On the upgradability of the Pyra

[matzesu]

If i would ever need to upgrade my board, in the End, i would only use my Pyra for all the Emulators i had on the Pandora, + Dreamcast and maybe PSP,
But its also quite handy for RMAS, if something wrong whit the CPU Board, you only need to change the CPU Board..
My Plans for the Pyra are also as a Workstation for writing Documents etc, so nothing you cant do whit the current Board..

Some things on the Pandora allready worked quite well, maybe even better than on my Thinkpad as this is now quite unoptimiced whit Windows 10,

But first, i need the Pyra whit the current Board..

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

I dont think i would need to change my CPU Board as i want to get used to it , i know it cant run fly simulator 2020

Maybe you can play FlightGear on the Pyra. FlightGear is really fun too. But it is pretty resource heavy. If the Pyra can run FlightGear at good speed then I'm probably going to play FlightGear on my Pyra.

 

[levi]

Even if your perfectly happy with your Pyra for now, software and specifically ptitseb never stands still, and I can imagine that there gets produced something you want to play that your current pyra struggles to run well. Never say never.

 

[Wax]

If i would ever need to upgrade my board, in the End, i would only use my Pyra for all the Emulators i had on the Pandora, + Dreamcast and maybe PSP,

How well are those expected to run on the Pyra? There are a few handhelds coming out now that run those kind of ok. It would be cool if something that costs considerably more were at least similarly capable.

 

[levi]

Thanks to ingoreiz's archive of old Pandora videos, we can see what PPSSPP and Reicast ran like on ten year old similarly open hardware as the Pyra has:
Here's PPSSPP on the Pandora:

And here's Reicast:

You can see and especially hear that the system was having trouble keeping up with everything, but it was basically playable. I'd expect the Pyra to be a step ahead of that, although those only came about around 4 years into the Pandora's life, so it might be sensible to expect them not to run even this well to begin with even on more capable hardware like the Pyra.

 

[Askarus]

PPSSPP and Reicast where not written especially for the Pandora.
Maybe PtitSeb made some optimizations to them, but I don't think they were heavily Pandora centered.

Don't forget that emulators get optimized overtime.
So they might even run better on a Pandora now.

 

[levi]

Yes, I assume the later emus mostly came from android projects originally. But actually very few emulators came specifically for the Pandora, I can only think of DraStiC really, and even that probably got far more bug reports when it got released on the android app store. Emus like gpSP came from the GP/H line of handhelds I believe, written by Exo. And emus like UAE and FUSE have been knocking around for years now on linux computers, and other machines capable of running open source projects.

And those videos are from about six years ago, which is where I got that 4 years in stat from. I remember PPSSPP getting a lot better over time, although that was perhaps more about emulating more library calls and HLE effectively, perhaps only Mupen for N64 improved as much over it's development span. A number of those optimisations should be directly portable over to the OMAP5 from the OMAP3, but exactly how much remains to be seen.

And don't forget Notaz got Reicast running well using I think an old TI kernel on the devboard. I think it's this video, although for some reason it doesn't seem to play for me just now:

Now that @ToastBucket and others have got a lot of those libs running better on more up to date kernels, we're currently a lot closer to being able to achieve what's shown there, although it may be worth bearing in mind that that was done on the devboard with a chunky heatsink and maybe a fan keeping the CPU/GPU cooler, and I don't really have a handle on how well ED's more compact and passive solution inside the Pyra's case works yet.

 

[Askarus]

We had multiple PS1 and MegaDrive emulators running at the same time on the devboard

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

We had multiple PS1 and MegaDrive emulators running at the same time on the devboard

Did any of those run faster than 1 frame per minute?

 

[FBnil]

Did any of those run faster than 1 frame per minute?

@λ the β-Redex Reducer Jr. Not sure... why not watch the youtube video?

 

[ToastBucket]

Now that @ToastBucket and others have got a lot of those libs running better on more up to date kernels, we're currently a lot closer to being able to achieve what's shown there, although it may be worth bearing in mind that that was done on the devboard with a chunky heatsink and maybe a fan keeping the CPU/GPU cooler, and I don't really have a handle on how well ED's more compact and passive solution inside the Pyra's case works yet.

Wanna make sure @daveshah gets the credit for this. I’ve just followed his instructions and posted the videos. All the stuff I’ve done is related to the bootloader and the charger.

 

[Askarus]

Did any of those run faster than 1 frame per minute?

All full speed.
There are some old FOSDEM and Gamescome videos where we showed it in public.
Ah, posted to fast. FBnail already posted the link.
At the Gamescome we had the same thing with 2 PS1 and 1-2 MegaDrive emulators if I remember correctly.
3 PS1 (with upscaling) was too much.

 

[ible]

3 PS1 (with upscaling) was too much.

but i wanna play 3 games at once!!! /whiny voice

 

[FBnil]

but i wanna play 3 games at once!!! /whiny voice

hmm... you know, maybe we could do the trick the Pandora does with suspend mode: "kill -STOP" the other processes until you do alt-tab, then "kill -CONT" the process on top. We have enough RAM to run 3 emulators at once. Or maybe play with "nice" so they don't interfere with the foreground process... we DO have some unused keys on the Pyra (usr1) we could map so something like that...

 

[Kev2442]

I wonder if 3DS emulation would be possible. Also, how is MAME running (especially 3D games like Virtua Fighter and Ridge Racer) ?
And as the Pyra has HDMI out and USB ports, could we run two emulators in parallel and link them (like two consoles or arcade cabs connected together for multiplayer, one on the Pyra's screen and controls, the other on TV with a controller) ?

 

[Grench]

For those of you looking for a camera:
https://liliputing.com/2020/08/fairphones-new-camera-modules-let-you-upgrade-the-fairphone-3.html
https://shop.fairphone.com/en/spare...?utm_source=tradetracker&utm_medium=affiliate
Someone would have to dig in and figure out what data lines would need to be connected to what kind of controller and all of that. Not a trivial task. BUT - this is the first stand alone decent camera module with flash I have seen in a self contained package around the right size to even be contemplated.

 

[levi]

I can't find any dimensions of that on either link. It might fit but without any metrics I can't really say. Also I'm not sure how it's meant to connect given I can't see any contacts. There looks to be a port type thing on the back but I don't recognise it as any kind of standard port, so I've no idea where the contacts are.

 

[lukey]

Someone™

 

[ToastBucket]

Someone would have to dig in and figure out what data lines would need to be connected to what kind of controller and all of that. Not a trivial task.

I don’t see any documentation there, but I’d be willing to bet it’s MIPI-CSI2. Unfortunately, the CSI lines on the Pyra SOC board aren’t exposed. Unless someone managed to get under the SOC and safely tack onto the lines this isn’t gonna be compatible with current hardware. As well as this, the speed would have to be managed as CSI consists of high speed differential lines.

The only way I see us getting camera support with current hardware is USB camera.

 

[docbroke]

Most USB cameras today are designed as webcams for use with desktop. I couldn't find any small enough to be suitable for Pyra.