The PSIO "Litemenu" Story

hi everyone welcome to the next episode of the zes Retro podcast I'm flying solo today talking to developer Dan Hans 42 he was developer of the light menu project and light menu was a custom menu loader for the PSI o uh OD dongle plugin that one that plugs into the parallel port at the back of the original PlayStation one so Dan tells us the story of how he started in PlayStation uh coding and hacking back back in the day with his own version of the net EUR RO system and then we jump forward to him coming across a psio adapter him seeing that the uh original official memory menu loader isn't that great it's got some issues so he tries to code his own and then we've got a series of back and forth sometimes known as drama in the Retro games Community uh and eventually this culminates with the creator of psio sending some sort of legal threat to Dan saying that if he releases this code then all sorts of legal things are going to happen and we get right into this this is one of those cases you know is it really someone just sends a legal letter is that it but what does that mean if you have to respond to a legal threat that's already costing you money so this is starting to see how people can use this for their own benefit Dan I find is very honest and very straight up about his part in all of this he acknowledges where he could could have acted better do he maybe uh provoke uh the Creator a little bit too much it's hard to say because also that person has a very distinct reputation in the community for being a difficult person to work with updates for years and you would say maybe even exhibiting toxic Behavior towards the customers so it's one of those difficult ones we're going to learn the story of light menu how easy this code is this is not some great project that he coded up to create this alternate menu it's very very simplistic because the way that psio runs its security is also very simplistic Dan frankly answers the question does he think this supports piracy of psio it's a good question we're going to get into that all right let's start the podcast with Dan Hans 42 Dan thanks for joining me on the zes Retro podcast it's been aging since I've talked to somebody but when I heard about your story and I I saw you uh out there I knew I sort of wanted to speak to you and get to the bottom of this and let let's find out this so uh I've already presented a little bit of the backstory in our introduction people are probably watching because they know something about this here so we want to start with uh you first of all you you coded the light menu you made this stuff but I mean it's I I think look you're very humble about your own ability uh but I think it's a pretty amazing thing to be able to come up with this stuff and work with it even though there are certainly many other uh very knowledgeable people in the community that you're very gracious to point to but let's start with you so what's your background where did you first get into computers consoles what was this um so yeah like as um yeah as a kid I was in electronics you put some in my hand I'm not interested what it looks like I want to know what's going on on the inside so like my dad had to keep screwdrivers away from me all that kind of [ __ ] um and I can't remember probably about six or seven he got me some little electronic set you know the little thing with the little Springs where you put the wires in yeah yeah and it kind of building Crystal radios and all that stuff um yeah and it kind of went from there about age 8 or N I got my first computer and amrad CPC um and obviously as you did back then with basic he just started programming you know like guess a number and all that kind of stuff and it got sort of stem from there um always wanted to get in a computers when I was a kid like as a profession um yeah and then work my way through basic um ended up on visual Basics sort of in the early 90s probably about version three or four something like that um yeah never did much with it and yeah end up getting a work job with a computer Builder manufacturer um and never did anything programming at all it was always it was like an interesting um but the the PlayStation part of it or the C programming that I learned um a lot of that stemm from reading about the Aros when I was younger so I remember reading about what Yos the netos um which is the pro oh I don't know how you pronounce it but yeah I don't know how you say got one got Australian talking to an English guy here it's going to be like two fures talking to each other trying to work out other's bloody accents yeah so um but actually before we go let's even just before that I was sort of a little interested because you and I grew up in a a common period so you had the the amstrad I had the Amiga 500 we had the the games that we were play back then so there was some games you could play or it was load up the basic and try and work out something for yourself it was that uh hacker that there was like almost like a feeling a community Spirit if there was a community back then of hacking or creating something for yourself because these machines that we got like the amstrad and the Amiga they came with the tools you what they came with some sort of basic you could have a go we were copying code from books in there cuz that was the only way to to get that so how do you like on the amstrad you were just writing stuff in basic you just picked it up yourself and just sort of had to go yeah so a lot of it like I don't know if you remember like if the computers you had but like the the user manual used actually to have programs in the back of it as examples so the actual amstrad user man he was really comprehensive it was like two Ines thick so in the back of there I think it started with some typings out of there um and I think one of my it might have been one of my grandparents got me I think the the book company was like Osborne or something and they used to do kids books for computers and they used to do a book where it had like CPC um c64 BBC and the programs were all the same for all of them then you had a couple of changes it did for each one and a lot of it I learned from there so it was stuff like a crappy Grand PRI G with a car going in the middle of the screen and Aster at the side for the track and then it got built up with Graphics so I had routines into do that um I'd start looking adding joysticks apart and stuff rather than using the Z and the X keys and things and yeah little bits like that um and then that was great so that and that was literally like writing it in from a book yeah came in a book and you had to type that that [ __ ] is yeah yeah and um I remember when I got the computer Christmas day um I I actually got 464 for Christmas and then my birthday was a couple months later my dad upgraded me to a 6128 but um it was a bit of a [ __ ] to be honest cuz um spent ages typing in this program it was like I don't know 150 lines so it went up to a count of like 1150 it was like oh well if you press alt and break or something like that or whatever it was on the am to reset it what happens so went and did that and lost everything so it's was like great um but yeah all on paper um initially saved on tape and then those um annoy little three-inch discs that cost a fortune so yeah good times yeah so okay so you've gone through that that uh and how to say that that period left us with those ideas that you could hack your own stuff or you could create your own stuff or you could just get in there and have a go and as you say even though you left it behind and and other things in life came along there was still that idea that this fascination with that so this came you you later on had a job building PCS which I also had we had a lot turns out we had a lot of common things building PCS when I was at University to make some money yeah it was as yeah it was cool so like yeah um the guy that owned this company um he was in a local hotel with some people from PC Magazine which was a big magazine back in back in the '90s and um he was hosting them for dinner like the computer did grooming him a little bit for a good review for whatever machines they were sending in and um I was just waiting and I got talking to him and he was like oh here's my card give us a call um cuz they were all computer people and all talking computers um had an interview a couple of days later and started the Monday after it was like 10 days or something next thing know I'm building 30 PCS a day or whatever on a production line and working way up through that company so yeah very different but pretty cool and that was the days that was the wild worst of building machines was amazing you got the parts you stuck it together and it like one out of five didn't work uh there's a random blue screen there's some random error that like I just remember getting having stress from calls from customers like it it crashed again and there wasn't even this knowledge about how often a machine could crash they just don't crash like they used to we had um so yeah we were we weren't small so we had we had some big clients so we had like a clim clim studios in tside they one of our clients yeah yeah um we had one of the film show studios in London they used to we used to build PCS for them um we were a partner with Micron so we did Micron Technology cases and some of their motherboards and bits and Bobs so yeah we weren't we weren't small but yeah we had the same problems so stuff like Voodoo 3 came out trying to run that on a via kt3 motherboard [ __ ] thing blue screens all the time um you got patched all this stuff in certain orders or oh yeah it was um yeah it's not like now I just plug everything in there was so many weird things just trying to get stuff working normally it was I don't know I kind of miss it to be honest made it more interesting yeah it was it was like still a time where you said you had a fairly big operation I had like a one guy kind of thing where the one guy operation could still make a thing and then Del came along in HP and sort of most people were buying these units out of you know sort of the the larger ones um yeah it was still a time where one guy could set up a shop and sell and he was like the IT guy and he he could help and everything it was that wild yeah cuz people were still looking at I don't know in the UK I think the big so I started in that in the late 90s and a lot of my friends at school were sort of the parents were around and pack our Bells from our local PC World where it was like 2,000 quid 22,000 for like a pent of 100 and we're like what could build you one of them for 500 600 and that kind of thing and obviously that just faded away as you went over the Millennium um yeah and I think they are sort of fell out of the market in the UK cuz loads of companies went bust um after that um including my then employer um I'd left them before then but yeah it was um bit of a shame really but yeah it was definitely more interesting and like you say there was there was a little bit of meet in it for everyone so you could build a PC for and just make a few quid and stuff like that and everyone were doing it and then yeah D storing with that cheap yeah I remember the that was about probably I was doing this at University when I had time to make a few extra bucks on the side yeah I could make a couple hundred out of a thing and hopefully it didn't crash to me time so didn't I didn't have to do too many call outs and go and see the guy and but uh yeah I Remember by the end I remember being so fed up that I was like [ __ ] it I'm just going to sell you a dell and or get you a Dell at least I'll my services to get you a dell and then I'll just come and maybe install it help you out with it like it just wasn't worth my time anymore to construct this thing cuz odds on that was going to be where the pain point was definitely and like you're using D an example that's pretty much word for word what I used to say cuz like you know I'm satting a well I'm not sat a d I'm actually sat on the surface but I've got a Dell there there's a Dell down there there's a Dell over there um I I mean I love that stuff um and if anyone says to me about buying a piec it was always like yeah just get a Dell um you know they're decent money you can get parts for them you know they're fairly upgradable generally you know they're not really that bad to be honest I just took the ass out the PC market that's all so how did you come along the PlayStation development kit the net EUR Ro because like in Australia we were so far away from everything and we get basically we were like the little brother to the UK I've told the story in