Chris Livingston Rae (c…@st-andrews.ac.uk) wrote:
: Okay, I’ll put my neck on the line.
: A Sega Genesis (or whatever you call it) emulator is IMPOSSIBLE using any
: current home-computer technology.
: That simple enough? Until someone comes up with decent evidence that one
: exists (like giving me it!) I don’t believe them.
: Is it just me or is anyone else getting sick of people who know jack
: about the technicals involved writing "oh well, I wrote one and it was
: lovely… you know, just knocked it up in an afternoon for home use"…
: Aaarrrggghhh! Can’t people have a serious debate without twats like that
: pretending they have a clue?
: <flame off>
If the following emulators can be done on the pc, a sega Genesis emulator is no
problem, Two Atari ST emulators, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 (a bunch), Apple ][
emulators (a bunch), TRS80 emulator, Mac Emulator, etc can be made a Sega
Genesis Emulator would be a piece of cake, the SNES emulator would be harder,
but is still possible. Now the video games above the SNES would be almost
impossible to run via software (Jaguar and 3do), but there is cards for that.
Trust me, the PC is fast enough with no problem with 486/Pentiums now, no
problem. Its not like its 6000 x 6000 resolution at 16.7 million colors.
Even if you could not emulate them at all which is impossible because you
can, but lets say you cant, you could convert the GENESIS games into a PC
format (off cartridge form)
I found some serious discussion! ;-)
In article <35qkqq$…@newsbf01.news.aol.com>,
JosephMcC <joseph…@aol.com> wrote:
>It depends on what level of emulation you want and what you want to use it
>for. If you want to be able to run a binary image of a Genesis Cart on a
>68K machine it can be done, the main problem being the Z-80 sound code,
>but the question is why would you want to emulate a $100 piece of hardware
>on a $2000 machine. If you want to be able to run games from a harddrive
>on your PC you can get a card from some outfit in Texas that works really
>well.
I really mean 100% emulation, but perhaps not including sound. And I mean
on an 80×86 (just because that was what the thread started off about, and
I don’t know anything about the 68ks!). Also, I’m not really bothered
about the economic feasibility of wanting to emulate one; I’m really just
talking from a technical standpoint.
>Now if you want to emulate the VDP so that you can use your current 68K
>development tools rather that what passes for development tools on the
>Genesis, that is a much more straight forward matter. You just have to
>write a set of routines to support four scroller planes, a hardware sprite
>manager, and something that will display the Genesis rather limited color
>palette. This enables you to do nearly all of you game logic development
>and animation testing (which is where most of the programming is) on a
>micro, in my case a Mac, than going through the mind-numbing compile,
>download, run, cycle, which is how most people seem to be doing it at the
>moment.
Does the 68000 work okay? What about hardware calls; can you intercept
them on a 68k? Four scroller planes are also pretty difficult (and very
slow) to implement on machines with standard gfx capabilities and no
custom chips.
>Then when you need to run code on a Genesis you modify a downloader so
>that it acts more like a debugger stub, which keeps in sync the executable
>and regs on the host with that that is running on the target Genesis.
What do you mean by a downloader? Sorry, but I don’t know the jargon!
>You are free to believe what you want but you are very unlikely to see my
>tools, or any one elses in my position, any time soon. Proprietrary tools
>like this are far too valuable to be given away, and those that are given
>away are in most cases useless for professional use.
Are they not commercially available? I find it difficult to believe there
isn’t a demand for them.
What you’re talking about really is a development platform though; I’m
just meaning something that your average Joe Public can d/load and run
his Sega disk-image games on. From what I understand, yours would not do
this.
–
+——————-+————————————————-+
| /– |_| /– | (~ | "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, |
| \– | | | | _) | the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously." |
+——————-+——————– Second Book of Kings 9 v20 -+
In article <362ce5$…@calvin.st-and.ac.uk>, c…@st-andrews.ac.uk (Chris
Livingston Rae) writes:
> Does the 68000 work okay?
Its a 8Mhz 68000 but Sega seem to use very slow RAM, and the video
interrupts seem to take away a lot of time. It looks like I might be able
to take a Logic Analyser to one soon the get some basic timing info.
