Pandora Handheld Emulator List?

[guizm]

I would like to know the real status of the emulators, in the pandora wiki are all in "wip" or "working build". Now Pandora is near to us, very near, i really hope that when it arrives, have at least full speed in nintendo old consoles ( nes, snes, gba... )

@Pleng: Jayfoxrox told that he had the idea of making a ds emu, but it is a console with very little info ( in emulating i mean ) and cause that he decided to make a psp emu insteed.
There's nobody working on a ds emu at the moment, Because: 1 , its a very complicated console to emulate, 2, it's nonesense playing a 2 screens videogame in 1 screen, most of the ds games use the 2 screens, so i won't spect too much effort in that emu...

 

[WizardStan]

I would like to know the real status of the emulators, in the pandora wiki are all in "wip" or "working build". Now Pandora is near to us, very near, i really hope that when it arrives, have at least full speed in nintendo old consoles ( nes, snes, gba... )

They're either a work in progress, because the developers don't have an actual Pandora on which to test, or a working build, meaning one of the developers with a Pandora has tested it. You're not going to get much more accurate information until people get their Pandoras and can start testing things. There may be no emulators on the day it is released (which I highly doubt, I'm sure there will be many), but a few days after each respective developer gets theirs there probably will be. Patience, man. You shouldn't expect anything but the base product to work on launch: it's an evolving machine, and the software will come quickly.

 

[Shaun199three]

I would like to know the real status of the emulators, in the pandora wiki are all in "wip" or "working build". Now Pandora is near to us, very near, i really hope that when it arrives, have at least full speed in nintendo old consoles ( nes, snes, gba... )

@Pleng: Jayfoxrox told that he had the idea of making a ds emu, but it is a console with very little info ( in emulating i mean ) and cause that he decided to make a psp emu insteed.
There's nobody working on a ds emu at the moment, Because: 1 , its a very complicated console to emulate, 2, it's nonesense playing a 2 screens videogame in 1 screen, most of the ds games use the 2 screens, so i won't spect too much effort in that emu...

You never really know if anyone is working on ds emulator just like how we thought no one was working on a N64 emulator. It's great how we already have so many emulators, from a small group of developers. Imagine when 4000 people get their Pandoras.

 

[guizm]

What i tried to mean is that i hope that the wiki project page is a little outdate, for example i asked cpasjuste for the status of his port of " freeciv " and he told me that was currently working perfectly. That game is in " working build " ( in the wiki ) just like N64 ari's emu, so im specting to see many software "outdated" going smoothly.
It's obvious that when more people have their pandora's, more people will make more and better software ( just look at the psp ).
Let's see what future brings us :rolleyes:

 

[Pleng]

@Pleng: Jayfoxrox told that he had the idea of making a ds emu, but it is a console with very little info ( in emulating i mean ) and cause that he decided to make a psp emu insteed.
There's nobody working on a ds emu at the moment, Because: 1 , its a very complicated console to emulate, 2, it's nonesense playing a 2 screens videogame in 1 screen, most of the ds games use the 2 screens, so i won't spect too much effort in that emu...

No I thought somebody actually had a build of an emulator working and managed to get some games working (albeit very slow, like 5fps or something).

Perhaps it was my imagination but you know all too well how dumb your 2 screen argument is nonsense. There have been several ways proposed for implementing switching between 2 screens and there are plenty of game that don't rely on having both screens full sized at the same time (Mario Kart, New Mario Bros and Touch Darts are three that spring immediately to mind)

 

[guizm]

@Pleng: Jayfoxrox told that he had the idea of making a ds emu, but it is a console with very little info ( in emulating i mean ) and cause that he decided to make a psp emu insteed.
There's nobody working on a ds emu at the moment, Because: 1 , its a very complicated console to emulate, 2, it's nonesense playing a 2 screens videogame in 1 screen, most of the ds games use the 2 screens, so i won't spect too much effort in that emu...

No I thought somebody actually had a build of an emulator working and managed to get some games working (albeit very slow, like 5fps or something).

Perhaps it was my imagination but you know all too well how dumb your 2 screen argument is nonsense. There have been several ways proposed for implementing switching between 2 screens and there are plenty of game that don't rely on having both screens full sized at the same time (Mario Kart, New Mario Bros and Touch Darts are three that spring immediately to mind)

I think it was Cpasjuste ( not sure ), he said that he made a very quick port of the ds emu running in his beagle, at 5 fps like you said. He is not working (officially) in the emu.
It's highly possible that we will see that emu in our pandoras ( perhaps not running at 100 % ), but i really think i could get a little insane trying to play games like metroid or zelda DS in pandora.

 

[Pleng]

Yea the switching screens clearly won't work for every game out there, but there are still plenty you could play (with varying degrees of success) on Pandora.

 

[Enverex]

it's nonsense playing a 2 screens videogame in 1 screen, most of the ds games use the 2 screens, so i won't spect too much effort in that emu...

