New PS2DEV Utility called OpenVCL is released

[EugeneWE3RD]

A new PS2DEV utility called OpenVCL has been released on PS2DEV by Emoon and Chip-Nat. OpenVCL is a preprocessor targeted to be an alternative to the proprietary 'VCL', supplied by Sony to registered developers and to users of PS2 Linux.

To those who don't know, VCL stands for Vector Unit Command Line. This tool makes it easier to be able to program the Vector Units but until now, you could only use this tool if you are a registered PS2 developer or you own PS2 Linux.

If you want to start developing the PS2's Vector Units, you can download some sample VCL files at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/vcl/ .

You can also download a prog called VUC - VU Compiler. VUC - VU Compiler is a prog which translates a C like language to a VCL file that can be assembled to VU machine code. You can download a X86 Windows/X86 Linux version of VUC - VU Compiler & some samples files & the downloads are at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/vuc/ .

Updates:

You can download some VU files along with a tutorial at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/vutut & another VU tutorial at http://paulsmith.is-a-geek.net/vututs/index.html but beforewarned, most of these tutorials on the above link were written with PS2 Linux in mind.

You can download a VCL file at http://playstation2-linux.com/projec...release_id=118 but I'm not sure what this VCL file is for.

You can download demos written for PS2 Linux using the Vector Units at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/vudemocontest/ . This is a demo contest for PS2 Linux progs written using the Vector Units. Most of these demos do come with source code so it might be possible to be able to use OpenVCL to bring these demos to native PS2.

There is a PDF with some info on programming the Vector Units. The PDF is from Sony & it can be downloaded from http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/gdc2k2clipping/ .

The site at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/jasefunky/ has a few progs & some of them do use the vector units.

There is some VU coding info at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/vustuff/ .

The site at http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/3dprotut/ does have some Vector Unit programming info. The VU programming info is in the download called PS2-tut-0.4_a.tgz .

[EugeneWE3RD]

OpenVCL has been updated to version 0.2. You can download the new version at http://ps2dev.org/kb.x?T=1095 . The new version comes with source code, example VCL files & Win32 binary.

Here is the write-up from http://ps2dev.org/kb.x?T=1095 :

OpenVCL is a software development tool that simplifies VU programming by preprocessing source into standard VSM/DSM. It merges both pipelines into one single path, manages register allocation and (in the near future) reschedules instructions for efficient execution .
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Basically put, this helps to simplify programming the Vector Units.