UniROM 8.0.K - GDB Debugging, install/backup to/from memory card, homebrew from memcard, etc

[sickle]

https://github.com/JonathanDotCel/uniro ... /tag/8.0.J

Some nice new stuff
Features:
- Settings menu/saving + Autoboot
- Disc identify routine
- Scam memcard detection (512k)
- Memcard Hex Editor
- Much faster booting (usually)
- Sped up the card screen a bit (ty rama)
- New documentation!
unirom.github.io (ty nicolas!)
- FreePSXBoot from slot 2 (properly!)
- Updated ROMsets (ty Squaresoft74!)
Fixes:
- Fixed memcard screen rebooting
- Hid memcard debug behind L1+R1
- Progress bars on the memcard screen
- Fixed a missing SJIS entry (ty nicolas)
- MCPro stability fixes (ty rama)
- Card format option for the memcard screen
- Nops: specify dump filenames (ty T0fuZ!)
- Nops: can now type into the monitor
- Support for lots of cheap memcards:
Wicareyo, Zedlabz/Assecure, Kafuty,
Ruitroliker, GamerGear, etc
- Fixed card screen visual glitches
- "Partial Deleted Save" on memcard screen
- Updated 28FS040
- Popup menu colour fix
- Warning when flashing with no card inserted
- Fixed booting of several games
- Fix from J-ish to allow editing empty cards
- Indicates which card slot it was booted from
Boot Fixes:
- Fix: BattleTanx 2 (mistamontiel)
- Fix: Heaven's Gate SLPS-00667 (mistamontiel)
- Fix: Crisis Beat (rama)

What was bad about Crisis Beat? I played that one through infinite respawns, PAL

Villain and the ender was such lacking all I recall

Lol, it was really subtle...
The attract mode would sometimes just not return to the main menu!

That's BattleTanx 2 and Heaven's Gate working btw, thanks!

the setsession trick

Aah bugger, I forgot to add this, will put it in the next one, thanks!

I've noticed that I couldn't write a FreePsxBoot memcard while using a wireless Logitech controller.

Lots of SPI improvements in this version, do let me know if anything changes!

Hello, today I tried to softmode my PS1 with uniroom. I successfully patched my cheatcard. But after that every copied CD...

Sounds like your laser is on its last legs.
You might be able to tweak it to read CDRs again, but potentially at the cost of reading black discs properly.

[zloygrinder]

[/quote]
Sounds like your laser is on its last legs.
You might be able to tweak it to read CDRs again, but potentially at the cost of reading black discs properly.
[/quote]

Thank you! I will try to find a spare one.

[mistamontiel]

This came to mind, any hopes of your 50>60hz force to come with Y position with vertical positioning?

I recall wanting to re-visit Gex 2+3, but the PAL voiceover for Gex is apparently radically different+superior! When I popped them in Xebra emulator no screen positioning ={

[LopoTRI]

I want to build a solo .exe version of unirom. In the TuT it stays innstall psyq and copy the unirom to c:/psyq/urom, made it, but are files missing? Cause i didn´t find the "build_bootdisc.bat" file. I dl the unirom.zip, source.zip and source.tar.gz. Even in the previous files i didn´t find the bat.

How can i make the .exe??

[danhans42]

Use the unirom_b.exe from the archive.

Currently the source isn't available

[mistamontiel]

*eek*.. another dinosaur bones PS1 game that almost but doesn't xd

King's Quest 1, the Japan exclusive SLPS-00017 tested with the English PPF patch and intro plays out the text scroll everything not FMVs (definitely it's entirely in-engine game, 30 megabytes!) but on loading into gameplay hangs there

[tomexplodes]

I just wanted to update that after all my issues back when, I ended up finding a suggestion online to flip my machine upside-down to see if burned games played better. They did. From there I ended up buying a for-parts PSOne machine with the better disc drive and swapping it into my SCPH-1001. Now every burned game (Verbatim CD-Rs, burned at 10x speed) I try works flawlessly. So it was my drive that was the issue. Just throwing this here in case anyone else runs into the same problem: It might be your laser! I'm very happy and I love unirom. Thank you.

[mistamontiel]

Oh dear

Racing Lagoon SLPS-02038 was just fully translated to ENG, but sometimes takes a year to load I've seen this from first boot-up just to begin intro FMV, and the last screen before the first race it hanged there for minutes then started load

Got into two duels and the spinning cars screen spazz out and again loading is far too long, minutes

vE8ish

[sickle]

I just wanted to update that after all my issues back when, I ended up finding a suggestion online to flip my machine upside-down to see if burned games played better. They did. From there I ended up buying a for-parts PSOne machine with the better disc drive and swapping it into my SCPH-1001. Now every burned game (Verbatim CD-Rs, burned at 10x speed) I try works flawlessly. So it was my drive that was the issue. Just throwing this here in case anyone else runs into the same problem: It might be your laser! I'm very happy and I love unirom. Thank you.

