Recent RetroPie Documentation Changes - PSX - Emulator Info and BIOS Info.

MajorDangerNine

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Playstation-1/

First of all, the BIOS section was updated as it didn't have any mention of the fact lr-pcsx-rearmed recognizes the following BIOS: SCPH101.BIN, SCPH7001.BIN, and SCPH5501.BIN.

https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/commit/d2cb52e5247d52cbc2d1c6f299ee4b21a85d462b#diff-bcc93185b5af1efadbbb0318c53fe7ec

The other updates were simply giving detailed description for both pcsx-rearmed emulators. The only part that is currently questionable is the "small amount of emulation slowdown" in the lr-pcsx-rearmed description as the slowdown that can occurs is actually more than a small amount currently with the core's current binary, unless the binary for the core has been updated per my suggestion here

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/18147/update-binary-for-lr-pcsx-rearmed

while a source update will reduce emulation slowdown to a small amount.

dankcushions

IMO the emulation slowdown stuff should be removed. we typically don't cover per-game emulation issues in the wiki pages as that would make them huge. if there's an issue with a game it should be logged as an issue on the emulators github repository, and that's enough.

MajorDangerNine

@dankcushions Fixed it. RetroPie users should be made aware PSX emulation is not perceptibly perfect though.

Also, pcsx_rearmed is dead development-wise when it comes to core emulation improvements. Still, I do know of one case where the issue is to do with the platform the libretro core is running on and not to do with the core emulation, so I'll log that issue at some point.

dankcushions

@eckaji thanks :) one question - are you sure this slowdown is not present on the native hardware? PSX games often had slowdown.

yes, psx_rearmed is fairly dead. however issues should still be logged. it's open source so who knows what the future holds.

pjft

FYI, the latest binary does add issues to at least some games, so I'm going to bisect it and if it is related to that particular commit that changes the CPU clock I'm going to flag that at the main repo.

Darksavior

@eckaji Eh...lr-pcsx-rearmed recognizes quite more than those. Maybe all ones available. I've been using scph7502.bin for years. I'm not even using it in caps.

The pc-engine wiki page needs some refinement as well. The bios that runs everything is the "correct" bios to use. This confirms the correct one I was using:

https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/8rlpgq/turbografx_pcengine_rom_bios_problems/

pjft

As a note, bisecting didn't yield any meaningful results at first as the commit that seemed to be faulty was one that was about improving region detection.

Now, after a bit more investigation what turned out to be was that that commit broke people's configs if they had selected "Auto", as that option was turned into "auto". As such, all were defaulting to NTSC which broke PAL games' sync and timing.

Opening the core options and manually changing the option back to "auto" fixed it. Hope this is useful to others who may go through the upgrade.

mediamogul

@pjft said in Recent RetroPie Documentation Changes - PSX - Emulator Info and BIOS Info.:

Opening the core options and manually changing the option back to "auto" fixed it.

Going through my core options file, I noticed that there were several entries for 'Auto' and for 'auto'. Do you know if any other core options should be changed as well?

pjft

@mediamogul I actually don't know, but I didn't manage to find the core option files - can you point me in the right direction?

The change that broke it was this one:

https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/commit/f4cceff67b56fe112f6440b7e9c97238fb7b1e69

it just changed "Auto" to "auto" in lr-pcsx-rearmed.

mediamogul

@pjft said in Recent RetroPie Documentation Changes - PSX - Emulator Info and BIOS Info.:

can you point me in the right direction?

Sure, it's at /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg.

MajorDangerNine

@dankcushions

are you sure this slowdown is not present on the native hardware? PSX games often had slowdown.

Well, due to my current lack of an original console, I plan to retest all problematic games I've documented in a spreadsheet in lr-beetle-psx or lr-beetle-psx-hw, though I suspect they might run better in those if they employ game-specific background hacks.

yes, psx_rearmed is fairly dead. however issues should still be logged. it's open source so who knows what the future holds.

I plan to log several issues once I've run the problematic games through lr-pcsx-rearmed on my PC to verify issues are completely core emulation issues and not platform specific.

@Darksavior

Eh...lr-pcsx-rearmed recognizes quite more than those. Maybe all ones available. I've been using scph7502.bin for years. I'm not even using it in caps.

Interesting. This prompts further investigation. Wish the emulators would add support for Redump's accurate naming convention for BIOS instead of insisting on only model numbers as numerous models used the same BIOS.

At the moment, I suspect lr-pcsx-rearmed just uses certain parts of the BIOS that are most likely universal across all BIOS revisions.

The pc-engine wiki page needs some refinement as well. The bios that runs everything is the "correct" bios to use. This confirms the correct one I was using:

https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/8rlpgq/turbografx_pcengine_rom_bios_problems/

Is that so? Well, looks like a small update to the page is necessary. I thought it was strange that the No-Intro verified version wasn't the correct one to use.

pjft

@mediamogul I suspect the option we're looking for - and that surprisingly seems to be correct? - is

pcsx_rearmed_region = "auto"

Either that or my defaults were already overwritten by today's change :)

mediamogul

@pjft said in Recent RetroPie Documentation Changes - PSX - Emulator Info and BIOS Info.:

Either that or my defaults were already overwritten by today's change :)

That could be the case. Mine was 'Auto' and I didn't run the update beforehand.