I recently acquired a a PS2 debugging unit (DTL-H50001) and I'm looking to run some backups on it. It plays PS1 games from CD-R with no problems, but I have a quick question about playing PS2 backups. So I downloaded the Disc Patcher 3 tool to patch as a master disc, but I'm not sure what to put (if anything) into the "Exe Filename" field. Should I just leave it blank or type "SYSTEM.CNF" or what? Just want to be sure I'm doing the patch properly before I burn the disc. Cheers.
So if the first line in SYSTEM.CNF reads: BOOT2 = cdrom0:\SLPM_669.26;1 then this is what I should copy into the patcher: SLPM_669.26;1 Is that right? Or should I leave out the ;1 at the end?
Also forgot to ask, should I include the decimal point in the number? So either SLPM_669.26 or SLPM_66926
Does master disk patching break compatibility with mod chips? I'm kind of curious whether a DVD can be simultaneously compatible with mod chips, debugging stations, and whatever that DVD Video-based trick is called (EVR or something?).
Well, I tried patching an image with "SLUS_201.51" as the "Exe Filename", and it took a few seconds to patch, rather than instantly like last time I tried. But the ISO file is still the exact same byte size as before - so I'm still not sure if it made a difference... This is the tool I'm using Should I go ahead and try burning anyway? Thanks for the help so far. I wouldn't imagine that master disc patching affects modchips in any way, but I wouldn't know for sure. However, debugging stations don't support DVD-Video at all - it simply won't boot. So I'm pretty sure ESR-patched discs won't work on debugging stations.
It's about CRC32, not size. Most translation patches, for example don't increase ROM/ISO size. So yeah, just burn it. DVD-R discs aren't that expensive.
That would depend on a bunch of things, really. Does having a VIDEO_TS on a master disk cause Mechacon to interpret the disk as DVD Video instead of PS2 DVD? Do the ESR patches to the IRX files check the disk type before switching to use readDvdV? Do debugging stations refuse readDvdV requests on PS2 DVD master disks? I sort of remember readDvdV working on PS2 DVDs on an unmodded retail PS2 in some test I did. Obviously, it returned zeros for the subcodes returned in readDvdV's extra bytes, since PS2 DVDs don't use CSS.
Looks like it did the trick - I just successfully booted a backup of Klonoa 2 on the debugging station! I'm going to treasure this console forever. Many thanks, guys. Well I'm not an expert with this stuff, but you're right that there are a number of factors involved. What I can say for sure is that my debugging station refuses to play discs that are ESR-patched, because it calls for DVD-Video support. When I tried, it said something about DVD playback not being set up. But if I actually booted FreeMCB from a memory card and tried starting the disc through ESR itself, who knows. I might give that a try, but something tells me it won't work. Could be wrong though.
The MECHACON is a very intelligent device that has its own mask ROM. It is able to determine the disc's format on its own (and reports it to the EE and IOP via one of its registers), and hence the lockout is done by the MECHACON itself. I don't know much about the DVD video disc format, so I cannot say whether it'll determine whether the inserted DVD-R disc is a DVD video or PlayStation 2 disc, just based on the existence of the VIDEO_TS folder alone. I haven't personally done any tests on a debugstation's hardware before because I don't have access to one, but it is known that they cannot boot a DVD player because the MECHACON rejects the DVD player's KELF type and hence it is not possible to re-enable DVD video disc reading at all. On retail PlayStation 2 units, DVD video playback support is disabled by default by the ROM OSD, and this is re-enabled by the MECHACON when a DVD player is decrypted successfully. This applies to debugstation units as well, except for the part about re-enabling it. This information was obtained from tests involving booting FMCB on a debugstation. When DVD video playback is disabled, sceCdReadDVDV will just return an error, regardless of the type of disc inserted. However, it may be possible that DVD video playback will work if an OSD update that doesn't disable DVD video playback is booted... although that seems unlikely because Sony had most likely disabled the DVD video disc reading functionality within the MECHACON itself, since they obviously wanted to make the debugstation incapable of playing DVD video discs. If you can re-confirm that, that would be great. I don't know why, but I somewhat remember that it would return an error if the inserted disc is a PlayStation 2 DVD. I could be wrong though, since I never recorded my findings anywhere. Congratulations!
One more question about my debugging station, if I may... I understand that it will boot games from any region (I've already tested a Japanese release and it works great), but how will it handle PAL releases? I've heard that debugging stations will boot PAL titles, but won't convert the video signal to 60Hz, resulting in a broken picture. Some PAL titles have a 50/60Hz selector when they start, but a lot of them don't. I'm using an NTSC CRT via component video, and as far as I know, the TV will not support 50Hz.
PAL titles will use whatever video mode that they were programmed to use (which is generally PAL 50Hz). Unlike the original PlayStation consoles, the PlayStation 2 is highly reprogrammable and supports a whole range of video modes (regardless of whether they are "NTSC" or "PAL" sets). If your TV does not support PAL, then you need to either get a new TV set or use a tool like GSM to override the video mode. The best solution (although the most expensive one) would be to get a new TV set. Or if you can live without ever touching PAL games, just do that.
I'm somewhat familiar with GS Mode Selector, so I'll give that a try when I get round to testing FMCB on the system. Thanks!
What I'm wondering about is actually what happens if a DVD is ESR patched and master disk patched. In other words, if the disk type from the perspective of a debugging station's Mechacon is both "DVD Video" and "PS2 DVD". It's something having to do with VIDEO_TS, because that's part of what ESR does to get the Mechacon to recognize a DVD-R as a video disk. If you'd like to me to run some executables on my DTL-H50001, let me know. =) It's worth a shot. It'd be funny to get the DVD player to work on debugging stations. I don't have any of the old tools I'd need to try again, so I doubt that I'd realistically be able to. I'd have to dig up the open-source SDKs for all of that, then figure out how to interface them to Sony's undocumented cdvdman and such. It's been way too long since I have done any of this.
