Advancemame And Advancemess

[scoutme]

we absolutely should!!

http://www.talfi.net/gp32_franxis/

[ScottYelich]

I've been trying to run mame for years on the zaurus
and i've never seen it get > 25% of the normal speed.
it's quite a let down.

Scott

[danboid]

Anybody had a go compiling the GP2X MAME for the Z yet?

I've not got round to doing any cross compiling yet but I want this pretty bad so it may be the first thing I attempt. I'd like to get it compiled to work with SDL from under a Cacko console though (the one you get to by pushing / on boot)- is that possible? I've not yet seen this working, but I've heard you can run SDL under the console on pdaxrom so I don't see why not. Other SDL stuff I've ran under Cacko had to be run from konsole under QT and then the screen was 640x480 giving a small image and I'm after 320x240.

I should imagine that the only thing that would really need to be changed are the controls as they will obviously be mapped to the GP2X's pad, otherwise its a piece of code for xscale linux so I'm hoping it will be an easy job to get running.

Anyone know of a good guide to cross-compiling progs for Cacko? (1.23b if it matters)

[ScottYelich]

there was a mame for cacko that used SDL ... "parachute deployed" :-)

It would be good to see a recent compile of mame (advmame?) that uses SDL.

Scott

[jcabrer]

As I recall, Advance MAME was much slower than the xmame.sdl that I compiled.  Did anyone try them both?  I can compile either one fairly easy.  I see that .103 is the latest version.  If anyone wants it, send me a request and I'll post it at http://pdaxfeed.dyndns.org

[danboid]

I sent a mail to the author of the GP2X MAME port asking if he might be able to help us bring it to the Z and here is his reply:

I don't have a Zaurus and i know nothing about development on this
platform.

I suppose Zaurus has little-endian 32 bit ARM processor (ARM9), and
probably
the changes in the program will be easy and it will be not too hard to
get a
good MAME port for it. You will only have to port the gp2x/ folder of
the
distribution and Makefiles. I don't want to use SDL for performance
reasons,
then you will have to recode the gp2x/ folder to SDL if you want (or a
direct hardware library preferred).

It couldn't be too hard, but i'm not sure of course.

Regards.

I was hoping there would be a configure script for it and it was just going to be a recompile but it looks a bit more involved than that. I hope somebody with some programming skills decides to take this up, as he says it probably wouldn't be hard for someone who knows what they're doing.

[jbruno]

Are you expecting GP2X Mame to perform better than xmame.SDL?

Why would it be faster??

Anybody had a go compiling the GP2X MAME for the Z yet?

I've not got round to doing any cross compiling yet but I want this pretty bad so it may be the first thing I attempt. I'd like to get it compiled to work with SDL from under a Cacko console though (the one you get to by pushing / on boot)- is that possible? I've not yet seen this working, but I've heard you can run SDL under the console on pdaxrom so I don't see why not. Other SDL stuff I've ran under Cacko had to be run from konsole under QT and then the screen was 640x480 giving a small image and I'm after 320x240.

I should imagine that the only thing that would really need to be changed are the controls as they will obviously be mapped to the GP2X's pad, otherwise its a piece of code for xscale linux so I'm hoping it will be an easy job to get running.

Anyone know of a good guide to cross-compiling progs for Cacko? (1.23b if it matters)
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[danboid]

I tried the first pdaxrom beta on my C3000, but I'm going to wait for either beta3 or the first stable C3000 version before I ditch Cacko. I haven't been able to get any version of MAME to run under Cacko so I dunno how MAME performs on the Z at all but from what people have been saying it performs at a fraction of the speed I'd imagined- struggling to play ms. pacman on a 6000!? The GP2X MAME can supposedly even play the Neo Geo games at a decent framerate on a 200/250(overclocked) ARM CPU. It uses ASM ARM CPU code which presumably this version of MAME people have been trying doesn't. Maybe they just missed some optimisations out in the makefile?

I'd be grateful if someone could point me to a SDL MAME package for Cacko that works (under console SDL preferably)

Thanks!

[jbruno]

Actually, the performance is not that bad.  I can run things like MsPacman at around 28FPS on my 6000, but I have to overclock, exit X, and set the sound sampling frequency a bit lower.  

Without sound, it does around 30FPS.  It's definitely playable, not at all a "fraction" of what it needs to be.  If it weren't for the sound being a bit scratchy, it would be just like the arcade version.

I use xmame.SDL for the above. I don't have it in an IPK, but I have the executable I built, which is xmame 0.77.  I have no idea if that works on Cacko - it works for me on pdaXrom, though.

I tried the first pdaxrom beta on my C3000, but I'm going to wait for either beta3 or the first stable C3000 version before I ditch Cacko. I haven't been able to get any version of MAME to run under Cacko so I dunno how MAME performs on the Z at all but from what people have been saying it performs at a fraction of the speed I'd imagined- struggling to play ms. pacman on a 6000!? The GP2X MAME can supposedly even play the Neo Geo games at a decent framerate on a 200/250(overclocked) ARM CPU. It uses ASM ARM CPU code which presumably this version of MAME people have been trying doesn't. Maybe they just missed some optimisations out in the makefile?

I'd be grateful if someone could point me to a SDL MAME package for Cacko that works (under console SDL preferably)

Thanks!
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[danboid]

Yuck!

