PS3 [RELEASE] ★ Ultimate Toolbox v2.03 - It Only Does Everything! v2.03 (FW 4.84 - 4.91)

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

First off, I just want to say this app is awesome! Nice work!... I may have stumbled across some sort of bug though, possibly a conflict with 4.88 Evilnat CFW. I'm honestly unsure what's going on exactly, and it only seems to be affecting my CECHA model console.

The issue occurs when I change my font using UTB, it seems to mess up the ps2 emulator. The first time I had an issue, ps2 games were still booting and loading, it was the in game menu that became unviewable. I tried a few things after that to alleviate the issue. One being re-installing webman, the other being deleting UTB from my system, neither of which worked. I then decided to just re-install CFW (Evilnat 4.88.2), which then fixed my ps2 game play and the menu. I then decided to test it one more time with changing out the font, and sure enough it messed it up, this time basically making every ps2 game I launched completely black screen. I then went thru some of the same actions to try to fix including putting the original font back. Unfortunately none of that worked and I had to re-install CFW again. I now have UTB setup and i'm just avoiding changing the font on this console. Everything seems to be working fine as long as I don't alter the font. I've changed out coldboots, waves, installed themes, etc, i'm just avoiding changing out the font.

I decided to test this on my CECHK model, and the issue was not there (ps2 games and menu's worked fine when I changed the font), so i'm wondering if it affects only the CECHA models or something. Idk. I just figured i'd mention it in this thread in case there is a bug that seems to only affect the CECHA models. My cousin has a CECHE model, so i'm gonna have him test it on his model and see if he has any issues with ps2 titles after changing his font.

Edit: I had my cousin check his CECHE model and seems to be working fine, so as of now my findings are only for the CECHA model. I have a second CECHA model i'll be setting up for use in the next few days. I'll report back if that one also suffers from the same issue.

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

@DeViL303 I can confirm that it does in fact break ps2 usability on the CECHA model by switching the font. I tested on my 2nd bc console and same thing. Doesn't seem to affect any other models though from other tests i've done. Reinstalling CFW now to fix. I appreciate you looking into this. This app is awesome!

 

[LyuboA]

@DeViL303 do you have any intention to add Rebug 4.84.2 with Cobra 8.3 to the Toolbox

 

[DeViL303]

@DeViL303 I can confirm that it does in fact break ps2 usability on the CECHA model by switching the font. I tested on my 2nd bc console and same thing. Doesn't seem to affect any other models though from other tests i've done. Reinstalling CFW now to fix. I appreciate you looking into this. This app is awesome!

I dont really know enough about fonts to fix those issues. My guess is that there are some characters missing that are used by the hardware PS2 emulator, or the font is not valid at all for the hardware PS2 emulator.

@DeViL303 do you have any intention to add Rebug 4.84.2 with Cobra 8.3 to the Toolbox

I've no plans to update it for now really. Busy with real life tbh.

 

[SKEPTiCK]

So, for anyone wanting to get rid of those red frames in the legacy waves collection, here's a fix

As long as you have not moved any of these waves around (and have 86) this should work.

The red frames I made for my copy of PS3EXTISO were bigger and had to be down-scaled to fit into UTB

and those (red-framed) photos were taken 3 seconds into console boot-up using an Elgato (hence no XMB junk)

This time I made it much easier by using the Screenshot XMB function found in the webMAN VSH menu

and I must say that I love how the VSH menu is able to capture the still of the XMB when first opened

half of the .jpg files were resized to 236x236 using Microsoft Paint (lol) and the other half was done more hastily with Flexxi Image Resizer. Then a 2-pixel white border on all sides using Lunapic's online border tool.

I was looking for a function inside of the Ultimate Toolbox to hide the XMB UI Clock Bar or at least change it to have a different look... but nothing so I found the Modern Clock UI by @dazzaXx instead.

https://www.psx-place.com/threads/release-modern-clock-ui-4-82-4-84.22752/

The clock change works for me at least but I can't say that it works for anything other than 4.82 / 4.84.1 / 4.84.2

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

I dont really know enough about fonts to fix those issues. My guess is that there are some characters missing that are used by the hardware PS2 emulator, or the font is not valid at all for the hardware PS2 emulator.



