How Claude cracked the Playstation 1 open for me

A security engineer built a PS1 development environment from scratch using Claude as a primary resource, including a cycle-accurate emulator covering the R3000A CPU, GPU, GTE, CD-ROM, DMA, SPU, timers, and MDEC, validated against 65+ bare-metal hardware test ROMs. Claude helped navigate undocumented hardware behavior and low-level MIPS assembly where existing C++ SDKs were too opaque to use as a starting point.