Try checking sector 16 or higher - a lot of PSX CDs genuinely do have broken ECC/EDC in the system area of the disc due to a bug in Sony's mastering tool.

Thank you very much Apsley, I see a very small difference in the gray plastic part, the mold "circles" appear fainter. So does the printing on the blue sticker, hmm.. I wonder what the experts TriMesh and Shadow think about those close up shots 8-) rama3, that's what the site claims but h...

Damn, I wasted $50 on a Japanese playstation with accessories. I bought it because I thought it was in better condition compared to the other US models that were listed thinking I was going to be able to use Unirom with it regardless. The swap method should still work as long as you have at least o...

OK, I just had a look at the code, and noticed a few things to do with the region detection. 1) You are reading 0xBFC7FF52 and comparing it with 'A' and selecting NTSC mode if so - this results in the code switching to PAL mode on consoles with a Japanese ROM, which is the wrong thing to do (tm). I ...

Hopefully it will be compatible in the future, because damn, I was going to use it to play backups and japanese games on this ntsc-j model. Please elaborate a little more on the swap issue. Thanks. The "nocash unlock" bit is never going to be compatible with any console with a Japanese CD...

I can't even boot up japanese region backups with this method. I'm not sure if it's a cart, model, or hardware issue. Which region is your console? If it's Japanese (SCPH-xxx0) or Asia (SCPH-xxx3) then the nocash unlock won't work because it's not supported by the code in the CD ROM controller chip...

I haven't bought one, but I'm extremely dubious about that claim. Partly because it's an item that's been out of production for so long and partly because the official Sony service part came with the rubber shock isolators and that one apparently doesn't. From the photo it looks decent quality though.

The nocash unlock is not going to work on the SCPH-7000 (or any other console with a Japan region CD controller) because the CD firmware doesn't support it. Normal booting of in-region discs should still work, though.

As far as I remember, the 'Aging Test Disc' was released here . Yeah, that one is the CD drive aging disc - there was a system test aging disc too, and that doesn't seem to have ever leaked. Seeing as the hardware is getting old now, maybe it would be a good idea to write some test software - testi...

Maybe a problem with the game code branching differently in some areas because of the regional differences (in the BIOS, for example). All it takes is an expected SPU DMA routine delay that somehow takes more/less time on the NTSC-U machine. I tested it using the same configuration he did (SCPH-550...

I just realized that I had an unmodded Japanese PSOne lying around. The game works fine on it, so this is not really a problem anymore. But this is still a very mysterious issue. It is very strange - all I can think of is that it's some sort of edge-case hardware problem like bad SPU RAM that this ...

OK, do you have access to another console to test with? I've just tried this using an unmodified SCPH-5501, an old Action Replay cart flashed with UniROM v6 and a original Japanese copy of Um Jammer Lammy (SCPS-18011). There are no strange noises and it sounds identical to the same disc booted on my...

Presumably the 12V in to 3.5/7.5V out board that goes in place of the power supply in the DTL-H110x consoles.

There was a special power block that was only used with those debug consoles. There is also a specific PSU that came with some Sony VAIO laptops that will work, but I imagine that would be as hard to find now as the original one that came with the console. The other option is to open the console up ...

My open-source tools OpenSend and QPSXSerial (http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=1307) are more complete than PSXSerial and SIOCONS, as they also allow uploading external files e.g.: TIM, VAG... under request from the target. PSXSerial and SIOCONS would only upload an EXE file to ...

If it's an SCPH-1000 it will have a PU-7 board in it. Unlike the US and European markets where SCPH-1001/SCPH-1002 covered a wide range of hardware specs the Japanese changed the part number when they changed the hardware. SCPH-1000: Early machines with a PU-7 board SCPH-3000: Later machines, no S-V...

I can't be 100%, but I have a unit here also made in the Kisarazu plant with a higher serial number than that and it has the old boot ROM in it, so I think there is an excellent chance that one does too.

It's true for most SCPH-1000s - this was a bug in the boot ROM and it was changed late in the production run so you might be unlucky and get one where it doesn't work. You do need an original NTSC:J disc and there is a specific procedure you need to use. Turn on console with no disc in it and go to ...

OK, to fix the first error you need to change the contents of line 1 on the file to reflect where you have the cdgen files installed - for example on my machine the correct path is C:\psyq\cdgen\LCNSFILE The second one is probably again that the path doesn't exactly match your installation, so reche...

Having had a chance to look at this dump, here are a few observations: 1) Although it's a 32K EPROM, only the upper 16K is being used and the lower 16K is filled with 0xff - this is consistent with the socket on the piggyback chip being wired to take either a 27128 or a 27256. 2) Unlike the producti...