Re: MIPS - Sony (PSX)?

["Brian" <bbaker@snuffle.demon.co.uk>]

> Eventhough Sony delivers DJGPP with its Playstation Dev Kit, they still
> do not freely distribute the programming manual for the Playstation.
> Your Yaroze comes with only a subset of the full documentation and
> only a fraction of the libraries.  

Granted only a fraction of a full Developement kit, ie. no documentation
for 
hardware specific stuff at a low level and a 'limited' set of libraries,
but 
the power of the playstation yaroze kit (pardon the pun) exists mostly in
the software and libraries. 
 
> Since this information is closed,
> I find it hard to believe the Sony configuration option of GCC is for 
> the PSX.  Rather, I believe there was a MIPS based Sony workstation 
> a long time ago.  

That kind of, answers one of my questions, and is what I expected. 
However I do know that GCC can successfully be built for the yaroze using 
Linux, so I see no reason that EGCS can't be. The configuration target for 
GCC is mips-ecoff-unknown I just have the problem of working out what 
configuration target and assorted other options I need to build EGCS.

I've had some helpful mail addressing my other questions (cheers guys) 
so I hope that I'll be able to sort it out for myself now. 

> BUT I would kill to have the the full PSX documentation myself.
> Someone must have it that is willing to share it despite of the
> foul licensing requirements of Sony.  I am not about to shell out
> > $10K for hobbyist purposes.  BTW how did they produce the PSX 
> emulators?  No, I do not believe in reverse engineering in this case.

I too would love the full dev kit, but I can't afford it, reverse
engineering
would have little point as this wouldn't contain anything easy to re-use.
A proper dev kit also comes with support etc. I would love all information
to be free, but this is to say the least unlikely, perhaps in ten years 
time when the PSX is finally dead and buried unful information will see
the light of day.

> Question 2:  The Playstation II apparently use a 128 bit MIPS.  
> I am not aware of any 128 bit MIPS at this time, thus I suppose 
> there neither can be any GCC support for it yet.  Is this the 
> reason Metrowerks is listed as third party SW supplier for PSX II?

You have to be careful with the hype, 128bits could refer to a myriad
of things, internal databus width, external databus width,  (which I 
doubt), size of possible multiply result destination register etc. 
The processor core for the PSX2 is a MIPS r4000/5000 type unit,
(I seem to remember reading somewhere) however I think that the 
true processing power comes from two rather advanced vector 
co-processor. Well have to wait and see.

BTW, A company called SN systems in the UK supply the official PSX 
compiler at the moment. I suppose I could ask them :-)
 
Brian
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