This file describes mymc, a utility for manipulating PlayStation 2 memory card images as used by the emulator PCSX2. Its main purpose is to allow save games to be imported and exported to and from these images. Both MAX Drive and EMS (.psu) save files are fully supported, however save files in the SharkPort/X-Port and Code Breaker formats can only be imported and not exported. In addition to these basic functions, mymc can also perform a number of other operations, like creating new memory card images, viewing their contents, and adding and extracting individual files.
A simple, hopefully easy to use, graphicial user interface (GUI) is provided, but it's limitted to only basic operations. More advanced opterations require the use of a command line tool. To install mymc, unpack the downloaded ZIP archive to a new directory on your machine.
You can then run the GUI version of mymc by openning that newn directory with Windows Explorer and double clicking on the "mymc-gui" icon. To make it easier to access, you can drag the "mymc-gui" icon to either your Desktop, Start Menu or Quick Launch toolbar. Make sure if you do so, that you create a shortcut to "mymc-gui.exe". If you copy the file instead, the program won't work.
The command line utility can be invoked from the Windows Command Prompt by using the "mymc" command. The executable "mymc.exe" and
number of support files and these file must kept together in the same directory. To run the command you need to either add the directory where you unpacked the distribution to your PATH or type the full pathname of the executable. For example if you unpacked mymc to a directory named "c:\mymc" you need to enter "c:\mymc\mymc.exe" to run the program.
The second important thing to note is that mymc is only "alpha" quality software. This means that has is been released without extensive testing and may be unreliable. While it works fine for me, the author, it might not work as well for you. For that reason you should be careful how you use it, and prepared for the eventuality of it corrupting your save game images or producing garbage save files.
If you're worried about this, one make things safer is to use two memory card images. Use the first image to load and save your games ith under PCSX2, and the second image to import and export saves games using mysc. Then use the PS2 browser to copy files between two card images.
GUI TUTORIAL
============
The GUI for mymc is should be easy to use. After starting mymc, you can select the PS2 memory card image you want to work with by selecting the "Open" command by pressing the first button on the toolbar. You can then import a save file clicking on the Import toolbar button. To export a save files, first select it and then press the Export button. You can delete a save file permanently from your memory card, by selecting the "Delete" command from the File menu.
Do not try to use mymc to modify a memory card image while PCSX2 is running. Doing so will corrupt your memory card.
COMMAND LINE TUTORIAL
=====================
The basic usage template for mysc is "mymc memcard.ps2 command". The first argument, "memcard.ps2" is the filename of the memory card image while "command" is the name of the command you wish to use on the image. So for example, assuming you've installed mymc in "c:\mymc" and you've installed PCSX2 in "c:\pcsx2" you could enter the following command to see the contents of the memory card in the emulator's slot
1:
c:\mymc\mymc c:\pcsx2\memcards\Mcd001.ps2 dir
You would see output something like this:
BASLUS-20678USAGAS00 UNLIMITED SAGA
154KB Not Protected SYSTEMDATA
BADATA-SYSTEM Your System
5KB Not Protected Configuration
BASLUS-20488-0000D SOTET<13>060:08
173KB Not Protected Arias
7,800 KB Free
This is the simple "user friendly" way to view the contents of a memory card. It displays the same information you can see using the PlayStation 2 memory card browser. On the right is name of each save, and on the left is the size and protection status of the save. Also on the left is one bit of information you won't see in the browser, the directory name of the save file. PlayStation 2 saves are actually a collection of different files all stored in a single directory on the memory card. This is important information, because you need to know it to export save files.
As mentioned above, if you know the directory name of a save, you can export it. Exporting a save creates a save file in either the EMS (.psu) or MAX Drive (.max) format. You can then transfer the save to real PS2 memory using the appropriate tools. You can also send the saves to someone else to use or just keep them on your hard drive as a backup. The following command demonstrates how to export a save in the EMS format using mymc:
c:\mymc\mymc c:\pcsx2\memcards\Mcd001.ps2 export BASLUS-20448-0000D
This will create a file called "BASLUS-20448-0000D.psu" in the current directory. To create a file in the MAX format instead, use the export command's -m option:
c:\mymc\mymc c:\pcsx2\memcards\Mcd001.ps2 export -m BASLUS-20448-0000D
This creates a file named "BASLUS-20448-0000D.max". Note the "-m" option that appears after the "export" command.
Importing save files is similar. The save file type is auto-detected, so you don't need use an "-m" option with MAX Drive saves. Here's a couple of examples using each format:
c:\mymc\mymc c:\pcsx2\memcards\Mcd001.ps2 import BASLUS-20035.psu
c:\mymc\mymc c:\pcsx2\memcards\Mcd001.ps2 import 20062_3583_GTA3.max
ADVANCED NOTES
==============
- To get general help with the command line utility use the "-h" global option (eg. "mymc -h"). To get help with a specific command use the "-h" option with that command (eg. "mymc x import -h"). In this later case, you need to specify a memory card image file, but it's ignored and so doesn't need to exist.
- Both executables in the Windows version, "mymc.exe" and "mymc-gui.exe" do the same thing and support the same options. The difference is that "mymc" is console application, while "mymc-gui" is a Windows appliction. Currently, using "mymc" to start the GUI will result in a fair amount debug messages being printed that are normally not seen "mymc-gui" is used.
- It's possible to use mymc create images that are bigger (or smaller) than standard PS2 memory cards. Be very careful if you do this, not all games may be compatible with such images.
- The bad block list on images is ignored. Since memory card images created with either PCSX2 or mymc won't have any bad blocks, this shouldn't be a problem unless you've somehow extracted a complete image from a real memory card and expect to copy it back.
- The PS2 only uses at most 8,000 KB of a memory card, but there is actually 8,135 KB of allocatable space on a standard error-free memory card. The extra 135 KB is reserved so that memory card with bad blocks don't appear to have less space than memory cards with fewer or no bad blocks. Since there are no bad blocks on memory card images, mymc uses the full capacity provided by standard memory cards.
PYTHON SOURCE DISTRIBUTION
==========================
The "source code" distribution of mymc is provided for users of Linux and other non-Windows operating systems. It uses the same Python code that the Windows distribution is built with (using py2exe) and supports all the same functionality. One big difference is that the Windows DLL "mymcsup.dll" is not included and as a result compressing and decompressing MAX Drive saves will be as much as 100 times slower.
The GUI mode is hasn't been extensively tested on non-Windows systems, and the 3D display of save file icons requires the DLL. The Python source version should support big-endian machines, but this hasn't been tested.
by Ross Ridge.