!!Con 2020 - Bringing back my 1998 by building an arduino that can recover a ... by Martin Gaston
2bringing back my 1998 by building an arduino that can recover a playstation memory card! by Martin Gaston
In 1998, armed with the original PlayStation and my childhood, I saved Midgard from Sephiroth, averted nuclear armageddon by sneaking through Shadow Moses and escaped a zombie infested Racoon City.
These iconic games have been re-released and remastered in various forms, but my digital memories of them now only exist on a single PlayStation Memory Card: 128kb of EEPROM storage I recently found hidden in a shoebox during a move. Awash with nostalgia by just holding the rectangular card in my hands, I realised I just had to find a way to break into this trove.
Join me as I learn how to setup an Arduino to access this data, tear down an original PlayStation console, read those precious bytes from my memory card and then convert them into a format to relive my 1998 memories on a modern PlayStation emulator in 2020.
The talk is specifically aimed at beginners with an interest in hardware and low-level file manipulation, and looks to introduce obtaining, reading and parsing a binary file in an introductory and accessible way. Python is used for some file manipulation, so a little knowledge of dynamic languages and an interest in 90s gaming would likely be beneficial.
Following careers in games media and marketing, Martin really got into programming in 2018 after previously assuming tech was inaccessible for people without a computer science degree. He was forged in the friendly fires of Founders and Coders - a tuition-free, peer-led UK bootcamp - and now talks about the 90s way too much with the rest of the team at 8th Light.