DSL Fixed

Ok, I guess I owe BellSouth an apology.  My DSL was working great and suddenly- BAM!  I was down to 1/2 my normal speed; it must have been something they did as nothing changed on my side...

After tracing and re-tracing my cables it appears that the fault was in my wiring.  Actually not in MY wiring, but the wiring made up my the company that put in the phone override for our alarm system.  I traced the phone line (I have another CAT5 dedicated entirely to DSL) and one of the connections to my DSL CPL box was such a bad connection that it snapped off when I touched it.

It has been two years since the alarm company did this install; it is my guess that the cold weather made something contract (perhaps the plywood it is mounted to?) and made the connection bad enough to cause the issues I was seeing.

After a modem and router reboot I am back up to a full 6Mbps- woo hoo!

Memor32 Updates

I grew tired of waiting for Team Memento to release their 1.3 firmware so I went and purchased a used PS2 from GameStop for $80.  It is 'fatty' PS2 that is model #SCPH-30001 R (a v5 or v6 motherboard- I will need to open the case to verify).

I purchased the PS2 as I found out I can run programs on bootup from the Memor32 cartridge by holding down R1/R2/L1/L2; this runs programs on the cartridge from /BOOT/BOOT.ELF or BOOT1.ELF/BOOT2.ELF/BOOT3.ELF.  Any ELF File can be renamed and run on startup- such as a nice selection of files from ExploitStation.

I tried USBeXtreme loader but it not see my USB Drive; I tried HDLoader and and HDADVance, but these only work with the 'fat' PS2s with the internal HD slot (via use of network adaptor add-on).  I decided to go back to the old faithful system and get a fat PS2...

I installed a 160GB Seagate drive and HDLoader 0.8b booted up and was able to format the drive.  I tried copying a game from DVD and it took about 15minutes for a 1GB game.  I removed the drive and connected it to my PC via a USB-IDE adaptor and ran Winhiip to copy three ISO images over to the HD- this took about 6 minutes to copy 8GB of data.  With help of the HD Loader game comparability list I was able to get all three games to work with no problems.

The Memor32 still works as a (4x) PS2 memory card so I am pretty much done.  If I want to boot to a normal game I just do not hold down a button  while rebooting the PS2; if I want to take this to another PS2 I just need the HD and the Memor32 card!

Weekend Issues

So my DSL is screwed up and we had snow- one good and one bad event...

I noticed on Wednesday that my DSL was going at about 1/2 speed that it normally was- about 3Mbps instead of 6Mbps.  I also noticed that if I rebooted the router it was taking several minutes to re-sync and get back online. 

I called BellSouth on Friday from work- bad mistake; they can only trouble-shoot if you are at the residence.  Basically they have you connect to speed.fastaccess.com and see what results you get- if you have a bad connection they cycle the sync, get you to reboot your modem and do a little song and dance.  None of this helped so they scheduled a technician to come out and take a look at it- on the next morning between 8am and 12am (!!!). 

The technician arrived and checked my line with a little DSL computer; he verified that I was having some kind of issues and he was going to check the box and may have to escalate to the line support group.  I gave him my cell phone and didn't hear back from him (he did a test call to my cell phone to put the number in his phone, but I never saw a missed call- I think he mistyped my number!)

Currently I have only about 2Mbps - 2.5Mbps connectivity and I am really hoping that they will get this resolved on Monday.  I am kind of betting that someone else in the neighborhood ordered DSL this week and my connection was 'bumped' while installing the other circuit (this happened a few years ago but at that time I had a total loss of sync). If this is the case then it is way too easy for a minimum wage technician to make a mistake and not realize that there is an issue with another customer (my early rant- I will retract if it is something else)

Another reason that I may not have heard back from the tech is that it started snowing about 30 minutes after he left my house.  The snow lasted for about 4-5 hours in central Atlanta, but some areas had more than I did.

