I have now successfully modded my ps1, ps2, ps vita and original xbox because of you. Thank you so much man. Your videos are very well explained. Keep up the good work!
+XeCuTioNR Hey thanks for the help! I learned about softmodding the Saturn's AR card and it worked out well but had no idea this was a thing until you let me know, plus it wasn't as consumer friendly when it came to instructions and installation :p
At the X-Flash main menu, have you tried unplugging the cart then replug it in then rescan the eeprom check? Also make sure you grab the newest UniROM CD as well (v6 as of this post). If you still get the unknown eeprom, its basically 50/50 chance..you either flash it and it will work...or you will brick the cart.
XeCuTioNR hells to hells yes! I have been using the POPS emulator thing on the PS2, and while I LOVE IT it's compatibility is rather low. Very happy to have found this.
I was doing this with a custom rom previously, but i always needed to start the ps1 with an official disc, i just changed my device to use this it's much better. Thanks for the video.
I originally came here to learn how to softmod a PS1. Not only did I learn how to do that, but I also found the best swap trick tutorial on the Internet. Thanks for uploading this.
You too, dude. I have one quick question though: I want to try this today with my GameShark (I have the same one that you used in the video), but I would like to know if there's any way to un-mod it, just as a safety precaution. Do you know how? Thanks again.
YOU HAVE BLASTO!!!! THAT WAS LITERALLY MY ALL TIME FAVORITE GAME GROWING UP AS A KID!! ALMOST NO ONE HAS EVEN HEARD OF THAT GAME!!!!!!!! DUDE!!! BADASS!
For people that are having trouble running a backup game try the following. At the start up screen click on x to continue, at the following screen use the directional pad and click down to fast boot. You should see the x moving down, when the x is at fastboot click x and your game should load. No need to click R1 or R2 that was not working for me as the game would never load.
the disk swappping at the beginning is the so called swap trick method and works with nearly all games without copy protection, some need patches to work. At the first slowdown it reads the boot data and at the second one the games copy protection key. it should not get standard to play games cause the drive will fail in the future. The EEPROM Method with the gameshark is quite nice, I didnt know about this exploit on the parallel port. My advice: Flash the gameshark on a PS with a modchip, you dont need to swap the cd one time. after that just plug the ready cartridge in its unmodded PS of your choice Thats a great alternertive to soldering in modchips, thats really hard cause of the tiny soldering points, the risk to fuck up the system is quite high with cheap soldering irons. In my opinion this is a quite nice DIY PS Mod, especially as a gift for example cause modchips or modded consoles are getting quite rare these days. You can find cartridges (broken or not) much easier and cheaper.
I agree with you for the most part, however I have chipped consoles and this reflashed cart because I find this stuff to be fun. Most people have one or the other, not both, so most likely someone with a modchip in their PS1 will never have the urge to do this. Modchips actually aren't too rare! You can find them a few places online plus the hex files are readily available so you can burn your own chips 😸
I just recently rebuilt an original PSX with an HDMI output, chipped it as well & installed some LEDs for nice cosmetic look. I absolutely love the original PlayStation.
If your disc doesn't boot after you press R1 and R2 and it gets frozen at "Loading. Hang on." message, you can try scrolling down to "Fastboot" option and press X. This can be applied to UniROM v6, Action Replay Pro cartridge and SCPH-75xx systems. Thank you Danny for this amazing tutorial.
I did this a couple years back and after burning a few games, I fell back in love with my original Playstation and started collecting games for it lol.
I used to use this same type of soft mod method on one of the PS2 slim models. You would swap disks while the tray was open on the Playstation startup screen, and you'd be able to play your PS1 game no problem. You could even save your game to a PS1 memory card and everything
Works. After I flashed the cartridge (I have an old GoldFinger), when you turn back on with cartridge in I had to just tap the x button to get to where I could load but it DOES work! Thank you! I have a boot disk so if you DO have one (and I know, redundant?) you can boot to your uniprom cd that way. With your cartridge though you no longer need the boot disk and you can just play the burn like a regular game with the lid down.
So I've been using this for a few weeks and I've found some workarounds for some issues and some interesting info as well. Since the Isozone is down I thought I'd just dump them here since this seems to be the best tutorial for it. Not every cart is picked up by X-Flash but what's interesting is that not every cart's EEPROM is fully writable. For example, the Gameshark v2.3 only has 128kb of writable data despite it saying in X-Flash that it has an X-plorer chip with 256kb. Others have tested and stated that if you want to reflash it back to stock you are SOL because the stock ROM is bigger than 128kb. This means that if you've done this to play imports and backups then you cannot go back so your best option is to flash Unirom Standalone and stick with it. If you'd like to test this yourself than go ahead but be warned. X-Flash won't tell you that the EEPROM is too small when flashing(it's supposed to have 256kb) it will just say update failed and you'll have to reflash while still in X-Flash or risk having to unplug the cart, do the swap trick again and replug in order to flash it back.This limits your boot options to just fast boot because all of the caetla boot options will be unavailable on standalone. This means that you might as well go back to UNIROM v.44 instead of V6 as it provides a faster way of booting your games(v.44 uses the R1 and R2 method for fastboot while V6 makes you scroll down a menu). Two of the games I've tested(Valkyrie Profile and Castlevania SOTN) just won't work on UNIROM but I've found that you can use Gameshark as a bootdisk. If you burn Gameshark v4 to a cdr and boot it with unirom it will pretty much do the same thing as the enable swap option on UNIROM and stop the disk from spinning and if you select start game and then select play without cheats you can swap the Gameshark disk to the game that doesn't work well with unirom and it'll play just fine.
