PS1 PSIO problems

Months and a new firmware later and PSIO is still a mess.

They can't get Driver: You Are the Wheelman to work correctly right now and people are reporting various bugs with other games. Somebody reported that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 freezes on the stage selection screen.

This is beyond horrible for a product which is being sold as "99.8% compatible" for over 3 years now.
 
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Honestly tho'... Wouldn't it be possible to use a kind of "MC2SD-Dongle" and write a Game-Loader, to load it off there?

It would be really cheap production-wise and I suppose even self-made/DIY!
@Citrus3000psi ?

Honestly... They want to get a ultra-high compatibility and something must be installed inside...
It is not really Plug&Play...!!!

...and then their FW doesn't even fed the installed chip correctly? I know it isn't that easy to do this kind of stuff, but when neither an ultra high compatibility nor P'n'P (and using it on another PS1) is achieved, a "Game-Loader" would be sufficient as well! Oh... A Game-Loader would also be P'n'P, if an MC-Exploit or UniROM would be used!


I suppose a MemoryCard-Exploit could be possible on a PS1 as well, or even just using UniROM and start a Game-Loader + have a MC2SD-Dongle would probably work.

I don't know the speed of the ports however!
 
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What game will run on ~20KiB/s? ;p Besides that, "file system" table at the beginning will not fit so much blocks (it was designed to next and only 15, each exactly 8KB).

On top of that, You will be forced to share RAM with games (parallel devices are quite autonomic).
 
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Nah, the cartridge itself isn't the problem. It's the firmware. They can't get the timings right, even after all these years. They also keep changing stuff like command chains, etc. It's just not accurate emulation.

But at least they are making progress. They fixed the VRAM corruption in FFVII in this new FW. It's just a shame all of this is happening many years after PSIO was commercially released, so now people who paid hard cash for this device are supposed to sit and wait until they get their shit together.
 
Honestly, I dislike numbers like that, especially when it is unlikely for them to have tested nearly all games out there. I don't even know if it's possible, given the diversity in regions too.

TnA said:
Honestly tho'... Wouldn't it be possible to use a kind of "MC2SD-Dongle" and write a Game-Loader, to load it off there?
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This isn't like the PS2, unfortunately. On the PS2, we could replace the IOP modules, to emulate the device we are replacing.
On the PS, the game may access the hardware directly. Their method is a good one, whereby they can emulate the registers of the CD-ROM drive without too much modding.

TnA said:
Honestly... They want to get a ultra-high compatibility and something must be installed inside...
It is not really Plug&Play...!!!
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Unlike the PS2, there is no way to remap the memory window for the DSP. There is also a need to re-route the interrupt signal from the CD DSP to the CPU. I remember that the small board exists, so that the user may switch between the PSIO and the original CD-ROM drive.

TnA said:
I suppose a MemoryCard-Exploit could be possible on a PS1 as well, or even just using UniROM and start a Game-Loader + have a MC2SD-Dongle would probably work.

I don't know the speed of the ports however!
Click to expand...

It's very slow. Even if the interface could be faster, the memory card just didn't work so fast.
 
Well, I see...
Yes, the bandwidth really seems quite limited (also for the port). I didn't knew that.

I agree that most games run more on 'bare metal', but am not entirely sure if it is technically completely impossible. I suppose with patches to the main executable it could work... But that would probably require a custom patch for almost every single game out there and that's not going to happen...

So in a sense of a "Game-Loader" not being possible... I suppose in a technical sence it is somewhat possible, but would require such a high amount of work for every single game, that it makes 0 sence... 1% compatibility with a lot of work makes less sence than their PSIO, where there is less software-work involved and rather a real hardware-ODD with software combined, to get a MUCH higher compatibility in a shorter amount of time and in the fastest and most efficient way.

It's just kind of sad, that it isn't a full P'n'P-solution and since it isn't, I'd hope for high compatibility atleast (but it seems it still has several problems).


I like to play on the original Hardware as well, but in the PS1's case I suppose I just use the PSC! ;)
 
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I've noticed a very bad habit of the PSIO dev (there are supposed to be two of them, but only one posts online at all). He tends to dismiss problems, unless a lot of people start grilling him about it. That's not how you're supposed to run development. He should actively look for problems and check everything, not try to push this out of the window half-broken in hopes that people won't notice.
 
