Xplorer carts

[Aergan]

...

A heck of a write up and thanks for the great read!

[sickle]

Yeah, great info, cheers for sharing

[Kukuruzo]

Hi everybody.
I wanted to try unirom, because I don't have a modchip in my scph 1002. I bought xplorer fx, it has a date on the box 3/5/99 and it (is?)/was 512kb.
I've downloaded unirom, burned the CD and tried to flash the cartridge but upgrade hanged and I had to restart PS. The flashing went wrong and now I want to unbrick the cartridge somehow. When the cartridge is plugged in PS (both on/off positions) then the console doesn't start at all, no white sony bootscreen( If I start PS1 without cart and plug it after loading x-flash, then everything hangs and I can't choose a ROM to flash.
I have decided to try x-killer, bought a ltp cord today and will buy pci ltp port tomorrow and will try reflash the cartridge using x-killer 0.56 with some ROM, but still not sure that I will succeed with it. There are lots of details as I understood. Any advices would be good. Please guys, help me bring this cart back to life somehow. Thanx)

[Aergan]

Hi everybody.
I wanted to try unirom, because I don't have a modchip in my scph 1002. I bought xplorer fx, it has a date on the box 3/5/99 and it (is?)/was 512kb.
I've downloaded unirom, burned the CD and tried to flash the cartridge but upgrade hanged and I had to restart PS. The flashing went wrong and now I want to unbrick the cartridge somehow. When the cartridge is plugged in PS (both on/off positions) then the console doesn't start at all, no white sony bootscreen( If I start PS1 without cart and plug it after loading x-flash, then everything hangs and I can't choose a ROM to flash.
I have decided to try x-killer, bought a ltp cord today and will buy pci ltp port tomorrow and will try reflash the cartridge using x-killer 0.56 with some ROM, but still not sure that I will succeed with it. There are lots of details as I understood. Any advices would be good. Please guys, help me bring this cart back to life somehow. Thanx)

You should be able to swap-trick into booting X-Flash CD without an Xplorer attached, once loaded then hotplug the Xplorer into the parallel I/O on the back of the PS1, force a flash, end up with a working Unirom. You can do the same thing to resurrect a dead Xplorer cart back to original firmware so long as you don't have a double-banked Xplorer FX (that becomes a pain but not impossible).

[Kukuruzo]

Ok, so my problem is solved. Squaresoft74 helped me a lot.
Aergan is right, do everything as he described to recover your cart.
Thanx guys!

[Aergan]

Glad it's all sorted!

[Nextria]

Hello,

I have a question, I have a Xplorer and years ago deleted a lot of cheats from it.
Now I want to flash the old rom back to it, but I am not sure how to do this safely, does any one have any tips ?

Also is it possible to remove the SST 29ee20 chip and solder in a other one (or dual rom) and flash it ?

[Squaresoft74]

Is this a regular Xplorer or an FX one ?
Can you post your current rom version infos ? (just hit select while on main menu)

[Nextria]

Is this a regular Xplorer or an FX one ?
Can you post your current rom version infos ? (just hit select while on main menu)

Sure here is the picture, Its A regular xplorer.

[Squaresoft74]

Oh it's an early undumped Dutch rom version you have there so it would be interesting to backup it first.
But that currently requires old hardware/software (that i have) to do that.
Do you have access to an old Win98 machine with a parallel port ?

As for flashing it, i can help you but only with 1.xx, 2.xx or 3.xx English/German roms.
You would only need to boot a custom disc for that (using a modchipped console or swap trick).

[Nextria]

Oh it's an early undumped Dutch rom version you have there so it would be interesting to backup it first.
But that currently requires old hardware/software (that i have) to do that.
Do you have access to an old Win98 machine with a parallel port ?

As for flashing it, i can help you but only with 1.xx, 2.xx or 3.xx English/German roms.
You would only need to boot a custom disc for that (using a modchipped console or swap trick).

Yeah I am from Holland And bought it years ago.
I don’t have access to an old computer.

I was looking in to making a usb to parallel cable,
And trying it on a vm but I am not sure if it would work?

Like I said many cheats got deleted does this affect the rom dump ?
Or are the cheat codes and rom two different things.
For me English is not problem. But I don’t speak German

I would be happy to dump it and hare it to complete the collection

[Squaresoft74]

I was looking in to making a usb to parallel cable,
And trying it on a vm but I am not sure if it would work?

Usb to parallel cable won't work and i couldn't get vm/parallel cable either, hence i bought an old cheap Win98 laptop with parallel port dedicated for that purpose.

Like I said many cheats got deleted does this affect the rom dump ?

Chance of finding old unused stock is pretty low so dumping used cartridges is still better than nothing.

Or are the cheat codes and rom two different things.

Cheats are part of the rom but can be downloaded/updated/uploaded from/to cartridge using Xlink.
So when dumping a used cartridge, you get a rom backup of what's curently inside, again, still better than nothing.

For me English is not problem. But I don’t speak German

English roms 1.xx, 2.xx or 3.xx are available for your cartridge so that should cover your needs.

