PS2 for OS X?

[MacRumors]

MacEvangelist has an interview (http://www.macevangelist.com/news/2001/1022.html) with someone who claims to be working on a PS2 emulator for OS X:

[i] A new startup that I was a part of created a PS2 debugger for MacOS X. It was during this consignment that we thought, "why not make a PS2 emulator?" Things has gone very well, we are seeing leaps and bounds in development and we are excited with the way things are going. We are now trying to work with Sony and Apple to release a fantastic product sometime in 2002.[i]

Seems to be a technically challenging task... so take it with a grain of salt...

[jefhatfield]

hey why not?

[No One In Particular]

Instead of a game emulator why not go after game DEVELOPMENT.

Thats really a vertical, high margin market. Sony essentially made their own custom PeeCee running Lunix w/custom PCI-based PS2 to do game development.

Imagine if you could just buy any newer G4 w/Mac OS X and buy (from Sony) the IDE and PCI-based PS2 card to make games for PS2.

Everyone wins.

[snowman]

Working with Sony on this sounds very unrealistic since they shot down the PS-emulator from Connectix

[spikey]

It would be nice to see some great PS2 titles being run some decent hardware, as opposed to the ******* and much over-rated PS2.

[kainjow]

Running PS2 on a Mac OS X seems like it would be slow. It would probably require like a G5 or something like that. I had Connectix's PlayStation on my iMac 333 and it was slow!! I couldn't even imagine a PS2 on it!

[spikey]

Yes, thats emulators for you.

But i want to see PS2 titles on a different platform. The PS2 is *****.

[blakespot]

Spikey,

Thank you for sharing that insight. We all appreciate sound, objective assessment of hardware.


blakespot

[spikey]

Anytime blake7.

I wont give a full explanation of why the ps2 is ***** cos i have done before.
It is underpowered by a consoles standards, it is hard for games developers to program for, it only has part anti aliasing, it has a stupid add-on HD, It destroyed several games makers on launch due to too much investment made into the console, it had to be recalled for several faults in design, it looks and sounds like henry kissinger having an orgasm, and it is still being bought by zealots who would suck sony's d*ck if it had one.
etc etc etc

[holmesf]

Somehow I doubt that even a 867mhz G4 could possibly emulate a 300mhz 128 bit PS2. First of all the architecture is completely differen't which slows it down very significantly. Secondly the chip is 128 bit. The only reason we can get good emulation of a playstation is its 32bit (and only 25mhz at that). If emulation like this was possible I'd say make a gamecube emulator. At least that uses RISC architecture very close the the G3's. But I don't think this will be possible to happen for at about 5 years.

[GPTurismo]

You're an idiot.

It's a 128 bit console, compared to X-Boxs 32 bit core and GameCubes 64 bit core. Also it allows programmers to allocate power to where they want. It can do full anti aliasing, but the programmer has to be somewhat decent to turn it on.

Finally, it allows for raytracing rendering with the use of splines instead of the old hunky polygonal phong shading.

You sound like an anti-sony nazi to me, spouting the regular moronic reteric.

Also, PS2 core emulation can work because it's a unix based os. The only problem I see is replicating the bandwitdh and sheer speed of the system. I think there will be an X-Box emu out before a full PS2 emu due to it running on NT code and on standard off the shelf components. Also gamecube since it uses PPC and ATI technologies, and the Dev kits are OS X machines.

[GPTurismo]

holmesf, don't forget it has TWO 128 bit processors, not to mention all the different processors handling sound and graphics.

[hahaha]

The playstation2 does not do real raytracing.

Sheesh people.

[blakespot]

holmesf,

The MIPS R3x00 CPU in the original playstation runs at 32MHz, not 25.



blakespot

[blakespot]

Here's a technical (from arstechnica), in-depth look at the Playstation 2's Emotion Engine chipset, including a detailed look at the MIPS III CPU core.

http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/playstation2/ee-3.html

Pretty impressive hardware. Quite impressive bandwidth. Take a look if you're technical.



blakespot

[jefhatfield]

finally, someone with some "numbers"

thanks blakespot

i will check it out

[NO B&W]

There is an even better perspective here: http://www.somethingawful.com/firemancomics/consolewar.htm

That should settle this argument.

