Hacks, Hardware & Emulation, Oh My

treefroggy

hellomrkearns I’ve played this on hardware every chance I’ve had another friend to do it with. Pretty underrated as one of the most important hacks ever?!

the rocky connrrr picture show

My PS2 slim is plugged into my router by ethernet, and I remembered I had a 128GB flash drive lying around I want to make use of. The router is a weird Asus model that doesn’t support Merlin but which does have a couple USB ports and a page in the settings for setting up Samba shares.

I keep trying to get help from the mess of frequently old threads about playing games from an SMB1 share with OPL and it’s all really hard to parse, and the atmosphere on places like the PS2 subreddit is just too toxic and sloppy (parroting half-remembered information and kind of just full of dummies) to bother with, so I’m asking for help here. Is there a reliable guide for this somewhere?

A question I had while looking this up was: why are people opting for travel routers or Raspberry Pis instead? Is there a reason I shouldn’t set this up on my main router? I know that SMB v1 which is what the PS2 uses has security vulnerabilities but would that open up my whole network to attack or just the drive? It looks like a lot of people host their games from their computers, so hosting from a flash drive connected directly to the router should be fine, right?

copySave

the rocky connrrr picture show I was using my stock 2018 Asus router’s SMB/UPnP services for a while and yeah, I ran into all sorts of issues with the way it handled the drive I had connected. Slow, could not get CIFS to work, permissions issues, hard to connect to with certain devices, etc. The generic software that comes with them is pretty limited and gets outdated fast.

Been using a 4gb Raspberry Pi 4 with Open Media Vault and it’s been pretty great. I wanted the Pi 4 since it would be running 24/7 and only uses 15 watts of power. Could also probably use an old low power laptop since OMV is just Debian Linux. More info here: https://www.openmediavault.org/

The drive I have connected to it is formatted as ext4 since that works best with Linux, and I copied over all of the files via the SMB service from a Windows laptop. Transferring files was done at max speed of the drive.

I have a read-only DLNA UPnP service running on it too so you don’t need a user name or password to access the content, but you need to authenticate with SMB to write/delete files. Been able to access the DLNA service with everything I’ve tried. Android phone, Steam Deck, MiSTer, Windows machines, Fire Sticks, Roku, WebOS on my LG TVs.

In short, yes a dedicated local NAS is totally worth it over your router’s built in software.

the rocky connrrr picture show

copySave thanks for clearing this up for me! I guess I’ll try to pick up a Pi4 sometime.

Playing online probably isn’t possible while connected to an RPi OPL server, or am I wrong?

robinhoodie

copySave Thank you. I have been hitting the wall with SMB stuff on the PS2. I don’t even need it, but I like to problem solve. I figured that the best route was a dedicated Pi. I guess it is time to invest in one.

copySave

the rocky connrrr picture show Yeah I think the PS2’s ethernet port is too slow for that. Someone asked a similar question here: https://github.com/ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader/issues/984

Perhaps you could have an internal/usb drive on the PS2 with just the games you want to do MP with?

Regarding the flash drives - I haven’t tried but, you should be able to attach a bunch of drives and use the MergerFS plugin to make them one pool. You can install plugins with the OMV web interface. Just keep in mind the speed and power of the drives as the slowest one might govern the overall speed. You might need to increase the PSU size to 5v 5a to make sure they are all getting enough power, or use drives with external power bricks.

the rocky connrrr picture show

Hey can I plug a bunch of flash drives into that RPi and RAID 5 them? Is that possible/advisable?

the rocky connrrr picture show

Also I did an SD card shuffle!!! today that I’d been putting off, because I was just about running out of space on my 3DS:

3DS’s 64GB card replaced with the 128GB card from my Vita
128 GB card in my Vita replaced with the 256GB card from my MC2SIO
MC2SIO intentionally left empty because all it will play is Legend of Kay
64GB card saved for my R4i card which will go in my DS lite when I get that thing repaired

I also downgraded my Switch from 256 to 128 when I saw how slowly I was filling that card up—swapped with my GameCube which I’ve been playing a whole lot of lately. This was so much moving, and waiting for files to move.

sabertoothalex

PSP hardware Q:

I have a PSP-3000 that seems to exhibit some kind of…I guess it’s a front plate fault? I can’t really tell. Basically on the top and bottom of the screen it looks like the edges of the screen are being reflected on the edges of the clear front plate covering the LCD itself

Angling the system shows the screen itself is fine

And when it’s non-text being reflected it gains one of those rainbow effect sorta things along the same places on top and bottom

I’ve been playing with this for a while and depending on the game type it’s pretty easily able to be ignored. But this game has tons of text and every single time I’m reading a line I see this reflection and it’s driving me crazy. I feel like it need to change the entire front plate.

