PlayStation Development Network

The SN Systems Windows 95 Debugger for the DTL-H2000/2500 boards requires a dongle in the parallel port to run fully.

This file will crack it for you so you may load the program and run it (instructions included within the archive).
The file seems to have been made later by Sony (or Sony requested SN Systems to do so) because developers must have been having problems or got annoyed with it.

NOTE: You must run the Psy-Q File Server before running the Psy-Q Debugger or else your system will blue screen.

Interesting, I didn't knew that Sony used dongles!

But I've just noticed that they have also used a dongle for their homebrew Yaroze devkit. However, that seems to be a totally different design: It looks like a regular PSX memory card (but with text "ACCESS CARD" printed on it), and connects to the yaroze memory card slot. You can see that card on the photo in the wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze

Anybody knows something about that thing? What does it do? What transfer protocol does it use? Which games and/or which devkit software do require that dongle to be present? Does it also contain save memory like normal memory card? Does it contain some unique (per-user) serial number?

And what the fuck is it good for? I mean, if the Yaroze console is a customized PSX, then software could detect that console customizations. It wouldn't need to check for an additional dongle. Or is that wrong - and the Yaroze isn't customized at all - and the actual dev hardware does simply consist of the dongle & cdrom bootdisc, and that stuff would work also on gray retail consoles?

I believe its not a real memory card, some people opened one and found the hardware was different, without the Boot cd wont load. a cracked CD doesnt need the memory card.

The yaroze isn't customised at all, other than its region free. If you have he access card and original boot CD I it will work on any standard PSX.

The access card is he same as an early memory card, but with no flash memory on the PCB. The MCU is programmed differently.

Someone on another site ran the boot executable through IDA and found that the Access Card just waits for a 0x21 byte and pulls down /ACK. After that /ACK the console sends a 0x53 byte and expects a byte with upper 4 bits set to zero.

See here http://pastebin.com/5cySSjcn

Source.. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... ngineering

danhans42 wrote:Someone on another site ran the boot executable through IDA and found that the Access Card just waits for a 0x21 byte and pulls down /ACK. After that /ACK the console sends a 0x53 byte and expects a byte with upper 4 bits set to zero.
Source.. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... ngineering

Thanks for the info! Good to know what kind of bytes it is transferring.
Though I still can't imagine why they have manufactured that thing. The region-free feature is probably done by customizing the cdrom sub-cpu bios, so they could probably detect original devkit hardware by checking the sub-cpu bios version. Which would make the access card rather useless.
Or did I mis-understand "region-free"? It could also mean that it could play homebrew games at both 50Hz and 60Hz (but without actually accepting CDROMs with SCEx strings from other regions).

For the Psy-Q; How did its 'dongle' look like? And was it really for a PC parallel port (=for a PC printer port)?
Asking because here is a picture of an(-other?) Psy-Q "parallel" port device: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... post278110 In this case, "parallel port" is apparently referring to the PSX expansion port. There's also a DB25 connector on it, which does also look like a "parallel port", but actually it appears to be an SCSI connector, as seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/defor/sets ... 680819477/ - knowing what was on it's EPROM would be also fun. In another forum thread, I've read that later revisions used FLASH or EEPROM instead of (UV)-EPROM.

I am also confused about which company(s) have made which official psx devkit(s). Sony? SN Systems? Psygnosis? Or others that I may have missed?