs by using logs homebrew such as catlog. This is the easiest way to access them.

For the eCFW modules, you can later access them by looking into log files at the ???0:/pspemu/ directory. They are all named using the following pattern: log_⟨MODULE_NAME⟩.txt.

Using CFW API in your homebrew

Epinephrine CFW offers five libraries that can be used by homebrew software: SystemCtrlForKernel, SystemCtrlForUser, KUBridge, SysclibForUser, and VshCtrlLib.

The SystemCtrlForKernel and SystemCtrlForUser contain API that allows the user to launch/execute homebrew and games, get and set system information, live patching utilities, and more. It is available in all possible runlevels, but, as the names suggest, SystemCtrlForKernel is only available for kernel plugins, while SystemCtrlForUser is available for user plugins and homebrew applications.

The KUBridge provides APIs to execute functions with kernel access from the user-space. It is also available in all possible runlevels, and as SystemCtrlForUser, it is available for user plugins and homebrew applications.

The SysclibForUser provides many basic C library API to the user-space. With it, you can avoid linking to the newlibc implementation of those functions, making your executable smaller. It is available in all possible runlevels for user plugins and homebrew applications.

The VshCtrlLib extends the API available on the VSH/XMB runlevel; this also means it is only available on that runlevel. It is available for user plugins.

How to use them in your project

To start using these APIs, you can install the PSP CFW SDK to obtain the headers and the stubs for the CFW API.

The easiest way is to use psp-pacman:

psp-pacman -Syy psp-cfw-sdk

You can also install it from source, by cloning the git repo linked above, and executing

make install

My homebrew already uses CFW APIs

In the case of your homebrew already using CFW APIs, there is a very good chance that you won’t need to modify a thing to support Epinephrine.

The Epinephrine’s SystemCtrlForUser and KUBridge have 100% API compatibility with the same libraries of M33, ME, PRO, and ARK custom firmwares. That means that if the API provided by the original targeted CFW is sufficient for your project, you won’t need to change the stubs and header and create a build only targeted to Epinephrine. You will only need to change if you desire to access newly added APIs.

The Epinephrine’s SystemCtrlForKernel is mostly compatible with M33, ME, PRO, and ARK custom firmwares. Make sure that any function you use from this library also exists for Epinephrine. If you couldn’t find any, at worst, you will need to rebuild your kernel plugin project for the 6.61 PSP firmware version to support Epinephrine.

The Epinephrine’s SysclibForUser only exists on Epinephrine and ARK, and they have total parity. If you already use it, you don’t need to change.

The Epinephrine’s VshCtrlLib is 100% compatible with M33, and mostly compatible with ME, PRO, and ARK custom firmwares. Make sure that any function you use from this library also exists for Epinephrine. If you couldn’t find any, you don’t need to change a thing to support Epinephrine.

Glossary

Known Compatibility Issues

This is a list of compatibility issues on Epinephrine with games, application, homebrews and plugins.

EyePet

The camera is not working in this game. That seems to be caused by some buffer in PSPemu that somehow gets invalid.

There are currently no way to solve the issue with this game.

Titles that ISO need to use BOOT.BIN

Titles in the ISO/Compressed ISO format that are decrypted or are demo, prototype or modded version of a game will need to be launched while holding the R trigger, otherwise the game won’t launch properly or crash the system.

Games with Network issues (requires re-testing)

Hang when trying to get to the AP connection screen

• Twisted Metal Head On
• NBA
• ATV Blazin Fury

Others

Games that use GameMode API - partial list of games here.

• Burnout Dominator: Game becomes too fast for everyone if a Vita player joins, also happens if one of the PSPs is overclocked (video demonstration here).
• Lego Indiana Jones 2: Getting a wireless error (Epinephrine) or the game freezes up (ARK).
• Street Riders/Asphalt: Urban GT 2: Can’t see other consoles in lobby (same developer made both games so its most likely the same issue).
• CSPSP: Game gets a blue screen/crash when entering multiplayer , note that the game works fine on Epinephrine.
• Sega Rally Revo: Game disconnects after it starts in infrastructure mode only.

Some network issues may be fixed with the updated PRO Online.

Fun Facts and FAQ

Why many things have “EPI” in the name?

“EPI” is the common abbreviation of epinephrine, which is the technical name for the hormone popularly known as adrenaline.

