need help: NHL94 in NHL2006 for PS2

[swos]

I got my hands on the PS2 NHL2006 DVD.

Naturally I was very interested about the NHL94 in it, so I browsed the DVD and found the NHL94 section from there,

and then opened the NHL94.sr file in hex editor. in the file there was almost perfect replica of the sega genesis rom, exactly 1.0 MB big. I extracted the rom from the file and renamed it ps2NHL94.bin and yes, it booted in Gens, but didn't go past the EA Sports logo.

With slight altering the game booted and played normally.

What I wanted to do next was to edit the NHL94.sr file adding the most recent update to it and then insert the file back to NHL2006 DVD.

Now I have the updated NHL94.sr file ready, but I just can't find a program that would let me insert a file to a DVD .iso file without trashing the LBA codes in the .iso making the game unbootable.

I tried different programs for 7 hours last sunday without success.

I need help re-generating the NHL2006 DVD, so that it would boot after altering the NHL94 part in it.

[mack]

Do you have a mod chip swos? I have edited a few names in nhl hitz pro with hex workshop and got it running on my modded PS2.

[swos]

I don't have a modchip, but I can play burned CD and DVD games in it with the use of Swap Magic and DVD Region X discs.

[wboy]

The info and appz found here may be able to do the trick.

interesting that you got the .sr file to load in Gens... wonder if it simply stands for something as silly as "sega rom" and NHL06 effectively has a Sega Genesis emulator on it. Hmmmm... might have to buy NHL06 soon to play around with it all...

When you say you slightly altered the .SR file to make it go past the logo in Gens, what exactly did you do/hex edit?

[don16086]

That is good to hear, the Swap Magic discs only work in the top loading newer model of the PS2 right?

[wboy]

That is good to hear, the Swap Magic discs only work in the top loading newer model of the PS2 right?

No, you can actually get replacement fliptop cases for the majority of older PS2's aswell. See here.

[swos]

The info and appz found here may be able to do the trick.

interesting that you got the .sr file to load in Gens... wonder if it simply stands for something as silly as "sega rom" and NHL06 effectively has a Sega Genesis emulator on it. Hmmmm... might have to buy NHL06 soon to play around with it all...

When you say you slightly altered the .SR file to make it go past the logo in Gens, what exactly did you do/hex edit?

thanks for the link.. I must try it when I get new DVDs (I used all my empty DVDs last sunday trying to get this thing work)

and to answer your question..

well... 1st of all I compared the NHL2006a.bin (should have used original) with the file extracted from the NHL94.sr file in Hex Workshop.

the results showed there weren't that many differencies. Then I copy pasted the different parts to another, and found the part that made the rom go to the menu. (in ps2 version there was a code that skipped the high score logo. I'm planning to use that option for the future NHL updates)

After that I tried copypasting the different parts to the updated rom one part at a time, and some of those made the game freeze either in menu, edit lines, in game or so on, but surprisingly many parts of the new code optimized for ps2 worked without any problems at all.

if you want I can send you the rom from within the nhl94.sr file.

That is good to hear, the Swap Magic discs only work in the top loading newer model of the PS2 right?

I have the older model of the PS2

and with addition to the Swap Magic 2.0 disc I must manually open and close the tray with the card trick.

[wboy]

swos, have you opened the extracted ROM from NHL94.SR in NOSE....? have you noticed that each team has what appears to be an additional bogus player entry, with no allocated name length.. and a heap of random bytes that follow. I thought it could be team averages for each attribute, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

If modifications to this version of the rom require such data, that could be another slight hurdle in getting your NHL'06 from to work on the PS2.

The goods news is (as you touched on) that the rom structure is very similar even with the roster changes etc.

[wboy]

Ignore that bogus player, its nothing.... I just took a closer look and realised what EA have done.

Its seems the game terminates the players in a roster when the player name length is 0002, which normally followed by the team name length bytes etc.

When EA shortened/changed names, they got to the end and added an additional 0002, but didn't bring the team name data forward as to obviously not alter the original rom's structure too much.

I actually thought the 0002 byte before the team name served a different purpose... which is why NOSE gets tricked into thinking its another player when indeed it is not... if only EA knew how to manage free bytes!

If you check the last player in Anaheim, you even see the remanence of Dennis Vail from the orginal roster (after the 0002) though it is missing the "Denn" text.