[Xperia Play Android Development] stevecrox:
To install a custom rom on to your Xperia Play you should follow the below rules:

Download Flashtools (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1351299), you will need to install it. Tycpically this installs to C:/Flashtools.

Once you have installed it, you will need to install the drivers, these can be found under c:/flashtools/drivers. When installing make sure you include both the ADB and Xperia 2011 Drivers (there will be a list, you need ADB if you don’t have the Gooogle ADB tool on your machine). There may be a problem with a driver called S3 Fastboot, do a search on google. It does exist somewhere on the xda forums.

Download your chosen rom and associated GApps and place them on the phones memory card.

If your chosen firmware is CM9/CM7 open the rom’s zip file and copy boot.img into the flashtools root folder C:/flashtools. Otherwise download the suggest kernel and copy this to the c:/flashtools folder.

Download the firmware your chosen rom recommends.

Copy the firmware (ftf file) to the flashtools firmware folder c:/flashtool/firmware.

Start Flashtools

Turn your Device off.

Connect your device to your PC while holding the “Back” button, the LED light should turn green (or blue, I can’t remember which).

Wait for widnows to install various drivers, this can take several minutes.

In Flashtools, select the Lighting symbol.

In the new Flashtools popup choose “Flash mode”.

This will open a new popup window detailing the ftf (firmwares), select the desired firmware (names can be different from file names.

On the right side of the popup make sure each checkbox is selected.

Click on “Ok” on the popup window.

The console window within Flashtools should show the flashing occurring and should report success.

Turn off your phone and disconnect it from your PC.

Hold the Search button and connect your phone to the PC, the LED should be blue if this is correct (possibly green I get these confused).

Wait for widnows to install various drivers, this can take several minutes.

Flashtools console should state your phone is connected in Fastboot mode.

In Flashtools select the Lighting symbol.

In the resulting popup choose “Fastboot mode” and select Ok.

This will open a popup window, ignore the “Hotboot” options and choose “Flash Kernel to Device”.

in the resulting popup window choose the correct kernel (in CM9/CM7 this will be called boot.img). The select Ok.

Flashtools console will show it flashing the kernel on to the phone.

Once the console shows a success, select “reboot the phone” option in the popup window.

When the phone starts up start pressing the volume rockers (during the Free Xperia animation).

That will open ClockWork Recovery Mode (CWM), the home key represents enter, while menu/search are up/down.

Choose “Install from Zip”.

Choose “install from sd card”,

locate your rom on the sd card, and confrm you wish to install it.

Repeat the process for GApps.

Press back until you hit the top level menu.

Choose “wipe Davlik Cache” and confirm.

Choose “reset to factory settings” and confirm.

Choose Reboot phone.

Viola you are done.

I have been working on an Eclipse RCP based application like flashtools which simplifies this further (mostly to keep my Eclipse RCP knowledge up to date), but a girlfriend has really slowed down development.