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Ive read on other sites about discussion about Chankast the excellent Dreamcast emulator for windows being ported to the Xbox, well on IRC yesterday (#dcemu efnet) i was told that yes its being worked on. Cant tell anymore than that but its very true.[br][br]More news as it happens :)
I will like to add a little more news to this. My buddy i speak to on msn has the xbox and visits evolution regularly. I dont know if he uses IRC or uses the forums but he talks to some people and what my buddy told me was that the emu runs the games at full speed. It still has some problems as it is in its beta right now but i think by next month there should be release. I dont know if its true but this is what my friend has told me.
Eric :)
:o Well I need to get my xbox modded if thats true!
Id rather play Chankast on the Xbox than any pc to be honest.
well i am thinking about xbox even more but i dont really see the reason to be playing it on xbox unless the graphics are being boosted up a bit other then that again this might have problems playing the homebrew games and like chankast not being able to play the very few dreamcast games online i might just stick with the dreamcast i dont know as of yet
if you have a Dreamcast you wouldnt want to use a Dreamcast emulator anyway :P
hi people!
Full Speed!!! hahahaha
Guess what, or Chankast is more like a wrapper then a emulator or it is all Assembly over Xbox. The video emulation is a wrapper as DC, PC and Xbox use the DirectX api. But you need to emulate the CPU and i know that the best way to do that is in Assembly. Why? Because you can do in Assembly things like using a instrution to emulate a instrution and it takes less CPU use by doing that. In assemly you can find other ways to do things that in C/C++ would take more CPU cycles. I hope i made me understand. ;D If that is true then you would be able to run Chancast in a PC (Celeron CPU at ~700Mhz). Anyway the L cache is very importante for a emu too.
Iam only realistic
-Mekanaizer-.
There is no way that it will work to play any (good) commercial games. The SH-4 in the Dreamcast is capable of a number of Floating point calculations per second that is equivilant to a P3 733. And that is maximum possible on both. It would literally have to have 0 overhead, which is impossible.
Ive been informed that garrofi is working on a new dynarec(or whatever that is)
No. It dosnt matter how efficient it is. It would literally have to run faster than 1:1. Like, it would have to make the xbox run the code faster than it can. I dont know how to explain it, but basically the power of the two chips in one distinct realm (floating point computations) is equal, so it would require for the emulator to be able to run the code natively, which is impossible. Since most people understand only in MHz, the 200Mhz Sh4 is equal to a 733Mhz P3 in some areas. Because of that, it would have to run exactly as fast as is theoretically possible.
Lets see if there is a better way to say this. It would be like emulating a Dreamcast on a 200Mhz computer. Its impossible. Might that help?
well running a dreamcast emu on a 200mhz computer would be pointless seeing that a 200mhz can only run nes,genesis and snes emulators anything else is kinda pointless.i have tried it cuz i used to have one back in 96 when emulation was kicking off.
sigh. that is exactly what im saying. it is impossible to emulate the target machine on any machine that is inferior in any specific capacity. In this instance, an Xbox does not have the floating point operation capabilities of a Dreamcast, or almost the same. Processor wise, based on Floating point operations, the dreamcast and xbox processors are almost identical.
[quote author=quzar link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=0#11 date=07/20/04 at 12:34:33]sigh. that is exactly what im saying. it is impossible to emulate the target machine on any machine that is inferior in any specific capacity. In this instance, an Xbox does not have the floating point operation capabilities of a Dreamcast, or almost the same. Processor wise, based on Floating point operations, the dreamcast and xbox processors are almost identical.[/quote]
You could probably emulate an underclocked, gimped DC, that may run some games OK. Anyway, Chankast would probably run great on an Xbox 2. So maybe that's what they meant :P
Also: DC doesn't just use a DirectX-derived API. Only a handful of games did. No KOS stuff did, no Katana stuff, etc. Also, the way the PVR2 works is very very different from an IMR like the geforce 3.5 in the xbox.
1) You weren't supposed to post about it wragg
2) Just wait and see, you'll be pleasantly surprised. If garoffi can get Chankast running on a 700mhz PC running Windows (using new dynrec, or dynamic recompiler), I'm sure he can get it working on a embedded device.
