New PS2 Tool owner, have some questions...

you will have a PM in a minute

as for the RAM dumps then, as it's more or less doable on a TOOL, that's fine enough, i'll have to look at that sometime if i were to ever have a need for a ram dump again. I once upon a time figured that i would use a ramdump to figure out the eternal bug of valkyrie profile and why does it only work with HDLoader after you start the game with a PSX pad (no analogs) plugged in.

unless you do this and wait for the "please plug in a dualshock" message to appear, the game WILL freeze once it enters battle mode.

tho now that i think about it, i suppose i could just run the game through a debugger once i've figured out how to install HDLoader on a TOOL

as for the devtool-opening "hack" that's pretty neat actually
i gotta give it a shot sometime and maybe replace the standart thing with some whitty custom message for the sake of being so leet ^.^
thanks for that

edit:

i just realized what was typed on page 4 of this thread about the VGA port that's next to the multi A/V on the back of the tool..
beforei rip off my monitor's VGA cable to test, would this work if i connect this ps2 side VGA to my (LCD) TV's VGA port ?
im currently using it via the normal ps2 multi A/V and that's fine, but since i only have 2 scarts on the tv and it has an unused VGA, i'd rather plug a normal ps2 and a snes to the scarts and keep the TOOL hooked via the VGA

 

Seems that those lines aren't in my ifup-post, any other idea where they might be starting from?

My install seems ANCIENT (everything in this part of the system is dated in '99), I've tracked down copies of the SDK and all, I suppose I should see what I can do about upgrading the install via the web package manager?

The drives in the system happen to have an OEM build date of Nov. 2000, and the System bears pencil markings of December 22 (presumably 2000)

On a sadder note, Drive 2 (the SBC boot drive seems to have hard errors around 2.2gb in, and I cannot get a clean dd image of it, I was about to get an image off Drive 1 at least, and, as everyone says, it seems to be an original install matching Drive 1, so (unless I'm mistaken, I can use this for setting up a new main drive) It does seem to be a working bootable image with no configuration thus far...

My theory on this after some thought last night has changed somewhat- and that is, given its connection to the PS2's Optical/PCMCIA controller board, the original PS2 hard drive kit's connection was unknown at the time of the SCPH-10000's creation, and this drive served to act as a proxy PS2 hard drive, for at what time the PS2 HDD sdk tools had been released (in the end they ended up targeting the PCMCIA interface, so this drive was left unused, forever...) the drive would be usable for development...

The inclusion of the SBC data files on it would have been a fluke, deemed acceptable by the fact that, given the specs (we need a system with 2 drives, one with nothing important- "it'll eventually be formatted anyway", and a second with a full linux build on it), it would have been easier to say, mass duplicate disk images before loading into each unit, and simply just grab 2 drives from the "TOOL" pile, than to separate imaged and unimaged drives, in addition, it would simplify recovery procedures theoretically if said TOOL corrupted, end user (or regional Sony rep) could just swap cables, and order in whatever oem drive existed at the time, more or less returning the TOOL to it's virgin state.

While this is speculation, it makes more sense that this drive's data is really just "garbage data", intended to eventually be formatted, and for simplicity's sake, it was easier to build the machine this way. (In the end, it's recovery properties has saved myself, and probably many others)

In regards to VGA, this port shares the same compatibility that the official VGA multiAV cable shares- requiring either a vga/rgb display supporting 640x480@30hz for general display, or 640x480@60 (if the game supports progressive scan)

More or less, unless you make your app support 60hz mode from the getgo, it'll probably be somewhat useless.

Just as on a retail/test PS2, you should be able to employ the blaze vga/xploder hdtv swapdisk to boot a good chunk of PAL/NTSC games using 60hz mode off this. I'll give it a test tonight when I get home.

 

Another thing- what's the proper route for upgrading the local install and getting going?

1) Install SDK (3.0 for example) on a linux system
2) Upgrade packages on tool
3) Upgrade PS2 rom (as explained in the Setup docs)
4) Install ProDG
5) Install Codewarrior

Also, I see a few tools mentioned in the documentation (Graphics Artist, Sound Artist tools, Other common tools) that seem to be "The following software is provided on the Developer Support website."- did any of these ever see the light of day?

