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

[Orion_]

I just tried with my game and it's working !
You can boot my RPG game Zia without modchip, just an Action Replay with UniROM 0.44, insert the CD, press R1 to unlock the CD, then R2 to boot the game !
Thank you for this awesome ROM and thanks to nocash for this great discovery !
I made a video of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsxTJABOVSk

[vxbinaca]

SickleBrick,

Why not put the code up for UniROM onto github? Has anyone decompiled xflash or gotten ahold of the devs to see if they'll release it's code?

[sickle]

@Orion_

Heh, badass Didn't realise you had full games. Zia's definitely reminding me of the FF6/Chrono/Secret of Mana era Square games
Just wondering... how small is the Binary+Assets for Yopaz?

If it can be squeezed into a single file, about ~480kb (after compression with UPX), it could be fun to make a cartridge version >.< (I assume Zia is too big)

@vxbinaca

I'm considering it! It's pure assembly, so it needs some pretty heavy documentation and it's very messy right now, so either it'll get cleaned up or I'll get frustrated and release the messyness at some point. TBH I just haven't the time to go through it all right now

A few of us have tried to contact Tim (the author) about XFlash, and IIRC he doesn't have any copies of the source :\ It decompiles cleanly in IDA Pro (both the .psx an .exe versions). Whatcha looking for?
Maybe relevant?
http://www.metagames-eu.com/forums/les- ... 35141.html

[vxbinaca]

There is still some use for UniROM and X-Flash, examples:

- Restoring or upgrading cheating devices
- Easy, quick, cheap testing of import discs w/o modification
- Upgrading the EEPROM, if modified to expand the supported chips Gamesharks couls be upgraded to Pro units.
- If I have to travel I'd rather take a few burned games and a UniROM device than a $150 flash cart.

I do plan on getting a flashcart though. However this is still useful.


I hope you release the source on GitHub.

[sickle]

Little update:
That's cheats back in and working on the Caetla side of things! Turns out pretty much every 0.34 version you can find doesn't have the final 14ish kb where all the cheats are, and just crashes so I grabbed some placeholders from Zippy. As long as your EEPROM is supported you should be good... otherwise uhm... have someone else add the cheats, download the rom then reupload to yours or something. Either way, me 'n lara have been doing some moon jumps.

Next up, still working on patching XFlash to support serial comms. The easier solution would be to let unirom handle the comms, load xflash then manually call the flash routine... but that's far from ideal :
I've got more room to leave the PSX plugged in and ready now, so fingers crossed I'll be a little more active.

@vxbinaca

I'm not against the idea in principle, but in practice it would be a nightmare.
For example today I added cheat support back into the Caetla side of things, making the caetla rom a bit bigger.
This means unirom had to be glued onto the end a little bit later in the file, which means I had to recalculate the new entry points and manually hex edit those at the two entry points in the original caetla rom ( since caetla's entry points are overridden to let Unirom take control briefly, check switch/emergency key states, etc, and once that's done jump back to hard-coded addresses in unirom).
Conversely, to enable the CD unlock in caetla, a small portion of code jumps off to a hardcoded region of unirom to do the unlocking, replicate the original code and jump back. Again, to account for the altered sizes I had to decompile the old/new caetla binaries (after adding in the cheats) as a reference to hex in the new addresses for the jumps. (So the caetla binary being used doesn't even boot on its own)
On top of that there are loads of undocumented tweaks to XFlash and PSXSerial along similar lines, the fact it's all written in assembly, tons of weird quirks 'cause the GPU doesn't like stuff on the EEPROM, and I haven't even been remotely consistent with 'class' names or use of temporary/saved registers, and that's before all the pre-patching for ROMs that can't be written to by caetla. That and I'm the sort of chump that if someone were to say "hey, how do I add some feature" I'd probably spend the week bringing them up to speed. So if someone shows some initiative, does a cool thing with it or wants to see how a particular part works... cool, fuckin' have it mate but otherwise, don't hold yer breath :p

[morpheous]

Hello,

This is my first post. I recenlt purchased a Game enhancer 9 off eBay for 20.00 shipped. It works great but i hate having to swap an original psx Disc, then swapping for a backup. So i remember i had a psx gameshark laying around. ( found it after i bought the game enhancer 9 ) So i wanted to have two flashed dongles. So i flashed the gameshark with a 128k rom via unirom .044 I choose option 14 stand alone and it works but there is a compatibility issue.

