PS2Client Loader v1.2.0

[vtecorona]

Also included in the zip is PS2Client rev5 by dlanor.

Changelog:

v1.3.1
- This revision includes major fixes that make detection of online\offlines PS2 machines much faster. A bug that was giving false detections of online ps2s was also fixed. Thanks dlanor for the great bug reporting
-Added 2 sliders to the settings window to adjust timeout between sending pings. One adjusts the timeout for online ps2(s) and the other for offline.

v1.3
- Changed the ping API call from IcmpSendEcho to IcmpSendEcho2; the latter of the two is a non-blocking api call. This gets rid of the freezing effect that the program has while waiting for a ping reply from an unreachable host. To see what I mean by this, enter an IP that you know has no ping and click Start. Now click and drag the main window for a few seconds and you will see it freeze for a second every time it encounters the bad IP address.
- Fixed the "Start with Windows" option. The correct share directories will now be accessible through uLe\SMS upon loading.
- Changed the way that the ping timeouts are monitored; it is much more accurate now. I recommend using a higher timeout than you did previously. I also recommend finding the highest ping timeout that works for you since having a lower timeout leads to more pings and just creates more congestion over your network.
- Changed the range for ping timeout from 10-100 to 250-2000. I personally use 500ms as my timeout.
- Added a "Close All" button to the "Active PS2Clients" window to close all with a single click.
- Made the "Slowest IP" value reset when a new instance of ps2client loads since, for example, you may be transferring small files with uLaunchElf then you may switch to SMS and watch a movie which will could possibly give you different ping rates.
- Added a button to make the interface smaller. When you make it smaller, the share directories list gets hidden and the main window gets much smaller.
- Also fixed misc. bugs & stuff in the process of updating.

06.21.06
- Made the program save the column widths of the share list so when you resize them they will be the same next time you load it.

06.19.06
- Added ability to rename share directory names. Highlight the list item that you want to edit then single click the name on the list. The renamed items will not appear as you change them in SMS because ps2client doesn't support custom naming for folder shares, yet.

06.07.06
- Added a settings window
- Added an option to allow the user to adjust the amount of time for the program to wait for a ping reply from the ps2 console. This allows for users to adjust the ping timeout to a custom level. The slowest ping I've gotten so far is 15ms so I set the default to 25 just to be safe.
- Removed ps2client status color-label from main window and added a label that displays the slowest ping reply to help the user tune the ping reply timeout setting.
- Adjusted timer interval again to give each the same amount of time no matter how many consoles are being monitored. In the previous release I increased the timer interval for each console added. This time I lower it so that each console gets roughly a 500ms interval.
- Changed the ping no-reply count to 3 instead of 5. So if an IP that has PS2Client loaded fails to reply 3 pings consecutively then ps2client gets closed. I changed it from 3 to 5 to make the detection faster. This means that it takes about 1.5 seconds for ps2client to get closed if the console doesn't respond.
- Added an option for the program to automatically close any open instances of ps2client.exe when exiting instead of being nagged with the window asking if you want to close them.
- Added item to the share-list right-click menu to browse to the selected directory.
- Changed 'Open Windows Explorer' menu to automatically shell to c:\
- Changed main icon to a nicer blue and changed some properties of the share list.

06.06.06
- Totally changed the PS2 monitoring method by having the timer's interval set according to the number of ps2 consoles being monitored. This allows for faster and more efficient cycling between consoles. It seems to be running alot smoother now and less laggy feeling. I tested it and it detected the disconnect when switching from uLaunchelf to SMS with "host:" enabled; dlanor mentioned this needed to be addressed.
- Attempted to fix problem of people not being able to add directories for particular drives. Someone please PM me if you still have a problem so I can talk with you directly. Since I didn't personally have this problem it is hard to debug it.

06.04.06
- Added label to active ps2client instances window instead of having annoying msgbox.
- Made a revision to make the program only ping valid ip addresses opposed to pinging the IP of every index even if it was the default dummy IP of 0.0.0.0. This should be been done from the get-go.
- Took out the sorting of share directories so they will be on the list in the order that you add them.

06.03.06
- Finished core of multi-console coding

[rathunter]

This is looking good!
Drag and drop doesn't work on my D:\ directories. I can drag the root drive in, but nothing happens with directories. It does work with directories in my C: drive, which is Fat32 (D: is NTFS).
Is it possible to rename the shares? Also, I'd like manually set the order (non-alphabetical).

[vtecorona]

Ok, I made it so you can add anything to the share list including individual files, maybe that will fix your problem. I never had a problem with adding any directory under any particular drive so I can't really think of anything else to try to fix this. I disabled sorting on the shares list too so you can add them in the order that you want them in the list.

I will release a new copy after I get a chance to hear from others about possible problems. In the meantime you can add any directories that the program wont allow you to by adding them manually into elflist.txt.

[dlanor]

Ok, I made it so you can add anything to the share list including individual files, maybe that will fix your problem. I never had a problem with adding any directory under any particular drive so I can't really think of anything else to try to fix this. I disabled sorting on the shares list too so you can add them in the order that you want them in the list.

I haven't tested those features at all, but I do have some other problems to report.

I will release a new copy after I get a chance to hear from others about possible problems. In the meantime you can add any directories that the program wont allow you to by adding them manually into elflist.txt.

I've always managed my elflist.txt mainly by 'hand', using normal text editors. But I have run into some entirely different problems using the new version.

The disconnect detection uses too long detection delay, so if starting SMS from uLE with host: already enabled, your loader will not always detect the momentary disconnection, and so the old PS2client can remain active on the PC, though it has really lost the connection to its server. And at that point it goes insane, continuously stealing over 90% of all CPU time... (Basically due to bad design of Windows).

Edit: Early on I though that it would help to use an HDD with many partitions on it to slow down the initialization, but that was wrong. The problem can still occur.

If I try to close PS2ClientLoader at this time it complains about running instances of ps2client, and asks me to shut them down, in a special dialog box for that purpose. If I press 'Done' in that dialog box directly, the program sometimes returns some error code. (Possibly due to some proiblem caused by the lack of CPU time.) If I do terminate the instance it works correctly.

Btw:
I think a new option should be added, which when set should tell the loader that the user wants to skip the extra dialog when terminating the loader with active instances of ps2client. Such instances should then be terminated automatically without needing further attention by the user.

Even when the user wants that dialog box to be used for individual shutdown of instances, it should not also be preceded by that huge info box, as that's just one more irritating infoflash/click sequence for the user (especially irritating once you've read that box a few dozen times...). I suggest you try to include the vital parts of that info into the dialog box itself instead.

Best regards: dlanor

[andyxxxx]

Hi, any chance of the source code please? Which programming language is it programmed in? Thanks

[vtecorona]

I will release the source as soon as I work out some of the bug reports. It is programmed in VB6. The source to the single-console version is available in the ps2autoclient thread.

[<__>]

Not sure if it's a problem with the pc side of things but if I add my desktop I can browse to it but when I press triangle to go back to the shared folder screen it goes all the way back to C:\ before it shows me my shared folders,through documents and settings etc.
I think this may be a possible security issue.

[vtecorona]

Not sure if it's a problem with the pc side of things but if I add my desktop I can browse to it but when I press triangle to go back to the shared folder screen it goes all the way back to C:\ before it shows me my shared folders,through documents and settings etc.
I think this may be a possible security issue.

That sounds like a ps2client issue.

[Jones23]

Yes it is.
Rad Host Client doesn't have this issue. (that's why I use it)

regards Jones23

[vtecorona]

Who is the author of radhostclient? I wonder if it can be ran via command-line commands. Is the source available?