Yeah they were not easy to get. The first one I had was fake, the second one I bought was the real deal. Then I got a DTL-H1101. That was the pinnacle of my console collecting. What sucks is I have a flat screen that wont display 240p, so I have to use an elf file that forces resolution. It's crazy how good PSX games look in 480p.
bvzxa3 the gold finger rocks. I've owned two. have one now. I love it. I also have a chipped PS with a dead parallel port. so I use it to load most backups. the gold finger one don't get used much. they are hard to find for sure haha
Josh Matthiesen Yeah...I had two as well. My first PS1 had the official Goldfinger card had got stolen from my apartment in 2000. I bought another PSX dated 11/05 and used a KO Goldfinger carduntil I got a DTL-H1100...that was my first rare system I ever owned until I got my White Saturn from Japan.
bvzxa3 I want to find another gold finger. I think mine is a real one. haha not sure how to tell other wise. and id try this flashing stuff. but I would want to be able to redo it
I remember doing that tape trick to spin some CD mixtapes I made and then using a sharpie to do cool swirly marks on the blank disk top. it looks cool with colored sharpie's too! oh man, the nostalgia! lol.
@@MrMario2011 blasto was one of my favorite games growing up. and honestly very few people I have talked to over the years have never even heard of it.;
I have a japanese one laying around. Nice to know that i can use it that easy, but you guys should know that you can make a modchip for the ps1 for a few bucks if you have an oldshool eprom burner.
Oh btw, use a push tack, or thumb tack, the plastic thing with the pin in the middle to hold down the thing instead of tape. That's how we played Japanese games back in the day
I'd say technically this isn't a softmod as you aren't just modifying the software on the machine (like you do with the Original Xbox softmod). This is more of a hardmod because you are actually re-flashing a cartridge in order to get UniRom.
Same logic as a FreeHDBoot/FreeMCBoot install for PS2 - nothing installed or modified on the console itself yet it's regularly referred to as a softmod.
Knowing this is how it works, I'm tempted to see if anyone has built a prebuilt cartridge with the required software already installed on it so we don't need to permanently alter Gamesharks to use it. Or Pro Mode would be to build it myself out of off the shelf components.
this is oddly similar in concept to a PS1 equiv of FMCB + ESR. that's really cool and kind of makes me wonder if I could get an older model PS1 sometime. I never had one as a kid - I had the newer one.
This might be a stupid question, but ... couldn't you flash that cartridge somehow from your computer, so you wouldn't have to do all that disc swapping?? just wondering.. :)
All you have to do is look for a Game Shark clone on ebay. These are only compatible with PS1 models up to 7501. They must have the serial port in the back. Now, either you can use a spring to hold down the button that pushes the internal button to make the system think that the lid is closed. If you do not have the spring, you can either wedge something in there or do what I did. That being taking the system apart, finding the little black button and taping something on top of it to permanently hold down the button. Once this is done, attach the Game Enhancer to the serial port, insert an original American game and turn the system on. The disc will stop spinning after a few seconds. Then pop out that disc and insert the import or back-up of your choosing, You only will have to swap 1 disc and it will NOT be spinning. Also, these game enhancers are 100% compatible with GS Codes. If you have any questions, please reply.
Hardak Nine why do this to a Gold finger?? lol it already does ps1 backup games. just insert a spring on the lid switch. then start up with original PS game in. and lid open. disk will spin and then stop. switch to burnt game. and choose cheats and start. or just start your game. kinda redundant to do this to a device that already does what this does lol.
Why do people still think these devices were made to play burned discs? They weren't, it's a spring and swap trick method which people exploit to get them to work. If it was solely designed for that you wouldn't have to bother with a disc swap or using a spring to hold down the button, UniROM will let you boot without any of that.
MrMario2011 rite on. I'd try it. but only have the Gold Finger at the moment. and I have a chipped PlayStation. so just no need. but it does look interesting. where can I find the files to make the CD?
I think a newer revision of the PSIO will fix a lot of these things... I think it will be amazing once they got a model where you can just insert it and don't even need to touch the internals of the console.
For sure, I have one on pre-order that I'll definitely be playing around with. Having to solder in the board is disappointing though as it isn't at all plug and play.
I just ordered a PS1 mod chip. Still happy to learn there is another way. The thing that bothers me currently is for modding the PS2 everybody is all about Free McBoot which I have gotten setup and working, the only issue I have is it doesn't work with PS2 backup discs which seems like a huge oversight to me? Yeah I know you can use network boot and USB boot (also hard drive sled) but USB is slow and Network can be challenging to setup correctly, and the hard drive sled requires buying more stuff. I find it curious that they have so many features and functionality of Free McBoot and yet the single probably most in demand feature does not exist? Oh well I guess I'll just get another modchip for the PS2 as well.
@@MrMario2011 Thank you very much fox hat man. Chip on the way already was only 5 bucks. But I have an original PSX as well as one of the smaller PSOnes so perhaps I can chip one and still have a plain one for FreeMCBoot if I ever do want to try that method.