I would be happy to dump it and hare it to complete the collection

Ok then if you can't find the needed stuff to do it i can suggest to do it for you if you're willing to lend the cartridge.
If you're not interested then just get kHn's Cheat Engine Compilation disc which contains everything you'll need to flash your cart.
Just keep in mind that once flashed with something else your current rom version will be lost forever if it hasn't been saved first.

[LameGuy64]

What about a PCI/PCIE I/O card that has a parallel port? I have one that's based on the CH384 chipset but I haven't tested it with caetla yet. Though in Linux/FreeBSD the parallel port portion appears as a standard parallel port device.

There are also some new motherboards as recent as socket 1151/AM4 that still has a parallel port on it, oftentimes as a pin header on the board.

[Squaresoft74]

From previous experiences some worked some didn't.
I had a PAR5008R (that i gave to kHn) and also an ExpressCard/34 (as suggested by Orion_) with a previous T410 laptop that somehow worked with CatFlap for inpout32 or Sicklebrick's patched Xlink 95.
Last one gave me various results depending if it was running under XP or Win7, and i often encountered freezing issues, communication time outs or mismatching checksums when doing multiple dump of a same cartridge.


Best way i found to backup any cartridge for now is:
- Boot X-flash from disc without cartridge inserted
- Insert the cartridge you want to dump when on main menu
- Hit R2 to detect eeprom (it won't be an issue if it's not identified)
- Hit L1 to copy eeprom to main memory
- Hotswap with an Xplorer cartridge
- Hit R1 to enable comms
- Run X-Killer from a Win98 machine with native parallel port.
- Tools -> Memory Editor
- Memory Region set to 00000000 - 00200000 [RAM]
- Hit "Download"
- from 00100000 with 20000 length for 128K roms
- from 00100000 with 40000 length for 256K roms
- from 00100000 with 60000 length for 384K roms
- from 00100000 with 80000 length for 512K roms

Main issue is that X-killer won't work properly/at all with newer Windows.
Unless someone could make replacement tool that works with modern OS, it's the best working solution i could find for that purpose.

I'm not a Linux user so i can't report any feedback with such setup.

[Nextria]

I spend almost all Monday trying to get windows 98 installed on al old laptop.
Only to found out it does not have a parallel port,

I would swear it had one :/.

So I bought an old windows 98 retro (gaming) PC,
I hope to dump the rom this weekend.

I also got an sort of cart/video vcd player it’s a long cart that goed is the multiout
And the parallel port. I have not tested it yet so I don’t know if it still work

squaresoft74 if I Just want to dump the explorer can I skip the swapping just loading to main memory
And dumping it.

[Squaresoft74]

So I bought an old windows 98 retro (gaming) PC,
I hope to dump the rom this weekend.

Great thank you for trying !

I also got an sort of cart/video vcd player it’s a long cart that goed is the multiout
And the parallel port. I have not tested it yet so I don’t know if it still work

Might be a Gamars PSX-001 or PSX-003, still worth dumping it too if you can.
But just don't try to reflash it with X-Flash !
kHn recently tried and told me it's currently unsupported by X-Flash and you might brick it (if PSX-003).

if I Just want to dump the explorer can I skip the swapping just loading to main memory
And dumping it.

Still boot X-Flash first without it, plug it in once in main menu then follow next steps.
Just skip the hotswap step since it's only needed to dump non Xplorer cartridges.
Your cart is a regular 256k Xplorer so download from 00100000 with 40000 length with X-Killer.
(you may dump it a few times and see if checksums match)

Get it from attachment.

[Nextria]

I got the pc today but I don’t have time for it until the weekend.
Also need to install windows 98 on it(ahh good times).

I also checked the other cart and it is a Gamars psx-003.
If I see correctly it’s a version 0.1 ntsc. It also only have ntsc and jap cheats on it
But it looks like it has never been messed with

So I will be dumping it too !

[danhans42]

I have added BIOS and ROM dumping functionality into a multi purpose serial tool I am working on that is built on the xflash sources, and it works perfectly. Currently has no CRC checks in place but every ROM dump so far has 100% verified against the original (verified with a flash programmer).

Ill see about pulling the code out of it and making it a standalone tool. I just need to finish off the PC side client (its written in Python3).

Its pretty quick as the files are only 128/256/384/512k - although nowhere near as quick as a parallel port.

Its a lot easier than working with legacy OS's/Emulation/old PC's and with the client being written in Python, it works well on any platform.

[Squaresoft74]

Sounds great, many thanks for your work Dan !

I also checked the other cart and it is a Gamars psx-003.
If I see correctly it’s a version 0.1 ntsc. It also only have ntsc and jap cheats on it
But it looks like it has never been messed with

So I will be dumping it too !

Many thanks !

[Nextria]

Hello,

So this morning after installing windows 98 for the 7th time (no joke)
I was ready to do some dumping.
X-killer worked like a charm and i dumped my rom 3 times as .bin and three times like .rom.

I hope the dumps are good, i did not flash my card yet.
I also tried to dump the gamars psx-003.
It says it dumped but x-killer can recognize the dump.

Can some check if they are okay