Problem dumping PSOne BIOS

Bent · June 12th, 2008, 02:49

I am attempting to dump my PSOne BIOS using the tools posted by Shendo in the sticky at the top of this forum. Dumping to the memory card seems to work fine, and I use my dexdrive to copy the .gme files to my computer. I then convert the .gme files to .mcr using the MemcardRex tool also posted in the thread. Everything seems to be good up to this point, but when I run the final step to merge the BIOS files, the resulting SCPHXXXX.bin is a blank file, if I open it in a hex editor it is all 00's. Does anyone have any idea what might be going wrong?

**ShendoXT** · June 12th, 2008, 09:17

Have you put Part1.mcr, Part2.mcr, etc... into the Parts directory and then merged the files?
If you haven't you must manually create Parts dir in the dir where BIOS merge.exe is.

Bent · June 12th, 2008, 17:54

Aha, that was the problem, thanks. Merge program was in the same directory as the part files. Not sure how I missed that in the directions, it seems pretty clear reading it now. Oh well, I am all set now, thanks for your help.

Bent · June 14th, 2008, 06:47

Sorry for the double post, but now I have another problem. ePSXe doesn't detect my BIOS dump, and if I set it manually I get this error:

ePSXe: Opcode [30-c06f0400] in PC [001ffee3] UNKNOWN [00000000:261:526]

when I try to run the BIOS. I also get illigal opcode messages in pSX. Could it be a bad dump somehow? Does anyone have the crc or md5 of the proper SCPH101 BIOS? I get a crc of 5740F69D.

**ShendoXT** · June 14th, 2008, 09:48

CRC-32: 171bdcec.
MD5: 6e3735ff4c7dc899ee98981385f6f3d0.

It is certainly a bad dump but it is very hard to detect what went wrong.
I remember that one person reported that he had to redump parts multiple times until he got 2 of them with the same checksum.
For all others it worked the first time (myself included).

I suggest that you delete what you dumped, completely clean your memorycard and start again.

Bent · June 15th, 2008, 01:52

Well I am not sure. I redumped it, used two different memory cards, and tried my dexdrive on two different computers, and all the .gme files have the same crc as the first time I dumped it. So it doesn't seem that's where my problem is. I tried converting to .mcr with both tools mentioned in the guide, and got different crcs for them. But once I merge the files I get the same 5740F69D crc as before. Do you happen to have what the crcs of either the .gme files or the .mcr files should be?

**ShendoXT** · June 15th, 2008, 07:09

Very strange. Could you please open the Hex editor, go to offset 16384 (0x4000) and paste 10 bytes from every part (converted .mcr file)?

Bent · June 15th, 2008, 19:30

Part 1: 13 00 08 3C 3F 24 08 35 80 1F
Part 2: 20 5B 78 0E 00 5B 8F A0 5B 51
Part 3: 40 A7 CD 00 07 40 9F 96 00 DF
Part 4: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Part 5: 21 12 42 92 82 12 24 22 14 22

Obviously part 4 looks suspicious, but as I said I did get the same result twice.

**ShendoXT** · June 15th, 2008, 19:51

It's all good (part 4 is supposed to look like that).
Might be something wrong with the merge application...
I'll take a look into it.

Here is how you can manually merge the files with hex editor:
Press Edit -> Goto and input the Hex offset of 4000.

Now delete all the data from the beginning to that offset.
Save the file.
It should be 112 KB in size.
Repeat all that for the remaining parts.

After you delete the data of the part5 go to the HEX offset of 10000.
Delete the data from that offset to the end of the file. (That is only required for the part 5).

Now make a new file called "merge.bat", open it with notepad and paste this:

Code:

@echo off
copy /b "part1.mcr" + "part2.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin"
copy /b "SCPHXXXX.bin" + "part3.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin"
copy /b "SCPHXXXX.bin" + "part4.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin"
copy /b "SCPHXXXX.bin" + "part5.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin"

cls
@exit

Save it and run it. You should get a SCPHXXXX.bin.

Bent · June 15th, 2008, 21:16

Same thing

5740F69D crc. I must have one byte screwed up somewhere or something. Would you like the crcs of the parts after I removed the headers?

Part 1: 4FB19053
Part 2: 74CFCF28
Part 3: 58F44154
Part 4: ED7A5212
Part 5: 6017F52A

**ShendoXT** · June 15th, 2008, 23:58

It seems that only your Part 1 is messed up. I have absolutely no idea what is causing that.
Have you made sure that the cards were completely clean when you started dumping?

