What Can You Do With Pandora?

[SeriouslyMike]

That depends on what the processors in question are, what the speeds involved are, how similar the RISC instruction sets are (RISC is a philosophy in processor design, it is not an instruction set) and a bunch of other factors. Mind, that is only about the processors. When you want to emulate consoles, emulating the main processor is the easy thing - it is the weird hardware surrounding it that is the most problematic.

Told ya, I'm stupid, bear with me. Also - the processors I had in mind are Gekko (486 MHz), Emotion Engine (300 MHz) and that 333MHz thing they put in PSP. I'm guessing that emulating PS2 would be very hard if not impossible due to EE being a 64-bit processor (you can't squeeze a 64-bit instruction through a 32-bit processor like ARM... I think), but the remaining two are 32-bit ones. Graphic chipsets, considering they're pretty dated already, should not be very problematic. The catch is, if we lug the functions of all that WTF hardware onto main processor, emulating the Gamecube may end up using all the Pandora's power if not needing more than it can provide.

Also - so, Win32 games are right out. Oh well, shit happens. We still have OpenTTD and FreeCiv, to say nothing of LinCity .

 

[hedwards]

I'm guessing that emulating PS2 would be very hard if not impossible due to EE being a 64-bit processor (you can't squeeze a 64-bit instruction through a 32-bit processor like ARM... I think), but the remaining two are 32-bit ones. Graphic chipsets, considering they're pretty dated already, should not be very problematic. The catch is, if we lug the functions of all that WTF hardware onto main processor, emulating the Gamecube may end up using all the Pandora's power if not needing more than it can provide.

Also - so, Win32 games are right out. Oh well, shit happens. We still have OpenTTD and FreeCiv, to say nothing of LinCity .

You can do it, just not without a huge amount of horse power. Horsepower which the Pandora lacks. It can be done you'd just have to send things through a couple times. Unless I'm mistaken that's how they do 64bit stuff with 32bit processors.

 

[WizardStan]

Also - so, Win32 games are right out. Oh well, shit happens. We still have OpenTTD and FreeCiv, to say nothing of LinCity .

Not right out, just that when it happens, it's likely to be more 95 era games at best, rather than XP.

 

[torpor]

The Pandora is a bloody wonderful emulation machine..

What can you do with the Pandora? How about Oric/Atmos-1 Emulation for starters ..

 

[VRAndy]

1. Can I run WinE or other Windows emulator to run Windows98/XP games?
2. Is there an emulator for Gamecube, PS2 or PSP available for Pandora?
3. How complicated porting Q3 engine games is?
4. Did anyone attempt to port Unreal Engine 2 (UT2003, Splinter Cell, XIII) to Linux? Would it run on Pandora?
5. ...can OpenOffice be installed on Pandora? (yes, I'm serious)

1. No, Sorry.
2. Nope, nope, nope. Probably won't be, but it's not _entirely_ outside the realm of posibility.
3. Not too bad if the game is opensource. If it's closed source, it's likely to be impossible unless it can be run with an un-modified Q3 executable.
4. So far as I know Unreal is closed source and therefore cannot be ported except by Epic Games, or other people who might license the code for big bucks.
5. Yes.

 

[SeriouslyMike]

I'm guessing that emulating PS2 would be very hard if not impossible due to EE being a 64-bit processor (you can't squeeze a 64-bit instruction through a 32-bit processor like ARM... I think), but the remaining two are 32-bit ones. Graphic chipsets, considering they're pretty dated already, should not be very problematic. The catch is, if we lug the functions of all that WTF hardware onto main processor, emulating the Gamecube may end up using all the Pandora's power if not needing more than it can provide.

Also - so, Win32 games are right out. Oh well, shit happens. We still have OpenTTD and FreeCiv, to say nothing of LinCity .

You can do it, just not without a huge amount of horse power. Horsepower which the Pandora lacks. It can be done you'd just have to send things through a couple times. Unless I'm mistaken that's how they do 64bit stuff with 32bit processors.

You might be right, as IIRC there's a Jaguar emulator for Pandora, and Jaguar was the first 64-bit console. As for the required horsepower, I'm suspecting that with the current capabilities, Pandora would be able to emulate the functions of EE, but as WizardStan said, there's still the rest of the stuff to be emulated which might overpower our little black box.

