Hi everybody

[jman]

Hello,

I'm pretty new around here, this is just to say hello and then I'll lurk a bit to allow me studying the basics of PSX programming.
First of all it's great to see this site and it was utterly a surprise when I discovered it a couple of days ago.
Last time I checked the PSX homebrew "scene" only a year ago it was a desert. Now things have changed and information and tutorials (!) are easily available. So, you really have my appreciation.
My goal is to study a bit how PSX programming work and see if it's something that can get me.
I usually spend my free time learning how to program for AROS, a OSS implementation of Amiga OS (that should tell you what kind of retro-poisoned I am).

Friend of mine told me I'm crazy and that I should find at least a game engine. I'm afraid that none is available, correct?

In the meanwhile I have a couple of questions (me being a total noob on the matter) after looking around:
1) The only valuable SDK available is the Psy-Q, latest version is 4.6. Is it correct? All latest documents and function reference are dated August/September 1999, correct? There are no newer documents than these.
2) The best Linux SDK available (PSXSDK) is still well behind compared to the Psy-Q because (as per the author's readme): "many asynchronous operations are unsupported, 3D projection is missing and memory card support is broken." and it's also missing "Geometry Transformation Engine (GTE) handling, root counter support and a lot more...".

I've installed Psy-Q into an XP virtual machine and the "hiworld" example work.
I'm running all the test software in epsxe 1.9 with the latest plugins.
I've also installed the psxlib of Orion_ but the EXE produced is not correctly executed by epsxe (black screen) and shows pictures but no test and buttons in PCSX, still have to investigate why. I did something wrong because It used to work

As a final note, since copy and pasting all the SET variables into Windows from PSPATH.BAT is a tedious and error prone work, I've prepared a .reg file that does the job (uses the standard path "c:\psyq"). Please find it attached, hth.

Thanks for any answer to my doubts.
See you around.
And sorry for the first long post

[t0rxe]

Thank's for making the registry file! I was meaning to make such a file, but never got around to it
I added it here: http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=206

[Shendo]

Hi jman.
I see you have done your homework regarding SDKs. Yes, currently PSYQ is the most complete SDK you can get.

PSXSDK is behind at the moment but it's still in progress and it already fixed some quirks and shortcomings of the PSYQ (like unusually slow memset, memcpy and plethora of other functions which were supposed to be DMA based).
MemCard support is being worked on. Current tests show significant speed up opposed to PSYQ functions.

PSYQ is closely bind to BIOS routines while PSXSDK aims to bypass that and access the hardware directly achieving greater speeds.

For testing your code I recommend a real PSX with a serial cable to upload the software, Xplorer FX or if you really need to use emulator use Xebra. ePSXe is too inaccurate for precise adjustments in your code.

[jman]

Hi jman.
For testing your code I recommend a real PSX with a serial cable to upload the software, Xplorer FX or if you really need to use emulator use Xebra. ePSXe is too inaccurate for precise adjustments in your code.

Thanks, I've downloaded it (good to know the author started again working on it!). However I think I still don't understand how to run EXE files on it, does it only work with CDROM images?

Concerning testing on real hardware, I'll keep an eye on the upcoming PSX Blaster, it seems an interesting option.