Hi there, looking to do this, but do you do this with the game shark not plugged in at start? your video shows you swapping disks without the game shark connected. Concerned about plugging up the game shark while the PS1 is turned on.
I have one of these, but i ended up using a modchip. It SO worth the little hassle. BTW, i like how you discarded the PSone haha it was a POS, altough nothing comes closer to absolute shit than the PStwo, that thing was complete garbage.
would this method work if you play a ripped/imported game with 2 discs? i assume that’s what the option labelled “enable swap” on the unirom menu means, right?
Hey thanks for the great upload man. The only thing that sucks, is when you load your game you don't get the cool Sonny bios anymore just black screen and then the game. Also, the switch on the side of the GameShark no longer works, so you can't turn it off to see the original bios. Hopefully the work something out and I update
@@slimnim1753 yes that's true, but I was just making a note to retro gamers that are nostalgic over the bio splash screen, it sucks you have to choose one or the other
Wow, just like the Sega Saturn mod....this is awesome, just a shame that Sony removed the Parallel port on the PlayStations. sadly, mine doesn't have that port....but still I can play PS1 ISOs on my CFW PS3 ;)
This isn't a soft-mod of the PS1. It's rewriting the flash on a Gameshark to be a mod. They did sell Parallel port modchips. I had one at one point but it stopped working. I had to add an aftermarket parallel port to my PS1 so maybe my years-ago wiring job didn't work anymore. Regardless, I just soldered a PIC into the PS1 and was done with it.
I am new to this I have a question What do I have to have for it to work do I have to have a computer or will it just work by just putting it in the PlayStation one Do the chat codes work That way
I’m very new to this video game modding stuff I was wondering when you mod your ps1 this way if your able to install the games directly to The ps1 or is this only so you can play games that are burned to disks..??
For the old PlayStation there's no need to mod anything. When the original disc starts, wait till the "PlayStation logo" of the game is almost finished, then swap with any of your burned ps1 disc, it will load
yeah tried to do it step by step... was able to get to the flash menu... i have a PS HACKER cart, i guess its a bootleg gameshark; so i flashed that... but it is detected as a "UNKNOWN EEPROM" must be a bad flash
I have booted in to the unirom installer but it can't recognize my gameshark 1.9. It says unknown eeprom 08 01 and none of the Roms will flash. Any ideas?
like it, i'll have to get one of my many ps1's and one of my port cards out of the loft and do this, thanks for the info. saves swapping a disc each time, i know its not ps1 but i did a mod years ago on a ps2 where you put in a certain ps1 game of your choice into your ps2 and programmed a memory card so everytime you put in the memory card into the ps2 and the game you programmed it to recognise, in my case gran turismo, it would boot into a hacked menu and let you play backups ;-) on the ps2. i forget what that hack was called though.
2 questions. Will this play actual PS1 import games and does it have any issues playing games with redbook audio? I ran into problems using the gameshark CD to play imports. The games loaded fine, but had no BGM. Gaia Seed was the main one I had issues with. I ended up buying a Japanese PS1 console, but it would be nice not to have two different PS1 systems connected at the same time.
Was not getting past Loading screen, tried a few different rom flashes , i think i used the standalone plugin 16 in the end. But the difference i think was instead of hitting r2 to load, use directional pad down to FastBoot hit X option rather than R2 fastbiosboot.
I just use a fliptop modded PS2, and an old Gameshark with the memory card it comes with. You only swap discs once (and you must have the screen split evenly after the woman on the intro screen gets a gleam in her eye, sometimes takes a few times, but it works for me), pretty much plays everything but Japanese PS1 games that are not compatible with PS2 (my luck I own a couple of them), I have quite a few import PS1 games, and at least 95% of them work just fine with my fliptop modded PS2 (I use Swap Magic on the same console for PS2 imports).
Just interested to know does this have 100% compatibility with all ps1 one games or is there flaws in it where it only supports a certain amount of ps2 games, sort of like its own compatibility list?
The cd swapping was how I exploited something for the first time. Unfortunately due to over swapping central piece of the console burst open and no more cd reading. (My playstation did not had the back connection for gameshark like devices.) I wonder if you could mange to install that software on a memory card like you do on a PS2. Btw that would be a nice tutorial "how to play ps2 games through usb stick using a memory card", I know that that is possible because I already do that with a fat ps2 and an internal ide harddrive using the ethernet extension. If you want to do a tutorial about that, (which I would appreciate), but are reading this for the first time I can give you some more information about it. ;)
+MrMario2011 well the good thing is that u can play most of best (exclusive) ps1 on emulators without must trouble. (specially on the PSP. PSP is so awesome)
If anything were to "brick" it would be the cartridge, anything being flashed has a risk of bricking. As for the console, you can't brick that as you aren't flashing anything to it, the concern there would be to not be too rough doing a disc swap.
None. A modchip just allows you to play Burned discs, CD-R only as that is what the PS1 can read, without having to apply a softmod before hand. This requires tools, parts, etc. The softmod usually just requires a memory card, one dedicated solely to the softmod itself, no saving games on it. These methods usually require you to boot into the softmod via some save game exploit, ex TonyHax, before putting in your burned disc. No tools needed no modification to the console needed, just a few steps to boot into it. The only real downside to softmods is you need a way to interface the memory card with the PC so you can deploy the softmod to it. This usually requires a MemCarDUINO and MemCardRex. Of course now this is made way easier with 8bitmods MemCardPro memory card which makes it really easy and you only need MemCardRex on your PC.
