Downgrading, How to guarantee you can safely return to 1.50

Tired of waiting for a downgrader to come out because you got a wild hair stuck up you know where and decided to upgrade your precious 1.5 to some other eccentric firmware like 2.71, 3.03 or 3.10?

Long lonely nights without homebrew, wondering why you upgraded your PSP firmware. Depressing, I know, I was in the same situation once when firmware 2.71 was released some time back. Luckily for me the depression stopped one day when someone sent me a messaging stating "There's a 2.71 Working Downgrader!". I was hesitant to try, after all the last thing I wanted to do to further hurt my preciou... my, PSP I mean. I started reading the success rate on this new 2.71 downgrader and surprisingly it seemed legit, so I took the plunge.

It took me about 30 minutes to download, get the folders & files ready for downgrading, double check everything loading up the downgrader and then came the final question.

"This has a chance of bricking your PSP. Are you sure you want to continue?"

I thought, 2.71 isn't so bad, I should just stop here and not take such a chance. But my curiosity got the best of me I had to know if I could get my PSP back to the beloved firmware 1.50.

I held my breath and reluctantly pressed "X" to continue. My stomach dropped, my heart began to race.

"A blank screen! Ok *Phew* its doing something else. Another message pops up! Good, just giving me more information about what's going on."

I started feeling as though I should pull the plug shutting down my PSP as quickly as possible to stop this madness but not wanting to run the risk of bricking it, knowing that it was to far to turn back, I waited, and waited, AND waited. and then.

"Press X to manually restart your PSP"

Could this be? Is it over? Will my PSP turn back on if I restart it? I knew it was now or never. "X" it was.

Another blank screen. I counted the seconds, 1... 2... 3... 4... 5.. A LOGO from SCEA! It didn't brick my PSP! Having much more confidence because I was now shouting commands from the default PSP menu and not some alien prompt like program that had me almost in tears, I ran as fast as my thumb would let me to the System Settings window, then to the Firmware Information window, I just downgraded my PSP 2.71 to 1.50 without a single hitch! All my homebrew troubles were over! I was able to run all my homebrew collection just like the good old days! YES!

From my adventure in upgrading my PSP to 2.71 (Official Update) I have learned that just because Sony says "You need this" Doesn't mean that you want it, and it certainly doesn't mean that you are obligated to put it on YOUR PSP.

My advice would be play it the smart & safe way. If you want to run a updated firmware, run a custom firmware by Dark_alex such as anyone from the OE (Open Edition) 2.71 OE-C 3.03 OE-C 3.10 OE-A.

These "OE" firmware will allow you to use the updated versions of the currently released firmware plus give you added on functionality such as the ability to run homebrew & downgrade using the recovery console. Meaning, If you get tired of running 3.10 OE-A you Press about 4 buttons and your PSP will be restored back to PSP Firmware 1.50!

So to everyone who is asking how to downgrade their 3.03 Maybe once you get it downgraded back to 1.50 you can upgrade to 3.10 OE-A and then you wouldn't have to worry :) sometimes it pays to be patient. and at this time Firmware 3.03 is the highest downgrader available with the GTA LCS Unpatched UMD. So everyone running the official 3.10 Firmware is stuck in the mud till someone creates a downgrader for 3.10.