the podcast the many times about uh getting the magazines three months later so I was connected to UK gaming culture but not directly in it and net yose was really one of those things that I was like wow wow maybe once I read about it was it around how did you see it so I came across that in I had a PlayStation at that point anyway um but I came across it in um I think it was Edge magazine so there's one of their features it's quite a silvery front and it's got yours on the front of it and that's when I'd first heard about it um never owned one never had my hands on one never seen one in in in the flesh um I just remember reading about that and I had I had Inn access at the time so I was looking around and I think there was some some of the Scottish universities picked them up and they were using them for some of their programming courses or some of their courses um so yeah they were around quite a lot um and they intrigued me because it was like well what's the difference um yeah like you know you know literally I remember downloading the order form and looking them and thinking God I want my rent in a check I I can't remember what's work the time I think they did them quite cheap they started off more expensive and they went down to like £250 or something um yeah and you could write off send a check away and you get one in the post 14 days later um [ __ ] I know and the funny thing is I've read stories since on news groups that apparently a lot of the time they didn't even cash the checks yeah I mean you might want to look that up but yeah like yeah apparently a lot of the checks didn't get just with Sony their ordering system or something there was some whoever banked the checks didn't Bank the checks um good time but yeah and then about the same time sort of doing I'd say Google it wasn't Google then was it it was probably hot dog or Alta Vista or something um yeah I came across like a geoc city's it and it had the Yo's SDK on it and some information about how the serial cable was put together um which is the bit that links it to a PC and it also had some action replay codes that you could use to actually boot the boot disc on a PlayStation so I was like [ __ ] hell I could make my own here um and it kind of went from there so got the serial cable built burn the disc popped it in next you know I'm sending code from my PC and from the examples over to the my normal gray PlayStation running this 's boot disc um yeah and it kind of sort of went from there so did you have okay so your regular so you didn't have a net EUR Ro box as such so you've got first of all I assume being a a gentleman of the generation you've got the classic mod chip in your PS1 at least of course of course exactly every that was my first uh foray into breaking a PlayStation back then and that a lot of money back then for us cuz it couldn't sold still can't sold of a [ __ ] definitely [ __ ] back then if I show you some of my stuff around there I'm exactly the same if it works it works I'm not bother about pretty I'm not volar oh yes who could be who could live up to such a standard so you've got the you've got a chipped PS1 from back in the day um so what work us through what you needed to how was how was the nety Ros connecting into your retail box so basically the N your is just it's just a PlayStation it's just a different color I mean there are other differences like it can play multi region discs it's got a different CD controller whatever but um yeah the the fundamental thing is it is literally it's the same thing it's two mega ram it's ontents and purpos is the same thing um the only thing it does have obviously comes with those accessories so you've got that boot disc that the disc that boots up where you see the little brick screen on the background um the boot disc that's it yeah and then you've got the memory card well it's called an access card so when that that boot is Boots up it checks for this particular type of memory card plugged in a slot and if it's not there it doesn't do anything um so there's that element of it which when I was talking about Action Replay that circumvents that okay um and then on the other side on the PC so sorry between the two you've got a Serial cable so I mean like nowadays with aduino and all that kind of thing everyone's really you know knows about TTL level serial and stuff like that um but that wasn't that well known back then um so yeah to build the cable basically you've got you've got a rs232 to TTL serial cable running at 3 volts between the two between your PC and the PlayStation um so you write your code on the and on your PC compile it and then you use a tool called scons which sends it over to the to the what would be the N or in my case the gr PlayStation U so the um sorry the the net Ro machine has a Serial Port built in that's an extra yeah it's like um I'll show you actually oh yeah so this is normal PlayStation can you see yep yep yep yep so net netos there normally would have um it's little black cable with the soap on the Box on it um the one I've got here USB version so we've moved on a bit now so yeah yeah you can just do it with the USB cable now um so yeah normally that would be a black PlayStation with the serial cable between the two but we just did it with a gray one and then built the serial cable myself all right uh so that okay that's how it got in sorry and just to I realize I'm being very pedantic here the net Rose machine machine itself has the serial port or it has the regular transfer Port but it's like a dongle you're saying it's just got a normal it's literally exactly the same as a normal retail exactly ex same but the transfer the Link cable Port that's it yeah yeah yeah that's the one it's the actual cable itself that does the conversion okay so you could and so you could actually use the Neto serial cable with a normal gray PlayStation it would work because it's exactly the same part gotcha gotcha so did you have to so the transfer cable did you have to like that Port you have to cut up a transfer cable or something or you just sort of stuck the wires in yeah so obviously link cables were a thing back in the 90s and they were quite cheap so I found this website that s to explain what the pin outs were it was like oh right just buy a Link cable chop it in half that's what I did all right um so yeah chopped in half um beeped out which color went to which pin on the plug um worked out ground went from there um and obviously with the information that I've seen on the website that I mentioned earlier um told me how to build like literally RX to TX TX to RX that kind of thing um put the hardware between the in between the two which is called a Max 232 it's a transceiver converts TTL to rs232 and back and forth um yeah and off you go and that's all it was all right so then you could start so then you had the the IDE or development environment or whatever it was on the PC so the geoc city site gave you all of that and then you could write some code there and it uploads it to the net Ros is that corre correct yeah yeah so yeah it was like um it was like a really simple version it was cut down version of SAQ I believe so there's some similarities between there um but yeah there was two ways you could do it actually there was one called um I forgotten the name of it there was a windows-based um code Warrior that was it you could do Ed thing called code Warrior which was all within Windows it had its own compiler and stuff I never used that I used the Doss tools um so yeah just editing notepad save it went type make off you go H and what sort of stuff what sort of apps were you making or cuz as understand it was quite limited you don't you certainly didn't get access to the full range of uh the PSX Hardware if I understand correctly yeah yeah so there was some bit you didn't get so the funny thing is the CD itself this boot CD it has assets on it that you can use so there's some graphics on there you can make it if you can make it play CD there's some CD audio tracks on there you can use for like ambient audio um there's some fonts and things like that that you can use um so yeah a lot of it was just doing little simple things like that and building on the examples I never did anything groundbreaking or even worth mentioning to be honest um a lot of it was just trying to use it as like a standard SE compiler just on a PlayStation for shits and giggles to be honest so yeah it was just your standard console stuff to start with like text based coming across the serial part um and then one of the dreams I had I've always been a Chuck egg fan I always wanted to make my own version of Chuck egg for the PlayStation so I think I had that in my head at the time and never got any chucka like the flight no Chucky egg Chucky EG CH egg oh it's like a platformer like Donkey Kong you go around collecting eggs and you've got chickens chasing you about it's the most simplest [ __ ] game ever but it's got quite a cool following um yeah and it was the first game I played as a child so I've always had a bit of an affinity with it um so yeah I wanted to do that I just yeah I think that was getting probably for 97 98 and I had other stuff going on in my life so it was like it was kind of I do little bits with it and there wasn't the community that there is now and obviously I didn't have access to all the neto's forums and things like what you get with the retail when if you actually bought it cuz you had the access code to get onto the members website I didn't have any of that um so yeah I was quite stuck really I didn't get a lot out of it so it kind of yeah after I think yeah mued around with them for probably six to 12 months at that point and then it just got pushed to one side and got them growing up and partying and all D things when you come into money in your early 20s late things I can understand that I I had the same uh yeah I had the PlayStation one and then I had sort of this I don't know I want to say how many years it was where I didn't play games at all didn't have a console I didn't have much money like you're working for I mean I had money but not enough to sort of go start to go splur especially with expensive Australian prices uh so I only came back into gaming consoles like at the Wii or something like that and then went hardcore again so yeah I understand how that being of that same generation uh the PS1 was that last Harrah and then you know girls and then life and then jobs come along girls [Laughter] but yeah I think I did have a PS2 I had a Dreamcast um XBox I mean I had the X the PS2 and the D and the Dreamcast I probably played a couple of games on them a lot and not much else Xbox got really into Project Gotham but yeah after I just yeah with um with the advances in console programming I was like God I haven't got a clue how to do these things because it's a very different way of thinking when you're programming something that runs on a z80 like an amstrad compared to when you get into something like a PS2 where you you got co-processor and all this stuff to do with and it's like what I I won't have I won't even know where to start um but yeah the PlayStation was about my limit of understanding I think um so yeah it kind of yeah probably got mothballed from like late 90s and didn't do a lot with it other than play the odd games on them and that kind of thing um yeah until probably nearly 10 years later okay so how did he come back to this how's the the story of your Revival um I've always had a PlayStation so the PlayStation I've show you is the one I've had since a kid um my original always there impressing the ladies when they come over no doubt hey ladies still got the gray box still got the original one um my old original one 02s up there um that I don't touch anymore so yeah I've still got them um so yeah I've always had one on my desk there's always been one at the end there I've always had an Explorer hanging cartridge hanging off the back of it one of these um so yeah CU you used to use that for connecting to your PC as well and doing development stuff so I've always I've always had the the kick kicking around um and it probably didn't start then it probably 2010 2011 um I signed up to do you remember assembl games forums no I don't oh there was the big Forum it was um it was mainly about obscure Hardware like the development Hardware that the game companies use and um that kind of thing so it's all like um the SQ PL consoles of the call them all the de debug PlayStations like the blue ones the PlayStation 2 tool collectors of things like that um and I ended up joining up there and it was like oh got people are still talking about all this kit from way back when and