How to get the title ID for an application/game?

You may want to get this information to write your plugins configuration or to report issues.

There are many ways to get this information, but the easiest with Adrenaline is to open the Adrenaline Menu after launching the app/game and look up the information in the Main tab.

How to contribute/support to the project?

There are a number of ways to contribute to the Adrenaline project for both programmers and non-programmers alike.

• Improving documentation: You can improve the documentation text and information. For that, you need to send a pull request (PR) on the Adrenaline GitHub Repository with the changes in the files at the docs directory.
• Code improvements: If you know how to code in C, you can contribute by sending Pull Requests on the Adrenaline GitHub Repository with your changes.
• Game/App/Homebrew incompatibility report: If a game is not working out of the box, you can open an Issue ticket.
  • Make sure to disable any known plugins to cause issues with the application before reporting.
• Bug reports: Any bugs found can be reported by opening an Issue ticket.
  • Be mindful that some issues are harder to fix than others and that the project is developed in the maintainers spare time as a hobby and may take a while for some issue to be solved.
• Feature ideas: You can suggest a feature to be implemented on Adrenaline by opening an Issue ticket.
  • Be mindful that your request may not be possible to be implemented or be considered low priority or even impractical to be implemented.
• Financial support: If you like, you can help the devs with monetary support
  • Cat (isage) is currently unable to receive any international money. If you so prefer, a donation to your local animal shelter is encouraged.
  • Grayjack can receive support by Github Sponsors or PIX. If neither are possible to you, consider a donation to your local animal shelter.

Is this Adrenaline compatible with Adrenaline Bubble Booter/Manager?

No. That project is a whole modified Adrenaline distribution (and not a plugin as many believe), that means when you install it, you are overwriting your entire Adrenaline installation. That means when you install it, now you have “Adrenaline from Adrenaline Bubble Manager” instead of “Adrenaline from TheFlow” or “Adrenaline from Isage fork” (this one, and the only one that is being maintained).

Although, we been thinking on other solution(s) to the launch Adrenaline with app/game X from the livearea.

Why rename the eCFW part of the project to Epinephrine

Now that the app supports natively loading other eCFW, it felt like making a clearer distinction on what is the Adrenaline (the app that does patches that allow to run CFW on PSPemu) and Adrenaline (the actual eCFW). This distinction always existed, but since they were always distributed together under the same name made the distinction blurrier to the end-user.

The decision on the name was easy, we’ve been using “EPI” as abbreviation for Adrenaline CFW module names and such. And as explained before, EPI is abbreviation on epinephrine, which is just a more technical name for adrenaline. So with that, we can name the two sides of the project while maintaining the meaning the same as it was before and a nice (and geeky) play with words.

How to install/use ARK with Adrenaline?

Part 1 - Getting the ARK files

There is two ways to get the ARK files:

Option 1: FasterARK

1. Download and install FasterARK.vpk
2. Run it from LiveArea, choose your installation type and proceed

Option 2: Update from ARK-4

1. Download ARK.zip from the ARK release page
2. Extract the zip file
3. Put the FLASH0.ARK file in your ???0:pspemu/PSP/SAVEDATA/ARK_01234/ folder

Part 2 - Setting Adrenaline

1. Open Adrenaline
2. Open Adrenaline Menu
3. Go to the Settings tab
4. Change the value of the vPSP Custom Firmware option to ARK
5. Return to the Main tab and select Exit PspEmu Application
6. Reopen Adrenaline

Changelog

Unreleased

Adrenaline

• Add option to select the vPSP Custom Firmware to use [docs]
• Add Scale2x graphical filter options [docs]
• Add Scale2x Plus graphical filter options [docs]
• Add Scale3x graphical filter options [docs]
• Add image overlay filter for PS1 game/apps [docs]
• “Fix” manual double launch on first install
• Improve frame pacing on Original graphics filtering

Epinephrine CFW

• Breaking change: New plugin configuration format [docs]

  • Only one configuration file /pspemu/seplugins/plugins.txt for all runlevels
  • Finer control over when to enable/disable plugins
  • Support for plugins in specific games
  • Support for plugin only on homebrew apps
  • Migration instructions below

• Update the Inferno Driver to Inferno 2 [docs]

• Introduce March33 Driver v2: An evolution of the March33 ISO driver [docs]

