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I'm new.. A few BASIC questions..

6.1K views 57 replies 14 participants last post by  MaZa  
#1 ·
In order to play PS2 games in a PC, what do I need? A PS2 emulator and the games that I want to play? In what ways can an emulator be better than another one (which is the best?)?

I had a sega emulator once and all I needed to do was to download any game I wanted (they were called roms, and were very small in size) and run that game using the emulator. In PCSX2, do I need to rip the original PS2 CD/DVD? And how can I do that? (can I find "roms" in the internet?)
In what ways does the emulation in PS2 differ from all the other consoles?

Thanks!
 
#2 ·
Book said:
In order to play PS2 games in a PC, what do I need? A PS2 emulator and the games that I want to play? In what ways can an emulator be better than another one (which is the best?)?
The only one I know of with progress is PCSX2. You will require a PS2, some way of booting burned CD's/DVD's on that PS2, PS2Link, pksh, and dumpbios.elf. Load up PS2Link on the PS2, connect to it with pksh, and "eeexec dumpbios.elf", this will give you a bios file for use with the emulator. (Note: Search google for a full tutorial on BIOS Dumping, and DO NOT ask for the bios here.)
Book said:
I had a sega emulator once and all I needed to do was to download any game I wanted (they were called roms, and were very small in size) and run that game using the emulator. And how can I do that? (can I find "roms" in the internet?)
You shouldn't talk about downloading any 'roms' or PS2 ISO's here.
Book said:
In PCSX2, do I need to rip the original PS2 CD/DVD?
Yes you have to rip the original PS2 CD/DVD. Or you can use Pete's CDVD Plugin and play it directly from your CD/DVD Drive.
Book said:
In what ways does the emulation in PS2 differ from all theother consoles?
Other than it having a heck of alotta Processing Units I don't know :p, wait till Refraction or CKemu gets here, they can tell you better than I can :p
 
#3 ·
Hello, and welcome to the forums.

In order to 'emulate' the PS2 on your home PC, you need.

  • A PC (very powerfull one, and even then you won't get full speed - AMD64 4000+ / 1GB ram / GeForce 5xxx / 6xxx / 7xxx range).
  • The PS2 BIOS, this can be obtained by copying it from your PS2 (guides can be found via www.google.com). You can't discuss downloading or getting the BIOS illegally here.
  • An original PS2 DVD or CD based game (Thus you need a DVD drive)
  • PCSX2 - www.pcsx2.net, latest release is 0.8.1, you can get it from the downloads section.

PCSX2 is the only project of it's kind this far into development, thus there are no other emulators to compare it with!

DVD / CD copies, whilst are a form of Read Only Memory (ROM) they are actually called ISO's. you may not discuss downloading them here! (This forum does not support / discuss piracy). PCSx2 comes with drive reading plugins and ISO reading plugins so both original and backup play is possible.

PS2 emulation differs from other emulation in various ways, the most significant of which would be it's need for a super high end machine, unlike PS1 / N64 / SNES / NES or even DC emulation it needs huge amounts of CPU power given the power and technical difficulty of emulating this multi CPU bandwidth hungry beast. PCSX2 is also in 'early' stages of development, so unlike a SEGA MD / Genesis emulator, not many games work, or work with many bugs.

The 0.9 release however will be far more compatible, when it is released. You can browse the official site's compatibility list for details.
 
#4 ·
The only one I know of with progress is PCSX2. You will require a PS2, some way of booting burned CD's/DVD's on that PS2, PS2Link, pksh, and dumpbios.elf. Load up PS2Link on the PS2, connect to it with pksh, and "eeexec dumpbios.elf", this will give you a bios file for use with the emulator. (Note: Search google for a full tutorial on BIOS Dumping, and DO NOT ask for the bios here.)
In order to boot burned CDs in a PS2, I need a special chip, don't I? What is PS2Link, pksh and dumpbios?? (I still don't get what you people mean with "BIOS" and why people shouldn't discuss it here..)

You shouldn't talk about downloading any 'roms' or PS2 ISO's here.
What are ISO's? And why aren't roms allowed?
 