> What about hardware calls; can you intercept them on a 68k?
All calls of interest are written to regs in the VDP, which are memory
mapped. There is a chip called the DMA (which is nt a DMA) that is used to
speed up writes to the VDP. The DMA chip is also memory mapped.
> What do you mean by a downloader?
A downloader is a program that moves the binary image from the host
through a serial port to the target sega system, in my case a standard
Genesis with a development card instead of a cart sticking out of it.
> Are they not commercially available? I find it difficult to believe
there
> isn’t a demand for them.
Because of the ecomomics of carts ($500K + if you want to ship a product)
there are very few small players, compared with the PC games world. If I
turned my mac software into something that other developers could us, I
would be very suprised if more than 50 sold. Its a very small market.
> I’m just meaning something that your average Joe Public can d/load and
run
> his Sega disk-image games on. From what I understand, yours would not do
> this.
My software is strictly for development on the Mac. I think it is very
unlikely that anyone will write what you want (or least anything that
works). Anyone who has the level of Sega expertese needed to do it would
be more likely to want to use this knowledge to create new exciting games.
- Joseph
Sod the phone bill, I had to reply to this one.
In article <360fga$…@bigfoot.wustl.edu>,
Vladimir Elberg <v…@motel6.wustl.edu> wrote:
>If the following emulators can be done on the pc, a sega Genesis emulator is no
>problem, Two Atari ST emulators, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 (a bunch), Apple ][
>emulators (a bunch), TRS80 emulator, Mac Emulator, etc can be made a Sega
>Genesis Emulator would be a piece of cake, the SNES emulator would be harder,
>but is still possible. Now the video games above the SNES would be almost
>impossible to run via software (Jaguar and 3do), but there is cards for that.
Nonononono! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! NONE of those computers
have custom chips to do ANYTHING and the SEGA and SNES do. Ever wondered
why there wasn’t an Amiga emulator?
BTW, where did you find two Atari ST ones? I’m just interested; I’ve
never seen either.
> Trust me, the PC is fast enough with no problem with 486/Pentiums now, no
>problem. Its not like its 6000 x 6000 resolution at 16.7 million colors.
What do you mean, Trust me? How is it? I don’t think anyone would get
very far just asking people to trust them on everything. No, very
observant; it is not 6k by 6k by 16.7m colours. I’m not exactly sure what
you’re saying here either; if that’s some sort of proof it’s a pretty
crap one. I suppose you’ll be coming out with "well, it’s not a Cray III,
is it" next.
The PC is not fast enough to display the graphics, because of its
graphics architecture (it’s not onboard) and because of wait-states on
video RAM and small video bandwidth.
> Even if you could not emulate them at all which is impossible because you
>can, but lets say you cant, you could convert the GENESIS games into a PC
>format (off cartridge form)
Eh? Is it just me or did you just rule out your own reason in the same
paragraph?
Come back with some reasons!
—
+——————-+————————————————-+
| /– |_| /– | (~ | "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, |
| \– | | | | _) | the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously." |
+——————-+——————– Second Book of Kings 9 v20 -+
>If the following emulators can be done on the pc, a sega Genesis emulator is no
>problem, Two Atari ST emulators, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 (a bunch), Apple ][
^^^ i know of one commercial (STXformer), there is another?.
>emulators (a bunch), TRS80 emulator, Mac Emulator, etc can be made a Sega
>Genesis Emulator would be a piece of cake, the SNES emulator would be harder,
>but is still possible. Now the video games above the SNES would be almost
>impossible to run via software (Jaguar and 3do), but there is cards for that.
The Jaguar is not too hard too, if you look at the real specs it look like
an atari STE with a DSP… (68EC030 CPU)
I think that a SNES emulation will be much more difficult…
> Trust me, the PC is fast enough with no problem with 486/Pentiums now, no
>problem. Its not like its 6000 x 6000 resolution at 16.7 million colors.
