Making a Magic Memory Stick for PSP Jigkick in 2025

This was way harder than it needed to be because of all the outdated information out there. 

Starting with ARK4 and DC-ARK (aka ARK DC?), I kept getting an error on the PSP itself that pointed me to "Team C+D mspformat PC Tool" that apparently only runs on 32-bit Windows XP or some crap. You don't need that. And the ARK-4 readme points you to MagicMemoryCreator which requires Python and command prompts that I don't understand and you don't either. That's all unnecessary too. There was also Resizer Portable which was an "improved" method, but who knows when in the timeline that was, and it didn't work anyway. 

It took a video from one of the legends of the PSP scene to point me to the right direction. You just need a PSP utility called PSP Tool. 

Here's exactly what I did, even if some parts were redundant:

1. Run PSP Tool, format memory card. PSP restarts.
2. Copy over PSP Tool again and run it, and choose to create Magic Memory Stick. When it's done (takes several minutes), press Home to exit.
3. Copy over firmware 6.61 to the root of the Magic Memory Stick (and name it 661.PBP or 661GO.PBP for PSPgo), and run DC-ARK This also takes several minutes. 

When it's all done, you'll be back at the XMB. Shutdown and place that memory stick some place safe. 

Thinking of building a candy cab...

Out of nowhere I had the urge to get a 2-player metal control panel from a Japanese-style arcade cabinet. I think I got a good deal on mine: $130 shipped from Japan, with two Sanwa levers, eight action buttons, two start buttons, and two button plugs included. That's probably about the price I'd have to pay for a high-quality repro from Arcade Art Shop shipping from Britain, and those are just the bare panels with overlays. In the future, though, I think the mountings on the repro panels allow for a greater variety of sticks, 

This video gave me the idea of making a box for the panel, and that you don't necessarily need to have an arcade cab to use it. Then this video gave me other ideas. And then I thought, why not modular? I got to thinking:

• Ideally I'd be able to have a box for the control panel now and use it like any other bespoke arcade joystick setup to put on a table or maybe your lap, and then connect it back to the cab when I want to play on the cab. 
• Entire should be easier to assemble and disassemble to fit through doorways.
• Even just the base and the control panel is a good thing to have; we can worry about the monitor later. 
• Should be able to swap out different panels for different layouts (e.g. one-player games on a 4-way stick on a single-player panel)
• If I don't want to use the arcade panel I should be able to remove that part and just use commercial sticks... maybe with clamps? 
• Auxillary buttons could go... somewhere else 
• Monitor should be easily rotatable
• By keeping it simple (i.e. no cutouts to keep the metal panel flush), you can switch between the curved Sega panels and square Vewlix panels. Plus, zero chance your arm gets pinched by any gaps between the metal panel and any cutout
• Blender is a free alternative to Sketchup

Info Dump:

Using the Sega Saturn Virtua Stick Pro as inspiration, matching the dimensions should be width: 23 cm and depth: 13 cm. 

Vewlix panels are 68.0W x 14.4D cms