Bug#137355: RFP: PCSX -- Playstation emulator
Frederic Briere <fbriere@fbriere.net> writes:
I should first alert you that after trying to pick up development on
PCSX, I found that the features that most people wanted (speed
enhancements, etc.) were out of my ability, but I can still try to
provide some help on this matter.
> [CC'ed to Matthew Dempsky, who's apparently working on PCSX]
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 11:39:58PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
> > > The main problem I see with including PCSX in Debian is that it requires
> > > a copy of the Sony PlayStation BIOS. (It might be theoretically
> > > possible to use the free BIOS from ePSXe, but I doubt anyone would do
> > > that.)
>
> My bad; it's actually PCSX that comes with a free BIOS.
Sorta... The BIOS's that PCSX supports using are emulated/recompiled
just like the PSX game code and then only the hardware interfaces are
emulated. When PCSX runs without a BIOS, it instead captures the
SYSCALL opcodes and just calls a C function. So, yes, PCSX can run
without a proprietary BIOS, but, no, it's not done by providing an
alternative BIOS. :-)
> > That's not much of a problem. Does the free BIOS work at all? If it doesn't,
>
> Well, it works in that I can successfully boot and run a PSX game (until
> I eventually get PCSX to crash or freeze <g>). Maybe Matthew has more
> information on how well the included BIOS performs, compared to the
> real thing.
Most people seem to get better compatibility from native BIOS (for
obvious reasons), but I think there's still decent performance from
the emulated BIOS (from what I recall).
> Now that I look at it, yes. P.E.Op.S. have a GPL'ed plugin for both
> video and audio, although the video plugin is plain X11. (Doing 3D in
> this matter sucks badly on my Duron.) There's also at least one GPL'ed
> plugin for each of the rest, and even Pete's plugins would probably be
> acceptable if he can clarify what he means by "The Plugin is free source
> code".
I prodded around for this for a while (getting official statements
allowing us to use plugins and such)... you can find some discussion
about the "public opinions" on the GPL emu/non-GPL plugins issues
here: http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45525
I tried to email someone at gnu.org to get the official legal
interpretation under the given circumstances, but I never got a
response.
> > For any of the non-free plugins, and specialy those who come without license,
> > we can try to convince the author of re-licensing them.
>
> It's Pete's MesaGL plugin that's sorely lacking; I'll try asking him
> what his licensing terms are, and if he'd be willing to GPL/BSD/whatever
> them.
I've talked with him about this -- he doesn't want to GPL it because
he wants to keep control of the project, etc.
> > > And there's also the fact that upstream has now ceased development;
> > > others seem to have picked up the pieces, but PCSX is still
> > > "upstream-less" AFAIK.
> >
> > Uhm.. what do you mean by others picking up the pieces?
>
> Matthew has posted a few times on the NGemu PCSX forum
> (http://www.ngemu.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=57), indicating that he
> was working on PCSX:
[...]
> I'm sure Matthew will be able to shed some light on this matter.
I did in fact contact Linuzappz about this matter (evidencable by the
fact that he added me to the sourceforge project's member list:
http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=42644),
however, he's mostly tied up working on PCSX2 and I never really got
around to getting serious work on PCSX done.
> > > (If anyone's interested, I maintain my own homebrew packages for PCSX,
> > > plugins and such at <http://www.fbriere.net/debian/>. Feel free to
> > > install them if you're a user, or to adopt them if you're a DM.)
> >
> > I could sponsor them if we sort out all the above problems first :>
> >
> > Btw, please retitle this to ITP and set yourself as owner
> > (see http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/)
>
> Given that I've yet to get PCSX to run w/o crashing or freezing, often
> before I get the chance to reach the first save point, I'd be reluctant
> to package it officially just yet. (I'm not knocking down PCSX; I've
> never taken the time to fully investigate the problem. If Matthew's
> still working on PCSX, I'd be glad to lend a hand in debugging.)
The one other issue you may have to worry about is the source code's
licensing... a few of the files are under license other than GPL so I
spent some time tracking down various authors to get their permissions
(I got Kazzuya's for the XA decoding components, and also asked a few
other people who'd stuck in code), but there were a few files that
give no real indication of their source such as the plugin
interface...
I'll be happy to assist in guiding through the source code and issues
I recall off hand from when I tried to carry development, but I can't
promise how much help I'll be.
-jivera
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