[MacMan4000]

Is there a PS2 emulator for Mac?

If not, which Windows one is the best?

if they all suck then does anyone know where i can get a mod-chip to make my PS2 (slim) play copied game disks?

[OwlBoy]

1. No

2. They all suck (I assume)

3. Piracy.

-Owl

[MacMan4000]

1. crap

2. crap again (not surprised)

3. not piracy... innocent backups

[osxrules]

PCSX2 ( http://www.pcsx2.net/ ) will likely be the best but I don't think it hasn't been ported to the Mac yet. Someone recently ported PCSX1 though so maybe one day. I don't know why some developers automatically miss Mac out. Mac has a bigger market than Linux I'm sure. Anyway, it's on Windows.

I don't know about playing copied discs. I read there was a way to copy discs so that you wouldn't have to mod your PS2. I just use originals anyway. When I owned a chipped PS1, I used to rent games and copy them so I got the games for about £3. Nowadays with PS2 games on DVD it just isn't worth it to copy them since I can buy them second hand pretty cheap and I don't have to mess about buying DVDs. Concerning backups, I have bought games that have been used loads of times from the second hand store and I've never had a bad game. Oddly, PS2 games seem to be more resilient than DVD movies. I've had tons of bad DVD movies from the rental store. Maybe I was just luckier with the games.

As for emulators not being good, well that's true in a lot of cases but the ones that aren't good tend to die pretty quick. Older console emulators like SNES, gameboy even N64 work very well.

[OwlBoy]

Originally Posted by osxrules

PCSX2 ( http://www.pcsx2.net/ ) will likely be the best but I don't think it hasn't been ported to the Mac yet. Someone recently ported PCSX1 though so maybe one day. I don't know why some developers automatically miss Mac out. Mac has a bigger market than Linux I'm sure. Anyway, it's on Windows.

I don't know about playing copied discs. I read there was a way to copy discs so that you wouldn't have to mod your PS2. I just use originals anyway. When I owned a chipped PS1, I used to rent games and copy them so I got the games for about £3. Nowadays with PS2 games on DVD it just isn't worth it to copy them since I can buy them second hand pretty cheap and I don't have to mess about buying DVDs. Concerning backups, I have bought games that have been used loads of times from the second hand store and I've never had a bad game. Oddly, PS2 games seem to be more resilient than DVD movies. I've had tons of bad DVD movies from the rental store. Maybe I was just luckier with the games.

As for emulators not being good, well that's true in a lot of cases but the ones that aren't good tend to die pretty quick. Older console emulators like SNES, gameboy even N64 work very well.

It has a ton to do with the fact that what emulation does is emulate a Chip, the processor the system uses.

And when emulating a chip, you tell another chip how to cun that chip's instruction set.

So, you work hard making lots of calls to another specific processor to do it, and to do it fast.

This is why you see windows emulators with Linux ports, they both run on x86.

Soon Macs will run on x86 too, so you will see the emulator scene on the mac get a bit more colorful in terms of bleeding edge emulation at that point.

And to make a bet about that, I am betting that by the time the transistion from PPC to x86 is 'over' we will see XBox emulators on the PC (already some in early early stages) and thus we will see it hopefuly hop over to the x86 mac 'quickly'.

-Owl

[scauntay]

its been a while for this thread, and i did a search on google about it, but has anyone heard anything about the ps2 emulator?

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by osxrules

Older console emulators like SNES, gameboy even N64 work very well.

N64 emulator that works well?, which one?

[Ryknow215]

I would be interested in a PS1 mac emulator if anyone had one. I've yet to find a N64 emulator that works well. I've used SixtyForce and Mupen64 and both have been complete crap.

However, I have both a SNES and NES emulator along with plenty of games. The availability of games on the web is really good. In case anyone cares, here's what I have:

SNES:
Super Mario All Stars + Mario World
Zelda: Link to the past
Megaman X
Megaman X2
Ninja Turtles 4
Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters
Doom
Mario Kart

NES:
Super Mario Bros.

[Hal06]

Originally Posted by Ryknow215

I've yet to find a N64 emulator that works well.

Not a big surprise… currently, all Nintendo64 emulators are only fit to be called simulators.

