Slashdot Mirror
Software and Cables for PS1 'Yaroze' System?
Huxley_Dunsany asks: "Yesterday, while attending the (super-duper cool and fun) Classic Game Expo here in Las Vegas, I was lucky enough to trade some old game stuff (Intelivision II, ZX-Spectrum, some Neo-Geo Pocket games) for a really neato black Sony Playstation 'Net Yaroze' edition. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, back in '97, Sony came out with a (very) limited edition of the plain old Playstation. Back in the day, the 'Yaroze' PSX ('Yaroze' supposedly means 'Lets do it together') came with some special cables and software for PC/Mac, and, given enough time and effort and programming talent, you too could create your own Playstation games! Unfortunately, the Yaroze I got yesterday came with nothing but the main CPU - no software, and none of the special PSX-to-PC/Mac serial cables. This morning, I hooked it up and hit the power button, and it fired right up with no problems! So, I'm just wondering if any of you have ever used this seemingly rare dev system, and if you could pass along any good ideas or advice. It seems that Sony has long since discontinued this program (and then recently started it again with the PS2 Linux kit), so I'm not sure where to turn for help if I actually wanted to use this thing to make some games, let alone finding/creating the cables and software."
A quick google search turns up all sorts of stuff:
U TF -8&q=Yaroze
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
If you read this page, you might find some interesting info:
Ms Ewen said Sony hoped to recreate the strong community that sprung up when the company released Net Yaroze six years ago.
Net Yaroze was a specialised version of the original PlayStation that allowed amateur programming.
The Net Yaroze software ran on a standard PC where the programmer would compile the code and a serial cable connected the PC to the Net Yaroze console.
"It was more limited because it did not access all the capabilities of the machine and there were non-disclosure agreements involved," she said.
There were 6000 Net Yaroze consoles sold across the PAL territories, mainly in the UK and Australia." Sony had developed the Linux Kit for PS2 in response to demand in Japan. The company sold 7000 beta copies in Japan last year but the full version was only released there in late April. "
Since most of the Net Yaroze consoles sold across the PAL territories, mainly in the UK and Australia, you might wanna look for websites in these countries...
Also check out the forums on this website
-- Sig
REJECTED STORY:
Making real money from virtually nothing on Online games
BBC has an interesting article about people making a real living buying and selling goods which only exist in the virtual world of an online fantasy game. A player says that he will declare to the US Internal Revenue Service in April 2004 that his main source of income is the sale of imaginary goods.
In Soviet Russia, your Playstation programs you!
Look for schematics on the internet so that you can build your own cable. But if you're not able to find any info, you can play Japanese/American/European games WITHOUT a mod chip on the Net Yaroze, so you can use it for that instead of having it sit around as a collector's item. ;)
I found a schematic here. You'll have to make a PCB and gather a few simple components, then you'll be able to use any standard null modem cable. I just searched google for "playstation serial cable schematic" and it was like the 15th site listed.
Unfortunately you'll need more than just the cable to get a Yaroze going the way it was originally designed to be used.
:)
:)
It used special libraries and loader software to actually upload your code and run it. Everything official was DOS based, though I had it going under FreeBSD with the help of some Japanese hackers, and the official cable was RS232 (mine didn't work the last time I tried it and isn't much use to me on my PowerBook
The loader disk went in the PS itself, of course, and spoke to the serial cable. So you'll need an original one these discs unless you want to mod chip the Yaroze machine (desecration!) which will be hard to come by. Otherwise, as someone else noted, it's a legitimate multi-region PS1 in its current state. And it's black.
You could get in touch with this guy. Some of the screens look pretty good for a hobbyist's efforts at PS1. Also he's a old school C64 geek so he's gotta be ok.
Sorry, but "...nothing but the main CPU..." means you only got the processor. I think you meant that you only got the console, or the system unit.