I'd kill for a few of these tools...

 

I have one type of graphic artist's tool on myself, which i believe is a third-party application intended to be used for ps2 related graphics. native support of ps2 filetypes such as TIM2 and the option to preview images on TV via TOOL would indicate this.

as for the VGA, my monitor's cable is utterly inaccessible at the moment, but i'll try and see if i'd have a spare somewhere to try and hook it up to the tv via the VGA directly.
More of that in a while, now im off to pick up my yaroze PSX and some cables so that i can finally back up my own TOOL's drives.

on a side note, i have drives from both; the PCI815VE/566Mhz and the "standard" 233Mhz CPU card equipped TOOLs. if anyone needs backup images, i might be of assistance

 

Another thing to note, for testing, PCI SBC's like this pull power off that converted molex, so once can run the board as a standalone computer if removed from the tool- using it that way on my desk with an external power supply at work with the blown drive to work on extracting the data off the drive

 

Hi there,

i have a question. Do the TOOL Plays PS1 Retails / Alphas BETAS too?

Regards
Bjoern

 

Its possible via the debugger's BSAVE command. If you ever need to do that on retail machines, let me know; I might have something for that ;-).

I've seen strange bugs with HDLoader, but didn't know about that one. This does only happen when starting the game under HDL with a dual shock, right? Does it always hang at the same location (like: first battle, regardless of whether you use a save or start a new game), or is it quite random like Xenosaga 2 (which can hang at basically any point when entering battle or a new area).

Sorry to disappoint you, but that is not possible with any publicly-available version of HDLoader. HDL's IOP-side "core" (CDVDMAN replacement; that's were the really nasty stuff happens :evil contains its own DEV9+ATA drivers, and these do not support the PCMCIA expansion port the TOOL uses to connect its external HDD. You'd need to reverse the entire core, then recompile it with new drivers and patch it back into the HDL ELF. It is not sufficient to replace the drivers in the ELF itself; you might get the HDL GUI to work, but it will definitely hang when trying to start a game. In addition, the TOOL's IOP kernel (at least release 3.0, which we all seem to use and love ) is completely incompatible with HDL's EE-side file I/O, so you wouldn't come very far in booting the game, even if you had a working core.

Been there, done that. Which reminds me of one of my other projects; I really need to get the debugger out, so I can find some time to hack a TOOL-compatible HDL OH:.

You're welcome :icon_bigg.

Depends on whether your LCD supports TV timing on the VGA port. All LCDs I've seen so far support a narrower frequency range than CRTs, but you might have luck if it already has SCART inputs. But don't expect too much; some LCDs might support TV timing only on certain inputs, even if both are handled by the same video processor :banghead:.

Try something like this: find /etc -type f | xargs grep "devtool-opening"
If some script in your /etc directory calls the script, this line will find it.

 

yeah, the valkyrie profile bug is always the same to my knowledge. albeit i'll admit that i've only tried it by starting a new game, where it always hangs upon entering the first battle (tutorial battle).
it's not really anything too bad or whatnot, but it's such a mystery. it's like somehow the dualshock thing goes over the "what is assumed to be a tri-ace implementation of a diskcheck" this game has a hidden proprietary filesystem and contains one of the most horrible encryption/compression algorithms ever seen in a ps2 game, so analysing the game itself is sadly not an option.

sad to hear about HDL on a tool one of my main points of interest in messing with ps2 hardware is the hdd, ( i believe i mentioned about turning bbnavi into a HDLoader ) so that really hit me hard :crying:

as for ramdump, i'll see BSAVE first and i'll drop you a PM were i ever need to do that on a real ps2. Thanks :thumbsup:

 

More or less the plan I don't see why not at least...

oddly enough was in the middle of getting a conv=noerror,sync image of that section for about the 5th time (kept forgetting sync and the data wasn't aligning) , and suddenly the error disappeared- was able to get a nice dump of the probably useless (in comparison to the clean second drive) boot drive!

