PCSX issue - android spec prob?

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Hello,

First of all, thank you - you guys are friggin ROCKSTARS. I know you’re busy, so if this is completely dense I apologize profusely in advance for wasting your time. I’m no lazy ignorant noob or anything- I’ve been a hardcore gamer for over 20 years, I’ve owned virtually every console within that time period (the only exceptions being the PSP and PS3), and I’m certainly no stranger to the emu craze; I have working emulators and ROMs on my PC (which was custom-built specifically for high-end gaming, so I havent had problems running programs due to inadequate system specs for a long time) for every system I’ve ever owned, aside from XBOX. But when it comes to smartphone gaming, I’m in the toddler phase, at best.

As for my android, I’d been using SNES Droid and Gameboid for about a year, but after losing these to a necessary hard-reset recently, I was thrilled to find RetroArch Android - the main reason being the PCSX core…which I would desperately love to utilize. My game ROMs are in CUE, which the manual states are playable files, and I have every BIOS .bin file I could find for this core. I’ve tried playing the ROMs from their own path file, and using every variation of ROM + BIOS .bin folders, in various locations on my SD card. I’ve been scouring the web looking for posts/articles concerning this issue, but no one else seems to be having any problems with this, which leads me to believe I’m probably a complete idiot. Feel free to call me out on this.

I’ve been able to run most of the NES, SNES, and GBA ROMs I’ve tried, but I do get black screens for some games. When I try to use the PCSX it says its loading but goes right back to the core list. I have of course gone through the manuals, so I know the recommended system requirement is to have an ARM Cortex A9 dual-core CPU, or A8 single in some cases, which I am apparently lacking. Considering the core itself is called “reARMed”, this is no doubt an absolute necessity, but again I know jack sh*t about android devices. I’ve had my droid for a year and a half so I’m assuming its “outdated” by now, but before I hang my head in defeat, my question is this:

Is there anything I can do to make this run -or to use ANY PSX emu- on my current droid, or am I just S.O.L until I upgrade? My phone specs are:

OS: Android OS, v 2.3.4
Chipset: Qualcomm MSM7630 Snapdragon CPU: 800 MHz Scorpion GPU: Adreno 205

Thanks again for all your hard work - for this exceptional contribution to the gaming world…and for suffering this old fool.

Cheers.

#2

PCSX ReARMed is probably not starting due to mmap issues.

Can you give me a log of when you try to load a game with the PS1 core? (adb logcat or something else)

And ye, your phone is on the slow side - SNES9x Next will not be fast enough on it at least. You might have better luck with some of the less demanding cores - PS1 emulation actually would run better on your phone than the SNES emu.

#3

Wow, thanks for the fast reply!

Strangely the SNES9x Next is working flawlessly. I’ve been playing Super Mario RPG and Tales of Phantasia and they’re perfect. In fact, that’s the only core I havent had any problems with at all. Weird.

I sent you a PM link to my log.

This log should have several different attempts to use the PSCX core - trying to run ROMs without BIOS, and trying with various BIOS in ROM folder combinations. I hoped that might help pinpoint the issue, or at least give us some idea of how I should run it, if its possible at all.

Let me know if you need me to change the syntax or anything (obviously I dont know much about this stuff), or anything else I can do to help! Duh.

Thanks again!!!