As a gamer, gadget-hound and someone who has been a reviewer of games on a variety of platforms for nearly a decade, I frequently get questions about games and gaming systems. These range from ‘what system should I buy my kids’ to ‘how do I get by this boss’. But yesterday I got one that really stopped me in my tracks. Here are the basics:
So my next problem is, I went to go play my psp for the first time in a few months and I could not find the charger. I can find the usb wire so I was wondering if I could charge my psp through the usb drive. If so, can I charge it in my Xbox 360?
My first thought was – depends upon the model. But since I already knew it was a ‘PSP Slim & Light’ (or PSP-2000, the one introduced in late 2007), I knew the hardware was capable. You see, the original PSP (or PSP Phat as it is affectionately known) had no option to charge via USB.
My second thought was … well, OF COURSE you can charge it via USB – I do it all the time! But then I remembered the other night – I was in the middle of a dungeon in Final Fantasy VIII and my battery light was flashing at me. So I connected to my laptop to charge it.
I looked over and nothing was happening. Don’t tell me, I thought, that the PSP has to be in ‘USB Mode’ in order to charge. I knew I had to put it into USB Mode to transfer files, but never in nearly 3 years of USB charging had I realized you needed to enable it just for charging! So I just quit out of the game, set my PSP Go into ‘USB Mode’ and connected to my laptop to charge it. No problem.
But what if your PSP is completely dead? So I took out another of my PSP’s, also a PSP-2000 that my kids occasionally borrow but has languished for a couple of months now. It was totally dead, so I tried plugging it in to my laptop. No indication of a charge. I left it overnight to see if enough of a trickle might occur to eventually get it to the point where it would power on. No such luck.
So I had my answer: you can use USB-charging ONLY if you can power your PSP on and put it into USB-mode … otherwise you need an AC adapter. Way to go Sony! And to think – they have produced two new hardware models and about 37 firmware updates since introducing the PSP-2000, and never dealt with this issue!
So … keep track of the PSP charger, because in spite of the capability of USB charging, losing that plug could be a $20 mistake!