I've no plans to update it for now really. Busy with real life tbh.

Yea no worries. I'm not hung up on it. I can live with the default font for now. Just wanted to mention it since it's such a weird issue, especially since those fonts in the ps2 in game menu typically stay stock even when you do change the font if i'm not mistaken

 

[aldostools]

Yea no worries. I'm not hung up on it. I can live with the default font for now. Just wanted to mention it since it's such a weird issue, especially since those fonts in the ps2 in game menu typically stay stock even when you do change the font if i'm not mistaken

You could try other fonts. At least the font 012 worked fine on my slim.

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

You could try other fonts. At least the font 012 worked fine on my slim.

Yea i tried a few already on the CECHA models and it seemed to cause black screens in ps2 games each time I swapped it. Only way i've found to fix it is to re-install CFW, so for now i'm just gonna hang tight with the default fonts for the launch models. The issue doesn't seem to effect other models, fat or slim from my testing, just the CECHA model.

 

[DeViL303]

Yea i tried a few already on the CECHA models and it seemed to cause black screens in ps2 games each time I swapped it. Only way i've found to fix it is to re-install CFW, so for now i'm just gonna hang tight with the default fonts for the launch models. The issue doesn't seem to effect other models, fat or slim from my testing, just the CECHA model.

I then went thru some of the same actions to try to fix including putting the original font back.

It's very strange that putting the original font back did not fix the issue. I'm stumped there tbh.

 

[LuanTeles]

@DeViL303
-
I tried some ps2 emus with no luck, ps2_netemu_default.self, ps2_netemu_hdd.self , ps2_netemu_hdd_dbg.self, ps2_netemu_memory_dbg.self and ps2_netemu_temp_dbg.self all of them turns the console off.

The only ones that worked here were:
ps2_netemu_default_db.self
ps2_netemu_temp.self

I tested on 4.84 Rebug and 4.88 Rebug (unOfficial by EvilNAT)

 

[DeViL303]

@DeViL303
-
I tried some ps2 emus with no luck, ps2_netemu_default.self, ps2_netemu_hdd.self , ps2_netemu_hdd_dbg.self, ps2_netemu_memory_dbg.self and ps2_netemu_temp_dbg.self all of them turns the console off.

The only ones that worked here were:
ps2_netemu_default_db.self
ps2_netemu_temp.self

I tested on 4.84 Rebug and 4.88 Rebug (unOfficial by EvilNAT)

Oh, no idea then tbh. I just used the ones from the PS2 emu selector. I will try test em when I get a chance, if no luck I will remove them in the next version.

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

@DeViL303
@aldostools
@Evilnat

So I have a weird conflict i'm going to try my best to explain, that seems to be a conflict between UTB and WebmanMod. The outlier is that it only seems to be affecting my Slim 2501a model consoles from my testing. I've become a bit of a ps3 hoarder over the last year and I use both your programs on a majority of my consoles. Two of my favorites by the way. I also love your CFW's Evilnat. I love all of your work.

So i've been dealing with an issue that arose originally when on 4.88 Evilnat Cfw. I had both UTB and webman mod installed. Things seemed to be operating fine for a few months. I then started encountering weird freezes that would occur mostly when using webman. Doing things such as refreshing the XML, and sometimes just going thru the settings in webman. It eventually got to the point, that I couldn't do anything in the XMB without having immediate freezes. I then went down the rabbit hole of thinking it was my internal HDD failing. Tried several different drives mainly keeping my CFW on evilnat 4.88. The issue seemed to spring up usually once everything was fully set back up (of course lol).

