PSPVBA: GameBoy Advance Emulator for PSP v1.2.0 (Media Engine)

**LampDev** · July 23rd, 2006, 19:59

Originally Posted by jOeBrO

downgrading is a must and it is completely safe from a 2.0

Wow, that's like saying that space flight is safe for humans right now.
Although it's been performed many times by qualified people, it's never "safe." $#@! can and sometimes does happen. Downgrade only if you are prepared for the worst.

**zx-81** · July 23rd, 2006, 20:33

Originally Posted by jOeBrO

i have one question though, if a gba emulator written from scratch was made(like what psmoney is doing with his n64 emulator) would that make enough of a speed increase to get to fullspeed?

to write an emulator from scratch or to rewritting existing one, there is no major difference lol. But i would say, yes if we want to go a bit faster, we can rewrite it all, using all optimization technics dedicated to PSP.

**kayhanbakid** · July 23rd, 2006, 20:34

I think if disabling the sound and using the media engine for something else would help speed at all it would be worth a shot. I never used to play my GBA with sound anyways. It's just repetitve songs and sound effects.

Just woke up so haven't tried it yet but thank you so much for your efforts and good luck on the next version.

**zx-81** · July 23rd, 2006, 20:40

Originally Posted by parsifal968

Full speed Emulators? ASM... the only choice!

GCC is doing optimizations that can't be done manually

. For example in the instruction decode part of GBA, you have a big switch with more than 480 cases, only gcc is able to find a new decoding function to build an optimized jump table

...

The ASM here is only to win 4 (8, 16, more ?) MIPS clock cycle by GBA instruction ... so i may be wrong but i think it's nothing ... Major speed improvements in GBA has been done with the hardware (overclocking, cache, GU, ME), and very little by the software :
only to disable the execution of the GFX on time over 2 (turbo modes) etc ...

**zx-81** · July 23rd, 2006, 20:42

Originally Posted by Lagnus

I feel that going to assembly language is a good idea, and also I now succesfully downgraded to fw1.5.

MIPS Programming anyone?
Below are some links that seem fruitful.
Mips wiki

Mips Assembly Language Programming

Mips Programmer's Guide

I've already designed MIPS familly micoprocessors, so i know pretty well the instruction set

. I can rewrite partially the GBA instruction code in ASM, but i don't think we will win a lot

**Airtoof** · July 23rd, 2006, 20:50

Salut Zx, j'ai remarqué que lorsque je quitte l'émulateur en passant par la commande Exit du menu, la psp freeze et ne se quitte pas, on est obligé d'enlever la batterie, as-tu ce problème?

**jOeBrO** · July 23rd, 2006, 20:56

Originally Posted by LampDev

Wow, that's like saying that space flight is safe for humans right now.
Although it's been performed many times by qualified people, it's never "safe." $#@! can and sometimes does happen. Downgrade only if you are prepared for the worst.

well since your running the official sony 1.5 update it is gauranteed(spelling?) by sony that the update wont screw your psp up

**anobulis** · July 23rd, 2006, 21:16

well i downgraded sucessfully, and im trying to install devhook, and this is really confusing...i got to step 2, idk where to dl the unpaker or where the unpaker is... and i deffinantly dont know how to use the prog.. so if some one would help me that would b great!

**zx-81** · July 23rd, 2006, 21:17

Originally Posted by Airtoof

Salut Zx, j'ai remarqué que lorsque je quitte l'émulateur en passant par la commande Exit du menu, la psp freeze et ne se quitte pas, on est obligé d'enlever la batterie, as-tu ce problème?

Oui, et je viens de faire une nouvelle release qui fixe ce bug

(v1.2.1)

For non french people: Airtoof has reported us the famous freeze on exit bug

... it's fixed in the version v1.2.1 !