The way the Nintendo 64 works, architecturally speaking, is that it has two R4000-based processors: The main CPU, and the RSP.

The RSP - Reality Signal Processor - is an interesting chip in that it is R4000-based, but has additional vector and matrix opcodes, and it also has split Instruction / Data areas, with 4K of instruction RAM and 4K of data RAM with which to store the microcode.
The microcode is loaded into the RSP from the cartridge upon bootup, but different microcode can be uploaded while the game itself is executing, though this is rare.
It is the RSP microcode's job to process task lists (consisting of displaylists for video and playlists for audio) that are handed to it by the main CPU, then parse them out into individual triangle-draw commands to be sent to the RDP (Reality Display Processor).

All playable N64 emulators do not bother with emulating the RSP. The emulator, on a per-game basis (as there were only between 10 and 20 different microcodes used across all games), simply intercepts calls to the microcode and simulates it directly via C or C++ code, rather than actually having an RSP emulation core executing the instructions of its microcode.

This has the advantage of being fast. It has the disadvantage of being a terrible hack, and results in numerous glitches and bugs, as it is effectively emulating the hardware on a per-game basis rather than providing a generic solution.

[scauntay]

so no dice on the ps2 emulator?

[sabrejim]

N64 emu's worked good enough years ago.

[scauntay]

ok, so the n64 emulators work well. but what about a ps2 one?

[manyyellowbirds]

I'm aware it's an old thread, but it's one of the top pages on google when you're searching for the emulator. There's a port of pcsx2, the instructions to set it up are at http://quant0r.com/trac/trac.cgi/wiki/runningPcsx2
If you aren't good at compiling, etc, there is a .pkg of most of the files, you still have to install xQuartz and NVidia CG Framework tho. The url for the .pkg is http://pcsx2-mac.quant0r.com/files/pcsx2.pkg
Good luck everyone!

[Big Mac]

I'm wondering why Sony decided it was proper to remove software PS2 emulation from newer PS3s.

[exca1ibur]

Because people were complaining about price and it was the way to do it at the time.

[Big Mac]

Software PS2 emulation? How does that cost Sony anything to continue including within its fixed PS3 console platform? I don't get it.

[exca1ibur]

The software has to be written = cost. It's more than just a tweak, as I've heard the graphic systems are night and day. The 40GB still had the PS2 graphic chip in it, just not the CPU, hence the 80% playback rate. Once that went away, there was no PS2 hardware at all, so a full PS2 emulator would have to to be written.

[P]

The PS2, like the N64 above, has two chips roughly corresponding to CPU and GPU. The "CPU" is called Emotion Engine (EE) and the "GPU" is called Graphics Synthesizer (GS). The first $600 PS3 included both EE and GS in hardware, and there was no emulation to speak of. The later version (the current 80 gig version, although it was indeed a 40 gig version first) has the GS in hardware and emulates the EE. The current 40 gig version has neither EE nor GS in hardware.

Sony hasn't figured out how to emulate the GS on the PS3 yet, and I suspect that it will be very hard to do so. To run PS2 games, it needs the GS in hardware. By not including the GS on the 40 gig models, Sony saves some money.

[platinumlolita]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

N64 emulator that works well?, which one?

u can try sixtyforce mac. works great.

[platinumlolita]

ummmm how about using crossover or crossover games to run the win version of the emulator on an x86 mac? any luck?

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by platinumlolita 

u can try sixtyforce mac. works great.

Oh, I thought the number of 'supported' games was really low and the N64 emulation was sort of abismal, no sound and stuff like that… Thanks anyway.

[P]

Originally Posted by platinumlolita 

ummmm how about using crossover or crossover games to run the win version of the emulator on an x86 mac? any luck?

No, but that is very unlikely. Crossover is designed to run only a limited subset of applications, and something like an emulator is very unlikely to run.

[carolina17]

Check
http://www.emuwiki.com/
http://emulation.macscene.net/

[TheoCryst]

I'm still hoping that someone will pick up development of PCSX for the Mac. I've got a stack of old PS1 games I never finished playing (mostly Final Fantasy games), but no PSX/PS2 to play them on.

[Chuckit]

You can get a PSone for like $20 on Amazon.