Hacks, Hardware & Emulation, Oh My

video games
816

@“copySave”#p99800 thanks! That‘s actually the method I used and yah… it didn’t work.

I followed the instructions, but VitaShell was not showing a uma0 directory at all... tried over and over again and still nothing.

I was using a Green Samsung card; the tutorial says the Red one doesnt work, some say all Samsungs don't work, somewhere on the internet says Green and Red cards are the exact same (just sold at different retailers), and some said they should work.

I thought fine, maybe I get another SD card, that would be the best next step. Got me a Sandisk one, and struggled to remove/insert the card into my SD2Vita... I think I may have thus damaged it? Coz when I then tried to format it thru VitaDeploy it was giving me an error message saying it could not Format the card :(

I do show some physical damage on my SD card, but I plugged it into my PC and it does work, so I think my SD should still be OK. I'm thinking that I actually damaged the SD2Vita now.

So... ordered another one; just gotta be patient and wait a few days for it to arrive and see if I can start again. If it still doesnt work then yeah, probably will pay a craigslist modder...

817

@“p3ters”#p99833 Yeah that could be hardware related, but I did see that if formatting fails you should keep trying (which you probably did). I‘m using a Sandisk 256 Ultra card with no issue. Guessing you also have VitaShell running in “Unsafe Mode” and mounted uma0 by pressing the triangle button. Also I’m using a PSTV, but I don‘t think it’s guts are too different from a non-OLED Vita model and I never signed into PSN with it.

But don't give up! After using the newer solutions to run roms the SD2Vita makes exploring the Vita and PSP libraries much easier.

818

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@“copySave”#p99866 and mounted uma0 by pressing the triangle button

I think I did do this with the old Samsung card? But again it gave me an error:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/lowZ57cl.jpg[/img]

I still get that error now when I try to press the button, but again I cannot test it properly since I apparently busted my SD2Vita

still... none of the tutorials say you need to press that button... they just open VitaShell and the drive just happens to be there! Was there really a step I was missing??

819

@“p3ters”#p99921 I think that message just shows up if it can‘t find any other storage media. I didn’t mount the SD2Vita in VitaShell before formatting. I just plugged the fresh-out-of-the-package SD card into the SD2Vita and then formatted with VitaDeploy. If you can't get VitaDeploy to see or format the SD2Vita, then yeah the adapter is probably broke. Hopefully the new one works!

Do other game carts work? Just to rule out any damage to the slot itself.

820

Have you tried different SD cards? This sort of thing can be real picky with SD cards, it’s been a while but I think that was my problem, and it usually is my problem when doing hacks. Google sd2vita sd card compatibility. The adapter is just a simple line through so it’s unlikely that it’s broken. IMHO

821

My replacement handheld batteries all came in. Only the 3DS’s really needed replacing—shit life on a charge and once I got it out saw that it was bulging!!! the case is fine though, phew.

So I took a look inside my Vita just to make sure nothing’s ready to explode, because while I bought the both of them at the same time, the 3DS was a refurb straight from Nintendo and the Vita was second hand probably originally bought at launch. The date on the battery reads 2012-04-16.

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I was thinking about starting a thread for hardware internals porn. I often post such things in here, but I kinda want to just see a slew of hi-res stock and modded game hardware boards all in one place.

822

For anyone who likes to have archive dot org collections on their local drives, might I suggest Free Download Manager.

It took a little figuring out but it was worth it. Just install the app and add the browser plugin through the preferences.
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/R4c11pA.png]

With the browser plugin installed click-and-drag to highlight the files you want, right click and select "Download selected with FDM". It will parse the highlighted text and generate a list of files.
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/xX4O6zY.png]

It will then switch to the app. Set your download location and then start the downloads (you can modify the list after it's started). Once it's started you can right click the line item set in the "All" or "Active" tab and click "Show downloads".
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/WRTrCzx.png]

This will list out all the files the queue. You can sort them by clicking the column headers and remove files you don't want by right clicking (for instance I had a ton of index.html files). You can also do a shift click multi-select if you want to change multiple files in the queue. I'm thinking you can also use the file-list.xml to get the links too, but I haven't tried yet. Might help to avoid superfluous files.

The main feature though is how fast it works.

FDM will automatically change the connected server to the fastest one and get four files at a time, getting consistent speeds of around 3-6mb per second like this:
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/q8D1vie.png]
Sometimes the speed goes much higher. Downloads would normally drop off to like >100kb per second on consecutive downloads just doing it through the browser.

There are ways to make your own plugins and scripts but what I've shown above is built in. If your annoyed by slow speeds and manually getting files then this is an essential tool. What would have taken a couple to weeks get only took one day and I didn't need to do anything once it got started.