there was a lot of people on there that quite knowledgeable and it kind of probably sparked it a little bit um again wanting to get back into it which is funny cuz that's when sort of Matt or sden whatever you want to call him shadow whoever we're calling him today that's when he sort of joined on that Forum as well and started talking about what became PSO um but yeah it was that Forum generally that got me back into it um Talk people talking on there about the weird Hardware things that I'd not seen when I was younger I was like oh I W mind getting one of those now as an adult um and that kind of started me off a little bit again um getting back into it okay so you get it back into it so let's kind of fast forward to the the psio so what first of all do you remember what year it came out what it was released done this research 16 something like that something like this okay something around there so and and to set it up up as I've understood you don't and still don't have an official psio no I don't okay so you haven't got one of those uh so the psio comes out it's pretty much as I've understood not too like it took it was cloned pretty quickly yeah I believe so I think it was a couple of years I think um okay as far as I know I don't quote me on it but yeah I think it was it was a year or two after I think it was um it was cloned okay so it's it's getting cloned um I don't know the full like I haven't been there from the beginning of how Matt dealt with the community I just know that it hasn't certainly been a positive way and people usually don't have a positive thing to say about the customer service and so forth but when did you first encounter the PS did you get one and you decide I want to did it just seem like a cool tool for hacking um it was a friend of mine who' seen them so obviously they' been they must have been around for when I first had a clone or saw a clone had a clone in my hand I think it was about 2021 early 2021 so it was way after the Clones had come out and um a friend of mine had bought one from AliExpress and he's like mate can you fit this obviously I'm the go-to guy so it's like yeah all right um and I just like I'll be honest I don't play that many games on my PlayStation because of the disc stuff and burning them and I don't own many originals and the prices are crazy now so I thought well I may pick one of these up um but I mean I can go into that but the official route to me has never been an attractive option um because of the way that people are treated I don't really want to be paying for something on credit card and they having a wait 6 to n months um and all the other stuff and all the other bad stories about that came out so it kind of the official route never seemed like an option to me um so I just ordered a clone and got one okay so you've ordered the Clone right so you uh you were interested to get one but you've already you understood the reputation that the device had in the community already it was you well known I wasn't even watching and I knew to to kind of stay away from that so and that's not only the customer service level but also the compatibility that it wasn't quite up to Snuff uh when it came to full compatibility on games and and so forth yeah so I mean I don't play any of these a lot of titles that you probably find that are rare that could be these outliers that don't work a lot of the stuff I've tried on it works fine um you know I played like the normal classic game bit of Doom bit of ridis or whatever um bit of grant turiso that kind of stuff and get my ass kicked by my son on Tekken every now and again so yeah a lot of it I don't I don't play a lot of weird titles so for me the compatibility kind of it won't really a problem um cuz I don't play any weird titles um but the whole You've Got got to convert them to this weird Q sheet format that was a bit of a detractor for me I didn't quite like so you couldn't just put a bin and a que on an SD card it had to be this cu2 format that they devised which was oh yeah which was another step that you had to do so if you use CD audio I think um yeah you basically have to use a different style of Q sheet so you had to convert a q sheet to what they called a q sheet 2 or something so yeah it was a little bit more there was a little bit more to it um than that so yeah I think my SD card for mine's got about eight or nine games on it something like that cuz I just can't be bothered coping and converting all these different games over to it so yeah sure are they to were there tools to to so it's just the the bin was the same but the Q sheet that's correct different so yeah yeah it kind of I think you couldn't use something like you can't use um multirack um qes and Bin so you could have a track one bin track two bin track B bin like that you have to merge them all together um some people that were members I think wrote like a python tool that squished it all together and spat you out a q sheet too to make it a little bit easier but yeah it was a little bit more involved right uh and so what we're talking about here for everyone the format that the PlayStation ISO can be on it can I ISO is one format the iso another format if you're into Homebrew games you may have encounter the bin and Q the bin file is the binary and the Q is essentially a text file which gives you some information about how to use the uh binary file and sometimes that binary can be split into multiple so one Q file would multiple binaries and it is a bit of a pain to merge them uh I've got a bunch of tools to do it but it's um yeah it's a bit of a pain so we've got a to just get our games onto the psio was a little bit difficult uh already yeah I mean there was some games you could just drop on and it work so if they didn't use CD audio or anything like that they' just work um and then other ones you had to obviously to convert them like that so yeah and then I think it was when I was downloading games off various sites were never quite in the right format so you always had some work to do before you try it and it was just yeah bit painful to be honest but okay do uh first of up um the Clones so do were the Clones using the official firmware or how did they get around such things I don't know to be honest so yeah the firmware on them is literally it's official so they've got it out of the arm somehow um yeah I would not know how I don't even know how they exploited it if they did or if they got the thing deled or whatever sorry decapped um after exploit known for that particular microcontroller I'm not sure but how they did it I don't know um but yeah the firmware on there for all intents and purposes was back then a current firmware okay the current firmware so yeah it's um all all it's completely all theirs it's not change from anything that they released right if you're buying from AliExpress you are getting the software product the firmware from uh from pyin what do we sayin cin I don't know siin try not to say the were too much to be honest um but yeah it's um yeah it's it's just an older version so yeah um obviously after the Clones measures got put in place so it was a little bit more difficult but yeah oh okay so he did a little bit more on that all right now reading through your documentation if I understand the three sort of main components that we are concerned about on the psio one is the menu software which is what light menu was uh replacing then on the actual device we've got the microcontroller firmware and then we've got the fpga firmware that gets flashed onto that if I understood correctly they're the main pretty much yeah I mean the other bit you've got on here is here we go let's pull this off so this is the the culprit so yeah we got fpg you got your arm and then the other little bit if you can see it just there is that tiny little SPI chip y so that actually holds the software both that and that that's contained within there as well so yeah there's actually three main parts to it but yeah basically yeah you've got two firmwares in a menu to get things up and running right okay so somehow the the allyy express cloners had done something that and it still worked so all right um so what's your story then so you've got one of this you you're H you've got the hacker mindset and your friend's giv you this device and you think [ __ ] it I can do a better job than this or how does that work um so yeah were a little bit of that so one of things I do a lot of obviously talked about is playing around with it's a PlayStation code um this thing used to sell itself as the ultimate PlayStation development tool but it doesn't have any development options and it was like wow that's a really easy thing to fix you can just use the serial part like Euros did um so there was that element of it and then um there was also just how long it takes to actually get to a game from when you boot the thing up you've got this menu then you've got things loading you've got a marquee scroll across the bottom and then you select a game and then there's another menu pops up and you've got to click another button and it just felt like this Hardware can't be that slow it's got to be this software it must be um so yeah there was that and then obviously what PSI um PS own put out saying you know we've got this there's all this blur in it you've got all this checking for paranoia that the firmware has not being meddled with checksums and things um so it's like well that must have a bearing on it surely um so yeah I thought [ __ ] it let's have a look at this and see if we can do anything with it it can't be that hard it's just the menu um so yeah that's how kind of about all started okay so you started to dig in and also reading through your documentation so the the menu which is the bit that you uh worked on and I'm I'm quoting for what you said when the PSS boots it looks for menu. CIS which is basically just an ISO file so did you work that out how did you come to that conclusion you justs so yeah they got all on that Reaper yeah yeah so it was lit it just I think it was just said there like so yeah it just said that basically menu sis is just literally it's a it's an ISO it's just a bootable ISO it's got the menu within it um so if you get a copy of Ridge Racer and just call it menu. CIS and cheuck out an SD card the PS will just boot rid racer instantly every time um cuz that's how it works kind of thing so yeah but yeah I didn't find that out that's that's PSI on that did the work on that all right so then you've understood that okay if I can create my own PlayStation uh app program whatever you want to call it I don't know what they apps we didn't use the word app back then but I could make my own PlayStation game program that would interface with the psio then I could replace the menu and maybe get rid of a lot of the bloat maybe make it a little bit more efficient uh so then though you would have had to learn something about the uh microcontroller and the fpga on the psio or interfacing with at least so was this also with the PSI owned I owned project that already have that information as well um so they had some information they didn't actually give me a lot um I I actually got in touch with them way later than when so when they announced what they did I I didn't actually start speaking to them and working with them until months after um a couple of months after but yeah if you notice on the PSI owned um website they mention that there's um you can actually get um a debug output from the arm chip and it'll tell you what basically what it's doing all the time which if you can see on here those little two colored cables MH yeah and they go around the other side and connect to that f CDI there that gives me my debug output from when it's running so I was like oh I wonder what this is going to tell me then so literally whyde it up plugged it in and this thing's telling me all the commands that it's sending to and from the CD controller and it's literally just spilling its heart out to me over the UR it's just telling me exactly what it's doing um so yeah from doing that and then look looking at basically I've got one window that's got a Serial output which is from there that's telling me what it's doing and on the other window I've literally got um the actual PlayStation output on the screen so I can sort of time code the two together and find out what's happening and when and then from then it was like oh it's sending the CD command that's not an official CD command ah and then obviously built on that and built on that and built on that and then we had a menu okay so that's how you built the menu up yourself would you say again I I I found you to be quite humble but