Start the drive by pressing a button instead of by closing the lid in japanese consoles

[pcortesduoc]

Hello, I was wondering if it would be possible to keep the lid sensor pressed permanently in japanese consoles.
The way it works right now is:

• Turn on the console with either the lid sensor unblocked, or with no game on the drive.
• While in the tonyhax screen, put in a japanese disc.
• Block the lid sensor. If it was already blocked, then I must unblock it first, and then block it again, or else the drive won't start spinning.

This means that I have to unblock and reblock the sensor every single time I turn on the console, which is a bit inconvenient. So my question is: Would it be possible to start the drive with the press of a button instead?

If something like that was implemented, then we could do the following:

• Block the lid sensor permanently with tape or something similar
• Turn on the console with no disc inserted
• Once in the tonyhax screen, insert the japanese disc, and then press X to start the drive

This way, we wouldn't have to keep unblocking the sensor constantly. My current way of blocking it is a bit convoluted lol and it doesn't let me close the lid, so I would really like to just keep it blocked permanently with tape and then close it whenever I want.

[alex-free]

Hello, I was wondering if it would be possible to keep the lid sensor pressed permanently in japanese consoles.

The way it works right now is:

• Turn on the console with either the lid sensor unblocked, or with no game on the drive.

• While in the tonyhax screen, put in a japanese disc.

• Block the lid sensor. If it was already blocked, then I must unblock it first, and then block it again, or else the drive won't start spinning.

This means that I have to unblock and reblock the sensor every single time I turn on the console, which is a bit inconvenient. So my question is: Would it be possible to start the drive with the press of a button instead?

If something like that was implemented, then we could do the following:

• Block the lid sensor permanently with tape or something similar

• Turn on the console with no disc inserted

• Once in the tonyhax screen, insert the japanese disc, and then press X to start the drive

This way, we wouldn't have to keep unblocking the sensor constantly. My current way of blocking it is a bit convoluted lol and it doesn't let me close the lid, so I would really like to just keep it blocked permanently with tape and then close it whenever I want.

Hmm, what boot method is this occurring on? And does it happen on the latest version?

For example, I can use a flashed GameShark cart with the Tonyhax International ROM on it with a Japanese console that has the lid sensor blocked at all times. That is definitely supposed to be a supported use case for other boot methods too though... maybe I'm missing some edge case? For the ROM method, last I checked I could do this just fine:

I) turn on the console.
2) Tonyhax International loader starts instead of the Sony boot screen/bios/memory card manager.
3) Japanese disc spins for a few seconds, stops, and then you can swap in the disc and press X on the controller to boot it.

[pcortesduoc]

I'm using the freepsxboot memory card images. I've used tonyhax_scph-7000_slot2.mcr on every version i've tried so far.
I just installed 1.1.8 and it still works the same way.

To clarify: the disc tries to spin up when I turn the console on, but first I need to wait for the normal PS1 menu to appear so that I can select the memory card manager and boot into tonyhax. So because of that, I have to turn the console on without a disc (or unblock the lid sensor beforehand) so that it doesn't try to boot into the disc as normal.

Once I'm in tonyhax, the instruction tells me to put in a japanese disc and block the lid. The drive won't spin at all until I unblock the lid and block it again. So for example, if I turn the console on with no disc, with the lid sensor blocked, wait until the ps1 menu shows up, insert a japanese game, then enter the memory card manager to launch tonyhax, it still won't know that the game is already there until I unblock the sensor and block it again.

[alex-free]

Oh, that makes sense. That's the intended behavior for the FreePSXBoot exploit boot method. What your asking is unfortunately most likely not possible. Let me explain:

You need to have the lid sensor unblocked, or alternatively no disc in the drive with the lid sensor blocked to be able to access the Memory Card Manager option in the PSX Boot menu.

Once the FreePSXBoot exploit starts the Tonyhax International loader, the drive is not in a 'licensed' state. What this means is that no SCEI wobble from a real Japanese game disc has been read to authenticate the CD drive.

I don't think there is a way to do this without physically unblocking and then blocking the lid sensor to get the CD drive into SCEI wobble read mode. There might be a command that can force it into this mode, but if there isn't this is simply impossible to implement.