EEk for that i apologise
/me kicks himself
Graphics Processor: 250MHz custom-designed chip
Graphics Performance: Over 1 trillion operations per second; 467 floats per clock @ 300 MHz = 140.1 gigaflops
Polygon Performance: 125 M/sec
Memory: 64MB RAM
Audio Processor: Special 16-bit DSP (64 3D channels)
Hard Drive: 10GB
Disc Drive: 2-5x DVD
Controller Input: Four game controller ports
Memory Card Memory: 8MB
Additional Inputs: USB
Online Connectivity: Broadband adaptor built in
Release Date: November 15, 2001 (U.S.)
CPU: 733MHz
Maximum Resolution: 1920x1080
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/sec
i was wondering if anybody knew this a 733 mhz maching i think there could be away to decrease somethings to make it run on the XBOX but someone said it was done in C++ also XBOX is a little different then dreamcast i could C++ stuff on dc very slow depends what your going for but i have seen lots of the stuff on the xbox and somethings created there is no way of seeing that on the dc until coders have knowledge or the coding software that has the programs needed? to work with some software and i am sorry i havent edited this i dont have enough time to set edit this i am on my way to work bye for now
i am dumb so dont make me look more dumb i dont know your stuff
Your silly if you dont think xbox can do it.
Sure it will take some cheap ass tricks such as underclocking the DC but its surly possable.
It is not possible to emulate a DC fully on an Xbox. The SH-4's Floating point speed is equivilant to that of a p3 733. The Xbox uses a chip that is inferior to even the Celeron 733.
Oh yea, not only that, but since the Xbox has not the capability to read GD-Roms, we end up again with just a warez factory, even if it gets working to some degree. (quite certainly not fullspeed).
I'll agree and disagree with Quzar.. He's 100%
right that you can't fully emulate a Dreamcast on
an XBOX.. especially if you're making a thunk layers
to API's, there's way too much overhead..
to emulate the cpu you need to fetch, decode, and
execute.. so for every SH4 inst. you'll need at least 4
cycles so you're 800Mhz(if it were posisble to
sustain that kind of xfer) = 200Mhz.. dynamic recompliation will work better,
but it still takes the same
amount of time to analyze, convert the code. if there's
a loop, and you keep a stale comp. buffer on the side
then you'll have a gain.. but in reality you're gonna see
hiccups every time it has to fetch/analyze new data
the arm will have to be a cycle eater.. PVR BM lists will
have to be converted to NVida lists.. or actually
DX8 calls.. etc.. etc.. serious corners will have to be
cut, alot of "Hacks" done to gain speed.. in the
end it will emulate about 50% of the titles at speed..
with all sorts of poly errors, sound problems, sync
issues etc..
I think the idea is cool, and would be a fun project to
see what could actually be done.. but I'd rather see
this much effort going into a portable DC emulator,
or a PSX emulator for the DC..
I think its a wait and see if it happens scenario, i trust what Pedro says and garrofi is talented but with all the best will in the world sometimes its just too high a plateau to reach.
i agree with Kamjin though a PSX emu for DC is the thing id rather see first, but not a port, we need a new emu written entirely for the Dreamcast, will that happen? ill never say never but its doubtful even with the great coders we have
You need to stop comparing the XBOX to a 733mhz PC... It may resemble a PC, but its not. You're correct about many of the technical aspects of the XBOX, eg. floating point calculations.. but then again, a 733mhz Celeron PC doesn't have that either.
I know you think you're right, but Garoffi is an amazing coder. I'll say it again, if he can get it running full speed on a 700mhz PC, Im sure he can do it on the XBOX. Remember, its an embedded device, not a PC.
i do agree with you kamjin and wraggsters about seeing psx emulation on dc. I dont really care about seeing emulation for dc seen as how i have one of those. I also think we cant really cant compare or say anything about it not being 100% yet as we havent seen the release. Even though your coders i can see you know a lot of stuff but there is always ways of making things different.
