[PS2] POPS stuff & POPStarter

I completely agree...
It is too much a beautiful project to be abandoned!!!
Come on Krhacken!

 

Salut kHn.

Enfin, te voilà de retour. Ta longue absence me faisait penser que tu te préparais à quelque chose de nouveau. J'ai de suite pensé à ton changement de logement et qui sait un travail rémunérateur. C'est le logement qui a gagné. Le travail va venir, je te le souhaite car tu es méritant.

Bon courage, ami.


Hi KHN.


Finally, you're back. Your long absence made me think that you have prepared yourself to something new. I immediately thought of your change of accommodation and who knows remunerative work. This is the unit that won. The work will come, I wish you because you are worthy.


Good luck, friend.

 

I was finally able to get Beatmania 6th Mix to boot up on my modchipped PSX. Beatmania IIDX controller works fine on the PSX, but not on POPSLoader.

Its probably the same story as the GunCon issue someone else was having.

 

I am new to the site. Very interested in trying to use Popstarter rev.13 WIP02. I am a noobie when it comes to emulators and there usage. I am using FHDB (everything from internal harddrive). I am also using 4.42e_HDD. I was able to create a "_.POPS" partition. I was able to revert files to .VCD. I renamed my popstarter.elf to the same name as game.VCD. Placed .elf in sysconf./FMCB/ file and .VCDs in the _.POPS folder. This is all according to the installation of Popstarter rev.13 WIP 02. What do I do next (remember me.....noob)? How do I run the emulator? Some step by step info will very much be appreciated. Thanks for your help.

 

You need 2 missing files in your setup : The POPS decrypted files (POPS.ELF and IOPRP252.IMG), which go in the __common partition of your PS2 HDD (http://ddata.over-blog.com/1/06/19/78/kHn/SOFTWARES/0-INTRODUCTION.TXT) They cant be redistributed here (sony copyrighted files).

Then you will be able to launch the emu by launching your posptarter renammed ELF file.

 

I forgot to mention that I have these two files and that they are in the _common partition. They are in "_common/POPS/ folder. The Popstarter.elf (which has been renamed the name of the game) is in the sysconf./FMCB/ folder but nothing happens (returns to the Free HDBoot/ main menu screen) when I launch the renamed elf. What could I be doing wrong? Maybe the way I am trying to launch the emu? Thanks for the response.

 

Replace your POPStarter ELF with this one (rename it like you did before). It's a POPStarter r13 WIP02 that is pre-patched with DEBUG_AND_HALT.PPF, it prints debug texts and error messages. Instead of exiting to FHDB, POPStarter will tell you what's wrong with your setup, and break the execution (you'll have to turn your PS2 off manually). Then try to fix the problem, and put the unpatched POPStarter back to your HDD.

If you are tired of copying numerous POPStarter ELFs, you can use the modified uLE to run your VCDs directly : uLE_kHn_20141013.zip

 

Thank you, I will try it this weekend and let you know the result. One other question: What is the difference between the popstarter.Kelf and the popstarter.elf?

 

Popstarter.kelf is pospstarter.elf embedded in a container. Its only usefull if you have HDDOSD installed in your setup. You would be able to launch your games from the nav 2.00. Otherwise its useless.

 

POPStarter.elf is a standard executable which can be run by any ELF launcher (FMCB, FHDB, uLE, OPL...), as long as the ELF launcher passes the proper ExecPS2/LoadExecPS2 argument.
POPStarter.kelf is a MagicGate encrypted executable (aka KryptoELF or XLF). It can be launched from the PS2 HDDOSD and the PSX (DVR) XMB.

When running POPS with POPStarter.elf, the file POPStarter.kelf is not needed. You can delete it if you want to save some HDD space.

POPStarter has 2 operation modes : Internal HDD and USB drive.
In internal HDD mode, the files "PFS_WRAP.BIN" and "POPS.PAK" aren't needed and can be deleted from your HDD too.
PFS_WRAP.BIN is the PFS wrapper developped by Delcro, which redirects HDD I/O commands to the USB device when POPStarter runs in USB mode.
POPS.PAK is a compressed archive. It contains POPS.ELF and IOPRP252.IMG, and it's designed to make POPS load faster in USB mode. This file is not used in internal HDD mode (internal HDD mode only uses the raw POPS.ELF and IOPRP252.IMG files).

