PS3 OPL and more on PS3

Pacorretaco

Pacorretaco

Member
Hello and thanks to everyone for the astounding work. Great people here.

I too have a semi b/c CECH-C04 and am interested in Scarface being playable hehe. Also I have been trying to get OPL running with no sucess. I tried with isos (most i made myself and tested on PCSX2) of OPL 1580DB, OPL v0.8, v0.91 (shared by kozarovv). v0.93, v0.94... Most of these even work on my Slim 2504 (with no network or USB support ofc) But most I get on C04 is black screen.
I came across a reddit "guide" to do this which made me think It would be doable easily... but no (also has conflicting information indicating "OPL only works on CECH-A through CECH-E consoles, due to the presence of the Emotion Engine chip on those models"), and after lots of reading and searching, I am beginning to think it is only actually possible for "A and B" models with EE CPU. Has anyone so far have really tested? Or am I doing something very wrong?
For me, the main appeal of the fancy shiny models was this in my mind (OPL, physical discs and peripherials and Scarface hehe) but pretty leaning towards the slim for everything now (Keep in mind the PAL 60GB semi is the best we can do in Europe).
Please, give me some light. Thank you and cheers.
 
Pacorretaco said:
Hello and thanks to everyone for the astounding work. Great people here.

I too have a semi b/c CECH-C04 and am interested in Scarface being playable hehe. Also I have been trying to get OPL running with no sucess. I tried with isos (most i made myself and tested on PCSX2) of OPL 1580DB, OPL v0.8, v0.91 (shared by kozarovv). v0.93, v0.94... Most of these even work on my Slim 2504 (with no network or USB support ofc) But most I get on C04 is black screen.
I came across a reddit "guide" to do this which made me think It would be doable easily... but no (also has conflicting information indicating "OPL only works on CECH-A through CECH-E consoles, due to the presence of the Emotion Engine chip on those models"), and after lots of reading and searching, I am beginning to think it is only actually possible for "A and B" models with EE CPU. Has anyone so far have really tested? Or am I doing something very wrong?
For me, the main appeal of the fancy shiny models was this in my mind (OPL, physical discs and peripherials and Scarface hehe) but pretty leaning towards the slim for everything now (Keep in mind the PAL 60GB semi is the best we can do in Europe).
Please, give me some light. Thank you and cheers.
Click to expand...
i moved your post to its own thread.

you dont need opl to run ps2 game on ps3.
 
Coro said:
i moved your post to its own thread.

you dont need opl to run ps2 game on ps3.
Click to expand...

Thank you, yes I am aware OPL is not needed to run ps2 games on a PS3 at all. As i said, I am happy to run them from physical discs or thanks to the amazing work done, mounding them from hdd using various homebrew. BUT please lets not get sidetracked here.

What i would like is to confirm wether OPL can indeed be used to load PS2 games from SMB in a semi b/c CECH-C model.
I saw big guys here interested in this as well, and it is implied that it should work but I did not find anything conclusive actually. As far as I understand, @jonnie got it working on a CECHA (years ago; his link for the OPL iso he used is down, but I tried with the versions he mentioned with no luck as well), @kozarovv was surprised to hear about certain OPL versions loading in slim model but blackscreening in gxemu. For me it is something worth testing and I would be happy to try suggestions. Maybe I am just doing something wrong.

And sorry. I thought my post really belonged there. I saw there was recent activity regarding SCARFACE and gxemu, and I supposed some other people in similar situation would be interested in this too. I am aware this is 2020. But still.

Cheers
 
Thank for chiming in, Sandungas. Yes I had been reading those posts, which are what made me make an account and join the discussion. In fact I had initially posted in that particular thread, but moderators moved my post to this separate thread. Which I suppose is well done if we are going to talk more about OPL.

That being said, I think I understand that it is probably more trouble than what it is worth trying to make fixes for individual games for gxemu, since It would require a personalized build of the entire firmware, and there are still not even good tools to make that process reasonably easy and quick, especially to go trying and trying. And thus no high hopes for Scarface or AREA-51 on gxemu yet.

Now regarding OPL again, I still would like to hear more opinions on it. @Coro says he thinks there is no support for USB or Network outside the A and B models, which at this point sounds like the truth to me... And therefore a no-go for OPL.
But the thing is, it is 2020...
We don't wanna think. We wanna know.