Downloaded UniROM V. 6, and uploaded "Unirom Standalone" on two gamesharks I have. However it did not start the discs, it would just be stuck at the loading screen for both. Downloaded UniROM V0.44 (used in this video) and uploaded "Unirom Standalone" on the same two game sharks. This time I was able to hit R1 and R2 to start the discs up. Problem now is the discs don't read well, even though they read perfect if I play them doing the disc swap trick.
Ok, more convenient is the right word. I bought my PS3 slim for only 120 euro. Got 320 GB of space for 700MB ps1 games. No switching discs, upscaling, wireless controller. Its perfect
Followed the steps to the letter, but my burned backup did not load. Any idea why? Used the same rom you did (14, unirom standalone), tried to play a burned backup of symphony of the night, but no dice
Alright I got a gameshark, but the EEPROM is not detected, so I'm assuming I have a EEPROM that isn't supported, But just so I can be safe, which version of Gameshark or whatever device you used, work for you?
I know your video is old man but for 10$ people could just buy the Goldfinger softmod instead cause i have one for my PS1 still which is able to play imports and copy games without any problems and still includes gameshark on top of it.
I have now successfully modded my ps1, ps2, ps vita and original xbox because of you. Thank you so much man. Your videos are very well explained. Keep up the good work!
For anyone having issue booting with gameshark. Instead of doing R1/R2 at the menu just go down to where it says "Fast Boot" and hit X. Worked for me
S&L Gaming ur a life saver worked for me thanxs a bunch
No problem. Glad I helped
Appreciate it!
Worked perfectly. Had the GameShark cartridge V.3.0.... The black one. Happened to be the 512kb version. Thank you and XeCuT1oNR.
Much appreciated. :)
Happy to assist! BTW theres a NEW v6 of UniROM with improved booting/etc fixes
Will look into that. Thank you. :)
Happy to help out on this video, Mr Mario! Hopefully it make some people's lives easier doing imports, originals & backups for the ol' PSX!
+XeCuTioNR Hey thanks for the help! I learned about softmodding the Saturn's AR card and it worked out well but had no idea this was a thing until you let me know, plus it wasn't as consumer friendly when it came to instructions and installation :p
XeCuTioNR help please, i have a cheat cartridge known as Smart Cartridge. I tried to install software,it says no eeprom any idea, thanks.
At the X-Flash main menu, have you tried unplugging the cart then replug it in then rescan the eeprom check? Also make sure you grab the newest UniROM CD as well (v6 as of this post). If you still get the unknown eeprom, its basically 50/50 chance..you either flash it and it will work...or you will brick the cart.
XeCuTioNR I have V6, I'll give it a try again to see if this works by repluging the cartridge again.
XeCuTioNR hells to hells yes! I have been using the POPS emulator thing on the PS2, and while I LOVE IT it's compatibility is rather low. Very happy to have found this.
I was doing this with a custom rom previously, but i always needed to start the ps1 with an official disc, i just changed my device to use this it's much better. Thanks for the video.
I originally came here to learn how to softmod a PS1. Not only did I learn how to do that, but I also found the best swap trick tutorial on the Internet. Thanks for uploading this.
Appreciate it 😸
You too, dude. I have one quick question though: I want to try this today with my GameShark (I have the same one that you used in the video), but I would like to know if there's any way to un-mod it, just as a safety precaution. Do you know how? Thanks again.
YOU HAVE BLASTO!!!! THAT WAS LITERALLY MY ALL TIME FAVORITE GAME GROWING UP AS A KID!! ALMOST NO ONE HAS EVEN HEARD OF THAT GAME!!!!!!!! DUDE!!! BADASS!
For people that are having trouble running a backup game try the following. At the start up screen click on x to continue, at the following screen use the directional pad and click down to fast boot. You should see the x moving down, when the x is at fastboot click x and your game should load. No need to click R1 or R2 that was not working for me as the game would never load.
Thanks I was having the same problem
TheTheHypebeast this needs to be stickied at the top I bet a lot of people have the same issue I know I did :)
Thanks man this worked for me!
TheTheHypebeast thank you,i thought I'd fucked my cartridge up with a corrupted file,just tried this ,worked first time 👍
Thank you! This helped a lot. I was having the exact same problem.
the disk swappping at the beginning is the so called swap trick method and works with nearly all games without copy protection, some need patches to work. At the first slowdown it reads the boot data and at the second one the games copy protection key. it should not get standard to play games cause the drive will fail in the future.
The EEPROM Method with the gameshark is quite nice, I didnt know about this exploit on the parallel port.
My advice: Flash the gameshark on a PS with a modchip, you dont need to swap the cd one time. after that just plug the ready cartridge in its unmodded PS of your choice
Thats a great alternertive to soldering in modchips, thats really hard cause of the tiny soldering points, the risk to fuck up the system is quite high with cheap soldering irons.
In my opinion this is a quite nice DIY PS Mod, especially as a gift for example cause modchips or modded consoles are getting quite rare these days. You can find cartridges (broken or not) much easier and cheaper.
