Upgrades

This Week: iPhone SDK, PS3 for $399

Tech News

Finally, an iPhone/iPod Touch SDK (in Feb 08). Now if Apple can only release an unlocked version of the iPhone in the US (They do that in France already).

Gaming News

PS3 for $399 in US? You betcha. Too bad it doesn't come in Pearl White (Jap Edition) and with the Dualshock3 controller...

TV News

Superman Vs. Superman? Not quite. But Dean Cain (Superman from Lois & Clark) guest starred on last week's episode of Smallville.

World News

Urban Camoflauge? Hmm, more like odd news than world news, but at least it sorta explains barrel/crate camoflauge used in Metal Gear Solid.

Web News

Check out this video where you don't see your own reflection on the mirror. It totally stumped me on how they did it. Hint: There was a movie last year that used the same trick. See if you can guess it before you reach the end.

Finally beat FFX

After 60+ hrs, I finally beat a game that, most of my friends that play RPGs beat when it first came out. Well, I did get my PS2 much later than they did (last year), but also, I just never thought I would have the time for it. But here I am, nearly a month after I started playing it, I have finally beat it.

I can't really comment on the graphics because it was made quite a few years ago. But the FMV is awesome, as always (can't expect anything less from Square). The story is intriguing, but a bit convoluted at the end. That was the ultimate downfall for the Final Fantasy movie, which came out just a bit before this game came out. But it was still pretty good overall. I'm still kinda surprise that they made a sequel. They have never done it before. The sales must have been incredible for them to make a sequel, but can they expect any less? I mean, the PS2 is close to selling 100 million units worldwide. Each subsequent sequel they make has a bigger install base. It is only natural that they would profit more from it. I just wish they realized that sooner. Well, at least they are finally making sequels for FFVII, probably one of the game w/ the best story in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Oh, and for people that complain that "Final" Fantasy never ends, here's my rebuttal. Why have sequels like Doom 2 and 3 or Halo 2 or 3? The only reason a sequel exist is because there is demand for it. If there wasn't any demand for Final Fantasy, it would have ended at 1, instead of continuing to XII. Running on the same analogy that "Final" Fantasy means the last fantasy, why have sequels for Doom and Halo which also signifies the end? I mean, how many times can you be doomed and Haloed?

WinHIIP did the trick

WinHIIP fixed the partition error that FapLink created. It recovered the bad partition so I can delete it and reinstall the backup. The really cool thing is the speed and simplicity of the application. Once I open the app, I just select the right drive (it detects all HD, even external USB drives and non-Windows drive). Drives already formatted for PS2 will have a PS2 next to the drive name. WinHIIP have all the settings you possibly need. Back, format, delete, and view partitions are all there. The speed I was mentioning before, is the ability to batch backup isos into the PS2 drive. A 4GB game iso takes a little less than 10 minutes on my old P3 700. I can backup 10 games back to back and it would take less than 2 hrs. I am sure it is closer to one hr if I set this up on my new computer. With FapLink, I can't even transfer one game in that same time period.

There are some codes in WinHIIP to do network transfers like FapLink, but it hasn't been implemented in version 1.63. With the speed that WinHIIP provides, I really don't think it need it.

WinHIIP and Faplink each have it's own advantages. But considering the difficulty in Faplink in terms of setting up the network, WinHIIP is definitely simpler to use than Faplink, as long as you have a basic knowledge of how to install a HD in a PC.

Problems w/ PS2 HD

Hmm, It seems like I have an error on the HD. I have over 30GB free on the HD but I can't backup anymore games into it. The problem started with FAPlink but now I just can't backup games into the HD, period.

I guess it's a blessing in disguise because now I get to play around with WinHIIP, which transfers backups directly from the PC. Will update on progress.

Some PS2 mod links I left out

Here are some links that I forgot to add here when I was modding my PS2. The Screensavers recently did the HD mod on the PS2. Wow, if you saw that episode, you would envy like I am at how many games they have. Here
is the link to the article they wrote about their experience w/ the mod.

