Benefits Of Pandora Over Psp?

[Jourdy288]

The Pandora should be able to emulate a PSP (it's a WIP) so you'll be able to use PSP homebrew on it.
Don't forget, we're open, and a community (sorta like a dysfunctional family ATM but family nonetheless).

jourdy

Auughh! I'm sorry, I have sinned!

I was unsure of the condition of the project, please forgive me!

But I'll tell you one thing: PSP emulation is most certainly possible on the Pandora, it's just a matter of time. Thanks for the heads up, I won't use that as a starting point.

 

[Exophase]

JayFoxRox's Beagleboard problems, while unfortunate for him, seem like a pretty minor issue as far as the development of his PSP emulator is concerned. Real Pandoras are supposed to actually be out soon (knock on wood) and chances are he's not going to be anywhere close to ready to releasing it then, at least not in a way that would satisfy most of you.

Personally, I think he's a little crazy for targeting OMAP35xx directly instead of working on it for PC first. There's so much to do that's platform agnostic before you should really work on before you can focus on the platform specific stuff. This is especially true for PSP emulation which involves HLEing an entire operating system and several libraries. The only real draw is ensuring OGL ES 2 compatibility, but he could still develop within a subset using OGL 2 (more or less) and use the PowerVR wrapper to test it until he has a real OGL ES 2 platform again.

But I'll tell you one thing: PSP emulation is most certainly possible on the Pandora, it's just a matter of time. Thanks for the heads up, I won't use that as a starting point.

Where's the proof? Or even substantial evidence beyond trusting the word of others. In these cases it's best to remain skeptical instead of saying something is definitely possible. That is, unless your definition of possible doesn't require full speed for anything. Sometimes there are totally unexpected overheads and bottlenecks in emulators that make everything come crashing down.

 

[juniorm33]

I seem to remember him having trouble with both his usb & bitbaking new firmware.
I would hunt down the links, but well you know which ever order it happened, result is the same, it's just not working dam it :lol:
And I really like reading his updates

I agree I wouldn't use the fact that psp emulation being worked on as a selling point at the moment. He's made good progress but nothing to really indicate what level of performance you can expect, or if it will ever play any commercial software apart from a few at reasonable speeds.

Edit: Sorry I had started to reply but had a meeting to go to, so I agree with Exophase somewhat.
Although his choice of how he may chose to progress, was his decision and he seems pretty happy about it, and he's learning a lot from his project, which seems to be his primary goal. So may not be the most efficient in terms of getting psp emulation running, but for his goals seems fine to me. (But that is just a personal opinion)

 

[Sitwon]

Actually i was thinking the same thing, i got a dsi and psp, but then i thought the pandora seem so cool.So i add it to my Christmas list, This thread help me a lot. thx
Hope i get it. ... Also i can not seem to find how much tv out cable cost. Would the psp one work for pandora?

The DS is quite... lame. I'm sure there are some games, but the console itself is so incredibly underpowered, which makes homebrew a pain to develop and use.

There are quite a few good games for the DS. I'm not going to comment on how easy it is do develop for since I haven't tried it, but the number and quality of games suggests the platform is certainly capable.

If it is indeed "a pain to develop for" it probably comes down to:
A. Lack of good development tools, or
B. Developer laziness.

It's probably a bit of both, but I'd guess mostly B.

 

[stephen0205]

I should think it would be a big deal to JayFoxRox, seeing as how he can't develop and test his emulator. You really have to think of all perspectives when you say something like that. Also, there are reasons people may want to have the PSP emulator for the Pandora rather than carrying a PSP around.

sorry if i offended anyone with that comment, i was just meaning if it dosent happen psps are cheap, i relize that if one becomes avalible then that would be awasome, carrying less around and such, but i do apologize, or adding a deeper comment into it.

 

[Tokiopop]

The PSP is good, but emulator wise the Pandora kicks the PSP's butt.

I like my PSP, but I just wanted something that little bit more powerful. Oh, and the keyboard, touchscreen, dual analogue etc are pretty sweet too.

 

[openthebox]

I am curious, what homebrew apps that are currently on PSP that can't be ported easily to Pandora and are worth having? This is a serious question and not a jab at PSP.

 

[Exophase]

I am curious, what homebrew apps that are currently on PSP that can't be ported easily to Pandora and are worth having? This is a serious question and not a jab at PSP.

Anything that doesn't have source code available and whose developer has long since vanished or doesn't care about Pandora.

That's probably not what you were really asking, but I think that'll be a bigger obstacle than portability issues in the code. A lot of stuff on PSP has no source available (even many things that are legally obligated to make it available) and were done by people that were never heard of again. Fortunately, a lot of these things were ports to begin with, so they probably don't contain a lot of unique code.