That makes no sense. All he did was compile Desmume and run that on his board and it worked (he didn't do any optimisations or anything) and the two screen argument isn't a problem at all. You can either rotate the Pandora sideways and stack them on top of each other or place them side by side, the Pandora's screen is high enough res to do that. If any work was done to make the emu better they could simply add in a function like MAME has that lets you select the screen layout (vertical, horizontal, single top, single bottom, etc). Only problem I can see with stacking though is without stretching them they are rather small (because the DS screens were stupidly low resolution).

 

[Near_Kstor]

I believe we could use our TV/Out cables for DS emulation as well.

I mean... Just the bottom screen have Touch. So we could use the top screen on the TV and the bottom screen on the Pandora itself.

For a more "portable" experience, switching screens also works with lots of games. Pokemon surely would be GREAT. But even Zelda would be perfectly possible (since the top screen is just used to see the map, and you CAN bring it down via game menu, all the gameplay occurs on the bottom screen).

 

[fusion_power]

I believe we could use our TV/Out cables for DS emulation as well.

I mean... Just the bottom screen have Touch. So we could use the top screen on the TV and the bottom screen on the Pandora itself.

For a more "portable" experience, switching screens also works with lots of games. Pokemon surely would be GREAT. But even Zelda would be perfectly possible (since the top screen is just used to see the map, and you CAN bring it down via game menu, all the gameplay occurs on the bottom screen).

Makes sense, with the right distance between Pandora and TV the visual feeling could be good enough for the Dual-Screen Games. Still not very useful for Games that stretch the Game area over 2 Screens (Sonic for Example) but we still can use Portrait mode and the 2 Screens nearly fit perfectly onto the Pandora Screen, even pixel doubled.

 

[Near_Kstor]

The big question is
CAN Pandora emulate the Nintendo DS?

DS uses ARM processors, so I don't think assembly translations are necessary (like that PSP situation... MIPS -> ARM , I think?)
And Pandora Cortex A8 is WAAAAY much faster than the DS ARMs...
I really think there should be a way to implement one... But probably is not as simple as compiling one that we usually use on x86 PCs... It have to be made from the ground up.

I wanted to make one, but my dev abilities doesn't even grasp emulation... And I don't think there are a lot of tutorials on "emulators development" around the web... =/ Our best shot is to count on one of our dev geniuses, like JayFoxRox, if any of them wanted to... =/

 

[Tom`]

I wanted to make one, but my dev abilities doesn't even grasp emulation... And I don't think there are a lot of tutorials on "emulators development" around the web... =/

There's a rather generic one by Marat Fayzullin.

Other than that, as a first project people usually suggest to try writing a Chip-8 emulator (or technically, interpreter). There's a massive thread on emutalk about how to do this, and that's where I'd start - the Chip-8 is very well-documented.

Of course, this will probably also tell you whether you're cut out to be a programmer - I've made multiple attempts at this and never made anything remotely playable...

(none of this will help you with a DS emulator, which is massively more complicated, but, well, you know what they say about the world's longest journey.)

 

[rabidpoobear]

I wanted to make one, but my dev abilities doesn't even grasp emulation... And I don't think there are a lot of tutorials on "emulators development" around the web... =/

Other than that, as a first project people usually suggest to try writing a Chip-8 emulator (or technically, interpreter). There's a massive thread on emutalk about how to do this, and that's where I'd start - the Chip-8 is very well-documented.

Of course, this will probably also tell you whether you're cut out to be a programmer - I've made multiple attempts at this and never made anything remotely playable...

*runs off to start on a CHIP-8 Emulator*

 

[Paradox]

ok, so nobody is (publicly) working on a DS emulator that we know about, but all i'm asking is if fullspeed w/sound etc DS emulation is ever possible or is the DS just too "new"? I never would have thought we'd get N64/Dreamcast/PSP emulators in the works that look promising so what do guys think?

 

[Near_Kstor]

I wanted to make one, but my dev abilities doesn't even grasp emulation... And I don't think there are a lot of tutorials on "emulators development" around the web... =/

There's a rather generic one by Marat Fayzullin.

Other than that, as a first project people usually suggest to try writing a Chip-8 emulator (or technically, interpreter). There's a massive thread on emutalk about how to do this, and that's where I'd start - the Chip-8 is very well-documented.

Of course, this will probably also tell you whether you're cut out to be a programmer - I've made multiple attempts at this and never made anything remotely playable...

(none of this will help you with a DS emulator, which is massively more complicated, but, well, you know what they say about the world's longest journey.)

We are really talking about direct assembly translation? I am not an Assembly programmer, but this Chip8 have a very limited and pretty simple Instruction Set... but I do know some MIPS and SPARC (I don't really like x86... it is a little more, as CISC would suggest, complicated >_>)
I guess my first real step to at least help a future NDS Emu Team is to learn a few things about ARM (at least that part I don't expect to be hard) and, of course, the NDS Architecture... I really need to do some research on NDS hardware documentation... Anyone knows/can suggest somewhere to start looking at?

