A new version of VICE PSP is now out. New in this version:

• Added 4:3 (fit screen height) stretch mode, visible in NTSC mode or when border is disabled
• Added border toggle – shows/hides the border surrounding the main display area
• Added PAL/NTSC/Old NTSC mode selection
• Added vertical blanking (VSync) support, only available in NTSC mode
• Bugfix: PRG loading now works
• Bugfix: “fit screen” stretch mode aspect ratio was incorrect; now fixed
• Minor fixes

UPDATE Saving in NTSC mode will currently crash the emulator. This should be fixed shortly (UPDATE fixed)

Download

A while back, I posted about my experience with PSP 2000’s video output capability – specifically, disappointment with the unscaled output on large-screen TV’s, and the lack of support for games on older CRT’s. The post, surprisingly, resulted in a lot of feedback from the community, on this site, as well as many others – some fanboyish, some understanding or agreeing, but mostly positive and a few helpful. Main suggestion was to use a plugin called FuSa, which is basically able to do everything that the PSP alone couldn’t do.

FuSa scales the image sent to the TV, and can adjust the output frequency, to accommodate things like rendering games to CRT TV’s (which normally only works while watching UMD’s). With the several emulators that I’ve tested, the plugin works remarkably well, which only begs the question – why wasn’t this included in the PSP 2000’s firmware to begin with? While the scaled-down image on a composite output looks jagged and low-res (understandably so), many PSP owners would’ve much rather had bad output, than no output at all – myself included.

Whether or not FuSa is the reason why the newer PSP-3000 models actually will display games through a composite cable is something we’ll never know, but I suppose the point of all this is that custom firmware, and custom plugins make the PSP a lot more than a run-of-the-mill handheld. Don’t get me wrong – the PSP itself was, for its time, revolutionary – and in many ways still is. But I doubt that the system would be as popular as it is today, if it wasn’t for the homebrew community and all of its contributions and offerings. Piracy is an unfortunate side-effect of all this, and while it may be ultimately what Sony’s concerned most about, for classic computer/emulation enthusiasts such as myself, the PSP’s abilities as a homebrew development and emulation entertainment center are the only reasons why I own one (actually, two).

It seems that in my hurry to put the emulator up for download, I forgot to mention some important usage details about tape and disk image loading. As you may have noticed, VICE PSP normally resets the system, anytime you attempt to load a game from the Game tab. This is behavior that’s consistent in all my ports, and it’s intended to make most games easily loadable. VICE PSP also provides some fine-tuning options, for games that require multiple disks or tapes.

To load tapes/disks without resetting the system, go to the System tab, select the Tape or Drive 8 menu option (depending on whether you want to load a tape or disk image), then press CROSS to load another image. If a tape or disk image is already loaded, it will be ejected, and another one will be loaded in its place. To eject a loaded image, select an option, and press TRIANGLE.

To autoload a program, first load the image, then go to the System tab, highlight the Tape or Drive 8 menu option, and press RIGHT. Select a program from the list, and press CROSS to autoload it. Note that this will reset the system.

VICE PSP is now out. The sound lag seems to be fixed; however there are some issues: for one, the FPS counter sometimes reports incorrect data after frame skipping goes into effect (showing 4 FPS, when the emulator’s actually rendering at 50), and annoying stuttering noise while frames are being skipped.

I would like the sound engine to be more polished prior to release, but I’ve only had a few hours to work in the last two weeks (not likely to improve any time soon), and I feel like it’s in a suitable enough state.

VICE is a series of Commodore emulators; for now, I’ve only ported the C64 emulator. I’ve wanted to port a C64 emulator for a while now; as a fan of chiptunes/demoscene music (I recommend Kohina, by the way), I’m familiar with the popular SID chip that gave talented musicians like Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard and Ben Daglish an outlet to produce some of the most brilliant sets of bleeps and bloops to grace one’s ears.

Now it’s almost 4 AM, and I should probably turn in.

Download

VICE PSP is largely complete; I say “largely,” because the main thing holding it back at the moment is intermittent sound lag.

What is definitely going to be in the release:

• The usual features present in my other computer emulator ports: virtual keyboard, state autoloading, per-game configurable input, peripheral indicators, state saving/loading
• Support for tape images, disk images, cartridges. Each can be “inserted”, “ejected”, and auto-run (by which I mean that a specific program on tape/disk can be automatically run) separately
• Several other things that are a side-effect of being a port of VICE, so to speak

The sound lag issue presents itself when emulator begins to skip frames – sound works perfectly (as far as VICE is concerned, anyway) otherwise. It would be fairly safe to say that once this is fixed, a release is imminent.

0xff now supports OpenID logins, for commenting and personalization. You may already have one if you use any of the popular websites – if you don’t, you can always get one for free.

Frequent spamming is the reason why this site still requires moderation for comments (at least for new commenters); if there is enough interest in using accounts versus posting “anonymous” (account-less) comments, I can remove moderation, and require authenticated comments, instead.

If you have an OpenID account, you can sign in here.

I realized my description from the last post wasn’t entirely correct, the emulator isn’t actually new per se, it’s just new vis-a-vis those that I’ve already released. Most everyone guessed correctly that it was a Commodore 64 emulator – it’s VICE, to be exact. I realize a port of VICE already exists (called PSPVICE), but as I mentioned before, I port software because I enjoy doing it, not necessarily because it’s needed

To answer some of the questions that are already coming in, yes it will have a virtual keyboard (it’d be pretty stupid to have a computer emulator without some form of one), and yes, it does support CRT files. VICE PSP is based on the latest version of VICE, 2.1.

The amusing part of this is that VICE PSP would have probably been released half a year ago, if it wasn’t for a misinterpretation of its performance, on my part. Due to a variety of factors, I was getting what seemed like surprisingly poor performance from the emulator; work on it was shelved for months, until I decided to take another look.

I still don’t have a definite release date, but work is progressing well, and a release shouldn’t be that far off.

I recently got a chance to make some changes to the site, adding some features that I’ve been wanting to add for a while now. psp.akop.org now includes an additional statistic – average downloads per day (Caprice32 lags behind with 3, fMSX leads with 15). Listing page also includes a few screenshots, some sorting options, and a new navigational system (too many emulators to list on one line now).

Unfortunately, the number of downloads is not completely correct – nor can it be. I’ve only been tracking downloads since Nov. 2007, which is a good 7 months after the first emulator was released (and shortly after sixth was released). It also doesn’t count  (what I’m assuming is) the larger number of downloads from other sites that host my binaries, such as dcemu and qj.net.

I’m currently working on porting another emulator to the PSP. For the curious, the image below contains a(n all-too-obvious) hint about the system that this emulator emulates.

I don’t know when the work will be completed, but the largest challenges have been overcome, and it’s all a matter of time now.