I wonder how would NDS emulator work.

 

[Mofokubik]

I wonder how would NDS emulator work.

From what I remember, someone has already tried porting a DS emulator to similar hardware. It runs too slow for most games to be playable, and that's without 3d. I'm not saying that it couldn't run close to full speed, but it'll never run full speed period.

ATM- there is no DS emulator currently being worked on for the pandora.

 

[SomeGuy99]

I wonder how would NDS emulator work.

From what I remember, someone has already tried porting a DS emulator to similar hardware. It runs too slow for most games to be playable, and that's without 3d. I'm not saying that it couldn't run close to full speed, but it'll never run full speed period.

ATM- there is no DS emulator currently being worked on for the pandora.

It's possible a developer might start work on one, maybe not now but at some point in the Pandora's lifetime. DS emulation is kind of the 'Holy Grail'.

 

[Morn]

1. Can I run WinE or other Windows emulator to run Windows98/XP games?

As a matter of fact I've never heard of any Windows Emulator that runs on Linux. Wine is not an emulator.

 

[Elanzer]

Have you ever attempted to run PS2 or GC emulation on your PC?

Even a 4200mhz dual core struggles with some games in PCSX2, 3000mhz dual core is pretty much a minimum to get a decent amount of games at max speed. Now when you compare a core 2 duo overclocked to 4200mhz to the OMAP3530, it stands absolutely no chance. We're talking well over 30 folds of performance difference (but at a cost of about 200 times the power consumption). GC emulation is very similar, there's absolutely no chance the Pandora, or any handheld at all that can emulate those 2 consoles, even in the coming nextgen dual-core A9s.

 

[SeriouslyMike]

Now I'm confused. There are two possibilities coming from your posts:
1. Pandora is utter shit that isn't good for anything above emulating ZX Spectrum.
2. You're lazy, whiny and firmly believe that if nobody tried it yet, it's "completely impossible".
Considering people made things like Kkrieger and The Conduit (even if people said creating a 3D game that takes only 96 kB or a game engine that supports bump mapping, specular effects and other flashy stuff on a Wii was "completely impossible"), I can safely disregard the first possibility.

 

[mali]

^ No insults, please.

 

[Xenu]

Now I'm confused. There are two possibilities coming from your posts:
1. Pandora is utter shit that isn't good for anything above emulating ZX Spectrum.
2. You're lazy, whiny and firmly believe that if nobody tried it yet, it's "completely impossible".
Considering people made things like Kkrieger and The Conduit (even if people said creating a 3D game that takes only 96 kB or a game engine that supports bump mapping, specular effects and other flashy stuff on a Wii was "completely impossible"), I can safely disregard the first possibility.

I think that your are either extremely naive or just wont listen to anything that has been said in this thread. The Pandora isn't designed to emulate the systems that your intrested in. There are no handhelds in the world that could emulate those systems anywere remotly close to playability. AFAIK emulation requires alot of CPU-power. The CPU in the Pandora is powerful compared to other handheld devices. We have seen that it can sucessfully emulate ps1-games at full speed. It may even (although it is far from certain) even emulate dreamcast games close to fullspeed. But that is the limit of the Pandora. And we are fine with that. That is all and more then we hoped for. By all means if you think you could write an ps2 emulator for the pandora, please try we wont stop you and we would stand up and applaud you if you were sucessfull. But you wont because it is not possible (or at liest extremely unlikely).

 

[XxionxX]

I don't think he understands the difference in architectures. People see the clock speed and assume it means they can do whatever other processors of the same clock speed do. I know I did that at first.

Edit 4 noob: We are using the ARM architecture, not the X86 architecture(PC). The PS2 and DS are different beasts altogether.

 

[Tom`]

I don't think he understands the difference in architectures. People see the clock speed and assume it means they can do whatever other processors of the same clock speed do. I know I did that at first.

Edit 4 noob: We are using the ARM architecture, not the X86 architecture(PC). The PS2 and DS are different beasts altogether.

Even in that case, though - you're not going to be able to emulate GCN or PS2 or even a DS on a 600 MHz PIII either. Or even a 600 MHz Core 2.

 

[XxionxX]

I don't think he understands the difference in architectures. People see the clock speed and assume it means they can do whatever other processors of the same clock speed do. I know I did that at first.

