Yet Another New User ....

[satanic virus]

Hi, firstly sorry as there are loads of new user posts!

Big hello to everyone from Dublin. I have used the search functions for some of my questions, but there are thousands of posts and difficult to follw when you are new! Anyway, it is better to get opinions from experienced users if you do not mind. I have managed to get most emulators up and running and am seriously impressed. My only concern so far is with battery life, although at 200mhz i can get close to 4 hours with my 2700's. About the same as my PSP running homebrew Overclocking though seriously reduces this. GP2X emulators reaslly do piss all over those on PSP (apart from PS1 obviously)

With emulation I look for the best performance with graphics and sound as opposed to additional features such as savestates, scaling etc. However if performance and features are both present, great!

Anyway, so I do not start my first post as being a record breaking longest :

(i may have some emulator names wrong - batteries charging at the mo)

1) Mega Drive/ Genesis - I am using DrMD and think it is fantastic. High quality sound and seems to be full speed with savestates. I see that PicoDrive enables segaCD emulation. Can someone please tell me which Mega Drive emulator is better, and whether PicoDrive runs megaCd games fullspeed, and also if it runs master system and game gear games (scaled to full screen?)?

2) Amiga - I can get ok-ish performance from UAE4all by overclocking to 260. I see from very early posts that some people though it would never be possible to emulate an Amiga on GP2X. As the Amiga is famed in the 16-bit era for its amazing graphics and sound (thanks to its custom chips - go on Denise!!) what is the general opinion now on having a full speed emulator with good quality sound? Don't get me wrong I am grateful for what we have, but I actually have a real Amiga so the difference in framerate is obvious to me.

3) SNES - there seems to be a few emulators for the SNES, and it is very confusing which one is the best. Some of the names even are similar! Is there a definitive answer as to which is the best one available at present? I have tried a couple (one has the same menu system as DRMD whcih seems 'almost there' for brilliance). Any chances of ever getting one to run at lower clock speeds as i have to clock to 260 to be decently playable.

4) Sharp MZ-700 : My first computer <_< Has this ever been emulated? I would love to play the likes of moving searcher and ape antics on the go. I have a Win PC and due to my complete lack of understanding of the Japanese language, I have never been able to get the MZ-700 emulator to run. Has anyone had any success? -

I have tons more questions on 8GB cards, TV-Out, usb controllers and video formats, but I will use the search function properly before asking!

Go raibh míle maith agat & big thanks to all the devs and community members for making the GP2X THE handheld to take with ya

 

[sehs33]

1) PicoDrive is much better, as far as I know you can get most games fully playable at less than 200 mhz, mega cd is great, but not all games are perfect, I played Snatcher a little, and it was great. Pico Drive doesn't emulate the Game Gear nor the Master System.
4) As far as I know, it hasn't been emulated yet, but you can check the wiki for a full list of all the emulators we have.

 

[Miika]

1) I think DrMD is faster for regular Megadrive Games, but Picodrive has USB
controller support and most CD games run fullspeed and has some neat options.

2) I don't think Amiga can reach fullspeed on GP2X (Some games of course), but I think it can still be improved (Dynarec or w/e)

3) For SNES, PocketSNES is definitely the best (The one with DrMD menu). For speed increase, turn OFF the transparencies in the options,
many games look good or perfect without them and plays MUCH faster! A good example is Donkey Kong Country 2.

4) I don't think it's emulated, also I have never heard of it so it doesn't seem so popular.

As for the SD Cards, regular SD ones that goes up to 4GB (Which I have) work out of the box in the official firmware,
but if you are going to use 8GB or 4GB SDHC, this might be helpful:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=35840

Or just wait for the Open2x firmware which is supposed to support SDHC.

 

[satanic virus]

Thanks sehs33 - quickest reply i have ever had on any forum! Sign of a great community.

Will definitely give picodrive a go for my mega drive games (& try a few mega cd ones too). DRMD is pretty amazing. If i can get the same performance on picodrive with better bettery life that would be great

Just checked the wiki (thanks for all the updaters to that) & no sign of any Sharp emulators, don't mind the MZ series. Ah well. Not likely, but if anyone out there knows anything about an MZ-700/800 emulator and how to get it running please let me know (on any system ) Did anyone here ever have an MZ-700? I remember there being only 2 publishers for the games (in Ireland/ UK anyway). I have no idea if the machine was ever released in the US?

 

[Miika]

Why am I always being ignored?

