Genesis Emulator

[sammster001]

i know that many people on this board are developers and i was wondering, now that snes is pretty much wrapped up (it just needs need some fine tweeking and some performance improving to os9xgp and it will be absolutely completed) how much longer will it be before we get a really good Genesis emulator.

FGen has outstanding potential but is taking an age to complete (Though the beta is by far the best out of the two) and Genemu is dire (no offence to Zardoz)

How much longer will i have to wait, it is my favourite console to play on my GP32.

Someone must have one in the pipeline. Anyone who has and has one of the os9xgp standard will get much acclaim (look at the frenzy FGen's 24 hour beta caused)

 

[Alpha2]

It's really just a matter of waiting for the coders to have the time to work on them, remember these are being created free of charge so work only gets done in small amounts.

I know it's hard to wait but thats all we can do.

 

[Tobriand]

Until there's a 68k ASM core, or very highly optimised C one. The one thats out atm is, iirc, fairly shat. Which makes for slow genesis emulation (and is also the reason why increasing frameskip on fGen does little for speed beyond a point).

 

[Efompor]

Sorry for being stupid, but uh... what's a core? I keep on hearing stuff about this. Genesis is my favorite old sytem, I like it much better than the SNES as I had like 41 games for it including Shining Force II and gunstar heroes. I really wanted this fGEN32 emulator too, but I just found my Sega Nomad in the closet and found the backlight to be (at least) twice as powerful as the GP32's FLU. I hooked it up to my wall and started playing it before I went to bed every night, along with my GP32. I kind of wish the GP32 had a light that powerful, it seems so dim in comparison. Anyone else have a Nomad? they rock

 

[taras]

Core = main part of the emulator. ASM (Assembler) is faster but more difficult to write compared to C or C++ which is slower but easier to write and maintain (still pretty hard though!)

I have a Nomad, but not a Sega Nomad... a Creative Nomad 3 mp3 player

 

[Ganepark32]

I've got an fgen emulator. It runs the games really well but there is no save or load which is crap. I can give you a copy if you want?

 

[Esn]

I've got a Nomad... but I don't really have any good games for it aside from some platformers (the Sonics, Aladdin, Lion King) and racing games (Virtua Racing (HUUUGE cartridge!), Super Hang-On). I also have Ecco the Dolphin and Phantasy Star 2, which people say are good games, but Ecco is way too hard for me and PS 2 I gave up on because of the extremely clunky interface and annoying scrolling...

What games did you say were good again?

Anyway, yeah, the Nomad's light can light up an entire room... but because it's backlight, it makes the screen wear out; mine is already a bit lighter on the bottom 1/5 of the pixels...

 

[yaustar]

Gamepark32: Does it have sound?

 

[ste_167]

I've always found GenEmu to be the smoother of the 2 emulators...

Maybe I have a supercharged bootleg!!

 

[sammster001]

This is just an idea and please forgive me, i have no clue about programming e.t.c.

PC emulators are very good at emulation of Genesis, almost perfect. What if you asked the creator of an emulator (Gens for example) If you could use their core. I know for a fact that the gens creator is giving a source code away aswell. If you used these and developed them further than surely we could create a fast enough core to create the genesis emulator we are all craving for.

This is from the gens website (http://gens.consolemul.com/downloads.shtml)
You can download HERE the last version of the Gens SH-2 core (SSH2).

This means that this very fast core (It is the best emulator on the pc by far even on my old 133mhz processor) is freeware for developers.

I hope this is any good to you and that it doesn't make me look like an idiot.

 

[khephren]

Wouldn't work i'm afraid sammster. Here's the way it works: If a CPU core is written in C, it can be passed form machine to machine, but is generally very slow. (which is what we have at the moment)

If it is written In ASM (assembler) it is machine specific (or should I say processor specific) it will only run on a computer/consloe that has the same CPU as the original in our case an ARM processor, as opposed to a PC Intel 8086+ processor).
So you can't just use a ASM core anywhere, and if you take a CPU core from a PC emulator that is written in C, there will be no guarentee that it will be fast (as we will run the core on a 133 CPU, while on the PC it could be fast on machines 500mhz+)

 

[Efompor]

What games did you say were good again?

Shining Force II, Gunstar heroes, Ecco 2, Shadowrun and Shaq Fu just to name a few :lol:

and yes I actually bought Shaq Fu when it came out

 

[Loridan]

Wouldn't work i'm afraid sammster. Here's the way it works: If a CPU core is written in C, it can be passed form machine to machine, but is generally very slow. (which is what we have at the moment)

If it is written In ASM (assembler) it is machine specific (or should I say processor specific) it will only run on a computer/consloe that has the same CPU as the original in our case an ARM processor, as opposed to a PC Intel 8086+ processor).
So you can't just use a ASM core anywhere, and if you take a CPU core from a PC emulator that is written in C, there will be no guarentee that it will be fast (as we will run the core on a 133 CPU, while on the PC it could be fast on machines 500mhz+)

Is it possible that someone can get me a copy of the x86 asm core that is in question. I will also need documentation on the arm assembler instruction set and a copy of an arm assembler itself that cross compiles from linux. I would be willing to give a conversion my best shot. But if I do succeed this is as far as I will be willing to take it, after I have made the core it will be up to someone else. Keep in mind that I am caught up trying to attain gainful employment at the time being but Im still probly the person to try this. I have worked with assembler extensively in the past especially programming micro controllers. I will need as much documentation on the core as possible if I am to make an accurate conversion. Unfortunately I doubt that the core is well documented.

Send as much documentation and tools as you can to:
loridand@netscape.net
hopefully I can come up with something

 

[unlucky]

WOOHOO !

 

[Tobriand]

Now THERE's some good news

You might want to take a look a darkfader's site; I suspect that's where you'll find all the specifications for the GP32 processor (http://darkfader.net/). Other than that, I can't really help, but its *very* good to hear there is someone who's worked with ASM before willing to give it a shot

 

[Loridan]

Ok, another shot of good news, I have discovered that the gnu assembler 'as' has built in support for the arm arch. So thats one more thing out of the way. Now its just going to be a matter of gp32 specifics. And yes, I visit faders site alot

 

[Efompor]

That's great loridan... It's really good to hear that we have another good ASM coder in our midst, people like that are rare. Good luck!

 

[yaustar]

Cool, I wish you the very best of luck

 

[kotd]

THats awesome Loridan the genesis is an awesome system. BTW I think rlyeh is looking for a fast asm core so he would be happy to take it off your hands and add it to fgen.

 

[Alpha2]

Please say this is really happening because I just spent the last hour rooting though a bunch of worthless genesis emulators and the only thing I got to play was a half speed Streets of Rage 2 without sound... <_<