Wiz Vice C64

[glezmen]

Hmm we need the power of the Pandora or a Wiz running at 800 MHz to emulate an 8-bit 64K RAM computer running at 1 MHz with 16 colors at 160x200 resolution and mono sound. Yet the Wiz can run NeoGeo, MAME, CPS1 & 2, Sega Megadrive with CD support, and PC-Engine CD all fullspeed with sound at the standard 533 MHz or in many cases underclocked to 300 MHz.

Is a C64 that hard to emulate or is this emu just super unoptimised for anything other than a Pentium class CPU?

the hardware of the C64 was exceptional, and perfectly emulating it always needed lot of resources

 

[fettouhi]

I don't really understand what people are complaining about Vice runs quite fine on the gp2x wiz when you set frameskip to 0, use fastsid and clock to 703 MHz. I would though like to see touchscreen support for it and the tearing removed .

Regards

André

 

[Dunny]

Hmm we need the power of the Pandora or a Wiz running at 800 MHz to emulate an 8-bit 64K RAM computer running at 1 MHz with 16 colors at 160x200 resolution and mono sound.

Is a C64 that hard to emulate or is this emu just super unoptimised for anything other than a Pentium class CPU?

I'd imagine it is, yes - I work in Z80 emulation (Specifically Spectrum in all its guises) and that takes a minimum of a 400-500 mhz processor to emulate accurately due to some quite odd behaviour of the hardware - display rendering has to be updated after every machine cycle in some cases. And that only has one custom chip (2 on the 128k models). The C64 has a few custom chips and getting them all to synchronise properly down to individual T-States will take significantly more CPU horsepower, so 800mhz for accurate emulation doesn't surprise me.

D.

 

[frolik]

I don't really understand what people are complaining about Vice runs quite fine on the gp2x wiz when you set frameskip to 0, use fastsid and clock to 703 MHz. I would though like to see touchscreen support for it and the tearing removed .

Agreed! Games run pretty smoothly really. I'm happy!

I have got around the troubles of waiting for games to load by running them on Vice for windows and dropping a savestate (vsf file) with the same name as the disk image, then in Wiz Vice I attach the original disk image and autostart the vsf savestate - bingo - straight in the game no messin'

Also I have realised (again) that I was wrong, you can get out of the keymapping menu with left on the d-pad.

I don't mind running it at 700Mhz, still plenty of battery life, and all seems smooth. However there are a few things I think would make this emulator better:


Ability to save default menu options.

Allow mapping c64 keyboard keys to buttons.

Allow mapping warp mode to a button.

Fix broken reset machine option.

Saving snapsnots with same name as disk image (having per-game save slots a-la picodrive etc.)

 

[GnoStiC]

Allow mapping c64 keyboard keys to buttons.
Allow mapping warp mode to a button.

1) when virtual keyboard is on display,
if you press A or X on a key, it assigns that key to it.
if you press A or X on a empty spot, it removes the assignment.

2) i recall assigning warp mode to a key combination,
i'm not sure if i left it in the code

 

[frolik]

1) when virtual keyboard is on display,
if you press A or X on a key, it assigns that key to it.
if you press A or X on a empty spot, it removes the assignment.

2) i recall assigning warp mode to a key combination,
i'm not sure if i left it in the code

Oh wow, thank you so much! Yes using the virtual keyboard to map keys does actually work! You can only remap the A and Y buttons, not X (B is fire button) which is odd - X doesn't seem to have any function unless you map it to a joystick direction on the keymappings menu, also the MENU button doesn't seem to have any function, and is not remappable (is that even a word).

Thanks for your work on vice, Gnostic!

EDIT: Was there ever a readme with these details? There is not one included in wiz-vice-2.1.zip in the archive.

 

[DaveC]

Hmm we need the power of the Pandora or a Wiz running at 800 MHz to emulate an 8-bit 64K RAM computer running at 1 MHz with 16 colors at 160x200 resolution and mono sound.

Is a C64 that hard to emulate or is this emu just super unoptimised for anything other than a Pentium class CPU?

I'd imagine it is, yes - I work in Z80 emulation (Specifically Spectrum in all its guises) and that takes a minimum of a 400-500 mhz processor to emulate accurately due to some quite odd behaviour of the hardware - display rendering has to be updated after every machine cycle in some cases. And that only has one custom chip (2 on the 128k models). The C64 has a few custom chips and getting them all to synchronise properly down to individual T-States will take significantly more CPU horsepower, so 800mhz for accurate emulation doesn't surprise me.

D.

So Sega CD with it's dual 68000 CPUs, DSP, sound including FM synth and DAC, sprite hardware and MP3 decoding simultaneously is easier to syncronize than a C64? Seems quite hard to believe. Then there is FBA that plays stuff like Mars Matrix full speed with all of its's massive sprite bullet hell madness with thousands of colors where there is hardly a still pixel on the whole screen. C64 is still more sophisticated? I don't know that seems a stretch. I can see maybe when it is emulating a 1541 drive but other than that I have doubts. The C64 was decent for its time (although the Atari had more colors at 256 vs. 16) but today it doesn't look that complex or powerful.

 

[GnoStiC]

Are nowadays C64 emulators too heavy?

the most important reason why vice is slower than other c64 emulators is because it's an event-based emulator.

 

[frolik]

What about this C64 emulator that claims to run on a 286!! http://homepages.vype.de/pabst/y64/

It's written in assembler. No idea how compatible it is, just shows what is possible though...

