Genesis Emulation - 32x Capability?


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Based on my research of Genesis emulation, I have been unable to turn up anything regarding the 32x. I was wondering if either of the Genesis emulators have 32x capability, or if it is in the works? My gut feeling would be no due to the emulation requirements, but I felt it prudent to ask regardless.
 
It's called a "32X" for a reason...and that's the Hitachi SH-1 32-bit CISC @ 20MHz it packs - same as the CPU in the Model 1 arcade board & the Saturn's coprocessor.

In other words, don't hold your breath.
 
Yeah no way jose' on 32X. Trust your "gut feeling" as it was right. Plain vanilla Genesis doesn't even run w/Fs0 full speed and sound yet.
 
While the 32x didnt look like much the idea was that it was pushin the Genesis to levels close to the saturn(heh right), Even though the new genesis emmulators are really starting to smoke along it's only just barly getting there, and the 32x was extra added hardware that you;d have to emmulate in the GP32 taking up more memory and larger harder to emmulate games.
 
Geez I can't believe people are thinking about the 32x and CD when we don't have a perfect Mega drive emu yet. I think you should search a bit more. Oh and the 32x was one of 2 saturn processors so its half as powerful not bad though.
 
i don't care if 32x gets emulated on GP32. From what i have seen it's just arse anyway.. I never even play it on the PC. Development time is better spent elsewhere if you ask me. Same goes for Sega CD! (I am a big Genesis fan, don't get me wrong)

on the other had it would be interesting to see if they ever got PCE ISO's to run on the GP32. Stripping out the soundtracks of course (too big!!) That's fine. I am no programmer but I bet it could be done with more success than the other two ideas. Hell isn't there some mention of Neo geo CD emulation possible? (Is that just absolutely insane or what!!!) I'll leave it up to the brainiacs to figure that business out, cheers guys!
 
Neo geo cd sdl seems 2 be out on the dreamcast at full speed and they're using a 200mhz risc or something though it does have some funky video hardware and a cd rom drive : / and more ram
 
The DC cpu (Hitachi SH3) is a lot more powerful than the ARM9. Please remember that even though our ARM9 is running at up to 166MHz, it's not really a powerful general purpose CPU; the majority of the ARM series are made for low-cost, low-power embedded devices (phones, set top boxes etc.) where brute horsepower isn't a primary concern. It's about equivalent to a first generation low end Pentium.

Even so, I'm quite impressed with what people have managed to squeeze out of it so far :)
 
The DC neogeocd emu REALLY needs that extra ram the dreamcast has got. I remember reading that the developer spent a lot of time working hard to shake of every KB that the emu and frontend were wasting just to get the Metal Slug games working.
 
Geez I can't believe people are thinking about the 32x and CD when we don't have a perfect Mega drive emu yet. I think you should search a bit more. Oh and the 32x was one of 2 saturn processors so its half as powerful not bad though.
Ahhhh...but Sonic CD is amazing.
 
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on the other had it would be interesting to see if they ever got PCE ISO's to run on the GP32. Stripping out the soundtracks of course (too big!!) That's fine. I am no programmer but I bet it could be done with more success than the other two ideas.
Well, it's been done on GBA. If the GBA can do it, the GP32 can, and the hardware's similar enough that it probably wouldn't be too hard to port (they both use ARM, yes?). ;) Of course, if that fullspeed GBA emulator ever sees the light of day and lives up to its promise, this might not even need to be ported. ;)
 
The DC neogeocd emu REALLY needs that extra ram the dreamcast has got. I remember reading that the developer spent a lot of time working hard to shake of every KB that the emu and frontend were wasting just to get the Metal Slug games working.
Plus Ian Michael is a friggin perfectionist! Not to mention a genius!

Dream team of coders:

Ryleh
Ian Michael
yoyofr
Rand (from bleemcast)
schzero (super famicast for DC)
Thunder Z

Damn, imagine what these guys good do together, working in unison for the GP32 and DC!!!
 
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on the other had it would be interesting to see if they ever got PCE ISO's to run on the GP32. Stripping out the soundtracks of course (too big!!) That's fine. I am no programmer but I bet it could be done with more success than the other two ideas.
Well, it's been done on GBA. If the GBA can do it, the GP32 can, and the hardware's similar enough that it probably wouldn't be too hard to port (they both use ARM, yes?). ;) Of course, if that fullspeed GBA emulator ever sees the light of day and lives up to its promise, this might not even need to be ported. ;)
That is the original PCE, there is already a normal PCE emu for the GP ou,

He means the CD version hence ISOs
 
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That is the original PCE, there is already a normal PCE emu for the GP ou,
He means the CD version hence ISOs
Download the latest version of PCEAdvance and look at one of the readmes. It plays CD ISOs. :)
 
on the other had it would be interesting to see if they ever got PCE ISO's to run on the GP32. Stripping out the soundtracks of course (too big!!) That's fine. I am no programmer but I bet it could be done with more success than the other two ideas.
Well, it's been done on GBA. If the GBA can do it, the GP32 can, and the hardware's similar enough that it probably wouldn't be too hard to port (they both use ARM, yes?). ;) Of course, if that fullspeed GBA emulator ever sees the light of day and lives up to its promise, this might not even need to be ported. ;)

The GP32 may not be able to do it, remember the GBA has a massive amount of Rom space, which the GP32 doesn't have (it only has 8 Megabytes of RAM, no ROM)

As for running a PCE emulator in a GBA emulator on a GP32, well the limit would be the Rom size wouldn't it?

A GBA emulator on the GP32 wouldn't be able to play GBA roms bigger than 6 or 7 Megabytes. In fact, that's pretty much all the GBA games. Are you sure this GBA emulator isn't vapourware?
 
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I think the author is using some sort of emulation technic (sp) that means he skips the emulation ( if that makes any sense), Its something to do with the ARM proccessers.

I think it was first done on an Amiga or something, but then again I have a bad memory.
 
It essentially uses the fact that the GBA processor is a less powerful version of our own, sharing near identical opcodes/registers/etc and only having, really, some different memory allocations (e.g. position of the GBA bios) and the GBA's scaling/translating hardware. So the idea is, if he can use the GP32's MMU to re-map all GBA bios calls to what ammounts to a translation layer for GP32 and memory likewise, there should be a possibility of making a GP32 effectively think it is a GBA. Which means it's basically only using 16-32MHz of processing power for the CPU. Then you use some of the rest of it to emulate sprite processing hardware and sound, and voila - full speed or better GBA emulation.

So far, he's got as far as a techdemo that works for mode 3 and mode 4 - no sprites yet, though. If you want to have a gander, though, fdave, the source is out on his site. IIRC he's a bit busy atm (though that's friend of a friend information - I heard it from someone, can't remember who, on these boards) so hasn't worked on it for a while, but its certainly not entirely vapourware.

If you haven't tried it, do try the tech-demo; it runs GBA mode3/mode4 demos at around 10x the speed of the real thing!

EDIT: Bear in mind, though, that the sprite hardware emulation and sound chip will probably put a huge extra load on the GP32 CPU.
 
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