TonyHax Boot CD is TonyHax without the Hax, Tony, and memory card or specific game requirements

General homebrew games, programs and PlayStation PS-EXE's
Post Reply
alex_free
Interested PSXDEV User
Interested PSXDEV User
Posts: 6
Joined: May 10, 2021

TonyHax Boot CD is TonyHax without the Hax, Tony, and memory card or specific game requirements

Post by alex_free » May 25th, 2021, 2:07 am

TonyHax Boot CD Webpage

TonyHax Boot CD v1.3.5 BIN+CUE download

I had this Eureka moment last night. I own an October 1995 USA Playstation. So why not burn TonyHax's loader .exe to it's own CD?

These early consoles are susceptible to the METHOD ONE: The Audio Menu [Safe and very easy] swap trick. For the past 24 years this had one issue, the original TOC of the legit game disc would be used. This mostly worked but you'd get issues with some games not booting or messed up audio, and you'd have to hot swap trick again if it was a multi-disc game at some point (many people incorrectly said playing multi-disc PSX games with just the swap method was not possible!). But by using TonyHAX, you can swap the TonyHax boot cd using this method with any legit game and then once the TonyHax Boot CD is booted you can swap your backup/homebrew! Finally, this is how you pull it off:

Turn on the Playstation 1 with No CD/game inserted and select the CD Player in the main menu.
Open the CD drive. Place any legit game disc that the console can read normally into the drive.
Now you need to block the lid sensor which is a circle to the right of the CD drive so that the Playstation thinks the lid is closed. In my opinion, the easist thing to do is to take a hunk of aluminum foil and mold it to the right size to the length from the pointy bit which normally would press down this sensor to the sensor button in the fully depressed state. You just need the PSX to think the lid is closed. Once you do this, the legit game disc will spin for a second, and then suddenly stop and display at least one track in the CD Player menu.
Okay, so right now your Playstation should have a legit game disc which is not moving and stopped in the CD drive, and something blocking the sensor so the console thinks the CD drive is still closed. Now, remove that legit game disc and replace it with your burned TonyHax Boot CD. Use the controller to then exit the CD Player menu, and wait. The PSX will show the black license screen and proceed to boot the TonyHAX Boot CD.
Now you can remove whatever you jammed into that lid sensor, wait for the burned TonyHax Boot CD to stop spinning, remove it, and put in the burned backup game or homebrew CD you actually want to play! Then close the Playstation's lid, and play like normal.

alex_free
Interested PSXDEV User
Interested PSXDEV User
Posts: 6
Joined: May 10, 2021

Post by alex_free » May 25th, 2021, 11:42 am

My pull request to add boot cd support to TonyHAX has been merged! https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax/pull/88

User avatar
Mdv
Active PSXDEV User
Active PSXDEV User
Posts: 69
Joined: Jul 06, 2020
PlayStation Model: SCPH-7502
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Mdv » May 26th, 2021, 6:48 am

alex_free wrote: May 25th, 2021, 11:42 am My pull request to add boot cd support to TonyHAX has been merged! https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax/pull/88
just use unirom and stop messing about swapping discs

alex_free
Interested PSXDEV User
Interested PSXDEV User
Posts: 6
Joined: May 10, 2021

Post by alex_free » May 26th, 2021, 1:26 pm

Mdv wrote: May 26th, 2021, 6:48 am
alex_free wrote: May 25th, 2021, 11:42 am My pull request to add boot cd support to TonyHAX has been merged! https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax/pull/88
just use unirom and stop messing about swapping discs
I don’t have a cheat device, and I bought this console specifically to do the CD player swap trick method which stops the disc when you swap. Now if I swap this boot cd I have no TOC incompatibilities and CD Audio works. Why would I buy anything else if I can do this?

User avatar
Mdv
Active PSXDEV User
Active PSXDEV User
Posts: 69
Joined: Jul 06, 2020
PlayStation Model: SCPH-7502
Location: United Kingdom

Post by Mdv » May 31st, 2021, 11:10 pm

alex_free wrote: May 26th, 2021, 1:26 pm
Mdv wrote: May 26th, 2021, 6:48 am
alex_free wrote: May 25th, 2021, 11:42 am My pull request to add boot cd support to TonyHAX has been merged! https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax https://github.com/socram8888/tonyhax/pull/88
just use unirom and stop messing about swapping discs
I don’t have a cheat device, and I bought this console specifically to do the CD player swap trick method which stops the disc when you swap. Now if I swap this boot cd I have no TOC incompatibilities and CD Audio works. Why would I buy anything else if I can do this?
unirom can be installed to a memory card the same way as freepsxboot

User avatar
MottZilla
Verified
Serious PSXDEV User
Serious PSXDEV User
Posts: 88
Joined: Jul 04, 2015
Location: North America

Post by MottZilla » June 2nd, 2021, 7:49 am

Having more options is a good thing. I'm sure there are others out there that might benefit from this. I remember the TOC issues when I used the swap trick way back before I had a system with a modchip. It was annoying for games with cd audio tracks. I think I saw somewhere that some models can actually issue a command to re-read the TOC without checking the security again.

rubixcube6
C Programming Expert
C Programming Expert
Posts: 10
Joined: Apr 11, 2021

Post by rubixcube6 » June 15th, 2021, 7:25 am

I think what we need most is a TonyHax CD that lets us select the hacked save-game that we want to use and writes it to the memory card. To load it we would just need to do the swap trick one time, and let it make a TonyHax memory card.

