Damn, I found out about your channel just a few days ago and followed the previous version tutorial, it's so cool that there's already such a major upgrade! I hope you're having fun doing this project and I wish I could help somehow but I'm a coding beginner (I'm more into hardware but I would love to learn more about this kind of software development as in software that brings new features to older hardware)
I find your comment amusing, because getting to this point feels like it's taken me way longer than it should have. I was aiming to have this phase of the project finished in September, but I've encountered delays almost every step of the way, including just getting this video to render and upload properly. It's taken long enough that I now have a pretty big backlog of features to add and other videos to make. Hopefully I'll be able to get those out quicker than this update.
@@sync-on-lumaI believe that you're doing your best and really hope that you never give up on your project, specially if they're as cool as this! haha.
I have a small wish for the awesome people still developing hacks for the PS2 today. I love using GSM but it doesn't fill the whole screen and not every tv has a good zoom option. Can someone tweak GSM or create an app similar to that which upscales to 1080i but fills the tv screen instead of a small area on your television?
I believe GSM just switches between the PS2s built-in video modes, it can't do any scaling or resizing that the hardware isn't already capable of. What you want is a video scalier. I use a combination of a GBS-C and OSSC, but there are other options like the RetroTink family of devices.
For the image loading, would it be easier to use a different and lighter type of format instead of (I’m assuming) png? Something that isn’t lossless but doesn’t look terrible
FAT32 support for USB drives larger than 4GB would be nice to have, IMO, because FAT32 is less prone to data corruption. No idea how difficult that would be to implement though, assuming it's possible.
I've been informed that it is actually possible to use larger FAT32 drives with the PS2, even ones that exceed 32GB. You just have to format them with specific software and compatibility drops off with larger/cheaper drives.
Not currently. It might be possible depending on how exactly the MemCardPro2 gets title IDs. I've read that there's a standard protocol it uses but have not been able to find any info on how it works or how to implement it. It might be something that requires a new driver to be written into XEB+ in which case there's nothing I can do. I honestly have no idea, as the information just isn't out there.
I am planning to add virtual memory card support, which should do bascially the same thing. The way want to implement it is a bit complicated, which is why it isn't a feature yet.
5:50 Wait wait! This tool also works with PS1 games? But, can you use it to change the title ID? I actually wanted to do that with a MMX5 modded rom, because I wanted to display a different game cover of it on Duckstation. So that I could difrentiate it from the base rom. I tried to change it with a hex editor, this was the first time I ever used one, and while I did manage to find the ID title there in the rom, when I changed it in the file, Duckstation would still find it to be the same old ID..... Anyone got an idea what I did wrong? Or is there a tool I can use for such case?
The tool only extracts title IDs, it can't change them. Changing the title ID of a game might be possible, but I'm not sure. It's tricky because the name of the main game executable is always the title ID. The title ID is stored in three main places in the ROM data. The first is in the table of contents that lists all the files on the disc, that's where my tool pulls it from. The second is in the BOOT flag that tells the console what executable to load along with other related information. The third is in the executable file itself. It also might pop up other places if things make reference to the main executable elsewhere in the ROM data. You could try to do a find and replace of all instances of the title ID with a hex editor. That I don't know if that would work, but I expect it would depend on if/how the title ID is used within the game's code.
@@sync-on-luma Huh.. Thank you so much for the details. If I remember correctly, I think I found only 1 with the find & replace in the hex editor. I couldn't find another, so that's why I wasn't successful. I guess it's also going to be beyond difficult to know if it's used in other places than those 3 places due to the game code as you said.. But what baffles me is that I found someone being able to do it with a mod they made themselves. It was a 60fps mod of MMX3 (for PSX). Since the game was only released in the EU in English, it only has a 50fps frame rate. I stumbled upon this one mod on reddit where they were able to make the game 60fps AND they changed the game's ID to make it different... So, there is proof of being done, but I'm not sure how it was accomplished.
If you already know the inner-workings of a game well enough to write that kind of patch I image changing the title ID is fairly trivial. The biggest obstacle I could see to it working is if the game runs a checksum validation on the ROM data as an anti-piracy measure. Not many games did that though AFAIK.
I followed the guide and got rid of all v1 files but when trying to load from HDD it gets stuck on "loading plugin" and when i try to use the MX4ISO option it loads and reads the list but then gets stuck on "loading menu" i tried a different usb stick and still same issues on v2 when v1 ran perfect
If you have artwork files on your USB drive, try disabling artwork in the neutrino Launcher settings. If it works without artwork enabled, that means you either need to manually run a re-cache, or one of your artwork files is corrupted and crashing the system when it tries to load.