Grahf said:
He should actively look for problems and check everything, not try to push this out of the window half-broken in hopes that people won't notice.
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That's describe of 99% modern commercial software. ;)

Anyway. It is sad to read about all those problems. I was sure before that games compatibility is very high.
 
It is hard to compare where all of those projects facing different problems. And in case of EverDrive for NES, still some top mappers like VRC7 aren't supported. I have in mind much more commercial software for leading OSes, rather than scene commercial software which often have quite good quality.
 
Berion said:
It is hard to compare where all of those projects facing different problems. And in case of EverDrive for NES, still some top mappers like VRC7 aren't supported.
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It's not hard to compare at all. ALL systems pose their own challenges, but either way - you're no supposed to SELL something if it doesn't work.

And VRC7 is a niche within a niche. PSIO doesn't play many PS1 games properly.
 
If PSIO works good with ~50% of games, it means it works... at least in those 50%. I know, they advertising it as 99% so it's kind of scam but... So, You have bought one, didn't You? ;)
 
Berion said:
If PSIO works good with ~50% of games, it means it works... at least in those 50%. I know, they advertising it as 99% so it's kind of scam but... So, You have bought one, didn't You? ;)
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No, it doesn't work at all. It's like saying that a car on two wheels instead of four works because you can move a little.

Nope. It either works or it doesn't. If only a few games are incompatible for a good reason, then it's understandable. If so many games don't work, then it's not working.

And no, I didn't get this. I wanted to, but my friend has it and I saw how bad this is right now. Some games freeze for no apparent reason in-game.
 
Just curious: are You the same Graf from psx-scene.com which complained a lot about my OPL logos, the old (in amiga style) and new (current in test builds, official ps2 style)? If yes, I still remembering You as the guy who complaining more than every Poles in entire planet merged into one superorganism. You haven't changed after all those years, didn't You? :D
 
Berion said:
Just curious: are You the same Graf from psx-scene.com which complained a lot about my OPL logos, the old (in amiga style) and new (current in test builds, official ps2 style)? If yes, I still remembering You as the guy who complaining more than every Poles in entire planet merged into one superorganism. You haven't changed, didn't You? ;p
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If I'm complaining more "than every Pole in the entire planet merged into one superorganism", then you are exaggerating more than all human beings on the entire planet merged into one superorganism. ;p

PSIO is broken as hell right now and it's silly to ignore this. Have you looked at their forums lately? Games are broken like hell and it's been something like 6 firmware updates in a row that didn't fix things, but actually made them worse.
 
Just as I thought... ;)

Look, if PSIO runs many games perfectly or at least very good (which means: no gfx glitches, game freezing, game slowdowns, strange bugs) then for sure it works. Just the author(s) should change the advertise type, focus more on community and of course polishing their product. I don't want to defend them but saying PSIO doesn't work is unfair IMO. Personally I don't have this device but heard many good opinions about it from some of my internet friends, so it cannot be such bad deal.
 
Berion said:
Look, if PSIO runs many games perfectly or at least very good (which means: no gfx glitches, game freezing, game slowdowns, strange bugs) then for sure it works.
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Nobody knows what it runs! Just a week ago, there was a guy who completed Resident Evil 2 and the game crashed at the credits, making it impossible to save his game data. Somebody else reported that Tony Hawk 2 works for a few seconds in the stage selection menu, but then crashes.

How can you call this "working"?

You can't sell a beta product as "working".
 
In a perfect world, a 1.0 would have been a stable, final product. But for that to work, the development team must have a clear understanding of all the requirements and have the necessary resources to achieve them.

If it is true that they do not seem to know what is happening, then it is possibly impossible for them to achieve a perfect release. Even though may seem plausible.
 
sp193 said:
In a perfect world, a 1.0 would have been a stable, final product. But for that to work, the development team must have a clear understanding of all the requirements and have the necessary resources to achieve them.
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You can sell a beta product if you say it's a beta product. You can't sell a beta product and claim it's "99,8%" done.
 
Yes. But now that it has been done and has been like that for years, don't you want to cut your losses? If they could have done better, then it would have gotten better by now. Clearly, they pulled out that magical number from someplace, perhaps from among the games they tested. Or was just a number that sounded good. But either way, isn't accurate.

At this point, if they manage to fix it eventually, I think that would be a bonus. Especially if they do not seem to know what to do.
 
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