Making a PSX cd that boots in a modded PSX
.oO Making A PSX CD Oo.
1) first combine all your files into one big executeable file. use 'combine' to do so and also to combine libps with your files. this gives you one big exe file that should be under 2meg.
2) once u have 1 executable file you must make sure the filesize of it is a multiple of 2048 bytes. this is required to for the psx to correctly load the exe file from cd. if it is not 2048 bytes, use ExeFixUp to make it so.
3) next you have to either name your file PSX.EXE or make up a system.cnf file for it. this can be gotten from any psx cd, just change the name of the exe file in it to the name of your exe file.
5) next make a cd image of all your data. i use ez cd pro 2 (by adaptec). it shouldnt really matter what u use as long as you follow the guidelines below: select 'close disc' but not disc at once (although DAO only really matters if you include more than 1 track).
make sure mode is 'mode 2 XA' format.
set filenames to be LEVEL 1 iso with version numbers.
6) once u have your cd image u are almost finished. you just have to license it first to make sure it contains data expected on it by the psx at boot time. to do this use bootedit. open the image in bootedit and select a region to license it for. then patch it!
7) now simply burn the cd, whack it in your psx and play it :)
.oO A list of the limitations that are placed on psx cds. Oo.
A standard PlayStation CD, played at normal speed can be up to 71 minutes, 59 seconds and 74 sectors long. This gives a total capacity of 624Mb:
71(minutes) x 60 (seconds) = 4260 (seconds total length)
4260 (seconds) x 75 (sectors per second) + 74 (sectors) = 319574 (total sectors)
319574 (sectors) x 2048 (bytes of data in a sector) = 654487552 (bytes)
= 639148 (Kb)
= 624 (Mb)
as well as this there are sometimes problems accessing the last 3 minutes of ANY psx disc no matter what size they are. because of this psx cds often include a file such as zzzzzzzz.zzz that is about 35meg and just full of zeros. this is a dummy file that is never used by any program, but takes up the last 3 minutes of any disc due to its filename placing it last in the image. this is a way of getting around the problem. if u wish to do something similar on a homemade disc just copy the above file from a commercially produced psx cd. most title have a file such as this however sometimes it is called znull.dat, zdummy.bin etc
There can be up to 99 tracks.
Track 1 will contain all of the PlayStation specific information, such as the executable and any data that it should require. Other tracks (2-99) may hold standard CD audio files.
There are limitations on the maximum number of files and directories allowed on a PlayStation disc - roughly 40 directories, each with a maximum of 30 files.
The actual limits depend on the length of the filenames. This is because when the psx reads a cd it stores all the filesnames and locations on the disk and it only allows 2048 bytes for doing so. so if there are more files than this it wont store the last files and so it cant find them.
Although CD-DA tracks are physically not in track 1, they do appear in the disc's Table of Contents. The advantage is that you can use cdSearchfile to find them - the disadvantage is that they impact on the number of files per directory limitation.
this means that you cant have lots of files or lots of directories. this probably doesnt matter much to those of you that just want to put a demo on cd, but for those of you that wish to include MANY other data files BEWARE!!! :)
streaming video and audio cant can cause many headaches to get working. generally if you use just a video STR without any audio u can burn it to disc ok, but if you use a STR with audio or an XA it expects to be burnt to disc as XA data not normal data. the only way i know of atm of doing so is by using sony cd tools. i have never personally done this though so i cant help u out any more than that.