@@sync-on-luma now the MX4SIO just goes from "loading plugin" and gets stuck on "initializing menu" and the HDD option still get stuck on "loading plugin" when art is disabled
Sounds like there might be an issue with your cache folder. Try deleting XEBPLUS/CFG/neutrinoLauncer/.cache on the USB drive and see if that makes a difference.
i keep getting audio problems on games loading from the hdd (not oem but a gamestar clone) idk if it has to do with that or something else as the same hdd works fine under UDPBD (OPL) so its weird and idk if there is a fix for it outside of getting a oem hdd adapter and the new sata board
You could try enabling accurate reads in the compatibility options, which limits the drive speed to that of the original DVD-ROM. Sometimes weird stuff like that happens when data gets streamed in too fast. Forcing synchronous reads might also help.
Are we able to manually edit the list of games before scanning them in the PS2? The reason I ask is because of custom Rock Band 2 mods that retain the original RB2 Title ID. All mods would just use the RB2 art if not correct?
Yes. The plugin doesn't actually check the list beforehand, it just assumes everything is correct. The checksum at the bottom is only used to tell if the list has been changed, it doesn't care if the data doesn't match. Just be careful with your edits, adding additional whitespace or certain characters can cause the plugin to freeze on startup.
@@sync-on-luma I Just want to be able to change the Title Ids so that they align with the artwork I already have setup using V1 of your loader. I haven't downloaded V2 yet. So if I change the title ids within the list, will I also have to generate a new checksum to inject back into the list?
No. The plugin doesn't care about the checksum beyond whether it matches the previous checksum, and it only uses that to determine if it should run a re-cache on startup. If you edit the title IDs in the list file, the plugin won't know the difference.
Slower than the hard drive but faster than USB. I think the throughput is just a little below that of the DVD-ROM, so it's a bit slower than reading from the orignal disc, but not to a huge degree.
I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I've installed this today following the guide and I'm getting a black screen when I launch any game. This is using an internal exFAT HDD. The same games launch fine in OPL. I've tried forcing all compatibility options and nothing changes. Any ideas? Thanks for making this plugin!
@sync-on-luma Hi, thanks for responding. No, it just sits there. Even with debug colors enabled, it just sits at a black screen. I've gone back over the guide multiple times as I thought I'd missed something, but I don't think I have.
Would it have anything to do with launching XEB from FMCB? That was my existing setup, so I just go into wLaunchELF and run XEB from there off the usb drive.
If it's not rebooting, that means it's loading the game image but it's not working for some reason. Usually that means you have a bad dump, but since they load with OPL that seems unlikely. The only thing I can think is that maybe the neutrino binaries on the flash drive are corrupted somehow. Try deleting and re-copying the plugin and safely eject the drive to see if that fixes it. Might want to also check to make sure the games are in the CD and DVD folders on the root of the hard drive. It sounds like they are, but you should probably make sure.
Hey so i have a modbo 5.0 chipped slim. I can obviously launch xeb+ through ulaunch, but do you have any idea of the best way to launch it from the modbo boot menu?
i don't have any experience with PS2 mod chips, but it looks like that one just looks for a boot.elf file on the memory card and loads it. Assuming that's correct, you should be able to launch XEB+ with the same method the neutrino loader uses to launch games. There's an app called RadShell that's a very basic command line interface / ELF loader for the PS2. The way my plugin launches games is by writing the command to launch neutrino into a file called radshellmod.ios. Then it loads radshellmod.elf, which automatically runs whatever is in that file on startup, kind of like autoexec.bat You should be able to do the same thing in your case. The files you need are already in XEBPLUS/APPS/neutrinoLauncher. Rename radshellmod.elf to boot.elf, edit radshellmod.ios to load XEB+ instead of neutrino, and copy both files to the memory card. Hopefully that works for you.
I'm not entirely sure. I know the 90000 series isn't compatible with the memory card update exploit, so USB loading might be off the table if you can't use PS2BBL to boot into XEB+. MX4SIO should still work in theory, but this is the first I'm hearing of compatibility issues, so I have no idea how viable that is.
@@sync-on-luma PS2BBL also has support for OpenTuna in a different build, so you can load it on 90k models too. Only difference being that you got to open the browser, MC menu and the exploit should load afterwards.
In 2006.
Kid: I want the new PS3.
Mom: We have the PS3 at home.
