psone2ps3pkg

A drag-and-drop terminal tool that turns a PlayStation 1 disc image into a PS3-installable PS One Classic .pkg, written straight into the folder you dropped.

It is a friendly front end around pop-fe, which is bundled in vendor/pop-fe (no network fetch of the engine). PS1 only — PS2 discs and other systems are rejected.

Use

Standalone binary (no Python needed)

Grab psone2ps3pkg-linux-x86_64 from the latest release, chmod +x it, and run it from a terminal. It bundles Python, pop-fe and a prebuilt pkgcrypt, so nothing else is required (Linux x86-64, glibc ≥ 2.35).

./psone2ps3pkg-linux-x86_64                          # TUI: drop a folder, press Enter
./psone2ps3pkg-linux-x86_64 "/path/to/game folder"   # build without the TUI
./psone2ps3pkg-linux-x86_64 --check                  # verify optional tools

This is a terminal app, so double-clicking the file in a file manager does nothing — it has no terminal to draw in. Either run it from a shell as above, or install the menu launcher:

./install.sh            # -> ~/.local/bin/psone2ps3pkg  +  a "psone2ps3pkg"
                        #    entry in your app menu that opens in a terminal
./install.sh --uninstall

(install.sh ships in the release next to the binary; from a source checkout it lives at scripts/install.sh and picks up dist/psone2ps3pkg.)

From source

./run.sh                          # launch the TUI, drop a folder onto it, press Enter
./run.sh "/path/to/game folder"   # build without the TUI
./run.sh --check                  # verify the build tools are present

The dropped folder must contain exactly one game as one of:

Input	Notes
.cue + .bin/.img	preferred; multi-track (CD audio) supported
bare .bin / .img	assumed single MODE2/2352 track; CD-audio tracks are lost
.iso	only if it is a raw 2352-byte-sector image; a 2048-byte data-only ISO is refused
.chd	needs chdman on PATH

Output is named <Title> [<SERIAL>].pkg, e.g. GRAND THEFT AUTO 2 [SLUS-00789].pkg.

Requirements

The standalone binary needs only chdman (for .chd input) and, ideally, an internet connection so pop-fe can fetch cover art / screenshots — offline still produces a working PKG, just without the artwork.

Running from source additionally needs:

• Python 3.10+
• A C compiler + Python headers, used once to build pop-fe's pkgcrypt extension (the bundled setup.py relies on distutils, removed in Python 3.12+, so it is compiled directly):
  • Fedora: sudo dnf install gcc python3-devel
  • Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install build-essential python3-dev

chdman comes from mame-tools on both Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu.

First run copies vendor/pop-fe into ~/.local/share/psone2ps3pkg/engine/ (a writable working copy) and builds pkgcrypt there. Delete that directory to force a clean rebuild.

Installing the PKG on PS3

Requires CFW (Evilnat/Ferrox/…) or HEN with Cobra.

1. Copy the .pkg to a FAT32 USB stick or FTP it to /dev_hdd0/packages/.
2. XMB → Package Manager → Install Package Files (or use multiMAN / IRISMAN).
3. The game shows up under PS1 titles. No RAP needed — the ISO.BIN.EDAT is signed with the free klicensee ps1_netemu accepts.

Content ID is UP9000-<SERIAL>_00-0000000000000001.

Notes / limitations

• LibCrypt (PAL games). The tool passes --no-libcrypt, so the executable patch method is skipped, but pop-fe still bakes the subchannel protection data into the disc image, which is what ps1_netemu needs. If a specific PAL title stalls at a known LibCrypt checkpoint, that is the thing to revisit.
• One game per folder. Multiple .cue/.chd/.bin files in the same folder is an error rather than a guess.
• Multi-disc games are not handled in one shot — package each disc's folder separately.

Layout

src/psone2ps3pkg/
  disc.py      scan a folder, identify the PS1 disc (ISO9660 + SYSTEM.CNF)
  engine.py    stage the bundled pop-fe, build pkgcrypt once
  convert.py   plan + run pop-fe --ps3-pkg, validate the PKG header
  tui.py       Textual UI
  cli.py       argument handling, headless build, --check
vendor/pop-fe/ bundled engine (see vendor/VENDOR.md for upstream revisions)

Development

python3 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Building the release binary

./scripts/build_release.sh      # -> dist/psone2ps3pkg

It creates an isolated venv, precompiles pkgcrypt against that interpreter, stages it into a private copy of vendor/pop-fe, and runs PyInstaller in --onefile mode. pop-fe shells out to a bare python3 for two of its helper scripts; in a frozen build there is none, so engine.py points those calls at a shim that re-enters the binary via a hidden --internal-exec flag and runs the script in-process with runpy.

.github/workflows/release.yml runs the same script on every v* tag and attaches psone2ps3pkg-linux-x86_64 (+ .sha256) to the GitHub release.