#5 ·
Book said:
In order to boot burned CDs in a PS2, I need a special chip, don't I? What is PS2Link, pksh and dumpbios?? (I still don't get what you people mean with "BIOS" and why people shouldn't discuss it here..)

What are ISO's? And why aren't roms allowed?
???? said:
You will NOT Ask for a BIOS, ISO (or pirated copy of a game), beta or how / where to download them.
Roms are pirated copies of games. BIOS Discussion I don't know about, but asking where to get it is not allowed.
 
#8 ·
The BIOS is copyright of SONY, thus downloading it is breaking the law as much as downloading a game is.
 
#9 ·
book, just understand that the BIOS is a file that comes with a PS2. Since Sony sells the BIOS along with the PS2, downloading it for free off the web is illegal. The same goes with games. Since corporations make and sell games so that they may have a paycheck at the end of the month, it is illegal to just download them for free off the Internet.

Please use a BIOS you dumped from your purchased PS2, and only play PS2 games that you bought.
 
#12 ·
guenthar said:
If I remember right putting a modchip in your ps2 is illegal so too get the bios you have too do something illegal so isn't discussing getting the bios against forum rules also?
I think you're missing the point. Truth be told we all know that a lot of people obtain the bios illegally. We're not stupid, however we don't want any discussion here so if for some reason you get caught you don't pull down this (once) beautiful community with you. We don't want any part in your illegal venture's.
 
#14 ·
I am not aware of this countries standpoint on modchips. You certainly can't find them in shops, and normally have to go to someone thats sells them privately. However many people I know have modchips, and people that sell them don't exactly get the police hammering down their door. It's more of a 'grey area' matter. Proberbly best left ouf of these forums, to save hassle and confusion.

There are (don't quote me on this, I ain't been awake long) ways to dump the bios without a modchip though, again google is your friend.
 
#17 ·
I was going to add how to extract the BIOS to my 'useless' guide, but alas it's locked and I've somewhat lost the motivation to try again. So for dumping your BIOS try www.google.com

But the top of it answers some of your question:

http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65015

You should have:
ROM0 - Main PS2 BIOS file [4.00 MB (4,194,304 bytes)]
ROM1 - Language / DVD Player Related [512 KB (524,288 bytes)]
ROM2 - Language Specific (Chinese Characters?) [512 KB (524,288 bytes)]
EROM - DVD Video Player [3.00 MB (3,145,728 bytes)]

The examples and information below is based off the Europe v01.90 [23-06-2003] Console BIOS. Thus some screens may vary.

Put these four files into the PCSX2 BIOS directory. Configure PCSX2 to use CDVDnull. Once this is done hit Run>Execute.
 
#18 ·
Book said:
How do I extract the BIOS from the PS2 and what files do I get?
After that, I put the files in the BIOS folder of the PCSX2 emulator?
Extracting (more commonly called "Ripping") the bios from your PS2 requires,
1. Some way to load burned CD-R's on your PS2.
2. Some kind of host program (naplink, pukklink, ps2link) I used ps2link.
3. A way to hook up your PS2 to your computer (naplink uses a host to host USB cable, pukklink and ps2link use the ethernet adaptor)
4. A PC side client for the program u chose (I used pksh).
5. Dumpbios.elf (Available on the PCSX2 Downloads page I believe).

firstly load your host program on your PS2, then connect to it with your client program. once your connected, run dumpbios.elf (in pksh that is "eeexec dumpbios.elf")
Code:
G:\PS2\pksh>pksh
pksh version 1.0
 Connecting to 192.168.0.10
pksh> eeexec dumpbios.elf
execee: loading host:dumpbios.elf
pksh>
loadelf: fname host:dumpbios.elf secname all
loadelf version 3.30
Input ELF format filename = host:dumpbios.elf
0 00400000 00057d70 ......
Loaded, host:dumpbios.elf
start address 0x400008
gp address 00000000
open name rom0:ROMVER flag 1 data 41378
open fd = 2
open name host0:SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.BIN flag 602 data 41378
open fd = 2
    write ok
open name host0:SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.ROM1 flag 602 data 41378
open fd = 2
    write ok
open name host0:SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.EROM flag 602 data 41378
open fd = 2
    write ok
open name host0:SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.ROM2 flag 602 data 41378
open fd = 2
    write ok
open name host0:SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.NVM flag 602 data 41378
open fd = 2
.NVM    write ok
that is how the dos console should look after a sucessful bios dump (in pksh at least :p)


this is how the PS2 screen should look on an NTSC TV (USA, Canada, Japan, thats you) Picture will appear messed up and or scrolling.