 

Did some testing using my ps2 linux kit
TOOL multiAV VGA lead: Sync on green required
TOOL VGA output: NOT REQUIRED! works on my tv, and generic lcd's

why couldn't sony have simply put a sync splitter on the retail vga cable as it was... sigh...

Blaze HDTV Xploder will NOT work on the tool - it tries to boot, looks like it resets once, then just hangs... odd?

 

Mugi talked about a 3rd party app, it's a bitmap painting program wich includes a target disc for the PS2 to display images/textures, it uses an usb cable, possibly the same one as Naplink iirc.
I'll try to find the product's official website.
I posted multiple times that I found Sony's own Artist Tool target disc data in a consumer product, but somehow nobody noticed!

 

oh, where did you post that ?
i've been sleep-reading this thread again i guess.

in any case, the app i mentioned does seem to support DebuggingStation2 via USBLINK too, but i just use it on a TOOL via LAN (i don't have a TEST anyway)

the homepage would be here

 

Last time was here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=372364&postcount=103

Yes that's the link, it seems the latest version supports LAN connection on the TEST units too.

 

oh yeah, the desr disk
tho you gotta admit that the post was quite subtle. There could have been anything in there.

like that one demodisk that had the multiloader editing tools on it....

 

so....

i was going to do some tinkerinw with the Vram thingy and booted up the tool again.

now here's the the part where i say to myself "DO NOT TOUCH IT BEFORE IT'S BACKED UP"

ran dsedb:
[root@tool] cd /usr/local/sce/bin/
[root@tool] ./dsedb -r

now i get a few screens of some errors and the whole rig totally froze on me, and since keyboard was unresponsive and the reset or power buttons on the top didn't do anything, i switched it off from the back. (what can i do?)

now here's the interesting part, now when i boot it i get:

can't connect: /dev/rmp0: Invalid port

the tool mode totally fails to initialize at all, running devtool-opening doesn't work and dsedb gives nothing.

also when i shut it down now (shutdown -h now)
it proceeds to halt until i get this and the whole thing freezes.

any ideas ?
or did the HDD fuck up on me now

 

doesn't sound fun...
here's my dilemma:

I've installed prodg 3.01 and have been able to connect via target manager with no issues, get realtime info, etc... (using either disk)

BUT

upon launching the debugger, and, resetting, executing any elf, retail disc, etc... this is the error that's spouted repeatedly (choosing ok exits the debugger, but target manager stays up):

TTY Stack Error in TTYUpdate Ln 120. *** Unable To Resume! ***
EAX = 00002467
EBX = 1F23886E
ECX = 164D059C
EDX = 13FEA51A
*ESI = CABE57CB

This doesn't happen in prodg 2.00, everything seems fine... (of course the debugger windows don't work right, scrolling, etc...)

Any ideas?
system is running t10000-rel300.bin and has dsnet-1.23.1-1.i386.rpm installed...

 

im backing up the drives with norton ghost now as a temporary solution and try to boot the thing with the secondary HDD to see if the HDD did indeed shat itself or did i actually manage to fry it up completely

(is it just me or do these dealextreme 2$ ide2usb things heat up a bit too much -_-)

 

i've been using ones from newegg- didn't know ghost supported linux partitions these days- nice

Codewarrior was no problem to get up and running- still no clue why prodg 3.01 isn't happy unless I need to update the rpm's to something even newer...

I've tried in XPSP1, XPSP3, XP Tablet, Windows7, Windows 7 x64 (currently prodg2&cw3 are running fine in Win7 x64 over wireless with no issues...) and they all fail with the TTY problem...
Now if only I can get CodeWarrior for PSX to be happy with Windows 7 x64

 

who knows about support, but atleast it regognizes the drives and partitions just fine.

ghost is all i have at hand now anyways, until i set up something linuxy to do this properly.

 

Mugi, when was the last time you turned it on before it went berzerk?
Did you turn it off correctly that time?
Was there a disc in the drive when you started dsedb -r?
Do you remember the errors you got?