racketboy.com

I was wondering if anyone here has any personal experience with softmodding their PS1 with a UniROM by essentially flashing an Action Replay device and using it on an older PS1 model with a Parallel Port.

I'm specifically looking into this option for three reasons.

1. Fast and easy region bypass, so I can swap games of different regions just by pressing a button during booting and not having to swap discs or any other more invasive methods (or just swapping to another region console altogether).

2. Play patched fan translated copies of Japanese games I already own, like the Suikogaiden games, by burning the patched version onto a CD-R. I would love to be able to add the fan translation patch during boot while playing with my original Japanese disc, but I know that's not currently possible.

3. NTSC patch some of my PAL games while still using my original PAL disc, instead of playing with a patched burned CD-R.

From what I read up, it sounds like is possible to do 1 and 2 with the UniROM but I'm unsure on 3.

Any information from people who have actually used this method and their experience would be appreciated, any tips, issues they had with it, etc. And if it is a good option for my purposes.

And before anybody mentions it, no I don't want to hard mod the console and I don't want to use a PSIO, I'm specifically interested in UniROM softmodding.

Never did this. I read some success story, but nothing more. Please keep us informed if you find your info elsewhere.
Also, the PSIO guys should really mention that their solution is a pretty difficult hard-mod, beyond a modchip hard mod's difficulty and ATM less compatible (tho by a low margin both ways).
Sorry for bumping without helping, but this interests me.

The PSIO Switch is actually harder than a normal Hard Mod to implement, as you mentioned, but it does have additional functionality, not something I would consider using though.

I got all the equipment necessary to try the UniROM softmod already, but I don't want to mess up either of my Xplorer cards, so I'll buy a new one specifically to flash, since it seems the flashing process is not reversible, and once you flash the card you can't revert back to its normal cheat-cart functionality.