Almost two years after the last release, Atari800 PSP sees another update today. New in version 2.1.0.1:
This is just a short post to note that the underlying framework (psplib) for Atari800 has been updated, as you can see from the attached screenshots. As noted in an earlier post, this was the main reason behind the delay of the version upgrade, which should follow in a few days or so. The sound code has been sped up a bit, though alas, probably not enough to run the improved sound engine of Atari800.
As many of you may have noticed, things have been going slow lately. I’m taking a break from PSP development, and trying other worthwhile things, like web development (another big hobby of mine), and wasting whatever free time I have on books and Xbox Live. If there is another release, it will be most likely in the form of an update to Atari800 PSP, to bring it up to date with the latest release of the emulator. Since it’s been a while since the last version came out, a lot needs to change in the user interface department, to make Atari800 PSP compatible with the latest version of psplib. This has been part of the reason for delay/procrastination.
Something that I’ve been considering lately is porting Game & Watch simulators to the PSP. I’m not aware of any currently out for the PSP, and I can imagine it being something quite enjoyable on a portable platform. Given a solid enough set of simulators, they may be easier to port than emulators, since sophisticated menus are not needed for a G&W unit.
While I wasn’t looking, the Atari800 emulator was updated to version 2.1 (current PSP version is at 2.0.3). Here’s what’s new (and not everything may be relevant to the PSP release):
New features
Fixes
The lately-neglected PSP version should be updated within a few weeks.
For those who are wondering, I’m not dead – just swamped with work and an unhealthy obsession with Fable II. Which is unusual for me, considering that I’m really not much of an RPG buff.
Some great news in the PSP-3000 hacking front came and went, the most promising one being the motherboard of the new system — it’s a TA-90, hence “pandorizable”, though currently with some sort of protection. Let’s hope not for too long.
In other news, I’ve noticed that while Atari800 has not seen any releases since mid-last year, work on it has been ongoing. While the changes are mostly structural (code reshuffling, etc…), they have made me consider an intermediate, possibly beta release of Atari800 PSP, based on code in the CVS repository. If that happens, I’ll most likely post a build in the forum for those interested to test (I’ll post an update here as well).
For the Fuse fans, here’s the situation on future releases: Philip Kendall, the principal developer of Fuse, commented earlier about changes coming to a future release; these changes will be substantial (from the sound of it, and at least from a structural standpoint), going so far as to change how extended disk support functions. Fuse PSP is being actively developed, and will be updated when the next version of Fuse is released, or shortly before.
There are other things being worked on at the moment, but as I’m not certain of their status, I’m going to keep any comments to myself, until I know for sure.
A new emulator is currently in the works. If all goes well, there should be a release within the next couple of weeks.
Second, according to the folks at the MSX Resource Center, there is an MSX ROM mapper database, licensed under GPL. This may well mean the end of ROM type selection for fMSX. Special thanks to Manuel Pazos and Manuel Bilderbeek for their help.
If you can help with similar information for the Atari800 (ROM CRC and ROM type information), please let me know.
Great time to be part of open source development, to be sure.
One feature that both fMSX and Atari800 could use is auto ROM type selection, as I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds selecting correct type of ROM an annoyance. I’d like to ask those of you who are dedicated fans of fMSX or Atari800 for help.
The method I have planned involves mapping a ROM CRC32 value to specific cart type, maintaining the settings in a growing list. Bunch of these lists would eventually be consolidated into a larger “super list” that would be included with the emulators, effectively eliminating the process of cart type selection (for vast majority of carts, anyway).
If anyone is interested in working to create such lists, please let me know by leaving a comment. Alternatively, if you’re aware of an existing list (perhaps for a different port), it would be great if you could point out the location. Thanks
PSP “Slim”-compatible binaries have been added for all my emulator ports. Visit the specific emulator’s site and click the ‘Firmware version 1.00 and 2.00+’ binary link to download EBOOT’s compatible with older 1.00 firmware as well as the newer custom firmware.
Many thanks to the administrator of pspslimhacks.com for his help in testing.
Also, please note that I don’t have access to the “Slim” PSP model for testing. If any of the binaries don’t work, let me know.
This version adds the ability to switch/eject the disk in drive 0