PS3 at home.
hahha
I think psbbn is what we actually got in around 2006, you should look for it ;)
At least PS3 at home had games
Great work! A possible future implementation of network loading, to have every loading option in one place, with the UDPBD protocol would be amazing!
Super cool. VMC's on actual disc games is at the top of my PS2 wishlist!
Nice going! Thankfully I already use PS2BBL due to how versatile it is, so this will come in handy to set up my friend's PS2.
AWESOME WORK, JUST AWESOME! Thank you!!
You sir are a king amongst men. Thank you so much for sharing your hard work with us!
This is the first time i have seen this and it looks amazing! Great work! ❤
This is fkn amazing!!! Game changer!!! Thank you so much!!!
Damn, I found out about your channel just a few days ago and followed the previous version tutorial, it's so cool that there's already such a major upgrade! I hope you're having fun doing this project and I wish I could help somehow but I'm a coding beginner (I'm more into hardware but I would love to learn more about this kind of software development as in software that brings new features to older hardware)
I find your comment amusing, because getting to this point feels like it's taken me way longer than it should have. I was aiming to have this phase of the project finished in September, but I've encountered delays almost every step of the way, including just getting this video to render and upload properly.
It's taken long enough that I now have a pretty big backlog of features to add and other videos to make. Hopefully I'll be able to get those out quicker than this update.
@@sync-on-lumaI believe that you're doing your best and really hope that you never give up on your project, specially if they're as cool as this! haha.
I don't plan to anytime soon.
Network loading is all we need 👏 very nice work!
I have a small wish for the awesome people still developing hacks for the PS2 today. I love using GSM but it doesn't fill the whole screen and not every tv has a good zoom option. Can someone tweak GSM or create an app similar to that which upscales to 1080i but fills the tv screen instead of a small area on your television?
I believe GSM just switches between the PS2s built-in video modes, it can't do any scaling or resizing that the hardware isn't already capable of.
What you want is a video scalier. I use a combination of a GBS-C and OSSC, but there are other options like the RetroTink family of devices.
Exellent job from you and other guys, God bless you 🙏
Holy shit, this is amazing! ❤
me i don't need a ps2.
PS2: looks my way
me: I NEED IT
Top tip save a syllable by saying show instead of showcasing. 😁 Another great video.
Yooooo this rocks! Fantastic stuff!
Wow, it's something big!
perfect! thank you!
Legend!
For the WIN….Ps2 slim 70K with the IDE hardware and the iFlash MOD. I’m going to set this up when I get back from vacation
Lol @ Chel-see-uh - It's Chel-sea and rhymes with Kelsey
Ps2 bbl is a crazy name
PlayStation 2 Basic Boot Loader.
I don't think you can get much less creative than that.
@@sync-on-luma hey, I was just joking 😁
I just dusted off mmy PS Slim yesterday perfect timing.
For the image loading, would it be easier to use a different and lighter type of format instead of (I’m assuming) png? Something that isn’t lossless but doesn’t look terrible
FAT32 support for USB drives larger than 4GB would be nice to have, IMO, because FAT32 is less prone to data corruption. No idea how difficult that would be to implement though, assuming it's possible.
I've been informed that it is actually possible to use larger FAT32 drives with the PS2, even ones that exceed 32GB.
You just have to format them with specific software and compatibility drops off with larger/cheaper drives.
al fin, play 2 chipeada 2
SMB Support when?
This is amazing! Does it support the per-game memory card GameID settings on a MemCardPro2?
Not currently. It might be possible depending on how exactly the MemCardPro2 gets title IDs.
I've read that there's a standard protocol it uses but have not been able to find any info on how it works or how to implement it. It might be something that requires a new driver to be written into XEB+ in which case there's nothing I can do. I honestly have no idea, as the information just isn't out there.
@@sync-on-luma Ah okay, good to know. Here’s hoping it can get added! Hard to imagine not using it once you’ve gotten used to it lol
I am planning to add virtual memory card support, which should do bascially the same thing. The way want to implement it is a bit complicated, which is why it isn't a feature yet.
fingers crossed that my deckard likes it better than opl
Can you do any GSM stuff? Forcing resolutions?
There's a separate XEB+ plugin for that.
Where can i download the dreamcast theme it looks so cool??!?!?
Looks like it's in the community themes channel on the XEB+ Discord.
Soo.. would that be possible with the last PS2 Slims? For now I have FMCB on a MC and Burned Discs.