In the meantime, I will try to learn some things with this Chip8 to understand the concepts behind emulators development...

Once we all got our Pandoras, I hope to organize a team (hopefully with people more experience on this than me) to start taking this on more seriously.

ok, so nobody is (publicly) working on a DS emulator that we know about, but all i'm asking is if fullspeed w/sound etc DS emulation is ever possible or is the DS just too "new"? I never would have thought we'd get N64/Dreamcast/PSP emulators in the works that look promising so what do guys think?

From wikipedia about the Nintendo DS:
CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7 co-processor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively. The ARM946E-S CPU processes gameplay mechanisms and video rendering while the ARM7TDMI processes sound output, Wi-Fi support and additionally, when in Game Boy Advance mode, processes what the other processor used to do.
RAM: 4 MB of Mobile RAM."
Now, Pandora have an ARM processor, Cortex A8, at 600 MHz. Note that it is not just quite faster, but it is an ARM as well (which makes me believe the translations are easier, IF necessary at all), and a more advanced one compared to ARM7TDMI and ARM946E-S.
Oh, as mentioned. The ARM7 is used just for sound processing. So, even if the Pandora can't provide us the 1:1 experience with sound, without sound it really looks like it could be achieved...


Of course, I still don't know much on the DS Architecture, I could be blatantly wrong... But this data points in this direction

 

[MonkeyChops]

I see no ZX81 emulator listed. I am now experiencing a craving to play 3D Monster Maze.

look here. Forum user zx-81 said he would be working on a port of an existing zx81 emulator. A good candidate could be Z81 emulator. However FUSE 0.9.0 Spectrum emulator port for pandora is already availabe. It could be upgraded to version 0.10.0.2 which is the latest one ATM. I like how that version's already been ported to psp, wii, nokia maemo...

Thanks for the great link (emulator possibilities)! Tells you what will, what won't, and what may work on the pandora handheld...he updates it too!!!

I update his list now. I have been taking a bit of a break from the forums lately (I had a week long 30th Birthday party for myself), so I just noticed this thread and I may have missed some emulator updates. Please inform me if I did.

Here the link to the new updated list:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/47518-pandoras-emulators-what-will-work-and-what-wont/

This is also linked in the Information Index

 

[rabidpoobear]

From wikipedia about the Nintendo DS:
CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7 co-processor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively. The ARM946E-S CPU processes gameplay mechanisms and video rendering while the ARM7TDMI processes sound output, Wi-Fi support and additionally, when in Game Boy Advance mode, processes what the other processor used to do.
RAM: 4 MB of Mobile RAM."
Now, Pandora have an ARM processor, Cortex A8, at 600 MHz. Note that it is not just quite faster, but it is an ARM as well (which makes me believe the translations are easier, IF necessary at all), and a more advanced one compared to ARM7TDMI and ARM946E-S.
Oh, as mentioned. The ARM7 is used just for sound processing. So, even if the Pandora can't provide us the 1:1 experience with sound, without sound it really looks like it could be achieved...


Of course, I still don't know much on the DS Architecture, I could be blatantly wrong... But this data points in this direction

You can't just move assembly between architectures like that. Despite being ARM they use different instruction sets (and I don't think the DS processor's ISA is a subset of the Cortex's but I could be wrong). Also I'm not entirely sure that that article is accurate, I believe I read somewhere that you can use both for rendering on different screens if you want. Just hold out for Exo to tell us both how wrong we are

 

[Near_Kstor]

You can't just move assembly between architectures like that. Despite being ARM they use different instruction sets (and I don't think the DS processor's ISA is a subset of the Cortex's but I could be wrong). Also I'm not entirely sure that that article is accurate, I believe I read somewhere that you can use both for rendering on different screens if you want. Just hold out for Exo to tell us both how wrong we are

But someone said before that, in the Angstrom repository, we should look for ARM7 versions of the apps...
From that, I assumed Cortex had compatibility with previous ARM instances...
Guess we just have to wait for Exo to clarify this -.-
Anyway, I do believe DS emulation is doable on the Pandora

 

[Tom`]

But someone said before that, in the Angstrom repository, we should look for ARM7 versions of the apps...
From that, I assumed Cortex had compatibility with previous ARM instances...
Guess we just have to wait for Exo to clarify this -.-
Anyway, I do believe DS emulation is doable on the Pandora

ah, you're a victim of ARM's confusing naming scheme... ARMv7 is not the same as ARM7. The Pandora's CPU is ARMv7, but it's a Cortex-A8 which is actually the sucessor to ARM11. So there's a pretty big difference there. I don't know anything about emulating complex systems, but if Exophase says something is difficult to do, it's generally safe to believe him, since he has a lot of experience with this stuff.

 

[timofonic]

X68000?
J2ME?
Sam Coupé?
Megadrive/Genesis/SegaCD+32X?
Laserdisc?
Soviet old computers?