I can't think of any reason besides mentioned why would only one part be corrupted.

I know that dumper works perfectly as many people dumped their bioses (SCPH-101 included) without any errors.
My only conclusion, unfortunately would be that something is wrong with a rom on the psx board.

Last edited by ShendoXT; June 16th, 2008 at 00:20..

Bent · June 16th, 2008, 02:53

Yeah that is strange. I formatted both the cards in my dexdrive before copying. I tried just deleting the files without formatting too, and ended up with the same thing. I guess I will try to work on it some more tomorrow. It's probably only a single bit wrong too, who knows? It's strange because the playstation has seen very little use and was brand new when I got it about 5 years ago. It works fine too. Well, thanks for your help Shendo, I will post here if I have any updates.

Bent · January 21st, 2009, 20:30

Sorry for the extreme post revival, but I decided to look into getting this BIOS dumped again and I happened to see that you had updated the dumper in July Shendo, and the last time I tried it was in June. Did this update have anything to do with my difficulty? I may try it again anyway, but I wanted to know if I was wasting my time.

**ShendoXT** · January 23rd, 2009, 21:20

Nope. Dumper just displays more info about your PlayStation before you start dumping.
BiosMerge is also updated but that just makes your merging easier and faster, there is no change to the dumping process of the BIOS.

Bent · January 27th, 2009, 15:52

Well I finally borrowed a friend's PSOne and did the dumping to find out what the problem was with mine, and I think I got a good file this time, this time the trimmed Part1 file has a crc of D9997704. For some reason on my first dump, the trimmed Part1 was filled with 00's from an offset of C000 to the end of the file at 1BFFF, more than half of the file. Not sure why, but I am not going to worry about it anymore, my PSOne works and I have a bios dump now. Thanks for your help

June 12th, 2008, 02:49	#1
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Problem dumping PSOne BIOS I am attempting to dump my PSOne BIOS using the tools posted by Shendo in the sticky at the top of this forum. Dumping to the memory card seems to work fine, and I use my dexdrive to copy the .gme files to my computer. I then convert the .gme files to .mcr using the MemcardRex tool also posted in the thread. Everything seems to be good up to this point, but when I run the final step to merge the BIOS files, the resulting SCPHXXXX.bin is a blank file, if I open it in a hex editor it is all 00's. Does anyone have any idea what might be going wrong?

June 15th, 2008, 19:51	#9
ShendoXT Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Croatia Posts: 4,605	It's all good (part 4 is supposed to look like that). Might be something wrong with the merge application... I'll take a look into it. Here is how you can manually merge the files with hex editor: Press Edit -> Goto and input the Hex offset of 4000. Now delete all the data from the beginning to that offset. Save the file. It should be 112 KB in size. Repeat all that for the remaining parts. After you delete the data of the part5 go to the HEX offset of 10000. Delete the data from that offset to the end of the file. (That is only required for the part 5). Now make a new file called "merge.bat", open it with notepad and paste this: Code: @echo off copy /b "part1.mcr" + "part2.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin" copy /b "SCPHXXXX.bin" + "part3.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin" copy /b "SCPHXXXX.bin" + "part4.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin" copy /b "SCPHXXXX.bin" + "part5.mcr" "SCPHXXXX.bin" cls @exit Save it and run it. You should get a SCPHXXXX.bin.

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

June 12th, 2008, 09:17	#2
ShendoXT Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Croatia Posts: 4,605	Have you put Part1.mcr, Part2.mcr, etc... into the Parts directory and then merged the files? If you haven't you must manually create Parts dir in the dir where BIOS merge.exe is.

June 12th, 2008, 17:54	#3
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Aha, that was the problem, thanks. Merge program was in the same directory as the part files. Not sure how I missed that in the directions, it seems pretty clear reading it now. Oh well, I am all set now, thanks for your help.

June 14th, 2008, 06:47	#4
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Sorry for the double post, but now I have another problem. ePSXe doesn't detect my BIOS dump, and if I set it manually I get this error: ePSXe: Opcode [30-c06f0400] in PC [001ffee3] UNKNOWN [00000000:261:526] when I try to run the BIOS. I also get illigal opcode messages in pSX. Could it be a bad dump somehow? Does anyone have the crc or md5 of the proper SCPH101 BIOS? I get a crc of 5740F69D.

