Ram upgrade for orig. Playstation?

[nathanallan]

Since there is a stack of PS1's here that nobody wants, I figure I can do some work on them. A friend of mine got an NES emulator working on it, also Genesis! Problem is there isn't enough ram in the console to make it do well; there's a lot of slowdown in some parts.

 

What I'd like to do is bump up the ram from 2mb to 4mb. Has this ever been attempted?? I know that the Commodore can be upgraded by piggybacking ram and "fixing" the timing.

 

Can this be done???

 

I do NOT want to run a PS2.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Since there is a stack of PS1's here that nobody wants, I figure I can do some work on them. A friend of mine got an NES emulator working on it, also Genesis! Problem is there isn't enough ram in the console to make it do well; there's a lot of slowdown in some parts.

 

What I'd like to do is bump up the ram from 2mb to 4mb. Has this ever been attempted?? I know that the Commodore can be upgraded by piggybacking ram and "fixing" the timing.

 

Can this be done???

 

I do NOT want to run a PS2.

 

Even if you were successful wouldn't anything you load (games/emulators etc) have to be coded to recognize or take advantage of that extra ram?

[nathanallan]

Thinking of this makes me think of when I was studying up on it for doing it to the Genesis-- there would have to be modes accessed. So OldSchool, you're right, the games wouldn't work with the extra ram, they wouldn't address it at all and most likely crash.

 

Modes would have to be implemented, and that means making the modes built in to the ROM on the console. Easier to do in a Genesis, much harder to work on a PS1.

 

Not that I'm not going to try, I still will and then go back to the Genesis and do it there, too. Maybe. I'm not much of a programmer, but I feel comfortable with the hardware aspect of things. Even been dabbling about with surface mount lately.

 

I'll have to think more on it, study the architecture and see what I can make of it. Definitely makes me want to re-visit the Genesis Project (KAAAAAAAAAAAHHHN!)

[gdement]

If the extra RAM actually caused a problem, you could just hook up a switch. It wouldn't have to be controlled by the BIOS, except that having it automated is more convenient.

 

I'm not sure how extra RAM would make it faster, but it would let you emulate bigger games. With 2MB available, I bet it's difficult to load games any bigger than 1MB alongside an emulator.

 

I'm surprised if the PS1 can emulate a Genesis full speed. Unless that CPU is faster than I realize.

[BigO]

If the RAM doesn't overlay addresses used for other purposes or somehow checked by BIOS or games, I don't see why it would cause a problem. My assumption was that the emulators would be coded to take advantage of the added RAM.

 

(Note: I know practically zero about the PS1's architecture.)

[nathanallan]

Well, my friend told me that the Gen roms were running well, but had a lot of slowdown. He just did this last night, and I don't have the disk just yet to try it all out. Nothing fancy done yet, just burned a disk as a test, but something works and I want to push it.

 

Great idea about the switch, that can definitely be used. And the emulator would be easier to work with since it would be on the disk not working with any ROM on the board, so it can be adjusted to deal with the amount of ram (hopefully, just diving in).

 

Having more ram apparently won't make it any faster (according to the articles I read) but will make running NES/Anything else's roms run better just to have the room to run. Okay, that's in theory.

 

Also wondering if I can match up a ram stick from a computer to the right "spots" on the board; it's been done with the Atari ST, I bet it can be done with the PS1. If that works, I wonder how it will work with a whopping 32MB installed >

[doubleminor]

Even if you were successful wouldn't anything you load (games/emulators etc) have to be coded to recognize or take advantage of that extra ram?

 

This.

 

Games have to be coded to take advantage of a ram upgrade.

 

A good example is the N64's ram expansion pack. Only a few games took full advantage of it; some weren't worth playing without it.

Edited December 18, 2009 by doubleminor

[nathanallan]

Right, the emulator can be re-written to address any extra ram, possibly. As gdement pointed out it can also be switched to the stock ram for playing regular PS1 games/standard disks.

 

I'm loving this.

[Bruce Tomlin]

I still don't see the point. It's the same problem as the Dreamcast, you still have to burn discs and wait for the emulator to load. If the point is to play them on a regular TV with real controllers, then a hacked Xbox with a large hard drive works best. (You can even upgrade its memory if you have surface mount soldering skills or know someone who does.)

[nathanallan]

The real point for me is to make use if these otherwise useless consoles I have, and to learn something in the process. I really like the hardware working, and my friend has the software skills. Yes, an XBox might be more fruitful, but that's been done before, and I like to experiment with older stuff. I have my roots in vintage computering so modding things is pretty darn appealing.

 

Also why the heck not? Nobody seems to want these things anyway. Might breathe new life into them. Since they're now vintage electronics (I never thought I'd think of these as any kind of vintage or classic) they are fair game!

 

Plus it's loads of fun to push things to and past their limits; make them do weird things. And I have like, five of them not counting the ones that don't work. Then there's always Linux, maybe, that's a pretty neat thing to do with older electronics.

 

But bottom line, fun to mess with them.

[BigO]

Maybe you can make a PS1 SuperCluster with enough horsepower to run a ROM resident 2600 emulator. Then hack up the hardware to make it read from a cartridge slot instead of a disk...

 

Seriously though, I can see the entertainment value in repurposing these things. Probably not much value other than entertainment value, but still a potentially engaging pursuit. More practical than some of the things I've burned lots of hours and money on in the name of keeping my mind occupied.

[Jess Ragan]

I don't think it's the RAM that's at fault, but rather the clock speed of the system coupled with the limited development tools available to hobbyists that results in sluggish performance. I've tried at least one homebrew emulator on the PSOne, and I wasn't really impressed with it. However, it's worth noting that licensees were able to do emulation pretty well on the Playstation, as long as they limited themselves to 8-bit machines.

 

I'm telling you what you don't want to hear, but you really are better off with a more powerful system if you want to emulate games. The Dreamcast gets a bronze medal for emulation, as it's capable of handling 16-bit quality games and even some Playstation titles in a pinch. The Xbox gets the silver medal, since it's three times more powerful and all the games can be stored on the hard drive. The PSP takes home the gold, since it's most convenient and the interface is more consistent and intuitive. All three systems can run homebrew without hardware modifications, although later models of the PSP are tougher to crack.

 

Systems that AREN'T good for homebrew emulation include the Playstation 2 (more trouble than it's worth considering the performance), Saturn (so very little software exists and performance is only marginally improved over the PSOne), Nintendo 64 (there's a kludge that lets you run NES games from a GameShark, but it's a legendary pain in the ass), and the GameCube (making the system take unlicensed discs is a Herculean effort). The Wii and DS perform reasonably well, but the DS is hindered by a slow processor and Wii emulators rarely take advantage of the 480p resolution that makes games look sharp.

[nathanallan]

Thanks for the input. I know it isn't the best, but to me it's like abandoned platforms that seem to have no hope and are kind of disposable. Yeah, I get to keep my mind occupied and stay busy with it, but I'll also learn something and be able to say I did this! (at least the hardware).

 

I can figure out how to do a mild overclock on this thing, and make things work on it. Yes, there are better choices for doing things with, but again, to me it's more than that, emulation is just there because it's convenient, I have lots of other things in mind for it. Emulating is just the tip of the iceberg for me, I see a decent little computer for all sorts of things.

 

And the ones that have no hope (dead drives, mainboards, killer errors) I can stuff a USB hub into and have a really cool to look at Media Bay for a DVD rom drive, harddrive inside, card reader and whatever else I can figure out how to fit inside that case.

 

But for now, I'd like to keep on trucking, with a proven how-to and do the cool stuff along the way.

 

Almost forgot, bragging rights