> Even if you could not emulate them at all which is impossible because you
>can, but lets say you cant, you could convert the GENESIS games into a PC
>format (off cartridge form)
I’ve one of that SNES/GENESIS taiwanese copiers, bought in Honk Kong,
it backups a cartridge on one or more MSDOS formatted diskettes.
–
Santagostino Carlo – santa…@dsi.unimi.it
In article <3666su$…@pluto.sm.dsi.unimi.it>,
santa…@pluto.sm.dsi.unimi.it (carlo santagostino) writes:
> The Jaguar is not too hard too, if you look at the real specs it look
like
> an atari STE with a DSP… (68EC030 CPU)
Have the programming tech docs in front of me. It uses a 16Mhz 68000 as
the main processor with a RISC based graphics processor. The instruction
set of the RISC is fairly straight-forward, but emulating some of its
graphics will be very very slooow. The same goes for the new 32 bitters.
Emulation possible, in theory yes, in practice no.
- Joesph
|> Nonononono! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! NONE of those computers
|> have custom chips to do ANYTHING and the SEGA and SNES do. Ever wondered
|> why there wasn’t an Amiga emulator?
|>
|> BTW, where did you find two Atari ST ones? I’m just interested; I’ve
|> never seen either.
Excuse me? When was the last time you opened one of these systems up? I
guarantee you, each and every one of those systems had several ASICs in
them. The difference between those and video game boxes is that those
systems didn’t need to do anything in real-time, which, I believe, is the
point you were TRYING to make.
|> The PC is not fast enough to display the graphics, because of its
|> graphics architecture (it’s not onboard) and because of wait-states on
|> video RAM and small video bandwidth.
So write one for an Amiga. It’s a 68k-based machine, so that takes care
of that problem, you can buy a reasonable Amige (500) for unde $200 now,
and I guarantee you the Amiga is more than capable of handling the graphics
and sound.
In article <365bif$…@calvin.st-and.ac.uk> c…@st-andrews.ac.uk (Chris Livingston Rae) writes:
|
|Sod the phone bill, I had to reply to this one.
|
|In article <360fga$…@bigfoot.wustl.edu|,
|Vladimir Elberg <v…@motel6.wustl.edu| wrote:
||If the following emulators can be done on the pc, a sega Genesis emulator is no
||8problem, Two Atari ST emulators, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 (a bunch), Apple ][
||emulators (a bunch), TRS80 emulator, Mac Emulator, etc can be made a Sega
||Genesis Emulator would be a piece of cake, the SNES emulator would be harder,
||but is still possible. Now the video games above the SNES would be almost
||impossible to run via software (Jaguar and 3do), but there is cards for that.
|
|Nonononono! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! NONE of those computers
|have custom chips to do ANYTHING and the SEGA and SNES do. Ever wondered
|why there wasn’t an Amiga emulator?
DMA,MMU,Shifter,GLUE,BliTter
Note: This is just another crazy, weird, and probably very
dumb comment from Tp12a:
Actually, I would rather think that a Genesis emulator for a
68k platform wouldn’t be *THAT* impossible. I figure you could
probably rig up a piece of code on a reasonably fast Amiga or Atari ST
(maybe even Mac??) that could run SOME, if not almost all, Gen.
software… Nasty part would probably be the chunky-to-planar
conversion but if you have a 24-bit grafx board and EGS drivers, you
probably wouldn’t hafta worry ’bout it. As for funky scrolling and
other weird stuff, an Amiga or Atari ST with non-segmented video ram
and a fast 680×0 ought to be able to cope…
Phil
tp…@freenet.fsu.edu
In article <36aprc$…@freenet3.scri.fsu.edu>, tp…@freenet2.scri.fsu.edu (Philip Tsao) writes:
> Note: This is just another crazy, weird, and probably very
> dumb comment from Tp12a:
> Actually, I would rather think that a Genesis emulator for a
> 68k platform wouldn’t be *THAT* impossible. I figure you could
Neither do I.
> probably rig up a piece of code on a reasonably fast Amiga or Atari ST
> (maybe even Mac??) that could run SOME, if not almost all, Gen.
