PS2 USB PORT "DISCOVERY"

[Joel Schlecht]

I'm not sure if anyone else has seen this or not but here is my observation:

I have used open loader with a usb stick for many years and I am familiar with its problem with fmv stutter. I finally decided to get an MX4SIO card and bought a sd card for it. I was having some problems with the configuration I was using that I changed years ago and open loader was not saving bla bla bla problems. So, I tried the sd card in the usb port to look at the config files and decided to load up a game. There was no stutter.... so I tried another game... no stutter... and another.... I have tried about 10 games now that I know had problems and they seem to run fine and load quicker than ever before just in the usb slot.??????
I did some digging and I have read that the usb 1.1 port does not power usb 2 drves properly and they are starved for power in that port. It may not be the speed of usb 1.1 that is the main issue but how power hungry usb 2 drives are. What I have is a Samsung 256GB pro plus card that came with the micro sd card adapter. perhaps this setup is more forgiving than other usb port solutions? Can some other people try this out? This would make the MX4sio card unnecessary.

 

[TnA]

Yeah no...
If people use HDDs and don't provide enough energy to give what it demands, it should be obvious that it won't run as expected... We DID extensive tests and USB doesn't even come close to the speed of MX4SIO, especially not "in-game" and by no means WOULD your claim make MX4SIO redundant either.

 

[arcadekidflo]

The USB port can deliver 0.5A but one USB stick will draw less than 0.1A, so i don't think power is the issue with the stuttering. It's just bandwitdth .

 

[TnA]

Oh! USB-Stick? Yes, those draw less than USB can provide.

 

[Peppe90]

I'm not sure if anyone else has seen this or not but here is my observation:

I have used open loader with a usb stick for many years and I am familiar with its problem with fmv stutter. I finally decided to get an MX4SIO card and bought a sd card for it. I was having some problems with the configuration I was using that I changed years ago and open loader was not saving bla bla bla problems. So, I tried the sd card in the usb port to look at the config files and decided to load up a game. There was no stutter.... so I tried another game... no stutter... and another.... I have tried about 10 games now that I know had problems and they seem to run fine and load quicker than ever before just in the usb slot.??????
I did some digging and I have read that the usb 1.1 port does not power usb 2 drves properly and they are starved for power in that port. It may not be the speed of usb 1.1 that is the main issue but how power hungry usb 2 drives are. What I have is a Samsung 256GB pro plus card that came with the micro sd card adapter. perhaps this setup is more forgiving than other usb port solutions? Can some other people try this out? This would make the MX4sio card unnecessary.

The stutter is in FMV. Try FFX

 

[Joel Schlecht]

Interesting responses so far. Is at least one of these essentially claiming that I am not seeing what I am seeing? Nice. I did more testing this morning with God of War II, Street Fighter EX3, Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Cloud, Burnout Revenge and a few others. I put the micro sd - reader combo up against my sandisk cruzer 128 usb stick (I have used others over the years with the same results). Stick - stutter, micro sd - no stutter, in every single instance. I reconducted the test with both my slim 77001 and my fat 50001. I also moved these games to the 64GB sd card marked mx4sio that came with my purchase yesterday and it works fine too.

I am NOT saying that the usb port has a comparable transfer speed on paper to the memory card slot. I AM saying that the reason I bought the mx4sio (to remove fmv stutter and improve loading times, what else do you need it for?) is rendered unnecessary for me in light of these findings. In addition, I am having problems with my mx4sio unit and open loader as I tried to change the default folder to my current setup and when trying to save my changes, they would not save. It just cycled for 20 minutes until I turned off the console. Then when I turned it back on, the configuration file was gone. uLaunchELF 4.43 does not seem to be able to identify the mx4sio so I cant move files around on the sd card with that plugged in. I'm not sure if thats normal. I know that open loader can see it but I have to change the configuration every time I run it because It wont save it. I'm not moving my files because I have other fmcb cards that I made myself from 007 Agent Under Fire and I'm not changing all of those..

