I can't find Beetle PSX in my cores list--help!

Libretro Lakka
#1

I installed Lakka 2.1 on an old Acer Aspire Revo 3700 a few weeks ago. It’s been fantastic: snappier and far more responsive than my modern gaming PC, and with a lot of Googling and experimenting, I’ve got my collection on there, properly configured, automatically loading up the shader I want, etc.

However, I’m running into a snag trying to run PSX games. I’ve got all the BIOS files, I’ve got my games in the .cue/.bin format, but the only Playstation-related cores in my list are PCSX-ReARMed and Beetle PSX HW. Neither work satisfactorily, and everything I’ve read says I need to be using Beetle PSX–but it’s missing from the list, whether I’m trying to Load Core or run the .cue file via Load Content. Any advice?

#2

Beetle PSX and Beetle PSX HW are exactly the same core, just the HW one includes the hardware renderer. However, you can go into the core options and set the renderer to ‘software’ and it becomes identical to the non-HW version.

However, you can’t do that without loading a game first, so that’s not going to help much with your current problem.

We can’t really tell what’s going on without a log, but I can tell you ~85+% of “games don’t load” issues are related to BIOS. Load the core (but don’t try to load any content yet) and then go to information > core information and it will list the BIOS files you need, whether it’s finding them or not and what checksums they should have.

#3

Thank you for the swift reply! The piece of information that I was missing was that Beetle PSX’ software core is accessible through the HW core.

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So, I’ve got games running through the software core now. I had tried running them through HW and Rearmed previously, but performance and accuracy were both lacking. Now it’s only performance that’s lacking.

I suspect that it comes down to my hardware not having enough juice: I’d thought that its 1.8GHz dual core Intel Atom, 512MB Nvidia Ion LE, and 2GB of RAM would do the trick, and I ran PSX games for years through Windows back when this PC was still in service, but everything I try to run goes at like ~25-55fps.

If you’ve got any suggestions on what I can alter from default to increase performance, I’m open.

#4

Ah, yeah, not gonna happen on an Atom currently. Beetle-PSX doesn’t have a CPU dynarec, so that’s the biggest performance bottleneck and requires a core2duo or better, typically at 2+ ghz.

#5

Good to know. Would it be reasonable to expect x86/x64-based dynarec to be supported within the next year or two, or should I go ahead and start looking for another hardware solution? Everything else runs like an absolute dream.

Actually, I decided to go ahead and test the Mupen 64 core before I posted since it’s got a dynamic recompiler. Super Mario 64 drops from full speed whenever there’s 3D graphics displayed, so I think I do need to upgrade to a new hardware paradigm for this if I want to break the polygon barrier.

#6

Hi guys, OK although I am not a noob by any technical sense I am noob on this forum.

I’ve jail broken my PS3 today and have got Retroarch running on it nicely with SNES games.

I’m looking for the correct ‘BEETLE PSX’ installer and where to find it and how to go about installing it.

I’ve updated core info and nothing for this core appears and yes, the Retroarch is the current one.

I’ve tried downloading these files on Libreto but don’t think they’re the right ones. https://xbins.org/libretro/stable/1.7.3/playstation/ps3/

Does anyone know where there is a simple guide to follow, and how to get the games working once its on the machine, thanks.

#7

I don’t think the PS3 CPU is fast enough for beetle-psx, unfortunately. In fact, I don’t think we have a PS1 emu that works on it, as pcsx-rearmed’s stuff is all geared toward ARM/NEON.