Too Much To Ask?

[Destructo2000]

After I found out that the Jaguar emulator only runs at 4 fps, I was shocked. The PSX emulator runs faster than that! Is anybody still working on Jaguar emulation? I think it would be really cool.

And also, for the 3DO, is anybody pursuing the FreeDO port? I'd really like to see it and I know it can be done.

Is this really too much to ask?

 

[moz]

After I found out that the Jaguar emulator only runs at 4 fps, I was shocked. The PSX emulator runs faster than that! Is anybody still working on Jaguar emulation? I think it would be really cool.

And also, for the 3DO, is anybody pursuing the Frodo port? I'd really like to see it and I know it can be done.

Is this really too much to ask?

jaguar 4fps im amazed it goes as fast as that!

i dont think theres a large enough decent back catalog for someone to bust their ass over to get 3DO/jaguar to anything resembling playable

Frodo as in c64?

 

[Destructo2000]

My, bad I was talking about FreeDO.

 

[rokdcasbah]

After I found out that the Jaguar emulator only runs at 4 fps, I was shocked. The PSX emulator runs faster than that! Is anybody still working on Jaguar emulation? I think it would be really cool.

And also, for the 3DO, is anybody pursuing the Frodo port? I'd really like to see it and I know it can be done.

Is this really too much to ask?

jaguar 4fps im amazed it goes as fast as that!

i dont think theres a large enough decent back catalog for someone to bust their ass over to get 3DO/jaguar to anything resembling playable

Frodo as in c64?

yeah, if someone did a clone of tempest 2000 i think we'd be all set

 

[Dunny]

yeah, if someone did a clone of tempest 2000 i think we'd be all set

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=4738...;highlight=gp2x.

D.

 

[Destructo2000]

yeah, if someone did a clone of tempest 2000 i think we'd be all set

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=4738...;highlight=gp2x.

D.

Yeah, did you see the part about that game running at 1 - 2 fps? Kinda slow. Just a little.

 

[Yono]

Jonn Blanchard isn't developing for the GP2X anymore it seems, so probably no more Virtual Jaguar updates.

There was a topic about 3DO emulation last summer, but it never materialized: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=29828

 

[Dunny]

yeah, if someone did a clone of tempest 2000 i think we'd be all set

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=4738...;highlight=gp2x.

D.

Yeah, did you see the part about that game running at 1 - 2 fps? Kinda slow. Just a little.

Did you see the part where it was running nearly full speed (without sound)?

I was talking to firefox a while ago, he said he'd see if he could get the bugs out of the cyclone core and have another bash when real life gives him some spare time

D.

 

[DaveC]

After I found out that the Jaguar emulator only runs at 4 fps, I was shocked. The PSX emulator runs faster than that! Is anybody still working on Jaguar emulation? I think it would be really cool.

And also, for the 3DO, is anybody pursuing the FreeDO port? I'd really like to see it and I know it can be done.

Is this really too much to ask?

Yes it is too much to ask.

Those would never run at a playable speed.

 

[Yono]

After I found out that the Jaguar emulator only runs at 4 fps, I was shocked. The PSX emulator runs faster than that! Is anybody still working on Jaguar emulation? I think it would be really cool.

And also, for the 3DO, is anybody pursuing the FreeDO port? I'd really like to see it and I know it can be done.

Is this really too much to ask?

Yes it is too much to ask.

Those would never run at a playable speed.

Although they would never run at fullspeed, if someone put in the time and effort that the PSX4ALL team put in, I think at least some (or maybe even most) games would be at a playable speed. I just don't think that anyone will put in that effort.

 

[DaveC]

Although they would never run at fullspeed, if someone put in the time and effort that the PSX4ALL team put in, I think at least some (or maybe even most) games would be at a playable speed. I just don't think that anyone will put in that effort.

I guess that depends on what you consider "playable"

I don't consider it playable when it is 5-10 FPS with no sound.

Hell we don't even have fullspeed *NES* yet let alone 3DO

 

[Yono]

Although they would never run at fullspeed, if someone put in the time and effort that the PSX4ALL team put in, I think at least some (or maybe even most) games would be at a playable speed. I just don't think that anyone will put in that effort.

I guess that depends on what you consider "playable"

I don't consider it playable when it is 5-10 FPS with no sound.

Hell we don't even have fullspeed *NES* yet let alone 3DO

Haha, good point. Another problem/advantage (depends on viewpoint) is that the FreeDO emulator is closed source. On the plus side, if the developer decides to port it, it would be ported by the most qualified person to be working with the code. However, if the developer ever "disappears", we'd have the Vobbo problem all over again.

 

[Jarska333]

Although they would never run at fullspeed, if someone put in the time and effort that the PSX4ALL team put in, I think at least some (or maybe even most) games would be at a playable speed. I just don't think that anyone will put in that effort.

I guess that depends on what you consider "playable"

I don't consider it playable when it is 5-10 FPS with no sound.

Hell we don't even have fullspeed *NES* yet let alone 3DO

I don't see you point with the "no fullspeed NES. It's not like fullspeed NES is a requirement for 3DO. And nobody just has, yet, done a fs NES emulator. It isn't due to hardware limitations...

Anyone know anything about the innards of 3DO?

 

[Ze_ro]

I was talking to firefox a while ago, he said he'd see if he could get the bugs out of the cyclone core and have another bash when real life gives him some spare time

I doubt the 68000 emulation is slowing it down a whole lot... The Jaguar has custom graphics and sound chips that are much more powerful. Atari only put a 68k in there to make it easier to port games to the system, and some games barely use it at all (If I recall correctly, the developers manuals recommended using it to read the joystick ports). I would think the best you could hope to accomplish with an optimized 68k core would be an extra 2 or 3 frames per second.