I agree with you for the most part, however I have chipped consoles and this reflashed cart because I find this stuff to be fun. Most people have one or the other, not both, so most likely someone with a modchip in their PS1 will never have the urge to do this.
Modchips actually aren't too rare! You can find them a few places online plus the hex files are readily available so you can burn your own chips 😸
using a modded ps1 to flash the cartridge is a smart idea lol!
I guess I should be happy I kept those 15 "game hunter cd version" cartridges I got a few years ago. Neat.
Do not do this. You will break the spindle hub.
I just recently rebuilt an original PSX with an HDMI output, chipped it as well & installed some LEDs for nice cosmetic look. I absolutely love the original PlayStation.
If your disc doesn't boot after you press R1 and R2 and it gets frozen at "Loading. Hang on." message, you can try scrolling down to "Fastboot" option and press X. This can be applied to UniROM v6, Action Replay Pro cartridge and SCPH-75xx systems. Thank you Danny for this amazing tutorial.
50 swapping attempts later............Success, definitely not easy. What helped me was swapping the disc a tiny bit just BEFORE it slows down.
Repeat it a few more times. Took me a while to perfect it aswell but it will work
I love that you chose blasto to show how to swap discs. Blasto is my favorite ps1 game
🙏
I did this a couple years back and after burning a few games, I fell back in love with my original Playstation and started collecting games for it lol.
Thanks! This worked. Ezpz. Your disc swap explanation was extremely thorough and well described. Got it on the first try. Awesome.
I used to use this same type of soft mod method on one of the PS2 slim models. You would swap disks while the tray was open on the Playstation startup screen, and you'd be able to play your PS1 game no problem. You could even save your game to a
PS1 memory card and everything
Works. After I flashed the cartridge (I have an old GoldFinger), when you turn back on with cartridge in I had to just tap the x button to get to where I could load but it DOES work! Thank you! I have a boot disk so if you DO have one (and I know, redundant?) you can boot to your uniprom cd that way. With your cartridge though you no longer need the boot disk and you can just play the burn like a regular game with the lid down.
you are drug ten elite dude!
I subscribed while watching this. I love the saturn, thank you for keeping the scene alive my friend.
So I've been using this for a few weeks and I've found some workarounds for some issues and some interesting info as well. Since the Isozone is down I thought I'd just dump them here since this seems to be the best tutorial for it. Not every cart is picked up by X-Flash but what's interesting is that not every cart's EEPROM is fully writable. For example, the Gameshark v2.3 only has 128kb of writable data despite it saying in X-Flash that it has an X-plorer chip with 256kb. Others have tested and stated that if you want to reflash it back to stock you are SOL because the stock ROM is bigger than 128kb. This means that if you've done this to play imports and backups then you cannot go back so your best option is to flash Unirom Standalone and stick with it. If you'd like to test this yourself than go ahead but be warned. X-Flash won't tell you that the EEPROM is too small when flashing(it's supposed to have 256kb) it will just say update failed and you'll have to reflash while still in X-Flash or risk having to unplug the cart, do the swap trick again and replug in order to flash it back.This limits your boot options to just fast boot because all of the caetla boot options will be unavailable on standalone. This means that you might as well go back to UNIROM v.44 instead of V6 as it provides a faster way of booting your games(v.44 uses the R1 and R2 method for fastboot while V6 makes you scroll down a menu). Two of the games I've tested(Valkyrie Profile and Castlevania SOTN) just won't work on UNIROM but I've found that you can use Gameshark as a bootdisk. If you burn Gameshark v4 to a cdr and boot it with unirom it will pretty much do the same thing as the enable swap option on UNIROM and stop the disk from spinning and if you select start game and then select play without cheats you can swap the Gameshark disk to the game that doesn't work well with unirom and it'll play just fine.
I like this intro music much better. Well done.
I never did Soft mod my PS 1. I still have it and still works great. I wasn't into modding at time. I started doing with PS2 few years ago.
It's definitely cool software, but a modchip is the better option.
@@MrMario2011 why? If they achieve the same thing? Or does this softmod have some missing functionality that the modchip offers ?
Wow...I wish I had a PS1. I used to have a goldfinger card with my PS1 back in 1999. Wow this is really freakin cool what you doing here!!
+bvzxa3 My manager had that lol
Yeah they were not easy to get. The first one I had was fake, the second one I bought was the real deal. Then I got a DTL-H1101. That was the pinnacle of my console collecting. What sucks is I have a flat screen that wont display 240p, so I have to use an elf file that forces resolution. It's crazy how good PSX games look in 480p.
bvzxa3 the gold finger rocks. I've owned two. have one now. I love it. I also have a chipped PS with a dead parallel port. so I use it to load most backups. the gold finger one don't get used much. they are hard to find for sure haha
Josh Matthiesen
Yeah...I had two as well. My first PS1 had the official Goldfinger card had got stolen from my apartment in 2000. I bought another PSX dated 11/05 and used a KO Goldfinger carduntil I got a DTL-H1100...that was my first rare system I ever owned until I got my White Saturn from Japan.
bvzxa3 I want to find another gold finger. I think mine is a real one. haha not sure how to tell other wise. and id try this flashing stuff. but I would want to be able to redo it
OMG ive been looking for that game since i was achild BLASTO i only had the demo💖
Still have it
Impressive. Considering that PS1 modchips are so rare out there these days, if you insist on playing backups an original PS1 this is just perfect.