Also, Kevin Rose from The Screensavers and The Broken showed off modding all 3 consoles on The Broken Video Release 0003. The Xbox and the PS2 were chip mods while the Gamecube is a softmod. Check it out here.

Modding PS2 conclusion

So I am finally done. How do I feel about this mod? In terms of difficulty, I would say it's in the low 5s in scale of 1 - 10. It really isn't difficult, just have a lot of reading to do. Everything is straight forward and everyone's experience can only help you understand this better (not confuse you even more, a la xbox modding).

I guess after failing to softmod the xbox, I feel that the ps2 mod is a not a difficult enough challenge. But at the same time, I am truly elated over the fact that I have completed the mod and have increase my PS2 capability many folds. It's still too bad the PS2 is just slightly underpowered. Let me explain why.

The PS2 Reality Media Player, is a really cool media player for the PS2. It can play divx, mp3s, jpegs via CD/DVD drive or streaming from network. Setting up the network is a breeze, just type in the ip address for your comp, your gateway ip (router), and make sure to open a port either via port forwarding or something else on the router. The media player has no problems with pictures and mp3. But divx is a slight letdown. The divx file that i stream across the network skips every few seconds. I thought it was a network problem. So I tried to get it to run on the drive. Had some TOC problems but finally got that to work, but guess what? It still skips. The skipping is not terrible. Just noticeable enough to bother you. It's just so frustrating though because it almost have enough power to decode the files smoothly. I guess this is where the Xbox has a huge edge over the PS2.

The PS2 Mame is an arcade emulator that is developed based on the Mame for PC project. Mame has been around for nearly a decade if I remember correctly and the PC version is a perfect port. I haven't try this myself because I don't own any arcade ROMs but ppl on the forums have said that the PS2 Mame is only good for games like Pacman and Space Invaders because anything else the PS2 just can't handle in full speed. Again, the Xbox has a edge on PS2 in this too.

Here are some of the improvements I hope to see in the PS2 modding scene:

1. KeyLauncher looks good, but the interlaced version of PS2 Menu-K makes the fonts looks better on regular TVs (mines anyway). Keylauncher is also oversized on my TV, a video calibration would be cool.

2. exectftp takes 14 seconds to load up. That's 13 seconds too long.

3. FAPlink 0.87.1 in NTSC please... So I can 'see' the improvements made.

4. PS2 Reality Media Player with a quick button (select) that pulls up the controller map for each function it has. It would make things so much easier. It would also be nice to load songs from HD and maybe even internet radio. Also, since it's not quite powerful enough to handle all forms of Divx, what about the ability to access DVD backups in the HD. At least then it is a DVD server.

5. PS2 Mame able to use the HD instead of just the CD/DVD drive.

6. LBA48. I know ppl are working on it. The latest patch only fix the drive size indicator, backups over 137g still doesn't run properly.

I hope my experience is a good pointer for anyone interested in modding their ps2. As always, you can email me at jackngai@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Modding PS2 part 10

I mentioned loading elf from HD using KeyLauncher yesterday. But how exactly did I get the files into the HD? That's where another program, HDDformat, comes in. If you have already sent some backups to the HD using FAPlink, you notice that when you FTP into the PS2, you can see the HD and the backups, but you can't access them. In order to access them, you have to mount them because they are really just unmounted partitions.

Using HDDformat, create a partition of at least 128 megs (mine is 256) so that you have plenty of space to store your elf file and whatever else you want. Now, reset and go back to exectftp. Now you need to mount the partition you just created (mine is called R). At this point, lookatthemonkey's tutorial has a typo so you have to be careful. You have to use the SITE comand, as the tutorial suggest, but you have to have a '+' sign before the partition name, as suggested in this forum link, post #14. W/O the '+' sign, your FTP client might say it mounted properly but you still can't access the partition. Also, lookatthemonkeys tell you to unmount when you are done, I usually just disconnect and have had no problems thus far.

