What makes a Playstation game self-boot?

[MrTeressaBond]

hey everyone, it has been awhile since i have came here to visit and check out what is going on, and i dont knowif this is the right place to discuss this or one place that i culd find, but i always ask myself 'what makes a Playstation game self-boot?'

i know it has been discussed a couple of times in other forums on the net, but never really gotten anywhere and just confused people. and unlike dreamcast game, where backups can be made selfbootable, i have not yet seen a playstation game that is over a decade old has not been able to be made selfboot when it has been backed-up.

thus, i was wondering, what actually mades this? because looking atit, just is an ordinary CD-ROM. but to expand on that slightly, i have read that there are deliberate error codes or data which the console reads and detects this as a way to boto the game up, but this i am not sure.

so i was hoping if anyone here can help me on this, and as well maybe if anyone has done, to make a PSX game boot up as a back up.

[lmtlmt]

Its the console that makes it self boot, nothing to do with the disc.

[VampDude]

There is something encoded within the disc that the console reads, which isn't imprinted on a regular CDR.

If you don't have a PSone still, remember the discs were black.

[JKKDARK]

a Dreamcast backup and a PlayStation backup are totally different. Dreamcast discs have copy protection.

[SnesR0X]

a Dreamcast backup and a PlayStation backup are totally different. Dreamcast discs have copy protection.

Dreamcast is also way easier to get backups for too

[JKKDARK]

Dreamcast is also way easier to get backups for too

Ilegally yes, it's easy to get any game.

But I'm sure there's a big difference between dumping a Dreamcast game and a PlayStation game.

[VampDude]

Dreamcast is also way easier to get backups for too

Yes, but Dreamcast discs could not be copied directly and had to be copied with a "special" reader/writer.

[MrTeressaBond]

There is something encoded within the disc that the console reads, which isn't imprinted on a regular CDR.

when u say on the disc, as in physically? or within the data?

If you don't have a PSone still, remember the discs were black.

i am very aware of that, i still own a few

so in anyway, is there way of replicating what the Playstation does? or even trying to make a PS game selfboot? for example, using a PSDev kit writer or actually obtaining a PS boot disc and somewhat modify it into the game itself?

[VampDude]

when u say on the disc, as in physically? or within the data?

Physically, I think there is a hidden layer on the discs.

i am very aware of that, i still own a few

so in anyway, is there way of replicating what the Playstation does? or even trying to make a PS game selfboot? for example, using a PSDev kit writer or actually obtaining a PS boot disc and somewhat modify it into the game itself?

I believe you can make self booting discs with a Yaroze programing kit, but alternatively if you wanted a boot disc to play with , I would recommend using a cheat CD.

I just inserted a BLAZE Xploder cheat/boot CD (for PSone) into my PC and the files display:

PSX.EXE
ZDUMMY.DAT

The entire content of the disc is 5.94MB, I reckon that if you knew what you were doing you could possibly bypass a game to load from the PSX.EXE file.

[WhizzBang]

according to Wikipedia:

the discs were mastered with a specific wobble in the lead-in area. This wobble encodes a four-character sequence which is checked by the CD-ROM drive's controller chip. The drive will only accept the disc if the code is correct. This string varies depending on the region of the disk—"SCEI" for NTSC:J machines, "SCEA" for NTSC:U/C machines, "SCEE" for PAL machines and "SCEW" for the Net Yaroze. Since the tracking pattern is pressed into the disc at the time of manufacture, this cannot be reproduced on a CD-R recorder.