For this reason (and the fact that wind chills were expected to be in the single digits) the weekend maintenance (Sunday 1am - 7am) that I was scheduled for was canceled (yay!).   So everything can be taken from perspective; the snow was bad as it may have kept everyone home and ruined the weekend, but it was good as it saved my weekend.

I was way to tired to go on on Sunday- I had been up until 5am on Saturday (and back up again at 9:00am when the technician arrived) playing Warhammer Dawn of War : The Dark Crusade (Awesome game!)  I was playing a warez copy, but I picked up a platinum edition today with the original dawn of war/dark crusade/winter assault at BestBuy for $30 today (with my new room fridge).

What Do You Do with 1500 Hard Drives?

Play Dominoes!

Dominos With 1500 Hard Drives - Watch more free videos

The Downfall of HD DVD

Ok, I am a HD DVD supporter, but this is just too funny to not post...

Memor32 for PS2

I purchased a Memor32 PS2 memory card from Modchip.ca; What is a Memor32 and why did I pay $70 for a PS2 memory card?  The basic Memor32 is a 32MB PS2 memory card (4x larger than a normal 9MB PS2 card) that has a mini-USB port on it.  This port allows USB connection to a PC (after downloading the appropriate drivers) and with the Memor32 savegame manager you can transfer save games to and from your computer (for archival storage or using other users save games). This feature is pretty cool. 

But wait- there's more! By downloading a firmware update from the Mememto Team you can play backup games on your PS2- without opening the case to install a modchip! (Detailed instructions for the firmware installation can be found on the Memento guides web page).  After the firmware update is installed the PS2 is essentially 'modded' to play non-original games (one catch, the disk images must be patched to run- detailed instructions on this is also in the Memento guides).  Even better is that the firmware works on all PS2 (so they claim) from v3 (Original 'fat' PS2) to v16 (PS2 Slim) and the card may be used on multiple PS2 systems (one at a time, unless you have multiple Memor32 cards).  Removing the card removed the patch so the PS2 warranty is not voided.

The current v1.2e firmware seems to work pretty Ok; I ripped my copy of Shadow of the Colossus with ImgBurn, patched it and burned it back a DVD-R (note; the current version works only with DVD-R media- DVD+R does not appear to work).  I put the disk in, booted the PS2 (with patched Memor32 card inserted) and I greeted my a 'Mememto' screen instead of the standard Sony screen.  A few moments later Shadow of the Colossus booted and I played through the first two levels before getting bored (ADD kicked in). 

I also tried patching Star Trek: Encounters and Galdius that I downloaded from one of the binary newsgroups and I had less success; Star Trek would boot and show most of the intro and freeze before the game started.  The later game boots and seems to play Ok, but I did have a game freeze during the load of the 5th training level.  It is possible this is do to corruption in the images I downloaded or it is also possible that my PS2 doesn't like my DVD-R media (Imation 16x DVD-R burned at 4x).

A promised v1.3 firmware promises the ability to run games from hard drive (internal for old PS2s ore USB for new PS2s) but is is also said to currently support HDAdvance/HDLoader on the old PS2s.  There are complaints about the PS2 reading a disk image over USB1.1 speed, but PS2 disks can be installed to the HD via a PC (at USB 2.0 speed) with WinHIIP software.

I am not 100% sure how this actually works, but a Memento patched game will appear as a DVD video to the PS2 browser if it is inserted without the Memento card; I am guessing when the PS2 tries to play the DVD video it looks for settings on the memory card- and from there there is an exploit that allows the Memento software to run and play a backup PS2 game?

Note: I will have to say something about Modchip.ca- they have great turn-around on orders.  I placed an order on Saturday and selected overnight FedEx.  My order was processed on Sunday and went out Monday morning- so I received it by 10:00am on Tuesday.  I was supplied with email information during order and processing to indicate the status and tracking information of my order.  Great job guys!

It did appear that I had a used Memor32 as there were six save games on it when it arrived (some Resident Evil 4 level 1 and some other random games), but it is also possible that this is how the card is tested before shipping- perhaps they just forgot to erase the test saves?