I also read people saying that Both the full and the semi b/c models supported it. (@Naked_Snake_1995) Which also made sense.
So that is what I made the post for. To find out. There's so much conflicting information on this.

Cheers
 
Pacorretaco said:
Thank for chiming in, Sandungas. Yes I had been reading those posts, which are what made me make an account and join the discussion. In fact I had initially posted in that particular thread, but moderators moved my post to this separate thread. Which I suppose is well done if we are going to talk more about OPL.

That being said, I think I understand that it is probably more trouble than what it is worth trying to make fixes for individual games for gxemu, since It would require a personalized build of the entire firmware, and there are still not even good tools to make that process reasonably easy and quick, especially to go trying and trying. And thus no high hopes for Scarface or AREA-51 on gxemu yet.
Click to expand...
The root of the problem is the PS2 emulator specific for PS3 models CECHC and CECHE (with the PS2 GS hardware) named dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self doesnt allows to load external CONFIG files
Because it have hundreds of CONFIG (data) embedded inside itself, using an special structure intended for safety and efficience
So we only have 2 options:
1) Find a patch (applyed to the .self) to allow it to load the CONFIG files externally
2) Modify the config table embedded inside the .self

Option 1 is just something theoretical... nobody found if is posible to create that kind of patch... so lets forget about it by now because doesnt looks probable that someone will publish a patch like that right now

This only left us with option 2... but this needs to be automated because is needed to rebuild the config table inside dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self

Pacorretaco said:
Now regarding OPL again, I still would like to hear more opinions on it. @Coro says he thinks there is no support for USB or Network outside the A and B models, which at this point sounds like the truth to me... And therefore a no-go for OPL.
But the thing is, it is 2020...
We don't wanna think. We wanna know.

I also read people saying that Both the full and the semi b/c models supported it. (@Naked_Snake_1995) Which also made sense.
So that is what I made the post for. To find out. There's so much conflicting information on this.

Cheers
Click to expand...
The peripheral support is made internally by the emulator itself... so in this case we are talking about the perippheral support that exists inside dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self

What happens is the emulators needs to emulate most of the hardware components of the PS2... just to show an example, for netemu they removed the network components so we are emulating a PS2 without network... so is imposible to have any kind of network function because network doesnt exists at all
 
sandungas said:
The root of the problem is the PS2 emulator specific for PS3 models CECHC and CECHE (with the PS2 GS hardware) named dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self doesnt allows to load external CONFIG files

This only left us with option 2... but this needs to be automated because is needed to rebuild the config table inside dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self


The peripheral support is made internally by the emulator itself... so in this case we are talking about the perippheral support that exists inside dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self

What happens is the emulators needs to emulate most of the hardware components of the PS2... just to show an example, for netemu they removed the network components so we are emulating a PS2 without network... so is imposible to have any kind of network function because network doesnt exists at all
Click to expand...

Ahmm.. Thanks again for answering. So now, I understand that the
dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self
Could actually be just replaced with the edited version as a "paste and replace file" without needing a whole firmware reinstall to change the .self (Easy enough, at least for an end user I guess?)
I suppose it is one step away from unfeasible then. I had just assumed that such files would be write protected or something.
The challenge of actually editing the .self still remains, though.
 
sandungas said:
Take a look at here: https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/PS2_Emulation#Peripheral_support

Under section "peripheral support" are listed together ps2_emu.self (used by CECHA and CECHB PS3 models) and ps2_gxemu.self (used by CECHC and CECHE PS3 models)... so i guess the peripheral support is the same in both emus :encouragement:
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly! That's why I am so confused!
Both should work. But I still have no luck running OPL. Whyyyyy?

Also I had tried wLaunchELF too and it works, but I couldnt get it to access mass USB storages...

What is the problem then? Still
a mystery to me. Hence my post.
 