 

[Mark1970]

I don't really understand what people are complaining about Vice runs quite fine on the gp2x wiz when you set frameskip to 0, use fastsid and clock to 703 MHz. I would though like to see touchscreen support for it and the tearing removed .

Regards

André

Well the 1541 emulation, virtual device settings keep on turning on even when you want them turned off and select a specific file to load. On the original gp2x switching these settings to off and then selecting a d64 or other file to load wouldn't result in those settings automatically being turned on. So on the original gp2x vice port it is possible to load a single game file of a d64 disk image without having to worry about 1541 emulation being turned on again resulting in slower emulation. On the current Wiz port the settings in the menu are dodgy as their settings will not be retained.

 

[Dunny]

So Sega CD with it's dual 68000 CPUs, DSP, sound including FM synth and DAC, sprite hardware and MP3 decoding simultaneously is easier to syncronize than a C64? Seems quite hard to believe. Then there is FBA that plays stuff like Mars Matrix full speed with all of its's massive sprite bullet hell madness with thousands of colors where there is hardly a still pixel on the whole screen. C64 is still more sophisticated? I don't know that seems a stretch.

It might well be. Give a thought to exactly how accurate that emulation of the more powerful chips actually is. The goal here is to get the game running in such as way as to be faithful to the original. There are no new games for those systems, so it's unlikely that we'll have to emulate down to machine cycles, unlikely that we'll have to emulate the incredibly complex system of interaction between ULA/CPU that the Spectrum has just in case someone makes a new demo for it that we need to be able to emulate.

A friend of mine in the ZX Scene has written an emulator in pure, heavily optimised x86 asm. It needs at least 300mhz to run with all accuracy turned on. His AY-3-8912 emulation is a lot more accurate than the one in MAME. Not to mention his z80 emulation being more accurate than any other z80 emulation due to the ongoing discoveries made by the people who inhabit the scene. But are you interested in the fact that instruction contention may vary by 1 T-State depending on manufacturer, or by a few T-States depending on the temperature of the CPU? Or do you just want to play a game?

All this is directed towards the Speccy, but it all applies to the C64 too - and that has even more hardware than the Speccy. Accuracy at the level we've come to expect from our 8bit emulators (and I don't include the GP2X 8bit emulators in that, for (hopefully) obvious reasons) does not have to be applied to arcade emulators.

I can see maybe when it is emulating a 1541 drive but other than that I have doubts. The C64 was decent for its time (although the Atari had more colors at 256 vs. 16) but today it doesn't look that complex or powerful.

Actually, emulating a drive is pretty simple. At a basic level, a uPD765 emulator can be written in a couple of hundred lines. It's when you start to simulate weak sectors and stuff that it gets into the thousands of lines, but that's still nothing compared to a decent CPU emulation.

D.

 

[rasteryx]

Of everything you have spoken except the motive that makes me hate this emulator, the scaling it is really very bad,I prefer to wait that is repaired

 

[glezmen]

Of everything you have spoken except the motive that makes me hate this emulator, the scaling it is really very bad,I prefer to wait that is repaired

what scaling? 1:1 is perfect for the WIZ

 

[rasteryx]

perfect? but if they miss the side edges and not only to the C64

 

[glezmen]

perfect? but if they miss the side edges and not only to the C64

the side borders 'officially' don't exist but of course you can put spires on there too, although usually they aren't used, and you shouldn't have any important information there

 

[rasteryx]

they don't agree,also because it doesn't concern only the C64,from the one glance to the VIC20,to get a faithful emulation nothing should not be discarded

 

[glezmen]

they don't agree,also because it doesn't concern only the C64,from the one glance to the VIC20,to get a faithful emulation nothing should not be discarded

I understand your point of view. But I think having a 1:1 scaling, and a usable screensize is much more important than showing a thick border around the image to be more similar to an analogue TV
of course your preferences can be different, I don't want to convince you about anything

 

[rasteryx]

then if I have understood well the vice for wiz it concerns only the C64,PLUS or C128 the other type the PET the VIC they are only there for beauty,I regret to say him but the true vice it is that for pc,with this I don't want to say that you don't appreciate the job taken for wiz,only that I don't succeed in seeing for the gp2x a perfect vice,I am excessively fussy perhaps but I see it this way

 

[vampire8bit]

Hmm we need the power of the Pandora or a Wiz running at 800 MHz to emulate an 8-bit 64K RAM computer running at 1 MHz with 16 colors at 160x200 resolution and mono sound.

Is a C64 that hard to emulate or is this emu just super unoptimised for anything other than a Pentium class CPU?

I'd imagine it is, yes - I work in Z80 emulation (Specifically Spectrum in all its guises) and that takes a minimum of a 400-500 mhz processor to emulate accurately due to some quite odd behaviour of the hardware - display rendering has to be updated after every machine cycle in some cases. And that only has one custom chip (2 on the 128k models). The C64 has a few custom chips and getting them all to synchronise properly down to individual T-States will take significantly more CPU horsepower, so 800mhz for accurate emulation doesn't surprise me.

D.

800Mhz to accurately emulate C64? Even the Pandora will struggle for perfect C64 emulation, and some pandoras might not even make it to 800Mhz

 

[Dunny]

800Mhz to accurately emulate C64? Even the Pandora will struggle for perfect C64 emulation, and some pandoras might not even make it to 800Mhz

No, the Panda will have no trouble emulating a C64, so long as you're not an audio purist and just want enough compatibility to play games.

D.