Lets just wait for this amazing release you all can think what you want i was saying it might be 100% of speed i cant say anything until i see it.
Eric
Hi again
hi people!
i Mekanaizer (it is the 7th post here) wrote:
and to this post i add this:Quote:
Full Speed!!! hahahaha
Guess what, or Chankast is more like a wrapper then a emulator or it is all Assembly over Xbox. The video emulation is a wrapper as DC, PC and Xbox use the DirectX api. But you need to emulate the CPU and i know that the best way to do that is in Assembly. Why? Because you can do in Assembly things like using a instrution to emulate a instrution and it takes less CPU use by doing that. In assemly you can find other ways to do things that in C/C++ would take more CPU cycles. I hope i made me understand. If that is true then you would be able to run Chancast in a PC (Celeron CPU at ~700Mhz). Anyway the L cache is very importante for a emu too.
Iam only realistic
Emu coders know that in theory a emulator can be done it a machine with only the double of the 'speed' of the machine to be emulated, but i repeat only in theory. In practic we need more 'speed' most of the cases more then 5 times the speed.
Now a thing to Chankast Team if you people sucessefully do that please share the secret with us. ;D
-Mekanaizer-
[quote author=Pedro link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=15#21 date=07/21/04 at 05:26:44]You need to stop comparing the XBOX to a 733mhz PC... It may resemble a PC, but its not.[/quote]
No, its not. A 733Mhz PC has more processing power. Same processor but more cache. If it uses mostly off the shelf prices, you are on a very thin line with an 'embedded device' argument.
The XBOX CPU has the same amount of cache as a Celeron, but thats not the point. Everybody knows programming for a console gives alot better results than programming for a PC - mainly due to the SDK primarily being written for the specific platform's hardware. I really don't know why you're argueing against something thats being/already been done.
btw, I never said it was full speed... but no one knows the speed of the emulator yet, Garoffi hasn't released any private beta's
[quote author=Pedro link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=15#25 date=07/21/04 at 09:40:57]The XBOX CPU has the same amount of cache as a Celeron, but thats not the point.[/quote]
Well that is part of the point. No the Xbox CPU has less cache than a celeron of that generation. IIRC half the amount. P3s had 512k, Cellys had 256k and the Xbox CPU has 128k.
Also, embedded devices usually have large performance gains because they use components specifically designed for the use. This is not the case with the Xbox where it uses a relatively generic CPU and a graphics card that is in no way superior to what is availible on PCs. Since these devices are relatively generic the devkit will result in no more performance than can be gotten from gcc and if you are using DX especially then it depends on the drivers, in which case the Xbox ones are very well made, since its a single chip taken into account, but there is no proof it is superior to that found in standard PC video drivers.
[quote author=Wraggster link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=15#20 date=07/21/04 at 01:24:45]I think its a wait and see if it happens scenario, i trust what Pedro says and garrofi is talented but with all the best will in the world sometimes its just too high a plateau to reach.
i agree with Kamjin though a PSX emu for DC is the thing id rather see first, but not a port, we need a new emu written entirely for the Dreamcast, will that happen? ill never say never but its doubtful even with the great coders we have[/quote]I hate people always say the DC scene has great coders when we have average coders. Most DC coders are very new to coding and dont have any professional experence. The reason you dont see great scale projects is simply because DC doesnt have as nearly trained coders as those who works on PC emulators. Take pagefault for example. He's not even a great coder but I think he could out code anyone that works on the DC at the current moment. I'm not trying to bash any coders but dc coders have less pratice and can always fall back on the "Hey we do this for fun and we do it for free" however if any pc coder gave the excuse ever they'd be constantly flamed and hated.
Warmtoe is afaik a professional coder. Many of the coders here just dabble in coding or are Computer Science students. We have learned how to do quite a bit though, and i think its safe to say the DC has one of the best coding communities of any non computer platform out there.
Also, i dont know of anybody who could be considered a DC coder who is new to programming. Most have at least 3 years experience.
