Change Background Images Discoveries...

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:30 am

Well, my first full day working on this and i'm already tinkering with the flash.

Anyway... few discoveries...

First, its possible to change the bmps that show up for each month as a background.

My first test was replacing the image with the same size and such (60x34 pixels). The result:

Ok, now, anyway. As this is cool and all, it looks like completel crap. It stretches the shoddy quality image to 480x272, and it looks horrible.

So, i poked around a bit and noticed that there was still about 10k left in the 16k cluster that the 11.BMP (November background) was in. After some thought i decided to do a test if a larger image would work.

I couldnt fit double size (120x68) into 16k, so i went with 1.5x (90x51).
Wrote the code to change the filetable entry to reflect the new 13k'ish size, and write the new bmp to the flash.

Well, after sweating for a minute or two... the result:

It worked! The PSP took the higher res image and made it full screen! Granted, its not THAT much better at 90x51... but the fact that the size isnt fixed is good.

Heres the bmp:
http://www.skie.net/test.bmp

After I finish my fat12 driver for lflash, i'll work on making a full 480x272 one to test.

Anyway... some good info I guess.

Enjoy.

-Klim

P.S. - Sorry for the bad quality pics... i dont have a good digital cam at the moment.

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:34 am

http://www.skie.net/test-orig.jpg

Theres a link to the original image for comparison...

threeballspin · Post by **threeballspin** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:38 am

That's awesome man. Good work. Hope to see a nice app for this soon.

Thanhda · Post by **Thanhda** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 11:48 am

can you explain or supply a video on how you actually did this? because this can easily be fake. i've supply a video showing how to fake it.
http://www.geocities.com/tsune_l/bg.wmv

You could have easily went to picture gallery, hit home, then <- and you would see your image in the background.
i'm sure you actually did that, because who would really spend all this time posting and explaining something thats fake.

_Psycho · Post by **_Psycho** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 12:44 pm

He is under the "game" section, so this has to be a real background, anyway i believe him for sure, and god i would be nervous writing stuff into the flash, in case the PSP reject it and dont boot anymore =P

But its a good guess that the PSP is enough smart to load any kind of picture and just resize it the good size and if the picture is corrupt, it probably just wont load.

greycellgreen · Post by **greycellgreen** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:23 pm

How long does it take the PSP to lose track of time, unpowered, with the battery out?

Maybe set the PSP's clock to 10 minutes before the month rolls over ... so if an invalid BMP prevents the menu from starting, you wouldn't have to wait particularly long for it to load the next image instead?

oki · Post by **oki** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:31 pm

if this whuld have bin a fake the white wave thing wuldent b in the backgrond.

nice to see someone do thins becouse ive bin wanting to do this for a long time but im a "noob" at messing whit the psp ;) so i hope you will put up some tut for this.

sorry for my bad english.

Thanhda · Post by **Thanhda** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:31 pm

_Psycho wrote:He is under the "game" section, so this has to be a real background, anyway i believe him for sure, and god i would be nervous writing stuff into the flash, in case the PSP reject it and dont boot anymore =P

But its a good guess that the PSP is enough smart to load any kind of picture and just resize it the good size and if the picture is corrupt, it probably just wont load.

you can be under game section and still have the bg on.

greycellgreen · Post by **greycellgreen** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 2:31 pm

Thanhda wrote:you can be under game section and still have the bg on.

He explained 'how' here: http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=2161

steddy · Post by **steddy** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 5:20 pm

Good work Klimru

I don't understand why you have had to edit the BLOCK device though which is what is imposing your 16k limit. Why write a FAT12 driver when there is already one in the kernel?

Could you not get writes to flash1: to work? Is it known if this is read only or not? I thought previous posts suggested it opened read / write.

Steddy

Post by **mrbrown** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 5:24 pm

steddy wrote:Could you not get writes to flash1: to work? Is it known if this is read only or not? I thought previous posts suggested it opened read / write.

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=2161

The backgrounds are stored on flash0, not flash1.

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:23 pm

steddy wrote:Good work Klimru
I don't understand why you have had to edit the BLOCK device though which is what is imposing your 16k limit. Why write a FAT12 driver when there is already one in the kernel?

The 16k limit is the size of the cluster in the FAT12 filesystem where the 11.BMP is stored. Right before it and after it are other files right up against it, so, without modding file tables to point it to a larger area, I'm limited to 16k.

As far as writing a FAT12 driver, you cant write to flash0. The existing module wont allow it. So, I'll write one that lets you access flash0 with write access through lflash. Then I could more easily make the files larger.

steddy wrote: Could you not get writes to flash1: to work? Is it known if this is read only or not? I thought previous posts suggested it opened read / write.
Steddy

As mrbrown said, the background images are in flash0 not flash1. Although... flash1 is writable.

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 10:01 pm

Ok, here.. you cant get to any of these areas without the photo background being turned off (when viewing an image from the MS)

Three shots of a second test of a 90x51 in areas that are pretty much impossible to fake... including one that shows theres no pics on the memory card... lol (looks a lot better... the other was far too bright)...

-Klim

Pikoro · Post by **Pikoro** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 10:22 pm

I'm begining to think that the firmware does not access files within the fat "partitions" via block addresses, but via file names and handles: i.e. /<filename>

If this is the case, then can someone perhaps toss a full resolution 08.bmp file into flash and see if it runs.

