Modify PSone to have serial Port

[mrhaboobi]

Hey guys,

Just wondering if anyone has modified a psone to have the std serial port as found in the early model psx machines?

If anyone has any details id love to hear from you.

[kendrick]

I don't have the spec sheet in front of me, but as I recall the consolidated PSOne chipset doesn't include the controller or the pin inputs for the serial port. There were at least four different motherboard versions though, so it's possible that the two PSOne units I have are different from the one you are trying to modify. Point is, I'm reasonably certain that for at least two versions of the newer PSOne unit, you can't reasonably expect to add the serial port back.

Are you trying to use one of the boot or hack devices, like a Gameshark or something? You might be stuck having to use a boot disk instead.

-KKC, searching for gaming in Kentucky.

[mrhaboobi]

I don't have the spec sheet in front of me, but as I recall the consolidated PSOne chipset doesn't include the controller or the pin inputs for the serial port. There were at least four different motherboard versions though, so it's possible that the two PSOne units I have are different from the one you are trying to modify. Point is, I'm reasonably certain that for at least two versions of the newer PSOne unit, you can't reasonably expect to add the serial port back.

Are you trying to use one of the boot or hack devices, like a Gameshark or something? You might be stuck having to use a boot disk instead.

-KKC, searching for gaming in Kentucky.

Thanks for the reply.

My plans are as follows.  I have a net yaroze, and use that for deving with.. I want to take a std PSone, and put a serial port into it, so that i can use the Yaroze Deving stuff with it.  The Yaroze connects to the PC via the Serial port. ( not parallel port, perhaps you were thinking of that ), i then want to be able to use one of the LCD screens that came out for PSone so that i dont need to lug around a monitor if im not working on the unit at home.

Alternatively.. id like a psx lcd screen ( for the first series model)..

Any thoughts would be helpful

[mrhaboobi]

Any more thoughts on this, a friend of mine looked into it and it seems that the psone uses the same chip as the grey units.. and this chip seems to have the required pins to do the mod.  Looks like the bios also has something into it similar to the grey units to access the port if it exists. so any experts out there that can provide some more details.. looks like we need pins 70 - 75 but i dont have a psone in hand to confirm if its going to be easy to get access to those pins ( eg they might not have any traces going to them.

[Guest]

I thought there were kits for doing this. I know there were for the normal PSX units that simply had it removed, but I was basing my next project on the assumption that there was a parallel mod for the smaller PSone. One thing that had me convinced was the internal VCD mod kit sold for the PSone. It boots to a menu very similar to the external mod + cheat + VCD devices, and I assumed it did it by interfacing to what makes up the internal parallel port. The instructions only showed two PSone PCB models, but I never heard of two more that it didn't work on so the chance of there being four PCBs seems slim to me. Can someone comfort or confirm my worries?

[Guest_CZroe]

OK, so there are definitely four versions... SCPH-100, 101, 102, & 103.

Here are the VCD installation instructions (bottom of the page). Can anyone work out a parallel port pin-out from that? The fact that it gives you a controlable menu and can read from the drive means that it is getting software booted just like a parallel mod and it is not simply hijacking the video output (ala the DrV64 VCD player for N64). I really need something like this, but I don't have the skills to test myself.

[mrhaboobi]

Guess no one can help with this?  Anyone have a chance to look at the psone and see if the pins are there for the serial port, supposedly they are, but i dont have one on hand to check.

[Guest]

Sorry dude, I think you're out of luck on that one.

I had an un-modded PSOne but was unhappy that it didn't have a parallel I/O port behind so I couldn't use my gameshark cartridge with it.

I went to shady local retailer and purchased a cheat code add-on. It's a bit hard to describe - the PCB is mounted on a plastic clip designed to fit on top of the BIOS chip. The legs of the BIOS chip make contact with the metal pins in the plastic clip, and these pins are traced to the PCB.

There's no way to decipher the pinout for the parallel port since the PCB makes direct contact with the BIOS chip

[jetblue]

i remember seeing one of those modchip selling sites that was putting serial ports on psone's,cant remember the site. This was like 3 or 4 years ago but i remember they had a diagram. You either had them do it or you bought the serial port from them and did it yourself. I remember seeing them screw it on the back with a couple of screws very crude like.


ack sorry,i got Parallel I/O mixed with serial i/o

[Guest]

I thought there were kits for doing this. I know there were for the normal PSX units that simply had it removed...

I used to have the conversion kit sold for that purpose...
in fact I'm fairly sure I still have it somewhere...

Good luck on installing the Parallel I/O onto PSOne

[Guest]

I thought there were kits for doing this. I know there were for the normal PSX units that simply had it removed...

I used to have the conversion kit sold for that purpose...
in fact I'm fairly sure I still have it somewhere...

Good luck on installing the Parallel I/O onto PSOne

What the kit you had one for the PSone or PSX? and if so any chance you could take some photos and scan whatever documentation? Thanks