PSX emulator for PSP

[Jdemon]

1timeuser, why do you have to bring up bleemcast? You know it makes me cry.

[caythos]

I would like you to consider something, years ago i had an old Pentium 266 PC that i dubed and emu box. At the time i had the basics nes, sega gen, and snes, but when it came to the psx emu it just couldn't do it, breath of fire 3 came out at full speed most of the time but most other games did not. The point is it always requires more power to emulate then the origenal system has if my 266 couldn't do it well, then the odds are a psp at 333 is not going to, especialy when its someones freetime project.

[Cap'n 1time]

I would like you to consider something, years ago i had an old Pentium 266 PC that i dubed and emu box. At the time i had the basics nes, sega gen, and snes, but when it came to the psx emu it just couldn't do it, breath of fire 3 came out at full speed most of the time but most other games did not. The point is it always requires more power to emulate then the origenal system has if my 266 couldn't do it well, then the odds are a psp at 333 is not going to, especialy when its someones freetime project.

DO NOT COMPARE YOUR PENTUIM MACHINE TO THE PSP'S PROCESSOR. They are not comparable because they do things completely differantly. This is the mistake that everyone seems to make... the only game console you could EVER compare to your computer is the Xbox because of its celeron processor and stuff. The xbox was basically a cheap pc with a ugly plastic case.

[caythos]

DO NOT COMPARE YOUR PENTUIM MACHINE TO THE PSP'S PROCESSOR. They are not comparable because they do things completely differantly. This is the mistake that everyone seems to make... the only game console you could EVER compare to your computer is the Xbox because of its celeron processor and stuff. The xbox was basically a cheap pc with a ugly plastic case.

That is part of my point, I know the psp works differnetly then the PC, the and they both are different then the PS1, I'm no expert by any means but thats why its emulation, and thats why I just don't see it happening, in my limited experence it takes more processor power for anything to emulate a processor that runs a different way, otherwise the psp would not do things like lag on a snes game. For this reason I just don't see anything beyond a snes or sega gen being emulated well.

[Cap'n 1time]

That is part of my point, I know the psp works differnetly then the PC, the and they both are different then the PS1, I'm no expert by any means but thats why its emulation, and thats why I just don't see it happening, in my limited experence it takes more processor power for anything to emulate a processor that runs a different way, otherwise the psp would not do things like lag on a snes game. For this reason I just don't see anything beyond a snes or sega gen being emulated well.

its a good point, and I can see why you would think that but...

The reason we have slow snes and gen emulators is certainly not due to lack of ability. I think its more that no homebrew developer has really taken 100% advantage of the psp's hardware. Also any "PORT" isnt going to be as great as some emulator that was programmed directly FOR the hardware its going on.

sorry to depress some more people by mentioning Bleemcast BUT it is another fine example that Good, Native Code beats the crap out of porting. So bleemcast works... but if you have ever tried the PCSX port for dreamcast you can see that... well... it dosnt work so well. Why? because Bleemcast was coded FOR the dc hardware and PCSX was a port.

A playstation emulator is possible I think... but very unlikely to be playable in a port form and even more unlikely to exist in a native form. Its unlikely, but certainly possible i think.

[tegs123]

id be happy to donate 10$ for any coders who is/are capable of creating a psx emu in full assembly and running in full speed

i dont know how much time it might take him to make one but if 200-300 people donate then it will be over a 2000$ for 3-4 months of work wich im sure many coders will be happy to take

its just that someone has to set the ammount of money and time he needs for the project.....

[soatari]

That's a good example. The idea is to get someone VERY familiar with coding the PSP and unlocking a good deal of its capable power. If you develop an emulator from the ground up for the PSP, its performance will be much better than trying to port code made for the PC over to an entirely different system.

