Racemaniac said:
the goal of a real-time os is to provide some processes the ability to work on timing critical issues. this means they need the ability to prevent being preempted by the scheduler, being interrupted by other tasks... isn't that what we want for our emulators? full control, not being interrupted by os processes (which is causing the framedrops)?
if our problem is memory, the os taking up too much memory, i agree wee need a minimal os
but if it's them getting interrupted by os processes, adding realtime features to the current os would be sufficient. we could keep a full featured os, and provide emus the ability to work as if it weren't there.
That's a very complex solution to a simple problem, though.
It would require a lot of testing of a new kernel, and the few emulators that could benefit would have to be rewritten anyway.
I think DaveC was incorrect to call this a "minimal OS", all we're talking about is killing background processes.
EDIT:
I'm not even sure why everyone's clamouring for every scrap of performance already...
The Pandora is a LOT more powerful than the Wiz, and emulators for anything older than the PSX should run fine.
Come back when you have something that is actually being slowed down after optimisation.