[onewolf]

greetings.

i was wondering, why is it, exactly, so difficult to emulate ps2 bios/operation? the hardware is certainly far simpler than pc hardware, and i can't imagine wherein lies the complexity.

understand, i FULLY appreciate that it IS, indeed, a very difficult aspiration, but i was wondering....why?

if you find this post in anyway inappropriate, insulting, or redundant, please inform me and i will delete the thread, the post, and myself. thats right. i'm talkin self-deletion.

thanks for your patience, and for your hard work.

-The Wolf

 

[onewolf]

thank you all very much for spending the time to answer my apparently already answered question. i am pleased that self-deletion seems unnecessary.

chaoscode- i apologize for possessing insuffecient search skills, but i was unable to figure out which phrases to use to bring up this info.

thanks twave for the simplified explanation, and thanks especially to refraction for the detailed one, and thanks celine for the articles. type r stickers really do make your car go faster. i swear it.

simply adding celines links to the faq would stop more repeat askers. assuming of course that the asker actually read the faq before asking. which i kno is absurd. but i looked there.

this does, naturally, give rise to a few other questions in terms of comparison.

1. when looking at the comparitive architecture of pc vs. ps2, one wonders why the pc model is prevalent or preferred. my guess would be that the ps2 architecture is more specialized, and that if pcs were designed similarly that they would be less capable of dealing with applications that require a higher data locality of reference (static applications). if this is so, i wonder if there are projects to somehow incorporate the two architectures to provide the needed umph for media apps, especially considering the tremendous marketshare surrounding video games as a whole. like adding SIMD processing to pcs.

2. although there is currently a push towards providing larger pipes in all sectors of data transfer in the pc (like 24 pipe video cards, and 2ghz FSB), how does a modern, high powered pc compare to the 10 channel dmac?

3. i read about how the ps2 offers smaller caches in more locations on the board than the pc does, but how does that differ from the pc model where there is ram on each card? are not the cards simply taking the place of things like the graphics synth and audio synth on the ps2? is simply the pipelines that make the data transfer more efficient on the ps2? how is caching on the ps2 different from the RAM caching on a pc?

there are more comin, but my brain is sleepy. i don't really kno much about technology to begin with, but i'm tryin. if my curiousity becomes a burden, just remember kids: self-deletion is always an option!

thanks in advance, and in retro....or whatever. i'm losin it.

 

[onewolf]

thanks again for your assistance, i haven't checked out the links yet, but i plan to.

On a humorous side note.....
After reading refraction's answer...we imagined a n00b's head expoding from the sheer amount of intellect being thrown there. If ever there was a way to curb a newcomers thinking of how easy PS2 emulation should be...then that was it.

i am a "n00b" for sure, and it is to his credit that was capable of absorbing at least the basics. i have always found that complexity is often manufactured by a human failure of expression, and it is a sign of knowledge when one conveys comlpex meaning to those of us (me) who kno little of a difficult issue.

fascinating how the market has both led to these gigantic technological advances, and at the same time has limited it. of course that explains why a more efficient architecture makes its debut in a game console, since the hardware developer is also the software developer (more or less). marketshare poses no threat, as long as people like your games. sort of ironic. one wonders if the rapidly rising numer of consumers demanding advanced platforms for gaming (and for the despecialization of gaming consoles as a perk) will guide computing into its next evolution.

i came here wondering why ps2 emu was hard, and now i'm thinking about specialized processing and high bandwidth pipes and computer architecture. god bless the internet.