Hacks, Hardware & Emulation, Oh My

Not news, but news to me. Apparently the Game Gear games on Sonic Adventure DX for Gamecube have a link cable emulation built in!

I have always wanted to see what hidden gems are lurking in realm of Game Gear link play, and this goes a long way

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This is what gets me over the line to buy a MemCard Pro 2. I have a slim and all the game loading methods until now have had some annoyances but this seems about as close to perfect as I could imagine things getting.

Extremely cool!

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I did a quick test on memcard pro 2 on slim. Ridge racer v and tokyo xtreme racer 3 are pretty much flawless. RRV was stuttery on usb hdd. Jp outrun 2 sp title screen is stuttery but game itself is smooth. Super promising! I’m stuffing sd card as I write this.

That memcard pro file linked by machonacho is updated from what he showed in video so there is only 1 opl entry and options are already properly set.

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Unless you’ve got a large physical library there’s no real benefit over MX2SIO. With MX2SIO you can use virtual memory cards that eliminate the need for a memcard pro. I imagine it’s useful for the handful of games that don’t run on OPL.

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This video also goes more in depth and has links to some alternate builds

@yoyostevo It helped me get a build of OpenTuna that works on my PS2 9001 Slim models and once I was in to FMCB I was able to load the stand alone Third Strike iso and play as normal. Obviously I need to do way more testing, but just being able to easily get into homebrew stuff on a 9000 model is huge for me. I gotta order up cards for all my Slims, because at the cost even if not perfect, it will stand in just fine for an ODE that has yet to exist.

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the stone age gamer store says it works on the original Playstation as well, is there anything detailing that or can anyone here attest to that?

I believe it boots entirely into its own PS1 mode, and there it is just a memory card, though it could be used to easily load FreePSXBoot. I “think” the card can detect what kind of system it is in, but you can also change what kind of card it boots as in the OSD.

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I surfed around like a couple of dozens of random games with memcard pro2 (watching intros, quick hop into games) and all ran great. Way better than USB and network drives. Didn’t need to tick on any per game options. It’s a winner!

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Unsure how to get this to work on an MCP1. My model’s compatible, but the page for the Pro 1 says that FMCB is coming at a later date so it must need to go into slot 2?

(I’ve already done the 5V mod to my card slots to make it work my slim.)

Oh, that’s interesting! I didn’t realise. Will do some research since the price difference is pretty huge. Thank you!

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Oops, ps2 cd games need to be in iso format for OPL, not bin cue. What’s good bin cue to iso converter?

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Handy site to have in your bookmarks

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I am diving into Gameboy modding. Ordered some replacement stickers for the battery covers on mine!

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I grabbed a memcard pro2 a few months ago because it seemed like some neat tech and tried to set this up last night but couldn’t get any games to show up in OPL. I’m fairly new to ps2 emulation and just followed the instructions in the video and plopped Choro Q on the card to see how it would work but no luck. Is this one of those things where a crucial “in the know” detail was left out intentionally or should I just attempt a reinstall?

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OPL is weird. there are specific settings that you need to enable in the menus that can be easy to miss. did you know follow a guide to set up the memcard with mmce?

Are you using the memcard file linked on machonacho video? Maybe try one linked by robinhoodie Hacks, Hardware & Emulation, Oh My - #1627 by robinhoodie

Or retrorgb PlayStation 2 MMCE – Setup & Demo Livestream | RetroRGB

Pretty interesting info regarding speed from the article:

The PS2 model I used was a SCPH-300001, which is known to have good performance from your memory card slot. The 50k and slim 70k have exceptional performance, however the slim 77k is the worst. The 90k revisions are between the 70 and 77k. Here’s a chart Thanos from 8BitMods sent me to help demonstrate the loading speeds of multiple methods:

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Its a bit of a shame but MVG tested the MMCE on a fat and a slim PS2 and the bus speed seems to be to low for FMV in certain cases especially on the slim

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I just followed the section of the video @KennyL posted that is supposedly how to set up the Memcard Pro 2. Thats why I wondering if there was a step I maybe wasnt privy to. I did read on the 8bitmods wiki that it works better with a class 10 microsd, which I’m using an old class 4 so maybe thats part of the problem.

I’m not ruling out the chance I’ve misunderstood something about the setup. Ive never had luck with any kind of disc emulation in the past and wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if that trend continued.

@KennyL I tried the one linked on the video. I’ll try one of those other recommendations when my new microsd shows up later this week. Thanks for making me aware of them!

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My friend gave me his sweet crystal blue 2ds since he stepped on it and destroyed the screen. I know it’s a singular screen under there. Anyone here know about replacing it?

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