The Book of CP-System [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Book of CP-System [pdf]

fabiensanglard.net

94 pointsibobev21 comments

Seems to be about Capcom arcade machines, 239 pages with lots of technical content. Nice pics of humongous 1980-era circuit boards. A nice addition to your file hoard if you're into retro computing.

Not to forget a complete, modern toolchain if you want to develop for it!

Proprietary arcade systems from the early to late 1990s, in spite of the admittedly ridiculous prices they sell for nowadays, are actually nice platforms for homebrew development. More often than not there is no protection at all against running homebrew software, as typically anti-piracy checks are implemented in the games themselves rather than in the hardware. Of course there is no documentation most of the time; even though MAME usually provides enough information to get custom code running, anything more complex than a simple demo will require further reverse engineering of the system. But figuring it all out is arguably part of what makes it fun.

The current platform I am obsessed with is Konami's System 573, a PlayStation 1-based board introduced in the late 90s and used most notably in Dance Dance Revolution. I have been reverse engineering it and writing documentation as part of a joint effort for about a year [1], uncovering previously unknown details such as scrapped support for booting from a CF card. There is still plenty of work to be done; Konami released several expansion boards providing all sorts of functionality from MP3 playback to online connectivity, and those have been a hurdle to reverse engineer due to their heavy use of FPGAs. Nevertheless, we already have pretty much everything required to develop 573 homebrew games using existing PS1 SDK projects.

[1] https://psx-spx.consoledev.net/konamisystem573

Thank you for sharing your discoveries. This will without a doubt save thousand of hours to multiple enthousiasts.

The entire site https://fabiensanglard.net/ is a goldmine of high-quality content.

The quality decreases as you go back in time. Some of the entries are embarrassing (both in terms of typesetting, language skills, and tablet/phone scaling) now but I like to keep them around so reminds myself and others that we all have to start somewhere.

Thank you for that, by the way.

I really enjoy watching writing and art develop over time (for example, web comics that run for decades like Schlock Mercenary or Penny Arcade).

Sometimes the temptation to go back and rewrite or redraw is too much, but if so leave the old version available.

The quality today is definitely excellent, but I think you're being a bit too harsh nonetheless. Even the early articles are still good intrigue, and I think we can forgive the lack of more responsive layout in 2008-2012 :)

From having followed your site for many, many years, I look at it differently: It keeps getting better and better. Also, as you mention, it's a good reminder of what one can produce if one just put in the hours and keep at it.

The Amazon version was cheaper, and nice enough - note that Fabien recommends the Bookpatch version, but it's more expensive.

https://fabiensanglard.net/cpsb_paper/index.html

Recently discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33716928

Amazon is able to reduce the price thanks to the volume they move.

I inquired a while ago about a bookpatch group order feature (volume order shipping to each individual). They said they had it planned but it yet has to happen. Best they can do now is a batch order but they mail to one destination and then that person would have to dispatch it. Sadly not doable for a one man operation.

I think Amazon drops prices for competitive reasons - I know for some of my self-published works I got "paid" the same amount even when Amazon for inscrutable reasons decided to discount the book to customers.

I do NOT think they bother printing multiple copies and warehouse them, I think it is very much print as many copies on demand as they need. I may be wrong here.

I wouldn't mind the book price per se, but the shipping to Norway is whooping $304.50, so I guess I'll go for the Amazon version this time.

I don't understand their shipping price. Someone also mentioned that shipping to France is $200.

Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about shipping prices :(!

Too bad, they print with such high quality.

I purchased the hardcopy and have been very pleased with it; it's been a long time since I've enjoyed a technical book so much.

Thank you for your purchase and kind words.

Then may I recommend in addition Hacker's Delight. The 1st ed is most fun, 2nd ed has a lot more depth in certain areas (division IIRC) which you might choose to skip.

I almost didn't click on this because I wasn't quite sure what it was about from the title. I'm sure glad I did as I stayed up way too late last night reading it. What an awesome and fun read!

I wish people spelled out acronyms more. I was expecting a book about consistent and partition-tolerant distributed systems.

What does CP mean?

"Capcom Play"

Which weirdly is not mentioned on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_System but only on the disambiguation page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPS1.

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