Fast forward to now. I've been trying to narrow down the issue. I've since invested in a brand new 1 TB SSD to eliminate any possibility of it being one of my older mechanical drives I was trying. I started from scratch this last time installing 4.88 Evilnat, using the new 1 TB SSD, setback up all my psn games, did hundreds of game updates, installed webman mod as usual, Note- I did not have UTB installed at the time of this. Things seemed to work fine for a while, but at one point the freezing issue popped up a bit, I was then prompted to plugin a controller and re-install FW. I decided this time to go back to 4.87 Evilnat, since i've had a theory that some of the extra goodies or modifications in the 4.88 CFW itself could be causing the conflict.

At this point, things seemed to return to normal. I could boot and play games fine, refresh XML, etc... I then decided I'd like to install UTB as well since I really love changing up the waves and doing the dual color waves for my background. I did the install, changed up a few things, swapped out some coldboots... The usual stuff. I then had went into webman mod to refresh my xml and scan my games since I had unplugged my external HD at some point in the process, and the freezing issue came back. At this point it does nothing and i'm forced to hard reset.

I then went through several troubleshooting steps (each time trying to beat the clock on when the freeze would occur in the XMB) of removing UTB, re-installing CFW (tried both Rebug 4.86 and Evilnat 4.87), deleted and re-installed webman (both manually and thru the webman setup page)... I spent about two hours last night trying to get it back to "normal" to no avail. I even went back to OFW, then re-patched, and installed 4.87 Evilnat again.

So after going thru all these steps multiple times, I'm really starting to feel like there is some sort of file or files in UTB and possibly 4.88 Evilnat CFW (since I know they have some similar mods in the menu) that may be conflicting with something in Webman itself. I honestly don't know enough about what was changed in these to try to pinpoint it, but I thought i'd share this experience in case someone might be able to think of something. Again weird part is this only seems to be occurring on my Slim 2501a models (I have two of them, and this issue is affecting both). Seems to be running great on my fatboy CECHA models though from my experience although I play mostly ps2 games on those and keep the slims mainly for my ps3 gaming.

UPDATE / EDIT: Okay, i've narrowed it down. Retroarch community edition does not play well with 4.88 Evilnat CFW. Someone on an online fb ps3 group had posted similar symptoms to what I was having. I decided to do my usual install of retroarch to test this, and sure enough the freezing issue started again and I was unable to do anything in webman. Interesting...

 

[DeViL303]

I think it might be a combination of everything. We are really pushing the XMB and OS by adding thousands of items.. with that in mind it is quite possible that UTB is adding some instability.

If users of UTB are having issues, I recommend going into the toolbox setup and disabling sections they do not use very often. This might add some stability. In particular the sections with loads of items like themes and wallpapers are most likely to cause issues. Those could just be enabled when required. Some people have no problems too so its hard to track down exactly what is causing problems like these random freezes. It could be a combination of things like large game collections, XMB mods like UTB, hard drive wear, console model etc.

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

I think it might be a combination of everything. We are really pushing the XMB and OS by adding thousands of items.. with that in mind it is quite possible that UTB is adding some instability.

If users of UTB are having issues, I recommend going into the toolbox setup and disabling sections they do not use very often. This might add some stability. In particular the sections with loads of items like themes and wallpapers are most likely to cause issues. Those could just be enabled when required. Some people have no problems too so its hard to track down exactly what is causing problems like these random freezes. It could be a combination of things like large game collections, XMB mods like UTB, hard drive wear, console model etc.

Is there any particular sections you can think of that might be directly conflicting with webman? It really seems like whether it's Retroarch or UTB, it seems to hit webman first with the freezes. I've definitely ruled out the HDD, as i've been thru three of them and just purchased a brand new one to be sure. I appreciate your advice

 

[DeViL303]

Is there any particular sections you can think of that might be directly conflicting with webman? It really seems like whether it's Retroarch or UTB, it seems to hit webman first with the freezes. I've definitely ruled out the HDD, as i've been thru three of them and just purchased a brand new one to be sure. I appreciate your advice

Not really, I never really had this issue. My guess is that it's just too many items on the XMB.. So sections like the visual customization would be the worst for that, but I could be wrong.

