Reference · device matrix

Devices — what it runs on

The emulator and hardware combinations the port has actually been tested against, plus the BIOS requirement and the paths the project has never tried.

~2 min read · 748 words

A labor of love by Hunter Davis. The FAQ has short answers to “does it run on a real PS1?” and “which emulators work?”; this page is the honest long form. It lists what’s actually been booted, what’s expected to work but isn’t covered by every-commit testing, and what the project has never tried.

If you paid for this, you were cheated. Open source and free.

On this page

Tested · emulator

DuckStation is the reference emulator. Every commit gets booted in it, the headless regression harness runs in it via -batch -nogui, and the 99.7% target-speed rollup the battle card publishes is measured against it. If DuckStation reports a regression, it’s treated as a real bug. Other emulators are not in the every-commit gate.

Field Value
Project DuckStation
Tested cadence Every commit (manual smoke) + every release via headless regtest
Platforms tested Linux (developer’s daily driver)
Other platforms DuckStation upstream supports Windows + macOS + Android; not gated by this project
BIOS Real PlayStation BIOS (e.g. scph1001.bin) required — DuckStation refuses to boot without one (see BIOS errors in /docs/regtest/)
Notable upstream duckstation.org

Tested · hardware

A real PlayStation 1 has been smoke-tested via the TonyHax softmod path. This is not a long-term soak — boot success and a few minutes of scene cycling is the bar — but it confirms the build clears the actual hardware envelope, not just DuckStation’s HLE approximation.

Field Value
Console Sony PlayStation, model SCPH-7501 (US, late-revision PSone-era motherboard)
Boot path TonyHax softmod (socram8888/tonyhax)
Media Burned CD-R from the released .bin/.cue pair
Tested cadence Per-milestone (not every commit)
Notes Treat any boot success as a small miracle — the path is fragile by 2026 standards (1990s-era laser, decades-old drive, softmod brittleness). The SPI driver story is one example of what shifts between HLE and metal.

The build is expected to run on any retail PlayStation 1 from the TonyHax-supported set, but only the SCPH-7501 listed above has been verified. PS2 and PS3 backwards-compatibility modes have not been tested and are not covered by the FISHING 1 bar.

Should work · unverified

These paths are expected to work but the project does not run them on every commit, so treat regressions as worth reporting.

  • PCSX-Redux — A modern PS1 emulator with PSn00bSDK-friendly debug surfaces. Has not been part of the smoke gauntlet but is expected to boot. If a bug is DuckStation-specific, PCSX-Redux is the obvious second opinion.
  • PS2 backwards-compat — The retail PS2’s PS1 mode runs original discs natively. The TonyHax path used here is the homebrew route; PS2-via-backwards-compat is plausible if a .bin/.cue is burned to a CD-R, but it has not been tested.
  • PS3 backwards-compat — Limited to early SKUs (CECHA / CECHB) with hardware PS1 emulation. Untested.
  • MemcardPro / similar SD-backed memory cards — The runtime reads/writes one block of memcard data for accessibility-toggle persistence. Behavior on SD-backed cards is unverified but expected to work (the read/write path is standard MemCardRead / MemCardWrite).

Unsupported / out of scope

  • ePSXe — Unverified. Not part of the regtest gate and not on the smoke list. PRs that target ePSXe-specific bugs are not in scope — the engineering bar is “passes DuckStation.”
  • No-BIOS emulators (some HLE setups) — The project relies on PSn00bSDK and the standard BIOS() syscalls; running without a real BIOS is unsupported and will probably crash early.
  • Streaming services / cloud retro players — Out of scope.

BIOS requirement

DuckStation requires a real PlayStation 1 BIOS file. The project does not ship one — it’s a copyrighted Sony component. Dump from your own console or source from your own physical hardware. The BIOS errors callout in /docs/regtest/ covers the symptoms when the BIOS is missing or wrong-region.

The scph1001.bin filename appears in regtest docs because that’s the file the project’s CI matrix points at; any equivalent retail BIOS (SCPH-101, SCPH-7001, etc.) should work.