You also need to take into account the similarities between how the PSP processes things and how the PS1 did. Let's say, hypothetically, the PS1 processes sound the same way as the PSP (I know it probably doesn't, but it's just theory), if it did, then letting the PSP process that RAW instead of trying to emulate it, it really frees up alot of processor power. This is the primary difference between what a PSP emulator could be and what a PC emulator is.

If the basic ports that have been coming out lately actually DO have a built in emulator, then trying to reverse engineer that would be the best bet at getting a full speed PS1 emulator. Of course, not being an experienced coder, I have actually no idea how one would do that. But this does give you a better idea of what really needs to be done.

its a good point, and I can see why you would think that but...

The reason we have slow snes and gen emulators is certainly not due to lack of ability. I think its more that no homebrew developer has really taken 100% advantage of the psp's hardware. Also any "PORT" isnt going to be as great as some emulator that was programmed directly FOR the hardware its going on.

sorry to depress some more people by mentioning Bleemcast BUT it is another fine example that Good, Native Code beats the crap out of porting. So bleemcast works... but if you have ever tried the PCSX port for dreamcast you can see that... well... it dosnt work so well. Why? because Bleemcast was coded FOR the dc hardware and PCSX was a port.

A playstation emulator is possible I think... but very unlikely to be playable in a port form and even more unlikely to exist in a native form. Its unlikely, but certainly possible i think.

[Cap'n 1time]

That's a good example. The idea is to get someone VERY familiar with coding the PSP and unlocking a good deal of its capable power. If you develop an emulator from the ground up for the PSP, its performance will be much better than trying to port code made for the PC over to an entirely different system.

You also need to take into account the similarities between how the PSP processes things and how the PS1 did. Let's say, hypothetically, the PS1 processes sound the same way as the PSP (I know it probably doesn't, but it's just theory), if it did, then letting the PSP process that RAW instead of trying to emulate it, it really frees up alot of processor power. This is the primary difference between what a PSP emulator could be and what a PC emulator is.

If the basic ports that have been coming out lately actually DO have a built in emulator, then trying to reverse engineer that would be the best bet at getting a full speed PS1 emulator. Of course, not being an experienced coder, I have actually no idea how one would do that. But this does give you a better idea of what really needs to be done.

yes.. but programming in assembly is like... well...

Take a dead and much untranslated language such as Sumarian and try to spell everything backwards. now copy everything out of the dictionary just like that... Its like that but X10 longer.

I personally think it would take more than $2000 dollars to get someone to look into it... that bleemcast guy just really loved the challenge apparently

[quzar]

I don't feel like quoting everyone because my post would be giant and unreadable, so I'll just try to haphazardly list replies.

The playstation and psp processors are very similar, but both very different from that of a pc. a dynamically recompiling ps cpu core would run wonderfully on a psp.

There aren't many people who would give 10$ to see an emulator. There sure as hell aren't 200, unless it was a commercial release. Due to the fact that there is no way to mask the blatant piracy required for such an emulator to work, this will never happen.

The time required to create something like Bleemcast without being an expert at assembly programming, which Rand Linden is (Doom SNES, Bleem! PC, BleemCast! DC, DRG3D [quake engine] Cellphones, GBA, Zodiac) and nobody in the open source/emulation community is anywhere near that skilled, or if they are they would never spend so much time on something like this.

Because of the hardware similarities I'm sure it would be possible to do PS emulation with just a dynarec core and still use software rendering and not have to resort to any sort of fancy stuff though.

The biggest problem with PCSX on the DC is that it was basically 4 different authors. The original author got hit by a bus or something, but had written what is a mostly asm core for it. Next the PCSX author updated it to the newest PCSX version and releaesd it (or something similar, mind you this is from memory so it is most likely inaccurate but captures the gist) then there was kind of an impromptou group that worked on it for a bit which included all the major coders of the time who were basically just chipping in little bits. Then Ian Micheal took it and didn't really do much to it. Now the code is possibly worse off than it ever was, as it doesn't even run when built with recent DC tools.