playstation emulators?

MelKor

emulation, not really my field but i have a nagging question.

the way i see it emulaters are a great way to play all the cool games you used to play mellenia ago!! on arcades and on old platforms. and getting these games on your pc's is (in a weird sort of way) legal.

if all the above is true (is it?) then why the hell can you get playstation emulaters? whats the point of them? and how the hell are they legal?

im not complaining by the way, im actually looking for a good PS emulator (for ff7+ff8 thats all coz i hates consolses!!:) )

Kairo

Playstation emulation is, as far as i know, perfectly legal.....as long as you own an actual playstation, and you only play with that playstation's Bios image.

You cannot play a playstation game without a Bios image, and your only allowed a back-up of the Bios Image that your playstation has. Its usually stuck on the bottom, looks like: SCHP-1001.

The point, as of all emulators, is really just to show it can be done. They're not game pirates..they're programmers.

Mixie

Kyro is correct in everything he said apart from "You cannot play a playstation game without a Bios image". If you can get your hands on a copy of Bleem! (which AFAIK is no more?) you can legally play PS games on the PC. The reason is simple, Bleem! doesn't use a PS Bios.

I'm not too sure on this one, but there was a product called 'gamestation', or similar, and it didn't use a Bios either... Perhaps someone else can provide a link or more information?

po0k

There was a thing called 'Connectix' or something for the Mac too, was a PSX emu.
How would one go about getting a BIOS image off the playstation (or any console for that matter)?
Could you use the serial/parallel cable and jimy something up your self with a PC?

Digi_Tilmitt

Anyone got some links to a PS emulator site that doesn't ask for money and works?

Kairo

http://www.epsxe.com is your best bet.

smoke.me.a.kipper

- bleem!
the bleem! company is no more. but i dont know if their product (a commercial one) is still owned by them.

if you search 'free cracked bleem' in google, you can find a version that works. but theres alot of trojans, so watch out.

---

- Connectix VirtualGamesStation
Both windows and Mac versions of this exist. The rights to the product were afaik bought by sony so the product is no longer for sale.

Again, try searching 'free cracked connectix vgs psx' in google. The whole emulator is only one file!! VGS is an amazing PSX emulator.

Kairo

I wouldn't recommend it...

As we all know, downloading cracked software is illegal, and just plain wrong. Neither of those emulators are pretty good anyway.

EpsxE, on the other hand, has alot of nifty features and a decent compatabilty list. What you should do, is use Google to find a PSX bios rom image, to use with the emulator. (One you already own, of course ) You can find out what Bios your playstation has by checking a sticker underneath. It'll look like 'SCPH-1001' or a different number.

In answer to your question Syxpak, I'd imagine they'd use some special piece of hardware to extract the bios from the playstation..I'm not exactly sure what it is tho. You can find them online anyway with a bit of searching.

DiscoStu

actually vgs is the most compataible. and if your pc is crappy its best. only problem is that like bleem it will only run on win9x and not nt/2k/xp

to get the bios from a psx you need an action replay with the pc link.

Augmerson

Originally posted by Kyro
http://www.epsxe.com is your best bet.

Do you use these Emulater yourself Kyro? I'd appreciate your view on what it's like.

saik

it is fast free and full of features. it's also pretty customisable in that you can get different plug ins to run the sound/gfx/cd drive.
it's *a little* complicated to set up, as you have to download bios images and plugins and set them up. but the program itself is newbie friendly and has cool features like hdd stored ISO compatibility.

in short, if you have no qualms, go get!

bugs

Action replay to rip the bios, are you mental??????

Much like most emulation, they generally transfer the stream of information thats running as the psx processes information thru a pc and if neccessary rip or decrypt it ( probably just directly ripped the bios, things like mod protection and custom chips might need decryption, like the DSP chips and the various copy protection from the neo geo )

Per say, most of these emulators aren't illegal at all, i'm pretty sure most proved in court that their programs didn't actually break any of sony's copyrights (this'll be why you'll see about 1000 more patent numbers on the ps2)
The main issue being that they were looking for money... which i could never understand as in my opinion bleem was one of the worst designed emulators i had seen, and they were asking for money for the privilege, VGS was simple and worked well but being simple , it just played games like the psx and no more and it had cd timing issues.

Epsxe is pretty good, the plugin system is nice, mainly because plugins aren't as bad as say impact as the psx plugins have been around since psxemu (oh lord,,,, hehe) pete's gpu etc. are all pretty good. Allows for a fairly decent config for your own machine so you get decent performance.

But again, psx emulation ain't all that popular, cd emulation.... nuff said.

DiscoStu

http://www.psxemu.com/faq/faq-bios.shtml

part of the old psxemu site is still up and there is proof that an action replay is required to dump the playstation bios.

and the old impact renderers were actuall psxemu pro spec plugins. try renaming render.ipc to gpu_whateveryouwant.dll and whack it into the plugin dir of epsxe or psemu pro and see what happens.

checkmate

LoGiE

But again, psx emulation ain't all that popular, cd emulation.... nuff s

YE GODS MAN! deja vu:D
But you never told us where you got this idea from?

Goin to go with Kyro on this one
http://www.epsxe.com/

checkmate

LOL:D

bugs

Errrr, hows that then , the site says basically exactly what i've said. They use the action replay etc. as a bridge to read the information and a program to decrypyt whats being run across.
Its not like the action replay is just getting the bios directly, its only a handy way to use the I/O.

As for the CD emulation,its pretty damned simple.
Theres little or no cd emulation popularity outside of the psx.
Mega-cd, jaguar and other projects are slow to come around and hard to find CD copies for, i think i explained the reasons for this at length in some other post. And this isn't just my opinion, try the retrogames.com boards for about another tonne of reasons.

PSX games being widely copyable and available means its used widely enough, but its nowhere even close to the emulation of cartridge based systems.

zAbbo

Used to play ePSXe, as far as i know you need a bios if you download ePSXe and try to run it, then it asks for the bios and funnillt enuff gives you the names of the accepted bios types, just search them in google and the`y`re easily enuff to come by:

eg SCHP-1001.bin

The different bios relate to different console type afaik:

eg NTSC and PAL

The only reason i used ePSXe was to play ISS PRO on my PC and it actually looked better and ran at a correct speed.

Well thats my 2c.......
Correct me if i`m wrong. I`m sure Logie will (he`s got more time on his hands....apparently)

LoGiE

Well thats my 2c.......
Correct me if i`m wrong. I`m sure Logie will (he`s got more time on his hands....apparently)

The smart ones study at home;) well away from all that college bandwith and that nasty rom download addiction of mine

course ya need the bios ie.scph1001- scph7502 blah blah...
which are all way to easy to find these day's

The only reason i used ePSXe was to play ISS PRO on my PC and it actually looked better and ran at a correct speed

Yes but couldn't you have picked a better game as your reason??

zAbbo

Sending in the SWOT team are u Logie, and content with the eircom broadband that will keep you from downloading. If the smart ones study at home i`d say you`re all studied out man.

LoGiE

TUT TUT TUT:)

zAbbo

hmmmmmmm Helpful posts there LOgIe, as the french say
"you`ve got way too much time on ur hands"

DiscoStu

snip me drunk

Kairo

I'm putting the fire extinguisher on this one.