L10N37
Curious PSXDEV User
Curious PSXDEV User
Posts: 15
Joined: Jun 17, 2021

Post by L10N37 » June 17th, 2021, 10:04 am

Mdv wrote: May 31st, 2021, 11:10 pm
alex_free wrote: May 26th, 2021, 1:26 pm
Mdv wrote: May 26th, 2021, 6:48 am

just use unirom and stop messing about swapping discs
I don’t have a cheat device, and I bought this console specifically to do the CD player swap trick method which stops the disc when you swap. Now if I swap this boot cd I have no TOC incompatibilities and CD Audio works. Why would I buy anything else if I can do this?
unirom can be installed to a memory card the same way as freepsxboot
actually freepsx boot isn't really anything other than an exploit trigger to run other apps

So technically you can have freepsxboot with Unirom specific to your MB BIOS
Or freepsxboot with tonyhax specific to your MB BIOS

L10N37
Curious PSXDEV User
Curious PSXDEV User
Posts: 15
Joined: Jun 17, 2021

Post by L10N37 » June 17th, 2021, 10:14 am

rubixcube6 wrote: June 15th, 2021, 7:25 am I think what we need most is a TonyHax CD that lets us select the hacked save-game that we want to use and writes it to the memory card. To load it we would just need to do the swap trick one time, and let it make a TonyHax memory card.
This could be possible but you'd have to have a memory card with modified save files and it would be a job for a skilled programmer with a lot of exploit/ hacking experience.

A lot of games blindly dump entire memory card contents to static locations in RAM - Sometimes without you even clicking "load game'. I've had heaps of games let me mess them right up without crashing and still cruise along perfectly with a 100 character name that's wrapped around the screen 5 times lol.. I've then used other applications whilst in emulation to modify the contents loaded in RAM and when you save the game, it saves everything in that static location (now modified) back to the memory card.

Others ganes load maybe 3 to 5 lines (binary dump) on boot without you knowing - for saved options etc before loading a game.

Take a look at "black bass with blue marlin"
It would be better to write something from scratch though due to obvious copyright reasons ...couldn't really release a modified version of a game for this purpose...

you could maybe get this working on an official release by using the extra save slots , then loading a game, and resaving it on - i.e load and then resave on slot 1 to a different card that places tonyhax files for other games in the other slots

If this isn't possible hell , let me know.. worth a mention

User avatar
ShadowGeist
Interested PSXDEV User
Interested PSXDEV User
Posts: 7
Joined: Mar 20, 2021
I am a: nobody

Post by ShadowGeist » June 17th, 2021, 2:31 pm

rubixcube6 wrote: June 15th, 2021, 7:25 am I think what we need most is a TonyHax CD that lets us select the hacked save-game that we want to use and writes it to the memory card. To load it we would just need to do the swap trick one time, and let it make a TonyHax memory card.
Try creating a disc image of Orion's Save Manager CD with TonyHax MCS files of your choosing.

L10N37
Curious PSXDEV User
Curious PSXDEV User
Posts: 15
Joined: Jun 17, 2021

Post by L10N37 » June 17th, 2021, 4:42 pm

That would have been awesoome, but unfortunately doesn't seem to work. Tried both genuine and aftermarket cards. It also have a character limit of 8 which some exceed but still fails on the ones less than 8 characters long.

User avatar
MottZilla
Verified
Serious PSXDEV User
Serious PSXDEV User
Posts: 88
Joined: Jul 04, 2015
Location: North America

Post by MottZilla » February 21st, 2022, 12:01 pm

rubixcube6 wrote: June 15th, 2021, 7:25 am I think what we need most is a TonyHax CD that lets us select the hacked save-game that we want to use and writes it to the memory card. To load it we would just need to do the swap trick one time, and let it make a TonyHax memory card.
I recently came back to this idea and did just that.

MCTOOL for TonyHax and FreePSXBoot + TonyHax.
https://ufile.io/4rsxingf

Burn and boot this image to a CD-R, use the menu to install either FreePSXBoot+TonyHax or a collection of TonyHax save games. It can also format the cards incase you need to remove FreePSXBoot from a card.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests