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PlayStation Architecture

copetti.org

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Re: PlayStation Architecture

#21

Post by stuxnet79 »

thenthenthen wrote: post #18
Scroll_Swe wrote: post #10

These articles are always excellent. PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.

It is quite amazing to me to see the specs and what developers managed to squeeze out of that!

Yes an entire generation of games running on a mere 2MB of RAM and 1MB of VRAM.

The crazy thing too was how much a step up PS2 was compared to PS1 in terms of available compute and sheer horsepower. But even that wasn't enough for a sandbox game like GTA 3 to run without a lot of clever tricks [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/cIbCxbrBCys?si=cLMr4-7ubGD4fNWi

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#22

Post by kthartic »

MrDOS wrote: post #14
kthartic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? That was 5-7 years ago. I haven't seen this before, so I appreciate it being posted :)

Yep! Just that the post title should have a (2019) in it. Or maybe (2021) or (2025), given the most recent revision dates.

Fair enough!

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#23

Post by patmorgan23 »

Narishma wrote: post #13
Scroll_Swe wrote: post #10

These articles are always excellent. PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.

They hold up pretty well when you play them as they were originally supposed to: on a CRT if you can or using emulators' CRT filters if you can't. Trying to play them at very high resolutions on crisp LCD displays is the worst way to go IMO.

Yeah, any 8/16-bit pixel are t wasn't made to be viewed on a screen with that high a resolution. CRTs smoosh/blur the image a bit so you don't see all the hardlines.

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#24

Post by giancarlostoro »

kthartic wrote: post #12
MrDOS wrote: post #6

This is great, but it was originally published in 2019. See the past discussions in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22932134 (114 comments) and 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576902 (114 comments also).

So? That was 5-7 years ago. I haven't seen this before, so I appreciate it being posted :)

Not only that, for a device from 1995... It's still amazing to learn about this, its not as if most people will read this once, and remember everything on the page in one go.

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#25

Post by Dwedit »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #17
Scroll_Swe wrote: post #10

These articles are always excellent. PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.

> PS1 games do not hold up so good Eeh ... speak for yourself. PS1 did mark the dawn of the 3D era for home consoles. There are lots of people who are into the low poly 3D models with the characteristic PS1 "wobble". Sure a lot of it may be nostalgia but it does have its charm and I can say it's grown a lot on me over time. Especially once I learned about the PS1's unique hardware limitations. If my social media feed…

I had the N64. It did not wobble. Seeing a Playstation in action with its wobble was so weird.

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#26

Post by matheusmoreira »

a-french-anon wrote: post #16
Scroll_Swe wrote: post #10

These articles are always excellent. PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.

The 2D ones (e.g. Symphony of the Night) do.

Love the 2D games of the PS1 era. I still replay Mega Man X4/5/6 every once in a while.

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#27

Post by malkia »

There are memory regions that are mapped to the same physical memory - https://psx-spx.consoledev.net/memorymap/

I worked on the Metal Gear Solid port from PSX to PC, and Konami programmers chose a wild trick to store how the "C4" bomb was planted - either on the wall, or on the ground.

Essentially the pointer pointed to the same physical memory address, but if it was planted on the wall (or on the ground, I forgot) - then it was OR-ing it with 80000000h or was A0000000h - or maybe something else - lol was long time ago.

It was fun porting this on PC, and right now I don't even remember what I did exactly - hahaha

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#28

Post by rideontime »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #3

Love Copetti. Even as someone who is not particularly knowledgeable of everything he’s talking about, I I really enjoy thumbing through his writing and diagrams. There’s just something really fun about trying to understand what is going on under the hood with these machines, especially fifth and sixth generation consoles

Copetti enjoyers should also checkout everything Fabien Sanglard has done, including the Wolfenstein and Doom Black Books, the Another World port analyses, and the other dozens of code reviews he's posted. https://fabiensanglard.net/

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#29

Post by boricj »

malkia wrote: post #27

There are memory regions that are mapped to the same physical memory - https://psx-spx.consoledev.net/memorymap/ I worked on the Metal Gear Solid port from PSX to PC, and Konami programmers chose a wild trick to store how the "C4" bomb was planted - either on the wall, or on the ground. Essentially the pointer pointed to the same physical memory address, but if it was planted on the wall (or on the ground, I forgot)…

Usually, that kind of stunt nowadays is done by using the lowest significant bits and masking them off when dereferencing the pointer, trading off for a higher alignment (so 4 bits gives you 16-byte alignment).

The PS1 also happens to have RAM aliasing, because there's not enough RAM to cover the entire decoding window for the RAM. I don't know the details, but I've seen PS1 executables setting their stack pointer to the end of the devkit's 8 MiB of RAM and yet they work on retail units, because it ends up at the end of the retail's 2 MiB of RAM. So theoretically, you could stuff bits in there too (and without messing with different memory regions with different cache behaviors).

Re: PlayStation Architecture

#30

Post by boricj »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #10

These articles are always excellent. PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.

Graphically, either play on a CRT (or with CRT filters) or use an emulator that has PGXP geometry correction to eliminate vertex jittering at higher rendering resolutions.

As for gameplay, that console has a massive library, with thousands of commercially released games (and a lot of hidden gems). I'd be surprised if any gamer wouldn't find at least one to their taste in that catalog.

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