 

[Gary13579]

I should think it would be a big deal to JayFoxRox, seeing as how he can't develop and test his emulator. You really have to think of all perspectives when you say something like that. Also, there are reasons people may want to have the PSP emulator for the Pandora rather than carrying a PSP around.

-God Ginrai

It's more than just not being able to develop/test, he spent a total of >600€ ordering it, getting parts he needed, paying import fees/taxes... etc. All to have it break down in a few months. It's a shitty situation and almost seems like a scam .

Actually i was thinking the same thing, i got a dsi and psp, but then i thought the pandora seem so cool.So i add it to my Christmas list, This thread help me a lot. thx
Hope i get it. ... Also i can not seem to find how much tv out cable cost. Would the psp one work for pandora?

The DS is quite... lame. I'm sure there are some games, but the console itself is so incredibly underpowered, which makes homebrew a pain to develop and use.

There are quite a few good games for the DS. I'm not going to comment on how easy it is do develop for since I haven't tried it, but the number and quality of games suggests the platform is certainly capable.

If it is indeed "a pain to develop for" it probably comes down to:
A. Lack of good development tools, or
B. Developer laziness.

It's probably a bit of both, but I'd guess mostly B.

I actually got my hands on a free DS Lite recently. The thing feels amazing in my hands, it's so thin but fits so well. So I take a look into the homebrew scene, the CPUs/RAM, and I throw the thing away. Wasn't even worth buying a flash cart for it.

I'm sure those are both reasons why homebrew sucks for the DS, but really? 4mb of RAM only goes so far, no matter how amazing of a programmer you are. A crappy 60mhz ARM CPU only runs so fast, no matter how many optimizations you make.

I've had a PSP for years, and I'd much rather carry that around for homebrews sake then a DS. It feels worse, has a shorter battery life, and worse to type on... but at least I can actually use it for more than tetris.

I am curious, what homebrew apps that are currently on PSP that can't be ported easily to Pandora and are worth having? This is a serious question and not a jab at PSP.

Anything that doesn't have source code available and whose developer has long since vanished or doesn't care about Pandora.

That's probably not what you were really asking, but I think that'll be a bigger obstacle than portability issues in the code. A lot of stuff on PSP has no source available (even many things that are legally obligated to make it available) and were done by people that were never heard of again. Fortunately, a lot of these things were ports to begin with, so they probably don't contain a lot of unique code.

It's quite easy to get away with breaking licensing (notably GPL) in the homebrew scene, from what I've seen.

 

[danielliu88888]

you mind if i use this as my avatar?

 

[Exophase]

I'm sure those are both reasons why homebrew sucks for the DS, but really? 4mb of RAM only goes so far, no matter how amazing of a programmer you are. A crappy 60mhz ARM CPU only runs so fast, no matter how many optimizations you make.

But a crappy 66MHz ARM and a good 2D tile/sprite renderer is all you need for good 2D games.

 

[Etinin]

You can't compare oranges to apples.

 

[Gary13579]

I'm sure those are both reasons why homebrew sucks for the DS, but really? 4mb of RAM only goes so far, no matter how amazing of a programmer you are. A crappy 60mhz ARM CPU only runs so fast, no matter how many optimizations you make.

But a crappy 66MHz ARM and a good 2D tile/sprite renderer is all you need for good 2D games.

All you need is a 2mhz CPU with 512kb of RAM. The SNES proved this.

Still doesn't mean it should fucking be done in this day and age, when you can upgrade 4mb of RAM to 32mb for a lousy $0.20 per board.

 

[Exophase]

All you need is a 2mhz CPU with 512kb of RAM. The SNES proved this.

512kb? Do you mean bits here? Because it didn't have 512kbytes.

Still doesn't mean it should fucking be done in this day and age, when you can upgrade 4mb of RAM to 32mb for a lousy $0.20 per board.

Nintendo DS came out 5 years ago dude, never mind when it was actually designed. It's not new tech. 32MB of DRAM in the package they wanted most certainly did not cost $0.20 per board, nor would it today. It also wouldn't have the same power profile. Even Sony was originally only going to give PSP 8MB of RAM. For the kind of games DS does 4MB is enough, but they did increase it to 16MB for DSi.

Besides, its predecessor only had 256KB + 32KB of general purpose RAM. Although it also had addressable cartridges.

 

[Gary13579]

All you need is a 2mhz CPU with 512kb of RAM. The SNES proved this.

512kb? Do you mean bits here? Because it didn't have 512kbytes.

Still doesn't mean it should fucking be done in this day and age, when you can upgrade 4mb of RAM to 32mb for a lousy $0.20 per board.

Nintendo DS came out 5 years ago dude, never mind when it was actually designed. It's not new tech. 32MB of DRAM in the package they wanted most certainly did not cost $0.20 per board, nor would it today. It also wouldn't have the same power profile. Even Sony was originally only going to give PSP 8MB of RAM. For the kind of games DS does 4MB is enough, but they did increase it to 16MB for DSi.