I got xmame.SDL running (under Cacko) on my Z last night and even when running @ 624Mhz with the sound off and autoframeskip I could only manage 3/4 fps under Crude Busters and TMNT- unplayable really. I remember Roms such as these being fully playable on a 200Mhz Pentium, no problems. I wouldn't have thought MAME would've made much use of an FPU so why is performance SO bad- its only trying to emulate a 8Mhz 68000 cpu and a 15/20yr old video chip. I could play Megadrive games at full speed on my Sony Ericsson P800 phone under Picodrive and I'm sure that phones (ARM) CPU was no faster than 150Mhz.

I know that there is ARM-specific code for emulating the M68k and Z80 processors as many of the GPX2 emulators use this code- is it not in the main MAME source tree?  I'll have to check. If not then thats why somebody needs to port the GP2X MAME over.

[jbruno]

Are you using a 6000? I can't get time to work unless I use the overclock app and set the three numbers to 3/3/2, which tells me it's 530.84MHz.  If I can get it to go to 624, I bet it would run the older games just fine.

Did you run it from the console? I know it will perform better out of the GUI environment.

Also, I noticed that the xmame.SDL (version .101 or so) that they have been building is a *HUGE* executable.  I think that the size of the thing is causing problems.  That's why I went back to 0.77 (plus I have a few 0.77 roms).  I just built the older stuff I was interested in, and it's still 20.6MB.  I don't need a swapfile to run the 0.77 version.  If you have a swapfile and swapping is occuring to an SD or CF card while playing, it will NEVER be fast.

I think a smaller executable would also help with the speed.

I don't see the point in building a "recent" MAME, as the newer games don't have a prayer of running on the Z anyway.

As far as the M68k and Z80 emulators - of course they are in xmame.SDL with arm-specific code, or MAME wouldn't work.

I'm also curious to know why I can only get 28FPS with MsPacman with sound sampling at 8KHz.  I don't know much about linux-based profiling tools, which would help figure out where to optimize.  I don't have those games you mentioned, but if you have MsP, how many FPS will it run at?

Yuck!

I got xmame.SDL running (under Cacko) on my Z last night and even when running @ 624Mhz with the sound off and autoframeskip I could only manage 3/4 fps under Crude Busters and TMNT- unplayable really.
[...]
I know that there is ARM-specific code for emulating the M68k and Z80 processors as many of the GPX2 emulators use this code- is it not in the main MAME source tree?  I'll have to check. If not then thats why somebody needs to port the GP2X MAME over.
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[danboid]

Are you using a 6000? I can't get time to work unless I use the overclock app and set the three numbers to 3/3/2, which tells me it's 530.84MHz.  If I can get it to go to 624, I bet it would run the older games just fine.

Did you run it from the console? I know it will perform better out of the GUI environment.

Also, I noticed that the xmame.SDL (version .101 or so) that they have been building is a *HUGE* executable.  I think that the size of the thing is causing problems.  That's why I went back to 0.77 (plus I have a few 0.77 roms).  I just built the older stuff I was interested in, and it's still 20.6MB.  I don't need a swapfile to run the 0.77 version.  If you have a swapfile and swapping is occuring to an SD or CF card while playing, it will NEVER be fast.

I think a smaller executable would also help with the speed.

I don't see the point in building a "recent" MAME, as the newer games don't have a prayer of running on the Z anyway.

As far as the M68k and Z80 emulators - of course they are in xmame.SDL with arm-specific code, or MAME wouldn't work.

I'm also curious to know why I can only get 28FPS with MsPacman with sound sampling at 8KHz.  I don't know much about linux-based profiling tools, which would help figure out where to optimize.  I don't have those games you mentioned, but if you have MsP, how many FPS will it run at?

Yuck!

I got xmame.SDL running (under Cacko) on my Z last night and even when running @ 624Mhz with the sound off and autoframeskip I could only manage 3/4 fps under Crude Busters and TMNT- unplayable really.
[...]
I know that there is ARM-specific code for emulating the M68k and Z80 processors as many of the GPX2 emulators use this code- is it not in the main MAME source tree?  I'll have to check. If not then thats why somebody needs to port the GP2X MAME over.
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As my sig says, i'm running MAME on a C3000. Like yourself, I was running 0.77.

xmame.sdl only runs from a QT console under Cacko- I did try running it from the prompt but it didn't detect any videomodes. I've yet to see a SDL app work under cacko outside of QT.

You misunderstood what I was talking about with the ARM ASM. There are CPU cores under MAME emulating the M68k and z80 that are just coded in C, which is what I would expect has been compiled into our binaries, and then there are CPU cores coded in ARM ASM, like the Cyclone M68k ARM ASM CPU core and the DrZ80 Z80 CPU emu, which bring significant speed gains to the emulation of many games and, from looking at the MAME GP2X docs, look like they weren't part of the main MAME source tree.

I borrowed my mates GP2X this weekend and I was greatly impressed with gp2xmame. Even though its an early version which only uses 32 of the 64MB RAM and 1 of the 2 200Mhz CPUs it still manages to play 16-bit games such as Final Fight, TMNT and even Neo-Geo games like Samurai Shodown at full-speed with sound. This is the kind of MAME performance I was expecting to see on my Z.

[jbruno]

Have you tried mspacman on your version of xmame.SDL?

Also, I looked at the GP2X mame page you posted - looks like they are coding to 0.34 or so!

Has anyone tried xmame.SDL 0.34 ? I think I'll try that later on, but I don't think my 0.77 roms will work.