Hi, I know, I'm kinda late for this stuff, but there's a lot of history in this platform, and I'm pretty sure, that coding for this platform is a lot of fun. Now my problem. I want to code for this platform. And over at the Hitmen pages I read that I need this Action Replay / Game Shark module, with a custom ROM. This is as far as I understand it. Now the problem. I dont know which AR / GS I need. There are like 5 millionen copies / fakes / newer versions out there, like Action Replay Pro, Game Shark Pro and stuff like that. So I need some help there, on the development setup, from a guy who has done this before, and maybe a source where I can buy the correct module. Thx in advance!:thumbsup:
The best is to get an xploder/xplorer As the AR needs a speciall ISA card to communicate with a PC. On the xplorer/xploder you can just connect it right to your "printerport". Luckily for you, you live in germany were these units seems to be rather common on eBay.
thank you babu. but now the question....how to control the psx with? I mean, all the tools that you can find on the hitmen pages (which is the best site still out there for psx development) are made for the action replay / game shark ?? thx in advance!
Unfortunately I can't help you there. Back when I did some PSX coding I didn't have one of those cartridges so I had to rely on emulators and CD-Rs.. But basically you re-flashed the cartridge with some caetla software and used some software on your PC to upload code/data to your PSX through the cheat cartridge. But here's some pages: http://jum.pdroms.de/PSX/psxdevstart.html http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/no-yaroze/ http://gamesource.groups.yahoo.com/group/psxdev/
You're not the only one late here, ICEQB All the neccessary stuff can be found at http://www.murraymoffatt.com/playstation-xplorer.html
Ok, sso first of all ... dayum!!! There's a lot of shit coming together right now. Is there somebody in here, who is actually intimate with the whole Cartridges and there replacement ROMS and the whole setup stuff? If so, please contact me via icq. thx in advance!
I don't do icq, but I've used caetla on an xplorer. You can use catflap for talking to it on windows xp & vista 32bit. I've still got a 32bit machine, but my main machine is now vista 64bit. I have been looking at what can be done about using that. Although it's not my top priority right now & some of the other things on my list have been there for years. Something usb or ethernet based would be pretty cool though ( I don't even have a parallel port anymore ). The latest official compilers ( pssn ) also work, psyq is msdos based and can give you problems. Although if thats all you got then dosbox would probably work.
Hey, thanks for your answer. I'm also about to use the same setup as you (Caetla on Xploder). Few days ago, I bought a Xploder Pro. Does it any matter which Xploder I use? I mean there are 3 normal versions, one Pro version and a FX Version, which was the last Xploder for the Parallel Port (big thanks to st! for the site, btw ). Or is caetla compatible to all Xploder versions? And is there any way to contact you via any messanger? MSN, IRC ? Big thx in advance!
AFAIK they are all compatible. I don't regulary hang out on irc or msn these days, you can private message me here if you get stuck and I can probably get onto an irc server sometime.
Wow, this topic is quite interesting. Speaking of Caetla and Action Replay communication with a PC, do you guys know if there's a way to also alter read/stream functions to load data from PC? For the moment I'm using a WIP of pSX (the emulator, not the console) that supports virtual CDs from a folder, but I'd like to test it on the real thing without having to burn a million CD-Rs.
good point bro and good question, I always wanted to ask the same thing, but I never found the right words.
The official way is to have the devkit and cd emulator, which has it's own dedicated hard drive. If you're going the console route, then you can use caetla to access files on the pc but it's slow. It's also supposedly difficult to get working on XP, because of timing issues. So I have never personally bothered with it. You only need to burn a CD when the assets change. You can send new exe's to the console over caetla that access the CD. Unless you're doing something complex like multiple exe's or overlays. If it were me then I'd sort out building an ISO and then run an emulator on that. The advantage is that as soon as you are happy then you can just burn it to a CD and you know it will work. What is it you're doing anyway, sounds interesting.
The point is, I'm really doing something complex with several overlays, not just some kind of small demo-like game. So I guess there's no way to use caetla to send actual CD data. Maybe I should just think about making my own hardware for that. I don't need to build an ISO every time I want to test on emulator (pSX 1.14 can do that), but I'd like not to rely too much on it if not for just small tests. I've already noticed errors with stretched textures and other stuff that don't appear in any emulator. I'd really need to run things on the actual machine every time I write something low-level that can be tricky to handle for the console, like stopping XA audio and load and overlay immediately after that.
I'd write a small test app for that, which could be sent as a .exe. You're going to need to burn a cd, but as long as the overlay doesn't need changing to fix the loading then it's only one. You should make notes of differences between emulators and consoles, because it might be worth getting the emulators fixed sometime.
It does change, a lot. And if many parts of the code in the exe change, all references in the overlays are broken for good, making the data on disc totally useless. Not even one of the emulator developers wants to emulate errors because of speed issues. They care more about emulating games rather than the machine itself. But that doesn't work on the Playstation, so uhm.