You can however achieve what you want, just not using the FreePSXBoot method. If you buy any cheat cartridge for the PlayStation, you can flash it with the tonyhax international rom flasher CD. So then you could do this:

1. Tape down the lid sensor permanently.
2. Insert the flashed cart into the back of the console.
3. Put the real Japanese game disc in the console and power it on. Tonyhax International will start immediately instead of the Sony logo/boot menu. It will automatically spin up the real Japanese game disc, and stop it. Then you can put in the backup CD-R or import disc without ever touching the lid sensor again!

Those cheat carts are super cheap, I recommend it for your desired use case.

[pcortesduoc]

Ahh I see, thanks for the answer. I don't think i've ever seen anyone selling cheat cartridges in my country sadly but I'll be on the lookout.

[alex-free]

Ahh I see, thanks for the answer. I don't think i've ever seen anyone selling cheat cartridges in my country sadly but I'll be on the lookout.

eBay has a ton, I have 2 GameShark v3.0 Pro cartridges but any should work. There are also some reproduction cartridges available on Alibaba. Now I do not know if those can be flashed to the Tonyhax International loader, but in theory it should work the same as any other cart.

Thanks for the feedback!

[pcortesduoc]

Hey, long time no see. I've been using tonyhax international through freepsxboot all year and it's been fantastic, but I still wanted to try the cartridge method you recommended.

I just bought a cheap "power replay" cartridge from aliexpress to see if it would work on my japanese console. It took me a while to set it up but I can finally say it works perfectly :) now I don't need to redo the sensor trick every time I wanna play a burned disc.

I mostly followed the instructions from this issue, but it was a bit hard to understand. I also burned a bunch of CDs incorrectly which caused me extra problems.
So you can probably do this more efficiently, but basically for me it went like this:

• Burn unirom into a cd-r.
• Use UltraISO to open the tonyhax rom flasher bin/cue file. The free trial version works fine.
• Add a new folder named THAX, and inside, add the tonyhax rom file. Save all changes.
• Burn this updated image into another cd-r.
• Boot into unirom on the console (i used the freepsxboot memory card that i had from before).
• Go to the boot CD option and then stop the disc. Now, with the sensor still held down, swap into the updated rom flasher cd.
• Hit circle and go into file browser.
• If you burned the disc correctly then you should now see the folder we created.
• Inside is the rom file. Hit x, insert your power replay cart and let unirom do its magic.

After following these steps, everything worked correctly :)

I initially made a mess of things by trying to add the files through windows explorer:
I extracted the files from the unirom image into a folder, added the rom folder through windows explorer and then tried to burn all of that into a CD. Everything looked fine on the computer, but after booting into unirom, I couldn't actually see any of the files on the file browser, and sometimes unirom would seemingly crash and restart the console or something.

After that, I added the rom to the other cd in the same way, through win explorer and imgburn. Once again, I could boot into the cd through tonyhax, but i couldnt access any files through unirom. I also couldn't install unirom into the cartridge, since the installer would fail to detect the necessary files.

I tried switching to the freepsxboot version of unirom, but the same issues persisted.
At this point I almost gave up, thinking maybe unirom just couldnt access burned discs on a japanese console because of the region lock issue, but I decided to try again.

I burned unirom, this time completely unmodified, into a cd and it actually worked correctly and could access itself on the file browser as well as install to the cartridge. That's how I figured out I must have messed up the burning process. So I installed UltraISO and added the tonyhax rom file through there, and then used imgburn to burn it into a cd.

Finally, now I could access the rom file from the file browser and install tonyhax international into the cartridge.
I imagine you might be able to use UltraISO to add the rom file directly to the unirom cd and skip some steps, but I don't wanna waste another cd trying this out.

NXFlash didn't work for me similar to the other user, but now I'm wondering if maybe it had something to do with burning the file incorrectly... oh well.

The only thing I'm worried about now is updating it, I guess I'll have to burn a new cd for that when the time comes, so maybe i'll only update once a year or something like that.

Anyways here's some images: