My PS1 devkit died... let's build a new one! - DIY Net Yaroze

Interested in getting started with PSX dev, but don't know how to get going? Let me show you how to build your own Net Yaroze on the cheap, so you can get started with your very own dev kit!
Useful Links:
FT_PROG: ftdichip.com/utilities/#FT_PROG
86box: 86box.net/
86box ROMs: github.com/86Box/roms
86box Manager: github.com/86Box/86BoxManager
DOSBox: www.dosbox.com/
Yaroze SDK and Docs: psx.arthus.net/sdk/NetYaroze
Errata:
I misspeak at 17:30 - use a colon for realport:COM2, not equals. Thanks @voltcorp for catching this!
Patreon: / mircoxi
Soldering guide for FT232:
Pin 1 is the pin closest to the Parallel port when plugged in, while Pin 8 is closest to the A/V multiout.
Pin 1: CTS
Pin 2: GND
Pin 3: DSR
Pin 4: RTS
Pin 5: RXD
Pin 6: DTR
Pin 7: Not connected
Pin 8: TXD
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:26 - What is the Net Yaroze?
01:45 - What made it different?
02:55 - Making your PS1 region free
04:01 - Connection Methods
04:44 - The FT232R Method
05:42 - FT232R: Making the cable
07:12 - FT232R: Programming the chip
08:59 - Serial ports
09:43 - Connecting to the PC
10:36 - The Emulation Method - 86box
16:58 - The Easier Way - DOSBox
18:34 - Testing the Connection
20:30 - Final Tip: Finding your COM port
Music used:
Galactic Rap, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Mesmerising Galaxy Loop, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Enemy Influx, K. Jose
Licensed under a CC0 License
Daily Agony, JAM
Licensed under a CC0 License

[@mircoxi]

Thanks for watching! While Net Yaroze isn't a fully fledged dev kit, it's plenty to get you going. I'll be going into actual development processes later, so feel free to subscribe for those! As a quick aside, the 86box section is a little out of sync... but all the info there is correct. Consider it an initial filter to get you used to thinking for yourself!

[@koozmusic]

99% of the difficulty you were having when soldering is a lack of flux! Always *always* flux!

[@M0UAW_IO83]

99.9% of the problems were bad technique, it's a skill and it takes practice, there's plenty of good guides on how to solder properly, I recommend the EPE Mag soldering guide if you can find it, it's old but *really* good. You *really* don't need to add more flux for through hole stuff if you do it right because decent solder wire contains all the flux you need. You generally don't need extra flux for a large amount of leaded SMD work either. Bonuses of learning to solder properly are that you don't burn circuit boards, components (massively important on unreplaceable vintage stuff), the work you do is a lot more reliable etc and the clean up is a hell of a lot quicker.

[@lemagreengreen]

Seeing the prices of Net Yaroze's these days... if only we knew. I remember my uni dumping these things!

[@BlueEyedVibeChecker]

Whenever I see devkits of modern systems, I grab them the first chance I get. I know they'll be highly sought after in years time, I know a guy with an Xbox 360 dev kit now going for well over £1200 on an eBay auction, which he acquired way back when it cost him just £800(adjusted for inflation) so he's making a solid profit on it when it finally sells. Personally I want a Dreamcast dev kit for indie endeavours since the SDK is harder to optimise on, I wouldn't sell it on until I'd done with it.

[@cypresshill9268]

@@BlueEyedVibeChecker ..... You can't use the Dreamcast dev kit for indie endeavours legally, although there is a pretty good replacement that aims to do everything the official SDK does and more It's called KallistiOS and I highly suggest checking it out!

[@TrimeshSZ]

The other thing that's special about the Yaroze apart from the mechacon is that it came from the factory with both GPU reference oscillators fitted, so it generates correct video timing (and usable color) in both NTSC and PAL modes.

[@jbreckmckye]

That was the issue I was thinking of. I don't recall all the details. Obviously using the wrong clock throws off the VSync. I think NTSC video is dependent on timing for colour? There might also be some general rendering issues just with vsync interrupt timing being slightly off, although I'd imagine the consequences to be minor

[@TrimeshSZ]

@@jbreckmckye It's more basic than that - the chroma signal is on a subcarrier and that needs to be a very precise frequency. On the older machines (up to PU-20), it's generated by dividing down the GPU clock (the same one that generates the syncs) and the installed xtal is different between the PAL and NTSC boards - so when you (for example) put a PAL board into NTSC mode the GPU changes the divisor to the one that would be correct with the correct using the NTSC clock, but since it's still being driven by the PAL clock the resulting signal is the wrong frequency. On the later (PU-20 and up) boards, the clocks are generated by a clock synthesiser chip and the subcarrier comes directly from there and is hence unaffected by the selected video mode. So if you have a PU20+ PAL console and switch it into NTSC mode it generates slightly incorrect NTSC frame timing and NTSC color encoding, but using the PAL 4.43MHz color subcarrier. This is a strange messed up non-standard signal, but luckily it's the same strange messed up non-standard signal that some multi-standard PAL VCRs generated when you played an NTSC tape on them, so there are a lot of older TVs that actually handle it correctly.

[@cmucklow]

I found a psx in the rubbish bin the other day with a stack of bootleg games. I opened it up and it was already chipped, so I was trying to think of what to do with it. I looked into how hard it would be to convert into a Yaroze, but didn’t find anything conclusive. This is exactly the information I was looking for, thank you so much for putting together such an informative and concise video.

[@turbochardged]

helpful tip: Use low melt solder to remove heat shields. just add it to existing solder joints to lower the temp. Also get some V2 Amtech Flux.

[@MrDbrennen]

I didn't need to know any of this, but thank you for your time to explain it

[@BrainSlugs83]

Also if you FDISK the drive manually, you can copy the WIN98 folder from from disk to C, and run setup from C. This has the benefit that Windows will never ask you to insert the installation disk ever again, since the install media is still there no matter what. It's only like 100 MB for Win '98 SE, IIRC.

[@glassbunnyy]

sick and informative project. god damn. keep it up dude i could listen for hours

[@CobraTheSpacePirate]

I actually built one of these back in 1997. Made my serial cable with MAX232 chip etc...wow! memories! HAHAH! I actually still have my hard drive with all the files in a directory on my NAS still today...I had actually brought the hard drive with me when I came to Japan in 1998...

[@OAM-Gaming]

It’s very interesting, having a box of old ps1’s I am always looking at different projects for them !🎉

[@resiigned]

man did we ever discover a gem of a channel. this has to be one of the best watches ive had as of recently. keep it up man.

[@OneLifeGames]

Wonderdil video. I loved that original demo disc. I always wanted one :)

[@lukasblenk3684]

Ok better experience with knock off FTDI chips than some years ago. FTDI just bricked them on purpose ^^.

[@DFX2KX]

Yep, lot of smaller devices turned out to have fake chips.... Need to get a legitimate one and solder it to my of Gamebuino.

[@BrainSlugs83]

@18:30 switching to C didn't work because you called a second batch file without using the "call" command. You can't do that because it transfers complete control to the new batch program. If you put the "call" command in front of your batch file, then the control will be transferred back to the original file when it completes. This is true for all batch files, even in the latest version of Windows. You can't call a child file without the call command if you want the current file to continue executing afterwards.

[@SeishukuS12]

Bringing back some old memories for me... I did this back in 99, though I also had a caetla PIO device that helped a lot, so you didn't have to wait for SIO transfers. I actually still have a zip of my old PSX dev tools folder.

[@anon_y_mousse]

You sound like you could be the son of Chris from Retro Recipes. I do wonder if this could be done entirely in software, like an emulator with debug tools and its own compiler that targets the MIPS. Would certainly expand the possibilities and make iteration faster. Actually, that sounds like a good idea for my next project since I'm probably going to need to start with writing a full PS1 emulator anyways before I start on the PS2. Yep, note added.

[@AcornElectron]

Bloody hell, those prices now. I wonder what the ps2 Linux kit is worth….

[@wakcedout]

Honestly watching this I’m tempted to try the 86box to make a mock dream machine from the windows xp days and play some of my old games I have laying around. Especially seeing as some I own haven’t received remasters to run on windows 10. Can imagine running black and white with the best hardware of the time over the jenky cpu with GeForce 2 I ran it on with minimal ram.

[@zedfragg4134]

That was really cool

[@costelinha1867]

I love how there's probably much easier ways to make games for the ps1 nowdays, but fuck it, let's make a fake yaroze instead.

[@TheRasteri]

cool! didn't know you could do this.

[@foxyridergaming9198]

the black one look so nice...it like premium console

[@jbreckmckye]

Nice video. I'm a Yaroze owner too (H3002)! I've never actually done development on it though It does play games well though. One tidbit is that the Yaroze has two VSync signal clocks, so when you boot across regions it has completely accurate refresh rates. Although games should tolerate using the "wrong" base clock, there can be issues with colour and video timing. The Yaroze doesn't have those issues. The PSOne laser is a bit picky about recordable media though. Most CDRs these days have pretty poor reflectivity compared to pressed discs and the PSX can struggle with cheap media. A bit of a random question - do you know why the cable inputs were inverted? Always seemed strange to me. Also the bits for the controller IO are always inverted... a pressed button is a 0 bit not a 1... I'll definitely subscribe for more PSX dev!

[@cho4d]

"I've never actually done development on it though" ... sad developer noises...

[@jbreckmckye]

@cho4d Honestly it's much easier just to work against an emulator. The Yaroze is quite limited in a lot of ways: no CD access, no memcard SDK, games are flashed over the painfully slow serial port. And you have to compile games with a 90s release of GCC. It's way easier just to use PsyQ, Duckstation and a modern C toolchain

[@cho4d]

@@jbreckmckye fair. it is basically a collector item now. i guess i just have memories of playing yaroze games on demo disks and thinking how cool it would be to make games and how lucky those yaroze owners were.

[@TheKsax]

Thats pretty good, now I want to build my own Net Yaroze. Is there a any built in way to emulate CD drive over parallel for example? So host computer can provide more assets as game needs? Is that a feature in full on dev kit, or expectations was to burn disk? Now I am quite curios. I wanted to get in to PS1 modding for awhile. I wonder how something similar is feasible with Dreamcast.

[@jbreckmckye]

Kind of. There is a hardware mod called the "x-station" that I think mounts to the CD DSP. It at least allows you to boot from SD card. Quite a tricky mod to fit from what I've read To be honest though, and not trying to be too negative, but if you want to do PSX dev I'd recommend debugging on an emulator and then building a "real" PSX game with e.g. mkpsxiso + Psy-Q. Then you can play on a "real" PlayStation with burned discs. The Yaroze doesn't support that, only flashing small games over the serial port

[@TheKsax]

@@jbreckmckye Thanks for info, but I was thinking, CD access happens over bios routines of playstation, so what if for debug build they redirected to paralle port connected to helper board. With a separate connection computer for quick image upload. So it can stream like from real cd. Considering parallel port ode already exsist, this could be simpler version of those, since it doesnt need to hijack system. Yaroze part can do it for us. Obviously just developing on emulator is easier, but i want some spice.

​@@TheKsaxOfficial ps1 devkits were ISA cards which you plugged into a PC of the era. One of those cards was "CD emulator card" whic pretty much did what you want to do. There are alternatives however, caetla for example with it's PCDRV interface which enables you to stream data through parallel port from a PC, exactly what you wan to do. You can do simmilar things nowdays through a serial port with nops (notpsxserial) to upload data straight to memory address or xavi92's QPSXserial which kinda emulates PCDRV behavior through serial port

[@jmpoder]

What about replacing the bios chip? I know it's not easy but the ps1 it's not as complex, it uses many standard (at the time) Sony chips for controlling stuff like the disk drive, sony combined some of those on later revisions, they are the same but in one chip, also as far as I know the disk validation is perfomed by the bios using information provided by the cd rom controller, I hope someone can comment on this

[@mircoxi]

I actually have a follow-up video coming soon involving repair/modding of it to get it working again, in which BIOS replacement is a part! The spoiler and answer here is "it depends". The PSX had so many hardware revisions that a BIOS replacement can be tricky - the BIOS chips themselves came in 32-pin, 40-pin, and 44-pin variants, and the pinouts were different on each so you generally had to match the model and revision mainboard if you wanted to do a transplant. Pretty much every IC had some sort of revision during the PS1's lifecycle, so it can be hard to mix and match - but for the same revision board, it should work (and in my case, did!)

