Psx- & Nintendo64-emulation

[Demonews-Daniel]

Hey guys, I'm from a German page called Demonews. I tested the GP2X a couple of months ago. Since then it was and still is one of my favorite handhelds. I'm glad to play a lot of my favorite youth's games like Secret of Mana, Super Mario World and many many more. So, I'm lookin' forward to get a Panodra console and test PSX emulation. Can anyone tell me whether there's something in developement to emulate PlayStation-Consoles or Nintendo 64-Consoles?

Thanks a lot.

 

[ldesnogu]

Did you read the FAQ on the Wiki (see sticky post)? Or are you looking for something not answered in the FAQ?

 

[Holokauston]

Hey guys, I'm from a German page called Demonews. I tested the GP2X a couple of months ago. Since then it was and still is one of my favorite handhelds. I'm glad to play a lot of my favorite youth's games like Secret of Mana, Super Mario World and many many more. So, I'm lookin' forward to get a Panodra console and test PSX emulation. Can anyone tell me whether there's something in developement to emulate PlayStation-Consoles or Nintendo 64-Consoles?

Thanks a lot.

Looked at the site, looks like a decent game site

It's kinda hard to answer how far emulation has come since no one is able to try it, in theory you will just have to port a working PSX emulator for ex. but then there is the question of optimizing it and getting playable speed etc.

Same goes for N64 but even more towards the "we have to wait and see" I'm afraid, but since SNES is done and maybe more I guess someone is working on it, if not to just pass time until they get a Pandora.

 

[Classic Team]

I would think that PSX emulation will come. The N64, however, will take some time; And I don't think it will runn everything...or fullspeed, but I would think since theres so much hype about the N64 on the Pandora, someone will make it.

The PSX emulator just needs to be ported to work on the pandora. But there is no N64 emu that we can translate into the pandora directly. Someone will have to take the source and re-program it for the Pandora. That means its gonna take time.

Altough I think SNES Will come to the Pandora early in release ( Maybe inbetween the first 3000 and the next batch).

But before you get your hope up, this is all speculation.

 

[Holokauston]

I would think that PSX emulation will come. The N64, however, will take some time; And I don't think it will runn everything...or fullspeed, but I would think since theres so much hype about the N64 on the Pandora, someone will make it.

The PSX emulator just needs to be ported to work on the pandora. But there is no N64 emu that we can translate into the pandora directly. Someone will have to take the source and re-program it for the Pandora. That means its gonna take time.

Altough I think SNES Will come to the Pandora early in release ( Maybe inbetween the first 3000 and the next batch).

But before you get your hope up, this is all speculation.

SNES have been ported already

What is the difference between PSX "translation" and N64 "re-programing"?
My guess would be that someone takes mupen64plus, does exactly what the PSX person has to do as well io:
Graphic plugins = from OpenGL calls to OpenGL|ES
maybe alter Sound plugins?
Memory optimization based on Pandora specifications?

Adjust for ARMEL and compile?

 

[anexanhume]

I don't think so. My guess is that someone who takes on the n64 emulator will be knee-deep in ARM assembly if they want to think about getting full speed or wide compatibility.

 

[ldesnogu]

Indeed... The N64 has a 64 bit processor running @93 MHz according to wikipedia.
So assuming a 600 MHz Cortex-A8, we are talking of 6 cycles per emulated instruction and that's only taking into account the N64 CPU.
Without some form of dynamic recompilation there simply is no hope. And even with it, I bet the result will be bad.

 

[anexanhume]

Indeed... The N64 has a 64 bit processor running @93 MHz according to wikipedia.
So assuming a 600 MHz Cortex-A8, we are talking of 6 cycles per emulated instruction and that's only taking into account the N64 CPU.
Without some form of dynamic recompilation there simply is no hope. And even with it, I bet the result will be bad.



Which is why a lot of people better hope that this omap chip has some hefty overclocking headroom.

 

[Exophase]

Indeed... The N64 has a 64 bit processor running @93 MHz according to wikipedia.
So assuming a 600 MHz Cortex-A8, we are talking of 6 cycles per emulated instruction and that's only taking into account the N64 CPU.
Without some form of dynamic recompilation there simply is no hope. And even with it, I bet the result will be bad.



You haven't played N64 emulators on 300MHz or less x86 PCs, have you...

Simply put, most games don't push the CPU to the limit and as far as I'm aware there's a lot of idle loop waiting. StrmnNrmn emulates it at a fixed 2 cycles per instruction, and I believe Project 64 usually does something similar, with an optional 1 cycle per instruction (that can make some games smoother than they are on the real platform).

More accurate cycle emulation would be great but counting cache misses is just too much, especially for any level of associativity.

 

[ldesnogu]

You haven't played N64 emulators on 300MHz or less x86 PCs, have you...

Is there any such emu that runs on Linux? If not, there's no way I will try such a beast

I don't think we need to start again that discussion, you know we will agree in the end

My main point was to say that without playing at assembly level, n64 emu won't happen (and I count dynarec as assembly).

 

[craigix]

I remember playing N64 on a 300mhz pc with a 3D card. HLE seems to work really well on the N64.

 

[ldesnogu]

I remember playing N64 on a 300mhz pc with a 3D card. HLE seems to work really well on the N64.

I would give it a try, but I couldn't find any Linux version

 

[craigix]

You would also need an old 3dfx graphics card too!

 

[Tobriand]

I thought you could get away with a Glide to OpenGL/DirectX wrapper? Could be wrong... it's a long time since I tried to run anything that needed Glide.

 

[fusion_power]

I remember playing N64 on a 300mhz pc with a 3D card. HLE seems to work really well on the N64.

I remember playing "UltraHLE" onto a 266MHz PII with the good old "Diamond Monster2" Voodoo 2.
I have no clue HOW these was possible but it was fun. This "High Level Emulation" could be the Key for many cool Emulators onto the Pandora.

 

[Exophase]

My main point was to say that without playing at assembly level, n64 emu won't happen (and I count dynarec as assembly).

Agreed. The good news (or at least a small consolation) is that a couple open source emulators are written with dynarecs, so they have the front ends done. At least one open source N64 emulator (Daedalus) is written with multiple platforms in mind. I personally wouldn't try to write another dynarec target for it, as the code is quite complex, but I bet StrmnNrmn could manage it with enough motivation.

Sadly the whole "really fast N64 emulators" period of time happened a long time ago and they were all on Windows But there were at least 4 of them.

 

[ldesnogu]

You would also need an old 3dfx graphics card too!

1. I still have one of these Voodoo beasts in a box
2. I have already run games with glide wrappers as Tobriand hinted.

 

[J201605]

but I bet StrmnNrmn could manage it with enough motivation.

lets get motivatin'... send him like 12 Pandora's.

 

[CoMiKe]

I remember to have played Mario 64 (and some other N64 games) on my AMD K6-2 350 MHz with my Riva TNT1 using an emulator named Corn.

You could perhaps try it under Linux using Wine.

 

[Tinnus]

We just have to bug StrmnNrmn a bit, and I bet he'd be very happy to do a version of Daedalus for Pandora I imagine the Pandora has the potential to emulate the N64 at very good speeds using Daedalus as a base (just check the PSP version, and it only uses one 333MHz CPU).

About PSX, well, it will happen very soon

(as soon as the psx4all team gets their hands on some Pandoras, that is )