3.55 CFW PS3 - new stuff

[Tiago]

Hi,
finally i was able to set 68020/AGA on the PS3 UAE.
WB31 works fine, games, and all demos so far.
for a version so low in options, the emulator works very fine.

- Amiga UAE
You can do a Pen drive with the package to install and also put on the same pen, a config fine with your adf, so if you give it to someone, he would just have to run the package and then run the program and it will launch you adf automaticaly. Very nice to send a demo/intro to someone that dont know anything about amiga. It's the only way i know to do a software for PS3 :lol:

- Linux
I also try the debian Linux with albestos and LV2 v9 patcher.
It starts but i have some error in the kernel... anyone try it?
you can also put ubumtu but the setup a bit hard to di...


- files over 4GB
i try PSARC to decomperss files over 4GB so i can get them in FAT32 external HD. It works ok.

- FTP server
it also works, it enables you to copy frmo your pc to the PS3 all files you want, but you must do it with wires, with wireless it was at 1mb/s ... to slow, with wires, i was able to do it at average of +/- 13mb/s

anyone try oher software? other emulators?

[Demon Cleaner]

Really only testing/using PS3 stuff on it. Well obviously also FTP server and all the managers you need to be able to actually run stuff on it.

[Demon Cleaner]

I installed FBA Next now, because I still had a set on my PC, and it works perfectly. Quite nice to play some CPS1, CPS2, Neo Geo... games on the big screen.

[Tiago]

New uae now gets hdf setups.
I was able to boot Amigasys Aga 4 on PS3 !

[Harrison]

That is great... sounds like they are moving forward with the PS3 UAE quite fast. Do you know who is working on that project? Anyone from the existing Amiga community? So tempting to get a second PS3 to run CFW on and not go online just to explore homebrew and emulation on.

[Tiago]

dont know, i didnt search a lot, didnt find any "main site" about it.
what i know is that the emulator is getting better:

What you can have
- you now can work with 68040 and 68060
- you can have HDFs, i test WB31 and Amigasys Aga4, both work fine
- floppy emulated at 800%
- 4 floppys
- all ROMs... i tested, 1.2 ; 1.3 and 3.1 both work fine

what you dont have yet:
- real keyboad, you only have a virutal keyb, holding down R2 then cicle all keyboard keys one by one... not the best solution....
- use the internal HD (didnt test thi yet, but i didn't see any option, you only have HD by *.hdf), i guees
that if you work with an external HD it will work, if it works with a PEN, it will work with external HD i gues...

[Demon Cleaner]

I was able to boot Amigasys Aga 4 on PS3 !

Nice. Only question here is, do you really need it?

That's why I wonder that you (Harrison) are being tempted to get a second console, only to "test" this stuff. How many devices do you have at home where you are running homebrew, which also means, a bit of the same stuff over and over again, only on other systems. I totally understand that you want to try out some stuff, like emulation on the 1st XBox, or some emulation on a handheld like the PSP, but does one really need to have the same emulators on every existing device in the house? Would you eventually USE emulation like UAE on a Wii? I doubt that.

My advice, spend your money on something else.

[Harrison]

Being able to boot HDF files is a huge thing for Amiga emulators to be able to do. This removes the need to manually load each game from an ADF. Instead you can have ClassicWB or Amigasys installed on a HDF and use WHDLoad to have the complete Amiga game library ready and waiting to run from Workbench. It makes a huge difference because you don't need to wait for the emulator to emulate loading the games from a virtual floppy drive; they boot directly from the HDF in seconds. WHDLoad is the only real logical way to run games on an Amiga these days.

I would really like to see how the various versions of ClassicWB run on the PS3 using an HDF. It would need to be about 20GB in size to fit all of the KGWHD game packs and other stuff in there, but would then be a standalone HDF setup to run anything you liked for the Amiga.

Regarding a second PS3. The PS3 is one of the best consoles for use as a media player (far better than the Xbox 360 and its WMP stuff), so having one in the living room, mainly as a media server, and for some multiplayer Move games... and another in the study/gameroom, mainly for gaming would be a great setup. Just an idea.

Out of all consoles available, the PS3 is easily the most powerful, so if emulation developers can get UAE, MAME and others working well, the PS3 will be a great emulation console... like a more portable MAME cabinet if you like.