+Ryan Ventura They actually aren't rare! It's quite easy to burn your own chips as well and then wire them up :3
Which method do you prefer?
Success. Got a free ps1 and action replay from a neighbor a few years ago and just came across this mod.
Nice! Free is the best price.
@@MrMario2011 update: I can only run one of the backups I've burned. 🤷♂️
I remember doing that tape trick to spin some CD mixtapes I made and then using a sharpie to do cool swirly marks on the blank disk top. it looks cool with colored sharpie's too! oh man, the nostalgia! lol.
the fact you are using blasto is awesome
😂
@@MrMario2011 blasto was one of my favorite games growing up. and honestly very few people I have talked to over the years have never even heard of it.;
i did this a while ago, works similar if not same to turning a saturn actionreplay/gameshark into a modchip of sort. good watch
+Saki Matsamoto Pretty much the same thing with a less pretty menu :p
I have a japanese one laying around. Nice to know that i can use it that easy, but you guys should know that you can make a modchip for the ps1 for a few bucks if you have an oldshool eprom burner.
those fox plushes are so cute!
ua-cam.com/video/K9S_sPmvv2s/v-deo.html
Ah? YES
ANYWAYS.....
Y e S.
Thanks man! you're a legend, childhood revived! Big thanks to Xecutionr aswell :D
Glad to aide in that!
Oh btw, use a push tack, or thumb tack, the plastic thing with the pin in the middle to hold down the thing instead of tape. That's how we played Japanese games back in the day
I'd say technically this isn't a softmod as you aren't just modifying the software on the machine (like you do with the Original Xbox softmod). This is more of a hardmod because you are actually re-flashing a cartridge in order to get UniRom.
Same logic as a FreeHDBoot/FreeMCBoot install for PS2 - nothing installed or modified on the console itself yet it's regularly referred to as a softmod.
Just noticed the TOOL eye on the mousepad under the playstation! NICE \M/
Always
Modchip will always be the best option for PS1 and PS2
You can burn a GameShark disc if you still want to use cheats. Works for me.
very nice I didn't know you could soft mod a gameshark. I don't need to do this as I have 4 mod chipped p1's but is nice to know.
Knowing this is how it works, I'm tempted to see if anyone has built a prebuilt cartridge with the required software already installed on it so we don't need to permanently alter Gamesharks to use it. Or Pro Mode would be to build it myself out of off the shelf components.
Great tutorial! But I have to ask, is there a list anywhere of compatible cartridges? If not, might I ask which revision of gameshark you were using?
this is oddly similar in concept to a PS1 equiv of FMCB + ESR. that's really cool and kind of makes me wonder if I could get an older model PS1 sometime. I never had one as a kid - I had the newer one.
Simply amazing. I’ve got one that I just picked up from my brother in law so thank you for the vid.👍✌️
What's the game compatibility of the Unirom? I need it to play some Japanese and American games on PAL console.
This might be a stupid question, but ... couldn't you flash that cartridge somehow from your computer, so you wouldn't have to do all that disc swapping?? just wondering.. :)
no
All you have to do is look for a Game Shark clone on ebay. These are only compatible with PS1 models up to 7501. They must have the serial port in the back. Now, either you can use a spring to hold down the button that pushes the internal button to make the system think that the lid is closed. If you do not have the spring, you can either wedge something in there or do what I did. That being taking the system apart, finding the little black button and taping something on top of it to permanently hold down the button. Once this is done, attach the Game Enhancer to the serial port, insert an original American game and turn the system on. The disc will stop spinning after a few seconds. Then pop out that disc and insert the import or back-up of your choosing, You only will have to swap 1 disc and it will NOT be spinning. Also, these game enhancers are 100% compatible with GS Codes. If you have any questions, please reply.
I just did this using a Goldfinger 256kb cart. It's cool, it does work alright. I still prefer a mod chip.
Hardak Nine why do this to a Gold finger?? lol it already does ps1 backup games. just insert a spring on the lid switch. then start up with original PS game in. and lid open. disk will spin and then stop. switch to burnt game. and choose cheats and start. or just start your game. kinda redundant to do this to a device that already does what this does lol.
Why do people still think these devices were made to play burned discs? They weren't, it's a spring and swap trick method which people exploit to get them to work. If it was solely designed for that you wouldn't have to bother with a disc swap or using a spring to hold down the button, UniROM will let you boot without any of that.
MrMario2011 haha I'll still do it my way. maybe you missed it. BUT I own a chipped PlayStation. and a Gold Finger. so I have no need for this lmfao.
I own them all as well but gave this a try for giggles ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
MrMario2011 rite on. I'd try it. but only have the Gold Finger at the moment. and I have a chipped PlayStation. so just no need. but it does look interesting. where can I find the files to make the CD?
I think a newer revision of the PSIO will fix a lot of these things... I think it will be amazing once they got a model where you can just insert it and don't even need to touch the internals of the console.
For sure, I have one on pre-order that I'll definitely be playing around with. Having to solder in the board is disappointing though as it isn't at all plug and play.