Hah, glad it's working at least!

Oh dear

Racing Lagoon SLPS-02038 was just fully translated to ENG, but sometimes takes a year to load I've seen this from first boot-up just to begin intro FMV, and the last screen before the first race it hanged there for minutes then started load

Got into two duels and the spinning cars screen spazz out and again loading is far too long, minutes

vE8ish

Cheers, I'll take a look for the next release

[leafy]

https://github.com/JonathanDotCel/uniro ... /tag/8.0.J

Some nice new stuff
Features:
- FreePSXBoot from slot 2 (properly!)
- Updated ROMsets (ty Squaresoft74!)
Fixes:
- Nops: can now type into the monitor

Hi! A lot has happened this year! This FreePSXBoot exploit changes everything! It almost makes mod chips and flash carts obsolete, depending on what you use those for. What's next, booting ISO images over the serial line? The nocash unlock, along with the memory leak exploit to run code from the memory card made the "magic" memory card finally possible.

It was with great satisfaction that Topaz and I finally hacked together a FTDI and half a knock-off PSX link cable to make a nops.exe serial cable. We used an FT231X breakout and soldered it up in 3 wire fashion. We tried just sticking the stripped wire ends into a connector on the FTDI breakout, but the echo in the monitor with nops was garbled, so soldering or a more solid pin connection is the way to go.

FT231X.jpg

cable.jpg

I downloaded the latest nops.exe but used an old version of Unirom CD so I didn't have to burn a new disk. First I tried the echo, and that worked better. Next the hello world, but it didn't load. So I used the command to write my Xplorer cart with the latest UniROM 8.0.J. After that things with nops worked well to load the hello world! Next I downloaded the FreePSXBoot and made a cart for slot 2 of our SCPH-101 that is not modded. At first on the PSX with the Xplorer, I tried with UniROM 8.0.J and nops to write to file to the mem card in slot 2, using what I thought would work:

Code: Select all

nops /fast /mcup 1 freepsxboot-unirom-fastload-20211004-bios-4.4-2000-03-24-A-6a0e22a0-slot2.mcd COM4

but in reality, I just needed to put the mem card in slot 1, then use 'nops /mcup 0 blah.mcd COM4'

After that I booted the PSOne with the lid open, and the memory card in slot 2, and after a while... UniROM 8.0.J woot! Very amazing to me!

It booted some burned disks just fine, until it got to Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories! That booted, but then after the Konami logo, I got the "SOFTWARE TERMINATED CONSOLE MAY HAVE BEEN MODIFIED CALL 1-888-780-7690"

warning.jpg

I guess this is one of those games with an extra check. I wonder what it does, exactly. This game worked in my console with MM3 mod chip. I also tried the swap trick with stopping the disk, etc. I guess you boot with the lid up, then hit x for memory card (load UniROM), then quickly close the lid with the black disk? Otherwise how would you boot UniROM with a black disk in and have it read it? That's how I did it anyway. My old cheat cart would automatically stop the disk at boot because it assumed you were using it as a mod chip every time, and it also booted it's menu first like Xplorer, etc. I guess that's the draw back of the memory card, you have to actually launch it from the PSX menu so the disk thing probably works best with a cheat cart and UniROM.

Thanks to all who made this possible! Can't wait to see what comes next, and also upload some home brew using my new serial cable!

Cheers!

[mistamontiel]

Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98 SLUS-00147 rarely boots

lol but fuck this game, jus tryna get in it caetla so I get in a boxing match then throw away this shit coaster. N64 version actually really crushes this

EDIT: I got to see your PAL>NTSC again, absolutely stunning! 60 and screen res fixed

My request is there a way to have this ability alongside caetla? Again try playing King's Quest 1 SLPS-00017 please

[leafy]

Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98 SLUS-00147 rarely boots

Hey, all the nocash unlock does is unlock the drive. If your disk doesn't boot, it's not the fault of UniROM nor nocash unlock. It's going to be your laser or media. There is no additional logic beyond unlock or lock the disk. Have a look at your hardware (laser), your CD-R burner, and your media. I burn disks with an ASUS DVD/CD burner at 16x and I never have had an issue with booting them.

