Lately I’ve somehow got it into my head that I want to try out the PS1DRV exploit and run some arbitrary code on my Playstation 2 sans modchip. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone with a modded PS2 to get the exploit onto a memory card. I do, however, know someone with a chipped PS1. Since the exploit only requires the ability to write to a PS1 memory card, it appears that should be all I need.
So, several days holed up in my computer room later, I’ve got a demo running in an emulator of a texture-mapped quadrangle with the face of Alan Thicke. PS1 homebrew documentation on the ‘net is surprisingly sparse; either most people who were interested just used Net Yaroze, or most people who were interested, had good documentation and tools around, and didn’t use Net Yaroze have since let their websites disappear. Code is even sparser. I often find myself thankful for some of the copycat kiddies on the web, who put up “ULTIMATE PSX DEV RESOURCE: WATCH THIS SPACE FOR CONSTANT UPdATES!@4″ sites, because they will put up the useful utilities and documentation of the day, and then promptly forget about their sites, leaving a nice time capsule long after the community has packed up shop and disappeared from the internet. I also find it weird that, for example, there are like 5 accurate SegaCD emulators, but no up-to-date documentation anywhere. What, they all reverse engineer it themselves? Or just swap info on IRC?
Anyway, I digress. The important thing is that, if I want to actually do PS2 development, I either need a $40 USB cable from Lik-Sang to upload my stuff, a $15 memory card reader (also from Lik-Sang), or a modded PS1/PS2 and multitudes of CDs to burn. So I’ve decided that what I actually want to do is PS1 development, on an emulator, for free. =]
One day I should put up my own console development resource site. I’ve accumulated all these fun bookmarks, but really there should be mirrors out there. I would be a good candidate for this because I want to develop for everything, and so have various docs kicking around for all sorts of platforms.