Educate me on the merits of the PSP!

[Eggman]

Screen protector of some sort. I don't use one but I sort of wish I did. The whole thing attracts dust.

Also, definitely look into a GBA emulator. The Mother 3 fan translation will be finished within a month and if you enjoy Earthbound, it should be your next priority.

[Bobbias]

Woo, next month? Awesome.

Which reminds me, RPGOne is finally starting back up again, so maybe we'll actually get some work done on the Slayers SNES translation. I've been waiting for that for AGES. Mind you it's one of their lower priority projects I think, but still, it seems to be a good part of the way finished, IIRC.

[Spectere]

Screen protector of some sort. I don't use one but I sort of wish I did.

Seconded.  I ended up getting a used, highly scratched up PSP and believe me, the thing looks really ugly when the screen gets scratchy.

Also, definitely look into a GBA emulator.

gpSP, hands down.  Exophase r awesum.

Alright, I can do without most of the stuff. I'll stick with Tetris Attack and Earthbound for now, especially since I've never played the latter and am long overdue. Couldn't hurt too much to only have a few games. And, well, if they don't work, they did invent 'delete' for a reason.

Super Mario World works very well.  I recommend putting that on there, too, because it be fun.

Sucks that I can't have portable IIDX

You can always play 5-key beatmania using the built-in PSX emulation.  I played BM 6th for a while with mine and it worked pretty well.

Thanks for your help! Any kinds of accessories I should take a look at?

Aside from the screen protector, not really.  I think PSPs come with ear bud head phones with a remote on the cord, though I'm not sure of the quality.  Be sure to invest in a memory stick as well.  It has to be at least 2GB to hold a full-sized UMD (which weighs in at roughly 1.8GB, though very few games are really that large), so you'll want to get one that's at least that big.

[annon]

I personally use a 4GB memstick because it has plenty of room for music and converted movies (see Xvid4PSP. As an example, it made an episode of Lain (DivX avi, 640x480) go from 196 MB to 67 MB), as well as emulators and more than one UMD ISO at a time as long as it's not all there at once.

[Bobbias]

I don't think I'd be able to watch anything on a PSP like that. I'm WAY too anal about my quality. I can't even stand Xvid any more.

[annon]

Heh, the more I think about it, the less practical it would be to put Linux on my PSP and get a keyboard for it now that I have an Eee PC. I thought it'd be cool before, but now it would just be completely impractical. I mean, yeah, it'd be pretty cool to use a PSP as an OS, but seeing how it only has a 333MHz processor, 32MB of RAM, less than 50MB total internal storage, and only 1 USB port, it seems unreasonable. Aside from playing games, there's nothing my PSP can do that my Eee can't.

That said, I still think Linux on a PSP is a cool idea. No idea why.

[Bobbias]

My MyBookWorld 1TB storage system runs a VERY stripped down linux. I dunno how much ram it has, but I am actually using it as a web server. And it only has a 333 MHz ARM processor (the exact same thing that is in many cell phones).

[annon]

I know it's conceivable, it's just that I already have a really portable Linux system and don't really need another.

[Bobbias]

Well, in my case that's not quite so portable. However, it being online 24/7 does make for a nifty web server. Now I just need a domain, and to make sure I've got my port forwarding settings right. But yeah, surprisingly, it runs pretty half decently, unless you're compiling something large. Like PHP :/ God that was painful.

[Spectere]

But yeah, surprisingly, it runs pretty half decently, unless you're compiling something large. Like PHP :/ God that was painful.

distcc.  Use it.   You'd almost certainly have to set up a cross-compiler to get it to work, but it would be worth it for that little thing.  Even just getting a cross-compiler set up on your current system and just transferring the binaries would help out a lot.

As far as distcc goes, I used it (with my C2Q system set up as a host, of course) to get kdelibs compiled on my P3-933 desktop system in the basement and rather than taking something like 2-3 hours it took less than 1.  My quad-core powerhouse can compile it in 18 minutes flat by itself but the network overhead is a real killer when you're building that much stuff, not to mention that make itself is still running on the slower system.

[Bobbias]

Well, PHP was the longest thing I had to build, and it took about 45 minutes, so it wasn't that bad. However, I did have to recompile it a couple times :/

[LunarKeys]

UPDATE:

The PSP arrived today with one game (Jeanne D'Arc). The graphics are amazing, the sound is incredible, and the system overall seems to be sound. And, of course, the emulators are superb. Genesis overall seems to run smoothly, which SNES lags quite a bit, sadly. Tetris Attack runs at about 50-60%. On the bright side, Kirby's Dreamland 3 runs at about 90%, a more-than acceptable rate. Looks excellent!

The system looks like it was well worth the purchase, and you guys were a big help. Thanks again!