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Comment by b3orn | Hacker News Reader

Why would you want to emulate an old crappy MIPS CPU using a relatively expensive FPGA? The whole idea of emulating old consoles is to be independent of the hardware so you can play your old games on your computer or phone.

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For you, maybe. For others, having thing that does what this other thing did, with no regard to cost, is a fun adventure, in and of itself.

I second that. I wrote a nes emulator twenty years ago because it was fun, and not for any practical purpose. I had no idea what I was doing, but I remember being in awe of the nes after reading the detailed hw spec ( found on zophars domain, doc by yoshi if memory serves me well ). I promptly decided to write an emulator in whatever language I was learning at that time.

The result was terrible, but I had tremendous fun!

In that case I'm sure current FPGAs are already capable of emulating the MIPS CPU of a PS2.

The CPU yes but you want to emulate every piece of hardware in the console. The audio chips, the GPU, they way video memory works and so on.

Because the implementation on your computer or phone behaves slightly differently from actual hardware, sometimes to the point of being unplayable. If you can't get your hands on a genuine working console, cycle-accurate FPGA implementation is the next best thing.

Often the games I’m excited to play run like shit and have timing issues that are difficult to measure but feel wrong and diminish the nostalgia.

Free time is scarce, so I’ll gladly pay a couple hundred to not have to spend time fiddling with settings only to ultimately capitulate.

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