I don't have any experience with those, but according to some other comments, it's possible to load PS2BBL via the OpenTuna exploit.
Does SMB loading works? Also nice work
10:58
@@sync-on-luma oh sorry, i was watching it on the bus and completely missed it, thanks for the info
5:50 Wait wait! This tool also works with PS1 games?
But, can you use it to change the title ID? I actually wanted to do that with a MMX5 modded rom, because I wanted to display a different game cover of it on Duckstation. So that I could difrentiate it from the base rom. I tried to change it with a hex editor, this was the first time I ever used one, and while I did manage to find the ID title there in the rom, when I changed it in the file, Duckstation would still find it to be the same old ID..... Anyone got an idea what I did wrong? Or is there a tool I can use for such case?
The tool only extracts title IDs, it can't change them.
Changing the title ID of a game might be possible, but I'm not sure. It's tricky because the name of the main game executable is always the title ID.
The title ID is stored in three main places in the ROM data. The first is in the table of contents that lists all the files on the disc, that's where my tool pulls it from. The second is in the BOOT flag that tells the console what executable to load along with other related information. The third is in the executable file itself. It also might pop up other places if things make reference to the main executable elsewhere in the ROM data.
You could try to do a find and replace of all instances of the title ID with a hex editor. That I don't know if that would work, but I expect it would depend on if/how the title ID is used within the game's code.
@@sync-on-luma Huh.. Thank you so much for the details. If I remember correctly, I think I found only 1 with the find & replace in the hex editor. I couldn't find another, so that's why I wasn't successful. I guess it's also going to be beyond difficult to know if it's used in other places than those 3 places due to the game code as you said..
But what baffles me is that I found someone being able to do it with a mod they made themselves. It was a 60fps mod of MMX3 (for PSX). Since the game was only released in the EU in English, it only has a 50fps frame rate. I stumbled upon this one mod on reddit where they were able to make the game 60fps AND they changed the game's ID to make it different... So, there is proof of being done, but I'm not sure how it was accomplished.
@@sync-on-luma SLUS-00353 is what he changed into to be exact.
If you already know the inner-workings of a game well enough to write that kind of patch I image changing the title ID is fairly trivial. The biggest obstacle I could see to it working is if the game runs a checksum validation on the ROM data as an anti-piracy measure. Not many games did that though AFAIK.
Peak
I followed the guide and got rid of all v1 files but when trying to load from HDD it gets stuck on "loading plugin" and when i try to use the MX4ISO option it loads and reads the list but then gets stuck on "loading menu" i tried a different usb stick and still same issues on v2 when v1 ran perfect
If you have artwork files on your USB drive, try disabling artwork in the neutrino Launcher settings.
If it works without artwork enabled, that means you either need to manually run a re-cache, or one of your artwork files is corrupted and crashing the system when it tries to load.
@@sync-on-luma now the MX4SIO just goes from "loading plugin" and gets stuck on "initializing menu" and the HDD option still get stuck on "loading plugin" when art is disabled
Sounds like there might be an issue with your cache folder. Try deleting XEBPLUS/CFG/neutrinoLauncer/.cache on the USB drive and see if that makes a difference.
@@sync-on-luma I don't see a .cache file in the neutrinoLancher folder just the menu.cfg file and the hdd and mx4sio lists and folders
It's a hidden folder, you might need to enable "show hidden items" in your file manager.
Do I have to run the List builder GUI script every time I add new games to my hard drive?
Yes
Are there plans to add smb loading?
Answered at 10:58
Can you reupload XEB+? Archive org is down
I don't have have the original package on hand. Ask in the XEB+ Discord, someone there almost certainly has it.
i keep getting audio problems on games loading from the hdd (not oem but a gamestar clone) idk if it has to do with that or something else as the same hdd works fine under UDPBD (OPL) so its weird and idk if there is a fix for it outside of getting a oem hdd adapter and the new sata board
You could try enabling accurate reads in the compatibility options, which limits the drive speed to that of the original DVD-ROM. Sometimes weird stuff like that happens when data gets streamed in too fast. Forcing synchronous reads might also help.
1:31 I live in this person walls 🤫don't tell him
What about MC2SIO
MC2SIO is a clone of the MX4SIO. It might work, but it's not officially supported by this or really any community driven project.
One question, does defragment still required?
What do you mean? I don't think it ever was.
@@sync-on-luma usb games required to be fragment to play on OPL before, does neutrino have the same required?
I've never had an issue with fragmentation, but just to make sure I tested with two heavily fragmented files on the USB drive and they both work fine.