> software… Nasty part would probably be the chunky-to-planar
> conversion but if you have a 24-bit grafx board and EGS drivers, you
I don’t think the Genesis uses any chunkymodes. AFAIK, it’s solely
based on charactermapped displays (which, BTW, might not be any
easier to convert on the fly than chunkyscreens..).
> probably wouldn’t hafta worry ’bout it. As for funky scrolling and
> other weird stuff, an Amiga or Atari ST with non-segmented video ram
> and a fast 680×0 ought to be able to cope…
And the spritecapabilities aren’t so fantastic either. The Genesis is
pretty much Amiga-like in that matter, as there’s a limit on the
number of sprites on each scanline.
Morten
Chris Livingston Rae (c…@st-andrews.ac.uk) wrote:
: Eh? Is it just me or did you just rule out your own reason in the same
: paragraph?
: Come back with some reasons!
I noticed that you are from the *.UK and that pretty much means AMIGALAND and
this also means that a lot of the Amiga users dislike the PC because it is the
standard. This also means that you "could" be biased.
The Genesis has two chips, one for the processor and one for sound (I could
be wrong, I have just heard second hand about this), the MOST PC’s are 10 times
faster (or even more) than the Genesis.
The Amiga emulation via software is not possible, you are correct there, It
has about a half a dozzen chips that are for differnt things
(Blitter,copper,etc….). The Sega emulator would be an easy deal, its just if
#1. Its legal, this could be a problem since you would not be running carts,
you would be running disk images of carts (ie Cartridge copiers) and It would
not be legal at all. (the above "Its Legal should read, Its not legal)
#2. Technical know-how for graphics/sound/joystick signals.
The PC would easily be fast enough its just the above problems that could
stop it from becomming reality.
Atari people said that an Atari 8-bit emulator could not be done on the PC
and that it would be slow. hahahahahahaha, they also said this about the ST,
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha and the MAC, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, what a
bunch of fools. The Only way to emulate the Amiga is have half
software/hardware combo or all hardware (Amiga on a card). The software
version would have to be more hardware than software, my mistake…. I can be
done, its just who is going to do it…..
I know you dont want to believe it can be done, but alas, I know it can be
done, where this is a will there is a way.
Patrick Killourhy (killo…@sal-sun5.usc.edu) wrote:
: |> Nonononono! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! NONE of those computers
: |> have custom chips to do ANYTHING and the SEGA and SNES do. Ever wondered
: |> why there wasn’t an Amiga emulator?
: |>
: |> BTW, where did you find two Atari ST ones? I’m just interested; I’ve
: |> never seen either.
o
Replying to Patrick Killourhy
The two Atari ST ones, are Janis and the Gemulator. Hope this helps to
keep you more on whats going on in the world (no flames included)….
In article <36eetg$…@calvin.st-and.ac.uk>, c…@st-andrews.ac.uk (Chris
Livingston Rae) writes:
> Ah, but emulation is possible for any machine, in theory, no?
In theory I can emulate a Cray XMPs vector architecture on my 486 box, but
it will be completely useless for running Cray software, its through put
would be measured in FLOPS not MFLOPS.
Both the Saturn (& 32x) and the Sony PSX have very sophisticated graphic
processors. I have seen figures of 170K Goroud polys per sec quoted for
the PSX. The best you can get from a 586 is about 50K polys per sec, and
that without trying to emulate something else.
Now a quad processor Indigo would be a different story, but few of us have
those lying around.
- Joseph
In article <36ec4p$…@bigfoot.wustl.edu>, v…@motel6.wustl.edu (Vladimir Elberg) writes:
|> Patrick Killourhy (killo…@sal-sun5.usc.edu) wrote:
|>
|> : |> Nonononono! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! NONE of those computers
|> : |> have custom chips to do ANYTHING and the SEGA and SNES do. Ever wondered
|> : |> why there wasn’t an Amiga emulator?
|> : |>
|> : |> BTW, where did you find two Atari ST ones? I’m just interested; I’ve
|> : |> never seen either.
|>
|> o
|> Replying to Patrick Killourhy
|>
|> The two Atari ST ones, are Janis and the Gemulator. Hope this helps to
|> keep you more on whats going on in the world (no flames included)….
|>
|>
You accidently double-quoted there, and didn’t realize it. The above that
)
you’re replying to is NOT my text, it’s the text _I_ was replying to. (BTW,
if it was mine, you should have flamed me, but it’s not.