 

krHACKen,
I ran the file/.exe "Debug and halt.ppf" and got this as a result: *New Launcher (For A Multiple POPS Games Dedicated Partition)*, "Mounting hdd0:_POPS to pfso_ _ _ _ failed" through "Mounting hdd9:_POPS to pfso_ _ _ _ _failed". "Beyond the Beyond.VCD was not found". I also tried Croc 2.VCD, with the same result. There were other screens prior to this one (too fast to note) but most of them were saying "not found"......example: Bios.BIN not found. As stated earlier, not sure what I am doing wrong. Only using POPS.elf and IOPRP252.img. Hard drive is 750GB and formatted with winhiip at 48bit, could this be the problem? Thanks again for all the help....striving to get this to work.

 

Hmm... for some reason it cannot find your game partition... POPStarter is LBA48 compatible, it works with ToxicOS, HDL28bit and HDL48bit formatted HDDs, so I don't think the problem is here.

Double-check that your .VCD file is in a partition that is named __.POPS (two underscores dot POPS).

EDIT : the other "file not found" are unimportant warnings. POPStarter halts just after it encounters a critical error (in this case, your __.POPS partition is somehow not found).

EDIT2 : POPStarter did print your VCD file names correctly, so the way you've renamed the POPStarter ELF is correct. The ELF location is OK too. It's definitely a game partition issue here (incorrect partition name, or weirdly corrupted filesystem :/)

 

krHacken,
I finally got this to work!!! Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate your patience and explanation of things. The problem was a simple mistake. When I created the "_.POPS" partition, I only had one underscore. Until your recent explanation, I don't believe I read anywhere that there needed to be two. The Beyond the Beyond game worked but the Croc 2 game froze. I will have to check the list. So, I am ready to continue to hacking abilities. How do I use the uLE_kHn_10141013.zip file, so that I don't have to create a popstarter elf for each game? Also, my renamed popstarter elfs have an extension of .ELF (in caps), does that matter? Thanks again for your help (the kids and I are going to have some fun tonight).

 

Croc 1 and 2 finished .....

Hello Rmac.

"Croc - 2" (SLES_020.88) version PAL fonctionne très bien chez nous. Mon épouse l'a terminé. "CROC - 1" a aussi été fini par mon épouse. Le 1 est un jeu original mais pas le 2 chez nous.

Cordialement.


"Croc - 2" (SLES_020.88) PAL version works very well with us. My wife has finished. "CROC - 1" was also My wife has finished. One is an original game but not the two at home.

Best Regards.

 

Not that I can remember.

 

1) Add BOOT.ELF or PACKED_BOOT.ELF (from uLE_kHn_20141013.zip) to your FHDB menu
2) Copy POPSTARTER.ELF (from the POPStarter zip) to __common/POPS/ (where you've copied POPS.ELF and IOPRP252.IMG)
3) Launch uLE_kHn_20141013 then you can run your VCDs simply by selecting them with the circle button (just like we do with ELF files)

The VCD files still have to be copied to the __.POPS partition. For example, if you put your VCDs in __sysconf/FMCB/, that will not work.
POPSTARTER.ELF must be uppercase.
uLE_kHn_20141013 has bugs that the original uLE_WIP7 does not have. More details here https://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?45347-PS2-POPS-stuff/page24&p=783405#post783405

Does not matter. Only the game name part is case sensitive and must match the name of the VCD. The ELF extension can be .elf, .ELF, .eLf, .ELf......

 

krHACKen, whether the new version of POPs,whenit comes,whetherto improvecompatibility andthatthe newreleasewill be????

 

krHACKen,
I couldn't get the kHn_20141013.zip to work. Also, a little concern about bugs. Anyway, I placed the "PACKED_BOOT.ELF" in the _sysconf/FMCB/ folder and "POPSTARTER.ELF" in POPS folder. Was I supposed to add kHn to my menu.....the same as Codebreaker, Simple Media System, and NES emulator?.... then just launch from there? Thanks for your and everyone elses help, I really appreciate it.

 

Yep, you must add it to the menu by locating and editing FREEHDB.CNF (or using the Free HDBoot Configurator), like you did for your other ELFs.

 

I'm glad to see you again here krHACKen, i have a lot of kHn files of compatibility Modes
for integrate in the emulator, i can send it to you now if you are enough ready with
your PS2.

Best regards.