New Project : CaSTaway PS2

[Shazz]

Hello freaks !

After discussing a few with Evilo (thx for motivating me !), some old' atari friends... I decided to think more and I hope to start coding too (eh eh) an Atari ST emulator for PS2.

It will be based on open-source CaSTaway emulator (SDL) and for the moment probably upon GP32 port (which does not used SDL but drawing primitives, sound libs...) which I think is a better start to port it on the PS2.

So, if someone is interested in joining, that would be a pleasure, newbies are welcome as I am concerning PS2 development...

Don't ask me when (I'm really sloooow and lazy) but I think you'll a day able to play Kick Off, Dungeon Master, Speedball II, IK+,... on your fav' black box...

[EugeneE3RD]

Well, I believe an Atari ST emulator for PS2 would be an excellant idea. I never owned an Atari ST but there are many freeware/shareware homebrew games written for the Atari ST.

[Shazz]

Let's say that mostly all ST games/applications are in the public domain as the different editors are either dead or do not support the software anymore.... the only thing you should not do is porting those old games to new hardware as the names still belong to some editors...

The ST has disappeared in 1995... so I don't think that anybody will sue you to download Atari ST games :D (neither Infogrames who bought the Atari brand)

But you're right, the community is still alive and since 2000 some very good apps and games are released by old fans :D

And last point I'm sure plenty of good PS2 coders have started coding things on the ST (or the amiga...)

[Raizor]

Amiga 500 emu would be much cooler :)

[pixel]

I started directly with a 286 12Mhz PC :p

Never went thru the amiga, atari, apple, amstrad or commodore mess :p

Anyway, having emulators would still be a nice thing.

[Shazz]

Raizor : nobody is perfect... copper is for kids :D ;-)
Pixel : young Jedi.... ;-)

Baaaaah I'm definitively too oldsk00l.. :D Just kidding... Raizor's ps2 demos are just toooo kewwwl :D And pixel's packer just miss the decrunching rasters ! :D

Raizor, UAE is open-source too, why not porting it ?

[Raizor]

I thought about the work involved in porting UAE. Would be quite a task. Also, a number of people said that the PS2 would not really be up to the task.... Not sure how true this is though :)

Would be nice to see some cool ST demos by from Equinox etc. Good luck with the project ;)

[J.F.]

The PS2 is plenty powerful enough for emulating an A500. Now emulating an A1200 or CD32 would be pushing it...

[Shazz]

Raizor,

Same question for the ST emualtor but as the NeoCD is running fine, I think a 68k/8 Mhz shouldn't be a hard deal....

Moreover, I plan to implement some kind of Planar2Chunky code on the VU1 to give more time to the EE and if needed maybe to implement directly some 68K instructions directly in MIPS...

I'll see how fast the EE version will be... jsut a little worry with the sound but... (how the AHX runs ? consumption...)

But yep A1200 or Atari Falcon emualtor would be tricky for sure...

[Raizor]

Shazz,

Sound shouldn't be too much of a problem at all. IOP easily handles the AHX player.

raizor