MemcardRex for Linux

[Wes-Von-Hohenheim]

Hello,

I would like to ask the contributors of the project if it would be possible, in a future update, to provide support for porting MemcardRex to Linux.

I recently migrated from Windows 11 to Linux Mint (Cinnamon), and I’m using PCSXR for my games. Later, I discovered that DuckStation is available for Linux, but the problem is that there’s no way to transfer “saves” from one emulator to another on Linux. Therefore, once again I kindly ask the developers involved—if you could port MemcardRex to Linux, you would certainly achieve another significant step forward in the Linux community.

[TheBlueTroll]

Heyo @Wes-Von-Hohenheim , just wanted to mention that Memcardrex (2.0 RC1) currently works via Wine (tested 10.13) only requiring the use of winetricks to install the dotnetdesktop8.

Additionally, Memcardrex 1.9 (Released Jan 8, 2023) also works using the mono runtime (mono runtime version 6.12 is whats on my system) if you dont want to use wine for some reason.

Picture Proof

also good luck on the switch to Linux Mint, the cinnamon desktop is very nice!

[jorgecruz-607]

I think the best way to port MemcardRex to other OS is using the QT framework. It could easily run in different system architectures (aarch64,RISC-V,x86-x64, etc.).
But to do that we would need to let go .net framework.

[ShendoXT]

Feel free to contribute to Robxnano's Linux porting efforts, https://github.com/robxnano/memcardrex/tree/linux/MemcardRex.Linux

The main project is already set for multi-platform support in mind and
linux branch once mature enough can easily be slipstreamed into it.

Over the years there have been a few criticising the use of .net framework but
once they realise they are the ones who would need to devote their time do the porting they all promptly disappear.

I wrote it in what I was comfortable with and decided to share it in binary and source completely free
so if anyone is dissatisfied with that the world is your oyster, roll up your sleeves and make it happen.

I on the other hand have set up paypal donation years ago so people can donate and appreciate
my efforts on working on this software and I received a head spinning sum of exactly 0$...

So, if it's not my need to have a Linux build and if others are unwilling to do or pay me to do it why should I care?

[NKO55]

I'm also here in the hopes that we would get Linux version one day... I also jumped from Windows 11 to Linux (Zorin OS 18) a while back and been missing this app ever since. I understand @ShendoXT s comment totally that it may not be very motivational to even consider putting time and effort with 0 $ incentive.

[ShendoXT]

@robxnano did a phenomenal job on the native linux port so far but it has ways to go still.
@NKO55 nice choice on the distro. I have been using it lately almost to the point of maining
and I'm very satisfied, gaming, video editing, coding, etc. all working great.

The thing is that I use multiple computers on a daily basis with all major operating systems
(Windows, macOS, Linux) so it's not THAT important (to me) that i MUST have other versions
but I understand, it would be nice. I mostly used mono/wine+dotnet to get my fix on linux if need be.

I'm willing to continue working on the grounds that robxnano built and i put ko-fi link so if you appreciate
that consider maybe, perhaps to buy me a cup of coffee or two for the effort 😅

This is the current state of it:

P.S. I know it may sound odd but I spent a lot of my own money to support this software.
For example, PS3 MCA support, even though I did not initially write it I had to buy the adapter
and I'm glad that I did because I squashed a couple of bugs, not to mention I had to have it to add
PocketStation specific commands to it. Same with DexDrive, had to buy it... To produce macOS
builds I have to have a mac, etc... It sounds silly but I have been sole financier of this projects
where people so far only want/demand more and more...

Years before open sourcing the software I had a donate button on my blog for a couple of years.
I got a pretty good download numbers (in hundred thousands) so I thought, hm maybe someone will
drop a penny or two to support this software that so many people like, nope.
I even asked my brother to test the link with a symbolic donation because I thought it may be broken...
Not a single donation for years, it was embarrassing, I took the link down as it left bitter taste in my mouth.

So yeah, demanding stuff while I have flashes of 0$ wallet kinda doesn't motivate me to go out of my way
to please demanding crowds 😅

[ShendoXT]

While I did mostly cosmetic changes so far this is the current state of the application.

If someone wants to try to compile it themselves follow the readme inside MemcardRex.Linux directroy.
Remember though, it's very much alpha so a lot of things are not working properly.

[NKO55]

I'm willing to continue working on the grounds that robxnano built and i put ko-fi link so if you appreciate that consider maybe, perhaps to buy me a cup of coffee or two for the effort 😅

Where's the kofi link? I'll buy you some from my next paycheck ☕️

If someone wants to try to compile it themselves follow the readme inside MemcardRex.Linux directroy. Remember though, it's very much alpha so a lot of things are not working properly.

I'm new to compiling, I followed your instructions and installed the depencies correcly with "sudo apt install dotnet-sdk-8.0 libglib2.0-dev-bin libgtk-4-1 libadwaita-1-0".

When I tried both "dotnet build MemcardRex.Linux dotnet run --project MemcardRex.Linux" as well as "dotnet publish --self-contained MemcardRex.Linux" I got an error "MSBUILD : error MSB1009: Project file does not exist.". I'm just a dumb user who's probably missing something obvious, do I need to git the project beforehand or something? :P

I also noticed that my OS already recognizes the card reader as "Bus 009 Device 004: ID 054c:02ea Sony Corp. PlayStation 3 Memory Card Adaptor" but I wonder if I need any further drivers for it to work with this app on linux.

