Wiz Impressions, Temper Performance Numbers On Wiz

[Franxis]

Franxis, I know we have your MAME running already, but still I'd like to send you a Pandora so you can push the hardware even more, is it possible we could send you a cased unit?

Of course Cragix , i really want to see a mounted Pandora unit. I'm sure MAME will run at 100% in the Pandora. But meanwhile i enjoy messing with the Wiz, i have played a lot with it (its battery is running for two weeks without recharge and still running nicely) .

 

[notaz]

Yes, mmuhack please!. Notaz, i saw in PicoDrive an mmuhack for the Wiz. Did you got it working?

Wow, where? I haven't even got Wiz or started porting PicoDrive yet.

 

[Franxis]

Wow, where? I haven't even got Wiz or started porting PicoDrive yet.

I thought this was done by you:
http://archive.gp2xwiz.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,17
http://archive.gp2xwiz.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,46,18

Sorry .

 

[notaz]

Hm, I wonder who did it. Judging by the horrible style of commenting out GP2X code, the person uses visual studio or some similar IDE. Lots of code duplication. Object files in the source archive. I suspect it's Orkie!

However mmuhack loading code has been updated, which suggests it might be actually working. I'd suggest trying it out if you have time.

 

[Orkie]

I deny all knowledge of it! We all assumed you had done it .

 

[geise69]

Hm, I wonder who did it. Judging by the horrible style of commenting out GP2X code, the person uses visual studio or some similar IDE. Lots of code duplication. Object files in the source archive. I suspect it's Orkie!

However mmuhack loading code has been updated, which suggests it might be actually working. I'd suggest trying it out if you have time.

Yeah I was always wondering who released it when I saw Wraggs post it on the GP2X DCEmu site. It said it was for the Wiz but I never even saw anything about it on these boards. Long ago I wanted to ask if the MMU hack was still going to work, but figured it would have been a stupid question. Mainly, I thought there would be no need for it. Regardless though, I'm glad to hear of everyone's results. I never thought it would be 2x, but at least tad faster none the less. I'm mainly interested in the build quality of it and the screen, plus the controls. Now I wonder how SNES would benefit.

 

[Franxis]

Long ago I wanted to ask if the MMU hack was still going to work, but figured it would have been a stupid question. Mainly, I thought there would be no need for it. Regardless though, I'm glad to hear of everyone's results. I never thought it would be 2x, but at least tad faster none the less. I'm mainly interested in the build quality of it and the screen, plus the controls. Now I wonder how SNES would benefit.

Yes, Orkie said me several days ago that MMU hack wasn't needed. The mmuhack in PicoDrive seems to be applicable to an older version of the firmware so i guess the PicoDrive port has been done by somebody with access to an older firmware' source code.

For me the build quality is good, screen excelent, controls good and battery excelent. No idea about SNES benefit.

 

[fusion_power]

Very interesting Thread.

I expected better results, anyway here they are:

Mortal Kombat:
GP2X: 250 MHz, mmuhack+ramtweaks, 16 bit color, frameskip 0, 23 fps
WIZ: 533 MHz, none+none, 16 bit color, frameskip 0, 30 fps
WIZ: 650 MHz, none+none, 16 bit color, frameskip 0, 36 fps

Knights of the Round:
GP2X: 250 MHz, mmuhack+ramtweaks, 8 bit color, frameskip 0, 46 fps
WIZ: 533 MHz, none+none, 8 bit color, frameskip 0, 55 fps
WIZ: 650 MHz, none+none, 8 bit color, frameskip 0, 66 fps

Hammerin' Harry:
GP2X: 250 MHz, mmuhack+ramtweaks, 8 bit color, frameskip 0, 35 fps
WIZ: 533 MHz, none+none, 8 bit color, frameskip 0, 35 fps
WIZ: 650 MHz, none+none, 8 bit color, frameskip 0, 35 fps

They are not good .

Could you test the WIZ also with 250MHz clockspeed so we could compare better the pure pro-MHz Power?

...I really Hope, we don't see such "surprises" onto the Pandora. ^_^

Franxis, I know we have your MAME running already, but still I'd like to send you a Pandora so you can push the hardware even more, is it possible we could send you a cased unit?

I really would like to see a test with Pandora, GP2X and WIZ and ALL at the same 200 or 250 MHz or whatever the GP2X can offer. I know that these Machines can't be really compared, even with the same Clockspeed...but it would be interesting at all.

 

[andymanone]

- The USB OTG drivers seem utterly broken......

Hi,

i wanna tell you, that i get USB working.

I got my WIZ MK0 in october 2008.
So i tested something and see, USB unfortunately doesn´t work.

So i took the compressed firmware (e.g. gp2xpatch-wiz-081028.tar.gz)
unzipped it and found the file "usbconnect.gpe".

i put it on a SD card boot up the wiz and started this file and voila, it works

So you got access to the internal NAND and the inserted SD Card via USB cable

Here you can see it :

and so the only way to get a shell on the thing is via serial (need the BoB), and the only way to get files on the thing is via swapping an SD out or via serial transfer (VERY slow, and I hear the UARTs are capped at 115200 in the kernel, so forget about using fast USB to serial adapters to get 1mbit/sec transfers). Swapping the SD out over and over gets old, especially when the auto unmount causes the Wiz to crash when you're currently in the directory (so get out of the directory)

So maybe its "nice to know" it´s also possible to use a direct serial cable without a BoB.
I soldered a 232-TTL Cable , so i can directly access the WIZ via seriel console

Look here:

Greetinxx,
andYMan

 

[Orange Pumpkin]

Very interesting Thread.

