The Davec List And Where We Are Now.


Cyclops

Active Member
Joined
May 26, 2003
Messages
950
DaveC's whats possible.

DaveC posted on Sep 13 2005 at 06:59 PM said:
updated list:

* 3DO (No)
* Amiga OCS (95% Possible)
* Amiga AGA (No)
* Amiga CD32 (unlikely)
* Amstrad CPC 464 (100%)
* Atari 2600 (100%)
* Atari 5200 (100%)
* Atari 7800 (100%)
* Atari Jaguar (no)
* Atari Lynx (100%)
* Atari ST (100%)
* BBC Micro (100%)
* Coleco Colecovision (100%)
* Commodore 64 (100%)
* Gameboy Advance (maybe)
* Gameboy / Color (100%)
* Game Gear (100%)
* Genesis (100%)
* GCE Vectrex (100%)
* MAME (100%) for older games only
* Mattel Intellivision (75%) controller issues. needed keypad.
* MSX (100%)
* Neo Geo (maybe) speed issues. would be possible but without ASM and extensive 2nd core use would be very slow with no sound.
* Neo Geo CD (same as above)
* Neo Geo Pocket (100%)
* Nes (100%)
* Nintendo DS (never)
* Nintendo 64 (never)
* Nokia N-Gage (Possible to a degree)
* Philips CD-i (Unlikely)
* Playstation (not in playable form)
* Sega 32X (never)
* Sega CD (never)
* Sega Master System (100%)
* Snes (75%) probably would have to omit transparencies to get at a good speed.
* TurboGrafx-16 (100%)
* WonderSwan / Color (100%)
* ZX Spectrum (100%)

I do like this list. It seems we have learnt quite some things over the past 6 months.

edit thanks whiskthecat
 
Last edited by a moderator:
hehe... but the he was right on the snes emulation part: Without transparency it works at decent speeds even though with a fairly big frame skip setting. Maybe this needs to be optimised...
 
Knoxximus posted on Mar 16 2006 at 12:01 AM said:
He was DEAD WRONG on that NeoGeo though.....GnGeo is my fav emu to DATE! :D


Not dead wrong really though, that was about half wrong. I did say it needs ASM to be fast and it does. Without DrZ80 and Cyclone you would need the second core or insane overclocking and it would still run slow with sound. No need for the second CPU that part was off. Still not bad guesses considering when that list was made.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
DaveC's predictions were pretty damn good, most of them right on the mark. SNES emulation doesn't need to run with a high frameskip setting, though, as was said earlier in this thread .. you can just as easily run your 920T at around 297 MHz, set frameskip to 1, and add an FPS Limit or VSync to keep things from going too quickly, and you're about there.

As for MAME-- I see no good reason why high-end 68000 games can't be emulated soon with quick cores like Cyclone and DrZ80; I'm speaking mostly about Cave games e.g. DoDonpachi, Esp.Ra.De, Guwange, Dangun Feveron, all those excellent shooters. Or CPS2 shooters like Capcom's "Mars Matrix" and "Giga Wing", or the pre-III Strikers 1945 series. Seeing as the NeoGeo can be emulated with very high speeds even WITH sound, and it uses the same 16 MHz 68000, it seems perfectly realistic, and I do hope that dream of mine is realized to have a pile of portable arcade shooters at my disposal. ;)

I do believe we will have GBA emulation working at half-decent speeds eventually, but I have my doubts that even with heavy overclocking, that it ever reaches 100%. The Sega CD might be feasible if you could emulate the main 68k and Z80 on the 920T, put the 12 MHz 68000 on the 940T, and still manage to emulate all the additional helper hardware the Sega CD supplied. The problem is you'd need to decode and play back audio too-- and odds are, that's going to be Mp3's, since most users won't want to drop a 650MB ISO on their SD card, they'll want to put a small ISO and the audio tracks compressed...
 
Nah, good GBA emulation is actually very likely using the GPadvance method... someone just has to go do it.

Ahem... *not it*
 
Mudi posted on Mar 15 2006 at 08:40 PM said:
Nah, good GBA emulation is actually very likely using the GPadvance method... someone just has to go do it.

Ahem... *not it*

Just read up on GPAdvance-- this isn't really emulation, it's interpretation to run ARM7 code on an ARM9 processor. I'm kind of surprised it doesn't need to run bootstrapped from an SD card and can coexist with the present GPH Linux-based OS-- but yes, this is a pretty promising approach. It's emulating all the graphical glitter of the GBA on top of this that'll be the challenge, I imagine, once this interpretation technique is perfected... still, it's an impressive project and I certainly look forward to its progress. I would love to play Gunstar Super Heroes or Megaman Zero on my '2x one day.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Epicenter posted on Mar 16 2006 at 02:23 AM said:
Mudi posted on Mar 15 2006 at 08:40 PM said:
Nah, good GBA emulation is actually very likely using the GPadvance method... someone just has to go do it.

Ahem... *not it*

Just read up on GPAdvance-- this isn't really emulation, it's interpretation to run ARM7 code on an ARM9 processor. I'm kind of surprised it doesn't need to run bootstrapped from an SD card and can coexist with the present GPH Linux-based OS-- but yes, this is a pretty promising approach. It's emulating all the graphical glitter of the GBA on top of this that'll be the challenge, I imagine, once this interpretation technique is perfected... still, it's an impressive project and I certainly look forward to its progress. I would love to play Gunstar Super Heroes or Megaman Zero on my '2x one day.