Edit 4 noob: We are using the ARM architecture, not the X86 architecture(PC). The PS2 and DS are different beasts altogether.

Even in that case, though - you're not going to be able to emulate GCN or PS2 or even a DS on a 600 MHz PIII either. Or even a 600 MHz Core 2.

Very true, I did not mean to mislead anyone.

 

[hal9000]

Now I'm confused. There are two possibilities coming from your posts:
1. Pandora is utter shit that isn't good for anything above emulating ZX Spectrum.
2. You're lazy, whiny and firmly believe that if nobody tried it yet, it's "completely impossible".
Considering people made things like Kkrieger and The Conduit (even if people said creating a 3D game that takes only 96 kB or a game engine that supports bump mapping, specular effects and other flashy stuff on a Wii was "completely impossible"), I can safely disregard the first possibility.

You ask a question whose answer is available everywere, people answer, you insult them because you don't like the answer. What is the problem with you?

There are many experts in emulation in this forum (people who actually write emulators). All of them say that PS2 and GC (at playable speed) won't happen, that this is totally impossible. But you, without any knowledge about Pandora or emulation, just based on the idea that in the past some people have done (completely unrelated) things which seemed impossible to some other people, you assume that all emulation experts on this forum are wrong. This is nonsense.

PS1/N64 will be emulated, Dreamcast/PSP/NDS are is the "uncertainty zone", PS2/GC/XBOX/Pentium class PC and more powerful machines will never be emulated, just take it as a fact. If you don't like that, if you consider that not being able to emulate a PS2 or a GC makes an handheld an "utter shit", fine, don't buy one, but please stop insulting people.

 

[gibberish]

for christs sake mike, ps2 and gc emulation on high end pc's is shit at best.
pandora does not come anywhere near competing with the processing power of a high end pc.

 

[mali]

Tbh, this thread is so constructed, I don't think it has been serious from the start. I'll happily answer real questions, but this thread is through, imo.

 

[SeriouslyMike]

First: I didn't expect Pandora to be able to emulate Gamecube after some research and I even stated that before. GC's main processor is very fast, nearly as fast as Pandora, and if you add other bits and bobs that make GC run, it'll most probably overwhelm our little black box. But, emulating Dreamcast is possible - and going from that point, I was curious if emulating marginally faster PS2 and PSP was possible too. The answer "It's possible, but hard to do properly" was enough - as opposed to four "BAWWWW UNPOSSIBLE!" answers before it. Same goes for the explanations about RISC processors - some folks (Moxie and WizardStan) at least had enough patience to point me in the right direction.
And then, in a bit of trolling, I dropped a question about emulating the woefully underpowered Nintendo DS. I expected all sorts of explanations and excuses regarding the dual screen/touch screen feature, but when I read "meeeeh, pandora too slow, unpossible to do dat", I blew a fuse.

Also, for those who couldn't bother to read two previous pages:
Me: "Okay, maybe GC emulation would be a wee bit problematic, considering the lovely "CPU: The fastest you can find." remark in the list of requirements for Dolphin."
Me: "if we lug the functions of all that WTF hardware onto main processor, emulating the Gamecube may end up using all the Pandora's power if not needing more than it can provide."
And here's where I understood that GC is too much for Pandora.
Me: "I'm guessing that emulating PS2 would be very hard if not impossible due to EE being a 64-bit processor (you can't squeeze a 64-bit instruction through a 32-bit processor like ARM... I think)"
Hedwards: "You can do it, just not without a huge amount of horse power. Horsepower which the Pandora lacks."
Me: "As for the required horsepower, I'm suspecting that with the current capabilities, Pandora would be able to emulate the functions of EE, but as WizardStan said, there's still the rest of the stuff to be emulated which might overpower our little black box."
Here I started doubting in the emulation of PS2. After sleeping with the problem and concluding that translating 64-bit PS2 instructions to a 32-bit Pandora processor would eat up a lot of resources (and that's only the main processor!), I kinda gave up on this one completely - too bad, it's a popular platform.
BUT:
WizardStan: "Despite what others have said, PSP is looking like it could be very viable in the distant future. I seem to recall JayFoxRox posting some very promising results with his (very very alpha) emulator."
That one gave me some hope - at least PSP would be possible to emulate (32-bit architecture, half as powerful, probably enough overhead to make it run smoothly with proper optimization).