PS3Roar Dragon 32 / 64 PC XRoar Emulator PS3 Port Announced

[PS3 News]

Today PlayStation 3 developer CrashSerious has announced news of an incoming PS3 homebrew port of the Dragon 32 / 64 PC XRoar emulator now dubbed PS3Roar.

Download: PS3Roar Dragon 32 / 64 PC XRoar Emulator PS3 Port WIP / PS3Roar BiOS Files / http://git.dashhacks.com/ps3roar

To quote: PS3roar is a port of xroar for X windows, as well as; the Nintendo DS, GPX32, PSP and AMIGA OS4. PS3roar is a Dragon 32 and 64 Computer emulator that runs on a wide variety of platforms, now including the PS3. Due to hardware similarities, PS3roar also emulates the Tandy Colour Computer (CoCo) models 1 & 2.

The PS3 port and modifications completed by CrashSerious (me). The PS3 port uses PSL1GHTv2, a free and Open Source SDK for the PS3.

PS3roar is a Dragon/Tandy Coco emulator, is a port of xRoar by Ciaran Anscomb. xRoar is Copyright (C) 2003-2010 Ciaran Anscomb (xroar -aT- 6809.org.uk)

From the ReadMe file:

Emulated machines

• Dragon 32 (PAL).
• Dragon 64 (PAL).
• Tano Dragon (NTSC).
• Tandy Colour Computer (1 and 2) (PAL).
• Tandy Color Computer (1 and 2) (NTSC).

Current status:

• 6809 emulation
• Video display (at original pixel size) on a 480p display w/ background
• Keyboard emulation with PSL1GHT_SDL that has a keyboard Driver (https://github.com/CrashSerious/SDL_PSL1GHT)
• Cart loading from /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/ROMS/ (CTRL-I)
• Cassette loading from /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/CASSETTES/ (CTRL-L)
• Cassette Saves from /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/CASSETTES/ (CTRL-W)
• New Cassette creation (currently only one filename is used, a input mechanism is needed)
• Disk loading from /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/DISKS/ (CTRL 1-4)
• Disk Saving from /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/DISKS/ (No Key, automatically writable)
• New DISK (.dsk) creation (currently only one filename is used, a input mechanism is needed)
• Snapshot loading from /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/SNAPSHOTS/ (CTRL+S)
• Snapshot saving to /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/SNAPSHOTS/
• Emulation Soft Reset (CTRL-R)
• Emulation Hard Reset (SHIFT-CTRL-R)
• Exit (CTRL-C)
• Trace mode (with DEX or Ethboot payload)
• Fixed emulator in all resolutions supported by the PS3. 480p, 720p, 1080p, etc
• Switching to and from full screen mode enabled, set full screen to default.

Known issues:

• Sound (Sound is there, but not 100% correct)

Keyboard commands: PS3roar's user interface is based around SDL. The emulator video output window is shown, and all operations are performed with keyboard combinations, usually accessed as Control+KEY. The following are the keyboard combinations for the functions listed:

Loading Files:

• Control+I Insert a ROM cartridge.
• Control+Shift+I Insert a ROM cartridge, no autorun.
• Control+L Load a cassette file.
• Control+Shift+L Load a cassette file and attempt to autorun it where appropriate.
• Control+W Attach a virtual cassette file for writing.
• Control+[1-4] Insert a virtual disk into drive 1-4.
• Control+Shift+[1-4] Insert a blank virtual disk (40TSS) into drive 1-4.
• Control+[5-8] Toggle write enable on disk in drive 1-4.
• Control+Shift+[5-8] Toggle write back on disk in drive 1-4.
• Control+S Save a snapshot.
• Control+Shift+S Load a snapshot.

System Control Keys:

• Control+R Soft reset emulated machine.
• Control+Shift+R Hard reset emulated machine.
• Control+C Quit emulator (Power Off).

