Clarification of new TA-088 motherboards

There has been news recently about a Pandora-proof PSP with TA-088 motherboard. There has been a lot of speculation and misinformation being spread around.

There is a Pandora-proof model out now and it is of a TA-088 motherboard. However, that is not to imply that all TA-088 boards are Pandora-proof. There are currently (AFAIK) three different TA-088 models:

TA-088v1: These were the first TA-088 models which came with 3.71 firmware. They are similar to TA-085v2 in that it has disabled writing to the battery eeprom so that Pandora batteries cannot be created with these boards. However, like the TA-085v2, Pandora still worked perfectly fine so cfw can still be installed normally like any other PSP.

TA-088v2: These are newer TA-088 boards which came with 3.90 firmware and had a slight hardware change in the TACHYON IC (the cpu chip). At first, Pandora could not run so it was speculated that the exploit that allows Pandora to work was patched. However, after more research it was found that this was not the case but simply there was a hardware change that made it incompatible with the DDC kernel. Custom IPL’s could still be run so cfw still worked on these models, however they will be unable to be installed with the current versions of DDC. A new DDC version will be needed for these models. (EDIT: DC6 has now been released to fix this problem, DC5 and earlier versions still will not work on these boards)

TA-088v3: These are the newest TA-088 boards that seem to be completely Pandora-proof (as far as I can tell). It has a new TACHYON IC part number - CXD2988GG with a copyright year of 2008 (previous TA-088 models had a CXD2975GG part number with a 2007 copyright year). This PSP looks like to be the real Pandora-proof model, one that has patched the ‘preipl’ exploit that allows Pandora to run. If this is the case (and the exploit was properly patched) there would be no workaround or ‘fix’ to get Pandora to run (unless we find a way to ‘properly sign’ our own IPL).

I hope this clears up some of the confusion surrounding the new TA-088 motherboards and the rumours surrounding this new Pandora-proof PSP.

EDIT:

There’s some confusion with regards to the relationship between the firmware version and the motherboard. There isn’t a one-to-one correlation between the motherboard version and the firmware version. That is, if you have a TA-088v2 board then you have (at least) a 3.90 firmware. However the inverse is not true, that is, it doesn’t necessarily mean that if you have a 3.90 firmware then you have a TA-088v2 board (you may have a TA-088v1 board or maybe a TA-085v2 board).

It’s just the TA-088v2 boards first started appearing with 3.90 firmware. But you may also still have TA-088v1 boards or TA-085v2 boards being produced with 3.90 firmware too. Especially depending on the region. The firmware versions listed above are the earliest firmwares seen with these boards. These boards were released in Asia first so the firmware version may be earlier than on US or Europe models.

Basically, you cannot tell what board you have just based on the firmware version (though you can make an educated guess), however if you have a certain board then you will know at least the earliest firmware it will have.

EDIT2:

The new TA-088v3 boards only come in 4.xx and above. The new pre-IPL in these boards can only boot the 4.xx IPL’s, it cannot boot older IPL’s from 3.xx. So as long as the PSP doesnt come with 4.xx fw you know it won’t be a v3 board. Just remember, v3 boards cannot run firmwares under 4.xx.