• Introduce MinimalEdition Driver v2: An evolution of the ME ISO driver [docs]

• Introduce an improved implementation of the GalaxyController [docs]

• Add support for launching JSO, ZSO, CSOv2, and DAX compressed ISO formats using any ISO driver. [docs]

• Introduce CFW Settings on the XMB [docs]

• Introduce Plugin Manager on the XMB [docs]

• Improve stability of the Force High Memory CFW option. [docs]

• Improve the speed and efficiency of all UMDemu ISO drivers [docs]

• Add Custom POPS Configuration injection for custom or converted PS1 game/apps [docs]

• Patch libcrypt for custom or converted PS1 game/apps [docs]

• Add Memory Stick Cache to speedup I/O operations in the Memory Stick drive (ms0) [docs]

• Add Use Graphic Engine 2 and Use Media Engine 2 advanced CFW options [docs]

• Add Fake max free memory advanced CFW option [docs]

• Add Hide CFW files in PSP games general CFW option [docs]

• Add TTY redirection advanced CFW option [docs]

• Implement “Hold L while launching apps” to not load plugins [docs]

• Implement “Hold R while launching ISO apps/games” to execute BOOT.BIN instead of EBOOT.BIN [docs]

• Implement PSP native music player and SenseMe to continue to play music after system suspend

• Add quick exit to VSH key combos [docs]

  • PSP games/homebrew: L+R+Down+Select or L+R+Down+Start
  • PS1 games: L2+R2+Down+Select or L2+R2+Down+Start

• Fix wrongly module privilege level reset on official apps and set it to user privilege level on homebrews

  • Fix SenseMe launch error
  • Fix potential issues related to privilege level to other official apps
  • Fix homebrew software not able to call some sceKernelLoadModule* functions that they should be able to use

• Game Compatibility:

  • Fix PBP collection games (e.g. Ys I&II, Sega Genesis Collection) crashing after game selection
  • Fix BEATS custom tracks
  • Fix the infinite loading screen on Jackass: The Game
  • Fix The Simpsons Game crashing during the start of the game
  • Fix TwinBee Portable crashing when not using English or Japanese language
  • Fix Smakdown vs RAW 2009 by bypassing anti-CFW check
  • Fix Smakdown vs RAW 2010 by bypassing anti-CFW check
  • Fix Smakdown vs RAW 2011 by bypassing anti-CFW check
  • Fix Aces of War by bypassing anti-CFW check
  • Fix Pangya Fantasy Golf by bypassing anti-CFW check
  • Fix freeze on Bust-A-Move by bypassing anti-CFW check
  • Fix Lego Star Wars II WLAN switch state wrongly returning “off”
  • Fix Megpoid the Music# audio and synchronization issues when run as ISO/CISO
  • Patch to remove the “overclocked” message on ATV Pro
  • Fix Rainbow Six: Vegas instabilities with high memory layout options
  • Fix Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines instabilities with Stable high memory layout
  • Fix PaRappa The Rapper instabilities with Stable high memory layout
  • Fix Tony Hawk's Underground 2: Remix (US) erroring with lack of space on save

• DEV: Introduce the CFW library SysclibForUser: Export many C-lib functions for app and user-level plugins developers to use to help avoid linking to newlibc and reducing binary size

• DEV: Expand CFW libraries API

• DEV: Improve CFW API compatibility with other CFWs’ API (M33, ME, PRO, and ARK): KUBridge, SystemCtrlForUser, SystemCtrlForKernel, and SysclibForUser

• DEV: Add support for MEMSIZE=2 (to request only stable extra RAM)

• DEV: Make PSPemu sceKernelPowerTick to behave as the VITA sceKernelPowerTick

• DEV: Introduce Adrenaline Log, a C header library that developers can use even outside of Adrenaline (i.e. your project)

• DEV: Fix homebrew software not able to call some sceKernelLoadModule* functions that they should be able to use

• DEV: Add stubs for the UMDemu ISO drivers

• DEV: Add NID translation table to sceAudioRouting_driver (Improve plugin compatibility)

• DEV: Create, use and share with ARK a PSP CFW SDK

• DEV: Split patches to make vPSP possible to it’s own module: Pentazemin

• Internal: Some code reorganization

• Internal: Code clean ups

v7.1.7

• Fix autoboot.
• Support vita firmwares 3.71-3.74.

