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Detecting a PS2 Emulator: When 1*X does not equal X


Using an odd floating point error to detect emulators

If you look at any multiplication instruction (MUL,MULi, etc) in the VU developer manuals, you will see this remark: It’s a little bit loaded but the gist of it is, with multiplication operations 1 * X is not guaranteed to result in X, unlike X * 1 which is. The exact reason why a bit is lost is not known to me, whoever decides to implement software floating point for the PS2 will have to figure that out and report back :^)

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