v1.3

Sections

Introduction Downloading ePSXe Installing ePSXe Installing Games Setting Up ePSXe with ePSXecutor Graphics Plugins Sound Plugins CDROM Plugins Configuring Controllers Playing A Game Image Gallery

Introduction

ePSXe is a Sony Playstation emulator. It has a good compatibility rate and runs very fast. It is also very flexible as it uses a plugin system for sound and graphics and can also support original playstation controllers (using a special adaptor). I have only recently started to use ePSXe as I normally use Bleem, however I have found out that ePSXe has alot less glitches and is updated far more regularly so I have switched over completely. I thought long and hard over this tutorial as I knew it would be difficult to write as there are alot of options in ePSXe. Because of the amount of options I found that it is sometimes difficult to put the technical jargon into plain english but I think I have. I hope you like the results. Top

Downloading ePSXe

You can find the latest version of ePSXe on it's homepage here. If you want a friendly frontend for ePSXe then get Epsxecutor from the ePSXe homepage as well. IMPORTANT! To get the emulator working you need a copy of the Playstation BIOS which you can get at the following link. There are 2 to look for... 1. SCPH7502.bin 2. SCPH1001.bin You will also need to download some plugins as well to get ePSXe working. Plugins can be got from links below. The ones I recommend are... Graphics = Petes GPU 1.64 (gpupete164.zip) Sound = Petes DSound SPU 1.15 (spupetedsound115.zip) CDROM = ePSXe's Internal CD and CDR Mooby 1.6 (cdrmooby16.zip) for ISO images. Top

Installing ePSXe

To install ePSXe you will need a copy of Winzip. All you have to do is to open the zipfile, press the extract button and type C:\ePSXe into to the path area of the window that opens. Use the same path if you want to install the ePSXecutor front end as well. Heres a look at the folders that are set up... Bios - Where the BIOS image is stored Cheats - Place cheat files here Docs - ePSXe documentation Memcards - Where ePSXe stores your memory cards Patches - For game patches to help get copied games running Plugins - For 3rd party audio / video plug-ins Snap - Where screen shots are put Sstates - Where ePSXe stores its saved game states. To install the bios file you must extract the bios images to the C:\ePSXe\bios folder. You will need a copy of Winzip to extract the file. You will also have to extract the plugins to the C:\eSPXe\plugins folder. Top

Installing Games

To play games on ePSXe you will need either the original Playstation CD's or ISO images of them. If you have the original disk (or copy if your naughty) then ePSXe can play them straight from your CDRom. If you have an ISO image then you will need the cdr mooby plugin selected and will have to select the image from a file window. As ISO images can be up to 700MB I don't suggest you store too many on your computer as you'll soon run out of hard disk space. Top

Setting Up ePSXe with ePSXecutor

To set up ePSXe use the ePSXecutor front end. Run it and you will see the following screen. Before you can do anything you need to make a configuration file up. Go to the configurations menu and select new configuration. You will see the following screen (dont be put off!) Type in a name for your configuration file. The bitmap option lets you set different pictures for different configs. Now click the "Configure ePSXe" button. You will now see this... You can see above that there are alot of things to configure. There are three types of icons showing graphics, sound and CD plugins. ePSXe uses a plugin system for it's graphics, sound and CD control, these can all be selected here. To make sure that they are working properly you can press the test button or if you wish to configure your plugin press the Configure button. There are some sections below that deal with configuring these plugins which are based on the plugins I recommended above. To select a plugin just click on it, press activate and an arrow will appear next to it. Just pick the ones that you feel suit your machine best and then select the Memcards tab. You will see this screen... To make a memory card you need to press create. A card will appear in the list but its not formatted so select it and press format and the text will show that the card is formatted. You now need to put it into a memory card slot, so select your card and press which slot you want it in. Once done, press the "Options" tab and the following screen appears... BIOS BIOS Sets which BIOS ePSXe will us to emulate the playstation. Sound Settings Enable Sound Enables/Disable sound in games Enable MDEC XA Enables/Disable the XA sound system in movies Enable SPU IRQ Hack Needed in certain games. Enable CDDA Enables/Disable CD audio in games CDRom Settings CD Drive Letter Lets you select which of your CDRoms is used by ePSXe Read subchannel Reads extra data stored on CD disks Cache subchannel M3S file to disk Stores subchannel information on your hard disk for fast access. Cache subchannel LG 8520/21/22b Does same as above but on LG CDRoms. Other Settings Auto Load PPF files Automatically load patch files for games when their CD is inserted. Command Line Lets you add extra commands which can be found in the readme file. Country Settings Sets which country's TV format is used (NTSC, PAL) Pad Settings Starts ePSXe so you can configure your controller. For the cheat system check out the documentation as it needs files to be downloaded to get it working. Press close and your configuration panel should look something like this... Top