On a PAL TV (everywhere else) it should appear more normal with
Dumping NVM Completed OK
being your last line.

After this is completed you go back into ur clients folder and you will find 5 new files in there
Code:
 Directory of G:\PS2\pksh

08/28/2005  01:09 PM    <DIR>          .
08/28/2005  01:09 PM    <DIR>          ..
01/13/2005  09:21 AM           368,644 DUMPBIOS.ELF
01/06/2004  04:51 PM           106,577 pksh.exe
08/28/2005  01:09 PM         4,194,304 SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.BIN
08/28/2005  01:09 PM         3,145,728 SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.EROM
08/28/2005  01:09 PM             1,024 SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.NVM
08/28/2005  01:09 PM           524,288 SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.ROM1
08/28/2005  01:09 PM           524,288 SCPH-50001_BIOS_V9_USA_170.ROM2
               7 File(s)      8,864,853 bytes
All the SCPH files are the bios, just copy all those into ur PCSX2 Bios folder and run PCSX2, The bios will then be detected by the Emu and you can select it from the configure menu.

Hope this helped sortaish.

MiKE41
 
#22 ·
Anyway, I did what Mike suggested, and I tried to load a game that I had downloaded (umm, you probably call that an ISO, it's in a cdi file extension, anyway, if it's not allowed, don't answer me). I checked the "Post your pcsx2 screenshots here" thread and saw that game as well (RES Code Veronica). It said that I need to install some kind of patch in order to play, so my actual question is where do I get that patch, or any other bug-fixing update if there are any (why don't you incorporate all those in the current version of pcsx?)?

Thanks again!
 
#23 ·
Downloading a copyrighted game IN ANY FORM (Iso, "rom", Bin etc... they are just containers. What matters is whats inside) and mentioning it here will get you in serious trouble in this very forum.

Still, you are trying to get BIOS file legally from your PS2 yet you downloaded illegal pirate-game... oO Do you already own the game that you downloaded?

IF you own the game which ISO you downloaded from later, its STILL considered illegal. So i suggest you delete that downloaded file and rip the ISO from our own game disc with probram like ISOBuster, Alcohol120% etc... thats legal way to obtain "ROMS" to play with PCSX2.
 
#25 ·
Im sorry, im newb when it comes to PS2 things so i cannot help you out on that one. Following this thread is pretty much as usefull for me as its to you.
 
#26 · (Edited)
Book said:
Anyway, I did what Mike suggested, and I tried to load a game that I had downloaded (umm, you probably call that an ISO, it's in a cdi file extension, anyway, if it's not allowed, don't answer me). I checked the "Post your pcsx2 screenshots here" thread and saw that game as well (RES Code Veronica). It said that I need to install some kind of patch in order to play, so my actual question is where do I get that patch, or any other bug-fixing update if there are any (why don't you incorporate all those in the current version of pcsx?)?

Thanks again!
The current STABLE version is 0.8.1 which is the only build supported on this forum. The current DEVELOPMENT version is 0.9, and it not stable (which is why they haven't updated yet), plus it is required that you build it yourself, so too many things can change, so to make things easier, its just, not supported ;P

BTW the file I got that CK didn't say or explain is the NVM, which GiGaHeRz_ tells us is Non-volatile Memory. And CK now knows he missed the .NVM file :p
:
Code:
(MiKE41): CK: u missed the .NVM file :P
(@CKemu): thats auto generated........but true, ahh well too late now :P
So there are indeed 5 files.

Here are the patches if you still require them.