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Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: April 27th, 2015, 12:21 am
by Killer_Code
Hello fellow PSX developers.I want to get into PlayStation development,and i saw this thing http://store.imgtec.com/us/product/mips-creator-ci20/ is MIPS based. So my question is can i learn MIPS Assembly on this? (I started programming 2-3 years ago is it early to get into such a thing?)

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: April 27th, 2015, 1:19 am
by Shadow
You don't need to buy that to learn assembly. You can learn assembly on your Windows PC. Even so, you don't need to know assembler to program for the PSX anyway. You use C. Assembler was only used for highly optmised engine routines, or lower level controllability of the machine itself. I have found people that can program in assembler however, can not program in C (and vice versa).

I guess once you're a fluent assembler programmer, you don't really use anything else :P

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: April 27th, 2015, 10:38 pm
by Yuri^Cybdyn
Killer_Code wrote:Hello fellow PSX developers.I want to get into PlayStation development,and i saw this thing http://store.imgtec.com/us/product/mips-creator-ci20/ is MIPS based. So my question is can i learn MIPS Assembly on this? (I started programming 2-3 years ago is it early to get into such a thing?)
interesting device, but price is big))

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: April 28th, 2015, 4:08 am
by Killer_Code
Thanks for the quick reply! Anyway I want to buy a developer board that's a little more serious than my current one. It is based on a PIC 16F877 so i'm very limited :D

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: April 29th, 2015, 7:32 am
by smf
Killer_Code wrote:Thanks for the quick reply! Anyway I want to buy a developer board that's a little more serious than my current one. It is based on a PIC 16F877 so i'm very limited :D
Unfortunately Raspberry Pi 2 is cheaper, but the CI20 has more stuff built in. So if you were going to buy the add ons for the Pi 2 then the CI20 works out cheaper.

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: May 2nd, 2015, 2:21 pm
by sickle
Wait what?
If you're dead set on ASM, why not just do it on an actual playstation?
There's ASMPSX from the PSY-Q SDK (see downloads section) or spASM (by Hitmen, google it) and you can test on actual hardware or practice on no$psx which is accurate as all hell and has a debugger built in: http://problemkaputt.de/psx.htm

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: May 3rd, 2015, 10:09 pm
by Killer_Code
sicklebrick wrote:Wait what?
If you're dead set on ASM, why not just do it on an actual playstation?
There's ASMPSX from the PSY-Q SDK (see downloads section) or spASM (by Hitmen, google it) and you can test on actual hardware or practice on no$psx which is accurate as all hell and has a debugger built in: http://problemkaputt.de/psx.htm
Of course i will learn Assembly on a PlayStation but i want to try out this device since my current development board is based on an 8 bit PIC and i want something more advanced.

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: January 17th, 2016, 2:56 pm
by gwald
sicklebrick wrote:Wait what?
If you're dead set on ASM, why not just do it on an actual playstation?
There's ASMPSX from the PSY-Q SDK (see downloads section) or spASM (by Hitmen, google it) and you can test on actual hardware or practice on no$psx which is accurate as all hell and has a debugger built in: http://problemkaputt.de/psx.htm
Hey Sicklebrick, @nocash, guys.. I'm trying to send via psexe.com to no$psx using the Xboo port LPT1/378H but can't seem get it anything going.
Not sure what to boot up on no$psx.. I want to dev in C not in asm.
Any advice would be great :)

PS: I can't search the forum for it either, it doesn't like the $ :(

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: January 17th, 2016, 3:20 pm
by Greg
you can run your PSX EXE file in no$psx, click on "File" then "Load Disk Image" and choose your exe file or iso file.

Re: Is this thing worth buying?

Posted: January 17th, 2016, 4:07 pm
by gwald
Greg wrote:you can run your PSX EXE file in no$psx, click on "File" then "Load Disk Image" and choose your exe file or iso file.
Hey Greg, thanks for the tip, yip I got that going but need to load assets into memory etc.
I know there's an program that combines assets into the exe.
Shame, it's a versitle program :| The TTY out (printf's) and the vram view are great
Thanks again :ugeek:

Combines assets into the exe.

Posted: January 19th, 2016, 2:52 am
by Greg
You can use WinBin2Src, BIN2H or RAW2SRCto convert your asset in C file
you can found them here: http://www.psxdev.net/downloads.html

Once you've got your binary in C format, you then compile it to an object file using the compiler
GCC/Yaroze: gcc -c
PSY-Q: ccpsx -c

Accessing object files from your code:

first you must declare it like so:
extern char arrayname[];

then you can access it like this: (example is for a tim file)
u_long *ptr;

ptr=((u_long*)arrayname);
ptr++;
GsGetTimInfo(ptr,&A_GsIMAGE);

Final Compilation: (simplified)
ccpsx image.obj main.c -o main.cpe

Some cool stuff here: http://www.oocities.org/farinez/PSxfaq.html

The other option is to use combine2.exe but only for yaroze, link: http://hitmen.c02.at/files/tools/psx/combine2.zip

Re: Combines assets into the exe.

Posted: January 19th, 2016, 10:08 am
by gwald
Greg wrote:You can use WinBin2Src, BIN2H or RAW2SRCto convert your asset in C file
you can found them here: http://www.psxdev.net/downloads.html

Once you've got your binary in C format, you then compile it to an object file using the compiler
GCC/Yaroze: gcc -c
PSY-Q: ccpsx -c

Accessing object files from your code:

first you must declare it like so:
extern char arrayname[];

then you can access it like this: (example is for a tim file)
u_long *ptr;

ptr=((u_long*)arrayname);
ptr++;
GsGetTimInfo(ptr,&A_GsIMAGE);

Final Compilation: (simplified)
ccpsx image.obj main.c -o main.cpe

Some cool stuff here: http://www.oocities.org/farinez/PSxfaq.html

The other option is to use combine2.exe but only for yaroze, link: http://hitmen.c02.at/files/tools/psx/combine2.zip
Hey Greg :)
Yeah, that looks like the best way forward using an emulator at least.
I tried combine2.. couldn't get it to work.
Thanks for the info