If someone supplies the eboot.pbp to let me select a file and make it my background, i'll be a willing test subject. I've got 2 1.0 psps.

Cheers

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 10:25 pm

Yes, the firmware does access by filenames. But theres no way to write to flash0 to change the background by filename. So, you have to do it by blocks by directly modifying the FAT12 partition in its raw format.

Working on a way to do a full res image... its just going to take some time.

HaredX · Post by **HaredX** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 4:50 pm

Not to be a downer, but you could have just taken an image and set it as a new layer over a picture of a PSP and turned down the transparency so you could see the wave and the image would appear as if it were the background. Like so:

of course, if I were to make a fake picture believable I would spend more time on it, I threw that together in a little under 2 minutes. Another thing that leads me to believe that your images are fake are the fact that there are random things that appear bolder in your pictures, in your latest post, the date in the upper right corner in the first, second and third pictures seem bolder than the images and text from the menu of the PSP, in the second picture, your psps nickname appears bolder than the mac address and other text on the psp.

greycellgreen · Post by **greycellgreen** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:08 pm

HaredX wrote:Not to be a downer

Good god shut up. http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=2161

Who cares if faking it is possible? It has no bearing on this thread. He obviously didn't. Take your baseless accusations and speculation elsewhere.

edit: I apologise for my brashness. I've just gotten rather ornery reading up on PSP homebrew tonight, and seeing little or no appreciation for it. Instead there's accusations and whining and complaining, by spoiled little snots and egotistical know-it-alls who've never coded in anything beyond qbasic.

HaredX · Post by **HaredX** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:33 pm

I am in no way accusing him of faking this, I am just pointing out the way he could have faked it and the things that look suspicious about the pictures so he can take better ones. It's hard not to doubt things like this when 99% of the pictures/videos we see of supposed hacks/cracks/and modifications are indeed fake.

DrEggman · Post by **DrEggman** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:48 pm

Guys, me and Vampire did this a few days ago.

http://www.moshimoshineko.com/psp/PSPBG.wmv

We replaced a red background with a blue one. Look what the PSP does when expecting the red background!!

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 1:33 am

http://www.skie.net/background.wmv

If you say it's fake after seeing that, then I highly suggest you seek theropy. lol

-Klim

gotxp · Post by **gotxp** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 1:43 am

there is no reason why he would have faked it... It seems very straight forward and simple to do... Just using the lflash device to overwrite ##.bmp... If this technique prove to be truthfull, it will greatly help us in running homebrew :D

alexmae · Post by **alexmae** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 2:09 am

can you post the eboot and the source of how you did that?

HaredX · Post by **HaredX** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 3:02 am

Thank you for the video, I believe 100% that this is real now :D

gotxp · Post by **gotxp** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 5:31 am

yea that vid was AWSOME!...

Thanhda · Post by **Thanhda** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:49 am

the video is so FAKE! haha just kidding, looks good, i believed it as soon as i saw those footage. and thank you for supplying a video. now can you supply us a video showing how you did this.

Thanhda · Post by **Thanhda** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:53 am

DrEggman wrote:Guys, me and Vampire did this a few days ago.

http://www.moshimoshineko.com/psp/PSPBG.wmv

We replaced a red background with a blue one. Look what the PSP does when expecting the red background!!

this is easy to do. it happens when you set the date to the last minute of the month, and turn it off. wait for about a minute then turn it on. it turns on thinking its the same month, then changes settings when it boots up.

gotxp · Post by **gotxp** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 8:02 am

Thanhda wrote:
DrEggman wrote:Guys, me and Vampire did this a few days ago.

http://www.moshimoshineko.com/psp/PSPBG.wmv

We replaced a red background with a blue one. Look what the PSP does when expecting the red background!!
this is easy to do. it happens when you set the date to the last minute of the month, and turn it off. wait for about a minute then turn it on. it turns on thinking its the same month, then changes settings when it boots up.

yea thats true... the the month rolls over while the PSP is on sleep mode (or on)... the background will remain the same... However, the other video is 100% conviencing!

Klimru · Post by **Klimru** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 11:59 am

Ok, after about 2 days of work I got enough fat12 stuff coded to write a larger background image file to the flash.

First, I went for the gold. I tried a 480x272 background.

Well, it went... ok. My heart was about to jump out of my chest while it was writing to lflash, but, ok ok.

Went back to the menu. Background was full res. But, the menu items were messed up. Just big white boxes. So i tried half res (240x136). It seems to work OK.

The buttons looked normal, but there was a glitch... you can see it in the video below.

Note the quality of the background compared to the previous vid though. Its tons better.

I'll maybe take a still pic in high res when I find my cam.

Video:
http://www.skie.net/highresback.wmv

Perhaps an app in the next few days to copy backgrounds from the MS?! hehe

-Klim

Vampire · Post by **Vampire** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 1:31 pm

Klimru wrote:Ok, after about 2 days of work I got enough fat12 stuff coded to write a larger background image file to the flash.

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=2201

too bad i haven't found it out earlier...
it could have saved you a lot of work and time ;)

Famicom DS · Post by **Famicom DS** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 1:37 pm

One question klimru why block your MAC address in the pictures when you can clearly see it in the videos you posted? Just curious.