[@TrimeshSZ]

Just bypassing the check in the boot ROM won't do anything useful - there is also an internal flag inside the mechacon code and if that's not set then the CD doesn't generate sector complete interrupts, which is what the boot ROM uses to trigger reading data, so it will just hang. If you have a NTSC:U/C or PAL machine then there are some commands you can send to the mechacon that disable the licensed disc detection - so you could patch the boot ROM to include them and get a direct boot with just a ROM change. Note that this doesn't work on NTSC:J machines because they don't have the backdoor code in the CD controller. Almost all Japanese machines also have a license data check in the boot ROM, so even if you unlock the CD using something like a modchip they will still only boot discs with Japanese license data. The exception to this is that most SCPH-1000 machines had a bug in the boot ROM that meant that if the license data check failed then the black boot screen was suppressed - but the console booted anyway. The SCPH-102 PAL PSone also has a license data check, except obviously looking for PAL license data.

[@KiraSlith]

Why not just install the RS232 controller inside the PS1 directly and skip the cable?

[@mircoxi]

That's certainly an option! In this instance though, I wanted to keep the original port since I'm intending to use a link cable for some projects and have the original Yaroze cable anyway, and (in my personal opinion, at least) an external cable is the most accessible option for people who are interested in getting into this stuff - I'd rather an inexperienced hand make mistakes on something that's still mass produced than risk breaking a 30 year old piece of tech that's getting harder to find in good condition.

[@ezoray]

Great video, I still have my Net Yaroze I bought at the time. I remember when messing around with the serial speed between the Net Yaroze and a chipped playstation the port supported speeds way above 115200 baud, I wonder if the memory card save could be altered beyond that. You're probably aware a parallel connection could also be used unoffically as a higher speed option. I used to use Code Warrior R2 (the first release was riddled with bugs and practically unusable), do you think that would run on a current version on Windows? I look forward to your future videos for a bit of nostalgia. :)

[@mircoxi]

Lucky! I first heard about the Yaroze when I was 7, so they were probably out of production then with the PS2 already starting its lifecycle. I actually didn't know the serial could go above 115200, I'll have to test that out at some point! For CodeWarrior - it doesn't work on Windows 11 (gives me an error about 64-bit not being supported), but I don't have a VM handy to try on Windows 10 x32 (so far, my experiments have been written in Borland and VSC 6.0) but I'll try that for the follow-up where we start making things proper.

[@ezoray]

​@@mircoxi I remember the more I heard about the Net Yaroze the more interested I was and the Edge magazine article really sold it to me. I did get the PS2 Linux kit as well, Sony sent a couple of retail games to Net Yaroze members who bought it. There wasn't any real games focus with that though so I soon lost interest in it. Don't quote me but I may have had the serial port running at 921600 but I'd have to dig out the code to check. Shame about CodeWarrior not running not totally unexpected I guess, it sounds like 86Box might be the way to go for that. You'll have to try repair your Net Yaroze considering the value nowadays. There was one for sale at cex for £600 the other day but it wasn't there long. Most seem to be sold missing the dev kit goodies which is a shame. I look forward to seeing more of your videos on this, actually when I first listened to this one I thought I was watching Retro Recipes. ;)

[@ezoray]

@@mircoxi I came across this video showing the port speed being increased, makes me wonder what the max speed actually is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZrKiammlq-gnZY. I also came across this new development which looks interesting: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4GWn35mmtJjp9U

[@JeffisWinning]

I have a blue debug dev Playstation unit, but have yet to get a net yaroze due to the outrageous price tags for them.

[@_pixelatedsilver2a412]

If you have an ASUS motherboard, you may have a Serial header on the motherboard that just requires a port and ribbon cable, even on more modern boards. I'm curious if OTVDM\WineVDM might work for running the old 16-bit software on 64-bit windows. I am not sure if it supports serial devices. You could also like... I dunno, buy an old thinkpad or something :D

[@user-hs6ls9gy9m]

I have 7501 and am interested in doing this since I have win 95 pc. What modchip did you use?