EDIT: OK, I apologize, I think what I said above is incorrect. It seems the way the nocash unlock works isn't foolproof because of the way some games work. It seems I have mis-understood the situation. So, some games might not load. I doubt there would be a game that sometimes loads or sometimes doesn't with nocash unlock. I think that would still be the laser, etc. But, if it never boots, perhaps the nocash unlock and UniROM could be modified.

Sorry for my confusion!

[Octane]

Bishi Bashi Special, both PAL and NTSC-J, still boots into a black screen.

[mistamontiel]

Updated to current UniROM!

Since previous version (maybe two ago) and now in Legend Of Dragoon SCUS-94491 I noticed in encounters the music kicks in late, and one encounter stuck black for maybe even two minutes and finally loaded

I tried in tonyhax to rule out laser see and yip not delayed

EDIT: I don't know why since today pimping my slim SCPH 101 but Legend Of Dragoon music was not delaying, now I noticed another game I finally got to re-visit is bugged

Viper SLES-01302 I tried clean to see its 50>60hz (I remember Ape Escape PAL so amazing, but music is fast) but this one ingame gives a nasty chunky border beneath with nonstop glitching confetti, screen positioning this one doesn't do, 8.0.J with both SCPH 7501+101 units

Popped in PAL4U patched one and doesn't do this (*maybe* there is cut-off the positioning very needed and works, and wish to use caetla and with enabling your 50>60hz unless Gamehacking.org has PAL2NTSC+Y-Fix would be superb)

I know I the only one whining for PAL titles just all the cool shit+variants we never saw

[sickle]

@leafy

Aaah nice one!
Congrats on getting it up and running,

If you're up for it it might be possible to play some of those games with the nocash unlock if you add a switch to your mod chip. I vaguely remember for example that Medievil works fine with no$, but moans when it finds the chip as you enter the 2nd level.

The swap trick is pretty easy if you have a cart in:
- jam the sensor down
- go to boot -> stop disc
- stick your own disc in
- boot
(note: that's currently broken for memcard-based boots, but that fix is in the next update. you could just lift the disc out and replace it while it's spinning.. but don't look at the laser, be careful, etc)

Can't wait to see what you do with the serial cable

@mistamontiel
Shame though, NTSC->PAL is easy, 'cause you're doing lower res + lower framerate.
PAL->NTSC seems a bit more tricky... some games totally work, and some don't. I never did quite work out if you're just trying to do too much per frame (higher framerate + higher res).
If the P4U stuff works, it's probably going to do a better job anyway lol

If it makes you feel any better, us PAL folks missed some good stuff too!

Dragoon still all good btw?

@octane
saw your msg on github... seems to be working recently - I've been using both versions to test stuff, but feel free to drop your setup somewhere. (which psx, which boot method, etc)

[serj_82]

Hello!
Please help in solving the problem with my Game Shark.
Game Shark version 2.1, bought on Ebay, in a box with all documents, without traces of use.
Connected to the console (SCPH-7501, with a mod-chip) - nothing happens.
I found a disk image of Sicle Unirome version 6, of all the firmware that were on the disk, only a few were able to fit.
Others gave an error...
Well, ok, one of the firmware has successfully approached, Gameshark is working.
The entered codes for Resident Evil 3 came up, everything is ok.
But the next day, the first oddity began: the codes no longer worked... The game shark started, everything was ok, but there was no result in the game!

But the worst began later. I sold my 7501 console and tried to run the Gameshark on 7502.
And it stopped working completely!
Even EEPROM is not detected in the disk menu by Unirom - it writes "unknown 2F 6F"
Accordingly, no firmware can be installed.
How can it be? What is the reason?
Is it really the fact that this is a console of another region?
But does it affect the parallel port? The console(7502) is also chipped, it reads any discs.
Please tell me what to do?

P.S.

I dismantled the Gameshark, it is ideally a high-quality soldering (only the flux is not washed off in some places).

[danhans42]

Might be an intermittent connection on your parallel port, clean it and make sure it's connecting well.

[mistamontiel]

Well no shit report just to say I played Legend Of Dragoon front+back! Cheers sickle!

[mistamontiel]

Back to Martian Gothic Unification speech cutting.. man, I don't know why my fat struggles because now I gave that a spin in my slim and intro plays out flawless

[mistamontiel]

I thought Martian Gothic was another big shit to own but I got it $20 and four days (!) later here from Puerto Rico

I wanted to rule out my fat 7501 laser going out.. so interesting I exited UniROM I might have gotten one minor intro speech pop and same just good when introduced UniROM