Hello, I recently aquired a TEST 50001 model Debug console and I'm trying to create some back up discs for a couple games and I have some questions. I am entirely new to this, and from what I can tell, I have no clue what I'm doing I've got the Loser's Master Program but my attempts to make discs have been miserable failures... So, what programs should an individual use while attempting to make a backup disc? Are there tutorials anywhere on this process? I was unable to find any on the site after looking tonight. Does this process work for both PS1 and PS2 games? Thank you in advance for your help.
Master Disc patcher works well with a very lot of games, yet some will give errors with the CNF file not found and that. You don't need any sort of setting (just tick master disc) Only PS2 CD & DVD are needed to be master patched and PS1 you don't need any patching at all. To get around the games that don't work with the patcher, you need to obtain Isobuster, open the image and extract the contents. Download Sony's CD/DVD Generator 2.0 (google it) as I cannot link the file here as its copyrighted (illegal) but with searching you will find it. Try to get the one that does not need a install (non exe) as it dont work with Win7 x64 if you use it. There is a extracted version floating around that you just run. Open up CD/DVD gen, create CD or DVD master disc, drag and drop the files in the same order as Isobuster displays them, fill in the product code (find this if you drag the system cnf to notepad) and fill in name. Then find JRLS ISObuilder and make the iso after dvd gen has finished. Have search over on isozone.com as there is a tutorial there if you search dvd gen
just rip the contents from disc, make an iso with imgburn, patch it with master-disc patcher, burn it, done. some games with lba protection wont work this way ofcourse.
Yeah, I can vouch for Imgburn as a much better alternative to CDVDGEN for casual remastering of PS2 discs. I have used it successfully to build several custom Guitar Hero II discs, and have also used it successfully with a handful of games that contain large dummy files (for HDD purposes, when such games work after removing the dummy files I prefer to do so to save space on my HDD). Imgburn removes the requirement to use a program to build from the .IML that CDVDGEN outputs, and instead outputs an ISO directly. I always prefer to match the original file order from the ISO when building in Imgburn, this makes it more likely that the LBAs will match up. With GH2, I actually drag over the folders first (GEN, IOP, VIDEOS), then the main ELF, and finally SYSTEM.CNF. I know this goes against the standard of having SYSTEM.CNF and the main ELF first on the disc, but AFAIK every custom disc I've made with the above method worked fine, both from optical disc (on the ones I've tested that way) and from HDD. For any random game, however, I definitely recommend either using the same file order as the original disc, or putting SYSTEM.CNF and the main ELF as the first two files. As richi said, any game that fails is likely to be referencing the LBA of a desired file, and if it's not present at the same sector as on the original pressed disc, it will fail the protection. If you have an unarchiver that supports ISO files, you won't even need ISOBuster, you can just extract the ISO into its own folder. Virtual DVD-ROM software like Daemon Tools, etc will also let you mount and extract the ISO contents, if you have such a tool installed.
Most of you with TESTs and TOOLs have the official PS2 SDK laying around on your harddrives. Use SONY CDVDGEN to make the discs, my python scripts to strip the extra (useless) mastering data so the images are suitable for burning with IMGBURN. For me it works every time I try... Edit: Even with CD-ROMS !!!!! :very_drunk:
So what you're saying here, is that an ISO that cannot be patched directly with the Master Disc Patcher (Soul Calibur 2) is an example, as it gives an error that the system.cnf cannot be found, can be just extracted and made to an ISO with Imgburn. And then use the patcher again to master it regardless of the file order and LBA for debugging PS2's? Or does Imgburn fix this so that no further patching is required? My current way for years for games that could not be patched with the patcher was to rip the iso via isobuster, open up cd/dvd gen and create a new disc using the same exact file order from isobuster. Output the files with cd/dvd gen and create a iso with IML2ISO and then burn with imgburn without any further patching. Only issues with this method was with DVD9 games such as GOW series, as I could not make backups of this.
for backing up dvd9 games, you have to open the game with something like apache3 that support dvd9 L1 ripping. however, let me warn you beforehand, dealing with CDVDGEN and dvd9 images is a pain in the ass.
You would have to use Loser's patcher to turn it into a master disc, Imgburn doesn't do that. What Imgburn does do is make valid ISOs that will work as PS2 games, assuming the game doesn't look for files at specific sectors of the disc instead of just searching the filesystem (the aforementioned "LBA protection"). Such an ISO can either be master patched for a debug, or ESR patched for a retail softmod, or burnt directly for chipped systems, or installed to a PS2 HDD for HDL/OPL/Diskload usage. This is not valid for DVD9 games AFAIK, I haven't generally rebuilt any of those. Most of my PS2 work with Imgburn, as I said, was with custom Guitar Hero II images, which all work flawlessly after being generated by Imgburn. Any issue would be with the layer break.
