This text was originally posted at psx-scene.com by dlanor on 07-06-2009,05:42 AM
I recently acquired a PocketStation unit (abbreviated "PS" below), mainly intended for use with Final Fantasy 8 and its 'Chocobo World' minigame. And like many users before me I was seriously irked by the knowledge that the production ID of my PocketStation unit would forever handicap its use for FF8, since it was not a 'good' ID (according to Chocobo World ranking methods) and the rank upgrade method Square had intended to be used for this game simply is not available in the western world.
In Japan players can upgrade their chicobo rank by letting it battle another chicobo in another PS using IR communication, but this is only meaningful if another player with a better rank is available, which is not the case here (Sweden for my case) where PS units are very very rare.
So I started searching for all available info and downloads related to the PS, and soon found that a number of various programs are available, these being both minigames and tiny utilities. And one that I found had the intriguing name "Rewrite ID". And it turned out to be exactly what I needed.
This program simply displays two text rows holding 8 Hex digits, with an editing cursor placed at the start of the top row. At first the two numbers will be identical, since the top number is then just a copy of the bottom number, which shows the current ID of the PS. The top number represents what new number you want the unit to get, and this can be edited by the following controls:
Left / Right => move the cursor left / right to select the digit to edit.
Up / Down => raise / lower the value of the current digit by 1
Action button => current value is stored as new PS ID
Now consider my own case for example:
My tests with Chocobo World originally gave me an ID of 435, which is rank 7
(A majority of the PS IDs give Chicobo rank 7, this being the worst rank existing)
That ID is really the 3 lowest decimal digits of a 24 bit part of the full 32bit ID of the unit.
The full ID, as shown by "Rewrite ID" was 421EFB63, which matches the code printed inside the PS cover in an odd way. That code is B02030435, where the letter B has the ascii code 42 in hex, while the decimal number 2030435 corresponds to 1EFB63 in hex, so when we put these together we get the full ID as shown by the "Rewrite ID" utility.
Next I needed to calculate what to enter in order to get an ideal ID, resulting in a rank 1 chicobo. In order to get that I would need Chocobo world to show an ID of 211 (according to the best FAQ on this matter), so 211 should be the final digits of the decimal number corresponding to the last 6 hex digits of the full ID. Thus I took the original value of that part and changed it into 2030211, which I then converted into 1EFA83, making the full new ID 421EFA83.
So that is the value I edited into the top line of the display, after which I pushed the 'Action' button at which the program copied this number into the bottom line, signifying that this was now the active ID.
Next I transferred a normal FF8 gamesave onto the PS and booted FF8 to load that save, and then used the save menu to download the Chocobo World into the PS and 'Sent Boko' to that 'World', after which I made a new save (so the sending is recorded in it, so it can later receive Boko back 'Home' again).
And then for the moment of truth, inspecting the new Chicobo data, which turned out exactly as good as I had hoped. Here is a comparison between the Lv1 chicobos using my old ID and my new ID.
Old => ID=435 HP=6 Weapon=2,1,1,1 => Deduced rank = 7
New => ID=211 HP=16 Weapon=4,3,3,3 => Deduced rank = 1
This also means that in the new minigame I can expect 25% of all found items to be class A, as compared to the zero chance I had with the old game.
The only drawback of this method is that it can do nothing for a "Chocobo World" game already existing. You need to create the Lv1 chicobo on the PS after changing its ID. Just resending an old chicobo from 'Home' to 'World' will not make it adopt the new ID, even if you force a new upload of the game itself by having deleted the old copy from the PS before sending Boko to 'World'.
Now for the part that lets you do the same thing I did:
The attached ZIP file contains the "Rewrite ID" program in a form that is ready for direct copying to the PS, which you can easily do on a PS2 running uLaunchELF (aka: uLE). Just use the FileBrowser of uLE to copy the file named "XXXXXXP-RESER" exactly as it is into the PS directory, which is either mc0:/ or mc1:/ in the uLE FileBrowser, depending on which MC slot you used for the PS.
Then remove the PS from the PS2 and use the PS menu to launch the program displayed as two rows of numeric digits with an arrow between them. And from that point on you can refer to my instructions above for the editing. Just remember to exit the program afterwards (press action button until you can choose "EXIT"), so that no accidental ID change occurs after the one you wanted. And for the same reason it is a good idea to also delete that program from the PS once its work has been done.
Best regards: dlanor
