Ok, before I begin to give definitions to all these components and theories, we have to go into a little history and facts about the Sony PlayStation.
1995:
The Sony PlayStation is released worldwide. Sony, in an effort to
avoid the pirating (copying) of their software, has added onto their disc's
aCOUNTRY CODE that a PlayStation can read
(and that CD burners cannot). The country code specifies which continent
the disc is from; only PlayStations with matching country codes will read
the disc.
The
country code coded onto the disc is written in the form of bad sectors.
When you copy a PlayStation game with a CD Burner, the drive (not the software)
recognizes that the country code has been coded as bad sectors and automatically
'corrects' these bad sectors on the new copy. Upon loading a copied disc,
the PlayStation first looks for the country code before it continues to
load the game. Since the new copy (or import) does not contain the correct
country code in its original form, the PlayStation deems the disc as being
not a PlayStation game but rather an audio CD and directs you to the audio
CD player portion of the PlayStation.
We
discover that the PlayStation loads the country code and then runs the
game, this leads us to what is now commonly known as the SWAP
TRICK. The swap trick involved letting the PlayStation read the country
code off of any original PlayStation disc (a disc with a country code encoded
onto it), quickly opening the tray and switching the original disc with
a copied game. Not only was this technique tricky, but also difficult
to time right and often required that the user repeat this procedure a
few times before the game actually loaded. Sony then fought back with their
later versions of the PlayStation, with optimizations as far as disc access and
read times, and the elimination of overheating and laser eye movement problems typical to first generation PlayStations.
The newer units also now read the country code four different times at 2 different
alternating speeds (2x,1x,2x,1x). In order for the swap trick to be done,
it would have to be done 4 separate times, rendering it neigh impossible
(it HAS been done, but I STRONGLY recommend against it). The solution? A
modification chip or MOD CHIP for short.
A mod chip is a chip that is soldered onto the PlayStation's motherboard
and "plugs in" a country code regardless of the CD in the drive. This allowed
the play of imported and copied games on a PlayStation bearing this chip.
Long before mod chips became popular, GAME
ENHANCERS existed. Their main feature was to enable cheats in games
(similar to the Game Genie add-ons of the early 90's), but little did anyone
know, they can serve a much more useful purpose, which is the ability to
play backups (copies) and imports [Find out how on the
Methods page].
1999: Sony fights back with their new PlayStation models: model 9001 (and above), as well as the new PS ONE compact PlayStations, do NOT have parallel I/O ports! (the port needed to support game enhancers). Sony, finding no use for the port supporting Sony made products (game enhancers are NOT made or endorsed by Sony) they decided to obliterate it entirely. What this means is that game enhancers no longer work with these new PlayStations! The only known way to play imports/copies on 9001 machines (or above), or the new PS ONE compact PlayStations to date is VIA a mod chip. [Click here if you would like to find out how to determine which PlayStation model you own and/or whether or not it is compatible with a game enhancer].
1999: Sony has not only fought back against people using game enhancers to play backups/imports, but has also fought back against people using mod chips to play originals/copies/imports. Games featuring the new, unofficially named "anti-modchip protection" loads the country code from an original PlayStation disc at different times in different increments during bootup. A mod chip only "plugs in" the country code once in one shot during bootup. Copies of anti-modchip games, and even the original anti-modchip games themselves, do not boot up as they wait for the country code to be "plugged in" when they request it, and since the mod chip has priority over the disc's country code, that information is never sent to the PlayStation when requested and the game hangs. Stealth modchips have been developed to counter this problem. Game enhancers have always defeated this problem as anti-modchip games work fine with game enhancers since they allow people who own either non-stealth modchips (older modchips) or no modchip at all to play anti-modchip games and backups by means of either using codes found online with their game enhancer [a database of these codes are available by clicking here] or by using a special swap method described here.
A BACKUP is another word for a copy of disc (whether it be PlayStation, PC CD ROM, or any other disc that contains data for that matter) by means of a CD burner on a computer. A CD BURNER is a type of CD-ROM that can copy onto special CDs called CD Recordables (CD-Rs) data and/or audio tracks. It can make perfect copies of CDs, whether they be PlayStation CDs, PC CDs, or other.
Yes, I know this is rather vague, but read on and it will clear up. Promise.