Could you test the WIZ also with 250MHz clockspeed so we could compare better the pure pro-MHz Power?

I'm to sure is it good to compare Wiz with GP2X on 250 MHz ,, the GP2X have 2 core and the "poor" Wiz only one but the Wiz has the GPU built in so We should use it ..

In my opinion the best way to compare would be to run both devices one the biggest stable clock speed and compare the battery life the and then the one witch last shorter ( GP2X ) leave alone and make the second device drain the same ( or the max needed with sound ) power and than compare graphics , scrips , maths etc.

Because other way one of the devices will be slower for example the Wiz will be slower on 250 MHz and still it can have way more possible clock speed ( and the GP2X hasn't ) any way draining less power than the GP2X

Edit: ( Wiz on 250 MHz ) I'm not sure but I think that maybe the graphics may be better ( using hard-ware ) because of the acceleration

Edit: forgot to say that I would use the same battery ( screen would be nice to but much harder ) if You want just to check the CPUs

 

[Squidge]

i wanna tell you, that i get USB working.

Can you actually transfer a file over it? USB works for the people I've spoken to (detected, shows your picture, etc), but the broken part is that it either can't transfer a file, or says it has, but then you find its full of garbage.

Maybe I need to port my GpDrive

 

[Exophase]

unzipped it and found the file "usbconnect.gpe".

i put it on a SD card boot up the wiz and started this file and voila, it works

So you got access to the internal NAND and the inserted SD Card via USB cable

I haven't been able to get that to work, but I'll try again. My mini-b cables (all three of them) are VERY finicky for some reason. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

[andymanone]

i wanna tell you, that i get USB working.

Can you actually transfer a file over it? USB works for the people I've spoken to (detected, shows your picture, etc), but the broken part is that it either can't transfer a file, or says it has, but then you find its full of garbage.

Maybe I need to port my GpDrive

Yes, i can remember, that it doesn´t work really stable in this time i tested it (november 2008),
but it works !

So you can see in the picture below accessing an F200 successfully to the SD Card inside the WIZ:

Greetinxx,
andY

 

[Exophase]

I got sound working okay finally (can't run it as low latency as I did on the GP2X but it seems alright). The important ramification is that it means that I can now play games at the proper speed, since Temper synchronizes the game speed using audio.

After actually playing the games more at correct speed I find that the controls aren't quite as bad as I originally thought, IE I'm able to play Sapphire for several minutes without feeling like my thumbs are going to break. It's still a little annoying and I still hit the Y button sometimes when I mean to hit the B button.

Volume buttons are in a less convenient place than GP2X but this is a pretty minor gripe. Although it's also a lot harder to press a "volume middle" button.. I think we might end up seeing this removed from software that had it as an option.

D-pad is pretty good - diagonals are not perfect (hard to be on any pure cross one, being tiny probably makes it worse) but they're not awful like on many other platforms these days.

I tried USB again and I still can't get it working. Windows says it's an unknown device (used the cable that was working with my GP2X the other day). andymanone, are you using a direct ext to USB cable?

 

[Squidge]

Please define "It works". Can you actually copy a small file through it and verify its actually there on the Wiz?

Exophase: Unplug and replug a few times whilst on the menu and you eventually get the "Choose NAND/SD" screen. Choose nand and the PC recognises it. You can then copy a file across. However, once you disconnect the usb and reconnect, the file disappears. SD mode doesn't work at all - no directory listing, and any attempts to transfer a file just gets "I/O Error".

 

[Exophase]

Please define "It works". Can you actually copy a small file through it and verify its actually there on the Wiz?

Exophase: Unplug and replug a few times whilst on the menu and you eventually get the "Choose NAND/SD" screen. Choose nand and the PC recognises it. You can then copy a file across. However, once you disconnect the usb and reconnect, the file disappears. SD mode doesn't work at all - no directory listing, and any attempts to transfer a file just gets "I/O Error".

I'll give it a shot. Really strange what's going on with the NAND, I wonder if it's really mounting some temporary thing instead...

But anything that'll get the file on the Wiz is enough for me.

 

[fettouhi]

Well, that doesn't sound to good. Are you guys using the latest firmware? The Wiz is supposed to be out in little more than a month. I really hope that all these issues I've been hearing here in the forum will be fixed. If not then it just be a shame (GP2X fiasco more or less).

Regards

André

 

[Franxis]

Video of my latest WIP MAME4ALL version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01C9Rcaxs0E

Sorry for the bad quality (taken with my ugly camera).

 

[Ghaleon]

Thank you for the video Franxis! It really helps.

 

[Franxis]

The version used for the the video:
Executables: http://www.talfi.net/gp32_franxis/mame4all_1.6b2_wiz.7z
Sources: http://www.talfi.net/gp32_franxis/mame4all_1.6b2_sources.7z

Compiled using DevKitGp2X with some modifications in the devkit explained here:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=46371

In the source code there is a replacement of the GP2X minimal library for the WIZ, maybe somebody will find something interesting on it (src/wiz/wiz_lib.cpp and wiz_lib.h).

Regards.