[MasterX (OSiX)]

They said it'd have external harware. I'd bet money it's gonna be firewire, what else can keep up a good speed and run outside a box (very faring i gotta give them credit). I wonder what they'd put on an out-of-box device? Perhaps a I/O bord w/a PS2 controller port that'd take I/O strain off the CPU. But i still wouldn't think that'd be enough to get over 10 fps out of an iMac. I don't think FW is fast enough to service a full-blown 2nd CPU, or some key video hardware components. FW is about 1/20 the speed of the AGP 2x in the old G4s. If the emulator had a way of de-subvidiveing (less polys) the emulator could work well.

And for the record I ran CVGS on my iMac 233 and it ran great. Also Sony didn't "shoot down" CVGS, they bought it. Connectix isn't really loyal.

I'd love to see a PS2 emulator that only ran on OSX. For those who don't know, many of the famous emulators are based on code that only runs on x86/Intel CPUs. That's because the emulators will run faster, thus the popularoty of emu's on Win. The ones made in a more universal language (C++?) can be ported. CVGS was ported to windows. Bleem is a piece of ****.

[jimbo]

My name is David Allouch and i am the CTO for the Grinch Project (PS2 on OSX)
In addition of the emulation, we are adding some debugging functions. (which answer the question on PS2 development)
for the additional hardware, we are exploring the AGP capabilities of the portables, our first priority here is
transparency, we want the coolness of PS2 on OSX.
The url of the project is http://www.securitycentralhq.com
and really fell free to send me any junk comment you have.

Cheers.

[DannyZR2]

Funny, I think you shut all the "I-know-everything-and-I-am-never-wrong" people up!

[jefhatfield]

cool beans, jimbo

[buzzardo]

they would have to reverse engineer or license the sony roms which is unlikely. sony won't do anything that would cut their hardware sales. how about a gamecube emulator. at least that is powerpc. only problem with that is the disc format. if you can emulate x86 you could do a x-box emulator. just a pentium 3 & a geforce chippy. that should be ez for elite hackerz like y'all claim to be.




[Edited by buzzardo on 11-04-2001 at 08:31 AM]

[jimbo]

We are doing reverse engineering,
guess what... we are good at it.

[Mac EvangeList]

Just a FYI.

The Mac EvangeList is a Mac news organisation dedicated to quality Mac news. We do not post rumors under the guise of real stories, and we would certainly never publish a fake interview.

Regards,

Shane Anderson
Chief Evangelist
shane@macevangelist.com
http://www.MacEvangeList.com
ICQ: 6393614

[NoahFex]

Originally posted by spikey
Anytime blake7.

I wont give a full explanation of why the ps2 is ***** cos i have done before.
It is underpowered by a consoles standards, it is hard for games developers to program for, it only has part anti aliasing, it has a stupid add-on HD, It destroyed several games makers on launch due to too much investment made into the console, it had to be recalled for several faults in design, it looks and sounds like henry kissinger having an orgasm, and it is still being bought by zealots who would suck sony's d*ck if it had one.
etc etc etc

Actually, a lot of hle and dynrec (dynamic recompiling) techniques can be used since the processors are quite similar in many ways. Actually, i've worked quite a bit with the PS1, PS2, and N64 processors (all quite similar) and I have written debuggers and an emulator for the n64, and I know ways to get amazing speed where most people wouldn't. If the authors are reading this, email me at nick@squirrelsw.com, i'll email you a list of my emulator projects. I'd love to help out with your project. I don't code emulators for money, but for fun.

[MasterX (OSiX)]

I've already bragged to "all" my friends about being the only person that will own a mobile PS2/PS2 emulator so it'd better come out, and it'd better not cost the same as a PS2.

Good luck reverse engineering this piece, I miss Virtual Game Station when I'm in OSX. I'm assuming this thing will run PSX games since the PS2 does.

cough cough beta testing cough cough

[spikey]

I havent got a clue why you quoted me on your last post noahfex.

[spikey]

Infact quoting me bears no relevance to your post whatsoever.

[degs]

We had some luck with the PS2 by getting it to boot an OS disk that we made. From what we found, you could possibly do PS2 emmulation if you had a bunch of RAM for the multiply unit look ups. I don't think that you can keep up with the PS2 hardware in the multiply dept. with a G4, but you can catch up. Most of the multiplies are redundant anyway.

We tried to make an emmulator of a quad MIPS box, but then we ran out of beer/motivation.

[Ensign Paris]

May I just enquire when this product is going to be released? Put me down for a copy!

Guy