Free Vast Continues

[TnA]

I see it on the French forum.

Edit: I will take my MC + USB-Stick with me. Let's see if there is a PS2 to "play" with.

Btw.: Last DVDV-Test was "15"?

[dlanor]

the chkESRdisc.rar one work to tell difference between patched dvdv and normal one.

Sorry, but IMO this test.elf does not work correctly (yet).

I first tried it with a homebrew DVDV disc I prepared in Nero.
I then tried it with a similar homebrew DVDV disc prepared in ImgBurn.
Both these discs boot fine with the 'dvdv direct' variant of ESR.
But with your test.elf from chkESRdisc.rar they were not properly recognized.

Both discs gave identical results as follows:

With DMS4proSE active I got "PS2 DVD Disc detected"
That is acceptable, because with active chip dvdv discs boot like a normal game.
And in any case, this result was due to modchip interference.

Without modchip I got "DVDV detected" + "Normal DVD Video"
That is not acceptable, as it would lead to eternal BSOD at boot (when integrated with FMCB), as the DVD player would then attempt playing the disc.

The correct response without modchip should have been "DVDV detected" + "ESR DVDV", but your program only gives that response for DVDV backups of real game discs, apparently being dependent on a specific volume label used by these (which I didn't use for my homebrew discs).

Of course we can agree to only support ESR discs using that particular volume label, but it will be sure to come up as a 'sore point' many times in the future then. So it would be better to find some other way of testing, without demanding some playstation volume label that apparently isn't mandatory for the ESR boot method.

That also raises the question if it really is a mandatory label for commercial releases, or if there may be such discs around that don't have it. Cheat engines come directly to mind, since their manufacturers are not tolerated in the official Sony 'community', so they frequently avoid standard methods. But it may be that some normal games also lack that label, since the main boot routines don't seem to care about it. (Otherwise ESR would fail to boot my homebrew discs.)

Best regards: dlanor

[jimmikaelkael]

Thanks for this report
I will try to fix it asap.

[dlanor]

Many people have suggested checking for the SYSTEM.CNF file, as a sure sign of a bootable disc, which combined with recognition of the DVD Video format should always indicate an ESR disc. But this thinking is flawed, as it requires the ESR driver to be loaded in order to access the SYSTEM.CNF file properly.

What we need is a method for identifying the ESR nature (or lack of it) of a DVD Video disc, without having to access any files that would require active ESR drivers.

This can be done quite easily by checking for contents in the VIDEO_TS folder, which will never be empty for a real DVD-Video disc, but which is always empty for a game or homebrew bootable disc patched by any of the available dvdv patchers.

The only complication here is if we also want to recognize discs of the older dvdv type introduced for SMS, where the VIDEO_TS folder always did have content related to real DVD-Video material. But in my opinion no such support is necessary, since those discs were never bootable, and the disc detection we need for FMCB+ESR is mainly to be used for boot purposes. People who want an SMS-style dvdv disc in tray at boot time will probably disagree with my reasoning here, but once they adapt to the ESR dvdv standard they will get used to it.

Edit:
I realize that VIDEO_TS is not quite empty for the patched discs, but it doesn't contain any VOB files, which all real DVD-Video discs do, since those hold the real video content.

Best regards: dlanor

[bootsector]

I don't know how is CheckESRDisc programmed, but if there's a way to access the disk at a low level manner, the correct way to detect an ESR-Patched disc would be:

:. Read sector (LBA) 14
:. Check if there's a "+NSR" magic string starting from offset 25

For ESR patched disks, LBA 14 contains a backup of LBA 34, which is an UDF descriptor. On normal (read "unpatched") disks, LBA 14 is usually not used and contains only 0's.

Regards,

bootsector

[jimmikaelkael]

We were planning to use this method.
Memento patched discs have it too...

[bootsector]

We were planning to use this method.
Memento patched discs have it too...

That's correct! Feel free to take a look at esrpatch source code available from ESR thread!

Keep up the great job!

Regards,

bootsector

[ffgriever]

@bootsector:

Note, that it still has the flaw dlanor was writing about. It will be unable to detect homebrew DVDV discs... because they're not patched. They're simply created to contain all the structures needed to make it appear as DVDVideo (well, at least in most cases... I guess).

[bootsector]

@bootsector:

Note, that it still has the flaw dlanor was writing about. It will be unable to detect homebrew DVDV discs... because they're not patched. They're simply created to contain all the structures needed to make it appear as DVDVideo (well, at least in most cases... I guess).

You're right, I see his point now!

Anyway, I don't remember now if launcher2 uses cdvd library, but I *think* that it reads only the ISO9660 descriptor, ignoring the UDF descriptor. This way that would be possible to check if SYSTEM.CNF exists from the ISO9660 descriptor.

Well, anyway, I'm sorry if I'm saying bullshit. I will read the discussion from the beginning now to understand it right!

bootsector

[kevstah2004]

You mean the AUDIO_TS folder that's always empty
Do the VIDEO_TS.BUP & VIDEO_TS.IFO strictly have to be in the UDF file system to recognized as a dvd-v? or can they be placed in the IS09660 file system? if I extract the VIDEO_TS folder of an already patched ESR DVD-V and simply add it as a extra folder when rebuilding an image.
All PS2 games are ISO/UDF format "not sure about cd based games" would they even boot with just the 1SO9660 file system? or would it cause them to be recognized as a copied ps1 disc?