A similar (and IMO, better written) story on emulating the TRS-80: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1755886
Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#32"One of the fun aspects of a cartridge-based system is that you are literally plugging a PCB directly into your system. Thus, you can put extra coprocessors, often digital signal processors, right inside of the cartridge. This gives you an extra edge against your competitors' titles. The most popular SNES coprocessors were the SuperFX for polygon rendering and sprite rotation (used in Starfox and Super Mario World 2)…
This is why the NES had the insanely long life it did. Every game was able to provide custom hardware (called 'mappers') to offload computation. I've said for a while now that the next generation of consoles will go one of two routes: completely downloadable titles, or PCI-e-based cartridges. I'm inclined to think the latter, despite the evidence to the contrary. It's just such a huge benefit, and they love shipping…
The cost savings of downloads are just too ridiculously huge to really think about going back to manufacturing circuit boards. Beyond the marginal circuit board cost, there's a huge physical goods infrastructure that just doesn't have to exist when you go with downloads. Servers are a good bit easier to manage than manufacturing plants and shipping infrastructure.
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe Nintendo intends to profit via software licensing and hardware sales. The Wii was profitable at launch[1]. But I wonder how the Virtual Console works on the Wii. Does Nintendo have an SNES hardware-to-software conversion guide? Do their VC releases turn out perfect? I've bought a few, and while they're certainly faithful, I'm not enough of a connoisseur to spot the flaws. [1] http://www.next-gen.biz/news/fi…
I'm under the impression that each Virtual Console download includes an instance of an emulator. If that's the case, they may tweak the emulator for compatibility with each game (or hack the game itself). If you want to look into it some more, the guys who do 'Virtual Console WAD injection' might have an idea. ROM Hacking and (NES/SNES) console development sites/forums might have some information, too. I vaguely reme…
Yeah, in the one case where I tried the wii virtual console with a game that was big in my childhood (Contra 3), it just doesn't feel quite the same. Noone's gotten an SNES controller quite right, either. So I hang on to a SNES to bring out every now and then.
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why the NES had the insanely long life it did. Every game was able to provide custom hardware (called 'mappers') to offload computation. I've said for a while now that the next generation of consoles will go one of two routes: completely downloadable titles, or PCI-e-based cartridges. I'm inclined to think the latter, despite the evidence to the contrary. It's just such a huge benefit, and they love shipping…
The cost savings of downloads are just too ridiculously huge to really think about going back to manufacturing circuit boards. Beyond the marginal circuit board cost, there's a huge physical goods infrastructure that just doesn't have to exist when you go with downloads. Servers are a good bit easier to manage than manufacturing plants and shipping infrastructure.
Sony thought servers would be easy to manage.
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why the NES had the insanely long life it did. Every game was able to provide custom hardware (called 'mappers') to offload computation. I've said for a while now that the next generation of consoles will go one of two routes: completely downloadable titles, or PCI-e-based cartridges. I'm inclined to think the latter, despite the evidence to the contrary. It's just such a huge benefit, and they love shipping…
The cost savings of downloads are just too ridiculously huge to really think about going back to manufacturing circuit boards. Beyond the marginal circuit board cost, there's a huge physical goods infrastructure that just doesn't have to exist when you go with downloads. Servers are a good bit easier to manage than manufacturing plants and shipping infrastructure.
Yah, but what if physical goods gave you that edge over your competition? That neat wow cool factor that all of the other 'download' devices don't get because they can't change?
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost savings of downloads are just too ridiculously huge to really think about going back to manufacturing circuit boards. Beyond the marginal circuit board cost, there's a huge physical goods infrastructure that just doesn't have to exist when you go with downloads. Servers are a good bit easier to manage than manufacturing plants and shipping infrastructure.
Yah, but what if physical goods gave you that edge over your competition? That neat wow cool factor that all of the other 'download' devices don't get because they can't change?
No, that will never happen. Businesses don't work that way.
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why the NES had the insanely long life it did. Every game was able to provide custom hardware (called 'mappers') to offload computation. I've said for a while now that the next generation of consoles will go one of two routes: completely downloadable titles, or PCI-e-based cartridges. I'm inclined to think the latter, despite the evidence to the contrary. It's just such a huge benefit, and they love shipping…
A general system expansion slot would make a lot more sense. Think the RAM expansion on the N64. It'd be silly for each new game to have to provide its own extra processors or RAM in its own (expensive) cartridge, and console piracy is close enough to dead already.
console piracy is close enough to dead already
What? When did this happen? Last I checked there were successful exploits for every major console on the market.
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost savings of downloads are just too ridiculously huge to really think about going back to manufacturing circuit boards. Beyond the marginal circuit board cost, there's a huge physical goods infrastructure that just doesn't have to exist when you go with downloads. Servers are a good bit easier to manage than manufacturing plants and shipping infrastructure.
Yah, but what if physical goods gave you that edge over your competition? That neat wow cool factor that all of the other 'download' devices don't get because they can't change?
But in a download-only world, physical goods would be perceived as rather inconvenient to obtain compared to the norm, somewhat negating the effect. (In PC gaming, this is arguably already true.)
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm under the impression that each Virtual Console download includes an instance of an emulator. If that's the case, they may tweak the emulator for compatibility with each game (or hack the game itself). If you want to look into it some more, the guys who do 'Virtual Console WAD injection' might have an idea. ROM Hacking and (NES/SNES) console development sites/forums might have some information, too. I vaguely reme…
Yeah, in the one case where I tried the wii virtual console with a game that was big in my childhood (Contra 3), it just doesn't feel quite the same. Noone's gotten an SNES controller quite right, either. So I hang on to a SNES to bring out every now and then.
http://www.retrousb.com/ has adapters to connect the original NES or SNES pads to either USB or a Gamecube/Wii. I've used their SNES-to-USB adapter and it works perfectly.
Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I did a Sega system on an FPGA in 2003 as a one-semester senior design project. The article was about achieving extremely high compatibility by emulating hardware quirks. What advantage would an FPGA be? Easier synchronization?
The hardware quirks, by and large (ignore things like the behavior of undocumented/unintentional instructions on the CPU -- these are a separate issue and easy to deal with), are due to the impedance mismatch you have of emulating hardware on software. When you're emulating old hardware on an FPGA, you don't worry about synchronization, you just have the cycle timing be a multiple of the original timing. This gives y…
FPGAs don't solve all the timing problems. In some cases, you have to accurately emulate the stalls that occur on one processor as computation or interrupts occur elsewhere.