@@sync-on-luma is it exfat format? I'm thinking of what format should i use for it, fat32or exfat
If you're loading games from USB with this your drive has to be exFAT.
Are we able to manually edit the list of games before scanning them in the PS2? The reason I ask is because of custom Rock Band 2 mods that retain the original RB2 Title ID. All mods would just use the RB2 art if not correct?
Yes.
The plugin doesn't actually check the list beforehand, it just assumes everything is correct. The checksum at the bottom is only used to tell if the list has been changed, it doesn't care if the data doesn't match.
Just be careful with your edits, adding additional whitespace or certain characters can cause the plugin to freeze on startup.
@@sync-on-luma I Just want to be able to change the Title Ids so that they align with the artwork I already have setup using V1 of your loader. I haven't downloaded V2 yet. So if I change the title ids within the list, will I also have to generate a new checksum to inject back into the list?
No. The plugin doesn't care about the checksum beyond whether it matches the previous checksum, and it only uses that to determine if it should run a re-cache on startup.
If you edit the title IDs in the list file, the plugin won't know the difference.
How fast does it read games off the memory card slot?
Slower than the hard drive but faster than USB. I think the throughput is just a little below that of the DVD-ROM, so it's a bit slower than reading from the orignal disc, but not to a huge degree.
AMAZING MENU INSTALLING NOW
I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I've installed this today following the guide and I'm getting a black screen when I launch any game. This is using an internal exFAT HDD. The same games launch fine in OPL. I've tried forcing all compatibility options and nothing changes. Any ideas? Thanks for making this plugin!
Does the system reset after a minute of sitting on the black screen?
@sync-on-luma Hi, thanks for responding. No, it just sits there. Even with debug colors enabled, it just sits at a black screen. I've gone back over the guide multiple times as I thought I'd missed something, but I don't think I have.
Would it have anything to do with launching XEB from FMCB? That was my existing setup, so I just go into wLaunchELF and run XEB from there off the usb drive.
If it's not rebooting, that means it's loading the game image but it's not working for some reason. Usually that means you have a bad dump, but since they load with OPL that seems unlikely.
The only thing I can think is that maybe the neutrino binaries on the flash drive are corrupted somehow. Try deleting and re-copying the plugin and safely eject the drive to see if that fixes it.
Might want to also check to make sure the games are in the CD and DVD folders on the root of the hard drive. It sounds like they are, but you should probably make sure.
Also you are using the HDD launcher, correct? If you set the wrong drive type in the list builder that would definitely do it.
Hey so i have a modbo 5.0 chipped slim. I can obviously launch xeb+ through ulaunch, but do you have any idea of the best way to launch it from the modbo boot menu?
i don't have any experience with PS2 mod chips, but it looks like that one just looks for a boot.elf file on the memory card and loads it.
Assuming that's correct, you should be able to launch XEB+ with the same method the neutrino loader uses to launch games. There's an app called RadShell that's a very basic command line interface / ELF loader for the PS2. The way my plugin launches games is by writing the command to launch neutrino into a file called radshellmod.ios. Then it loads radshellmod.elf, which automatically runs whatever is in that file on startup, kind of like autoexec.bat
You should be able to do the same thing in your case. The files you need are already in XEBPLUS/APPS/neutrinoLauncher. Rename radshellmod.elf to boot.elf, edit radshellmod.ios to load XEB+ instead of neutrino, and copy both files to the memory card.
Hopefully that works for you.
@@sync-on-luma oh interesting. I'm going to give that a try and I'll let you know
Is the compatibility better than OPL?
Generally, yes.
Would it work on PS2 Slim SCPH-9000x series ? (Specifically 90004) , as they are quite picky with MX4SIO
I'm not entirely sure. I know the 90000 series isn't compatible with the memory card update exploit, so USB loading might be off the table if you can't use PS2BBL to boot into XEB+.
MX4SIO should still work in theory, but this is the first I'm hearing of compatibility issues, so I have no idea how viable that is.
I have a 90001 ps2 slim, and it works perfectly with opl and USB and network games, so it should work with mx4sio
@@sync-on-luma PS2BBL also has support for OpenTuna in a different build, so you can load it on 90k models too. Only difference being that you got to open the browser, MC menu and the exploit should load afterwards.
Random question, what Linux distro do you use?
Fedora KDE
Is there GSM support built in?
No, there's already another XEB+ plugin for that.
@@sync-on-luma What's it called?
I think just GSM. It should be in the plugins channel on the Discord.