Who else was doing the disk swapping to play copied games in the 90's? makes me feel old :p
Why don't you use the gameshark itself as in easier swap method rather than double disc swap?
Oh sweet. I just got a ps1 with an external mod chip. I could flash this unirom onto it. Nice.
I just ordered a PS1 mod chip. Still happy to learn there is another way. The thing that bothers me currently is for modding the PS2 everybody is all about Free McBoot which I have gotten setup and working, the only issue I have is it doesn't work with PS2 backup discs which seems like a huge oversight to me? Yeah I know you can use network boot and USB boot (also hard drive sled) but USB is slow and Network can be challenging to setup correctly, and the hard drive sled requires buying more stuff. I find it curious that they have so many features and functionality of Free McBoot and yet the single probably most in demand feature does not exist? Oh well I guess I'll just get another modchip for the PS2 as well.
You need to patch your physical PS2 game backups with ESR if you're wanting to do that on FreeMCBoot.
@@MrMario2011 Thank you very much fox hat man. Chip on the way already was only 5 bucks. But I have an original PSX as well as one of the smaller PSOnes so perhaps I can chip one and still have a plain one for FreeMCBoot if I ever do want to try that method.
I might actually give this a try. Have an old PS and some kind of parallel device that was we for swap disc for different region games.
I dont even have a PS1 but i watched this video...
based
Hi there, looking to do this, but do you do this with the game shark not plugged in at start? your video shows you swapping disks without the game shark connected. Concerned about plugging up the game shark while the PS1 is turned on.
I have one of these, but i ended up using a modchip. It SO worth the little hassle. BTW, i like how you discarded the PSone haha it was a POS, altough nothing comes closer to absolute shit than the PStwo, that thing was complete garbage.
wait back in the day I used the same gameshark. / action replay to play imports and backups.
would this method work if you play a ripped/imported game with 2 discs? i assume that’s what the option labelled “enable swap” on the unirom menu means, right?
Neat stuff. Unluckily real problem is to find PSX with working laser. Maybe PSIO will fix that..
Hey thanks for the great upload man. The only thing that sucks, is when you load your game you don't get the cool Sonny bios anymore just black screen and then the game. Also, the switch on the side of the GameShark no longer works, so you can't turn it off to see the original bios. Hopefully the work something out and I update
You remove it to see the BIOS. That's it.
@@slimnim1753 yes that's true, but I was just making a note to retro gamers that are nostalgic over the bio splash screen, it sucks you have to choose one or the other
I didn't end up using the softmod, but thanks for the great discwap guide!
Wow, just like the Sega Saturn mod....this is awesome, just a shame that Sony removed the Parallel port on the PlayStations. sadly, mine doesn't have that port....but still I can play PS1 ISOs on my CFW PS3 ;)
+DvdXploitr Sony wasn't happy about people cheating so GameShark had to go to discs over parallel port carts lol
Sounds like Nintendo with the Game Genie back in the day!
+DvdXploitr I've only owned one original PS1 without the parallel port, it suffered a horrible death.
Gat damn, we've come a long way baby...
I had a box that did this in the late 90s
Hey are you with Curse? if so get back to me
This isn't a soft-mod of the PS1. It's rewriting the flash on a Gameshark to be a mod.
They did sell Parallel port modchips. I had one at one point but it stopped working. I had to add an aftermarket parallel port to my PS1 so maybe my years-ago wiring job didn't work anymore. Regardless, I just soldered a PIC into the PS1 and was done with it.
If you do this wrong would it kill the PS1?
So can you play PC games on the PS1 with this?
Worked! Thanks!
Didn't know about this.. I like very much
not really a softmod when you need additional hardware (cartridge)..its basically turning the cartridge into a modchip
That disk swap sequence lol
This is very interesting. 😀
I am new to this I have a question What do I have to have for it to work do I have to have a computer or will it just work by just putting it in the PlayStation one Do the chat codes work That way
I’m very new to this video game modding stuff I was wondering when you mod your ps1 this way if your able to install the games directly to
The ps1 or is this only so you can play games that are burned to disks..??
The latter.
For the old PlayStation there's no need to mod anything. When the original disc starts, wait till the "PlayStation logo" of the game is almost finished, then swap with any of your burned ps1 disc, it will load
yeah tried to do it step by step... was able to get to the flash menu...
i have a PS HACKER cart, i guess its a bootleg gameshark; so i flashed that... but it is detected as a "UNKNOWN EEPROM"
must be a bad flash
I have booted in to the unirom installer but it can't recognize my gameshark 1.9. It says unknown eeprom 08 01 and none of the Roms will flash. Any ideas?
like it, i'll have to get one of my many ps1's and one of my port cards out of the loft and do this, thanks for the info. saves swapping a disc each time,
i know its not ps1 but i did a mod years ago on a ps2 where you put in a certain ps1 game of your choice into your ps2 and programmed a memory card so everytime you put in the memory card into the ps2 and the game you programmed it to recognise, in my case gran turismo, it would boot into a hacked menu and let you play backups ;-) on the ps2. i forget what that hack was called though.
+dooronron69 Independence exploit, I did that as well with a copy of DOOM that I had :)
This basically turns the GameShark into a Modchip (Game Enhancer)?
