Didn’t sony make an official accessory to connect ps1 to a CRT monitor? I can’t remember what it was called
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The one I have I believe has a “sync-on-green” pcb attached. Apologies if that’s not the right terminology.
Thanks for the detailed response. My +OPL folder looks identical but the ELF is hosted on MASS as my HDD (IDE-SD card) doesn’t seem to play nice when you ask it to wake and boot apps from OSDSYS. OPL saves it’s .conf to the +OPL folder and reads ART and THM fine.
I am using the latest daily build of OPL and the most recent release of OPLM. I’m about to head to work but this afternoon I’ll compare my CFG files to yours.
Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of.
Wow!
I got it working!
It turned out that I had only created a tiny partition for OPL and expanding it cleared up the issue right away. Now if only I could get FTP support working!
Currently I’m able to transfer games over the network via HDLGManclient with no issues at all but for whatever reason I can’t get FTP support to work in uLaunchELF. I’m considering switching to wLaunchELF to see if I have better luck.
I want FTP support so I can transfer CFG and ART over easily without USB.
edit I figured it out. I need to navigate to the HDD to start the modules up, then I can start PS2NET and it works fine. Not sure why but my guess is that due to the weird adapter I’m using (IDE-SD card) that it halts trying to wake the drive when starting the FTP server.
I’ve used FTP in both u/wLaunchELF. Maybe check your FTP app connection settings, eg. Passive, limit to transfer at a time etc.
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Yeah, I just edited my post. The issues weren’t on the FTP end it was my HDD setup.
The setup works great but it causes problems in a few areas; attempts to boot .ELFs from HDD via OSDSYS won’t work, FHDB causes OSDSYS to freeze etc.
That said I’m happy with it now after a bit of tweaking, to save MC space I have the large .ELFs on a USB stick (OPL, Network Transfer, DVD playback, PS1VModeNeg) FMCB on mc0 and all of my games on the 256gb micro SD.
edit now if only I could find an OPL theme that doesn’t look terrible. Most are garish and really poorly designed.
You might want to look into a larger memory card. Standard PS2 memory card holds 8MB but I use a 128MB (yes, megabyte!) memory card from eBay which works really well - fast and error free.
Unlike older large memory cards there’s no bank switching or compression involved.
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I use the standard OPL-DB theme - I just use it as a simple launcher list (just cover and disc art) rather than viewing all the extended game information.
Maybe we should put together a nice (RGB?) theme? I’d be happy to do the work with some direction on what you’d like.
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Could do with one for OutRun C2C - the save/load times are infuriatingly long off a Sony card.
I think I just use the default list style theme on OPL. I just see it as a simple launcher for me.
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Half of me wishes I could just launch my games from wLaunchELF
I’m not saying the 128MB cards are faster than OG, just not slower.
Does anybody use a PS2NETBOX?
Just read about it today - seems to be a kind of NAS drive that connects direct to the PS2 by ethernet.
Anyone got any experience burning PS1 backups to play on a real ps1/ps2? I’ve heard mixed things about write speeds and disc quality and the like and there are a handful of games I’d really rather not use physically (both because of the chance of them being damages, and since they’re more or less on display). Looking to get an external CD burner and some CDs, would like recommendations on brands if anyone has any.
I have a few tips.
Buy a Pioneer drive. They’re more expensive but they’re worth it – they’ve been in the business of optical media longer than anyone else and their drives are more reliable and produce better results. I had thought older IDE drives would yield better results with something like a PlayStation (which is quite picky) but I’ve found my modern SATA blu-ray drive is quite good as well, and at least the newer Pioneer drives I’ve used have allowed me to burn at slower speeds.
For external drives, it’s hard to find good stuff in the US. It’s probably better to just buy something off Amazon Japan as they still have a good selection. For example I have one of these Logitech blu-ray external drives but it’s actually a rebadged Pioneer and I’ve gotten good results with it. Even factoring in shipping to the US it’s cheaper than you’ll get a lower quality drive for locally.
For discs, since PS1 can be picky it’s best to stick to higher quality discs. Taiyo Yuden discs and rebadges used to be the go-to here but they no longer exist, and TY has since sold the dye technology and QA process to a brand based out of Taiwan called CMC. I have bought two sets of CMC discs and they’re still better than any other modern CD-R I’ve tried. B&H has a good price for these in varying quantities – I’d recommend sticking to something with a white label coating rather than just a lacquer as writing on just a lacquer with a sharpie could cause degradation over time.
When burning it’s usually better to burn at slower speeds. A 4X is usually good in my experience. It’s both for picky lasers and to prevent any issues of the drives burning at inconsistent speeds which can lead to errors that are harder for older CD readers to handle. Again in this case Pioneer drives tend to do better as other brands often don’t let you burn at lower speeds than the disc is rated for.
In terms of playing on hardware, there’s a lot of PS1 and PS2 models and each has their own quirks. PS2s tend to not be very reliable for CD playback but if you have one you know works well they tend to do better with CD-Rs than most PS1s. If you want to stick with PS1, the PSone variants tend to have much more reliable lasers and (at least in my experience across 3 different PSones) are a lot less picky when it comes to CD-Rs. If you already have a drive & stock of discs and a PSone you may just want to try your luck, it would probably be fine with just about anything. But that’s very much not true about any older PlayStations I’ve tried; skipping FMVs are an obvious symptom but you can get mis-reads that cause games to crash, sometimes painfully far from your last save.
Hope that gives you some ideas. I usually find it safer to just combine high quality drive + high quality media + slow burns to get good results across PS1, Sega CD, PCE CD, and Saturn but depending on what you’re working with any of the above might improve results (generally I find an original style PS1 to be the most picky).
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You can get Taiyo Yuden discs on Amazon and Ebay. Here’s a link to one:
my particular PS2 (a DTL-50K) tends to prefer reading CDs to DVDs weirdly, so I don’t think my console will be a concern.
This was super helpful, though thank you.
I’ll keep an eye on those CDs too, timu.
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