823

@“copySave”#p100383 you're really living up to your name with this one

(I use this!)

_______

I got my PS2-> Gamecube controller adapter, but it doesn't work with arcade sticks, so I'm screwed! That was the whole reason I got it!

825

I also use jdownloader, it’s great.

826

I have it installed, I just don‘t know if it’s worth using in my specific circumstances. I only tend to download things one at a time, and from what I‘ve heard it can’t improve download speed beyond what the source allows, which is a significant problem considering how slow download speeds can get on Internet Archive.

828

@“treefroggy”#p100386 I struggled with this. The best I found is PS2 to Wii mote adapters will do the job if you can play the game on Wii. But obvs not the ideal situation. It worked well for me in playing CPS2 on Wii in 240p though.

829

https://twitter.com/DrTomTilley/status/1613846131175469057

830

@“robinhoodie”#p100398 I have to sus out some mods or find a PS2 arcade stick now that has analog mode compatibility.

The difference between analog vs digital playstation controllers are about as simple as a single jumper I think, so there may be a way. Could be on either side. But that takes work lol.

A PS2 equivalent to my Hori Real Arcade for PS1 that I got costs over 5 times as much.

831

@“Syzygy”#p100393 I‘m thinking in terms of server-side upload speed: it doesn’t matter how fast my computer can download the data if the Internet Archive can only upload it to my computer at X speed. I remember reading a couple posts on Reddit explaining this as a limit between Jdownloader and the Internet Archive.

833

@“treefroggy”#p100433 Yeah I use the big old Tekken 5 PS2 sticks and I figured the no analog being present is what screws things up. Now of course those Hori style GBA pads don't have analogs so there must be something there that bypasses the check.

834

@“robinhoodie”#p100438 gotta dummy it out…

835

aw man… so the good news, I got SD2VITA working, and it is beautiful. Bad news, geez what an ordeal it was. Forgive the potentially long post, but I need to rant lol.

So first off, got my replacement sd2vita. Inserted my SD card and there was no more iron grip so all is well so far. Tried to format it and it formatted successfully, so all continues to be good!!! Proceeded to the next steps and...

[img]https://i.imgur.com/wAJ1TS8l.jpg[/img]

still no UMA0 drive!! grrr!!! Did another google search and found someone who had a similar problem and said it resolved itself when he reinstalled 3.65 ENSO. Problem is, I already tried this earlier with the first SD card and got an error trying to do that too!!! That's why the UD0 drive above is blank, coz apparently I f'ked up something there too. However, it was then when I noticed VitaDeploy also has an option to clear out the Update partition, so I selected this, it fixed the UD0 drive, attempted once again to reinstall ENSO, that was a success, and now... YAY! everything is working and I have the UMA0 drive!! It's party time! almost...

so next step is to copy over my memory card. This was a pain coz I have a 32GB. I had already deleted a ton off of it to make the process easier, but it wasn't enough... ran into a ton of errors trying to copy it within VitaShell

[img]https://i.imgur.com/vUAO7lrl.jpg[/img]

tried to instead copy everything manually to my PC and from there transfer back to the SD card, but even that ran into issues...

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ibJsMunl.jpg[/img]

so... ended up copying everything over piece by piece in small chunks. Fortunately the only files that gave me errors were all game files. Technically it woulda taken no effort just to redownload the missing games, which lead to my final issue...

with the reinstallation of ENSO I was no longer able to access the PSN store :( This was one of the initial problems I had which lead me to wanting to update my VITA. Fortunately I was able to fix this before trying to setup SD2VITA, but now the problem was back. I had to manually edit a CONFIG file since the ITLS program or whatever wouldn't do it on its own... can't believe I'm smart enough to even figure that out O_o

so with all that done, my Vita now (almost) works the way I want it to, I have lots of storage, can play so many great games, and the whole Adrenaline emulator just makes me feel happy!! The one thing it wouldnt do was allow me to actually buy something off the PSN store with a credit card, but I'll try this again later with a PSN card from the supermarket.

I guess the next thing to do is actually play some games on it lol.

836

https://github.com/nathanfarlow/stylehax

https://youtu.be/GywA40btJ6E

Unsigned code execution exploit via the web browser on the DSi

837

@“p3ters”#p100527 are you wanting to buy stuff off the store because you are a good person or just because that's the easiest way to access something?

If you're happy with sailing the seven seas, install pkgj. That has a repository of every game for the Vita inc DLC, PSP and PS1 and you just hit download.

838

@“Chopemon”#p100572 @p3ters There is also a NoNpDRM dump on the internet archive if you want manage the games locally. Just install NoNpDRM and ref00d with PluginManager2 then copy the game, patches, and DLC