2 questions. Will this play actual PS1 import games and does it have any issues playing games with redbook audio? I ran into problems using the gameshark CD to play imports. The games loaded fine, but had no BGM. Gaia Seed was the main one I had issues with. I ended up buying a Japanese PS1 console, but it would be nice not to have two different PS1 systems connected at the same time.
So to switch games you can just throw another disc when it’s off or do you have to do it again
Was not getting past Loading screen, tried a few different rom flashes , i think i used the standalone plugin 16 in the end. But the difference i think was instead of hitting r2 to load, use directional pad down to FastBoot hit X option rather than R2 fastbiosboot.
I just use a fliptop modded PS2, and an old Gameshark with the memory card it comes with. You only swap discs once (and you must have the screen split evenly after the woman on the intro screen gets a gleam in her eye, sometimes takes a few times, but it works for me), pretty much plays everything but Japanese PS1 games that are not compatible with PS2 (my luck I own a couple of them), I have quite a few import PS1 games, and at least 95% of them work just fine with my fliptop modded PS2 (I use Swap Magic on the same console for PS2 imports).
Works!!!! But my games keep skipping.. What burning program do I use? IMG Burn minimum is 16x. Lower = less skips right? THANKS!
Just interested to know does this have 100% compatibility with all ps1 one games or is there flaws in it where it only supports a certain amount of ps2 games, sort of like its own compatibility list?
The cd swapping was how I exploited something for the first time. Unfortunately due to over swapping central piece of the console burst open and no more cd reading. (My playstation did not had the back connection for gameshark like devices.)
I wonder if you could mange to install that software on a memory card like you do on a PS2.
Btw that would be a nice tutorial "how to play ps2 games through usb stick using a memory card", I know that that is possible because I already do that with a fat ps2 and an internal ide harddrive using the ethernet extension. If you want to do a tutorial about that, (which I would appreciate), but are reading this for the first time I can give you some more information about it. ;)
+mikelmanson nothing like that is possible on the PS1
+MrMario2011 well the good thing is that u can play most of best (exclusive) ps1 on emulators without must trouble. (specially on the PSP. PSP is so awesome)
Does the GameShark have to be in the port during disc swap?
This is pretty cool. Is there a risk of brick?
If anything were to "brick" it would be the cartridge, anything being flashed has a risk of bricking. As for the console, you can't brick that as you aren't flashing anything to it, the concern there would be to not be too rough doing a disc swap.
@@MrMario2011 Thanks. Rather than buy the PS classic, for the holidays I'm going to try modding my PS1 that I've had forever collecting dust.
cpt blasto.. man i remember playing that like twenty years ago.
Hi, great video. What are the downsides to having this softmod compared with a modchip?
None.
A modchip just allows you to play Burned discs, CD-R only as that is what the PS1 can read, without having to apply a softmod before hand. This requires tools, parts, etc.
The softmod usually just requires a memory card, one dedicated solely to the softmod itself, no saving games on it. These methods usually require you to boot into the softmod via some save game exploit, ex TonyHax, before putting in your burned disc. No tools needed no modification to the console needed, just a few steps to boot into it.
The only real downside to softmods is you need a way to interface the memory card with the PC so you can deploy the softmod to it. This usually requires a MemCarDUINO and MemCardRex. Of course now this is made way easier with 8bitmods MemCardPro memory card which makes it really easy and you only need MemCardRex on your PC.
My brothers were doing this 20 years ago xD I was like "what the hell are they doing".
Amazing, haha.
Downloaded UniROM V. 6, and uploaded "Unirom Standalone" on two gamesharks I have. However it did not start the discs, it would just be stuck at the loading screen for both.
Downloaded UniROM V0.44 (used in this video) and uploaded "Unirom Standalone" on the same two game sharks. This time I was able to hit R1 and R2 to start the discs up. Problem now is the discs don't read well, even though they read perfect if I play them doing the disc swap trick.
this is so dope tysm 🙏
I guess that now with TonyHax we can install Unirom without using the swap trick :D
It should be awesome! :D
They make a cart or dongle for Tue serial port for systems that have that. Usually labeled as ps1 mp3 player.
It might be cheaper to buy a used softmodded PS3. It plays all ps1 games from the hard drive and you get the nice wireless controller
yeah, that's not going to be cheaper, not even close
Ok, more convenient is the right word. I bought my PS3 slim for only 120 euro. Got 320 GB of space for 700MB ps1 games. No switching discs, upscaling, wireless controller. Its perfect
except ps1 games look like crap on HD TVs
Really how do you get ps1 games to show up with component cables I just get a black screen when using them on my ps2.
mine is to its the only way I can play games on my ps2 until my new ribbon cable arrives the old one was scratching my disks.
Thank you mr Mario your the greatest !!!
Followed the steps to the letter, but my burned backup did not load. Any idea why? Used the same rom you did (14, unirom standalone), tried to play a burned backup of symphony of the night, but no dice
Just out of curiosity. What model of the ps1 were you modding?
Alright I got a gameshark, but the EEPROM is not detected, so I'm assuming I have a EEPROM that isn't supported, But just so I can be safe, which version of Gameshark or whatever device you used, work for you?
Can you do this with the Tonyhax Exploit than just disc swapping?
I know your video is old man but for 10$ people could just buy the Goldfinger softmod instead cause i have one for my PS1 still which is able to play imports and copy games without any problems and still includes gameshark on top of it.