Preparing For Pandora Emulation With Regards To File Formats

[kaprikawn]

Hi,

having dabbled in emulation in the past I'm only really getting it sorted out on my desktop PC now.

I have a couple of noob-esque questions on file formats, specifically with regards to PS and SNES emulation.

Firstly with PS, I'm sorting out ripping my PS discs at the minute and playing them on ePSXe on my Windows machine. I'm having the most success with ripping them as .bin files (not so much with .iso files, epsxe doesn't seem to like the ones I'm ripping using infrarecorder). Is .bin an acceptable file format for when I start playing PS games on the Pandora? Are there any better file formats for ripping that I should be looking at?

Similar question for SNES games, I'm doing SNES emulation using zsnes at the minute which seems to create .srm and .smc files for save games and save states. Are these filetypes specific to zsnes or are these standard, in other words can I use them later on the Pandora? I've just started Yoshis Island in the hope of getting 100% (again) and want to continue my endeavour on the Pandora, I'll just wait for the Pandora to be released if I couldn't port my save game across to the Pandora later.

I use Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Yellow Dog Linux (PS3) and obviously in the future Angstrom so cross format portability and open standards are quite important to me so could you figure that into your answers please. Thanks.

 

[Prometheus]

Firstly with PS, I'm sorting out ripping my PS discs at the minute and playing them on ePSXe on my Windows machine. I'm having the most success with ripping them as .bin files (not so much with .iso files, epsxe doesn't seem to like the ones I'm ripping using infrarecorder). Is .bin an acceptable file format for when I start playing PS games on the Pandora? Are there any better file formats for ripping that I should be looking at?

If memory serves, Tinnus said that .bin is fine (I've got all of mine in this format, as it's quite convenient to pop the CDs in and use cdrdao to create a BIN/TOC combo ).

QUOTE

Similar question for SNES games, I'm doing SNES emulation using zsnes at the minute which seems to create .srm and .smc files for save games and save states. Are these filetypes specific to zsnes or are these standard, in other words can I use them later on the Pandora? I've just started Yoshis Island in the hope of getting 100% (again) and want to continue my endeavour on the Pandora, I'll just wait for the Pandora to be released if I couldn't port my save game across to the Pandora later.


I don't know about the .srm thing, but you could perhaps try running the same game in Snes9x (the mobile branch of this, if memory serves, is what PandaSNES is based on), and see if it brings up your save files correctly.

 

[A_Llama]

The SRAM (.srm) files for SNES are compatible with any SNES emulators. That means you will be able to use your saves

However, if you make save states they will only be compatible with the emulator you made them with.

 

[Micket]

bin + cue is fine. In fact, I added support compressing CDDA-tracks into the bin-image plugin for pcsx-df (which i assume any playstation emulator for the Pandora will be based on).
Basically this means that for games that use actual CD-audio tracks the songs can be ripped and compressed as OGG Vorbis. Typically you'd get down a game like Wipeout from 600 MiB to 100 MiB. Of course, there will be an extra overhead from decompressing the audio, so i'm not sure if it's suitable for the Pandora.
The plugin is in the CVS for pcsx-df under binimage2.

 

[Prometheus]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall it being said that it's just bin, not bin/cue or bin/toc, right now, as cue and/or toc support isn't there in psx4pandora yet. Of course, I think that this was said some months ago - it may well have changed now.

 

[emcp]

i was just thinking about this today
thinking id need a 32gb card instead of 16gb, for psx

im most interested in homebrew but psx is second,

psp did it crap, with no dual sticks and the pandora is annoying me due to the R2+L2, luckily though, im also hoping to use the funtion keys for this sort of stuff

anyway 700mb for 1 game is quite large, so if we can get them to 100 whooo!

 

[Micket]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall it being said that it's just bin, not bin/cue or bin/toc, right now, as cue and/or toc support isn't there in psx4pandora yet. Of course, I think that this was said some months ago - it may well have changed now.

If it's psemu based (which I believe it is) then it should be rather easy to incorporate the code from binimage2, and have support for bin+cue directly. And compressed data as well.

emcp; this is only for games that makes use of CD tracks, such as Wipeout, Rayman, Motoracer, Darius Gaiden, most games don't use this.

 

[Alpha2]

700+mb per-game is not really going to be the norm though, not every PS1 game filled an entire CD, sure some were multiple disks but that's not the majority.

For the sake of ease I'd be happy just slapping and .ISO on my card.