in your words but do you think the light menu was it particularly sophisticated on what how what level of sophistication do you think you had to do to actually get this going um so light menu is really simple like it's about 250 lines of code of my writing that's it yeah so a lot of the other stuff in there obviously because you've got quite a complex machine there really you've got loads of other libraries that make things work um but the way that a PSI own works is it sends it just pretends to be a CD controller now the the original one that's in the PlayStation has like a a hole in the middle of the commands so the stop at like 20 hex and then they don't start again till like 50 so you've got this you've got this unused area in the middle that you could just use whatever you want and that's where all the psio commands sit so they're above and below the official commands um and then that was basically it so it was like you know you send a command it checks if it's there you send another command select this ISO select this other one it reboots the machine um send another command it can disable it um that kind of thing and yeah they just they just literally you send like a 0x2 one to the CD controller wait for an IQ pop it's disabled or whatever that kind of thing it's really simple so yeah it's literally just sending single bik commands to a controller on it inside it and then reading the right responses the rest of it is literally it's the PSI own software on the on the arm and the fpga that are doing the work still so yeah the menu is very simple okay so the menu is very simple you said about 250 lines of your own code something like this and you said some libraries now those because one the reason I'm digging into this a little bit is because of the statements that were made uh by sden saying that you know all sorts of claims I'm pretty sure they would say anything to back up it you're using their code you're using their stuff uh what are these libraries that you said you were accessing so uh in the interests of who wrote them I can't say which lab is it used because it's unfair to that individual um but they are completely open source they are used in other software projects um the person who wrote that code the codee's out there you can find it um but the person who's there don't want to be associated with any of this at all so to respect their wishes I'd rather not say however it doesn't use anything from sibon at all because that's just son's libraries that they've used um so yeah I'm I'm fine we're not using that so yeah I didn't use any of that at all okay so and we will get into that a little bit so the reason that the dad is is so Koy about this because there has been difficulties in the community with personal attacks and and stuff like this so to not highlight the develop the so I understand why you want to do that so we need these extra libraries to access different parts of the hardware and either you could use the built-in Sony libraries or uh this particular open source developer has released their versions of them and that's what you were incorporating in your code yeah so it wasn't for anything particularly magic so stuff like um mounting the CD um passing an ISO file system um passing the system CNF which is like on a placation that's like your your auto exit bat from back in PC days tells it what file to start and things like that um the code that passes that and Boots all that up that kind of thing I didn't write that that's that's part of the libraries um that's all those libraries did and that's all I provided they've be okay so they're open source so that's it so okay you've you've created this menu uh system for it sounds like my interpretation is just for your own hacking thing you were you were just you're a hacker you've W to and I use that in the the good terminology uh home brew developer uh you're frustrated with something the uh slow pace of development now on the psio is dragging on as well there is not any sort of or much as I understand at all official updates coming from psio at this stage so it's not like the official developers are adding to this and going this it's it's your frustration that this product isn't being supported is that another part there pretty much it yeah so like yeah I mean couple of my friends that are on our Discord server they sort of said the same thing you know like it doesn't actually offer any development opportunities it's a bit of a waste that kind of thing um and obviously getting the hardware on the PSA to do development related tasks is now and impossible without you writing a custom firmware from scratch beat for the fpj and the arm um so my my initial idea was would just to literally get it to boot like some sort of iso that will give me like a Serial dummy server that I can upload my own code to um if you've ever used unirom something along those lines um which is a Playstation tool which is excellent by the way um for that kind of thing um so yeah it was just to try and get me some development features initially and maybe just to boot the CD if I wanted to um and yeah basically for my own personal gain and to see well basically to offer people you know you've got this missing piece of a puzzle this bit of cod here provides it it doesn't really step on your toes or anything and that was that was based on my initial goals right and you've you've kind of essentially clean room developed it that it not actually using uh the siin libraries or or any of their stuff uh just something that came to my mind right now if the menu dot wait what's that sound is there a clicking no there was a weird clicking in the the the speakers back there no no problem sorry it's all right um where am I going with this so the the menu. CIS is its own bootable I don't know why if this would make a difference or not but could the uh your light menu just be burnt to a CD could it load from a CD rather than having to be a file on the SD card or something like that works the same same so yeah if you put if you put my light menu and just literally burnt the menu cyst to a CD and popped it in it' literally pop up and say it can't detect a psio because that's part the Cod yeah sure okay you put psio in that's it yeah but yeah you could you bounce on and purposes you could just Boot It On Any machine it doesn't it's not really other than the parts it needs to communicate with the psio to get the information it needs like the list of games that are on the SD card or anything like that um it doesn't rely on anything on the PS at all it's um yeah it's just an application like anything else so yeah if it was named an ISO and recorded to a disc it had just boot uh and do all psio official and unofficial versions do they all need that extra little mod ship looking part that goes with it as well what's that part yeah so the way that PS works is you've got within the PlayStation you've got the CD controller um and the way that PSI works is it literally that switch board um switches off the internal one and it flips all the control signals to psi or cartridge on the back um and because these signals been well they're not actually externally rooted correctly that's why you have that Bas that little mod board um so when your PSA is enabled it switches off the internal CD controller um when you choose to boot a a real CD with the PSA it flicks it the other way back so it uses the internal CD controller again and that's all that does it's literally just a it's like a I don't know probably about a four or five prong switch so it just switches some signals between the original inside and the PSA that's it so yeah it's 100% required all right and it's not uh a classic mod chip but at least on visual inspection it seems like as hard or as easy to install as an an OG mod chip like you've got to open the machine up do some soldering to different points underneath there yeah it's probably a little bit harder you've got I think there's two really tricky little tracks where you've got to cut them with a knife to to basically isolate the signal then you jumping some wires in but yeah if you can do one of those old whatever they are seven or eight wire stealth mods from back in the day I'm pretty sure you'd be you'd be fine with it they're not hard um and I mean to be fair I've never even used those I I'm a bit lazy so I use the voltar solution which basically it sticks on the underneath of the um parallel part the back and it doesn't require as many cuts and wires it's a little bit simple I forgot what they call it siox I think it is um yeah I'm lazy so I just use those but yeah it's it's I I don't know it's probably a two out of five in difficulty scale probably most people should be able to do it you just got to take your time sure so so far we sort of just been focused in on your efforts you're a Homebrew developer you've made this thing but I'd like to now relate this story back to the community and back to and then uh Matt starts to come in the the the original developer of uh psio so take us through that timeline of things you're developing something and what you're talking about it on the community and you're saying hey guys I've got this but I haven't released it yet what is that timeline how does that go so I initially discovered some of the commands that do various things so I think it started with like oh I can actually just switch off PS even though I booted from it and just boot original CD um you can disable and enable fast boot so rather than booting up like a normal PlayStation that takes quite a while showing you the logo and things you can just make it boot like a cheat cartridge does um so I found the options for that um so ially my original project and the kind of probably the thing I bragged a little bit about if I'm honest was um I've made this thing where you've got a menu where you can either choose to boot uniom so you can do your serial development stuff and all that lot like would use uniom or you can just boot the official menu um from sdin so you had you had like a dual boot kind of thing that worked okay um so yeah that's kind of how it started and that was that I think I was dropping bits about that on um the PSX dodev Discord um and then I put some pictures up on on um sorry not pictures um put a bit of a video up on YouTube about it just to see if there was any interest cuz that was a thing a lot of people quite vocal about not having any updates um so I thought I wonder if there anyone else interested in this kind of thing so yeah that that's where it originally started um was with that and then obviously as I started discovering more commands and making more things work add did more videos talked about a little bit more figured out how it worked and then yeah we got up to like probably last June something like that June okay have you at this stage then have you released any code for light menu or any what have you released to the public at this stage nothing okay so yeah there's nothing there's nothing released um my initial idea was to get a couple of people for maybe like a close beater kind of thing um like I alluded to before there's some code in there that belongs to somebody else which is open source but they don't want to be associated with it um so my idea was initially to look at that code and literally rebuild it myself so use that as an example strip out what I don't need keep the things I do need so that person's absolved of anything to do with it and um as a learning exercise for myself as well cuz that was one of the other things that sort of fueled it a little bit was I know nothing about the CD controller and a PlayStation so I wanted to learn a little bit more um which this kind of did help with it's it's admirable that you are thinking of the people who are involved here and you said this uh other developer with their library that they've made and you don't want them involved but if that library is it on GitHub is it available like is it or what what how come you can't just say hey I downloaded their their Library they don't know nothing about it I'm using it is that not public available a what's up with that library then um it's publicly available it's not on GitHub um it's getting on a bit now um yeah all it was I'm I'm quite good friends with this person who wrote this code and um you know quite a lot of people are and they were just like I don't want this I don't need this um kind of thing so you know we just not mention my name in it and then I kind of went a step further and I was like I need to you know I really want to respect their wishes here I don't want anything I don't want them to have anything to do with it at all um so yeah that's kind of what