PS2 Hardware: CHIP REVISION(s)

Hi,

do you have any further information on the bus expansion port? I once reconstructed the pinout (up to 2 pins which I wasn't able to trace), but I lack the components, soldering experience and know-how to make my own extension board :shrug:. As I wrote in one of my other posts, my dream is to add a debug port (similar to the one present in the TOOLs) to a retail machine.

There are some interesting differences in the BIOSes, but nothing that really prevents homebrew from running. Some things I had to consider for my debugger are:

• The 10000 misses the X-modules, which are needed to make some functions of the homebrew libraries work. Sticking to the regular modules helps; if this is not an option, one could always load the extended versions from secondary storage.
• No rom0:EELOADCNF (as there is hardly any use for it without the X-modules :110, so the usual SifIopReset("rom0:UDNL rom0:EELOADCNF") kills the IOP after reboot. Booting the NULL kernel helps, but leaves the IOP with an ancient LOADFILE module without the SifLoadModuleBuffer call. Workaround: sbv_patch_enable_lmb.
• Program load address. I haven't researched this one in detail yet, but some homebrew launchers (like the ps2link I use) seem not to bring the EE kernel to the default state before executing the next program. Loading the program at a higher address (for my ps2link, its +2MB) should help in these cases, though. If you know exactly what you are doing, you can also try to kick the misbehaving loader out of memory and reset the kernel yourself :lol:.

The same applies (minus the third point of course) when trying to boot homebrew on a TOOL. In addition, as these have a flash ROM, there are also some dependencies on the last Sony SDK version used.
Somewhere (I think) in the 2.x range, Sony has restructured the file I/O library to use an asynchronous model in its internal calls to the IOP. As the homebrew library still assumes the early synchronous semantics, it won't produce any meaningful results on these versions; typically, it survives 2 to 3 calls before you get a crash deep down in the IOP's I/O manager.

 

Tracing that connector is something I can help you with. !
Let me know what you have traced already and on which motherboard you worked I'll try my best to help.

I have to mention that the pinout of that connector seems to change every few revisions (maybe that make the engineer feel better, security wise ... LOL) so which board type you tried to reverse engineer is important. :thumbsup:

 

oh yes, it 18000 with add on board,
namco system 246,256 have many type, but all is cool
i have one Konami acrade system is useing custom ps2
btw, how about PSX ? ( in PSX upgrade disc, i have find out some text "rom0:" "DTL-H" "DTL-T" )