All other consoles from the last generation and earlier have not quite had enough power to do most emulators justice, and whilst they are all great fun to play around with, I've never wanted to use any of them as the main hardware to run each of the emulators from. I've always returned to my emulation PC for actually playing games on. Xbox, PS2 and Dreamcast emulators are only just able to get enough speed to run Amiga ECS games, so again are not ideal. And their versions of MAME are not brilliant. They are all fun to play around with, but not practical to use as a console for emulation gaming. Ans N64 emulators have only ever really been about the ability to run them on the console, rather than utilise them every day. Portable systems are more appealing because of their portable nature. Being able to emulate something anywhere has its different appeals, even if not perfect. But for emulation at home I don't think any console to date has really been quite powerful enough, until now and the PS3.

[Tiago]

makes a huge difference because you don't need to wait for the emulator to emulate loading the games from a virtual floppy drive; they boot directly from the HDF in seconds. WHDLoad is the only real logical way to run games on an Amiga these days.


wht do you think i am testing all this stuff ? ;) Exactly, WHDload is the way !!! and with the WHDload key, even faster!!
This weekend i will make the ClassicWB3.9 setup, let you know if it worked. But if ClassicWB worked, ClassiWB3.9 should work to !!

I just wish they put the feature of being able to use the internal HD, imagine, you could play with the internal files, you could do software to list games, and maybe even, run them.... (?) If you could access the internal HD just as you do in your WinUAE you could do your own backup system/copy manager. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

so if emulation developers can get UAE, MAME and others working well, the PS3 will be a great emulation console... like a more portable MAME cabinet if you like..
Like I mentioned before, FBA games (which run also under MAME) just work fine.

[Tiago]

some new about UAE in PS3

OS3.9 with WHDLoad working good !!!:)

what i did:
- I setup a clean HDF with 4GB in WINUAE (PC)
- installed the Workbench 3.1
- Installed Amiga OS3.9 on top of 3.1
- Installed Boingbag 1 & 2
- Installed WHDLoad
- Put the HDF in a PEN with the following config file:

kickstart_rom_file=/dev_usb000/uae/kick31.rom
chipmem_size=2
fastmem_size=8
use_gui=no
nr_floppies=2
cpu_type=68060
cpu_speed=real
cpu_compatible=true
chipset=AGA
ntsc=false
#chipset=ecs
gfx_width=720
gfx_height=480
gfx_linemode=double
gfx_framerate=1
sound_output=exact
sound_channels=stereo
sound_bits=16
sound_frequency=48000
show_leds=true
floppy_speed=800
floppy0=/dev_usb000/uae/blank.adf
floppy1=/dev_usb000/uae/game_disk02.adf
gfx_center_vertical=smart
gfx_center_horizontal=smart
gfx_color_mode=32
hardfile=read-write,63,4,2,512,/dev_usb000/uae/system.hdf

- Lauched the UAE in PS3, and worked fine, i can now play WHDLoad.

What didn't work:
- Picasso 96 drivers - in WINUAE is working good, but UAE in PS3 dont like other video cards, and can not work above 640*512, hope they fix this.
If you put the OS with 800*600 or higher when starting in UAE/PS3 he will setup to 640*512
- working in internal HD, i transfer the config file+HDF with FTP server to the internal HD, but it dont work
- OS3.9 work fine in PS3, but much much slower then WINUAE. 1/3 of the Speed +/- if it's just for WHDLoad, WB3.1 would be much better
- 68060 is working fine, but no more then 8MB of fast RAM

I will test more games now.

[Harrison]

Thanks for the udpate Tiago. Very interesting to see what is and isn't currently compatible/working.

So is there currently a restriction to 8MB fast ram for the emulator? Or just for specific setups? Does it offer Z3 fast ram support for more?

And like you say, it would be great to get graphics card emulation working for the PS3 version, and also a real usb keyboard/mouse.

[Tiago]

Yes there is a restriction, you can only setup the chp ram (2mb limit) and fast ram (8mb limit)
graphics card would be very nice, but it's much more important to put the emulator working in internal HD because in a USB PEN the speed is to slow.
In WB1.3 you can work ok, but a bit slower then winaue, but with OS39 is almost impossible to work, each window takes seconds to open. When you open the system draw for exemple it takes 1 second to each directory.... takes ages to list the games in whdload directory. But HWDLoad, look to work nice.
I test 3 games and they work normaly.