that went about um but yeah the cod's out there it's part of an old development kit for the PlayStation um if you look hard enough it is out there it's on a couple of the old scene sites that have been kicking around since the late 90s um come across it quite easily okay so this uh attitude that a few uh people in the community have that they don't want to be associated with is this because the possibility of your tool could be used used for piracy or is it that they don't want to get involved with what seems to be a rather toxic developer and a toxic Community or what's that why are people worried about being involved I won to say worried but yeah it's map people just okay C be ass with it straight up yeah that's it it's just map yeah okay so the developer of psio he by now as I understand has displayed so many negative traits negative quality to the community the way that he's reacting uh that he just that people just don't even want to be associated with I don't want my name anywhere near this I don't want to know anything about it is that is that it like yeah pretty much I mean with in honesty there are people that do go on the forums and stuff I mean it's quite complicated with Who's Who and everything but like I think it was one of the developers of um one of the expanded versions of I think called Tony hacks they're quite a big poster on on his forums now um Martin C no cash is called um who's one of the great people on the PlayStation scene Al very quiet and a recluse um he posts a lot on there with technical information um so there are people that you know do get on with this guy but there's a hell of a lot that don't a lot okay and so the feeling is that if I'm the feeling from these other people who have concerns is it that oh if I'm associated with this then I might get some of the toxicity of the community directed at me so that means there must be some previous examples of someone who's tried to mess in the community and got a a negative or to the level of toxic reaction from Matt and or his company and so other people have just shied away is that where we're going with it's a little bit Yeah so I mean Matt and who mat is is quite a complicated subject in itself um so yeah we can talk about a or whatever but that I think the thing that is is that that puts a lot of people off is rubbing even up against him was it like there's examples of it around um there were people who didn't get a timely response on ordering a um a psio and then they did charge backs and he literally docks them on his website and threatened her um so he was going to say you know I'll put your name and your address and your credit card details and you'll go on a bit of a [ __ ] list on our website which I think I believe happened with a couple of people and then I think he realized that he shouldn't be doing things like that and then they got removed um so it's those kind of things it's just like if you've got a guy that's fueled by that much hatred for something so minor what's he going to be like about you know someone [ __ ] around with his software um yeah and you know it it might be all Steam and piss and whatever and he might just be mouthing off but you know if he finds some information you know people don't want that it's you know we've got lives to get on with I guess and um yeah right sure so I guess that's uh what I was trying trying to build this picture here for people who may not know part of the situation that uh look in our Retro Gaming Community unfortunately this negativity just I don't know whether it's we're all a bunch of autistic nerds or something and these things could come up and I think we're all used to a certain level of that and all used to a certain level of sort of maneuvering through such things but it seems that he uh the experiences of people seem to be really negative really [ __ ] uh and he's and he's done some things like that so the website thing as we understand not entirely sure of that but it seems like personal information was put out there but then there's also negative uh reactions to people in the community people asking for things people wanting customer support getting very negative so the whole picture is just I don't want to be communicating with this individual yeah I don't like yeah and that was the thing like you know the person who wrote that software the bits of software that I used to to build light menu they were just like I don't want that to dealing anything like that I don't even give a [ __ ] about his product um you know I don't even want my [ __ ] used for it but you've used it and it's it's in terms of the license so you can but you know it's kind of against my wishes and I was like yeah well you know I'm not bothered about what license is you know I'd rather respect this person's wishes so that's kind of what I did but yeah that's exactly it okay so do I detect however in you d a small uh I don't know a sense of the Rebel in you a little bit that okay if the bully's out there then we're not going to sort of back down stra away and that you did you you went for this a little bit and eventually you did you know decide you had a limit and we all had a limit but at first you haven't been turned away by this attitude no so yeah I umum before we even get to the point where emails got exchanged um i' I've done a lot of background on this person um yeah we've got a quite substantial file of information um addresses where this person yeah lots of stuff so yeah I followed in my background before I was doing this so I was like you know has this guy got any patents has he got any trademarks has he got any copyright I [ __ ] so it was like it was all this kind of thing um yeah you know he's registered as a sole Trader just like my dad was as a decorator or something like like you know it's not even um the only he can't even trade out the name of the product because it's actually already another product in Australia which is like some MP3 player glasses thing or something it was just like you know what yeah [ __ ] this guy I'm going to go for it which is why obviously my initial response was quite ballsy um yeah probably not the best in hindsight to be honest I was quite fired up when I wrote it but yeah that was yeah bit of Rebel in there I think definitely okay so at first all right he's pushing at you and you're like [ __ ] this I'm GNA you know I could push back a little bit uh right so so so as I've understood Matt in Australia you're a soult Trader which means you're not an incorporated company and I remember I was a soult Trader when I was when I was selling PCS uh back in the day I was a soul Trader uh registered in Australia with the Australian business number and all that and because that's the individual like what to say when you make a company you can uh you get the for the word the indemnity or the protection of the company if things go bust it's the company that goes bust but if you're the soulle trader then you have full liability full personal liability if someone sues it's on you and uh that's why these days I certainly don't trust or don't go to Soul Traders ships anymore but this person that's very interesting like it's not that hard to make a company in Australia we pretty backward but not that backward that it's not that hard to to make a PTY LTD yeah I don't know why they've chosen that I I I can't answer that yeah like you know in the UK you can go and get a company in a box for 250 quid you know and do a trading house whatever yeah you know then you've got your limited you've got your limited liability and everything um why someone would choose that route I don't know um I don't know yeah I have no idea um yeah I know what's up with that and I don't know the GST or vat is cuz we couldn't we got the vat in Australia but we couldn't just call it vat cuz that'd be too [ __ ] easy so we had to call it GST goods and services tax uh instead but we've got an equivalent thing in Australia uh I don't know I know nothing about that situation the only time I usually find when people want to be sold Traders ships is they want to do some funny business with GST but I know nothing of that I make no claims to to know anything about the specific situation um okay so the next thing is I mean he's push you know this guy's a little bit Upp you decide I'm not just going to sit down completely and as I understand your first reactions to him were quite uh assertive back to him as well you know you weren't going to take any [ __ ] um how do you in reflection at the end of this process now how do you have you has it taught you something about how you communicate in the community how do you feel about those First Reactions now when you maybe weren't so eloquent in all of your words yeah I think probably yeah reflecting now um I shouldn't have replied when I did probably te you know taken a couple of days and made a more considered approach um I think I stand by what I wrote at the time so I mean even if I I mean there' have been less of the [ __ ] you and all that stuff in there and all that kind of stuff but yeah yeah it have been worded a little bit differently um Ely um I think even then based on what I knew before obviously about him and the situation and what's copyright what isn't obviously it uses Sony code in the thing and all that sort of stuff I'd have probably still made the initial you know I'm going to do this um however I would have chose a better date um because stupidly I was on freaking holiday so I had to break off from my sunton duties on a beach put the cesa down and go off and make a [ __ ] blog post about it um yeah I couldn't believe it so yeah I got the feedback about that off my partner like why the hell have you said 14th of August you prick whatever it was so yeah um so yeah yeah on hindsight yeah I think I'd have taken a couple of days to think about a little bit more I think and probably yeah worded that a little bit differently sure sure sure so we certainly I'm not saying we need to to back down to bullies but okay maybe there are different ways to to come at that I don't think actually in this conversation I've been so clear with this further on uh earlier on but we may as well jump into this bit here now where we were talking about this library and the library that your your friend and you don't want to be Associated and this library that we're just speaking about uh you need those libraries to access parts of the hardware now it has come out I don't know did you find it out or someone else found it out that the psio official firmware the official version that comes the their solution is to just use the Sony libraries and use the Sony code is that correct or what you've seen no so when P PSI owned put out their information on their GitHub about you know this is how the menu is encrypted this is what the different files do um literally as soon as I saw that went straight through it ran the python tools to decrypt it and have a look at what was in there um and then literally you can just drop a file straight in the hex editor and you just seen Sony Library copyright blah blah all the way through it um so yeah that's that wasn't anything to do with the my friend's code that I've used right that was literally this predates all that um so yeah um so yeah that was that was how that we came across that was literally just looking through the code and you can see straight there clear this day um son is peppered all over it and okay and now sometimes if there's a library that's it's like if it's the library is there you could sort of use it but he would have had to package that up into the psio firmware and that's definitely not approved with a license let's say it's not like that Library just exists somewhere and he was just accessing it he actually had to take the sunny code incorporate it into his own code and then is Distributing that in the psio firmware or how does that Library get so basically the way that Matt's written the software for PSI always used the official p p well SQ or however you want to pronounce it the Sony tools what what developers did back in the day um so rather than using an open source solution that uses modern tools and compilers he's just used the old tools um and obviously that library then forms part of that the SQ Library um so all this the access the stuff will access in CD um the cd part of it um the bit that loads in graphics and it's got the fancy stuff on it and all that lot that's all syq code that's in there and that's like said and because he wrote it using the official development kit when you compile the code those libraries get linked and obviously become part of the executable which ends up on the thing okay gotcha gotcha and