v7.1.6

• Fix recovery plugin manager.

v7.1.5

• New recovery/installer.
• Support for displaying manuals for ISO-format games.

v7.1.4

• Revert fancier recovery for now (breaks installer)

v7.1.3

• Don’t load plugins in recovery (for real).
• Support for downloading official updates for EBOOT/ISO.
• Support for updates/dlc for EBOOT/ISO.
• Support for autoboot /PSP/GAME/EBOOT.PBP.
• Update version in LiveArea automatically.
• Support for logging psp printf’s via catlog.

v7.1.2

• Fixed photo/video browser.
• Don’t load plugins in recovery.

v7.1.1

• Fixed version info.

v7.1

• Fixed XMB camera app.
• Added support for PS2/PS3 <-> PSP game link.
• Cleaner recovery with adjustable color.

v7

• Fixed issue where plugins were loaded in recovery mode.
• Moved native display buffer to a different location, so GePatch works for some more games. Please note that only GePatch v0.18 or above will only work, older versions will cause a black screen. If you’re using GTANativeRes, please download the latest binary as well.

v6.9

• Added support for native resolution patches.

v6.8

• Added sharp bilinear without scanlines filter. Thanks to rsn8887.
• Fixed PS1 slowdowns. Thanks to rsn8887.
• Fixed compatibility with h-encore 2.0.
• Fixed compatibility with udcd_uvc.skprx plugin.

v6.7

• Added support for PS1 multiplayer on PS Vita using an upcoming DS3/DS4 plugin.

v6.6

• Fixed bug from previous update that caused black screen in other DJ max games.
• Inferno driver was not included correcty, now it is.
• Tekken 6 can now be played with any CPU speed.

v6.5

• Added updated inferno driver by codestation which improves performance of CSO reading.
• Added option to choose USB device.
• Added xmc0: option.
• Fixed stupid mistake that made DJ max portable 1 crash. Install it again, because this has been added post-release
• Fixed little bug in msfs.
• Removed savestate version restriction, old savestates will not disappear anymore.

v6.4

• Added ability to fast forward in PS1 games by pressing L+SELECT.
• Fixed double launch bug when using without enso. You need to add the kernel module to config to do so.

v6.3

• Added support for 3.68.
• Added ability to freely adjust the screen size to your desire in both psp and ps1 modes.
• Removed ‘Screen Mode’ and ‘Screen Size’ from menu.
• Improved Adrenaline Menu.

v6.2

• Added f.lux by Rinnegatamante.
• Fixed PS1 framerate when using custom screen.
• Fixed bug where exiting a game with ‘High memory layout’ would crash.
• Fixed compatibility with ‘Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep’ english patch, again.

v6.1

• Added support for 3.65/3.67.

v6 fix

• Fixed bug where CSO games freezed up the system.

v6

• Redesigned boot process. Adrenaline does now not require any basegame or activation anymore.
• Added ‘uma0:’ to ‘Memory Stick Location’.
• Added support for longer ISO filenames.
• Fixed Memory Stick free space integer overflow in games like Outrun.
• Fixed bug where ISO games did not show up when the folder ‘PSP/GAME’ was missing.
• Improved core and fixed some small bugs.

v5.1

• Added ability to skip adrenaline boot logo.
• Added message for original filter.
• Fixed bug where payloadex was not updated and caused some bugs.
• Fixed ‘20000006’ bug on PS TV. Network update will work on PS TV in the future.
• Changed CPU clock back to 333 MHz.

v5

• Added ‘Hide DLC’s in game menu’ functionality.
• Readded ‘Original’ graphics filtering, since PS1 games have got framedrops using custom filters.
• Fixed corrupted icons bug that was introduced in the previous update.
• Fixed bug where the framebuffer was corrupted after loading savestate.
• Adrenaline icon is now hidden in game menu.

v4.2

• Added support for ISO sorting using ‘Game Categories Lite’ plugin.
• Fixed compatiblity with ‘Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep’ english patch.

v4.1

• Fixed bug where holding R trigger while launching Adrenaline didn’t open the recovery menu.
• Fixed msfs truncation bug that caused savedata corruption for Little Big Planet and maybe other games.
• Fixed wrong scale of PS1 games on PS TV.