 

[satanic virus]

Hey Miika no way are you being ignored

After I posted my reply I saw your post. Very helpful thanks. A bit confusing for me with regards to mega drive emulation due to different opinions. However, I am already using DRMD and find it great. I will try picodrive though and test a few CD games.

Amiga so far is pretty decent, but I wish for a day when you can get all those great demo's (sanity, budbrain etc) running perfectly....

Thanks for the tips on snes emulation - will be trying soon

Not surprised you never heard of the MZ-700! Basically it was an 8-bit computer in the 1980's. In Ireland it was relatively popular as it was the main prize in a Sunday night TV game show at the time!!! In my school, there were 2 other people who had one. However, most people had either C64's or CPC464's (consoles were not that popular in Ireland at the time)

Thanks for the help

 

[Miika]

Ah, thanks for the info. Looks like most sites about it are Japanese... Well at least we got fullspeed C64!
Did you get a GP2X recently?

 

[Orkie]

I have had better results with PicoDrive than DrMD too.

 

[sam fisher]

I have had better results with PicoDrive than DrMD too.

Picodrive is infact faster and it offloads audio emulation to the 940.

 

[satanic virus]

I got it a few months ago, but was moving house and never got a chance to look at it properly. My PC was in a couple of boxes at the time! Now I have time I am more than happy with what it does.

Funny you should mention the C64, my friend at school had one and I was so jealous! The MZ-700 used block graphics (the ones displayed at the front of each alpha/ numeric key) whilst the C64 used PIXELS in its games! :lol: It was a long time ago but I think the MZ-700 had 7 colours, and used an internal speaker for its sounds. It had a great conversion of Galaga though (using green graphics and no new enemy waves)

On a different note, is there any movie player that plays MP4 on GP2X? Also having a PSP, it would be cool if I could store all my portable movie files in the same format.

sam fisher - 940 is the second CPU right? How low can you go in clock speed on picodrive to get same result as DRMD? (difficult question, but any rough anwers - thanks)

 

[Alex.]

Your best bet for video is PocketDivX, choose the standard PDA format.

Picodrive works great at 180Mhz, but I'm sure most games work well at 140.

 

[satanic virus]

Thanks Alex, have used PocketDivX for my Axim - will experimemt for GP2X. Underclocking for mega drive sounds great - extra time to play my favourite games on the go

 

[b._.o._.b]

Just checked the wiki (thanks for all the updaters to that) & no sign of any Sharp emulators, don't mind the MZ series. Ah well. Not likely, but if anyone out there knows anything about an MZ-700/800 emulator and how to get it running please let me know (on any system ) Did anyone here ever have an MZ-700? I remember there being only 2 publishers for the games (in Ireland/ UK anyway). I have no idea if the machine was ever released in the US?

I thought I was the only one! I also owned a MZ700 (and a MZ800). Great computer, great games, great apps and had a very active community in the Netherlands.
Already asked for a port of a Sharp emulator, but unfortunately nobody ported it yet. I will certainly donate when it's ported.
You can run Sharp MZ700/800 games/apps on Windows and Linux, look at my signature and follow the hyperlinks

 

[Miika]

Hmm, I just tried Picodrive with regular MD games, and I guess I get better performance than DrMD after all. At least it is noticeable when you try both emus at 140MHz.
It must have been the higher CPU demand on Sega CD games that confused me. I thought Sega CD was almost the same as Megadrive, just with CD music and that.

 

[satanic virus]

Thanks b._.o._.b - will have to research that emulator a bit, have downloaded but not initially clear what to do. I will look it up. Great to see another MZ fan

Miika, seems like picodrive is best for MD & CD games. However, DRMD is cool too for MD and of course, SMS & GG - Result : both great emulators!

 

[imhotep]

One general tip is make sure you turn on the following 2 options in emulators that offer them:-
- Squidge's MMU Hack
- CraigX's RAM Timings (in gpSP2X you have to put these timings in manually)

Both of the above settings are normally switched off by default for compatibility reasons, but most GP2X's run perfectly with them enabled. I noticed a few FPS difference particularly in SNES emus (FPS are very precious in SNES emulators).

CraigX's RAM timings for gpSP2X:-
CAS 2
tRC 6
tRAS 4
tWR 1
tMRD 1
tRFC 1
tRP 2
tRCD 2

Choosing a SNES emu:-

DrPocketSnes v6
- Better interace (marginally)
- Runs Donkey Kong Country smoothly! (first SNES emu to achieve this)
- I think it might be better at displaying transparencies, but not sure.