I know for a fact the P3 has 256k of cache, the celeron has 128k and as does the XBOX CPU. The latest 32bit CPUs have 512k of cache (for example, the AthlonXP Thoroughbreds only have 256k of cache, where as the Barton core has 512k)
I'm just saying we don't have no Zsknights of the DC scene or anything.
hi
Hola wrote:
i will only answer this:Quote:
I hate people always say the DC scene has great coders when we have average coders. Most DC coders are very new to coding and dont have any professional experence. The reason you dont see great scale projects is simply because DC doesnt have as nearly trained coders as those who works on PC emulators. Take pagefault for example. He's not even a great coder but I think he could out code anyone that works on the DC at the current moment. I'm not trying to bash any coders but dc coders have less pratice and can always fall back on the "Hey we do this for fun and we do it for free" however if any pc coder gave the excuse ever they'd be constantly flamed and hated.
How many Xbox coders know about sh4 coding. They are PC x86 coders and as you may know Xbox is x86. But Dreamcast is not. And if you know how to code for a PC you can code for Xbox. Most of the time that doesn't work with DreamCast you need to know more then just coding/compiling for PC/Xbox. And not to say what more them 90% of the Xbox coders use the leaked oficial Xbox SDK and not a free open-source ~SDK~ like KOS, Libronin or the old LibDream. And that is equal to warez coding. And one more thing i didn't saw any Xbox homebrew going comercial, do you?
(anyway i don't know much about the Xbox scene just what i read from time to time :D)
-Mekanaizer-
I always hated the warez excuse because I for one could care less if your using warez to devolope with. Also I wouldnt call of the DC games that have went comerical a suggeces. FoF barly broke even and that was the biggest of the comerical releases.
[quote author=Pedro link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=30#30 date=07/21/04 at 17:54:59]I know for a fact the P3 has 256k of cache, the celeron has 128k and as does the XBOX CPU. The latest 32bit CPUs have 512k of cache (for example, the AthlonXP Thoroughbreds only have 256k of cache, where as the Barton core has 512k)[/quote]
Many P3s had 512kb of L2 cache. The Xbox CPU has a 133Mhz fsb and celerons did not. The best thing it has been compared to is a mobile celeron.
hi
Hola don't talk like that about things that Xbox doesn't have (and never will, cos with the way things are going Xbox coders will use the M$ SDK til Xbox is dead). The Xbox scene ISN'T half the DreamCast scene. Is just warez nothing more. Only some stuff is good to have (like that Apple emu), the ones that are no warez. Which is less then 10% of it. I end my Xbox talk here.
-Mekanaizer-
Hola - there's one massive difference between Dreamcast stuff and PC/Xbox stuff, and it is actually related to experience. However, it's not what you think.
The problem is that a PC and Xbox both use an x86 CPU, which is extremely well known, well suited to general purpose calculations although poorly suited to 3D math, has a host of very mature development tools, uses a well specified set of programming interfaces to communicate with the hardware, and so on. The platform is extremely well known, and it's fairly easy to write good code on it.
There are other systems which are similar. For example, a modern Mac uses a processor which is different to the x86 series used in PCs, but many of the same things work, it has excellent tools, and the same kind of well understood programming interfaces.
Contrast that with the Dreamcast. It uses a 200MHz SH-4. How many other devices do you know that use an SH-4? Some of the older handheld PDA-alike machines do, and that's about it. It is a very different CPU to the x86, most of the well-known optimizations for x86 CPUs don't work on an SH-4, many of them are in fact detremental, the CPU itself works in a fundamentally different way, it's not that good at general purpose computation but it's very good at 3D math, it has a really crappy cache system which requires a completely different coding style to a PC, and frankly the compilers available for it suck.
Specifically to the Dreamcast, the programming interfaces for accessing the hardware are nothing at all like those on a PC, because the hardware is nothing like a PC either.
In other words, the problem is that the Dreamcast is a completely different machine to a PC. Of course we don't have that much experience with it - it's components are completely different to all common components we may have experience with, and they aren't really used in anything else. Additionally, it's designed for 3D gaming, not emulation. The architecture of the Dreamcast is totally unsuited to it - it's suited to 3D games, has specialised hardware for that, and that's all it was designed to be good at.