Besides, its predecessor only had 256KB + 32KB of general purpose RAM. Although it also had addressable cartridges.

I was actually estimating, I have no idea how much memory the SNES had.

And you're right about the power profile, but I'm not so sure the cost (but then again, no one really knows what Nintendo pays for its parts). 20c was an exaggeration, but I doubt it would cost more than $5 per unit to upgrade from 4mb to at least 16mb. Comparing DS to the PSP is silly though, as the PSP is extremely memory wasteful (the 6-8mb of RAM that is reserved for kernel space, and can't be used by official games).

I am extremely against hardware upgrades like Nintendo is doing with the DSi. You're basically allowing developers to abandon the old hardware, which screws over MANY users. Are they releasing a higher capacity GBA memory cart to coincide with the DSi's release, so old customers aren't just shafted?

And my point with bringing up the SNES is that just because you *can* do it, it makes developing a lot harder, and adds a lot of limitations to the device.

 

[Exophase]

And you're right about the power profile, but I'm not so sure the cost (but then again, no one really knows what Nintendo pays for its parts). 20c was an exaggeration, but I doubt it would cost more than $5 per unit to upgrade from 4mb to at least 16mb. Comparing DS to the PSP is silly though, as the PSP is extremely memory wasteful (the 6-8mb of RAM that is reserved for kernel space, and can't be used by official games).

Would have cost. 5 years ago. Right now it costs at least $2 per unit for 32MB of similar RAM. I can't say how much it would have cost 5 years ago, but probably substantially more. For devices of this volume saving every penny is crucial.

You're missing the point on my PSP comment. I wasn't comparing it to DS. I was saying that Sony originally going for 8MB of RAM, despite being a substantially higher end device, shows that the extra memory is not something that comes for free. Had it been a negligible decision they wouldn't have needed convincing to go to that target.

I am extremely against hardware upgrades like Nintendo is doing with the DSi. You're basically allowing developers to abandon the old hardware, which screws over MANY users. Are they releasing a higher capacity GBA memory cart to coincide with the DSi's release, so old customers aren't just shafted?

The DSi was released forever ago. No, they're not doing that, because they want people to buy DSi's. Do you feel this way when game companies release new hardware altogether? What about if they're backwards compatible? Anyway, DSi's upgrades are mainly meant for games you can only purchase online.

And my point with bringing up the SNES is that just because you *can* do it, it makes developing a lot harder, and adds a lot of limitations to the device.

Being at 4MB isn't necessarily a huge handicap. For 3D games it isn't good, but DS isn't good at 3D games for a lot of reasons. It sporting less than spectacular 3D hardware while still having full 2D hardware (something no other platform I'm aware of has done) means that a lot of 2D games are still being done on it. And the memory is not a huge limitation for 2D games, like I said. It's nothing like coding them for an SNES. It's good that developers have a compelling reason to still pump out 2D games on a modern platform, and for this reason fans of 2D might be happy that DS isn't more powerful than it is.

 

[Sitwon]

I actually got my hands on a free DS Lite recently. The thing feels amazing in my hands, it's so thin but fits so well. So I take a look into the homebrew scene, the CPUs/RAM, and I throw the thing away. Wasn't even worth buying a flash cart for it.

I'm sure those are both reasons why homebrew sucks for the DS, but really? 4mb of RAM only goes so far, no matter how amazing of a programmer you are. A crappy 60mhz ARM CPU only runs so fast, no matter how many optimizations you make.

I've had a PSP for years, and I'd much rather carry that around for homebrews sake then a DS. It feels worse, has a shorter battery life, and worse to type on... but at least I can actually use it for more than tetris.

Did you actually try playing some games on it before you dismissed it out of hand because of low specs?

Forgive me for suggesting it but try out some of the commercial games before dismissing it as a platform.

There are a lot of good game that are actually fun to play (which has nothing to do with texture resolution or polygon count).

There are even a lot of 3D games on the DS. If the commercial developers can pull off games of that quality I see no reason (barring the two excuses I pointed out before) why homebrew can't do the same.

 

[iprice]

Right now it costs at least $2 per unit for 32MB of similar RAM.

I remember buying a 1Mb RAM expansion for my Amiga - that cost over £50 back then - and IIRC I thought that was agood deal at the time! We've never had it so good.

 

[bzar]

you mind if i use this as my avatar?

Not at all, be my guest

 

[elwing]

There are even a lot of 3D games on the DS. If the commercial developers can pull off games of that quality I see no reason (barring the two excuses I pointed out before) why homebrew can't do the same.

there's even a quake2 port... given the spec it is simply crazy...and visibly yes you can do good homebrews...