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Pacorretaco said:
Ahmm.. Thanks again for answering. So now, I understand that the
dev_flash/ps2emu/ps2_gxemu.self
Could actually be just replaced with the edited version as a "paste and replace file" without needing a whole firmware reinstall to change the .self (Easy enough, at least for an end user I guess?)
I suppose it is one step away from unfeasible then. I had just assumed that such files would be write protected or something.
The challenge of actually editing the .self still remains, though.
Click to expand...
Decrypting it, modifying it, and encrypting it again (back to the original format) is relativelly easy, it can be made with scetool.exe (or any other program based on scetool code)
After that we can replace it in a CFW easilly, there is no need to reinstall the firmware

The pain is to edit the table where are stored the configs, are actually several tables, every config is splitted in small chunks of data across different tables
Kozarovv did it for the sake of doing it, and for confirmation that the idea was working as expected, but it was not easy

Pacorretaco said:
Yes, exactly! That's why I am so confused!
Both should work. But I still have no luck running OPL. Whyyyyy?

Also I had tried wLaunchELF too and it works, but I couldnt get it to access mass USB storages...

What is the problem then? Still
a mystery to me. Hence my post.
Click to expand...
At this point i think GX emu have USB and network support, so OPL + SMB sounds theoretically posible... but i dont know much about it, i never had that PS3 models so i didnt cared much about that hacks

Also, the fact we are using cobra as a proxy (to serve the correct info to the emu) complicates the things a bit more because to talk about it we should know what cobra is doing exactly in this case, and i dont know it
GX emu was designed to load PS2 games from a real optical disc inserted in the drive (not an ISO), and cobra is the responsible of doing some "black magic" to cheat the emu into thinking the ISO is a phisical disc
 
@Pacorretaco @sandungas

i've been reading and i think c and e models do have usb and lan access.

also i found this clue...
atreyu187 said:
I dont think i can launch from OPL as v0.8 MOD was the only one with PS3/Cobra support. Ffgriever made that build just for BC PS3 users and the feature got broke along the way withno one caring to fix it.
Click to expand...

i know you said you tried 0.8 but look for 0.8 MOD by ffgriever. (i looked myself but do not find it yet)
 
.... The truth is sad for me, but the mystery is solved.
Unexpected as it may sound. The issue was a failing unstable system. My CECH-C04 is giving Matrix style artifacts, and hanging at random. I guess too many hacks on this fat girl haha. A glitch in the matrix.

I simply tried again my OPL v0.8 iso, which I had already tested a couple times for a similar hang, and what do you know, It works. SMB support and all. I could acess and launch my bunch of games.
Only... (See photo for proof and laughs).
 

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Coro said:
@Pacorretaco @sandungas

i've been reading and i think c and e models do have usb and lan access.

also i found this clue...


i know you said you tried 0.8 but look for 0.8 MOD by ffgriever. (i looked myself but do not find it yet)
Click to expand...

Oh, I read this now. Well, this advice was well aimed. Thank you anyway.
I provide my ISO with this working version of OPL.
It should be extremely easy for anyone to take advantage of it, now that the problem is found to be my particular console.

Indeed. There IS network and peripheral support on the semi b/c models.

Only shame is that we have to deal with this really old version of OPL. But hey, it works. Maybe someone can find and test a later version that may work.
 
Pacorretaco said:
.... The truth is sad for me, but the mystery is solved.
Unexpected as it may sound. The issue was a failing unstable system. My CECH-C04 is giving Matrix style artifacts, and hanging at random. I guess too many hacks on this fat girl haha. A glitch in the matrix.

I simply tried again my OPL v0.8 iso, which I had already tested a couple times for a similar hang, and what do you know, It works. SMB support and all. I could acess and launch my bunch of games.
Only... (See photo for proof and laughs).
Click to expand...
my slim does this if it gets too hot. eventually will need repair.
 
Coro said:
my slim does this if it gets too hot. eventually will need repair.
Click to expand...

Hmm yes. Eventual repair, but imminent need for it really.

I guess it needs an RSX replacement. I'll probably start a new thread tomorrow.

Funny, now that I find the reason to love it. It needs a repair. Or sad really.
 
Ok.
Now that the mystery is solved (gxemu DOES support LAN and peripherals, and therefore OPL, v0.8 at least)

My particular issue is another one.
I now have an artifacting / GLOD
Semi b/c CECH-C console.
Which, as far as I understand, would need a RSX replacement.