June 14th, 2008, 09:48	#5
ShendoXT Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Croatia Posts: 4,605	CRC-32: 171bdcec. MD5: 6e3735ff4c7dc899ee98981385f6f3d0. It is certainly a bad dump but it is very hard to detect what went wrong. I remember that one person reported that he had to redump parts multiple times until he got 2 of them with the same checksum. For all others it worked the first time (myself included). I suggest that you delete what you dumped, completely clean your memorycard and start again.

June 15th, 2008, 01:52	#6
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Well I am not sure. I redumped it, used two different memory cards, and tried my dexdrive on two different computers, and all the .gme files have the same crc as the first time I dumped it. So it doesn't seem that's where my problem is. I tried converting to .mcr with both tools mentioned in the guide, and got different crcs for them. But once I merge the files I get the same 5740F69D crc as before. Do you happen to have what the crcs of either the .gme files or the .mcr files should be?

June 15th, 2008, 07:09	#7
ShendoXT Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Croatia Posts: 4,605	Very strange. Could you please open the Hex editor, go to offset 16384 (0x4000) and paste 10 bytes from every part (converted .mcr file)?

June 15th, 2008, 19:30	#8
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Part 1: 13 00 08 3C 3F 24 08 35 80 1F Part 2: 20 5B 78 0E 00 5B 8F A0 5B 51 Part 3: 40 A7 CD 00 07 40 9F 96 00 DF Part 4: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Part 5: 21 12 42 92 82 12 24 22 14 22 Obviously part 4 looks suspicious, but as I said I did get the same result twice.

June 15th, 2008, 21:16	#10
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Same thing 5740F69D crc. I must have one byte screwed up somewhere or something. Would you like the crcs of the parts after I removed the headers? Part 1: 4FB19053 Part 2: 74CFCF28 Part 3: 58F44154 Part 4: ED7A5212 Part 5: 6017F52A

June 15th, 2008, 23:58	#11
ShendoXT Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Croatia Posts: 4,605	It seems that only your Part 1 is messed up. I have absolutely no idea what is causing that. Have you made sure that the cards were completely clean when you started dumping? I can't think of any reason besides mentioned why would only one part be corrupted. I know that dumper works perfectly as many people dumped their bioses (SCPH-101 included) without any errors. My only conclusion, unfortunately would be that something is wrong with a rom on the psx board. Last edited by ShendoXT; June 16th, 2008 at 00:20..

June 16th, 2008, 02:53	#12
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Yeah that is strange. I formatted both the cards in my dexdrive before copying. I tried just deleting the files without formatting too, and ended up with the same thing. I guess I will try to work on it some more tomorrow. It's probably only a single bit wrong too, who knows? It's strange because the playstation has seen very little use and was brand new when I got it about 5 years ago. It works fine too. Well, thanks for your help Shendo, I will post here if I have any updates.

January 21st, 2009, 20:30	#13
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Sorry for the extreme post revival, but I decided to look into getting this BIOS dumped again and I happened to see that you had updated the dumper in July Shendo, and the last time I tried it was in June. Did this update have anything to do with my difficulty? I may try it again anyway, but I wanted to know if I was wasting my time.

January 23rd, 2009, 21:20	#14
ShendoXT Moderator Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Croatia Posts: 4,605	Nope. Dumper just displays more info about your PlayStation before you start dumping. BiosMerge is also updated but that just makes your merging easier and faster, there is no change to the dumping process of the BIOS. __________________ Shendo's software blog Core i5 2400 3.1 Ghz \| ASRock H67M \| GTX460 768Mb \| 8GB DDR3 1333 \| 1500 Gb HDD Grundig VLC 7121 C (1080p) 32" \| Razer DeathAdder \| Logitech G110 \| Windows 7 x64 Don't PM or ask me about VMP-MCR conversions. I will ignore you if you do.

January 27th, 2009, 15:52	#15
Bent Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: USA Posts: 9	Well I finally borrowed a friend's PSOne and did the dumping to find out what the problem was with mine, and I think I got a good file this time, this time the trimmed Part1 file has a crc of D9997704. For some reason on my first dump, the trimmed Part1 was filled with 00's from an offset of C000 to the end of the file at 1BFFF, more than half of the file. Not sure why, but I am not going to worry about it anymore, my PSOne works and I have a bios dump now. Thanks for your help