Trying to get Playstation files to work

Libretro Lakka
#1

I’ve done a fair amount of searching and to date I haven’t found anything that solves my problem. So I registered and am posting here :).

I have some Playstation files that I am trying to get to work with Lakka. I have the files under /roms/Playstation and I’ve put the BIOS files under /system. The site says to rename scph7003 (I think that was the original name) to scph5501. So I did that, and now I have a scph5501.BIN file. Originally the files were named PSX - SCPH5501.BIN and the like, but I renamed them, including making the scph lowercase per what the website has. But I’m also wondering if the .BIN needs to be lowercase as well.

Lakka seems to scan the directory just fine, but the emulator/files don’t show up after the scan. I’ve tried manually getting to each file, and it reads them as being in the directory, but I haven’t been able to get them to play.

I’ve checked the CUE file and everything seems to check out there. However, where the CUE file points to FILE_NAME.BIN, the actual file name of the game is FILE_NAME.bin.ecm. Would this cause a problem? The actual filename has the extensions as lowercase, but the CUE file has the extension as uppercase (.BIN).

Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks in advance :).

#2

There are a few things at play here: 1.) yes, the *.BIN needs to be lower-case. 2.) RetroArch’s scanning feature only supports redump bin/cue pairs. If you’re using EMCs or whatever, they’re not going to show unless you use some other way to create your playlists (manually with a text editor or via a external scanning script). 3.) the cue files are case-sensitive, as well, so they’ll need to match the actual files, however those end up. So, scanning isn’t going to work with your current ROMs but if you would like to load them manually through load core > load content, the cues will need to point to the files in a correct, case-sensitive manner.

#3

I’ve gone through and verified upper and lowercase on both filenames as well as extensions. I also found a bin.ecm to bin converter program and I now only have .bin and .cue files. I put them into a .rar file, but now when I try to get Lakka to try to scan it, it says there is nothing in the directory. Actually, all of the directories with games in them say there is nothing in there to scan. Do I need to clear something or tweak a setting somewhere?

And thanks for the help!

#4

RAR archives won’t scan, either. They need to be uncompressed bin/cues.

If you don’t want to fool with our scanning system, you can use a script. See this page for details: http://www.lakka.tv/doc/Playlists/

#5

Ahh, ok, so my collection of RAR and 7z files need to be extracted first?

#6

yeah, for the scanning, at least. I think at least 7z can run while compressed if you load core > load content, but they won’t get scanned.

#7

Yup they got to be uncompressed. (I tries 7z it won’t run right for some reason) Don’t get mad if you have img/ccd/sub files it won’t scan but if you manually link the game in the playlist file you will want to link it to the img file.

#8

I got one game to work! Is there a best practice to handle multiples of these? Or should I just dump all the .bin and .cue files into one folder and be “messy”?

Another game I have is a set of img/ccd/sub files that was just mentioned. How do you manually link those if they won’t scan? (FYI I’m very new to Lakka and am still getting used to it :slight_smile: )

Thanks, guys!

#9

The messy method works just fine as Lakka will sort it out later when you get to the menu.

You will want to verify that your game will launch first. So go to the lakka berry icon (first menu item all the way to the left) Load content/select file and detect core/(playstation folder name)/game.img If you are greeted with the game launching as expected or you can select the playstation emulator to use and the game works, exit the game and you can move on to the next part of this post.

Anyway, how I handled the img/ccd/sub file set was to manually edit the play list.

For the following example, replace gamefile.img with the img file name that you are dealing with. For Game Name, call it what ever makes sense, or call it what the name of the png file for the box art files name is.

/storage/roms/playstation/gamefile.img Game Name /tmp/cores/(insert PSX emulator used).so Name of Playstation emulator used DETECT (detect is used for when you don’t know the exact info to put in, useful for replacing ##########|crc) Sony - Playstation.lpl

The emulator used varies on your setup, for me it’s pcsx_reARMed as I use an ARM based system for this (Raspberry Pi 2), if you are running on PC hardware it will likely be Mednafen’s playstation emulator however it is called. Sometimes DETECT can be used and the system will guess which emulator to use, but this can be messy and sometimes not work as expected. Also to note, since you have gotten it to successfully scan one of your games, just copy and paste whatever emulator setup is used in the entry of the playlist that scanned properly. This will assist in not worrying about whether you got the right emulator.

#10

Unfortunately it might be a few days before I can try this out, since I won’t be able to jump back on this project until then. But I have to say I’m excited to take these next few steps…may have to figure out a way to get at it :).

My setup is an older PC that I’ve installed Lakka and a number of ROMs on. And I think you are right…I think I remember seeing the name “Mednafen”.

Where do I go to manually edit the playlist?

#11

You access the file system through shared folders (the same way that you got your roms on there) and open the folder /storage/playlists , as opposed to /storage/roms, and you will find your playlist files. you will want to open the one labeled playstation.lpl using a text editor (not windows Notepad) like Notepad ++ or if you have a linux computer, the text editor that is part of the system will be sufficient. Just don’t use windows build in Notepad as that will not read them right.

#12

Thanks! Will give it a shot! I’m new to the Linux game as well, but I think I can figure it out :).

#13

Let us know when you have success my friend. I know it can get a little daunting at times, but it is worth it to learn how to deal with these things.

#14

Please check this documentation :wink:

#15

Well at least that shows how to write a cue sheet if your bin file doesn’t have one. But that wasn’t his current issue.

#16

I got the IMG file to run by going through the Load Content menu! It was a semi-ordeal since it wouldn’t play it at first and would only show me the CCD file. So then I turned off the “Filter by supported extensions” option and was able to see the IMG file, but it still wouldn’t run it. So I saw an option to download more cores (I’m assuming these are the emulators) and so I downloaded the ones associated with PlayStation. Now I can go through the Load Content menu and get to the IMG file, but instead of allowing me to select a core, it automatically picks one. So I don’t know which core is being used which means I can’t update the playlist file. How can I tell which core is being automatically selected here?

Slowly but surely getting there!

#17

It’s probably pcsxreloaded that is being ran. PcsxreARMed acts much the same way and it’s just an arm port.

#18

It’s probably Pcsxreloaded. You might be able to get it to tell you by opening the menu while the IMG file is open and running and going though the options, I forget what the option you are looking for is called.

#19

Yea, I think the “reloaded” one was one of the ones I downloaded. Do you know the keyboard command to open the menu while a game is running? I can’t find where those inputs are. A moderator told someone that it is in the wiki under the “input” section, but searching for that asks me to create a page named “input” LOL. So far searching hasn’t been any help at all :(.

#20

Scratch that, I found it (F1) by trial and error. But I didn’t see anything in the way of which core was being used. I can just trial and error it if we can’t figure out how to see which core is being used, but I’ll need to know how to spell the core names in the playlist. Any idea where I can see that?