iOS - Running PCSX ReARMed Core Sends Me To Homescreen

RetroArch Apple devices
#1

Hello guys,

I’ve recently discovered about RetroArch after a YouTube adventure I had trying to find the best version of psx4all for my iDevice. I thought this was a cool idea, and people were reporting better speeds than psx4all, so of course I immediately downloaded it. After obtaining my BIOS files and making sure folder ownership was mobile/mobile. I tried running a game : Digimon World 3.

I tried running it first with the ReARMed core, as that was the first on the list. Crashed to homescreen. I assumed that I picked the wrong core and tried the Mednafen core; it tells me it failed to load the game.

Is this a specific problem with this game? I’ll be downloading another game tonight while I sleep to try, but just to save some time, I thought I’d just post this up first.

Oh, I am on an iPhone 4 on iOS 6.0.1 Jailbroken.

Many thanks in advance!

#2

Is your game in cue+bin format?

#3

Yes, they are.

#4

I have tried another game, Suikoden II, and it still gives me the same result.

Any info would be appreciated.

#5

do you have the correct psx BIOS files required by the core?

I’m not sure about IOS but in android case matters, I think the names have to be lowercase

#6

They are all lowercase…just to be sure, these are the bios files I have: scph1001.bin scph5500.bin scph5502.bin scph7502.bin

#7

Okay after poking around the settings for PCSX ReARMed, I found a page where it listed the BIOS files I had, and the alternate BIOS files I could have. It listed that I had scph1001. But there were two alternates in red which were : scph5501 and scph7001. I could not find 5501 (it does not exist on the net apparently), but I did find 7001. I tried running the games now…but it still crashes. The strange part is, though, the Mednafen core works now. However it’s waaay too slow to play.

Any guidance would be appreciated…

#8

Of course the Mednafen PSX core works and of course it’s slow - it is using an interpreter CPU core instead of the recompiler CPU core that PCSX ReARMed uses.

Which is the entire problem with iOS - Apple normally disallows recompiler code techniques on non-jailbroken devices. This means that even if it were possible to download N64/PS1 emus off the App Store, it would probably be too slow on anything but MAYBE an iPad Air - and even that is a big question mark. The reason for that is that such N64/PS1 emus would HAVE to use an interpreter CPU core instead of a recompiler CPU core - and that will make things at the very least 2 to 4x slower - perhaps even more.

A jailbroken iPad normally gets around these restrictions and allows you to run cores that use recompiler techniques - unfortunately some devices seem to have problems executing this kind of code - like yours it seems. There have been reports of other people who have not been able to get it to work as well - most of the time it involved an older iOS version (ie. older than 6.1.2) and it was using a jailbreak other than evasi0n (the 6.1.2 jailbreak). On both of my evasi0n jailbroken iPads (iPad 2 and Mini), PCSX ReARMed runs just fine.

Bottom line - we have never been able to solve this problem because the only people who ever get this bug are endusers and none of them are willing to donate a device that is still on an older iOS version - so it’s a Catch 22 - we can’t fix it and we can’t test it either and try to fix it hands-on.

#9

I was aware of Mednafen being slow. What I found strange was that both cores did not work in the beginning when I had scph1001/5500/5502/7502. Only when I downloaded 7001 did Mednafen started working…so I thought perhaps it was a BIOS problem.

Thank you for the reply! Ahh…so it’s a problem with my iOS version, huh? Would updating to a higher version (maybe something after 6.1.2) help then?

#10

No, of course not - if you lose the jailbreak you will lose any and all ability to run recompiler cores since Apple won’t let you. So you can say goodbye to PCSX ReARMed ever running then.

That is what sucks about Windows and iOS phones/tablets compared to Android ones - dynarecs/recompilers are not allowed by default. And without a recompiler, emulators for N64 and PS1 (and later) will be disastrously slow.

#11

!!!

I got it working! It’s thanks to you for pointing me in the right direction! I asked on another forum the best way to upgrade my iOS version while preserving my jailbreak. And their suggestion helped.

Apparently I am a moron; I should have mentioned that I was on a 6.0.1 TETHERED jailbreak. The guy on the other forum suggested I just download the evasi0n unthetered 6.x.x off Cydia. I downloaded it, rebooted and voila running PSX games much faster than on psx4all.

Again, thank you for working on such a great project as libretro (for free, no less) and providing support as much as possible!

Have a good day!