The PSIO "Litemenu" Story

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Күн бұрын

The PSIO "Litemenu" Story
In this episode I speak to developer Danhans42 who was the programmer of the PSIO homebrew custom menu "Litemenu" which was never released after legal action from the PSIO maker.
PSIO is a plug in dongle for the original grey Playstation 1 which allows you to run games from an SD card. While it was one of the first "Optical Drive Emulator" type mods for PS1, it has experienced a difficult history with a slow pace of updates and negative online behaviour from the creator
After feeling frustrated with the lack of updates, Dan used public information and his own debugging of the PSIO to develop his own menu which was faster and had more features.
Dan offered to give this code to the creator without publicly releasing it, however after a deadline had passed, the offer was not taken up and Dan was on the end of legal threats. While Dan and the community in general were quite confident that these legal threats were baseless, Dan decided to fold the project and not release the code.
There is also MUCH MORE to the story. In this episode we learn a little about Dan's background and how he came into PS1 coding as a young person, hacking up his own Net Yaroze style PS1 dev console. We then jump forward to how he obtained a PSIO clone, what led to his frustration with the development and how we went about coding his own menu.
Dan is quite open in this talk about the part he played and steps along the way he could have handled better.
We try and answer the most controversial points about PSIO and Litemenu
* Does Litemenu enable PSIO piracy?
* Does Litemenu include any PSIO code?
Follow Dan
Blog ⁠psx0.wordpress.com⁠
Github ⁠www.github.com/danhans42⁠
PSX.dev Discord - ⁠psx.dev/⁠
0:00:00 - Start
0:04:11 - Typing in code from the user manual back in the day
0:11:08 - Using Net Yaroze for PlayStation Programming
0:12:05 - Net Yaroze SDK and PlayStation Boot Disk
0:18:12 - Dan wanted to make a a Chuckie Egg-Inspired PlayStation Game
0:21:49 - Discussion on the PSIO and Clones
0:34:32 - Which chips are inside the PSIO? How did Dan create the menu?
0:39:32 - Could I make any ISO the menu.sys??
0:43:08 - Discovering PlayStation CD Commands via the PSIO debug out
0:56:51 - Does Litemenu infringe on any copyright??
1:04:33 - Technical discussion on PlayStation coding
1:16:28 - Online Drama and PSIO Development
1:25:32 - Litemenu adds Game List Retrieval and faster loading
1:31:44 - Exploring Future PlayStation Hacking Opportunities
----------------------
Along with my friend Steve from RetroTech we maintain a blog about our projects "The Cathode Ray Blog"
www.cathoderayblog.com
You can find the audio on the web or your favourite podcast app
anchor.fm/zezretro
Catch us on Twitter
/ zez
/ usa_retro
For all your CRT repair needs, check out Steve's channel
/ retrotechusa

Пікірлер: 24

@danhans42 9 ай бұрын

Was great fun chatting and such a great host, thanks for letting me ramble on 😂. Cheers man ❤

@MeganGrass 7 ай бұрын

This was a great chat and very informative! Dan's really a class act, and I totally don't blame him for not releasing Lite-Menu -- especially after watching this. Next up, chat with Nicolas Noble..? :)

@emmettturner9452 9 ай бұрын

Pretty sure the “Cybdyn Systems” name is a reference to Cyberdyne Systems in the Terminator series.

@niklinders1579 9 ай бұрын

Awesome chat, thank you both!

@devsfan1830 8 ай бұрын

Any reputable retailer still offering to sell genuine PSIO needs to drop their listings ASAP. Such a community bully shouldn't make another CENT. Not when better products now exist. Poor shmucks not knowing the truth are gonna be duped into getting one.

@soundsonline796 9 ай бұрын

I enjoyed this. He need to release the menu though so we can make this product better.

@beard-monster 8 ай бұрын

Oh no, he's been hacked and someone anonymously put the code on github, they even changed the name.....

@enthusiasticgamer88 8 ай бұрын

Looking into doing a BIOS mod just so my PSIO can work with my MemCard Pro. It's such a shame how terrible the PSIO community has been treated from the owner. Matt's delusional thinking that alienating his entire customer base in order to combat PSIO cloning to make more money couldn't be more incorrect. If the software updates were provided on the same level as xStation he'd have seen huge success but this approach has all but destroyed his business in the name of seeking revenge against cloners (which he will never stop). You reap what you sow. I just hope another ODE comes to market to allow me to retain my disc drive as I am someone who enjoys playing physical but also having access to an ODE for expensive games / translations.

@danhans42 8 ай бұрын

Check on that.. the bios mod might not work depending on the boot method selected in the menu.

@natehinxman9050 26 күн бұрын

great interview! im also intrigued about the stand up comedy in Estonia that hes talking about. lol

@pchering Ай бұрын

Been looking for ages and cannot find Lite Menu any where on the internet? can anyone help?

@kikujade 9 ай бұрын

We didn't deserve you dan ❤. Now we know why there's never free stuff on the community

@dirty_tuna 5 ай бұрын

I had no idea there was so much muddy water behind this thing. You can't even get the genuine firmware right now. Made the mistake of buying a genuine model, it took a whole year for my pre-order to come in. Finally got around to installing the switch board but when going to get the official firmware I get nothing but 404 errors. What a rabbit hole myself and likely many others have fallen into trying to work around this bizarre DRM tactic Matt insists on punishing everyone with, only to learn he went out of his way to stop this menu from coming out. Supposedly many apsects of the site are down for maintenance until February 12th in preparation for this fabeled new firmware! Given what I've learned today about the Matt guy I have my doubts anything is getting fixed, let alone released. 😒

@Fille-lj1qv 9 ай бұрын

Simply,matt is incompetent,simply as that,we will never see a new firmware,i have psio from 2015,in the meantime we have a MISTer core that simply blows out psio out of the water.

@beard-monster 8 ай бұрын

Where do I donate to a legal fund to get this released? I love a good spite release.

@ZezRetro 8 ай бұрын

Unfortunately not about the money. Even if they win what do we get? A menu for a out of date homebrew project 😕

@8bitnation419 8 ай бұрын

I think Matt has become a complete victim at this point with no way of him being able to escape his product being cloned.

@ZezRetro 8 ай бұрын

I wouldn’t quite say “victim”. While stopping cloners is very difficult, there are creators out there who have a good relationship with their community and they do win customer loyalty

@natandjai 6 ай бұрын

bought my psio a few years back dont remember when went to update firmware today saw this and went wow this matt guy from psio seems like a toss pot

@t.g.ch_life 8 ай бұрын

If you have really great achievements and unrealized potential, why not help the author of the picostation project with the implementation of the software part or implement this open project yourself?

@danhans42 8 ай бұрын

Picostation is a very different beast, and I have very little to no knowledge of that level of the cd subsystem.

@ZezRetro 8 ай бұрын

Not sure I see your connection here. The author can prove himself by working on other projects?