Recommended for Dev

[bowbe]

Hey guys, I have been lurking on this forum for a month or so, and two weeks ago I finally decided to break down and purchase a Gameshark (v1.3, only $16 at the local Wal-Mart) to softmod my PS2. So far, so good. I managed to get FMCB installed and all of my discs work perfectly with ESR (yay for no coasters).

That aside, I've got a few questions.

One. Aside from the tutorials on ps2dev and a few pages I've found online, are there any recommended references (books, etc.) that might help me out for PS2 development?

Two. Are there any specific distros that are good for ps2dev? I'm thinking about reconfiguring Gentoo, Ubuntu, or Slax to have the ps2dev tools and burning it to a livecd or make it bootable from a thumbdrive. (only because space is limited on my laptop hd and I don't feel like wiping the drive)

Lastly. Is there an ELF other than uLE that handles gamesaves (copying to and from USB)? I was hoping there was a program that worked and looked like the PS2's native browser (gui, icons, straightforward save names), but I didn't find any...

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[dlanor]

Lastly. Is there an ELF other than uLE that handles gamesaves (copying to and from USB)? I was hoping there was a program that worked and looked like the PS2's native browser (gui, icons, straightforward save names), but I didn't find any...

There is no homebrew gamesave browser available which displays the same 3D icons that the Sony browser shows.

But you can easily use the uLE FileBrowser to handle gamesaves by the same gamesave titles as shown by the Sony browser.

Simply browse to the MC root directory and then press the L1 button to bring up the Display+Sort popup, where you can choose how files and folders should be displayed and sorted.

The default display mode is "Filename + Details" as that is most useful for homebrew work, but for gamesave usage it is preferable to switch mode to "Game Title + Details".

You can also switch the sort mode to have the gamesaves sorted by "Game Title" instead of the normal "Filename" sort, but I prefer to keep that even when displaying titles, because this way the saves from different region versions of the same game are kept separate. If I used the "Game Title" sort they would be mixed together, and it would be hard to tell them apart, as the game titles shown never show the region info.

Best regards: dlanor

[E P]

Lastly. Is there an ELF other than uLE that handles gamesaves (copying to and from USB)? I was hoping there was a program that worked and looked like the PS2's native browser (gui, icons, straightforward save names), but I didn't find any...

Nport shows the save icons and when you hold down triangle with the cursor on a particular save it shows the selected game icon blown up to full screen. Anyway, N-port is an open source ps2dev program that lets you backup and manage saves through network via inLink but without support for USB. Unfortunately, it's woefully obsolete now as it lacks support for saving and restoring attributes for the backups it creates. So that's just one of the many reasons why we mostly recommend uLaunchELF here.

I just thought I would point out nport as it's open source, and it does do a few things that none of the other save managers do that's if it's of any interest.