Nugget: a C++ SDK and open BIOS for the original PlayStation
Nugget bundles PSYQo, a C++ SDK, and OpenBIOS, a from-scratch Sony BIOS rewrite, for PS1 homebrew devs.
A GitHub repo called Nugget is the home of two PlayStation 1 projects: PSYQo, an object-oriented C++ SDK, and OpenBIOS, a from-scratch reimplementation of Sony’s BIOS. If you do PS1 homebrew or like poking at the console’s guts, this one’s worth a look.
Nugget is a set of bare-metal libraries, runtime pieces and example projects for the original PlayStation. It’s built to be used as a submodule, so your project pulls in only the parts it needs. No emulator or toolchain comes along for the ride.
PCSX-Redux already uses it that way. Its src/mips tree is this repo. The repo ships examples like helloworld, cxxhello, cube and modplayer, plus docs in the doc folder. Generated API docs live at https://pcsx-redux.github.io/nugget/. The code is MIT-licensed, but everything in third_party carries its own license, so check those before you ship anything.
The numbers are small: 80 stars, 9 forks, 4 watchers, 1,627 commits. The page doesn’t say how far OpenBIOS gets compared to Sony’s real BIOS, or whether it runs on actual hardware. Read the docs before you bet a project on it.
How to try it:
- Read the doc folder to see what lives where.
- Follow PSYQo’s Getting Started for toolchain setup.
- Start from helloworld or cxxhello.
- Talk shop in the PSX.Dev Discord server, which the README points to.
The split matters more than the star count. An SDK and a BIOS that don’t need an emulator attached make PS1 C++ easier to pick up for people who only want to write code for the console.
