Test PS2 game burning question?

Hello! New Test PS2 owner here with a few noob questions about burning the games. I already patched the ISOs I want to play, but what speed do I burn at and what DVDs do I use? I have a bunch of DVD+Rs, will those work? Thanks in advance!

 

Speed is very subjective and you'll get all sorts of answers. Consensus is that slower is better; I use 4x personally.

I use DVD-R but DVD+R should work. Why not try it out and find out?

What patching are you referring to, ESR?

 

Thanks for the fast response. Sorry about not being too clear, I meant the master disc patch via this tool.

 

Concensus is therefore formed by people who don't understand how writers work or have ever actually done any testing of their burns. Or living in the 90s

 

I actually have, lol. On my Dreamcast, it really only likes CDs burnt at 8x. Anything higher or lower won't boot or just will come out as an audio CD even if I'm using the same ISO.

 

Very true, like Adam noted, it's all subjective, depends on your burner, medium etc, like I can bur Taiyo yudens at 16x and they play on my DC, but the cheap riteks or even tdks suck and I have to burn 8x on my toshiba, or 4x on my Dell xps

 

I suggest getting yourself some DVD-R discs. While DVD+R will work, DVD-R is far better in the long run.

In regards to booting, be sure to patch it as a master disc (as we've covered already). As someone that used that tool quite a lot for PS1 images I can say it's nice that it works. I can't confirm how well the patching for PS2 master discs work but I'm sure it's fine. I also suggest running it in administrator mode as it gave me some issues early on when I didn't.

For burning your disc, it is really varied on what the *best* speed of burning is. I find that 4x speed works for me for ps1/ps2/xbox/dreamcast/general purpose disc images/live boot discs, but most of my drives over time just don't support that speed anymore, so my burning software gives the closest one to it. In the end I've ended up with 6.6 burning speed most of the time lol.

Good luck to you. Get some component cables for that unit while you're at it.

 

The aim of burning, is to have the least jitter (noise) as possible. Burning at the lowest speeds, does not guarantee that you will achieve the best burn result. In fact, it has been known to sometimes result in worse quality than burning at some higher speed.
I would just go for the highest speed, unless it doesn't result in the best quality burns.

@OP: don't use DVD+R discs. In general, most PlayStation 2 consoles do not fare well with DVD+R discs. You will also want to use high-quality discs like those Verbatim DVD-R discs that were manufactured by either Taiyo Yuden or Mitsubishi.
If you don't do these, then the laser may be subjected to higher strain.

 

Ok, cool. Well I burnt my first game (Persona 3 master patched) at 8x using ImgBurn and a Memorex DVD-R (only ones they had) and it just gives me a "Disc Read Error". What do I try now?

 

Change the brand of disc?
You never mentioned the model of DEX unit that you owned, but the older ones don't read cheap discs well.
Most of the ones that I see out there are early A/B-chassis units, so they are not going to love cheap discs.

At worst, just get a HDD unit and use OPL to play your games. You may be better off playing your games with a CEX unit though, as they are more common and aren't crippled in MagicGate functionality (hence it's possible to boot them with FMCB/FHDB, without discs!)
While the later DEX models have MagicGate KELF decryption support, they are rarer.

BTW, it's also possible that your DEX has a worn laser, given how old and heavily used they all are.
You could also try to turn on the "diagnosis" option in the browser. The CD/DVD drive will auto-adjust the gain (and radial skew for the B-chassis).
It doesn't mean that cheap discs weren't ever the cause of the read problems, however.

 

Yeah, it seems to be the DVD side of the laser that has died/is dying. It will not play a movie or burnt game, but will play a legit game just fine. I think its just worn down and needs to be replaced. Oh well, thank you for the help!

 

DEX units cannot play DVD Video discs, so the only thing that you are unable to play is burned games....

 

The diagnosis option can access and write some of the internal calibration data?
Could you explain a bit more, sp193? What about retail units?

 

According to @l_oliveira, it doesn't ever update the EEPROM, so the new data only stays in RAM.
This setting is present in all models. I suppose that the user manual would have mentioned it.
The only thing that is adjusted on all models, is the gain. Only the B/B'-chassis (SCPH-30001 GH-004/GH-005) had the AUTO TILT motor, so it was the only model that could adjust radial skew.

As of now, it is not known whether there are any service commands for the PS2 side of the MECHACON.
The service command maxtrix seems very different from the normal PS2 N and S-command tables.

 

Well, all ps2 drives could use a tool that takes the new gain setting and writes it to eeprom.
Out of the many console's I've seen, most had non working drives, some worked but were on their last legs, none was really good.
This is from earlier 30002 models up to the latest 90002 ones.
(And PSX drives.. yea )

 

Best way of master patching discs:

Find SONY disc making program (official CDVDGEN) which makes "signed master disc images".
Extract boot elf file, system.cnf and disc authoring information (game ID, maker ID, volume name and authoring date)

Fill all that on CDVDGEN place system.cnf, elf boot file and a adequate size dummy file in the program and generate a iso.

Open the generated ISO on a hex editor and copy the 4096 bytes from 0x7000 0x7fff into the existing ISO of the commercial game. If you believe the logo is tampered you can replace the whole first 32KB of the disc image into the existing image. Burn it and the game should boot perfectly on ANY TEST.

That works on ANY games, even the ones the existing master disc patcher can't patch.

Edit: ESR doesn't work on Debugging Stations or on the PS2 TOOL. Why? They're designed to actively refuse reading DVD-VIDEO discs.

 

The master disc patcher can patch everything as long as the system.cnf follows the sony naming convention for executables, which isn't the case for most homebrew iso files for some reason.

 

I had the patcher refuse to patch retail game ISO images more than once.

 

I've never had mixed luck with Memorex brand CD-R and DVD-R media in consoles. The Mini DVD-Rs worked in my GameCube however the rest seemed to be a crap shoot. I'd highly recommend trying better media if possible. Lots of the stuff you can pickup in a store cheap is pretty poor quality.