If your mx4sio card you already works for you, fine. If you plan on buying one and you have to get a micro usb anyway, why not get one with the card reader and try it out first. Maybe it does everything you want. If not, then get the mx4sio. That reader will probably come in handy in either case.

I have been reading these forums here for years (I mod my ps3 and ps1 also) but never really felt the need to post until now that I am excited about finding something that may help some people out and putting up with years of usb stutter myself. I'm a little concerned that this would be dismissed offhand rather than someone trying it out for themselves first to see if it works on their machine. Would have saved me 30 bucks.

PROBABLY my final update to this. I did find one game so far that does still stutter. That was Gran Turismo 3. (GT4 will probably too) But, it was only on the opening movie. When I let it play the in game demos, they did not stutter. My guess is that it depends on how the fmv was encoded. I love that intro but it doesn't affect the gameplay and if there is any stuttering in the background during the menus, it causes no slowdown.

That being said, I don't play a lot of rpgs like ffx so maybe they work and maybe they don't but as I said, see if it works for your needs and it seems to work flawlessly with 95% of the games I have.or better. I am also putting off the planned hard drive upgrade I was going to do.

 

[TnA]

I didn't write "on paper", but "in-game".....

Regarding wLE and MX4SIO: Use the ISR-Build.

 

[Berion]

@Joel Schlecht Stuttering came from lower speed (USB 1.1) than real disc drive (DVD x2), that's a fact and physics which cannot be jump over. However, in 1.2.0 beta there is implemented buffering read chunks so it theory massively reducing such hiccups. Another factor is data fragmentation which should be equally zero or else You experience delays from clusters seeking. Most demanding games in that matter are those which constantly streaming data and using videos with high bitrate.

Fo now, from all three external media: USB, i.Link (FW400) and MX4SIO, last is fastest.

 

[moriljn1]

I'm not sure if anyone else has seen this or not but here is my observation:

I have used open loader with a usb stick for many years and I am familiar with its problem with fmv stutter. I finally decided to get an MX4SIO card and bought a sd card for it. I was having some problems with the configuration I was using that I changed years ago and open loader was not saving bla bla bla problems. So, I tried the sd card in the usb port to look at the config files and decided to load up a game. There was no stutter.... so I tried another game... no stutter... and another.... I have tried about 10 games now that I know had problems and they seem to run fine and load quicker than ever before just in the usb slot.??????
I did some digging and I have read that the usb 1.1 port does not power usb 2 drves properly and they are starved for power in that port. It may not be the speed of usb 1.1 that is the main issue but how power hungry usb 2 drives are. What I have is a Samsung 256GB pro plus card that came with the micro sd card adapter. perhaps this setup is more forgiving than other usb port solutions? Can some other people try this out? This would make the MX4sio card unnecessary.

The USB port can deliver 0.5A but one USB stick will draw less than 0.1A, so i don't think power is the issue with the stuttering. It's just bandwitdth .

I want to clarify that by occupying a second USB port by connecting a controller, stuttering will be much stronger and even present in games where they weren't present with only the USB stick connected.

I'm curious about this USB adapter thing, can you tell me what brand you use and what OPL version are you using precisely? I still discover little things about USB, like this one about the usb controller which, by disconnecting it, has eliminated the stuttering in various games and in others they have become less frequent. In any case, I have already used 2 generic unbranded micro sd adapters and 2 kingston micro sds without sadly the magic you experienced.

 

[TnA]

Fo now, from all three external media: USB, i.Link (FW400) and MX4SIO, last is fastest.

Incorrect! i.Link is the fastest of these 3! USB is slowest. MX4SIO has a good/solid middle ground, quite close to drive-speeds used in reality so essentially I think we will see LESS Mode 1 usage on MX4SIO than on faster devices.

 

[Joel Schlecht]

I want to clarify that by occupying a second USB port by connecting a controller, stuttering will be much stronger and even present in games where they weren't present with only the USB stick connected.

