R36S: PSX ROM Conversion.

The default PSX ROMs on the R36S are in PBP (PlayStation Boot Package) format. The issue with using this format is that only certain versions of the games are available, which can be problematic if you’re looking for a game in a specific language.

Most PSX game disc images are in BIN format. As stated in the official ArkOS documentation , the supported formats for the PSX emulator are:

Extensions: .cue .CUE .img .IMG .mdf .MDF .pbp .PBP .toc .TOC .cbn .CBN .m3u .M3U .ccd .CCD .chd .CHD .zip .ZIP .7z .7Z .iso .ISO

Therefore, if we download BIN images, we need to convert them into a compatible format. The simplest option is to convert them to CUE.

Steps to follow:

Generate CUE files.
Transfer files to the console.
Generate M3U
Duplicate games.

Generate CUE files:

In this example, we will generate the necessary CUE files for the four discs of Final Fantasy VIII:

echo 'FILE "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 1).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00' > "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 1).cue"

echo 'FILE "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 2).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00' > "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 2).cue"

echo 'FILE "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 3).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00' > "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 3).cue"

echo 'FILE "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 4).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00' > "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 4).cue"

Some games, such as Final Fantasy VIII, are protected by LibCrypt. To run them, we need the SBI files :

SBI Files are archives that contain the protection information required to run these protected PAL games in emulators.

In my case, the files correspond to the following discs, so we rename them with the same name as the CUE file but with the .SBI extension:

mv SLES_020.84.sbi "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 1).sbi"
mv SLES_120.84.sbi "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 2).sbi"
mv SLES_220.84.sbi "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 3).sbi"
mv SLES_320.84.sbi "Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 4).sbi"

We test loading the CUE files using DuckStation to ensure they are valid:

wget https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/releases/download/latest/DuckStation-x64.AppImage
chmod 700 DuckStation-x64.AppImage
./DuckStation-x64.AppImage

System -> Start file: Final Fantasy VIII (Spain) (Disc 1).cue

Transfer files to the console:

We create a directory on the R36S SD card and copy the BIN, CUE, and SBI files:

mkdir /media/kr0m/EASYROMS/psx/FF8
cp Final\ Fantasy\ VIII*.bin /media/kr0m/EASYROMS/psx/FF8
cp Final\ Fantasy\ VIII*.cue /media/kr0m/EASYROMS/psx/FF8
cp Final\ Fantasy\ VIII*.sbi /media/kr0m/EASYROMS/psx/FF8

Generate M3U:

If the game has multiple discs, we must also generate the M3U file . Creating this type of file imposes certain restrictions:

It only supports CUE or CHD files.
Multi-disc games must include the word Disc in the description.

We proceed to generate the M3U:

Options -> PS1 - Delete m3u files
Options -> PS1 - Generate m3u files

We will see a directory containing the four discs, but to launch the game, we need to select the main game entry from the list:

Duplicate games:

Multi-disc games can cause duplicate entries in the game list. If this happens, follow these steps:

PlayStation -> Start -> UI Settings -> Theme Configuration -> File Extensions: And enable only .m3u