Snes Then Vice 2.1 = Faster Vice

[Valvestat]

Can someone check that I'm not loosing the plot (or my Wiz has't lost it at least)

I've recently been playing with Vice 2.1 as it's suggested that it is faster than Vice 2.2. I seemed to get a very smooth rate from Vice 2.1 by disabling virtual devices, disabling true drive emulation, setting the sid emulation to fastsid and setting the cpu overclock to 623. The game I was basing this on was my version of hunter's moon.

So... I decided to try and set these as the default setting and edited the x64.gpe by adding / altering the following parameters using the unicode notepad++:

-sidengine 0 -refresh 1 -truedruve -virtualdev

I disconnected the Wiz from the PC and tried out vice to see if it had worked. I didn't realise until later that to turn the true drive emulation and virtual devices off I had to add a + suffix instead of a -, but that's by the by.

I found that the emulation was pretty poor in comparison so I deleted vice 2.1 from the SD amd replaced it with a working version that I had backed up. Started Vice again and found that I couldn't get the emulation to run as smooth as I could before I had edited the x64.gpe.

Later in the day I started up PocketSNES and played for a while, quit and then loaded Vice. Using the settings I mentioned above, and with the unedited gpe, it worked fine again!

So what seems to happen is that if Vice is stated straight after booting up, it seems to perform quite poorly. If it is started as the second app (in the working example, after PocketSNES) after switching on the Wiz it seems to run smoother at 623mhz. Either that or I've done something strange to the Wiz.

here's vice 2.1:
http://files.emuwiki.com/Vice-wiz-2.1.zip

this is the ver of pocket snes i'm using (latest):
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/wiz.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,37

and here's Hunter's Moon which is the c64 game I was using to test the speed with:
http://www.soundsage.co.uk/hunters moon.t64

The Vice settings that I used were:
True drive emulation off
Virtual devices off
FastSID sid emulation
623mhz CPU speed

I know it's quite a lot to ask, but if someone could confirm that the older Vice, if started as the first app after booting up, does or doesn't run perfectly smoothly with the settings above, I'd be well happy. Then I'd know if the Wiz is a bit ill.

 

[Dave18]

One explanation could be that the clock setting on the Wiz version isn't really enabled (I seem to remember the same existed in AlexKidd until the most recent update). Therefore rather than running the 623Mhz it is simply running at whatever the Wiz is currently set to. I don't know what the default Wiz clock speed is but I imaging there's a good chance that PocketSNES increases it by quite a bit, so running Vice after PocketSNES effectively runs it at a higher clockspeed.

All a complete guess!

Dave

 

[crow_riot]

One explanation could be that the clock setting on the Wiz version isn't really enabled (I seem to remember the same existed in AlexKidd until the most recent update). Therefore rather than running the 623Mhz it is simply running at whatever the Wiz is currently set to. I don't know what the default Wiz clock speed is but I imaging there's a good chance that PocketSNES increases it by quite a bit, so running Vice after PocketSNES effectively runs it at a higher clockspeed.

All a complete guess!

Dave

thats what i think, too. maybe the clock works in vice and snes changes ram timings which helps, too ... but as u said, it's just a guess

 

[Pickle]

One explanation could be that the clock setting on the Wiz version isn't really enabled (I seem to remember the same existed in AlexKidd until the most recent update). Therefore rather than running the 623Mhz it is simply running at whatever the Wiz is currently set to. I don't know what the default Wiz clock speed is but I imaging there's a good chance that PocketSNES increases it by quite a bit, so running Vice after PocketSNES effectively runs it at a higher clockspeed.

All a complete guess!

Dave

thats what i think, too. maybe the clock works in vice and snes changes ram timings which helps, too ... but as u said, it's just a guess

im pretty sure the clock setting works in vice, but its been a while since ive used or looked at it.
Another alternative is Frodo, its much faster than vice

 

[Valvestat]

Thanks for the reply guys.

Yeah, TitanUranus suggested the same.

I've just set up vice to run without frame skip (frame skip 0) and the other bits turned off as above and it seems to work great from first booting now. This is a strange little box.

One explanation could be that the clock setting on the Wiz version isn't really enabled (I seem to remember the same existed in AlexKidd until the most recent update). Therefore rather than running the 623Mhz it is simply running at whatever the Wiz is currently set to. I don't know what the default Wiz clock speed is but I imaging there's a good chance that PocketSNES increases it by quite a bit, so running Vice after PocketSNES effectively runs it at a higher clockspeed.

All a complete guess!

Dave

thats what i think, too. maybe the clock works in vice and snes changes ram timings which helps, too ... but as u said, it's just a guess

im pretty sure the clock setting works in vice, but its been a while since ive used or looked at it.
Another alternative is Frodo, its much faster than vice