Graphics Plugins

I'm going to take you through the "Pete's D3D" driver as most of the commands relate to other drivers and it should work with most 3D cards. Click it, press "Activate" and then press the configure button. The following screen appears... Settings Select Device Lets you choose which 3D device ePSXe uses if you have more than one. Resolution And Colors Fullscreen Mode Sets the resolution the ePSXe uses in fullscreen mode Colour Depth Set the amount of colours used on fullscreen displays. (Warning! Do Not Use 32Bit if you have a 3DFX cards Pre Voodoo 4) Window mode Lets you play your games in a window and set its size. Textures Texture Quality Set the amount of memory bits allocated to colours being displayed on the screen. If you dont know which one to select the select "don't care". Texture Filtering Lets you set how much blending between game textures is used and whether you want non 3D graphics blended. GFX Card VRam Size Lets you specify how much video ram your graphics card has so ePSXe can optimize for it. Smart Texture Garbage Collection Gets rid of random pixels and other impurities on textures. Faster palletizes texture windows Improves graphics on textured windows used by some games. (e.g. text windows) Hi-res textures (2xSAI) This is a special effect that can be used on textures to improve them but it needs alot of video memory to do it. Framerate Show FPS display on startup Show the current frames per second that ePSXe is running at. Use FPS Limit If you have a superfast machine with a super fast graphics card then games often play too fast so this option limits the speed to a selected framerate. If you dont know how fast your graphics card can draw then select the auto detect option Use Frame Skipping If you have a slow computer and/or a slow graphics card then you can make ePSXe skip frames in a game to speed things up a little. This option also causes games to seem jerkier. Auto Detect FPS/Frame skip limit Looks at you system and sets both limits automatically. FPS Limit Sets the speed that the FPS (Frames per second) limiter uses. The most compatible setting is 60 as most SVGA graphics cards support this. Compatability Off screen drawing Used in certain games where characters, objects or images have to be drawn off of the visible screen. (Such as Final Fantasy games) Advanced Blending Lets ePSXe use advanced blending to improve graphics. You can use software blending although this might slow the games down or if your card supports it, you can use hardware blending. Framebuffer textures Sets how ePSXe stores textures for graphics on your graphics card. Framebuffer Access Chooses how ePSXe accesses textures in the framebuffer Alpha Multipass For improved textures Mask Bit For compatability in come games. Misc. Scanlines Emulates the lower quality of TV's. Unfiltered framebuffer updates Speed up the drawing of playstation video files. Color Dithering Uses dithering to lessen the differences between on-screen colours when using 16bit graphics modes. Screen Smoothing Adds a small bit of blur to the screen. Active special game fixes Fixes issues in certain games Default settings If you cant be bothered to much around with the above setting then use one of these defaults. (N.B. Dont use "Nice" and have an older 3DFX card) Top

Sound Plugin

Again I'll deal with one of Pete's plugins as they seem to be the best. This one is for Direct Sound Support. Volume Lets you set the volume of the game Enable XA playing Enables the playstation XA music system Change XA speed Changes the XA emulation speed to maintain accuracy Compatibility mode Sets the compatibility mode for sound and music timing. SPU IRQ This is needed by some games to get the sound running. Enable developers debug mode For developers Top

CDROM Plugin

I included a CDRom plugin section only for the CDR Mooby plugin. The only thing you can do with this plugin is to compress you ISO images. As most images are 700MB+ this can be of real benefit. Most images can be compressed down to 450MB which is one hell of a saving. The only down side is the fact it can take over half an hour to compress the image. What you will see when you try and configure the CDR Mooby plugin is this... It's very straightforward so I wont go into any more detail other than saying that the compression format is RAR. Top

Configuring Controllers

This is how to configure your gamepads. First open up your config and select the options tab. Now press the 'Start ePSXe for pad configuring' button and this screen will open... Select the config menu and then select a Game Pad. You will see this panel... To configure a key just click on a box and press the key or joystick/joypad button you want to use. If you use a joystick/joypad then it must be configured in your windows control panel for it to work. Top

Playing A Game

Firstly you need to know some keys... Default Game Control Keys S Square D Triangle Z X X Circle C Select V Start W L1 Q L2 E R1 R R2 Arrow Keys Directional buttons Other Keys F1 Savestate in selected slot. F2 Increase slot. (max = 5) F3 Loadstate from selected slot. F4 Enable/Disable SIO irq. F5 Toggle Digital pad/Special pad F6 Enable/Disable Xa sound/read. F7 Enable Chrono Cross cheat code. F8 Make a snapshot to snap directory. And now for a play. To play a Playstation disc make sure you have the ePSXe default CD plugin selected. Now put a disk into your CDRom and double click on your configuration icon. Hopefully if you game is supported it will run. If you want to run an ISO image make sure that the CDR Mooby plugin is selected. Now when you double click your configuration icon a file window will open. All you need to do now is selct the ISO image you want and ePSXe will start. Top

Image Gallery

Here are some pictures of ePSXe running on my computer... Top

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