It worked with a game called, "Fighting force" but it won't boot "Castlevania: Symphony of the night" For this to work, i would have to use the game enhancer 9 to allow a original psx disc to spin up and once it stops, i have to swap in the backup of Castlevania: SOTN Then and only then does it boot.

It seems this may be an issue with many more games and not just SOTN. I'm sure if i use the Option 9 Rom "Smart Cart Auto stop", it'll boot it just like the Game enhancer 9, once its swapped with an original psx disc.

This really defeats the purpose of me not needing to swap and wear out my CD spindle, being Unirom Caetla is suppose to be direct boot with no need to swap an original disc.

I only tried 2 backups so far and Fighting Force boots without a need to swap, SOTN needs to be swapped.

Unless i am doing something wrong, could someone give me some advice? is there another Rom with better compatibility i can flash to my gameshark or Game enhancer 9? can my game enhancer flash a bigger rom? 512k for instance?

Thanks in advance...You and everyone associated with this project is keeping the psx alive and well, so we will never forget where we've came from.

[sickle]

Stuff doesn't boot.

The boot code's just not very good.

Tbh it wasn't really for playing games, and boots any homebrew I've thrown at it ... but it is distressing to know that SOTN doesn't play :\ Good news though, I've been doing a bit of poking and prodding around in the BIOS and I've had a few successful boots by patching the regular BIOS boot. I don't have anything older than SCPH-1002 to test the older BIOSes on but it should work with all the other ones. (Except nocash's high level clone. not sure yet).
The new boot sequence logs to the screen too so should help in diagnosing issues ^^

[ploder]

Stuff doesn't boot.

The boot code's just not very good.

Tbh it wasn't really for playing games, and boots any homebrew I've thrown at it ... but it is distressing to know that SOTN doesn't play :\ Good news though, I've been doing a bit of poking and prodding around in the BIOS and I've had a few successful boots by patching the regular BIOS boot. I don't have anything older than SCPH-1002 to test the older BIOSes on but it should work with all the other ones. (Except nocash's high level clone. not sure yet).
The new boot sequence logs to the screen too so should help in diagnosing issues ^^

Does it matter whether the game is PAL or NTSC? Interested because SoTN is one of the games I'm interested in playing if I ever get another cart to flash. If this new 'non-swap' method doesn't work reliably then I might just save my money. But it seems there is some scope for improvement? Appreciate all the hard work you guys are putting in.

[morpheous]

Stuff doesn't boot.

The boot code's just not very good.

Tbh it wasn't really for playing games, and boots any homebrew I've thrown at it ... but it is distressing to know that SOTN doesn't play :\ Good news though, I've been doing a bit of poking and prodding around in the BIOS and I've had a few successful boots by patching the regular BIOS boot. I don't have anything older than SCPH-1002 to test the older BIOSes on but it should work with all the other ones. (Except nocash's high level clone. not sure yet).
The new boot sequence logs to the screen too so should help in diagnosing issues ^^

So does that mean you're working on another 128k rom with better compatibility or a tweak to the bios to boot backups with any game? So you're saying i should sit tight as there is something in the works?

[sickle]

things

Hah wow, SOTN lead me on some wild goose chase... I dunno what it is about this game in particular, caetla wouldn't boot it reliably, my code wouldn't boot it at all and launching the .EXE directly and would sometimes crash on a blank screen and always at the loading screen. I haven't really had the time to fix the fastboot properly...

Buuut.. the patched bios boot seems to work really reliably, especially on chipped systems (found out this one has a NTSC-PAL converter in it ). So R2 now runs the patched BIOS boot, and it's pretty happy with both versions of SOTN. Woo!

Anyhoo, update coming tonight/tomorrow with this and some other fixes.

[sickle]

doublepostbump:

Take a wee look at the first post to get up to speed with the update!
(http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=722)

[Squaresoft74]

Neat , thanks for the update Sicklebrick !

[ploder]

things

Hah wow, SOTN lead me on some wild goose chase... I dunno what it is about this game in particular, caetla wouldn't boot it reliably, my code wouldn't boot it at all and launching the .EXE directly and would sometimes crash on a blank screen and always at the loading screen. I haven't really had the time to fix the fastboot properly...

