linux dexdrive

About

A tool to mount memory cards as block devices in Linux, making them accessible as you would any attached (hard) disk. When mounted in this way any tool that has block device access can be used with the card.

This service will allow you to dump (or image) entire cards. It does not do individual saves. The resulting imaged cards are compatible with hardware, dumped images are compatible with emulators.

The tool runs as a daemon creating /dev/dexdrive0 cards can be inserted and removed without the need for a restart

Features

• Dump memory card images in mcs format
• Image mcs format to cards

Install

From the Experimental menu select the dexdrive menu item

Usage

• Install the tool
• The daemon will attempt to start automatically on installation, if your serial device is as per the default /dev/ttyUSB0 (general location for first USB->Serial devices), check the status from the menu.
• If your serial device is not /dev/ttyUSB0, configure your serial device and stop/start the service

Troubleshooting

Card not recognised

If you card is not recognised, check dmesg output starting the service, if it returns-6 the card is not being detected by the Dex Drive. May happen with dead and/or 3rd party cards. When a card is successfully read the output will be 1

Manually using dexattach

A successful Dex Drive (not card) attachment out will look as per below (Ctrl-C to exit)

$ dexattach --check --verbose /dev/ttyUSB0 
Opening /dev/ttyUSB0 and setting line discipline
Device number is 254:0

Check block devices with lsblk

$ lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk0     179:0    0 14.8G  0 disk 
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1    0  256M  0 part /boot
└─mmcblk0p2 179:2    0 14.6G  0 part /
dexdrive0   254:0    1  128K  0 disk 

Check permissions on the serial and/or block device

Need example

Tools

Use these tools to query/manage the images on Linux (not sure about Windows, sorry)

• psxmemcardmgr
• psx_mc_cli

References

• Retronas Log
• linux-dexdrive