PS1 emulator: What's stopping you?

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Do you think it's possible to simply "port" ePSXe to Dreamcast?

 
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Van_Lardo
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PS1 emulator: What's stopping you?

Post by Van_Lardo »

There's a lot of whinging going on right now that Bleem! should release their source code to the public... why should they?

What about if someone made a "port" of ePSXe instead?

Since ePSXe's free and all, will there be any legal difficulties in producing this?

I may be stating the obvious, but I seek clarity... :?
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Post by sam17 »

it MAY be possible but who is capable??? and what about speed? epsxe needs a really fast machine to run OK.

and the BLEEM!cast source would rock!!!!!! ;) ;) ;)
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Post by .:ajay:. »

Is ePSXe's source released? I didn't think it was, AdriPSX's is, so that would be a candidate for a talented coder.

They both have more legal difficulties than Bleem! in that they use ps bios's, whereas Bleem! does not.

ePSXe is, I agree, an excellent emulator, using as it does PSEMUpro plugins. Whether, even if the source was released, it would be a suitable subject for a port, I don't know.
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Post by discostu55555 »

adripsx's source isnt out yet anyways, it will be released soon though (i think at the end of this month),but i think some of the code is asm (but most isnt, so it isnt insumountable)....the only open source psx emu at the moment that can play any commercial games is fpse, but that is a rather poor emulator compared to the others, and i think has some rather high system requirements....anyways, i think porting one of these emulators would bring an unwanted legal haze over the dcemulation "scene" as not only has sony aggressively pursued completely legit emus, but adripsx (and i think this also applies to fpse, but cant really remember) requires a psx bios which is copyrighted, so they wouldnt take to kindly to it i believe....
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Post by Schnapple »

Well I think there's a world of difference between an emulator that can play the games and a commercial emulator that can. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think most of the freeware emulator authors are being sued. This has to do with many things - the fact that the emulators are free (and therefore not sharing shelf space with Sony products), the fact that the main argument (that the BIOS' inclusion or that the BIOS is illegally engineered) is moot, since the emulators require you to BYOB, the fact that the authors are largely anonymous, the fact that the word "PlaytStation" isn't physically printed anywhere, and most importantly, the fact that the emulators themselves often times aren't that good. Sure, ePSXe kicks ass - I've used it, but it's the exception and with the tedium of plugin setup most people (i.e., Joe Average) won't fool with it.

Having said that I don't think we've ever had a 100% free software based console emulator for a modern day console whose manufacturer is still active. It would be interesting to see how that plays out.

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Post by Van_Lardo »

It seems to me that the only way around the legal issues involved with porting ePSXe to DC would be to:

1. Insert an ePSXe emulator disk and load it up,

2. Remove it and insert a seperate disk that exclusively contains a Playstation BIOS file,

3. Load that up.

4. Remove "BIOS Disk" and insert the actual game disk!

Not quite the "Let's have a go of this for 5/10 minutes" solution but what do you think?

Anyone interested in programming it?

I know I am!... Now, if I only knew how... :cry:
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Post by Dr Wily »

Hmm... I'm not so sure - if you own a PSX then you 'own' a BIOS as well - I'd have thought it would be possible to release a 'plain files' emu and leave it to the individual users conscience as to whether or not they owned a BIOS to add to it or not

In much the same way as most of the Emu disks get released; as long as this hypothetical author made sure *THEY* weren't the ones distributing the BIOS it should all be good - like the PC Emus do, they all come BIOS free and make it fairly clear not to ask them where to get a BIOS.

Also, it would probably be *easier* to do a DC port, as you wouldn't need to have a huge range of 'plugins' as the DC is a standardised system; they could simply get (or write) plugins that are DC compatible and leave it at that, optimising the Emu to use those specific plugins (or indeed simply include them as part of the emu)
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Post by Van_Lardo »

You make it sound so easy!

Why has no-one ever tried this before?

Do they need special permission from the original developer, or will that not matter since the software's free?

What?
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Post by Dr Wily »

Nah, its not easy, but theres never been an open source vaguely decent PSX Emu before... theres not one at the moment (yet) but when AdriPSX gets open sourced, I'm pretty sure there'll be some interest amongst the devvers to at least have a go at it - assuming its not ASM...
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Post by Van_Lardo »

I've never heard of this AdriPSX, how good is it, anyway?

It would be something else if someone released a PSX emulator that played games even better than Bleem! did?

They'd change his name to "Rand Linch-'im" :o
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Post by Dr Wily »

Check out http://www.zophar.net and try it for yourself ;)

I'll be honest, I've never used it; ePSXe is *more* than good enough for me...

I just check my Emu News every so often, and noticed it...
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Post by CG1 »

i think it could be possible, i mean, why not heh some1 try :D
Dr Wily
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Post by Dr Wily »

fixing date for 007
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Post by dreamcaster1 »

why not do fpse thats a open source emulator as for the psx bois sony has said 3 out of every 4 americans own a psx so 3 out of 4 americans actually have psx bios so make a disclaimer that you have to own a psx to use the emulator most people own one so that would not be a big problem
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Post by LiENUX »

fpse would be a better port
just about the only thing that needs to be redone is the dynarec core and the video.
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Post by Schnapple »

One of the disadvantages of writing for a closed hardware platform is the fact that the hardware can't be scaled. You can write a PSX emulator for the PC in C or some other slow portable language and simply tell the world to buy a faster computer. However on the DC you can't do that. Ergo, unless you can write a PSX emulator in a fast language like Assembly it's probably not going to happen. No one knows what Bleem was written in (Bleem's policy was not to discuss how they did things) but the popular theory pointed to Assembly. Assembly is not portable at all, so even if an open source Assembly emulator existed, "porting" it would be impossible.

Another thing people don't seem to realize (and I didn't either until Heliphobe mentioned it) is that the misconception is that because Bleem proved perfect software emulation of a fairly recent system like the PSX was possible (albiet one game at a time) then surely perfect emulation of an older system (i.e., SNES) must be more possible. However, the way processing chips are made today is different from how they were assembled back then and the PSX's hardware was more like the DC's hardware than the SNES' was. This is part of the reason we haven't seen a perfect SNES emu yet but we've seen one knock the socks off of a PSX. Consequently, people are more apt to say "this N64 emu must be real, since Rand proved that..." etc.

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Post by DukeofURL »

What about that PSX for DC emu that was based on jackal, but know was not. I recall going to the site a few months ago and he said it was cancelled. Yet just two days ago I went back and he said that he stopped using the jackle source and now had large successes even after a few days of working on it. the site had something to do with kami, I think it was his website in fact. (I linked to it from a french site that I stumbled on called interestingly enough, "dcemulation.co.fr" so I am not sure if it was his actual site or not)
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Post by JuniorCrb »

[quote="LiENUX"]
fpse would be a better port
just about the only thing that needs to be redone is the dynarec core and the video.
[/quote]

its a decent psx emu and its is open-source (adri-psx where are you??) so in my opnion i could be developed the quickest
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Post by JuniorCrb »

anything is possible as long as its coded right
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