if uh that is Sony proprietary stuff so if you don't have a license for that you can't be doing that sort of stuff or at least one shouldn't be um I'm not a liyar I can't comment on that but um I I think it's one of those that probably don't give a [ __ ] anymore because it's so old but I think when you're making a commercial product and you're selling something and you're making money out of it like this is and you're using something that was commercial which did have a cost attached to it and a license I think you're potentially on dodgy ground it's not a it's not I wouldn't want to be doing it that way anyway I'd rather be completely clean um but you know Matt CHS this rout for whatever reason for maybe familiarity with the with the toolkit itself because he was used to using it or something I'm not sure yeah I think that's a question a lot of people sort of came to the first mind oh my yeah first of all oh my God actually psio is included copyright unlicensed Sony code but that's only how to say going to get him in trouble officially if Sonny or whoever is the current license holder of that takes some action against that person or maybe I don't know someone who's an intermediary seller says Ah I don't want to be involved in this I'm just imagining here if he sold it on I don't know Amazon and Amazon said oh this looks dodgy we're not going to let you sell it on our platform but beyond that someone actually has to take action some rights holder and I guess he's too small fry for Sonny to look at on that looking at that [ __ ] anymore or I I I you know I think that's it yeah I think it's basically I mean Sony a Sony out there and this is something that relates to a computer that came out in like 1994 the the software is way old they've made their money on that manyfold like you know they probably couldn't give a [ __ ] anymore there's probably I mean to be fair the public would care more about the fact that he's used the grand um Crash Bandicoot and stuff like that all over his website without actually getting permission and you've got you know you've got running stuff of games like Tekken on the they will probably things that be more interesting in than the fact that he's used um the library code from where back when but yeah it would be certain that would need to do that uh right and I think more than like some legales thing that oh the lawyers are going to come uh to me personally it just speaks more to the uh I don't know say moral standpoint of this when someone says Ah you've used my stuff Matt saying this stuff but okay the pots call in the kettle black over here because you're not exactly got you haven't got Clean Hands either in this situation no I think that's the thing that really really red me about it and it really got my back up which is why I wrote that initial response that I did was you know this this motherfucker's using son need Li [ __ ] here and like I'm I'm using bad gcc2 I'm I'm using part of an example that were written by Jonathan someone yeah the guy wrote uniom he's got like a hello world example which is like some proper bear startup code I use that um the font came from um some site called 8bit fonts which are then converted and ran in like you know there wasn't there's not a single bite of anything in there that's suddenly copyright all in what I've done um and I've not even you know I won't even know reverse engineer code let alone his anyway but yeah so there's like there's literally not touched a thing of his and then he starts spouting all that stuff so yeah it's uh yeah I think that was the thing that got my back up the most to be honest all right so you you've talk you're talking about the the light menu or the the the development is continuing it's starting to form this thing called light menu you're adding more features to it you're talking about it and um now there was this cuz Walkers through this thing where you sort of it was like an ultimatum as well uh this time limit ultimatum what sends you down this line of talk us through what you did and why did you do that so yeah I was kind of in the moment on that thinking about it um yeah so I was quite red obviously because of the exchanges we had had and it was like right this guy keeps dropping a carrot saying you know dangling a carrot I'm going to bring it out soon I'm going to bring it out soon it was supposed to be bringing it out and then PSI own did what they did and then it's like this is f delayed it and all this kind of stuff and it was like I'm going to give him the opportunity to do the right thing okay you know I'm not saying deliver a firmware that's sorry a menu That's stupidly fast that does all these development functions that has MC Pro support and all that stuff just [ __ ] do something you know do something for your users at least there's been you know it's nearly two and a half three years at this point um so I was like well I'll give him four weeks so I just thought you know and I talked it over with some people like yeah why not like you know it might do the right thing and he might release the menu and and updated menu or updated firmware for his device and if he don't well people have got light menu to play around with um yeah and that that was basically the rational behind that was it was trying to just turn his hand a little bit and just say come on mate just put something out but but yeah obviously didn't work very well okay well yeah okay going full on at him so how do you then um which kind of explore both sides of this here and I I thank you that you're being quite open with this and I you know you you do seem to acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses here let's say which I appreciate this in conversation how do you feel about the idea that if you had released light menu that it might or I mean it bypasses the DRM that the original developer put in now For Better or For Worse whether that's good DRM or what that is and now I know I could see already I got you there that it is that a valid concern and how do you feel about that I don't agree with that term if I'm perfectly honest sure so okay DRM so yeah it don't have any it literally doesn't have any um you know you put an ISO on that SD card the [ __ ] thing runs it like there's nothing to stop it from doing that so when I put my own code on it and just name it menu sis there we go it that's it there's there's nothing else to stop you accessing that Hardware it's not like you've got some weird key exchange you've got to say hello Matt and it says hello back or there's some weird algorithm or exchange of data to make it work there's nothing literally it just runs so all I did was make an ISO that you know renamed did the thing and controlled it there's nothing there is no Rights Management or anything to crap to make it do it it's just sat there waiting for you to give it the commands and that's all I did gave it them okay so like you were saying I could just get my copy of Tekken and rename it or is it literally as easy as renaming the iso to menu. sis you got a game Run Tekken yeah yeah I mean it'll run Tekken you won't get stuff like the audio working maybe properly you'll get you get sound effects you're getting music but yeah yeah you could put Ridge Racer ISO in then you'll be a to drive around the track you would have the music but you'd have the sound effects yeah so that's yeah that's it yeah correct okay okay and uh also by this stage it's not quite a defense but the Chinese had already been selling these clones they had already done something so there wasn't there's no cracking here there's no hacking there's no decryption of security protocols or something like that like so if I understand the DRM that the original developer put in was in the code of their PlayStation menu so it would run anything and that was in the middle of that where maybe he's checking for cereals or something like that correct yeah so believe the way that it works it the reason why it takes so long is is because to start up initially is because it's literally it's doing a check some of itself so what that's doing is that menu it's not actually stopping you from running another menu it's trying to stop you from tampering with the menu itself okay so obviously it's protecting itself because it's saying how on a minute this this checks I'm don't add up that's because there's been some bites done right I'm not going to boot or it'll come with an error whatever I'm not sure um and then also you've got the added thing about in the newer versions I believe he's got a bit of a blacklist in there of serial numbers or something um but yeah that's it that's all it does it literally protects the menu itself so yeah you run your own code you don't need any DRM and you're not cracking anything okay so okay expert hacker here all right all we did was replace an ISO file so that was interesting to get into the idea of what is this hacking what is this thing behind it because uh so uh you've said here's the deadline it's August uh 14 and uh Matt you get some communication what communication are we getting from so I initially obviously sent him that that email saying you know [ __ ] off um and then um he replied and just basically said the same thing um that I think it's all on my get up I think but yeah it came back with like you know I don't know where you've got your legal info from um you know I want the name of your solicitor or your legal counselor and all this sort of [ __ ] um and then he made light of an allegation that I made about about his ident entity online um the whole map Shadow whatever you know the and all this stuff um yeah and yeah and that was basically it um after that we had no other further exchanges um so I just left it like that um and then yeah after obviously then went around the that the and just left it like that so yeah nothing else um had nothing else from him since okay so what was the final thing what then made you change your mind and you went that's it I'm not going to release it this there's too much [ __ ] [ __ ] this I'm done was it that last one where he's like give me the name of your lawyer I've got lawyers involved blah blah blah blah blah BL blah no it wasn't that um so yeah I i' got some legal advice for a friend of a friend um before I wrote the initial response and um when we had dinner they were sort of saying like I'd feel bad taking your money to even look into this [ __ ] because it this is this is [ __ ] am night um however um after that when we were talking said the one thing you do need to consider is is there are other legal avenues that people can take and it can actually cost you money um so you know there's a whole civil route um you know having to deal with the whole thing about um you know just having to deal with email exchanges and things like that and maybe having to get things written by a solicitor to respond to you know I'm in it for you know the Goodwill and all that lot but I'm I'm not being out of pocket for it and I'm not having letters sent to my personal address and things like that um and that was that was one of the things that was one of the circumstance that made me think right you know I've got children I've got a partner got a job i' got a house all periphery around the PlayStation nothing to do with it you know this this could get a little bit messy and yeah and um yeah ultimately decided maybe not the right thing to do this is an understandable point so I think if people haven't been involved in legal proceedings before or something hasn't happened it's not like instantly there's a judgment made and guilty or not guilty money involved there is a process and you are going if someone the first thing I ever learned in business was the first time someone threatens me with legal action it's happened a number of times before and hey now I'm used to it so it's okay it doesn't phase me anymore uh whenever somebody says uh threatens legal action the first thing I am now programmed to say is okay I understand I will be speaking to you anymore please uh whatever you now say to me will be responded to by my lawyer so as soon as I threaten I just there's no more conversation so that is actually really a good way to get out of a lot of it because if they're bluffing straight away like why didn't you talk to me because you threaten legal action legally I shouldn't communicate as soon as you threaten legal action to me I should not communicate with you anymore and our interactions should go through legal terms to to cover us or go through legal offices or or legally trained people um so if I get and then so let's say the the bluff isn't you know so Bluff let's say I get a lawyer's letter which has happened