flashing the ps2 bios

That's is cool to know about the 10k's. I figured as much, just being kind of silly about it. Never seen an EE chip marked from 1999 before. That is really cool about the BBA too. I might have to try a round of killzone while there are still a few people out there playing it. Can't think of any other games at the moment that might still be online.

My dead board is originally marked with a 030 on the bios.

I have a GH-010 with the same label on it's bios. I am wondering if anything like serial numbers and such are embedded in the bios code. You stated above that it stores the serial number. Does that mean it's in the bios itself? I'm hoping it means it's loading it into memory from the motherboard elsewhere which would allow me to still swap the chip. Do you know?

 

Nope, the serial number is stored on the DVD drive EEPROM, as I said on an earlier post. The same EEPROM stores user settings like language, timezone and date/time format.

And since your bios is 030 you can use any *US* bios on your board. Mismatching the bios region will cause modchips to fail on the board (the modchips detect the console region by reading the bios and if they detect incorrect region wrong patches will be sent to the DVD drive causing it to show a red screen: "Insert Playstation or Playstation 2 disc")

The bios is a *MASK ROM* which is a special kind of chip that is not programmed, but "pressed" with the data it's meant to contain already in it. Different from the Xbox which uses a flash rom chip (writable ROM). Mask ROM is extremely reliable and since it's not writable I guess you never heard about a "bricked PS2 due to bad flash".

 

If you remove it from the board then you could replace it with flash, but there is no real advantage.

 

I'll let you know if I have any results repairing the GH-013 board with the new bios chip. That is really interesting to know about how it works. I did not know it was just a blank being injected.

As for the scph-10000, it is successfully modded now. Played GoW just fine however I think that I've discovered this model can not do games in progressive scan properly for me. When I enabled progressive scan it did not display on the screen correctly. It was off to the side. Is this something to do with me playing an import? (usa game on a jap console)

-Kreg

 

For a working homebrew stuff on 10k PS2 without modchip, read at this. It's in french, but this is perfect for people who don't want use modchip on 10k PS2.

Hum, and other stuff like DVD drive calibration and security control. A special software can disable security tests.

 

Well... It can do progressive scan just fine. Maybe due to the fact it's video output circuit is different or maybe due to it's age it might be with problems.

The only limitations you will have game wise is that very few US games won't play due to bios problems and depending on which modchip you install, you might not be able to play non japanese PS1 discs. I don't know if Ghost2 does patch the PS1 driver but if it does, you will have a great system for PS1 games.

Keep in mind that the PS1 emulator in the 10k (and any other japanese PS2 system) have a database with custom settings for troublesome *Japanese* PS1 titles. If you try to play these titles on the PS2 they might have weird issues due to being played with *standard* settings for games without problems as they will be indentified as unknown titles.

An US PS2 will have the same kind of PS1 titles database but it will contain disc codes which match it's region.

 

That would allow for replacing the bios with either an edited bios or a "Debugstation" ROM which would be quite awesome IMHO. Anyway I never tried it because the ROM is read in 8 bits mode and I don't have a 4MB ROM chip capable of being read in both 8 and 16 bits modes. I have 4MB NOR flash chips here but they're of "16 bits only" kind.

BTW... For anyone who care about it:

The 18000 works great with a DMS3 chip.

 

I'll try out some other US titles that support progressive output and see if it's any different. I doubt it, but might as well look. I was surprised to see it not work correctly as I thought NTSC-U or -J was the same as far as 480p goes.

The DMS3 2.0 and Ghost 2 are the only two chips I have that could run on a v0. There are a couple others, but they are even further in history and I've never seen them. I chose the Ghost 2 because the DMS3 2.0 can not play PS1 "imports". I have not put in a US PS1 title yet with the Ghost 2, and I'll confirm it later when I do.

I have another thread I discussed on the topic over at psx-scene.com. qfx80001 was really helpful a few years back on the topic.

hxxp://psx-scene.com/forums/ps2-general-discussion/23090-just-got-a-used-japanese-ps2-need-help.html

and

http://psx-scene.com/forums/ps2-modchips/32106-need-help-is-there-any-modchip-that-work-on-ps2-v0-jap.html

I like DMS, but in the case of the v0, you can't use the latest firmware and none of the dev modes work. Basically you can't really use much of what the DMS is capable of and might as well use the Ghost 2. The Ghost 2 can also play the ps1 us imports so that pretty much was an easy choice. The threads above mention some other facts to compare the two against, such as if you want to use the HDD and BBA for different things. Depending on that, you might have chosen the DMS3 2.0

Figure this thread is way off course, but everyone is very helpful and informative. Really appreciate it.

 

GT4 works with high image quality on my ps2 10k in 480p, 720p and 1920x1080i

 

Oh I forgot to mention... Disable any kind of "video fixes" your modchip might offer as these more than often disrupt the games progressive scan features. And indeed the chips usually apply the patches regardless the game need it or not.

 

OH Awesome. I would not have thought of that. I will have to try that when I get home. From the looks of google, it is not a jap v0 issue, but rather a modchip setting as you say.

This guy described the symptom much better than I did. Progressive Scan outputs top-right portion of the image at the bottom-left of the screen.
http://forums.kikizo.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=40945&mpage=2#43159

 

i did have a scph-30000 but give a black screen i repalced the ba chip and work then froze and i just bined it as i had no way to go to japan i wish i could go there

 

High I'm new to updating BIOSs but I have updated OSs. I have a laptop with a dead harddrive and I was wondering if I could replace it's BIOS with the ps2 BIOS.

 

Nope, PS2 BIOS is ROM, not flash. So it wimply won't happen.

Also nope, a laptop isn't a PS2. It will brick.

That's why people made PS2 emulators (to have a completely different thing play stuff made for another).