I'm curious about this USB adapter thing, can you tell me what brand you use and what OPL version are you using precisely? I still discover little things about USB, like this one about the usb controller which, by disconnecting it, has eliminated the stuttering in various games and in others they have become less frequent. In any case, I have already used 2 generic unbranded micro sd adapters and 2 kingston micro sds without sadly the magic you experienced.

The adapter is the one that came in the package with the samsung pro plus micro sd card. Interesting that you mentioned something in the other usb port because I am actually running a hdmi adapter and powering it from that second port. The version of opl is 1.1.0 beta db 1922 flee78a. build options - gsm 0.40, igs 0.1, and pademu. This is what came with my MX4SIO / FMCB card combo I got off amazon.

 

[TnA]

Use the newest official OPL Betas PLEASE!

 

[Joel Schlecht]

@Joel Schlecht Stuttering came from lower speed (USB 1.1) than real disc drive (DVD x2), that's a fact and physics which cannot be jump over. However, in 1.2.0 beta there is implemented buffering read chunks so it theory massively reducing such hiccups. Another factor is data fragmentation which should be equally zero or else You experience delays from clusters seeking. Most demanding games in that matter are those which constantly streaming data and using videos with high bitrate.

Fo now, from all three external media: USB, i.Link (FW400) and MX4SIO, last is fastest.

Just looking up some specs, I see that usb 1.1 low speed is 1.5Mb/s and high speed is 12Mb/sec.(USB Types and Speeds [An Overall Introduction with Pictures] - MiniTool Partition Wizard) DVD 1x speed is 1.32MB/s which is 10.56Mb/s. A DVD movie should never need to be faster than 1x becaue thats what DVD video is designed to play back at. That being said, there are probably other factors at play, perhaps there is something that is slowing down the usb transfers or causing them to not be able to constantly stream causing stutters. Then there are beneficial factors such as some fmv being encoded at lower bit rates in order to save on disc space. I have also thought obout projects to reencode some video on discs to reduce the birate allowing for almost every disc to be under the 4 gig limit and work better on usb sticks. Thats probably a moot thing due to all the other workarounds we have these days.

Actually the firewire port should be by far the fastest at 400Mb/s. Too bad ps2's i link was discontinued and firewire flash media is uncommon. That would have easily solved everything;

 

[Peppe90]

Just looking up some specs, I see that usb 1.1 low speed is 1.5Mb/s and high speed is 12Mb/sec.(USB Types and Speeds [An Overall Introduction with Pictures] - MiniTool Partition Wizard) DVD 1x speed is 1.32MB/s which is 10.56Mb/s. A DVD movie should never need to be faster than 1x becaue thats what DVD video is designed to play back at. That being said, there are probably other factors at play, perhaps there is something that is slowing down the usb transfers or causing them to not be able to constantly stream causing stutters. Then there are beneficial factors such as some fmv being encoded at lower bit rates in order to save on disc space. I have also thought obout projects to reencode some video on discs to reduce the birate allowing for almost every disc to be under the 4 gig limit and work better on usb sticks. Thats probably a moot thing due to all the other workarounds we have these days.

Actually the firewire port should be by far the fastest at 400Mb/s. Too bad ps2's i link was discontinued and firewire flash media is uncommon. That would have easily solved everything;

There are many games with low-quality FMVs that play with no stutter from USB.

You mentioned God of War 2, that's one of them. Aside from the FMV when Kratos throws himself from the ravine. That's a high bandwidth FMV. If it doesn't stutter there's a real improvement then.

 

[Berion]

@Joel Schlecht
Real speed is ~600KiB/s in read for USB 1.1 in PS2 in current libs. i.Link is faster but also not reaching FireWire400 specs and You need external power for it.

 

[TnA]

You expect high transfer speeds, whilst the IOP does all the other stuff as well? Some games even use the IOP for game mechanics instead of "only drivers" and I/O? @Joel Schlecht
...and from devices where the USB1.1 implementation will never get even close to 90% of the max. theoretical bandwidth of the standard on paper and you also ignore the overhead and what is ACTUAL DATA...

USB has still some potential, but it won't run every game without FMV-Stutters.