Sort of related but I turned on my Vita to try the game and now I’m becoming an intended color psycho because the warm colors on the Vita OLED just look so wrong now

So I’m stuck between off colors or this reflection issue and I’m stuck haha

the rocky connrrr picture show

sabertoothalex are there glass lenses for the PSP-3000?

sabertoothalex

the rocky connrrr picture show OEM is plastic but there are glass once’s available it looks like. If that’s what it is then no mention of it when I bought it unfortunately.

the rocky connrrr picture show

sabertoothalex it might fix it, I have no idea. Treat yo self.

Like in the pics with the text reflecting it does look like the screen is being reflected in the edge of the clear plastic. I don’t have a PSP but it looks like that’s where the material ends.

sabertoothalex

Took out my other PSP 3000 that has a really yellow screen but pretty clean front cover and did a swap to see if it made any difference. Really easy to remove and replace turns out! Bottom is the one with the good screen+new cover.

Still has the reflection though it does seem a little less intense and more easy to hold at an angle that minimizes it.

Guess this is just how the 3000s are.

treefroggy

sabertoothalex It’s hard to find true information online about the 3000 screen, is it meant to be slightly yellow? Because mine is. And I love my 3000, it’s the only PSP for me nowadays and I use it as my main MP3 player for road trips, among other nostalgic things.
I’m getting flash backs to my realization that 90% of original WonderSwan have ugly green screen replacements.

sabertoothalex

treefroggy The one I have with the good screen seems to have an overall cool color bias but doesn’t have any perceptible yellowing as far as I can tell. The bad screen I have is VERY yellow. I had another 3000 before these that also had pretty noticeable yellowing. I think you’re right that this is just the way these screens are going and good ones are just going to become rarer and rarer.

Naaaaaaaathan

Howdy folks, I followed @copySave ’s lead in the CRT thread and picked up the scan converter they demoed (it rules). Now I want to pick up a PC laptop for PSX (Duckstation) and Saturn emulation (speaking of which, what is the consensus pick for Saturn emulation, Mednafen?) and to remove several steps in my video output daisy chain (currently a usb-c to HDMI, HDMI to VGA, VGA into the scan converter).

Anyway, I have a total newb question: would a laptop with an i7-8650U@1.90GHz work for PSX and Saturn emulation? Or would my lil Macbook with an i3-1000NG4@ 1.10GHz be enough?

Thanks!

copySave

Naaaaaaaathan Glad I could help!

I’d say give your Macbook a shot since that i3 can boost above 3GHz for single core performance and should be able to handle up to the Dreamcast. Most emulation still relies on single core performance. Quickest option to test would installing RetroArch for Mac Intel (you might have to set your Mac to allow external software): https://buildbot.libretro.com/stable/1.15.0/apple/osx/x86_64/RetroArch.dmg

Just launch the App and get the cores from the downloader in the main menu. Also put your BIOS files for the PlayStation and Saturn in the /retroarch/system directory.

Coincidentally, I’m using a Windows laptop with an i7-8550U and it handles all systems pre-PS2 just fine (except for accurate low-level N64 emulation), so that i7-8650U is a good option as well. Most PCs from the last 10 years can handle emulation of 90s consoles.

Some other tips:

With either of these options I will say to not use any shaders beyond simple interpolation (/interpolation/sharp-bilinear-simple is a good choice) or the standard bi-linear filter to even things out. Your CRT will provide plenty of natural aesthetics.

Also, make sure you’re running the core’s internal resolution at 320×240 (1x native). This will improve performance and keep the visuals looking more like the real deal. These can be accessed by running a game, opening the RetroArch Menu, and going to the options menu. I cover these topics briefly in the video.

If you ever screw anything up and the core won’t launch, just delete the core’s config file in the retroarch directory and it will reset to default.

the rocky connrrr picture show

To celebrate 9/9 I flashed Cerbios to my Dreamcast 2, but then spent so much time troubleshooting after that that I ran out of time to play the game I wanted to check out and now it’s time for bed. :')

treefroggy

This yt channel with 45 subscribers has reverse engineered two e-reader cars dot codes that were originally slated to be released but never were: the cards that were the only way to unlock the original Zelda and Super Mario Brothers NES games.

robinhoodie

treefroggy Videos like this got me hooting and hollering. Just great stuff to see.

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