[@mircoxi]

I used the MM3! If I'm remembering correctly the 750x series works with most modchips, but the MM3 is considered the best "traditional" modchip behind the PSNee. William Quade has a decent guide with install diagrams here! quade.co/ps1-modchip-guide/

[@voltcorp]

17:30 here you say "realport=" but type in "realport:". Which is the correct one? Thank you for the detailed tutorial!

[@mircoxi]

Good catch! The correct one is the one with the colon, I transcribed it wrong when I was writing the script. I'll add some errata to the description, thanks for the heads up!

[@isheamongus811]

9:55 winevdm?

[@ezoray]

I've tried replying to my other comment but it's not appearing so I'll post here. There's a new parallel / usb device soon to be released that might pique your interest: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4GWn35mmtJjp9U. Also in regards to my comment on the serial port speed, I found a video where the port is set to a much higher speed: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZrKiammlq-gnZY

[@Kabodanki]

What do you mean died ? It could be bring back by repairing it

[@brake_4_cake]

Soldering those wires to the board was difficult because your technique and tools are bad, and you didn't use flux. Use a slightly bigger tip - the one you have will lose heat to the ground plane on a PCB too fast. Tin the wires - you did do this, but use some flux, and apply the solder directly to the wire. DO NOT use the iron to carry solder. Put flux on the pads on the board Heat the pad and wire, then apply solder. Again, DO NOT carry solder on the iron

[@maritoguionyo]

There's a program to be able to run 16bit exes directly on x64 windows

[@Sparkette]

Why do you refer to compatibility with 64-bit PC's as an advantage of DOSBox over 86Box? 86Box works fine on my 64-bit PC.

[@mircoxi]

I was trying to convey that you can use DOSBox without faffing about installing a guest OS first, may have misspoke on that part.

[@Mrshoujo]

Just fix the power supply.

[@lolpl0000]

You sound almost exactly like Retro Recipes! Has anyone told you that before? ;P

[@chumpyman]

Ironically enough my Net yaroze has stopped reading disks. Its in for repair the now.

[@Allerka]

I don't have a devkit, but I do have a Debug Unit, the DTL-H1101 one, which is nice. How did the Net Yaroze fail? If it just doesn't turn on at all I'd try swapping the power board and seeing if that helps.

[@SianaGearz]

Which chips you get fakes and which you can buy safely depends, and with boards yeah you need a trusted supplier whether you're buying from China or not. Your soldering is hilarious. Stick wires through, use flux, and if you're a beginner use leaded solder please. Only put solder on the iron tip to clean and wet it, don't just blob it on there and carry it to the spot you're soldering on the iron, that's not going to work most of the time. Heat the pad and the wire with the iron, and when they're up to temperature feed solder wire into the joint. Use 0.5-0.65mm solder wire for this joint, not 1mm. Don't use a fine conical tip on the soldering iron, it basically never works well, use wide-ish chisel tip.

[@mircoxi]

Don't worry, my soldering has improved a lot since I recorded this a few months ago! 90% of the issues I'd been having with soldering turned out to be a factor of it being the cheapest kit available on Amazon (alas, can't turn down a birthday gift) and completely misremembering how I'd been taught in highschool - I've upgraded my gear and practiced some in the months since, my C64 restoration went much smoother!

[@SianaGearz]

@@mircoxi Excellent. Yeah those beginner kits with a blue soldering iron aren't great. The soldering iron doesn't hold temperature veering wildly between too cold and too hot, and the solder is horrendous too. Sometimes you get a good stand and good tweezers so there's that, maybe the wick is OK too with some extra flux, the solder sucker can be bearable, but the main bits are straight landfill fodder.

[@TafferTape]

Use some flux bro

[@VIRACYTV]

I only care about the shell color of Net Yaroze, not the abilities

[@BrainSlugs83]

Then mod it with a bottle of spray paint. 😂

[@VilifiedOne]

@@BrainSlugs83 The yaroze also has a unique texturing to it

[@BrainSlugs83]

@@VilifiedOne so... an expensive bottle of spray paint? (The textured enamel kind.)

[@xxsmbr]

You keep pronouncing it wrong.

[@BrainSlugs83]

He said Yaroze correctly.