In this episode I speak to Danhans42, the creator of the “Litemenu” custom menu for the PSIO. The PSIO is a plug in dongle for the original Playstation 1 which allows playing backups from an SD card.
Photo taken from official PSIO website https://psio.cybdyn-systems.com.au/
Despite working well enough for most users needs, the PSIO has a very bumpy history as a homebrew product. The product launch experienced many delays and there has been very few firmware updates for the product since then. The creator of the PSIO has a mixed reputation in the community, with some paying customers accusing him of very toxic behavior toward them.
One homebrew community member, Danhans42, came across a PSIO unit from a friend and decided to have a shot at writing his own PSIO menu loader. As the custom menu technically allows you to run the PSIO without a license, Dan offered the code to the creator of the PSIO with the condition that he release it instead. This resulted in a pseudo legal threat back to Dan and despite the threat being very baseless, he decided to pull the project rather than wade into that swamp.
In my talk with Dan we start with his background and how he learnt to code for the PS1 with the Net Yarose dev tools and then how he went about clean room investigating the PSIO and developing his own custom menu.
Dan is very honest in our discussion being humble, while proud of the work he does. He also discusses openly the ways he could have handled this situation better, despite dealing with very difficult individuals.
Follow Dan
Blog http://psx0.wordpress.com
Github http://www.github.com/danhans42
PSX.dev Discord – http://psx.dev/