Gpadvance School Report


Sonic-NKT

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Apr 15, 2003
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Hi,
just saw that on http://gpadvance.sourceforge.net/
there is an update, since GpAdvance became a school project he made a first report in PDF but since it ins french i cant read it.
the news is from the 21.10.04 a bit old but i didnt saw this here yet so i posted this.
 
I haven't really been following the progress of it to well, what is its state at the mo?

Can it play commercial games yet? (I remeber someone saying a while back that the author was deliberatly not allowing it to play commercial games, is this true?)

what about the memory issue, has that been addressed yet?

cheers,

c0ncept
 
c0ncept posted on Oct 31 2004 at 05:42 PM said:
Can it play commercial games yet? (I remeber someone saying a while back that the author was deliberatly not allowing it to play commercial games, is this true?)

what about the memory issue, has that been addressed yet?

It can play commercial games, sort of. Many run, but most are unplayable. One version had Mr Driller and a couple others working really fast however.

The memory issue has been addressed, again, only sort of. It loads ROMs of any size, but at the the minute it shifts too much data at once, which causes massive loading times.
 
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cool, I really can't wait for this to be finished! I sold my GBA for a gp32 and so far I haven't been dissapointed but a GBA emulator really would be the cherry on top :D
 
amiga would be practically impossible, it had something like 8 chips, they even all had names eg. AGNUS.
 
Those chips are:

Agnus - Blitter, copper, DMA circuitry (Address Generator)
Akiko - Chunky->Planar conversion & serial (on CD32)
Alice - 'AA Agnus'
Amber - Flicker Fixer gate array
Andrea - AAA Chip - Agnus/Alice analog
Beauty
Bridgette
Budgie - 'Memory Stuff'
Buster - Expansion buss controller
Denise - Color palette, sprites, video output: Display Adapter (Daphne)
DMAC - Disk IO controller
Gary - System Glue Chip, miscellaneous control circuitry
Gayle - 'lots of control stuff'
Grace
Kelly - RAMDAC
Linda - AAA Chip - Line Buffer
Lisa - 'AA Denise'
Mary - 'AAA Paula' Floppy, Audio, ect.
Monica - 'AAA Denise' Graphics Chip
Paula - Audio, floppy, joystick & interrupt circuitry: Ports and Audio (Portia)
Ramsey - Ram controller with DMA

Basically, to emulate a simple A500, we need Agnus, Denise, DMAC, Gary and Paula.
A lot of chips to emulate...

(BTW: I especially like the Grace chips followed by Kelly chips ;))
 
Those chips are:

Agnus - Blitter, copper, DMA circuitry (Address Generator)
Akiko - Chunky->Planar conversion & serial (on CD32)
Alice - 'AA Agnus'
Amber - Flicker Fixer gate array
Andrea - AAA Chip - Agnus/Alice analog
Beauty
Bridgette
Budgie - 'Memory Stuff'
Buster - Expansion buss controller
Denise - Color palette, sprites, video output: Display Adapter (Daphne)
DMAC - Disk IO controller
Gary - System Glue Chip, miscellaneous control circuitry
Gayle - 'lots of control stuff'
Grace
Kelly - RAMDAC
Linda - AAA Chip - Line Buffer
Lisa - 'AA Denise'
Mary - 'AAA Paula' Floppy, Audio, ect.
Monica - 'AAA Denise' Graphics Chip
Paula - Audio, floppy, joystick & interrupt circuitry: Ports and Audio (Portia)
Ramsey - Ram controller with DMA

Basically, to emulate a simple A500, we need Agnus, Denise, DMAC, Gary and Paula.
A lot of chips to emulate...

(BTW: I especially like the Grace chips followed by Kelly chips ;))


Basically, forget about it on the GP32. It would run at about 1 frame a sec with no sound, bah.
 
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I think amiga could run ok on the GP, have a look at the Amiga emu for the DC and remember it isn't useing an ASM core.

-Craig

www.gbax.com
 
I think amiga could run ok on the GP, have a look at the Amiga emu for the DC and remember it isn't useing an ASM core.

-Craig

www.gbax.com

I'd love to see an Amiga emulator but reading this the other day lowered my hopes a bit :(

This is a quote from the Amiga Format series on Emulation specifically about UAE.

"Other computers lack many basic Amiga features: sprites and dual playfields (overlaid displays), mixed modes on one screen,interacting (attached) sound channels, Hold and Modify colour, and bit level access to disks. Most can be emulated, but at great cost. Scrolling two overlays in opposite directions takes the A500 mere microseconds, but requires an emulator to read, mix and write up to 100 Mb of video data every second.

Tight coupling between the processors means the 68000 can program the blitter to program the copper to program the blitter, and then get on with something else leaving 100,000 or so graphic operations chugging away automatically every second, in perfect synchronisation at no cost to the 68000. An Amiga emulator must do all this, and more, without missing a beat.

UAE originally stood for Unusable Amiga Emulator, with good reason. Version 0.1 would not even boot! Despite this unpromising start vintage Amiga devotee Bernd Schmidt pressed on, encouraged by former Commodore man Ed Hanway who'd written his own, non-working, Amiga emulator.

Amiga emulation is a colossal problem. The 68000 processor is complicated, but a far greater challenge is emulating the custom chips, which can be reprogrammed at microsecond intervals, changing colours, reusing sprites and hardware channels. The effort required to allow for every possibility will humble even Gigahertz systems."
 
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