PC emulators that should be ported to Pandora

[SonicTehAwesomeFace]

There was a user on the GP32X forums (I think his name was Monkey Chops) who made a list of consoles the Pandora can, might, might not, and can't emulate. And the PS2, GameCube, Xbox and Wii were on the "Can't" list. But since those emulators existed for PC, why couldn't someone just port those?


I have no idea how to make or port emulators (or ROMs), so I was wondering if someone else could.


The link to the site that has these emulators is here: http://www.emulator-zone.com


If these emulators can't be ported then just tell me, and don't call me "stupid" because I'm not as much of a computer geek as the rest of you. I haven't experienced this yet, but I'm sure it will happen sooner or later.


[EDIT] OK, thx! I think I know now why they can't be ported. I was only wondering, because the pandora could emulate the PSP, which to me, felt the same as the PS2. And also the Dreamcast. But now I know for sure why the pandora couldn't handle them.

 

[Prometheus]

There was a user on the GP32X forums (I think his name was Monkey Chops) who made a list of consoles the Pandora can, might, might not, and can't emulate. And the PS2, GameCube, Xbox and Wii were on the "Can't" list. But since those emulators existed for PC, why couldn't someone just port those?


I have no idea how to make or port emulators (or ROMs), so I was wondering if someone else could.

If the source code is available and they don't depend on certain features present in x86 processors and/or x86-only operating systems, certainly these things could be ported. However, the reason they are in the "Can't" list is because they would almost certainly be completely unusable.


To put it in a nutshell, an emulator basically implements an entire machine in software. I don't wish to use the "If you want to emulate something, the target machine needs to be ten times faster" myth here, but I don't think that it's *totally* inaccurate to simply say, for the sake of explaining this, that emulating complicated systems tends to require a very beefy machine.

 

[THB]

They probably could port them, but they would be very very slow. A PC capable of emulating the PS2/Gamecube/Wii/Xbox generation needs to be very powerful and a pandora while powerful for a pocket computer really doesnt come close enough to do the job. Also PCs have a processor with a different architecture so the source code if it exists in public may not work at all.

 

[Exophase]

Yeah just port ALL of those. Maybe narrow things down a little first.

 

[DaMummy]

you can do it exo, we need that gamecube emu pronto! and the other ones while youre at it

 

[Elanzer]

Alot of the emulators (ie: PCSX2) are so low-level optimized for specific CPUs to get usable performance that cross compiling to an ARM CPU simply will not work.


Why would anyone waste their time porting these when the specs of the Pandora have absolutely no chance in hell of emulating them beyond 5% realtime framerate? It has absolutely no use at all on the Pandora, or any handheld device, so why put work into something that's doomed to be fruitless? If you know how to port the emulators, you would know how silly it is to port them.

 

[DaMummy]

the psp emulator is unlikely to run playable speed anytime soon, but ground work has been done on one, which will be a great start for something like a pandora 2 with better hardware, so dont think that just cause the pandora cant do it that its useless

 

[sukhi2011]

Atari Jaguar,Nintendo Ds,Sega Dreamcast if these can come,that will be great.


There was videos on dreamcast in youtube so it must be possible!


Dc was playing without sound and it was run at good speed,i saw ferrari f355 challenge on pandora dev kit and it played so well.


It's good news that 32x and n64 has come and they look quite impressive.


I would like following emulators on pandora:


Sega Saturn


Sega Dreamcast


Sega Model 2


Atrai lynx 2


Atari Jaguar/Jag-cd


Panasonic 3do


Cps 1,2,3


Mame4all


Nintendo ds/3ds (3ds can be made without 3d)

 

[breakpots]

See, the problem with porting the DS is that the Pandora has only one screen. Perhaps you could offer some suggestions on how we could work around that!

 

[Caine]

See, the problem with porting the DS is that the Pandora has only one screen. Perhaps you could offer some suggestions on how we could work around that!

I had a working dynarec for the DS, but I threw it away because I couldn't work around this issue.

 

[Norl]

I'd love a mac II emulator. The user could supply his own "bios" and pandora would have plenty of horsepower to emulate a motorola 68030.


20 years worth of apps and games. *drool*

 

[darfgarf]

I had a working dynarec for the DS, but I threw it away because I couldn't work around this issue.

i had a solution, but not everyone can afford a second screen and a usb graphics adapter

 

[Mr_Loon]

All I want is a Dragon 32 emulator, ah those happy memories of your first computer.

 

[Nintendo]

I'm happy with all the emulators we already have. N64 and PlayStation FTW!!!

 

[JerryBlade]

I'd love a mac II emulator. The user could supply his own "bios" and pandora would have plenty of horsepower to emulate a motorola 68030.


20 years worth of apps and games. *drool*

Heh maybe I am being a skeptic, but the *sole* reason I bought a PC in the early 90s was because the '030 and '040 Macs had very little when it came to games (Ultima VII pushed me over the edge I believe)... There were a bunch of fun and simple games, but nothing that I remember ever being something that people would point to a Mac and say "Damn... I wish we had that on my platform!!!"

 

[Norl]

Heh maybe I am being a skeptic, but the *sole* reason I bought a PC in the early 90s was because the '030 and '040 Macs had very little when it came to games ...

Not a lot but there were some. I'd just love to run apps on my pandora that i remember running on the original hw.


Dark Castle

Spectre VR

Glider

Pathways into Darkness, etc. Plus Photoshop and other non games.

 

[Nintendo]

Mate, I really want to play Macintosh Dark Castle (not the crappy SEGA MD one, lol) on Pandora. Please show me how?

 

[Norl]

I'd like to know that myself.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Sega Saturn

Not possible, Saturn's too complex to emulate well on the Pandora.

Sega Dreamcast

Possible in theory, but nothing much has been made of it recently. There's an old video somewhere.

Sega Model 2

Is that emulator even open source?

Atrai lynx 2

There is no Lynx 2; it's just a hardware redesign. We already have a Lynx emulator.

Atari Jaguar/Jag-cd

It was worked on a while back, and was going well, but was abandoned and never released.

Panasonic 3do

Theoretically it can work. FreeDO was recently GPL'd, right?

Cps 1,2,3

CPS1's covered by MAME4ALL. CPS2 is covered, albeit slowly, by MAME .106. There's also this thread.

Mame4all

Already been done, and it's a fantastic port, too!

Nintendo ds/3ds (3ds can be made without 3d)

DS has been attempted, but is very slow; not worth releasing. An extreme (extreme) amount of work is necessary to even get 20FPS in some games. As for 3DS? You're kidding, right?

 

[Nintendo]

I'd like to know that myself.

Aww, Dark Castle is one of my favourite games of all time!!!