Let me put it this way - very few of the prominent coders are complete amateurs. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Ian Michael, who essentially knew no C or C++ when he started doing Dreamcast stuff, but he had done some programming before. Many of them do this kind of stuff (or something related) as a job, and others may be relatively inexperienced (like me, for example - I've really only been doing "proper" programming for four or five years, and I did programming in BASIC before that) but that doesn't mean they aren't any good.
Admittedly, we have very few people with a lot of experience in SH-4 assembly, for example. When could we possibly have got experience with it, considering that virtually nothing else actually uses it? Compare that to a PC, where you have very large numbers of people who can write in x86 assembly. You also have many people who can write M68K assembly, Z80 assembly, 6502 assembly and so on, because they were all very popular CPUs. The SH-4 isn't, and never has been.
Very well said. Only thing i want to add is the clarification that because the tools for x86 cpus are very well made and have matured over the years, it is relatively harder to write bad code for it. Unlike other consoles (like the DC) there really arnt that many things you can do beyond what the compiler does for you. Since gcc dosnt do well with code for the DC, structuring it properly and understanding the machine aides in the development for it, and can allow it to achieve things that would never happen on a comperable 200Mhz machine. Since the Xbox is just an x86 cpu, not unlike those sitting in most desktops, it will not be able to perform any better than its PC counterparts. One of the biggest reasons that an Xbox seems to be able to do much more graphics wise than a 733 p3 pc with a gf3 or whatever is because not only does it have barely any OS overhead (in compairison to a PC in which things are always running in the background [windows PC]) and because the directX interface and drivers are integrated. Since DirectX only has to understand how to do what that GPU can do, it is made to more directly interface with the hardware. A standard PC works with many interchangeable parts that plugin (im talking software here, OS, Drivers, etc) and those will always be less efficeint than one large part designed for all three. That however is just in relation to the graphics system, and the Processing power compared to a PC when overhead is taken into account.
[quote author=Hola link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=15#28 date=07/21/04 at 15:37:26]
I hate people always say the DC scene has great coders when we have average coders. Most DC coders are very new to coding and dont have any professional experence. The reason you dont see great scale projects is simply because DC doesnt have as nearly trained coders as those who works on PC emulators. Take pagefault for example. He's not even a great coder but I think he could out code anyone that works on the DC at the current moment. I'm not trying to bash any coders but dc coders have less pratice and can always fall back on the "Hey we do this for fun and we do it for free" however if any pc coder gave the excuse ever they'd be constantly flamed and hated.
[/quote]
To put it nicely... ____ you..
and next time don't use me as a reference unless
you actually know what I've done in the Elec./Comp.
Industry to date.
The point is you ARE trying to bash someone.. That's
right we do it for free.. I don't think you understand
that concept. unlike the other's I'm not here to make
an excuse for you.. If you want me to code an efficent
scatter/gather dma engine for the PVR, I'll do so
add the graphics people, main engine design guys
sure.. tommorow! but who's gonna pay the salaries?
my house doesn't pay itself? and I'm not going to loose
it just so you can play your pirated rom, on a great
emulator..
When you get old enough you'll understand.. do you
take your excess free time, and read the lastest
specs/etc.. so that you can excell at your job, or
do you make a game so that the odd teenager
can sit back and flame you for no appearant reason.
And if you disagree with me please post this on
other sites and ask the other coders what they
think of the subject.. even the Zsnes team.
[quote author=Pedro link=board=DCPCEmu;num=1090323867;start=30#30 date=07/21/04 at 17:54:59]I know for a fact the P3 has 256k of cache, the celeron has 128k and as does the XBOX CPU. The latest 32bit CPUs have 512k of cache (for example, the AthlonXP Thoroughbreds only have 256k of cache, where as the Barton core has 512k)[/quote]Since all the coders have handily taken care of the important topics, I'll take this. Pedro, have you taken a look at the newer P4s? They have a lot of cache. A jackload. But I don't see why the cache is all that relevant, since you still have all the other problems even if it had the full cache of a P3 and no overhead at all.