Unfortunately, it *can't* co-exist with Linux - that's the reason no-one's attempted to bring it across yet - bear in mind this is for the GP32, not the 2x at present. If Linux is there, it steals the MMU, which the GPA method needs.

On the other hand, once HH mode has matured, and Linux can be booted out, that is, I suspect, a different matter :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just read up on GPAdvance-- this isn't really emulation, it's interpretation to run ARM7 code on an ARM9 processor.
It is emulation. The way the code is executed is not what defines if it's emulation or not. It can run without the bootstrapping and with Linux because each instruction is verified and some may be altered to fit the different environment. Most are relocated to deal with the different memory model, and others are replaced so as not to execute anything that needs OS priviledges.
 
Tobriand posted on Mar 15 2006 at 09:59 PM said:
bear in mind this is for the GP32, not the 2x at present. If Linux is there, it steals the MMU, which the GPA method needs.

That's the obstacle I expected. For a program that translated ARM7 code to run on an ARM9 I'd heavily suspect it'd need fairly exclusive access to the hardware.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I don't even think its that involved. (well ok it is sorta)

All you have to do is:

parse through the ARM7 assembly, modify any code that does
purely GBA hardware related stuff.
Map BIOS calls to handler routines.
Map GFX/SOUND hardware calls/use to more handler routines.
and prey it does not have self-modifing code. (emu killer right there)

The idea is to run most of the instructions as 'natively' as possible.
With a minamum of remapping and alteration to existing code.

Its not emulation so much as translation and interpretation.

Probably 300% as hard as writing a pure GBA emu.
 
I am glad that I didn't put an order of which would come first or I would have looked the fool. I would have NEVER guessed that we would have full speed NeoGeo and still no decent NES, MSX, or PC-engine :blink: To me the big gaping hole in the GP2X's emu line-up is PC-engine. The one that we have is slow and needs a crazy amount of OC to run decent even then the speed fluctuates and the sound is off. The one on the GP32 runs circles around the GP2X one in speed, compatability, sound quality, and interface and at *133 MHz*. I am starting to think that the GP32 is still where it will be at for PC-engine for a looong time. A shame really as that was a great system.

As far as that list I didn't take into account overclocking. We didn't know if it was even possible at that time. Overclocking is also "cheating" :p


Epicenter posted on Mar 16 2006 at 01:37 AM said:
DaveC's predictions were pretty damn good, most of them right on the mark. SNES emulation doesn't need to run with a high frameskip setting, though, as was said earlier in this thread .. you can just as easily run your 920T at around 297 MHz, set frameskip to 1, and add an FPS Limit or VSync to keep things from going too quickly, and you're about there.


297 MHz :blink: That doesn't count, that is cheating. Many of us can't run that high, and if you can you get shit battery life. I did also say we would need to eliminate transparencies to get decent speed and that still holds true, unfortunately.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
DaveC posted on Mar 15 2006 at 07:39 PM said:
I am glad that I didn't put an order of which would come first or I would have looked the fool. I would have NEVER guessed that we would have full speed NeoGeo and still no decent NES, MSX, or PC-engine :blink: To me the big gaping hole in the GP2X's emu line-up is PC-engine. The one that we have is slow and needs a crazy amount of OC to run decent even then the speed fluctuates and the sound is off. The one on the GP32 runs circles around the GP2X one in speed, compatability, sound quality, and interface and at *133 MHz*. I am starting to think that the GP32 is still where it will be at for PC-engine for a looong time. A shame really as that was a great system.

As far as that list I didn't take into account overclocking. We didn't know if it was even possible at that time. Overclocking is also "cheating" :p


Epicenter posted on Mar 16 2006 at 01:37 AM said:
DaveC's predictions were pretty damn good, most of them right on the mark. SNES emulation doesn't need to run with a high frameskip setting, though, as was said earlier in this thread .. you can just as easily run your 920T at around 297 MHz, set frameskip to 1, and add an FPS Limit or VSync to keep things from going too quickly, and you're about there.


297 MHz :blink: That doesn't count, that is cheating. Many of us can't run that high, and if you can you get shit battery life. I did also say we would need to eliminate transparencies to get decent speed and that still holds true, unfortunately.

Yeah, I loved the Turbographx too......but hey, at least we do have some rockin' Neo Geo! Even the PSP can't do that (last I checked, anyhoo....)! :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
i think we have pretty good pc engine. only thing is after running it on fw 1.4 it screws up the graphics for everything and so you have to restart. yes its not perfect speed could be improved and there is some flickering problems yet overall i think its quite well done. fishynes is coming along well and before too long we should have perfect nes emulation.
 
DaveC posted on Mar 15 2006 at 10:39 PM said:
297 MHz :blink: That doesn't count, that is cheating. Many of us can't run that high, and if you can you get shit battery life. I did also say we would need to eliminate transparencies to get decent speed and that still holds true, unfortunately.

Heheh, 310 MHz here .. ;) It's not really CHEATING, but I will fully agree an emulator that is emulating a ~7 MHz 8-bit 6502 variant, much weaker than the MegaDrive/Genesis' 7.6 MHz 16-bit 68000, without adding any significantly stressful-to-emulate hardware on top of that, running SLOWER when overclocked FURTHER is ridiculous-- it makes me wonder if the emulator in question is using a slow C core for the 6502. Is it a direct SDL port or something fairly custom? If it's SDL, C indeed... and that's the root of the problem.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top