does the SCPH-990x PS1 exists ?

I find 3-4 Import units per year doing that, including a perfectly good SCPH-1000

 

Heading to my storage unit tomorrow to hunt around for that Playstation. Will try to report in at some point soon.

 

Any luck with the dumper, Tichua?

 

I ordered the DexDrive since I couldn't find mine. It got delivered couple weeks ago but I'm having a hard time finding a PC with COM port around the house. I'll be very busy in the next 2-3 weeks due to new hardware release so I most likely won't be able to do anything until the end of the month. Hopefully tkeely4777 got around it sooner than mine.

 

Why buy the Dexdrive? Why not dump to memory card, the n put it in a ps2 and copy over to a usb stick

 

Lol. I should have thought of this. Thanks alot Bad_d84

 

Your model is very weird and rare indeed,tichua.Do the power/eject buttons on it say POWER and EJECT?Or they were replaced by a I/O sign and a CD player eject sign?
Also,might it be Sony again removed the region and disc check protection like the Yaroze on your console?IIRC,only Net Yaroze/Development consoles had this.(e.g DTL-H1001)

 

here is the pic of the console from up front.

From what I gathered and recalled, the console probably has a modchip inside (Sony has been doing it for years for in house debugging systems when there are shortages in equipment) because it has a SCEA, SCEE, SCEI boot string when booting discs from NTSC U/C, PAL. and NTSC/J. Real Debugging Station won't display that string.

I haven't been able to get around to dump the BIOS for Shendo yet. I'll try to do it during thanksgiving. The office has been in chaos in the past couple weeks due to new console launches

 

So it displays a boot string that matches the one from the disk? I've never seen a modded machine do that before - they will always display the boot string for the region the CD controller is expecting.

 

Yes, the boot string matches the region of the disc. If you put in a NTSC/J disc, It will show SCEI on the boot string. SCEA for NTSC U/C and SCEE for PAL.

 

Does this happen with CD-Rs, too?

 

It does

 

Actually,I do remember someone said that one of the debugging stations showed SCEI under Licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment(insert region here)
Also,if your console shows a certain string under Licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment(again insert region here)that doesn't match the console region,it must be then something else than modchip,as I have a chipped 5552 and booting NTSC-U/C or NTSC-J(this appears only on a copy of Abe'99 I have got)games result in either Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. or America,with the string under being ONLY SCEE.Your PS1 definately has something else than a modchip then,because NO modchip can change the system string.(the one which simply says SCEE,SCEA or SCEI,depending on what region is the console,not the disc)

 

Actually,I do remember someone said that one of the debugging stations showed SCEI under Licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment(insert region here)
Also,if your console shows a certain string under Licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment(again insert region here)that doesn't match the console region,it must be then something else than modchip,as I have a chipped 5552 and booting NTSC-U/C or NTSC-J(this appears only on a copy of Abe'99 I have got)games result in either Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. or America,with the string under being ONLY SCEE.Your PS1 definately has something else than a modchip then,because NO modchip can change the system string.(the one which simply says SCEE,SCEA or SCEI,depending on what region is the console,not the disc)

 

Oops.Sorry for double posting,didn't notice I already posted the text above.

 

Then it sounds like that machine has a patched BIOS - the normal way to get that string from the CD controller is using the "Get ID" test command, and that contains the string that's encoded in the wobble on the disk - and if you boot from a CD-ROM that string is blank.

I also can't think of any way that the CD controller could identify the region of the disk without using the wobble data, so it sounds like it would have to be done later on in the boot ROM.

 

I've never paid that much attention to this system and it has been sitting on the display shelf for years. It only caught my eyes recently because of the odd model number it has. There is also a SCPH-1001 Made In USA on the shelf and I never aware that they manufactured the PS1 in the States. lol.



I'll do a throughout testing including a bios dump this thanksgiving. I'll post all the results on here when they are done.

 

It says Made in USA,but it's followed by "with foreign components".Why does it say that it was made with foreign components?

 

I was asking the same questions but I honestly don't know the answer. There are weird stuffs that we just dont see normally

 

True.The 1001 may have been assembled in USA,while parts were probably made in Japan.(for NTSC-U obiviously,not NTSC-J like 1000)
Would be surprising if the 1001 you have would include the S-Video port and have a normar 1001 boot ROM.
Fun fact I found,is that not only 1001 is for audiophiles,but the 55xx series too are!