before so this happened to me uh in my my business is I run a standup comedy production company in Estonia and my guys we put videos to YouTube and a couple of my guys made some videos making fun of literally the local chippy like literally the [ __ ] local Chippy the fish and ship store that everyone goes to at 2 a.m. we all know we've all been there making fun of the quality of the 2 a.m. chippy right and then we get a a letter from them saying these two videos they have made we demand that you take them down we demand that all of this and it's clearly [ __ ] they're just getting themselves worked up uh they have nothing to stand on these are personal opinions that are said by individuals and this is absolutely protected uh they've got no leg to stand on however when someone sends us a legal letter I believe we are obliged to reply from a lawyer if you send me a letter from a lawyer I'm not writing back myself um even if I'm completely 100% correct I'm not stupid enough to reply back myself I then pass that information over to my lawyer they spend whatever their time is to construct a legali letter that says the same thing you're [ __ ] stupid but in lovely legal terms and that means I have to pay the lawyer to do that and in this particular instance I'm saying with the local chippy that was still 700 800 Euros by the time the letters get done I got to go meet them I got to expl because the lawyer doesn't just like write what you say they you know hey write this no they want to meet you of course they want to hear what's going on they want to hear all the information and it's easy enough with it's a video on YouTube where someone says some [ __ ] right but then you've got to meet with a lawyer youve got to explain all this technical stuff you got to explain libraries you got to explain the three separate parts of the code this is a number of hours of lawyers time then they're going to take some time to look up the statute then they're going to take some time time to actually draft the letter 5 6 7 8 10 hours easy times that by whatever your lawyer's rate is Grand bam there's a grand right there straight up just easy to reply to this person now even if Ed we saw I saw the the letter that that came from Matt it's coming from him personally oh [ __ ] yeah right it's not there's no lawyers involved here but nevertheless there's threatened threats of legal action oh I've got this I've got a solicitor I've got this so we want to protect ourselves you got a family you don't want to [ __ ] around you know you've got a life so what I'm trying to paint this longer picture of here is that even though Matt is clearly talking way out of his backside as soon as someone starts to say all this legal stuff then you've got to respond in kind and that is instantly expensive so is that part of the thinking that went through your mind it was partly that yeah um so yeah over here you're looking at 250 pounds an hour plus v 20% so yeah you know 10 hours two and a half Grand plus F so yeah there was that in the back of my mind um the other thing was it wasn't necessarily the whole legal part of it it was more the things that could be done that are maybe not legal or not using the legal system so the way if you look at the exchanges we had the initial contact he had with me um he actually found my details due to some database leak or some on a forum from [ __ ] knows when now I'm thinking to myself if this gu willing to stoop to [ __ ] like that you know you can go around and look on Google and there's people that will find people for 50 50 Quid in UK and they'll give you an address you pay a 100 they'll take a picture from on the doorstep and I'm thinking all these kind of things like do I want that invasion of privacy just for some [ __ ] menu like yeah and that's kind of where I was at with it it was partly the legal thing um smaller but the bigger thing it was it was just generically the threat of Matt and like you know he's threatened to docks people in the past my information's out there obviously not really where I live or anything but you know you can find out a lot about me you can find pictures of me and stuff like that I just yeah just not worth it that was that was it it was not worth it but in the same time as I'm sort of considering my options this is like coming up to the days before when it was like dday if you like um PSI owned we yeah reached out having some email exchanges and they were like we're on with this already mate so I wasn't part I was I'm not a member of them or anything I literally joined them towards the end but they were like yeah we've we've kind of got something in the works um so you know maybe consider that with your options so I'm like well we've got these people I don't know the [ __ ] be don't if the male female where in the world are from I suspect somewhere over rushia away just with a really crap translation but I'm 100% sure um yeah and they were on with something and it was like well you know they're going to feed the need of these people they're going to release something open source um you know that kind of gets me off the hook and that really made me then think right yeah I think I need to bow out of this so yeah it's fair enough and it's very look at the end of the day you've got a family you've got a life all this online [ __ ] drama and [ __ ] there comes some point where look okay good I'm out yeah totally and I think you know as a lot of people said you know quite some yeah I mean yeah two people that probably attacked me quite a lot um in males and things um but even then as that as as side there was some people on some discords there were some other people on Twitter and stuff that were sort of saying like you know you say you don't want drama but then you're doing this and I you know I'd probably agree with that in hindsight now you know maybe I shouldn't have been such a [ __ ] in my initial response um and so gung-ho about it um yeah to only then Rene onone the promise that I made so yeah I think you know yeah maybe I shouldn't have done that to be honest um and I do agree with what they said about that you know yeah I don't want drama and I probably shouldn't have replied in the way that I did initially and maybe they would have been as much who knows um yeah it's a hard one to say so if you because first of all it seems like uh okay it's a hard one to say because uh okay you were quite assertive also opinionated with uh your replies to Matt but if you have a bully I mean if you playstate the bully and you know just oh work around them does that you know is that going to work is there any flanking this person at all because the legal letter that you got from them my interpretation of that is it's the equivalent of when there's drama out the front of the Chippy at 3:00 a.m. and you know your way to deescalate the situation is just to go crazy nuts at them come at them like that just tried scare them off even though you know if an actual fight broke out you really couldn't do anything um I look I like that you're reflecting on this and I think this is a very good sign for you that you have that ability to reflect look back at yourself I did some things good there is things I would have approved and I think that's one of the things why I've enjoyed this conversation with you as well because look hey we've all done some dumb things we've all done crazy things was it dumb or not I don't know I'm going to leave this uh judgment to somebody but we've all done actions in the past and had interactions that we can look back on and say hey you I probably could have dealt with that in a different way or more diplomatically would it have helped can't say but I appreciate your thinking yeah and I think you know it's all part of the journey isn't it it's not about where you're going and you learn things on the way and um that's everything I've done with PlayStation is always about a journey so it's it's not about hitting a goal it's about the things that you learn on the way um and that was one of the things it's just while it was helping me on the way I was looking at well I could maybe help other people on the way and then you know we had these negative forces and yeah so yeah hindsight wonderful thing huh indeed it is we learn everything is learning I like this a lot so to kind of wrap up the end of this story here so the PSI owned guys they're who knows where they're from they're from somewhere we don't know uh but they also shut down as well if I look at their giek Hub 2 what do you know what was up with with them decid the same reasons yeah so I I I basically joined them so um when I started making the discussion they was saying like you know we're on with this menu um they were like well we've actually made some inroads into this already um we've got some bits working what have you got working do you want to compare notes so like yeah I just sent the literally a list of commands that I had that worked to did various things to them and they ran with the rest of it um but yeah um after that and obviously after I put out things saying I'm not going to release um light menu um I started getting a lot of abuse off an individual I won't name um because it's irrelevant but yeah this particular individual was going all over my YouTube so had to switch all the comments off on like really old videos and stuff and they were talking about my dog and things like that and literally everywhere I went this guy was just giving it some [ __ ] banter um and I'm not on Twitter I'd have been on me on that um so yeah um I was like so I was just talking to these guys and the Discord Channel I was like I'm just sick of this guy all over me like what are we going to do about it cuz you know he's talking to you PSA own about this stuff not knowing that I'm part and I just want him to [ __ ] off so they were just like well just email him off the PSI on email just tell him who you are time to back the [ __ ] off because if he doesn't we're not playing ball anymore we're not doing it anymore and I was like yeah but you can't make this about me this is your work and they like we don't really give a [ __ ] we just we just wanted to correct the thing and we've done that you know we're not bothered about writing a menu for his shitty firmware cuz it's [ __ ] you know you can't polish a turd that was basically what they're thinking so I was like fair enough so obviously they gave me the credentials logged in proton mail sent this chap an email saying like M back the [ __ ] off this is who I am you're going to ruin the project if you keep going on like this so it just basically outed my entire email on Twitter so PSR was just like [ __ ] this and shut it down and that was that so yeah it was due to the individual if you look on the PSI on site um on the GitHub it does explain that the the story and the exchange on there um but yeah that was basically why because we're not in it to be dealt with you know talk to like that we're not in it to be bullied cold slurs and things like that you know we're in it for the fun we're in it for the game we're in it for the chase we're in it for you know just have a good time and help people out with things and this guy's getting personal and he's you know like gers and all sorts of [ __ ] like that and it was just like don't need that in my life and they were like we don't want anything to do with it either so yeah basically that um that individual spelled it for everyone hm was this individual I and I didn't quite understand were they unhappy because you didn't release it or were they unhappy because you had developed it why were they unhappy I don't understand um I believe there's something are the connected to the the people or the team that have cracked the original firmware um that are now doing various things on 4 PDA and stuff like that um I don't know anything about them guys you know like [ __ ] respect to them they crack the firmware they're doing you know they're bringing updates to people that have got these things you know fair play um but yeah this guy was something to do with that and he it was a grief so when I started light menu and I started up with a GitHub repo explain what it was about it was in there saying you know you need to do this feature you need to do we need multi-is support we need this um yeah and then obviously I said that I'm not not going to release it and then he's like oh you've got no [ __ ] balls you're just a typical British queen and all this [ __ ] um oh you know just stuff like that and it was just like yeah it was just basically I think his line was something like I don't like people that go back on the word and I'm a man of principle and all this kind