HopStation vs mkpsxiso

HopStation is a work-in-progress PlayStation emulator written in C++, shared chiefly as a reference for emulator developers rather than as a primary way to play games. It emulates the R3000 CPU, GPU, DMA and interrupt controllers, CDROM, GTE, SPU, MDEC, and memory cards. The project provides a windowed application and a headless command-line mode, with tools including a disassembler, executable sideloading, USB controller input, configurable logging, a VRAM viewer, and ImGui introspection windows. It accepts BIN/CUE disc images, but support is buggy: CUE parsing prevents many games from loading, and inaccurate CDROM emulation also limits compatibility. The SPU lacks features such as volume sweep and dynamic ADSR. A PlayStation BIOS is required; only SCPH1001, the original US launch version, has been tested. HopStation builds for Windows, Linux, and macOS and is free under the MIT License. Some builds need additional shader libraries. The author describes it as an unfinished personal learning project and says feature contributions are unlikely to be accepted.

mkpsxiso builds PlayStation CD images from an XML document, with output in .bin/.cue or .iso formats for emulators or CD burning. File order in the XML sets LBA placement, which the project says can support access-time optimization. The builder handles mixed-mode CD-XA content, including XA audio and STR video, and CDDA tracks sourced from WAV, FLAC, PCM, or MP3 files. Its related tool, dumpsxiso, extracts PlayStation disc images and can generate compatible XML. It supports 2352-sector images and CUE files, and can extract tracks, license data, and raw sectors. Generated XML follows strict LBA order and preserves timestamps and XA attributes. The project targets homebrew development, ROM hacking, and reverse engineering. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and is GPL-2.0 licensed. Documentation covers command-line use, XML structure, track types, ordering, errors, and validation. Users supply their own Sony license data for injection. On ext4 and xfs, absent XML dates prevent 1:1 rebuilding for certain older files; Windows also has a documented directory-browsing issue with some nested structures.