Evil hacking

[luigi]

Had an idea for fun. When hacking the game Tobal #1 through the RAM viewer I found an address that erased my memory card info for that game. Keep in mind that I would NEVER suggest posting such codes for unsuspecting people to lose valuable data, BUT, why not try to hack such codes for fun to see what we can come up with? Many games have format memorycard funtions, overwrite, ect. Who can come up with the best most evil codes ever? (I would go back into hacking PS1 for this). Could one actually corrupt the ps1 itself by Gameshark (you can do quite a few things to the unit through Gameshark during gameplay)? (would not suggest trying that one unless you can un-corrupt your Bios). Who is in? What is the roster? Non-formal judgeing by all participants.


Luigi (of course)

[LiquidManZero]

Evil hacking

It's almost impossible to do any damage to the system itself with software. The BIOS is a ROM, can't be reflashed (otherwise, people would've used a function like that instead of mod chips...) About the worst you can ever do involves corrupting the memory card, which kind of sucks. Of course, it could be kind of evil to figure out what the software reset to bios command is, and have a trigger for that.

I'm interested in this, as I've run into some things that could be potentially evil. For one thing, two of my memory cards are victim to it...

All games are supposed to have some kind of format memory card feature, though most have no use for such a thing... In some cases, the function is somewhat broken and can cause semi-permanent corruption... As I found out several times already.

[Amy]

Evil hacking

Well, on this issue, not really on issue, but is something that has happened to me, and I have no idea how other then the GSPro and codes. (No not codes created here by anyone, codes that have been around on GSCCC.com for years now, and something messed up happened.)

Again I am not all tecny in the PSX department, so maybe LMZ or others can give answers how or what and why it happened, but otherwise yes it did, and I honestly can and will vouch for it, after all why would I make it up, cost me money and a mistake that costs money is not pretty.

'Anyway' I turned on Chrono Cross about a year ago, not full year, with several 'codes' on and in effect, the thing booted up quite good, but once I pressed 'start' to choose a memory file to load a certain memory file, the screen flashed white and my PSX was 'on' yet a black screen.

I restarted, GSPro was fine (Thank God) controler was fine, memory card was fine, all was fine, other then the PSX would 'NOT' read Chrono Cross disc 1 anymore. I disconnected GSPro and tried many times and for a good while a few days, it kept telling me to 'insert a PSX formated disc'. Again all things were okay and 'fine' but getting this PSX to read Chrono Cross disc one it never would, nor will to this day as far as I know.

Nothing wrong with the game, it works in 'other' PSXs I have, works in PS2 all just fine, but this one PSX I had and was trying to play with code effects on, is ruined as far as the CC game disc #1 is concerned. Again it still to this day each time I put CC disc 1 in, with no GS or anything on it, it does the little PSX logo (sony mess) and seems to 'read' the disc and after a while, it says 'please insert PSX formatted disc'. I again an serious and honest as can be.

So not sure what happened, I do think I talked about this somewhere around here before. But not sure if it was codes or GSPro, but looks and seems it indeed was, I am sorry I have to disagree with thinking that software can 'hurt' your machine, unless anyone may know what really happened....

Also, nope, there was no thunder storm, nor anything like that, the weather was nice and calm, just seems the GSPro killed this PSX from even reading CC disc 1.

The part about costing money, well, I bought a few PSX systems after that, I have three... and hope they do not give out, kinda hard to find another now when everyone was all selling them when PS2 came out, now PSX is getting rare itself. (Specialy those with the GS port P/O port on the back) Anyway the day afetr that, I bought myself several PSX systems, and while my cousin was not 'looking' traded my non-reading CC disc 1 PSX with his, and til this day kept my mouth shut.

Otherwise, PSX systems, the good ones are rare again as I said, and, just kinda scares me at times, I am worried, the Memory card reading goes out or something, seems a few of my cards are in the PSX but not the same card in the PS2 which seems can read any card. Now buying PSX memory cards at $1.99 each because well, the whole concept of ruined memory I do not like and seems, sad, I hope not, but kinda seems this way 'some cards' or going dead out these days with me anyway.

Strange thing, it seems the 'official' PSX Sony cards are the ones going out all the time, these Pelican, and gameStop and third party cards Nyko and all else seem to hold up ALOT better then the 'expensive' Sony brand ones. hmmm wonder if you can 'clean' the memory cards and the memory card unit in the PSX systems and not mess it up more?

~Amy

[LiquidManZero]

Evil hacking

I suspect what happened, was that the Chrono Cross disc had some deffect, which I suspect quite a number of copies had. Hell, the one I've got only loads up about half the time, unless I've been messing with the laser adjustment... It's entirely possible for a disc to spin up fast enough to knock the pot out of the correct position, especially if the disc wasn't quite alright to start with. I've got several games now (two of them are original discs even) that won't load, or won't load past a certain point. Part of it is that after awhile, the disc will start to wobble, and that causes problems if it's reading the outer half of the disc...

You can get memory cards for only $1.99 each? Damn, around here they cost at least $14.99 for just the cheapo knockoff kind...

[luigi]

Evil hacking

Yeah, I get mem cards for 1.99 to 2.99 each at E.B.. Here in Baltimore we have Planet replayn and they have a bunch of the old grey ps1 controller extensions for .99 and Interact Gameboy adv/color car adaptor with A.C. adaptor for 1.99. Anyway, I have a few days off and will be trying to hack a few evil codes. BTW Zero, if it is any help I can pull up the memory of a Gamesharkpro without a computer (a trick I stumbled on a few months befor Codemaster posted the same info for the Dreamcast Gameshark). If you or anyone else has Gamesharkpro I can explain how to do that. If you change anything with the RAM viewer it will not be permanent though and it will not continue to boot afterwards (you have to hit the reset so all you can do is LOOK at the programming).

[LiquidManZero]

Evil hacking

Hmm... That could be an interesting trick to know. It might have some other uses. Hell, all I have right now is a GS Pro... I'm always stuck using somebody else's computer for everything. It's also possible that trick could be used with some ASM hacking to do interesting things...

Ah, I haven't been in an EB since I got screwed over on a used controller from there... The thing works still, but it turned out when I bought it that the casing on the cable was broken where it goes into the controller itself... And they don't take returns on working used items...

[luigi]

Evil hacking

I found this by accident. You do not need a game in to do this. Select cheats for ANY game (doesn't matter which game). Hit start. At the menue that says:
start game with selected codes
start game without codes
cancel

Highlight start game without codes and then HOLD IN THE BUTTON to the the Gamesharkpro. Then (still holding the button) press X to start. When the screen scrolls away and says:

Loading game please wait...

LET go of the button (you must do this as soon as the screen says Loading game please wait)

Now your menue will come up

Select memory editor

Have fun. All your code list and everything is viewable. I have even found codes that were deleted from an old program I tried to use that put your codelist on the pc for editing. TThere is some very interesting stuff here. Let me know if you find something.

[LiquidManZero]

Evil hacking

Ah, I never thought of that. I have problems with the menu coming up before the game loads, as I've got the hacked version set up. That reminds me of the odd thing that you can't change the built in set of codes in a GSPro ROM, as it'll somehow end up with the normal ones after a reflash, even if you've used a hacked rom... Which kind of sucks, because I had wanted to do something like having a hacked hacked version of the thing with all the GSHI Playstation codes. Still, it might be doable.