Thought I’d update this thread seeing as the forum is now back online.
The TOOL is still going strong. I was lucky enough to be gifted two authentic blue vertical stand triangles, which I was able to attach to the base plate that I made, therefore making the 3D printed items redundant. My extreme thanks here go to
@unclejun for the spare parts from his Aladdin’s cave of TOOL bits.
I also ran a HDDRawCopy check on the DTL-T14000 Emu HDD and it was totally bare. Not a sausage on there. It got me thinking that, so many hard drives do actually fail (even though the PC hard drive and Emulator HDD were both still working well), I have decided to retire them both.
I purchased two SanDisk Extreme 64Gb CF cards, and I cloned both original 40Gb hard drive images over to them. I also had to buy two ‘CF card to IDE’ converter PCBs and a floppy drive style power cable adaptor. The original hard drives are still present inside the case, but obviously are disconnected. The Linux operating system CF card is attached to a PCI card which utilises the blank slot next to the emulator card. There is a blinking red light to show ‘hard drive’ activity and also the CF card can be removed from the rear of the TOOL if ever needed, without taking the case apart. The emu CF card is stored inside the unit, underneath the original emu hard drive.
The emulator hard drive software can only store a maximum of 16 game images. It is able to run a combination of CD, DVD, and DVD Dual Layer images. I love using the emulator because you have the ability to run all sorts of games on the TOOL and you don’t need to wear out the disc drive or laser. One limitation of the emulator is that games running through it are unable to communicate with connected USB peripherals.
Apart from using ProDG, ProView, RenderWare and Visual Studio with the TOOL, I wanted to try and get OptPix Image Studio running. I have an old version of the software which works well, and a newer ‘trial’ version which only works if you alter the date of your PC. I don’t think I’ll quit my job and become an artist though - zoom in on the green square….what do you think?
I managed to locate a set of the original ‘sixth edition’ developer manuals which correctly shipped with the DTL-T10000HA units. I also have the original user manual for the TOOL which is useful for setting up the device on your network.
I’ve also sourced two external SCSI mastering drives for the Windows development laptop I use with the TOOL. A Pioneer DVR-S201 DVD burner, and a Sony CDU948s CD burner - both of which are recognised by the CD DVD generator software. I’ve managed to burn several discs from all
four PS2 regions (includes the mysterious NTSC/C region specially created for mainland China) that run on the TOOL and the TEST stations. The burn process is pretty slow and there are quicker modern methods of burning media these days, but it’s nice to experience how it was during the actual PS2 development cycle.
Initially, I had quite a bit of trouble burning DVD discs with the Pioneer drive unit. Firstly you need a drive unit running minimum firmware 2.02, and secondly, you need the correct SCSI adaptor card. I was racking my brain for weeks over this and finally resolved the consistent burning errors by replacing the 16bit ‘fast’ SCSI PCMCIA card with a 32bit ‘ultra’ SCSI PCMCIA card. I’m now using an Adaptec APA-1480A SCSI card. The slower 16bit card worked fine for master disc image verification (for both CD and DVD), and burning CD based media with the Sony CDU948s though. Actually, I tell a small lie, the CDU948s will only burn media if the drive unit is running firmware 1.0k or later. Luckily I managed to find the firmware on OG (many thanks to the kind user who directed me to the file), however be aware that you can only install it using a DOS computer, which is quite a faff. Alternatively, you can steal a known 1.0k motherboard and swap/install that into your CDU948s drive too. Both firmware upgrade methods work.
The HDD checker software can be quite useful to verify data on the external hard disk drive. You can use both the consumer variant (SCPH-20400) or the development version (DTL-H20400). The only major difference is the developer version has a little black plastic built-in vertical stand on the base, and the consumer unit doesn’t (it has some rubber feet instead). The same goes for the network adapter (PCMCIA card) too. You can use either the consumer variant (SCPH-10010) or the developer version (DTL-H10010). The main difference is that the developer version has an extended length cabled RJ45 connector, whereas the consumer variant has the RJ45 port built into the card.
The TOOL will only recognise an external disk drive that has been initialised by BB navigator (required for the ATOK files). This is important to know because the TOOL cannot run the BB navigator software. The only units that can connect to the external disk drive
AND run the software are consumer PS2 models (SCPH-10000, 15000, 18000). Sony realised this was a limitation of early debug consoles and fixed this with the release of the DTL-H10100. This is the only debug console which can intialise a blank/formatted external PS2 disk drive.
Although the TOOL is designed to be used remotely (which is how I use it), I figured I’d connect the ‘VGA out’ port from the PC part of the TOOL to an external monitor, in case I ever get any boot problems in the future or I need to access the BIOS (unlikely but you never know!) - so I bought an OSSC which converts the bios and local console output to HDMI which now displays on the screen properly.
