Psx4zaurus Now Supports Cacko! :)

[Jon_J]

the joypad and gameport adapter setup isn't recognized, just the adapter is.
I do have a newer joystick that is recognized, but it is one of those 20 button things.

[Jon_J]

ISObuster seems to find no errors in this file.

[zodttd]

It's been reported previously that MDF files tend to not work. I believe the iso extension should be recognized though.

But the reason you're most likely having trouble running the game is that the BIOS isn't found.

When the BIOS isn't found it tries to load some non existant HLE code for handling the BIOS.

I believe you need to rename scph1001.bin to all lowercase.

If you get the message "Load Success" then the BIOS was run properly.

If it doesn't run after that, in this case it's most likely you have a bad game image file.

[lardman]

I understand there's no source available for this?

If I can provide you with a pair of toolchains, is there any reason you couldn't target OZ+Opie/GPE too?


Si

[danboid]

lardman

Zodttd has already tried it out under OZ but the blit performance was very poor. All these cxxxx owners eagerly awaiting on SRAM support getting into the 2.6 kernel! Makes you wonder how much quicker this would've got done if Sharp gave 1/2 a $hyte about the Z as a real embedded computing platform rather than as an advert for their screen tech, which is how Sharp often seem to me.

[koen]

lardman

Zodttd has already tried it out under OZ but the blit performance was very poor.
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So? Where's the package so people who want to work on sram support can have a testcase?

[danboid]

mplayer is THE test case, but yes I suppose zpsx is a strong contender for best test case #2  

No offence ZodTTD, I just personally think more people are interested in smooth video playback than a console emu. As you know nobody has been more interested in zpsx than me

[Jon_J]

zodttd, I renamed scph1001.bin to lowercase earlier.
This message suggests the wrong path for scph1001.bin
This is the message on the screen before it drops to the desktop.

Handling HLS BIOS enbios /home/zaurus/scph1001.bin Enab

I have scph1001.bin here:
/hdd3/Documents/psx4zaurus/
The file browser also starts in /home/zaurus/
I'm going to put a second copy of scph1001.bin in /home/zaurus/ and see if that works.

I found some sort of windows emulator, "ePSXe" and it loads this game and runs the "preview" screen. It shows some of the game playing, but at a very fast pace. The speed is too high. I just tried this to see if my game file was corrupt.
I also got a game called "Legend of Legaia", and it runs the "Preview" on Windows.
"Legend of Legaia", is an ISO from the start and it doesn't run on psx4all.
It does the same thing that the other game, "FFVI" does.

[Jon_J]

Zodttd,
That was the problem!!
It's running the game now!!
I put a copy of scph1001.bin
in /home/zaurus

[Jon_J]

Trying this game: "Legend of Legaia"
The game opens with a splash screen and there is a flashing horizontal 1/16 inch bar at the bottom of the screen.
This flashing horizontal 1/16 inch bar persists throughout the game.
Game opens the main screen and is Panning a rural village.
This panning occurs very very slowly.
It finally gets to the Hero's hut and opens the hut to a screen to set your char's attributes.
Seems this game is kind of working but is unplayable in this state.
Maybe some video settings tweaking will help this?

Going to try FFVI next... (takes awhile to copy a ¼ to ½ GB game to the microdrive)

Anyone know how to take screenshots within the game?

EDIT: FFVI got to a screen with the framerates showing, (seems like very low numbers, I'm not sure how to read them).
Then it dropped back to the desktop. No title screen.
This file is a renamed *.MDF file.

[Jon_J]

In the install instructions it says:
Unzip psx4zaurus_b4_3.zip contents to a directory on a storage device for use with the Zaurus.
Does this entire directory and all it's contents need to be symlinked to /home/zaurus/ ?
This directory will not "fit" in internal flash with the games contained within.
The "workaround" method I had to use to get it running was to symlink the psx4all_cacko to /home/QtPalmtop/bin/
and copy the BIOS file "scph1001.bin" to /home/zaurus/

If this is the case, then it could possibably solve all the need to navagate the filesystem to select the game.
Navagating the filesystem with cacko's typmatic rate is somewhat difficult.
If you hold a key down for just a split second too long, it clicks more than one directory in the navagater, then crashes.
The way I have it set up now I have to navaagate from "here to here" (each line representing a seperate click)

/home/zaurus/
/
/hdd3
/Documents
/psx4zaurus
/games_psx

The original zip file's folder setup was 2 more directories deeper.