SquidgeSNES v0.396
- Runs Mode 7 games a few FPS faster. Great for F-Zero at 260MHz.

 

[satanic virus]

Thanks all for your help.

imhotep, i'll keep an eye out for the MMU hack ad CraigX's RAM timing in emulators (& i guess thanks to Squidge and CraigX too!). I guess these are the two main things needed for CPU heavy apps/ ems.

I had been looking for a proper MZ-700 emulator for the past couple of years, and since tonight I have found one!

b._.o._.b sorry but i could not get your one to run properly. Perhaps I am too 'noob' for it :blink:

Anyway, for any MZ Series fans, here is a link to a brilliant emulator (windows) :

http://www.khmweb.de/sharpmz/MZx_internet.zip -- looks like it has only been up very recently - few error messages at start, but click try again and it loads.

It seems to emulate loads of systems (spectrum included), but I am too excited by the ability to emulate my beloved sharp mz-700 to look into this further right now! Here is a link to some games for it too (btw, these are fully public domain now, and are not 'illegal romz') - there were loads more games for the MZ-700 but as sharpmz.org do not have them for download I gues they are either still copyrighted, or they have been unable to find the tapes.

http://www.sharpmz.org/index.html

Sorry for my excitement, but I gave my mz-700 away around 1989 to make way for an Amiga, and have been unable to find a working emulator since! (i swear i have done some other things with my life since then too )

I would really love if someone made this available for the GP2X, but we need someone that a) knows what it is, 2) has the coding skills & 3) has the time and wants to do this. It was not exactly mainstream, but here's hoping!

like b._.o._.b said earlier, I would be willing and happy to donate to anyone that does this.

Thanks again to all replies - looking forward to more GP2X fun tomorrow whan hangover subsides :unsure:

 

[imhotep]

I hope someone gets your Sharp emulator ported. There's nothing like a healthy dose of nostalgia.

It's interesting that you come from PSP scene, sataniC Virus. Both machines have advantages I think. What do you especially like about the GP2X so far?

 

[satanic virus]

Well, community for a start - you would never get as helpful responses on a psp homebrew forum.

You are right, both consoles have their good points. For PSP, it started off for me with Devhook, and basically Dark Alex firmware blew that away allowing all homebrew, emulators and 'other things' to run perfectly.

I like the level of support with GP2X - it seems there are emulators for every system (apart from my mz-700 )

So far, positive GP2X points:

Video support rocks - no need to re-encode any video torrent downloads if space on sd card

Better performance on most emulators. This includes NES, Genesis, Mame, and Amiga (although for 'userfriendlyness', Amiga on psp is better - but that's not what counts. GBA & SNES are pretty much the same to me at the moment (despite that a lot of people claim GBA is better on PSP right now - if there is any difference i think it is very small). I have not paid attention to PS1 development on GP2X but even if it got close to full speed the loss of buttons on GP2X would surely have an bad impact). PC Engine seems perfect to me on GP2X using HU260 (i may have gotten name wrong!) but it is badly in need of save states - i have not tried other pc engine ems yet.

Screen - most emulators I have tried so far fill the full screen in their correct ratio - as they should be!

Potential - the GP2X is open sourced . Someday i reckon Sony will figure out a way of at leat slowing down homebrew further more on PSP than it aready has. On GP2X, there are updates and improvements for most emulators and games on a regular basis.

Controls - loads of moaning on these forums about the stick etc, I think the joystick is great. I come from a history of using zipsticks etc on 8 bit computers & having a joystick now only adds to the retro fun!

For me the GP2X is missing a couple of things that i feel would definitely improve it - a sleep mode to 'pause' the system & an option to turn off the screen if using it as an MP3 player. There may be software soluctions for these already, I will have a look soon ...

Looking forward to trying out some native GP2X games - huge selection What are the chances of a psp owner liking the commercial games on GP2X? I must say Payback looks brilliant over the original Amiga version i used to play!

 

[shuggymacnab@lycos.co.uk]

Enjoyed reading this thread - very useful info.

I like the level of support with GP2X - it seems there are emulators for every system (apart from my mz-700 )

I think the MESS emulator supports the mz-700 - by that I mean the PC, MAC and UNIX versions.
Since there is a GP2X port of MESS (I've not got round to trying it yet) lets hope it can/will be made available in the future.