How good is emulation on the PS2 actually?

[masqueofhastur]

I've got a 75000 PS2, running FreeMcBoot 1.8b. I've got FCEU, SNES-Station, PSMS and PGEN. So far I haven't had the best of luck. I understand sound issues in SNES games, and that Mario Kart and Yoshi's Island 2 make use of hardware on the cart that isn't emulated, so those games not working well is understandable. However, the problem I'm having is with save states. So far I haven't had much luck. SNES Station freezes when I attempt to save, and FCEU just gives me an error. PGEN also freezes. PSMS doesn't give me an error or freeze, but it also doesn't save anything.

This seriously limits the potential. Are my problems common, or is there someting I could look into for the set up that would explain why I'm having these problems?

[spud42]

have you got the latest for each of these emu's ? i have used pgen and snes station without any hassle... check in the forums for each emu for more info...

[CaptainHIT]

Maybe there isn't enough free space on your MC?

[masqueofhastur]

I might not have enough free space. I have something around 600k free - I could clear it out by taking a couple emus off and getting rid of SMS too.

I didn't quite get the latest versions. PGEN I got the 1.5.1 version, didn't stick with the codejunkies version as that crashed. PSMS I got 0.4, also by Bruno Freitas. FCEUltra I used 0.90i rather than 0.93 as 0.90i was better centred, 0.93 was missing some of the bottom of the image. SNES Station I used 0.2.4 USB because I read that the later 0.2.4 HDD versions had some more problems.

[junebug]

Hi,

Emulation on the PS2 can be done - its not 100% but SMS/GG, NES, Gameboy, CBM64, SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis all work very well. I know that on my slim PS2 I need a disc of some description, like a music CD, actually in the drive before saving states in PGEN and SNES Station. FCEUltra,PSMS and InfoGB do not need a disk inserted to save states, you just need to configure your save paths for them to work. PS2Vice has no SaveStates as of yet 8-(

Re Mario Kart on SNES Station - it runs fine, and is playable.

[masqueofhastur]

Mario Kart was slow as hell for me. It was running at something like one quarter speed. It was off a USB stick which is at 1.1 speeds, but I doubt given the size of the ROM that that would be an issue.

Is it just any disc that's needed in the drive? Could I say have the ROMS burned to a CD, and read off that and have the save states stick to the memory card?

[FranktheBunny]

Mario Kart utilizes a special graphics mode known as Mode-7 and Yoshi's Island requires the aid of SuperFX2 chip emulation (think of the SuperFX chip as a video accelerator), which requires SNES-Station to, in Yoshi's Island 2's case, emulate an extra bit of hardware, and the PS2 simply isn't fast enough to smoothly emulate Mario Kart's Mode-7 graphics mode under the SNES-Station emulator (or, at least, in it's present incarnation, isn't optimized enough to properly emulate Mode-7 under the PS2's capabilities..or it's both. I'm not a programmer, I don't know).

Edit: Also, SNES games, or most ROMs, for that matter, aren't streamed from a device like PS2 games are from CD, DVD or HDD. The entire ROM is loaded into system RAM, then executed by the emulator (hence why larger SNES or Genesis games don't work). The game's speed is determined by the emulator and speed of the RAM and PS2 alone.

[bootsector]

I'm pretty sure that, for PSMS and FCEULtra, you need to configure the emulator at the first time and set the directory to be used for save files (usually some folder in your MC).

Regards,

bootsector

[junebug]

Is it just any disc that's needed in the drive? Could I say have the ROMS burned to a CD, and read off that and have the save states stick to the memory card?

I have everything on a USB stick, but yes, there should be no problem at all having the roms burned onto a cd to run snes station - as FranktheBunny says, the entire rom still needs to be loaded into memory first, does not matter if its loaded from a CD or USB first.

A big thank you to Bootsector too! His versions of PSMS/FCEUltra are fantastic!

[masqueofhastur]

Do you have a link to Bootsector's versions?