As the title suggests I'm looking for opinions on whether it is reasonable to use ProDG 3.0 on Windows for development with a T10K, given what is available in terms of tool applications, patches, etc.
For some background, I have a working setup using Metrowerks CodeWarrior already, so yes, I could just use that. But to be honest I find myself not liking it very much despite giving it a couple of months to "get used to it". Thus I've turned my eye to the other alternative, ProDG by SN Systems. The latter feels more "official" due to their developers' entanglement with SCEI, and from what I've gleaned it feels more like a proper Windows IDE suite than CodeWarrior. As I'm a Visual Studio user since VS2005 (or VS2008 for more serious development), the included VS integration that comes with ProDG is a big plus for me as well (even though it is for VS98 only; it seems that the commandline tools are documented well enough that you could probably integrate it with a later IDE version yourself if you felt up to the task however - I cannot say the same for CodeWarrior, at least from what documentation I've managed to find for it). The ProDG target manager also seems superior, alas I haven't been able to use the debugger so I can't say for that one.
Onto the problems then:
There is a leaked version of ProDG 3.0.1, but it seems to only be partially patched for license checks and as such will not work as-is. Now there is a keygen for an older version (2.76 or something I believe?); this will not wotk with the 3.0 target manager or debugger, however it does (seemingly) let the compiler run. No other components (linker, assembler etc.) seem to check the license at all. For the target manager, it seems to be possible to just run in permanent evaluation mode without any restrictions(?), and there is a patch for the debugger that allows it to bypass the initial license + validity period check. However, even this patched debugger fails whenever you try to actually attach it to a running session on the target Tool. I'm guessing this happens as it extracts some part of initialization data from a (valid) license that is just bypasssed and not properly set by the patch. I've tried looking into reverse engineering the debugger for the license check for a couple of days myself - I've managed to find where it checks the MAC address but that's it for now, and I'm not sure whether butting my head against this wall anymore is really worth the bother.
Furthermore, it seems like certain instructions / compilation does not yield the correct output when built with the ProDG compiler, and so I'm starting to wonder if perhaps that too is missing some initialization data from the (old) license, even though it doesn't complain about it being invalid out loud? To clarify, it does successfully compile code but unless it's a very simple "Hello World"-style program, it will fail to run on the console, usually when trying to do anything with the GS, and the same code compiles and runs fine with CodeWarrior so it isn't that the source itself is faulty (although I guess they do use different SDK versions so one cannot be 100% certain).
So, my questions then are:
1) Is it worth trying to get this to work? Has anyone else managed to (by looking at old AssemblerGames threads it doesn't really seem like it)? Or should I just write it off and fall back to sticking with CodeWarrior? (I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd really like to do some actual PS2 development for once).
2) Is it perhaps possible to procure a valid license somehow? If nothing else it would be a big help to have a good case in trying to reverse its checking algorithm. I doubt SN Systems would be willing to hand them out but perhaps someone wouldn't mind sharing a working one (along with whatever MAC address it is tied to then of course). But then again I wouldn't be surprised if any actually sold licenses have long since timed out anyway (although if so, can you get around it by simply patching the time retrieval API calls in the executables? Or simpler yet, just pull your system clock back a decade or two?).
3) Do anybody know whether my suspicion about the compiler possibly not working fully due to the incorrect license is likely or not?
Thanks for reading; I'm grateful for any pointers or other ideas/discussion.
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It should perhaps be noted that the ProDG compiler seems hardcoded to use version 2.9-ee-991111 of the EE SDK libraries. I don't have this particular version and so have rerouted it to version 2.95.3 which was the closest I could find. There were also some minor oddities needed to get the compiler/linker to work such as #defining long as int, or it wouldn't be recognized, and the EXCLUDE_FILE() operation not being recognized in app.cmd, which I thus simply removed from there to get it to build. Just in case this may play into the results I'm getting, though I doubt it should (I'd rather expect it to fail to build at all than runtime errors from the latter).
For some background, I have a working setup using Metrowerks CodeWarrior already, so yes, I could just use that. But to be honest I find myself not liking it very much despite giving it a couple of months to "get used to it". Thus I've turned my eye to the other alternative, ProDG by SN Systems. The latter feels more "official" due to their developers' entanglement with SCEI, and from what I've gleaned it feels more like a proper Windows IDE suite than CodeWarrior. As I'm a Visual Studio user since VS2005 (or VS2008 for more serious development), the included VS integration that comes with ProDG is a big plus for me as well (even though it is for VS98 only; it seems that the commandline tools are documented well enough that you could probably integrate it with a later IDE version yourself if you felt up to the task however - I cannot say the same for CodeWarrior, at least from what documentation I've managed to find for it). The ProDG target manager also seems superior, alas I haven't been able to use the debugger so I can't say for that one.
Onto the problems then:
There is a leaked version of ProDG 3.0.1, but it seems to only be partially patched for license checks and as such will not work as-is. Now there is a keygen for an older version (2.76 or something I believe?); this will not wotk with the 3.0 target manager or debugger, however it does (seemingly) let the compiler run. No other components (linker, assembler etc.) seem to check the license at all. For the target manager, it seems to be possible to just run in permanent evaluation mode without any restrictions(?), and there is a patch for the debugger that allows it to bypass the initial license + validity period check. However, even this patched debugger fails whenever you try to actually attach it to a running session on the target Tool. I'm guessing this happens as it extracts some part of initialization data from a (valid) license that is just bypasssed and not properly set by the patch. I've tried looking into reverse engineering the debugger for the license check for a couple of days myself - I've managed to find where it checks the MAC address but that's it for now, and I'm not sure whether butting my head against this wall anymore is really worth the bother.
Furthermore, it seems like certain instructions / compilation does not yield the correct output when built with the ProDG compiler, and so I'm starting to wonder if perhaps that too is missing some initialization data from the (old) license, even though it doesn't complain about it being invalid out loud? To clarify, it does successfully compile code but unless it's a very simple "Hello World"-style program, it will fail to run on the console, usually when trying to do anything with the GS, and the same code compiles and runs fine with CodeWarrior so it isn't that the source itself is faulty (although I guess they do use different SDK versions so one cannot be 100% certain).
So, my questions then are:
1) Is it worth trying to get this to work? Has anyone else managed to (by looking at old AssemblerGames threads it doesn't really seem like it)? Or should I just write it off and fall back to sticking with CodeWarrior? (I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd really like to do some actual PS2 development for once).
2) Is it perhaps possible to procure a valid license somehow? If nothing else it would be a big help to have a good case in trying to reverse its checking algorithm. I doubt SN Systems would be willing to hand them out but perhaps someone wouldn't mind sharing a working one (along with whatever MAC address it is tied to then of course). But then again I wouldn't be surprised if any actually sold licenses have long since timed out anyway (although if so, can you get around it by simply patching the time retrieval API calls in the executables? Or simpler yet, just pull your system clock back a decade or two?).
3) Do anybody know whether my suspicion about the compiler possibly not working fully due to the incorrect license is likely or not?
Thanks for reading; I'm grateful for any pointers or other ideas/discussion.
------
It should perhaps be noted that the ProDG compiler seems hardcoded to use version 2.9-ee-991111 of the EE SDK libraries. I don't have this particular version and so have rerouted it to version 2.95.3 which was the closest I could find. There were also some minor oddities needed to get the compiler/linker to work such as #defining long as int, or it wouldn't be recognized, and the EXCLUDE_FILE() operation not being recognized in app.cmd, which I thus simply removed from there to get it to build. Just in case this may play into the results I'm getting, though I doubt it should (I'd rather expect it to fail to build at all than runtime errors from the latter).