Taito G-net Emulation - important

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Kaiser
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Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Kaiser »

I need to discuss some issues about MARP's future regarding this. Two questions:

1. Will we need to go SPI driver route (read: RF1, RF2, RFJ etc.) route to playback replays? Because it takes long to "flash" any g-net game.

2. I'm getting 80% right now on both Psyviariar Medium Unit and Revision using MAMEUI32 130u1. Will the perfomance improve in future? Or the speed will be even lower with next versions? I'm using Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Brisbane 3,1 Ghz btw.

That's all i wanna know. Peace - Kaiser
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by kranser »

For #1, yes I feel it would be the best way to go with the RF2 method. I ran several G-Net games and exited after the loading had completed, then I made the nvram files read-only, and ran the games again - and behold - no loading delay on startup! So, that seems to be a good method to use.

For #2, the answer is 'who knows' - the speed may improve, it may not - if speed is an issue (as it is for MARP) the only solution would be get a better CPU. On my laptop I only get 50-60% speed. I would be interested to know how other people get on with G-Net speed - does anyone get 95-100% speeds required for MARP?

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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Haze »

Kaiser wrote:I need to discuss some issues about MARP's future regarding this. Two questions:

1. Will we need to go SPI driver route (read: RF1, RF2, RFJ etc.) route to playback replays? Because it takes long to "flash" any g-net game.

2. I'm getting 80% right now on both Psyviariar Medium Unit and Revision using MAMEUI32 130u1. Will the perfomance improve in future? Or the speed will be even lower with next versions? I'm using Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Brisbane 3,1 Ghz btw.

That's all i wanna know. Peace - Kaiser
1) they don't take long compared to the other games... although it could be annoying. It looks like the preloading of flashed data plan is on ice tho, so, something will have to be decided here.

2) They're likely to get slower when the sound is properly emulated (2 extra CPUs and an as of year unemulated sound chip, which could be complex in it's own right)
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Kaiser »

Haze wrote: 1) they don't take long compared to the other games... although it could be annoying. It looks like the preloading of flashed data plan is on ice tho, so, something will have to be decided here.

2) They're likely to get slower when the sound is properly emulated (2 extra CPUs and an as of year unemulated sound chip, which could be complex in it's own right)
Hm, still... Emulating is one thing but optimizing it for low-end CPUs is even more complicated. It sucks to be an AM2 chipset owner.
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by mahlemiut »

Yeah, flashing doesn't take too long, maybe about 5 minutes. (Longer if your CPU sucks. :)) It will run immediately after flashing is complete, so I see no reason to do anything special. Just pretend you're using an old computer and are loading a game from cassette. ;)

Two optimisation options - fix the issue with the PSX drivers hating AMD CPUs, and producing a DRC core for the PSX CPU.
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Kaiser »

mahlemiut wrote:Yeah, flashing doesn't take too long, maybe about 5 minutes. (Longer if your CPU sucks. :)) It will run immediately after flashing is complete, so I see no reason to do anything special. Just pretend you're using an old computer and are loading a game from cassette. ;)

Two optimisation options - fix the issue with the PSX drivers hating AMD CPUs, and producing a DRC core for the PSX CPU.
Actually the PSX drivers hating AMD CPUs is an issue that was well.... for a few years now. I hope it gets fixed in future (I don't think this is an usual find-n-fix case, it seems complicated) as i can play Psyvariar Medium Unit well (Read: 1cc it on hardest possible route to inflict more pain). Heh i'm also a good player at psyvariar 2 but that one is NAOMI/NAOMi2. The future is bright, i can't believe it... how MAME advanced so far... since the first beta release ever
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Haze »

Kaiser wrote:
mahlemiut wrote:Yeah, flashing doesn't take too long, maybe about 5 minutes. (Longer if your CPU sucks. :)) It will run immediately after flashing is complete, so I see no reason to do anything special. Just pretend you're using an old computer and are loading a game from cassette. ;)

Two optimisation options - fix the issue with the PSX drivers hating AMD CPUs, and producing a DRC core for the PSX CPU.
Actually the PSX drivers hating AMD CPUs is an issue that was well.... for a few years now. I hope it gets fixed in future (I don't think this is an usual find-n-fix case, it seems complicated) as i can play Psyvariar Medium Unit well (Read: 1cc it on hardest possible route to inflict more pain). Heh i'm also a good player at psyvariar 2 but that one is NAOMI/NAOMi2. The future is bright, i can't believe it... how MAME advanced so far... since the first beta release ever
Maybe the AMD Cpus are just crap ;-)

There is nothing in the code to specifically make them run badly on AMD machines, and the code isn't really that 'bad', so quite why AMD Cpus choke on it, I don't know.

More GNET games in the next update btw, although 'Zooo' (which is basically bejeweled..) doesn't work properly :/
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Kaiser »

I decided to do a little research, i got myself MAMEUI32 130u2, why MAMEUI32? Because it can log all kinds of errors to a logfile (forgot what it's like on commandline in original MAME builds). So i decided to launch up XII Stag and play it until beginning of Stage 2. It turned out there are loads of unmapped program memory dword write or read errors everywhere! Mind you i played the game for about 2 minutes! Here's the log for everyone: http://pastebin.com/f5e813d1d
Hope this helps everyone, it may not be related to speed but to sound, i don't know myself. I'm not a programming nut neither i looked into the source ever :P
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Haze »

Kaiser wrote:I decided to do a little research, i got myself MAMEUI32 130u2, why MAMEUI32? Because it can log all kinds of errors to a logfile (forgot what it's like on commandline in original MAME builds). So i decided to launch up XII Stag and play it until beginning of Stage 2. It turned out there are loads of unmapped program memory dword write or read errors everywhere! Mind you i played the game for about 2 minutes! Here's the log for everyone: http://pastebin.com/f5e813d1d
Hope this helps everyone, it may not be related to speed but to sound, i don't know myself. I'm not a programming nut neither i looked into the source ever :P
Nah, most (if not all) of that happens before the game even boots, during the bios.

We know why the sound is broken, fixing it is a different matter. As previous stated, the music requires additional CPUs and sound chips to be emulated.
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Re: Taito G-net Emulation - important

Post by Kaiser »

I understand, graphics in Fullscreen 640x480 seem only to slow when there are shitload of special effects on screen or polygons are on but hey, this thing just got barely emulated so we can't expect anything much :D yeah average speed on XII stag in FS 640x480 is 90-95%
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