A CPU (reasonable definition) in a desktop computer would be the Pentium/SPARC/PowerPC etc. -- CPU does not refer to the whole system box (which along with the CPU usualy has a HD, CD/DVD, power supply, motherboard, memory etc.). Similarly with consoles: the CPU is the processor and the console usually also houses a power supply, memory, I/O circuitry, graphics processor(s) etc.
Sorry for the pedantry, but I expect a little more from the /. crowd.
"The noble art of losing face will one day save the human race"---Hans Blix
The yaroze is annoying as hell to develop on. What you want is a modded psx with AR/Comms link. Check out hitmen-console.org. So much good stuff from the psx demo scene. http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=18&produ cts_id=234& . I got one sitting in my basement, but you can probably find one elsewhere. You also need some development libs. Sony made ones called PsyQ and yaroze, but you need a license to use them. There are some free libs that aren't too bad. You should really just move on to xbox dev.
Metrowerks CodeWarrior used to support the Yaroze. I can't find any current support for it (but they do support the PS2)
You might be able to find an older version of CodeWarrior for Playstation floating around somewhere like ebay...
I bugged my parents for one of these back in high school, and I spent just about all my time on it. It was a great way to learn about 3D programming back then, with a standardized graphics library that was actually used to make lots of games.
For my senior calc class, my final project was a demonstration of spherical mapping. I brought the Yaroze, my laptop, and borrowed a TV from the AV room. I was actually kind of a "jock" in high school (captain of the track team), so this bizzare demonstration really confused everyone. I remember the girl I had a crush on was walking through the hall and saw me as I was explaining surface normals. She didn't seem too interested in me after that.
True story:
For some reason SGI donated an O2 to our student group, and we were supposed to have a demonstration program running (apparently we convinced them it was good PR) at this big conference in LA. I was never able to get anything running on the O2 - this was before I knew how to use GLUT/OpenGL - so a couple of weeks before the conference I did the whole thing on the Yaroze.
The funny part was, SGI was displaying all of these REALLY NICE posters advertising the event that was supposed to showcase SGI technology (I hung one up in my dorm, I remember), but the whole thing was running off the Yaroze. I had it hidden under the table. Fun times. To test the display before the event I popped in a few PlayStation imports. People thought that Tobal 2 and Einhander were running on SGI hardware!
It was really fun to learn, but once college started getting tough, I used it less and less. The last game that I was working on was a 3D puzzle/racing game, but I since moved development to the PC, as it was becoming easier and easier to do 3D things on your average PC.
I've got all my Yaroze cables and software. And I still have the original laptop that I did the development on. It'll probably be fun to go back in a few years and load up those programs, but for now, it's too recent to be retro, and too retro to be useful.
for great justice, this sig has been moved
(Anonymous Cow posting AC since I'm too lazy to log in on anybody else's computer and I'm too broke to afford my own connection and I'm a bit embarrased by some of the crap I posted when I was young(er) and stupid(er ;) . )
;)
One of my roommates and I tried this my freshman year at UIUC. We actually took an original PS1, modded it, and made the cable (google for the specs). Since I was a CompE student, we even got the University to mill the PCB for us
But it sucked. Specifically, the devkit sucked ass and the transfer speeds were abysmally slow. I ended up getting a generic gameshark and this funky old ISA card that'd connect a PC to it (originally used for up/downloading cheats, but you could reflash the gameshark so that it'd also upload programs to the PS). Worked *MUCH* better. I never really did get the time to write anything interesting for it (which was what I wanted from the beginning), but it's THE way to go if you're gonna program the PS1.
It's been ~4 years since then and I'm too stressed about finding a job to remember anything at the moment, but google around for "playstation demo scene" or the like and you'll find plenty of interesting info, specs, demos, etc.
There used to be a program that converted Yaroze executables into regular PSX executables. But one thing I wondered about is what about emulating a Yaroze system on one of the free Playstation emulators. It certainly wouldn't be hard, you'd need the bios dump and change the code in the emulator to allow for more ram.
Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins, Grumpy Watkins,
Ruby Sleeps