you'll need mips r4k assembly knowledge, ida pro with needed plugins, the pj64 sourcecode, visual c++ 6, a bunch of programs hcs coded, and a lot of spare time.
yes, hcs's walkthough is a good plae to start to rip usf's (but it would only be valid for rips that use the standard drivers)
A place to start getting msvc is here (about 8.4Mb big, command line only)
A place to learn its assembly is anarko's n64 ops. I think it is at dextrose, but i can't seem to find an original link, so ill put it up here
Well, i will probally write my own howto in the future that will also disclose my super-unefficient and unorthadox methods, so if you can wait however long that will take, whatever might be a month.
Hi, welcome and good luck with your quest to learn USF ripping. I agree with pretty much everything said in the thread up to this point, and I don't have much to add. You definately will need MSVC6, though, if you can find Visual Studio 6 that will include it. I don't know how to configure the command line tools Josh links to for building Project 64, maybe he included a makefile?
To learn the process take a look at the documents in the USF lecture series thread. Josh's recommendation of anarko's n64ops is excellent, that's where I learned lo those many years ago. Also you might stop in the IRC Channel for some discussion if you'd like, knowledgeable people are in there on occasion.