[matthis]

I haven't been able to test yet, but thank you very much for the Cacko version!!!

[Jon_J]

I got the game: "Legend of Legaia" running and have tried different settings under the video options.
Using progressive set to on, eliminates the flashing white horizontal band along the bottom of the screen.
Progressive cannot be enabled unless Interlace is enabled.
I tried 3 different scenerios, with Progressive enabled.

Interlace set to 1 produces thin horizontal bands onscreen during gameplay.
Interlace set to 3 produces medium horizontal bands onscreen during gameplay.
Interlace set to 7 produces large horizontal bands onscreen during gameplay.

Remember, the Progressive setting cannot be enabled without enabling an Interlace setting.
There are only 3 different settings for Interlace. (That's all I could get with the touchy keyboard, making these settings)

The flashing band that Progressive eliminates, is reduced to a thin white line, that is stationary, and does not flash.

Using Progressive, I get 3.89-10.9 FPS.
Using Default settings, I get 3.89-7.56 FPS
So progressive is faster. I took these readings in these two scenerios:
1. Opening screen when camera pans entire village and zooms into our character's hut.
2. Character automatically walking to center of village and talking to a group of other people.
I have the sound turnd off also.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention the D-pad is upside down in the menu where you load the game & make settings, down=up, & up=down.
The D-pad is also backwards when controlling your character.
When you walk around in the village, this is what happens.
left=right
up=down
EDIT: I finally got to the cave in the game, where the save point is located and saved my game.
The gamesaves made from within the game are placed in /home/zaurus/
This may be, because I symlinked the ISO to /home/zaurus/ and copied the BIOS file there also.
After doing some more testing, I decided to try to Load my saved game. This worked just like the PC version does.
Last night I downloaded a PC emulator, just to test these games to see if they are corrupt.

[Jon_J]

Has anyone figured out what is required to run psx4zaurus from the console that appears when qtopia is shut down?
(using '/' at 5,4,3,2,1)
The game I have above plays too slowly, it's barely playable.
I haven't tried the "Fight" sequences yet, but I imagine these will be unrealistically slow also.
I don't want to overclock to play games all the time.
I haven't tried overclocking, but will overclock this game for a short testing period, to see if the framerates go up.
EDIT:
I overclocked to (624/208/104)
The speed went up to 4.87-11.89 FPS, and sometimes peaking at 14.75 FPS with characters standing still.
The dialog boxes that appear when the characters are speaking, scrolled and responded much quicker.
The game is still mostly unplayable, the controls are backwards, the characters break up into interlaced sprites when moving, and it takes too long to travel anywhere in the game.
This game runs at 59FPS on my desktop PC (I have FPS limited to 60.0 FPS in the game configuration, otherwise, it runs too fast).

[zodttd]

I haven't tested this game on my end, as it's not often requested for.
It might be too slow to play on psx4zaurus currently. If you want to make sure, try psx4zaurus on pdaXrom Beta 3 using the SDL included with psx4zaurus.
pdaXrom Beta 3 runs games about 15-20% faster than Cacko currently.

danboid: I think I have you very confused on things. mPlayer probably benefits from the PXA Framebuffer YUV overlay support. I believe this is already being worked on/completed on OZ. Since I do not use or have a need for YUV color support in psx4zaurus, the only way I could see getting acceleration from PXA FB support is through the use of it's SRAM. I'm not even sure if it will actually help, but it might.

What is true though:
If you use the FBCON (Framebuffer Console) video driver for SDL instead of X11/Qtopia, you will notice around a 20% speed increase. The problem with using fbcon drivers with various SDL's is some don't do the rotation needed, as the Zaurus has a rotated framebuffer (portrait).  To use fbcon driver in SDL even under X11/Qtopia run this after changing to the directory where psx4all is located:
env SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon ./psx4all

To change the framebuffer from /dev/fb0 to a different /dev/fbX there is a SDL_FB... environment variable for that as well. Probably not needed though.