Buuut.. the patched bios boot seems to work really reliably, especially on chipped systems (found out this one has a NTSC-PAL converter in it ). So R2 now runs the patched BIOS boot, and it's pretty happy with both versions of SOTN. Woo!

Anyhoo, update coming tonight/tomorrow with this and some other fixes.

Thanks for the quick work. What would be the best installation option for those with a PAL (SCPH-5552 if it matters) unchipped system wishing to flash either an original Xplorer v2 or game hunter cartridge to a) have the ability to input RAW codes and b) have the fastboot/nocash unlock option?

Also, is there a compatibility list for those games that work with the fastboot/nocash unlock? It would save having to burn a lot of cdrs and find them not to work without the swap method. If not then do you have any tips as to what it is that causes some games not to work? As always, your advice and hard work are appreciated.

[sickle]

...which install...

Okie, so if you have a 256kb cart or higher, then the UniROM+Caetla option might be best as Caetla can handle the raw codes. If your game hunter is 128k though, then it's one or the other.

...which games...

Now there's a question. I've honestly hardly tested this or used it to boot games - was kinda sad that SOTN didn't play though. Mostly unirom was made to help make unirom if that makes any kinda sense. I CBA keeping a google doc for this, but uhh.. feel free! haha

[ploder]

I see. Thanks for clearing that up. Regarding compatibility, I'm not that experienced with emulators but would it be possible to emulate a cheat cartridge flashed with unirom to test our backup .bin files without having to burn cdr? It would save on discs.

[vxbinaca]

Thanks for updating the code, can't wait to flash it onto a new Gameshark Pro and try it out.

[morpheous]

things

Hah wow, SOTN lead me on some wild goose chase... I dunno what it is about this game in particular, caetla wouldn't boot it reliably, my code wouldn't boot it at all and launching the .EXE directly and would sometimes crash on a blank screen and always at the loading screen. I haven't really had the time to fix the fastboot properly...

Buuut.. the patched bios boot seems to work really reliably, especially on chipped systems (found out this one has a NTSC-PAL converter in it ). So R2 now runs the patched BIOS boot, and it's pretty happy with both versions of SOTN. Woo!

Anyhoo, update coming tonight/tomorrow with this and some other fixes.

I'm glad my feed back led you to do more research into the issue with SOTN.

Thank you for the dedication and quick response.

I'll be monitoring this thread for a new 128k Rom for my Gameshark and Game Enhancer 9 dongles.

[vxbinaca]

Two quick questions:

- How do I alter that disc image that comes with UniROM releases to add firmwares to it?

- I have an older computer with a all the legacy ports on them. Could I just make a VM of Windows 98 and flash the cart directly without having to burn a disc?

[sickle]

Neat , thanks for the update Sicklebrick !

Thank you for the XPlorer ROM compilation

...emulator?...

Weird, I thought no$psx's debugger version had this option but it doesn't seem like it. Maybe undocumented. That would be pretty damn useful. If you have a parallel port though you could use XFlash right into an XPlorer. I'm working on a serial (works with USB) version but progress is slow.

...new 128k Rom for my Gameshark and Game Enhancer 9 dongles...

Yeah, sorry you can't fit the full version on those (just yet) but at least the standalone version is workable on them!

Two quick questions:

- How do I alter that disc image that comes with UniROM releases to add firmwares to it?

For this I just use the PC side CD creator for XFlash. You bung all the roms in a folder and run romfile.exe - it creates "romfile.dat" which goes on a CD with your system.CNF, and the main xflash.exe. (I use 'PSx CD-Gen' for that out of habit, but you should probs be using http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=1064 ).

- I have an older computer with a all the legacy ports on them. Could I just make a VM of Windows 98 and flash the cart directly without having to burn a disc? I suppose that would work, what's on the PC now?

I use Win7, lol. Might not work for everyone but the giveio version in the UniROM download works a charm. I guess it makes sense that it would work for XP/Win7/Win8/Win10? Not tried though! hehe.

[vxbinaca]

Thanks Sickle,

However the latest UniROM isn't booting my physical copy of IQ Final, but it reliably boots X-Flash. v.44 would boot it unreliably, but v6 isn't booting it at all.

I'll keep trying different versions to see what works.

Thanks again, and I'll use your instructions to create a master image for flashing cheat devices.