I think near fullspeed Jaguar and 3DO emulators are certainly possible on the GP2X... but it would take a hell of a good programmer to get the job done. Porting an existing emulator would not be the answer here... to get proper speed, you'd have to code it specifically for the GP2X. You'd have to get the 920t involved, and even then you'd probably need a really high overclock. If zodttd and Exophase get their dynamic recompiler going well for gpSP, it might make a good starting point for a 3DO emulator, since the 3DO is also an ARM machine... but the differences between the ARM60 used in the 3DO and the ARM7TDMI used in the GBA may or may not complicate this (I'm not well-versed in ARM processors or dynamic recompilers).

--Zero

 

[ldesnogu]

If zodttd and Exophase get their dynamic recompiler going well for gpSP, it might make a good starting point for a 3DO emulator, since the 3DO is also an ARM machine... but the differences between the ARM60 used in the 3DO and the ARM7TDMI used in the GBA may or may not complicate this (I'm not well-versed in ARM processors or dynamic recompilers).

One of the main differences between the ARM6 and the ARM7TDMI is that the ARM6 still implements a 26 bit address mode backward compatible with previous ARM cores. If the 3DO uses that then this would need to be emulated.

Regarding recompilation, dynamic recompilation of an ARM on another ARM could be done in a *very* efficient way. Look at what VMWare or Qemu can achieve emulating x86 on x86. I don't say it is easy, it's not, but it is much more efficient than more general dynamic recompilation
An example about how to do it would be to have a kernel module that would trap on some address ranges that contain IO related stuff. It would also have to handle exceptions. Overall not easy but certainly doable and faster than more traditional solutions.

EDIT: This does not mean Jaguar and 3DO could be made to run at an acceptable speed, as Ze_ro wrote the speed bottleneck is not in the main CPU.

 

[Dunny]

I was talking to firefox a while ago, he said he'd see if he could get the bugs out of the cyclone core and have another bash when real life gives him some spare time

I doubt the 68000 emulation is slowing it down a whole lot... The Jaguar has custom graphics and sound chips that are much more powerful. Atari only put a 68k in there to make it easier to port games to the system, and some games barely use it at all (If I recall correctly, the developers manuals recommended using it to read the joystick ports). I would think the best you could hope to accomplish with an optimized 68k core would be an extra 2 or 3 frames per second.

ISTR that he wasn't trying to write a Jag emulator (which is, yes, almost certainly pointless) but was optimising for Tempest 2k, and even considering rewriting portions of the code to native code to get that one game running.

You're right that just a core update won't do the trick - even a z80 core in a Spectrum emulator is peanuts compared to the enormous amounts of graphics processing needed to get anything like an accurate 48k speccy emulation.

I think near fullspeed Jaguar and 3DO emulators are certainly possible on the GP2X... but it would take a hell of a good programmer to get the job done. Porting an existing emulator would not be the answer here... to get proper speed, you'd have to code it specifically for the GP2X. You'd have to get the 920t involved, and even then you'd probably need a really high overclock. If zodttd and Exophase get their dynamic recompiler going well for gpSP, it might make a good starting point for a 3DO emulator, since the 3DO is also an ARM machine... but the differences between the ARM60 used in the 3DO and the ARM7TDMI used in the GBA may or may not complicate this (I'm not well-versed in ARM processors or dynamic recompilers).

Pfft. Forget 3DO and Jag - I need a replacement for my GBA! God, I wish we had decent GBA emulation. I'd have a bash myself, but I don't have the C-skills, and have never coded ARM assembly before.

D.

 

[Jarska333]

Pfft. Forget 3DO and Jag - I need a replacement for my GBA! God, I wish we had decent GBA emulation. I'd have a bash myself, but I don't have the C-skills, and have never coded ARM assembly before.

D.

Quite refressing, actually. Everybody allways tell others to forget machine X, because "we need to get machine Y fullspeed first". "We" need nothing.

 

[Ze_ro]

Frankly, I'd be far more interested in a 3DO emulator than in a GBA emulator... If you're THAT interested in GBA games, why not just go out and get a GBA and a flash adaptor for it? My M3 works great... far better than any emulator on the GP2X is likely to be anytime soon.

--Zero

 

[DaveC]

Frankly, I'd be far more interested in a 3DO emulator than in a GBA emulator... If you're THAT interested in GBA games, why not just go out and get a GBA and a flash adaptor for it? My M3 works great... far better than any emulator on the GP2X is likely to be anytime soon.

--Zero

Except that a GBA emu could run at full speed and 3DO never would. I don't know if Exophase is still working on it or if he abandoned the GBA emu. If he is still working on it full speed GBA is possible. You could go out and buy all of that GBA gear but if you don't have all of that stuff already why go out and spend another $200 and lug around another handheld if you don't have to? I would much rather have full speed GBA with sound than a choppy 5 FPS 3DO emu with no sound.

 

[Dunny]

Frankly, I'd be far more interested in a 3DO emulator than in a GBA emulator... If you're THAT interested in GBA games, why not just go out and get a GBA and a flash adaptor for it? My M3 works great... far better than any emulator on the GP2X is likely to be anytime soon.

--Zero

Already have a GBA SP (front-lit) but it has a broken screen, and the flashcart is only 256mbit. The 2X is more than capable of a fullspeed GBA emulator and has way more storage space...

D.