[Harrison]

Remember that WinUAE is normally set to emulate an Amiga the fastest possible, whilst retaining compatibility. The PS3 emulator might actually be trying to emulate the Amiga at its real speed. If you have even used a real Amiga in Workbench they do take some time to open, read and display directories of files. On a standard A1200 it can take minutes to read large directories before they show, and even an 040 can take a few seconds. It also depends on their HDD access speed.

But it probably is the USB pen drive slowing it down as you suspect. Can you try an external USB HDD?

[Tiago]

But it probably is the USB pen drive slowing it down as you suspect. Can you try an external USB HDD?
Yes, i can try that, i will try to do that today.

[Tiago]

But it probably is the USB pen drive slowing it down as you suspect. Can you try an external USB HDD?

I did it yesterday, put the config and hdf on my 500GB external HD and it worked fine, but i can't see any difference in speed comparing to USB pen, pretty much the same. I notice that in CFG, i have the option of CPU speed: i have the "real" and numbers from 1 to 12 and "MAX" option. I try the Max option, and didnt see any diference. But it worked very well.

I tested under WHDLoad:
SWIV: worked with full speed
Same demos like state of art, they all worked fine.

Reducing from 256 color to 16 or 32 color in OS3.9 gets a good result on speed under the OS, the draws open faster, but it looks very bad... :-(
for whdload doesn't affect anything it works always fine.

[Demon Cleaner]

!!!ATTENTION!!!

There was a Package Manager (0.9) released some days ago, which will allow you to install/uninstall .pkg files on your PS3. First of all I thought what's the point, as I can install them straight away from the "Install Package Files" menu. But they mentioned that with this software, the installed games would be together in one nice folder, not stacking up in your GAME column in XMB.

So after running the .pkg file of Package Manager, you have to run the install again from the XMB, which takes you to a screen where you can create the dev_hdd0/packages folder, and again install or uninstall Package Manager itself. At this point I couldn't do anything, because my PS3 froze. After restart, I could still choose which account I wanted to login, but after logging into my main account, PS3 froze again. It does do it all the time, you cannot log into your main account anymore!!!

So I tried to log into my second account, which worked fine, and there you can see, that the Package Manager install replaced the "Install Package Files" menu with Package Manager. You can then delete the install icon of Package Manager, but you won't get rid of the menu entry anymore, no way to delete it. After all this though, I still couldn't log into my main account. So the only thing which I could do, was doing a reinstall of the CFW from the recovery mode. Basically my PS3 was semi bricked.

It could of course work fine on any other console, I only wanted to share my experience here, and that I later also read on forums that I'm not the only one having this problem. This program is anyway needless, as you don't need it to install/uninstall .pkg files. I tested it when I was in my other account, and I was able to install one .pkg file, but couldn't delete it anymore, because the program can't find any installed .pkg on your disk!

[Harrison]

It sounds like this Package Manager has a lot of bugs and isn't worth the bother.

[Teho]

But they mentioned that with this software, the installed games would be together in one nice folder, not stacking up in your GAME column in XMB.

Did you know if you press Triangle on a game, choose Information and edit its albumname (which is blank by default) it will then appear inside a folder with that name in the XMB (you may need to sort by album by pressing square a couple of times first). Give multiple titles the same albumname and they will all appear in the same folder. It's a pretty backwards method but it works. On my system I have all my game content sorted in folders like PS1, Games, Minis, Demos aso. Much more tidy.

[Harrison]

I also sort mine like that. I do find it annoying having to manually enter it each time though. Why they couldn't have a drop down list showing all existing album names you have created to pick from is beyond me. Would make it so much easier.

[Tiago]

thanks for the info Demon, i will avoid it.

[Demon Cleaner]

But they mentioned that with this software, the installed games would be together in one nice folder, not stacking up in your GAME column in XMB.

Did you know if you press Triangle on a game, choose Information and edit its albumname (which is blank by default) it will then appear inside a folder with that name in the XMB (you may need to sort by album by pressing square a couple of times first). Give multiple titles the same albumname and they will all appear in the same folder. It's a pretty backwards method but it works. On my system I have all my game content sorted in folders like PS1, Games, Minis, Demos aso. Much more tidy.
Nope, I didn't know that, will try it this afternoon, thanks for the hint.