In article <366tj3$…@newsbf01.news.aol.com>,
JosephMcC <joseph…@aol.com> wrote:
>Have the programming tech docs in front of me. It uses a 16Mhz 68000 as
>the main processor with a RISC based graphics processor. The instruction
>set of the RISC is fairly straight-forward, but emulating some of its
>graphics will be very very slooow. The same goes for the new 32 bitters.
>Emulation possible, in theory yes, in practice no.
Ah, but emulation is possible for any machine, in theory, no? As long as
the graphics are possible!
–
+——————-+————————————————-+
| /– |_| /– | (~ | "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, |
| \– | | | | _) | the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously." |
+——————-+——————– Second Book of Kings 9 v20 -+
In article <36ebt2$…@bigfoot.wustl.edu> v…@motel6.wustl.edu (Vladimir Elberg) writes:
> The Amiga emulation via software is not possible, you are correct there, It
>has about a half a dozzen chips that are for differnt things
>(Blitter,copper,etc….). The Sega emulator would be an easy deal, its just if
So, emulate the functions of the chips also. I’m not saying it would be easy
or practical, but it could be done.
-Dan
–
Dan Newcombe newco…@aa.csc.peachnet.edu
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"And the man in the mirror has sad eyes." -Marillion
In note <365bif$…@calvin.st-and.ac.uk>, c…@st-andrews.ac.uk (Chris
Livingston Rae) writes:
>Sod the phone bill, I had to reply to this one.
>In article <360fga$…@bigfoot.wustl.edu>,
>Vladimir Elberg <v…@motel6.wustl.edu> wrote:
>>If the following emulators can be done on the pc, a sega Genesis emulator is
no
>>problem, Two Atari ST emulators, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 (a bunch), Apple
][
>>emulators (a bunch), TRS80 emulator, Mac Emulator, etc can be made a Sega
>>Genesis Emulator would be a piece of cake, the SNES emulator would be harder,
>Nonononono! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! NONE of those computers
>have custom chips to do ANYTHING and the SEGA and SNES do. Ever wondered
>why there wasn’t an Amiga emulator?
Have you ever looked at an Atari 8-bit? They had custom chips for I/O,
sound, player/missile graphics, video. Pokey did I/O and sound, ANTIC chip
did video, timing, and players and missiles (players and missiles are
"sprites", but players are good enough resolution for a player, missiles were
very coarse, and well.. designed for moving missiles around on-screen..)
>BTW, where did you find two Atari ST ones? I’m just interested; I’ve
>never seen either.
>> Trust me, the PC is fast enough with no problem with 486/Pentiums now, no
>>problem. Its not like its 6000 x 6000 resolution at 16.7 million colors.
>What do you mean, Trust me? How is it? I don’t think anyone would get
>very far just asking people to trust them on everything. No, very
>observant; it is not 6k by 6k by 16.7m colours. I’m not exactly sure what
>you’re saying here either; if that’s some sort of proof it’s a pretty
>crap one. I suppose you’ll be coming out with "well, it’s not a Cray III,
>is it" next.
He is just saying that it isn’t some super-hires mode, it is low enough
that a PC can do it..
>The PC is not fast enough to display the graphics, because of its
>graphics architecture (it’s not onboard) and because of wait-states on
>video RAM and small video bandwidth.
I know that my really slow SVGA (Oak O67..) card has like 70 wait states
I agree here fully..
on my 386sx-33, ISA..
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -
>> Even if you could not emulate them at all which is impossible because you
>>can, but lets say you cant, you could convert the GENESIS games into a PC
>>format (off cartridge form)
>Eh? Is it just me or did you just rule out your own reason in the same
>paragraph?
>Come back with some reasons!
