have homebrew and isos come much further on PSP? I remember having to have a disk in the drive for alot of stuff to work.
the reason I ask is I was thinking of picking up a psp with a broken UMD drive off ebay or something and just using it for emulation and a few isos.

The latest Custom Firmwares have an official Sony No-UMD plugin (np9660.prx) that you can enable in the configuration menu. Basically it has the highest compatibility of all ISO modes and doesn't require a disc in the drive.

As far as I know, no homebrew requires a disc in the slot either.

thats good news, I'll be keeping my eye out for a busted psp then.

Can't watch an official PSP UMD movie ISO without a UMD though.

meh I don't care about the umd movies. I can watch movies on my phone but my phone isn't real good at emulation. I am really just looking for teh cheapest emulation handheld options. it seems a psp with a broken umd drive is best they seem to be going on ebay in the 50 to 70 dollar range.