Emulators

[Pant Leg Eater from the Bad World]

Ok, here's the thing. I dont understand them. How do they work?

[Zeromus_X]

Well, you download them, and you play ROM files of games for that emulator's system. (Or ISOs, in PS games I suppose.) I don't know the technical stuff to why it works, if that's what you wanted to know. :cat: (And no, can't help you on where to find them.) They really aren't hard to find.

[Shoeberto]

This fits better in Help :)

[rubah]

You run them as a program, and are able to load the ROMs of files. As for how their inner workings work, I don't know, but they try to emulator (hence the name) the way that the consoles work. Of course sometimes the older consoles game writers used to use mechanical tricks in their games, which make them difficult to emulate, but people are dedicated.

I'd like to know how people get the roms though. That's what's ttly beyond me:o

[Shoeberto]

I'd like to know how people get the roms though. That's what's ttly beyond me:o
I'd imagine they just reverse engineer the process used to get the data onto the cartridges in the first place.

[rubah]

yes but what process is that!

[Mirage]

You run them as a program, and are able to load the ROMs of files. As for how their inner workings work, I don't know, but they try to emulator (hence the name) the way that the consoles work. Of course sometimes the older consoles game writers used to use mechanical tricks in their games, which make them difficult to emulate, but people are dedicated.

I'd like to know how people get the roms though. That's what's ttly beyond me:o
That's to emulate, not to emulator :p, Silly wuba. But yes, the program does it best to copy how the hardware of the system in question works, so that the end result is as close to the actual game as possible. Most emulators are not perfect, and you just have to expect a few errors here and there. They are rare on well-developed emulators though, such as Zsnes.

And how a ROM is made isn't too important. You can compare it to ripping a CD, just that you need a cardridge reader instead of a CD reader :p.

[a nirvana fan]

Download the emulator you wish to use for example if you want to play SNES games download *cough SNES9X cough* and if needed extract the files into a folder, download the ROM files from various sites *cough coolrom.com cough* and simply run the emulator and select the ROM file from the emulator menu. If you still can't do it, PM me.

[o_O]

Some systems are much harder to emulate than others, because the developers of the hardware used sneaky tricks to copy-protect games.

For example, a Playstation game is a regular CD with bad sectors burned into it.
There are channels of data on a CD called subchannels, which contain the information necessary to match the audio up with the video, so that you get the correct sound at the correct point in the game. For parts of the game which are silent, this data obviously doesn't matter, because it doesn't need to match up audio with video. Often the section of the game that they use is at the start, when the developers logos are on screen. So the makers of Playstation games burned the subchannel data for the silent bits as random nonsense, something which conventional CD writers are incapable of. When the Playstation boots up, it checks the subchannel data for the disc in the machine, and if it makes sense, it must be a copied game, and won't play.

It's because of tricks like this that emulation software can't be fully capable of emulating the hardware properly. There were actually no PSX emulators capable of emulating copied or ripped games until the author of ePSXe devised a workaround for subchannel reading. It would defeat the purpose of an emulator to only emulate authentic games.

[Samuraid]

Connectix VGS plays burned PSX games afaik, and I don't think connectix based their program off ePSXe. :p

I'm not sure how one extracts ROMs off every console, but in the playstation's case, people have written utilities that allow you to connect to the serial port (on the older consoles) and dump the BIOS image to a computer.

[o_O]

Connectix VGS plays burned PSX games afaik, and I don't think connectix based their program off ePSXe. :p

Connectix was a commercial emulator though, so they probably had secret methods of making stuff work.
ePSXe's subchannel module was adopted by the other free (or 'free', like Bleem!) emulators, which enabled everyone to play illicit PSX discs and images. :p