v4

• Added custom graphics filtering support for PS1 games.
• Added screen mode adjustment for PS1 games. If you’re using this feature on a PS Vita, select ‘Original’ screen mode in the official settings, then apply the custom screen mode. On the other hand, if you want to the screen mode of the official settings, select ‘Original’ screen mode in Adrenaline settings. On a PS TV this will finally allow you to play your games in fullscreen.
• Added screenshot support in PS1 games.
• Added network update feature for future updates.
• Fixed a bug in msfs driver that caused weird behavior in XMB after resuming from standby.
• Removed ‘Official’ graphics filtering in order to support the features mentioned above.

v3.1

• Added support for cwcheat in PS1 games.
• Fixed sound problems after exiting a PS1 game.
• Fixed ‘Please wait…’ bug in some games.
• Fixed problem where mounting ur0: as USB device would cause problems in livearea.

v3 fix

• Fixed bug where ‘Cannot find application’ would show up instead of returning to livearea.
• Fixed bug where you couldn’t access the Adrenaline Menu after enabling/disabling wifi.

v3

• Added ability to launch PS1 games from XMB and play them with full sound.
• Added ability to save and load states using the ‘States’ tab in the Adrenaline menu.
• Added possibility to connect USB in XMB and added ‘Toggle USB’ option to recovery menu.
• Added ability to return to livearea by double tapping the PS button.
• Added Adrenaline startup image designed by Freakler.
• Added option to force high memory layout. For ‘The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion’ Demo.
• Added option to execute ‘BOOT.BIN’ in UMD/ISO. For ‘Saints Row: Undercover’ Demo.
• Added correct enter and cancel buttons assignment.
• Fixed volatile memory allocation bug that made ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’, ‘Tony Hawk’s Project 8’ and maybe more games crashing.
• Fixed bug that was introduced in v2 which caused some games to crashed at PMF sequences.
• Fixed NoDrm engine bug where fan translated games couldn’t load PGD decrypted files.
• Fixed msfs directory filter bug that caused some games not to recognize savedatas.
• Fixed compatiblity of base games, any game should now be able to use Adrenaline to the fullest.

v2

• Added 64MB RAM support for homebrews.
• Added ability to use the ‘ur0:’ partition as Memory Stick.
• Added Advanced AA filter (disable ‘Smooth Graphics’ for that filter).
• Added ability to change smooth graphics (GPU internal bilinear filter).
• Added ability to change screen size (2.0x, 1.75x, 1.5x, 1.25x, 1.0x).
• Fixed sound issue in ‘MotorStorm’ and some other games.
• Fixed bug where ‘ms0:/MUSIC’ and ‘ms0:/PICTURE’ were not found in XMB.
• Fixed bug where changing options in the official settings menu didn’t have any effect.

Credits

• Ancient gods of the PSP scene: M33 Team, Proxima, zecoxao, among other tinkerers for starting it all.
• M33 Team: Dark_AleX, adrahil, Mathieulh for creating M33 CFW and open-sourcing it.
• Team Molecule: yifanlu, xyz, Proxima, Davee for Henkaku.
• TheFl0w (aka. Total_Noob) for his advancements and research in CFW development, starting Adrenaline, and overall contributions to the scene.
• xerpi for vita2dlib and VITA reversing work.
• qwikrazor87 for his hard work on reversing DRM.
• frangarcj for graphics filtering on Adrenaline.
• Rinnegatamante for f.lux on Adrenaline.
• meetpatty for fixing autoboot on Adrenaline.
• ARK CFW team: Acid_Snake, Krazynez, for Inferno 2, being a good fellow CFW-makers and helping in many ways.
  • And for allowing us to reuse parts of ARK-4 documentation for things that both Adrenaline and ARK CFW support (this reduced so much time used for writing this doc 😁)
• Codestation for his incredible work improving CSO speeds and creating the ZSO format.
• UnkownBrackets (maxcso) for creating the CSOv2 format.
• Cat (aka. isage) for everything that he has done for Adrenaline and continued improving it along the way.
• GrayJack for everything that they have done for Adrenaline and help Cat maintain it.
• Every other giant shoulder we are standing on.
• n̶u̶l̸l̵ for relentlessly testing many different configurations to improve the performance of the patches for Megpoid the Music# and being a great tester in general.
• Sotico for doing a bunch of tests to help to fix game instabilities with high memory layout. Also for finding and reporting bugs.