Yabasic Buffering

[ninogenio]

i would imagine it would run at the same speed but maybe not.

a yabasic written for the ps3 on the other hand could have some potential. i think one big draw back with the ps2 was that it couldnt handle doubles so each double had to go through a table and be converted to a float making it really slow that might be incorrect though.

then having the cell chips and uprated gfx, who knows we could have possible been writting ps1 qulity stuff

[Jim]

I've not tried it, but I expect it to be the same performance.

You're right about 'double' there nino, the PS2 didn't have a double precision FPU, and yabasic uses double exclusively, so it had to use an emulation library.

There'd be no problem for me at all to port ps2yabasic to run under the PS3 Linux though.  Right now there's no legitimate access to the 3d hardware, and no access at all with the latest firmware, so it'd have to be software rendered.  PS3 FPU (Cell) has double precision built in though

Jim

[Xone]

Would Sony not offer support for the dev' of a hardware version ?

I'd buy a ps3 just for a hardware driven yabasic.

[Jim]

There's no need for a PS3 hack, because of the OtherOS option which lets you install other OSs on the machine.  Linux can be installed, but there's already standalone programs which can boot up as if they were the OS.  Just right now the difficulty is getting 3d acceleration.  I don't see how it's necessary to be able to run homebrew from the XMB interface.

Sony aren't interested in yabasic any more.  It was a tax dodge that worked for a short time in the UK/EU.  With Linux on there you can run whatever you want and Sony wouldn't care.

Jim

[ninogenio]

so if your yabasic was ported to the ps3 linux using software rendered triangles and full double precision would it be a lot faster or would the software rendering kill some of the speed of full double support.

[Jim]

It would be more like the PC version - with frame sync off it would be really quick.
Jim

[ninogenio]

it would be really intresting to see it in action. is it something you would consider jim?

[rain_storm]

There is already a yabasic emulator that runs on linux maybe it could be ported over more easily. Hey the linux yabasic has a much larger following maybe someone has already tried it. I'll ask google.

Edit :

So far it seems as though a copy of the original PS2 demo disk is the only way to get Yabasic running on PS3. But at least I havent seen anyone saying that some commands dont work like they should.

[Jim]

That's a different yabasic - it's not quite the same as the one on the PS2.  Sony took the original one, added triangles and simplified and removed a lot of other stuff.

Jim

[Xone]

I just tried running a program which I gave a variable called frame, but it
wouldn't let me run the program.  Is 'frame' a command in yabasic?

[rain_storm]

its a keyword alright but I've never actually seen frame used in a command. This applies to both the emulator and the demo disk.

There is an open command that was broken but would run on the demo disk again I've never seen it work but I did manage to figure out what some of the expected parameters were. Forget them now but it was somethin like : open(file_name$, read_write_access$, some_other_parameter)
Definately a file access command that was cut out at the last moment.

There are other commands that just give the error "Not supported in this version of Yabasic"
For a list of all available commands that are supported by PS2Yabasic take a look here:

  http://members.chello.nl/~a.vanarum8/Yabasic/reference.htm

[Jim]

Right, I looked through the language description and the library and there's only token$/token and one other I forget that Sony didn't document on the PS2.  The former has a whopping great memory leak!  Some other commands parse but just do nothing.

Jim