[ShendoXT]

Where's the kofi link? I'll buy you some from my next paycheck ☕️

Thanks, much appreciated. It's in the readme on the projects's main github page.

I'm new to compiling, I followed your instructions and installed the depencies correcly with "sudo apt install dotnet-sdk-8.0 libglib2.0-dev-bin libgtk-4-1 libadwaita-1-0".

When I tried both "dotnet build MemcardRex.Linux dotnet run --project MemcardRex.Linux" as well as "dotnet publish --self-contained MemcardRex.Linux" I got an error "MSBUILD : error MSB1009: Project file does not exist.". I'm just a dumb user who's probably missing something obvious, do I need to git the project beforehand or something? :P

I assume you cloned the project to your pc (either via git clone or downloading source zip from the master branch).
Make sure you are running these commands in the root of the project, not in MemcardRex.Linux directory.

I also noticed that my OS already recognizes the card reader as "Bus 009 Device 004: ID 054c:02ea Sony Corp. PlayStation 3 Memory Card Adaptor" but I wonder if I need any further drivers for it to work with this app on linux.

While linux build has no interfaces available at the moment once it does it should work as in Windows via libusb.
I've had reports of people using PS3 MCA with Windows build of MemcarRex through mono so I hope it should not be that much of a difference getting it to work natively.

[ShendoXT]

Just got done with the save information dialog. Well not quite 100%, icons aren't animated yet but I'll get to it eventually.
Time to focus on the save editing dialogs next.

[NKO55]

Yo dude I managed to build it :D This is cool! I tried opening one of the PocketStation game files (.gme) and it seemed to open just fine. This really cool dude. So I can't really flash my memory cards as of right now, correct? I can just open files saved on my PC? Anyway thanks again for your hard work, this is going to be epic!!

In the meantime I also want to try that Wine method. I haven't used Wine at all so we'll see how this goes haha.

[NKO55]

Heyo @Wes-Von-Hohenheim , just wanted to mention that Memcardrex (2.0 RC1) currently works via Wine (tested 10.13) only requiring the use of winetricks to install the dotnetdesktop8.

@ShendoXT @Wes-Von-Hohenheim Are you able to give any more advice how to (try) to run MemcardRex with Wine?

First, I had to create udev rules for the PS3 mem card reader device so that Bottles/Wine would see the device correctly. Then, I used Bottles to create a virtual environment for this app. I added three files to the virtual C-drive: MemcardRexRC1, the dot net desktop 8 installer and Zadig for the drivers. Dotnet installation went through with no issues.

With Zadig, I was able to see the correct PS3 reader device in the device list and install the WinUSB driver for it. Zadig did give me an error first, and I had to disable "Create catalog file" setting from its settings menu to make it work.

This was a success, so then I launched MemcardRex. It listed many different COM ports to choose from, and even though I went through all of them, I couldn't one that would actually connect to the reader. This is were I got lost.

Do you have any advice on this?

There is maybe some trick to add the linux /dev/... address to Bottle's windows registry, but I am unable to find the correct /dev/... adress for my card reader.

[ShendoXT]

Yo dude I managed to build it :D This is cool!

That's awesome, I'm glad you like it.

So I can't really flash my memory cards as of right now, correct? I can just open files saved on my PC?

Yes, for now the hardware interfaces are not active but of course the plan is to make them functional.

This was a success, so then I launched MemcardRex. It listed many different COM ports to choose from, and even though I went through all of them, I couldn't one that would actually connect to the reader. This is were I got lost.

Those are only relevant for the serial devices, PS3 MCA is accessed as a USB device detected by its vid/pid
and communication goes via it's proprietary protocol so if you can't see it immediately changing to
a different serial port won't help unfortunately.

I'm not sure about wine, maybe there are some more settings to tweak to allow access to usb devices...
Or you need to be member of a specific group, etc...

The report for successful PS3 MCA communication on linux comes from pure mono setup without wine but apparently
latest version won't play nice with it for some reason...

But if it all goes to plan I'll start working on the interfaces for the linux build soon so I hope the wine/mono shenanigans
with the windows version should be a moot point.

[ShendoXT]

OK, this is what currently works:

• Open and Save to all supported Memory Card formats.
• Show save properties.
• Edit save header
• Edit save comment
• Delete, restore and format saves.
• Copy and paste to and from temp buffer
• Preferences can be changed and are preserved after closing and loaded on startup

Not working yet:

• Undo/Redo with history list
• Save import and export
• Hardware interfaces
• Plugins (anyone needs this?)
• Icon editor
• Compare save with temp buffer

I have MemCARDuino eagerly waiting on my table to read or flash a card or two
so I'll probably go sort out the hardware interfaces next.

[NKO55]

Amazing progress!!! Can't wait to test it out!!! Good job dude. Please keep the plugins at least the ones for PocketStation/Crash because those I need haha.

[ShendoXT]

Amazing progress!!! Can't wait to test it out!!!

Thank you.

I have connected hardware interfaces and can successfully read and write data to Memory Cards.
I only have MemCARDuino with me to test at the moment so while other interfaces are also operational
I'm unable to test them unfortunately for the time being...

@NKO55 Can you try reading the card via PS3 MCA?

If you get this error make sure to install:

sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev libusb-1.0-0

I unfortunately can only get this as my PS3 Memory Card Adaptor is not with me atm.