What about PS2MAME?

[ThisCarbonUnit]

Hello there, I'm new around here.. greetings to all, gentlemen!
Just a few questions to quick start:

- where I can download the ps2mame source code, at least the latest available?
- what do you suggest if I'll attempt to compile the old ps2mame source with latest ps2sdk?
- it would be ok just starting with a pre-configured virtual machine environment, like the one used for OPL?
- why basically no one, during these years, have tried to compile an updated mame version (the old one it's really old: 0.37b16) ? Is there such a particular reason?

Thank you in advance to clarify to me these things.

[LopoTRI]

- where I can download the ps2mame source code, at least the latest available?

Here is the official Mame, can you compile one?

MAME | Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator

PS2 has not the power to play the newer games of mame (performance), it plays only the old old 80´s (not all)....
Therefore no new version comes....

[aguy1222]

If the ps2 doesn't have the power to support a better mame emulator and such what console does(not including xbox 360 of ps3 as I am too nervous to mod them)?

[kadorna2]

If the ps2 doesn't have the power to support a better mame emulator and such what console does(not including xbox 360 of ps3 as I am too nervous to mod them)?

this is what really bugs me, dreamcast can run cps1 games perfectly with very little frameskip, and neo geo games without hiccups. why then the ps2 doesn't?

[SP193]

this is what really bugs me, dreamcast can run cps1 games perfectly with very little frameskip, and neo geo games without hiccups. why then the ps2 doesn't?

It doesn't have badly-optimized emulators.
Likewise, what bothers me is that my PSP can emulate a Megadrive/Genesis game at full speed (With it's CPU clock set to 166MHz), while the PS2 gives me frameskipping....

[kadorna2]

It doesn't have badly-optimized emulators.
Likewise, what bothers me is that my PSP can emulate a Megadrive/Genesis game at full speed (With it's CPU clock set to 166MHz), while the PS2 gives me frameskipping....

this is EXACTLY what i wanted to hear, because it's coming from a dev.

lazyness =/= console's fault

don't get me wrong, i love all the dev's work and such, but please stop saying the console is not powerful enough to handle proper emulation of such old systems... shit, not even pc engine could run at full speed with sound on ps2...

[SP193]

this is EXACTLY what i wanted to hear, because it's coming from a dev.

lazyness =/= console's fault

don't get me wrong, i love all the dev's work and such, but please stop saying the console is not powerful enough to handle proper emulation of such old systems... shit, not even pc engine could run at full speed with sound on ps2...

I wouldn't say that it was exactly caused by lazyness though. :/

It's difficult to program elaborate programs on the PS2, primarily because until today, the PS2SDK is still incomplete and buggy. By embarking on some of the (private) projects I'm working on now, I realized that I have probably re-written a considerable part of the PS2SDK because of limitations and bugs.

(Today, I've just run into another bug in the IOMANX RPC - devctl() is broken lol)

The lack of proper debugging support is another huge stubling block.
Things can crash on the PS2... and you won't know what crashed. Never.
(The result? You either give up or waste HOURS trying to troubleshoot your system)

If you were a licensed developer and got full professional support from Sony (And received a development TOOL console), your life will probably be a million times easier.

Oh, and one interesting thing to know is that the PS2 developers seem to be the developers of the PSP homebrew (Or the PSPSDK that was used to build the homebrew software) that we use nowadays. D:

[kadorna2]

is it possible to use ASM in the EE? or is it a documentation problem? that would eliminate the problem with the SDKs...

[reprep]

is it possible to use ASM in the EE? or is it a documentation problem? that would eliminate the problem with the SDKs...

Yes it is possible. You can use MIPS ASM.

[SP193]

You could also get away with writing replacement functions in C too.

But why do we (higher-level programmers) have to do that? I know, all these are free and we shouldn't complain... but by right, it is the job of those (usually really seasoned) programmers who write the low-level stuff to fix all that (Otherwise, the SDK isn't exactly n00b-friendly).

(Actually, what I meant to say here is that it's just odd that some problems have been lingering in the PS2SDK for so long - even though many devs have come and go throughout the years)

I would like to submit my patches to the main PS2SDK repository, but the problem now is that there isn't "the" PS2SDK repository. Ever since the PS2DEV SVN server frequently became unavailable, many people have mirrored the PS2DEV PS2SDK repository - and several developers have since uploaded their patches onto different repositories. So to whom should I submit my stuff to?

EDIT: Well, I was wrong about fileXioDevctl() being buggy. It only seemed buggy because I was tired. But there was a real bug all right - in ATAD.IRX. It doesn't detect Sony HDDs properly, and hence won't unlock the Sony disks for access. Which was why I kept getting zero-filled dumps of my HDD unit.