of alpha dog [ __ ] and it was just like whatever um so yeah I don't yeah just agreed that I didn't release light menu basically fair enough I can tell look thank thanks for going through that because it's not good when I uh it's I can't take it like when people are like abusing you online and [ __ ] like that like I'm not I feel terrible um so thank you for for the describing that to us cuz just it up you know it's a real negative it's quite cathartic I'm honest it's yeah I've not really talked about it much so like yeah literally like obviously we talking we're in a Discord and we all talk about stuff like that we didn't really talk about much in there it's drama we don't really talk about drama um spot to my partner about it my kid knows about it and stuff like that and that was about it and it was like do you know what it'd be quite and the other thing that's quite nice talking to as well is is a it's it feels quite good talking about and getting off my chest but B it's like setting the record straight there's there's a lot stuff that got said on Twitter and things like that and people have got opinions on certain things and you know some quite famous people on YouTube that reckoned it was fake and it was just you know I just knocked some images together it was all stage it doesn't exist um you know which it [ __ ] does um so yeah there was LS like that so yeah it's quite good just to talk about it get things off my chest and um set the record straight I guess and fill in some detail so yeah it's all good good I guess well if someone wanted prove if I understood they could just do the rename the I s menu. sis something would Boot and you at least have proof that this thing can like run right like this is not all snake oil right like okay yes you then okay you're still hiding the actual menu commands that you need to interact with the psio but if anyone wants proof just take an ISO rename it to menu. CIS and you'll see oh it boots well this is the kind of the proof we're trying to say here that this is not some snake oil this is true yeah and it's not hard like you know I'm not a reverse engineer I'm like I'm literally just a guy who knows a bit about Electronics I know some bits about logic and I've been pissing around with the thing since I was a kid and the thing is that that made this so easy was because the the [ __ ] debug output of this thing tells you literally everything what it's doing and you can literally just to code it with venue and it's you can just work it out so yeah it sends a command to get a game list and then next thing you know you read three sectors on the the CD at certain location and it starts reading out the list of the games that are on the SD card with the folder names and then you've got that and then to the order that they're presented in you just say all right so that's number 16 in that list right send this param send this command with the parameter 16 and it loads that [ __ ] game it's like yeah it's literally something like six commands to do the whole thing it's not rocket science and it's not hard and most people out there that are into this PlayStation development and stuff like that could do this themselves really easily it's just no one gives a [ __ ] not one most of them don't um which is no one else has done it but I just happen to be the person that knew a little bit had the kit and had a little bit of drive to do it but yeah it's dead easy that easy to get to do fair enough so as we're coming uh to the end here with a few wrap-ups is there anything else about this whole melodrama Days of Our Lives uh that you want sand Through The Hourglass is there anything else that we've missed or some I guess thought you said it's cathartic things that you want to sort of set the record straight is there anything here that we we haven't done that with so far yeah so I think one of the things is that like when we talked initially uh that start was saying about um you know why I don't have an official p psio and I've never wanted to deal with Matt um so I talked about used to be on a forum called Assemble games so the person that you know as Matt um actually joined that farm as somebody under the name of haunted um and was literally a child um they were really like they were saying they were basically they had the Blue Sky idea of a psio but they had no clue about actually how to go about it they got banned like three times um like various remarks they didn't have a clue um yeah so there was all that so I knew of this haunted stroke mat guy back then um and then we got the PSX Dev forums that that started up PSX de.net um the person that owns that is called Matt and their username on there is Shadow but Matt in PS calls himself Matt but he pretends that they're two different people even though it's the the same person so he's like he's trying to keep that person separate so it was like I know this guy from years ago from being a little bit you know immature and a bit of a [ __ ] on assemble Assemble games is he the sort of person I want to spend like over a100 pound with and wait nine months for a product from is he the kind of person that's going to deliv me these promised features that he hasn't yet delivered I don't think so um and Mark him out about that story and about some of the initial developers that helped with psio like with the menu system and stuff like that a guy called Gemini who literally wrote how it looks he wrote that and that's being used now but Gemini is no longer part of the project cuz he walked away from it because Matt wouldn't be open source and there was a lot around that that made me make that decision it's this is this is not the kind of guy I could um spend money with however if someone in the UK's got a psio a legit one I want to sell it to me give me drop me a line I'm quite happy to buy it um I just do not want to spend money with M to be honest so yeah that was that was the main thing I think because yeah there's a lot before this that I knew about Matt um so yeah um and also um the PSX dodev um Discord he kind of got AG grieved and wanted to take control of it um and we had a massive Fallout about that and he ended up starting his own Discord and then we kept ours and yeah so there's a lot of other things that went on prior to this um yeah and there's a lot of history there so yeah so yeah that's basically why I would never buy one because you know we've got previous beef and it's not somebody i' be comfortable sending a lot of money to and expect to receive a product or even most expecting any support from even if I needed it so yeah fair enough and it's good to explain these nuances of the situation uh so okay so that that is uh some of the negative aspects there but you have been uh quite humble and quite polite in highlighting others in the community who have helped you and aided you so you want to give them a shout out and a bit of credit here for other developers who uh the Giants whose shoulders you have stood on let's say [ __ ] Yeah man there's a few so oh God yeah um first and foremost probably um sickle brick for w in uniom um which is a great tool that you can use for doing various things on a PlayStation um playing backups loading code backing up memory cards that kind of thing um he's done some great work releasing some examples been a use like modern compilers and stuff um without that I wouldn't have written anything that I've written today um everything I use is literally uses that as berer plate and is built on that um and I've learned so much just from looking at his code now it's put together it's yeah it's brought me on taught me on told things um yeah so this CLE brick uh Nicholas Noble um grumpy coder um fantastic guy um doesn't always tell you everything you need to know but it drops enough information to make you hungry for it to kind of find out things for yourself absolutely fantastic guy um taught me again from like the electronic side of it saying oh why did you try connecting this or I've done this before and stuff like that um yeah so we've done some great stuff with things like that with bits of Hardware so he's a top guy um he's written a a visual studio um code plugin so you can literally just download everything you need to develop on Playstation about three clicks which is fantastic it's on the marketplace um obviously writes pcsx Redux the emulator which is indispensable for um developing so yeah um those two guys probably the main ones um outside of that probably everybody else on the PSX Dev discard if I'm honest um um be assembler um who's back from the PS2 days um oh God yeah names um [ __ ] knowell yeah I put you on the spot like an O but yeah there yeah there's loads man but yeah I think probably the people I talked to the moment have been the most help for me it'll be um yeah it'll be sickle brick and um yeah Nicholas Noble who the the biggest drivers of the things that have helped me to get where I am today definitely and thank you for the introduction to Nicholas so I'm going to talk to Nicholas next uh and learn about him and and and have a good old techy chat with him too so that's a good one to wrap it up Dan uh what's what's next what are we hacking next what's caught your eye that you might want to uh work so at the minute I'm having a bit of time away from PlayStation if I'm honest fair enough fair enough so yeah I'm just um I'm fixing up an old Atari St that I've just got sat theide of me so yeah I've just got that working um and then the other thing I play around with a little bit which is a weird one is um Philips CDI oh yeah all right yeah totally [ __ ] console don't get me wrong but um it's the hardware that makes me tick more than anything so yeah I've um started bilding a lot of Hardware into the back of that and exploring the operating system it runs a little bit and stuff like that as well um but yeah had some stuff to deal with at work recently so getting that out of the way as we get towards Christmas and I'll be back doing things on the PlayStation again um so yeah there's um Nicholas can talk about it but he's he's literally made a little piece of Hardware that you can bolt to an old action replay play cartridge gives you a highspeed data link between your PC and Playstation um uni ROM's getting support for that shortly so um it'll be probably working on things with that and um seeing what can be done with that pushing data between the two um yeah and I never know I might get that part of Chuck egg done eventually let's see so the the future of uh Playstation One Homebrew is looking strong right now there's an active Community oh yeah [ __ ] yeah so like um yeah like lit like the past couple years there's been some great stuff so a lot of it it's always been the tools to get you to develop on it you've been using these old compilers that running MS DOS setting it all up in a VM and stuff can be tricky um and all that's got a lot easier so um yeah you've got things like what they call New best DK which is um another SDK that you can use um Nicholas himself he can talk about it but he's brought out another software development kit called psycho which Builds on SQ but uses C++ so there's so many options now for getting into it veloping um and there's an active community on the discard so there's always people that can help so you know if you've got the the drive and a bit of the knowledge to get going there's people there that will help you along your way um which we didn't really have before so yeah it's a interesting T to be involved in that and all the a um the optical emulator Drive emulators that are out now you know fixel is bringing one out I think um obviously um Rama's got his new one coming out whenever that comes out you've got X station you've got this you know you don't need to burn discs anymore you can literally just Master an AS so develop it an emulator try it on an OD and off you go so yeah good time and yeah there's not a lot out at the moment compared with the platform so there's plenty to get after it's pretty exciting good all right Dan stay on the line just for a second I'm going to finish off the podcast here thank you very much for listening I've really enjoyed uh this discussion here learn more about the situation trying to dig into the nuances look like subscribe just follow follow on audio platforms I don't care just listen wherever you can I appreciate that we're going to have some more episodes of the cathod rate podcast with my good friend Steve soon thank you very much for listening thank you

Channel: Zez Retro

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Id: VitSk291ghM

Length: 95min 59sec (5759 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023