Here are the ELFs that I dropped into the HD: (do a search on google to find them)
CogSwaploader (get it from the cogswapexploit and rename if necessary)
CD Loader V7 beta 5.2 (copy from CD Loader disc)
HDDformat (from lookatthemonkey's tutorial)
launchelf (ps2 scene forum post # 8)
PS2 Menu-K
Ogg (Ogg Vorbis player/codec? Haven't tried yet, get from PS2 reality media player)
ps2media (PS2 Reality Media Player)
bor (beats of rage free game, never tried it)
exectftp
faplink

Tomorrow, I will have the conclusion of my mod experience and wishes of features that would make the PS2 modding even better.

Modding PS2 part 9

Now that I have PS2 backups running, it's time to do some minor touchups and add extra tools. Keylauncher is a much nicer interface than PS2 Menu-K. It lets you setup one button file launches and auto launches a specific app.

Keylauncher is currently at 0.4 which added some key features like loading ELF files from HD or from USB flash drives. I personally didn't try the flash drive setup but the HD one works just fine. Keylauncher consists of 2 files KL(version#).elf and KL.dat. KL.dat is a configuration files to setup all the links for the various button launches. It is quite straight forward.

Now to replace PS2 Menu-K is simply deleting boot.elf and then renaming KL.elf to boot.elf. Before you do that though, make sure that Keylauncher is working properly and it's auto load function is not set to 0, which immediately cause it to load whatever program you have it set to load right away. That wouldn't be good because you would have to reload everything from the exploit disc if this happens.

Part 10 tomorrow...

Modding PS2 part 8

Following LookattheMonkey's tuturial to setup the memory card exploit (w/ the addition of exectftp), I got the necessary files into my PS2. Now by putting Armored Core into the system, I can get to PS2 Menu-K. This is the default file browser that most everyone use. To access the directories, press R1 and select MC0: (memory card 1). Then go into badata-system folder and you can find at least 2 ELF files.

So far there are:
Boot.elf
exectftp.elf

Boot.elf is obviously PS2 Menu-K. exectfp.elf is even more obvious. Just highlight and press 'x' on exectftp and it start loading up. As long as you used the right TCP/IP settings in the config.dat file, you should be able to access the PS2 from your computer using any FTP client.

Once that is up, a whole world of possibility opened up. Now, I can drop in any elf files. The first one is FAPlink, which lets you transfer backup games from your PC to your PS2. Lookatthemonkey's tutorial explains how to use this pretty well. FAPlink uses the Fast Arm Protocol to transfer the backup so it is supposedly faster even though it took over 1 hr to send a 4 gig backup to the PS2.

As of this writing, the latest version of FAPlink (0.87.1) is only available in PAL mode. It simply is not pleasant to try to run this on the NTSC equipment so you might want to use the older NTSC version from LookattheMonkey's site.

Part 9 tomorrow...

Modding PS2 part 7

Now there are so many places that shows how to setup the Memory Exploit. LookattheMonkeys is one of the most popular ones and I used that one myself. Although I have read a bunch of others too.

There are some things I don't like about the tutorial though. For one, I would suggest finding all possible ELF (Executable Loader Files???, these are like .exe for PS2) files or at the very least drop in exectftp which turns the PS2 into a FTP server. Just setup the config.dat file to PS2 IP address, Subnet Mask, Gateway IP address in one line and that's set.

Why do you need ExectFTP? If I had that on my memory exploit disc last week, I wouldn't have to waste so many CDRs. Once you setup the ExectFTP, you can transfer any ELF files to the PS2 w/o having to use Cogswap (another mid swap disc like CD loader) or any other loader as LookattheMonkeys' instructions said. The memory card exploit simply copies all files (not directories though) inside the Files folder on the disc to your memory card. I simply just threw in a exectFTP and config.dat and the PS2 became a server in less than 15 seconds.

I will explain more on the different ELF files available on the PS2 tomorrow.

Part 8 tomorrow....