So my question is:
Besides the famous LAN and peripheral support, with the consequent ability to run OPL, what really makes these consoles something worth using over a more reliable Slim model?

In my experience, netemu at this point does actually work quite well for most of the games. Especially after the amazing work done with the Config files. (Which is not so easy for gxemu)

There are the notable exceptions that don't work well (in many cases don't even work in gxemu either), but actually have PS3 facelifted versions to play them instead!
Ratchet and clank, Jak and Daxter, Metal Gear Solid... Even Sly Raccoon! And perhaps NFS Carbon And Star Wars BFII.

Then there are the funny cases of games that run almost OK but a bit slow in netemu, and you would hope gxemu would be the solution, but no! Area-51 doesn't even work in gxemu. But in netemu is 90% playable and enjoyable.
Also as a general rule, I find that FMVs are perfect in netemu, and very often bad in gxemu.

And that leaves the stubborn titles which simply are problematic, namely Scarface, which just aren't playable no matter the system.
(notice that I am disregarding the A and B full b/c models for now, not even released in half of the world)

So guys, once again I would like to hear opinions. (Maybe 2 new threads should come from this, one for the RSX replacement, other for my main question of GXEMU over netemu)

Cheers
 
Gxemu does have Lan and peripheral support, I've played the hell out of Biohazard Outbreak File 2 online on my ps3 and tested a usb keyboard for kicks, it worked. In terms of gxemu taking config files, it breaks games more often than helping in my experience, good luck on the GLOD by the way, and don't give up on Scarface, Kozarovv may find the fix someday as he already knows what is causing the issue.
 
Pacorretaco said:
Ok.
Now that the mystery is solved (gxemu DOES support LAN and peripherals, and therefore OPL, v0.8 at least)

My particular issue is another one.
I now have an artifacting / GLOD
Semi b/c CECH-C console.
Which, as far as I understand, would need a RSX replacement.

So my question is:
Besides the famous LAN and peripheral support, with the consequent ability to run OPL, what really makes these consoles something worth using over a more reliable Slim model?

In my experience, netemu at this point does actually work quite well for most of the games. Especially after the amazing work done with the Config files. (Which is not so easy for gxemu)

There are the notable exceptions that don't work well (in many cases don't even work in gxemu either), but actually have PS3 facelifted versions to play them instead!
Ratchet and clank, Jak and Daxter, Metal Gear Solid... Even Sly Raccoon! And perhaps NFS Carbon And Star Wars BFII.

Then there are the funny cases of games that run almost OK but a bit slow in netemu, and you would hope gxemu would be the solution, but no! Area-51 doesn't even work in gxemu. But in netemu is 90% playable and enjoyable.
Also as a general rule, I find that FMVs are perfect in netemu, and very often bad in gxemu.

And that leaves the stubborn titles which simply are problematic, namely Scarface, which just aren't playable no matter the system.
(notice that I am disregarding the A and B full b/c models for now, not even released in half of the world)

So guys, once again I would like to hear opinions. (Maybe 2 new threads should come from this, one for the RSX replacement, other for my main question of GXEMU over netemu)

Cheers
Click to expand...
In general netemu works good enought, and there are many games with problems that could be theoretically fixed with a config (kozarovv and mrjaredbeta are constantly giving proofs)
Is just most of that fixes consists in "nuking" or "disabling" something (because we are replacing a value with zeroes, or we are flipping a switch to the OFF position)... so can be considered "destructive fixes"... but most of them are not much notables (while playing we dont realize there is something disabled)
So is a worthy payback... not a perfect emulation but the result is fine

There are other games that seems to be lot more tricky to fix... and netemu have a bad fame because there are a lot of users tryng to run this games (special mention to valkirye profile 2, we have tenths of post about it in the forum, lol)
I always thought there is hope for most of the problematic games though... eventually someone could find how to fix them


---------------
Keep in mind your PS3 CECHC have the GS (Graphics Synthesizer) of the PS2
Basically, your PS3 have 2 GPUs... the RSX (used by PS3 games) and the GS (used by PS2 games)
And the video problem could be located in the GS solder pads... or maybe is because the GS is overheating
Open a thread in this subforum, maybe there is someone used to it ---> https://www.psx-place.com/forums/hardware-mods.88/
 
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