Also once you have your game collection how you like it, I would recommend turning off webMANs Game scanning at start up and manually scan when you add new games, rewriting those xmls every boot up would probably not be helping things.

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

So I managed to get the XMB running smoothly with my usual setup using 4.84.2 rebug which is great. Not freezing in the XMB anymore like before, but I got the weird controller sync issue going on now, where it will start up the ps3 from the controller, but refuses to sync until I plug it in. Still not 100% it's UTB doing this, but it seems to occur after I install this, or shortly after.

I'm wondering is it safe for me to extract some of the legacy waves from the pkg, and install them manually? I know I can do that with coldboots enabling "write to flash", just curious about the waves?

 

[DeViL303]

So I managed to get the XMB running smoothly with my usual setup using 4.84.2 rebug which is great. Not freezing in the XMB anymore like before, but I got the weird controller sync issue going on now, where it will start up the ps3 from the controller, but refuses to sync until I plug it in. Still not 100% it's UTB doing this, but it seems to occur after I install this, or shortly after.

I'm wondering is it safe for me to extract some of the legacy waves from the pkg, and install them manually? I know I can do that with coldboots enabling "write to flash", just curious about the waves?

Yes you can do that with anything included in the Toolbox. If you are not familiar with extracting packages you might find it easier to just dump the "dev_hdd0/game/ULTOOLBOX/ " folder from the console. You could dump specific resources instead if you wanted.

I have had that issue you speak of where controller loses sync after power up, on just one of consoles, I think its related to HDD wear or speed or something. It's been a while now but I think one of the safe mode options like restore file system or rebuild database can help with that temporarily, but the issue did tend to come back after a while for me. I used to just get around it by powering that console on with the power button, then turning on the controller once it was already on..

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

Yes you can do that with anything included in the Toolbox. If you are not familiar with extracting packages you might find it easier to just dump the "dev_hdd0/game/ULTOOLBOX/ " folder from the console. You could dump specific resources instead if you wanted.

I have had that issue you speak of where controller loses sync after power up, on just one of consoles, I think its related to HDD wear or speed or something. It's been a while now but I think one of the safe mode options like restore file system or rebuild database can help with that temporarily, but the issue did tend to come back after a while for me. I used to just get around it by powering that console on with the power button, then turning on the controller once it was already on..

So after further testing, i'm thinking this controller sync issue is being caused by being on DEX firmware, not fault of UTB. I decided to flash back to 4.84.2 Rex last night, deleted UTB, and let it sit over night. In the morning, I checked how it was acting and the sync issue was not happening... So I decided to flash back to DEX this morning, then see how it was when I got home from work, and sure enough it won't sync from the controller (still had UTB uninstalled at this point). So at this point, i'm just going to do the workaround that you had mentioned and leave it on DEX, especially since going back to REX had broken a few of my psn titles since I believe they were installed while on DEX. Figure rather just turn it on at the power button versus having to go through all that mess again lol. I appreciate your input and your work on this sweet app!

 

[marciolsf]

First of all, thanks for putting this together! I've been playing around with it this afternoon and wow, there's a ton of options.

Also, I can't begin to tell you how excited I am for legacy wave #30 -- I've been trying to reenable this wave ever since Sony did away with it all the way back then (fw 3.00, I think). The time-of-day wave change was always my favorite look.

I have two questions:

What does the ps2 temp mod do? I'm currently on a 2501a slim.

I found the option to disable a few XIL items (like Spotify), but I've also been wondering -- is there a way to reenable the folding @home icon? I'm sure that wouldn't enable the client itself, I just wonder if that option is in there somewhere.

 

[aldostools]

What does the ps2 temp mod do? I'm currently on a 2501a slim.

Here is the description from this post: https://www.psx-place.com/threads/ps2-netemu-selector.16095/

• Temperatures Mod - Custom emulator version patched by 3141card to show temperatures of CELL/RSX while playing PS2 games. Additionally patched by kozarovv to fix temps display on every display mode, and set to refresh temp every 2 seconds.

For me the best option is the one that installs the Temperature Mod With Debug Menu.