Emulation Configuration Keys:

• Control+K Toggle between Dragon and CoCo keyboard layout. See Keyboard.
• Control+A Cycle through cross-colour video modes (hi-res only).
• Control+M Cycle through emulated machine types (resets machine).
• Control+E Toggle DOS emulation on/off - reset to take effect.
• Control+J Cycle through joystick emulation modes (None, Left, Right).
• Control+Shift+J Swap joystick mapping (left/right).
• Control+Z Enable keyboard translation mode.
• Control+F Switch from and back to Full screen mode.
• F12 While held, the emulator will run at the maximum possible speed.
• Control+U Create and copy from folders on USB for ROMS, CAS, DSK, BIOS, etc.

ROMS information: The emulator is distributed with some software for the Color Computer II, it is distributed with: Dungeons of Daggorath, per the license below: http://iloveglory.freehostia.com/daggorath/license.html

To find other ROMS, and to find BIOS files; search google for the phrase, they are REQUIRED to get the emulator working: "color computer" roms

PS3Roar creates a folder structure on a USB drive that does not already contain a "PS3Roar" directory, the structure is:

• BIOS
• CASSETTES
• DISKS

images

• ROMS
• SNAPSHOTS

These folders correspond to the folders in the installed PS3roar directory on the HDD. Placing fikles on the USB Stick, then anagin inserting into the PS3 and pressing CONTROL+U once more will copy the files to the PS3. Once copied, the USB stick can be removed. Note: files are NEVER loaded from USB, they must be on the internal HDD in the proper location. The CONTROL+U functionality makes this easy and removes the need to FTP files to the PS3.

Notes:

• You will need to unzip the rom files. They need to be .rom files, the emulator doesn't deal with .zips
• You will need to get your own roms and (for now) place them in /dev_hdd0/game/PS3Roar00/USRDIR/ROMS/ to get the emulator "operational"
• Heavy reorganization was done to the original source code to accomodate easy PS3 compilation and creation of a PS3 the original source code is in a .tar.gz in the original source code of this repository.
• The original readme has been left intact, and is named README.xroar
• Docs for the original can be found at http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/xroar-manual.shtml
• (Xroar functions that are not to be implemented)
• Control+F
• Toggle full screen mode.
• Control+T - Open the tape control window (certain user interfaces only). See Tape control.
• Control+Shift+P - Flush printer output. See Printing.

More PlayStation 3 News...

[misiozol]

As for me i don't see games from C64 on 42 or 50 inch telly with out any proper upscaler, on psp they looking like crap imagine on big screen , but at least someone is doing something good job.

[Maihkyz]

Interesting.

[Txuki2005]

yeah interesting... but it seems complicated to use it.

[sharp30]

whatever happened to the dreamcast emulator for ps3 is it still in development ? does anyone know ? I love all these emulators keep up the great work guys.

[PS3 News]

I have now updated the first post with the initial PS3Roar Dragon 32 / 64 PC XRoar Emulator PS3 Port WIP and GIT for those interested.

Also the required BiOS files are available linked below:

• CoCo BiOS
• CoCo2 BiOS
• Dragon32 BiOS
• Dragon64 BiOS
• PS3Roar BiOS Files

To quote from CrashSerious: jailbreakscene.com/main/2011/08/ps3roar-released-by-crashserious/

When you install this, you will get a orange and black checker board pattern on the screen. This is because teh BIOS for the system you want to emulate isn’t in the pkg.

You can insert a USB Pen drive into the PS3 and press Control+U and the needed folder structure will be created for you on the Pen drive.

Place the BIOS files in the /PS3Roar/BIOS folder and you will then insert it back into the PS3 and press Control+U again to copy the files to the PS3.

Exit the emulator and reload it and you should be in business. Because of the original license I could not distribute the BIOS roms with the pkg. (Sorry) No doubt some person will create easy to use zip/rar’s to extract to the root of the pen drive to help make this much easier for you.