PicoDrive Settings for Sonic games??

[Anjalena]

Hey guys. Sorry, I'm absolutely brand new to emulators for my PSP. I just found out about 4 days ago that there were emulators for it at all. I was thinking it would be great if I could play the old Mario games for the NES on my PSP since I've been sick and haven't been able to get to my PC. But it really was just kinda a pipe dream but I looked anyway. And lo' and behold... emulators! For frickin everything almost! I'm really stoked!

Anyway, I'll babble my head off if you don't shoot me first so let me attempt to get to the point. I want to play my beloved old Sonic games (1, 2, and Spinball) for the Genesis. I downloaded PicoDrive 1.51 and extracted it. I'm using 6.60 PRO-B10 firmware. Other than that, I don't know what you might need to know about my end.

Now I was glancing through the readme.txt file and it looks like there's a lot of settings or plugins or something similar to the PSX and PS2 emulators on the PC which I always just let my son set up. So I'm not accustomed to doing it. So I was hoping for some help in how to set up PicoDrive so I can play my Sonic games. Also, since I see there are 3 different file format combos used with PicoDrive, but obviously CUE/BIN is not really the best, which of the other 2 is best for the Sonic games, if that's a valid question?

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[wizarddoctor]

It's a long time ago I touched a PSP or PicoDrive, but isn't it just plug and play? I mean, drop the ROM's in the folder and load?
It would seem strange to me that you need to modify a lot of settings just for it to run...

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[Anjalena]

Okay, well I'll try that and hopefully it works. The readme file within the PicoDrive archive makes it sound very complicated. Feel free to download 1.51 and read the enclosed readme and see if you can see where I went crazy. *laugh*

Anyway, thanks for helping. =)

[wizarddoctor]

Well, you obviously need a bios, but that's illegal and I'm not really sure if I can even talk about this according to forum rules... But after that's done, you just put a ROM in the folder and see if it runs. If it doesn't, check the readme for answers .

[Anjalena]

Okay. Gotcha. =)

Hey, whenever I look up info on the PSP, I always see Wololo.net come up. You guys seem pretty dedicated on this site. Are there other sites where they still have communities dedicated to the PSP that are still relatively active? I tend to have that problem a lot when looking for help for my PSP. I'll post in a forum then realize that people stopped posting there in 2012 or 2009 even. It's nice to know several sources of information and help so I thought I'd ask. A forum is especially important, but also articles or anything else to read is always a nice thing. I mean, I'm bobbing around this site right now and seeing things I've never heard of and trying to learn about them. =)

[b2p1mp]

You would probalby like Sonic CD. It works fantastic on the PSP using Picodrive. Certain games may not have background music unless you convert them to psp format. There are instructions to do this in the readme that comes with most picodrives.

[fate6]

Only CD games need a bios, All those settings are just for people who are inclined to mess with things but no you don't have to configure anything, Especially for Sonic games.

[wizarddoctor]

Okay. Gotcha. =)

Hey, whenever I look up info on the PSP, I always see Wololo.net come up. You guys seem pretty dedicated on this site. Are there other sites where they still have communities dedicated to the PSP that are still relatively active? I tend to have that problem a lot when looking for help for my PSP. I'll post in a forum then realize that people stopped posting there in 2012 or 2009 even. It's nice to know several sources of information and help so I thought I'd ask. A forum is especially important, but also articles or anything else to read is always a nice thing. I mean, I'm bobbing around this site right now and seeing things I've never heard of and trying to learn about them. =)

Imo this is one of the best (or even only active) forum(s) at the moment... Everything that could be hacked on the PSP is done and Sony has put a stop on manufacturing the device. So, it's a bit dying and the community along with it, but I'll think you'll be safe here for another 2 years

[Anjalena]

"Oh good! There's more of you!" ... sorry. Buffy quote from Season 7. *laugh* I dunno. Sometimes lines from the show just pop into my head. heh. But the sentiment definitely stands! I'm very glad to have more support.

But honestly, I was coming back here to apologize for that post. I was afraid it might have been rude or taken that way anyway. Like me walking into a restaurant, asking some questions about the food, then asking about some recommendations on other restaurants. When I thought about it, it seemed it might have come out that way but I certainly didn't mean it that way. But I'm so grateful that you didn't take it that way! (let me just say "that way" a few more times... that way that way that way that way. *rofl*)

But, back on topic: So, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but for some reason, when I launch PicoDrive and try to open a game, it sees just about every folder except the PSP folder in the memory stick root. I did end up downloading the BIOS files that I could find and putting them in the PicoDrive folder. But I've tried renaming each directory to all caps and renaming them to just 8 letters in all caps. Same with the file names. Nada. I've got everything currently on my memory stick in the PSP\GAME\PICODRIV directory. Before it was named the PicoDrive directory.

It lets me go through and change all the config settings, but when I go to open a file, it won't see the PSP directory. I have no idea. =( Any idears?

[wizarddoctor]

Yeah, the file browser of PicoDrive doesn't open in the root of your PSP but in the folder of PicoDrive itself. The caps don't matter. The only thing that matters with homebrew is that the EBOOT.PBP sits in a folder in the folder PSP/GAME/.
I just put it on my old 1004 and it seems to be working here, although I have no BIOS or ROM's currently, but I expect them to work as I can browse my whole memory stick...

PS: When downloading homebrew, don't change any names of folders. There's a reason the directories have a particular name