>–
>+——————-+————————————————-+
>| /– |_| /– | (~ | "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, |
>| \– | | | | _) | the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously." |
>+——————-+——————– Second Book of Kings 9 v20 -+
In article <36ebt2$…@bigfoot.wustl.edu>,
Vladimir Elberg <v…@motel6.wustl.edu> wrote:
>I noticed that you are from the *.UK and that pretty much means AMIGALAND and
>this also means that a lot of the Amiga users dislike the PC because it is the
>standard. This also means that you "could" be biased.
Actually, I am quite a PC fan and dislike the Amiga; I reckon it’s just a
console with a keyboard. Anyway, that’s a personal view, don’t flame me
on it!
> The Genesis has two chips, one for the processor and one for sound (I could
>be wrong, I have just heard second hand about this), the MOST PC’s are 10 times
> faster (or even more) than the Genesis.
Yes, but you need a machine (generally) at *least* 10 (my 6502 emulator
runs at BBC speed on a 386-40, and it’s the fastest implementation I know
of) times the speed to emulate.
> The Amiga emulation via software is not possible, you are correct there, It
>has about a half a dozzen chips that are for differnt things
>(Blitter,copper,etc….). The Sega emulator would be an easy deal, its just if
Well, it’s certainly impossible at 100% speed. Nothing is impossible if
you’re willing to wait for it! It would certainly be *very* slow.
>#1. Its legal, this could be a problem since you would not be running carts,
>you would be running disk images of carts (ie Cartridge copiers) and It would
>not be legal at all. (the above "Its Legal should read, Its not legal)
Yes, I know. I was really just discussing it from a technical "is it
possible" point of view.
> The PC would easily be fast enough its just the above problems that could
>stop it from becomming reality.
I disagree, basically, but for the reasons I’ve already rambled on about.
> Atari people said that an Atari 8-bit emulator could not be done on the PC
>and that it would be slow. hahahahahahaha, they also said this about the ST,
>hahahahahahahahahahahahaha and the MAC, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, what a
>bunch of fools. The Only way to emulate the Amiga is have half
>software/hardware combo or all hardware (Amiga on a card). The software
>version would have to be more hardware than software, my mistake…. I can be
>done, its just who is going to do it…..
Well, with all due respect *I* never said that. I agree with you about
the only way to emulate an Amiga; but this would work out more expensive
than an Amiga!
> I know you dont want to believe it can be done, but alas, I know it
can be >done, where this is a will there is a way.
Erk! Sorry, I didn’t mean to appear a killjoy. I want it to happen as
much as anyone else (if nothing else just to annoy the people who bow to
Amigas!) but I’m afraid I still see it as impossible on current technology.
—
+——————-+————————————————-+
| /– |_| /– | (~ | "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, |
| \– | | | | _) | the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously." |
+——————-+——————– Second Book of Kings 9 v20 -+
In article <36febu$…@lvl-sun703.usc.edu>,
>You accidently double-quoted there, and didn’t realize it. The above that
)
>you’re replying to is NOT my text, it’s the text _I_ was replying to. (BTW,
>if it was mine, you should have flamed me, but it’s not.
Humpf! It was mine, and I’m offended. I have had flames on this subject a
bit, but looking over what I wrote I think I must have been a bit worked
up at the time. However, the basic idea behind it I still agree with
(seeing as it was mine!). What you count as a "custom chip", of course,
is open to question. I mean, by custom chips, one which allows… well, I
can only give examples: hardware multi-layered scrolling, sound mixing,
rotation / zoom, etc… I suppose you could say that even a basic CRT
chip such as the 6845 does this sort of thing, but if you’re willing to
fiddle around. Generally, though, I would say that computers were split
into this which had custom chips (mainly the games-orientated machines)
and those which don’t (the multi-purpose ones).
Please, flame me on this if you feel like it, I’m not trying to be
controversial. Newsgroups are for expresing opinions, though…
—
+——————-+————————————————-+
| /– |_| /– | (~ | "And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, |
| \– | | | | _) | the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously." |
+——————-+——————– Second Book of Kings 9 v20 -+