The “Pandora’s Battery” as they call it, is just a regular PSP Battery . The battery of a psp has flash memory on it with boot information for the system. When converting the battery for this downgrade procedure, the psp program that you use actually dumps the batteries flash and puts a bin image with official sony firmware 1.50 and some developer code. When you place the converted battery into the psp it boots and runs the developer code and downgrades the psp. At this point, they say that the battery is useless. They have come out with an update that will convert the battery back and thats why they dump the flash first. After the psp is downgraded, if you use the converted “pandora battery” as your power source, it will only run a partial of the 1.50 firmware because of the missing battery flash files. in order to have full 1.50 you must convert your battery back into a normal one.
The reason a PSP running 1.50 or custom firmware is required to create a pandora’s battery is that you have to run some unsigned (i.e. homebrew) programs from the PSP itself to create the battery. Also, a memory stick pro duo is also required. Most people are suggesting to use a 256MB one, as it is the smallest pro duo you can get, plus it’s guaranteed to work on one that small. You can’t create a ‘jigstick’ (that’s what they call the memory stick that works with the battery) out of a 4GB or larger one. A jigstick will work as a normal memory stick, but you have to have a jigstick to use the pandora’s battery. Creating the jigstick is part of the process of creating the battery in the first place, so if you get a spare battery, a 256mb-2gb memory stick pro duo, and have access to a 1.5 or custom firmware PSP, just follow the instructions and you’re set.
On August 22, 2007, Team C+D released the “Pandora’s Battery” that can convert a spare Memory Stick Pro Duo and battery into a “Magic Memory Stick” and a “JigKick Battery”. The Memory Stick and the JigKick battery couple is called “Pandora’s Battery”. The Memory Stick and battery can then be used to downgrade any PSP of any version or to recover from a brick. To convert the Memory Stick and battery another PSP which is able to run 1.50 homebrew is needed. The Memory Stick can also be converted without using a homebrew PSP by using a Pandora’s battery program, such as Pandora Easy GUI. After the downgrade/unbrick service has been completed, the Memory Stick and battery can be restored for normal usage.
A “JigKick Battery” is a battery with the first adress in the EEPROM chip changed to 0xFFFFFFFF. This unlocks the service mode of the PSP and launches the IPL from the Memory Stick (instead of from flash0). A “Magic Memory Stick” consists of a reverse-engineered IPL and a minimal subset of the firmware 1.50 stored on a Memory Stick Pro Duo. This downgrader can downgrade all firmware versions. The original version is incompatible with the PSP Slim & Lite due to the 1.50 IPL being incompatible with PSP Slim & Lite hardware. However, on September 28, 2007, a version that works on both the old style PSP and the Slim & Lite was released. The new debricker is called Despertar del Cementerio, and is also known as the Universal Unbricker, which was developed by Dark_Alex. Instead of installing firmware version 1.50, it installs a custom firmware.(PSP Battery )
The “JigKick” battery can also be created by lifting the fifth pin of the EEPROM on the battery’s mainboard, circled here. This is somewhat dangerous because it disables the EEPROM entirely, and may have side effects such as overheating if pin 5 is shorted to other pins while desoldering.
The battery that is included with the PSP Slim can also be converted into a “Pandora” battery by using the hardware modification method mentioned above.
There is now a method that will enable users of custom firmware above 3.71 M33 which does not automatically have the 1.50 firmware kernel to create a Pandora battery. This method can be found here.
Though Sony advocates against use of any homebrew, representatives have said that the Pandora’s Battery will not physically harm the PSP in any manner, as this is the same method used by Sony when customers send in their bricked PSPs for repair.