Hacking SCDS2 ports of SNES9x and VBA(-M) possible?

[signz]

As the official supercard forum is more and more filled up with noobs and spambots, I'm not gonna care about posting there (yet).

I just talked to a friend and we both wonder, if it's possible to port SNES9x and Visualboy Advance to the SCDS2, as both sourcecodes are available.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/snes9x/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/vba/

I got no big knowledge in coding and/or porting things, so please don't stone me.

Also, I know the DS+SCDS2 is not that powerful, but if someone could at least look into it, I'd appreciate it.

 

[Recorderdude]

They would be possible, but fairly hard to do, and the results wouldn't be worth it. A good example of this kind of thing is Ragnarok2040's port of SNES9x 1.52 to PS2; The PS2 is a little weaker than the PSP in some ways and a little stronger in others, so you'd think it would run nice and fast with those specs. Due to the emulator being so "heavy", It ran well, but REALLY slowly, about 25% on games with NO special chips, worse with others, even with optimizations. We haven't seen Rag around, recently, so we're not sure if he's still working on it or not.

If you're looking to port any emulators to DSTWO, port them from the dingoo, as the hardware for the DSTWO is practically a "dingoo-on-a-chip" with a slight bottlenecking of transfer speed due to the limitations of slot 1 in the DS. There is also the fact that dingoo vers of the emus are often based on earlier, "lighter" versions of the original, making them run better but sacrificing some compatibility.

Alekmaul ported MAME4ALL this way, but will not release another update until SC team fixes their SDK. Another user, alynna, was porting an advanced C64 emulator, but he gave up too because of the poor SDK. He wants it either fixed up or opened up so the users can fix it up.

So, if you do go and port anything, port it from an open-source dingoo emu, I say.

 

[Sheimi]

I should go do a port of SNES9x. It will give me something to do over spring break

 

[Recorderdude]

I should go do a port of SNES9x. It will give me something to do over spring break

That is a very nice gesture, but remember what I said about porting the newer SNES9x to older systems.

It would probably be best for you to port PocketSNES: http://dingoowiki.com/index.php?title=PocketSNES

It's open source and runs a hella lot better than NDSSFC in some ways.

these are the only games with issues so far:

Star Fox (runs too slowly, graphic glitches)
Alien vs. Predator (graphical glitches)
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (stuck at menu)
Kirby Super Star (runs too slowly)
Mega Man X (doesn't start, probably because of capcom chip)
Mega Man X2 (doesn't start, probably because of capcom chi)
Castlevania: Dracula X (hangs at Konami logo)
Star Ocean (graphics glitches - probably because of S-DD1 chip)

And even these will be fixed eventually.

You might also consider porting Snes9x4D: A little slower, but more compatible.

http://crankgaming.blogspot.com/search/label/Snes9x

I'm not sure if that's open source though.

Good luck and happy porting!

 

[nl255]

Actually, CATSFC is a port of snes9x and it not only works fairly well, but is fully open source (http://gbatemp.net/t281923-catsfc-released). So grab the code, check out the issues page on github, and go. BTW, ShadauxCat just made a breakthrough in making automatic speedhacks (no snesadvance.dat needed) work. As for the GBA, you could try porting gpSP as there is no source code for the GBA emulator. It all depends on whether or not you want to port a new emulator over (harder but eventually more useful as there is no open source GBA emu for the DSTwo) or just work on an existing emulator.

 

[Terminator02]

im fairly certain NDAGBA is based off of gpSP, however the author, darkchen IIRC, won't allow team supercard to release the source code for some reason

 

[Game Dragon]

im fairly certain NDAGBA is based off of gpSP, however the author, darkchen IIRC, won't allow team supercard to release the source code for some reason

DarkChen is a BASTARD

an ANIAL ARSHOLE

 

[Melter]

I'd really like to see VBA ported to the supercard, the included emulator is damn slow.

By the way, isn't it possible for a hack to run GBA games from a slot 1 flash card using the native hardware? (for the DS Phat and Lite anyway)

 

[DanTheManMS]

There are several technical reasons why that wouldn't work. First off, once in GBA mode, you have no access to slot-1 at all. Secondly, there's nothing on the DS that's fast enough to run the game without it freezing. The DS's 4 MB of RAM would be enough for small homebrew games, but that too gets locked out when in GBA mode. The GBA's own RAM is 256 KB, enough for tiny multiboot homebrew files, but even that gets cleared out by the GBA's BIOS when it loads.

In short, no. That's why for the DS Phat and Lite, you MUST have a slot-2 cart of some sort, and for the DSi and beyond you have to rely on software emulation.

 

[Melter]

what if you're in DS mode, you have no access to the ARM7?

 

[fearofshorts]

what if you're in DS mode, you have no access to the ARM7?

You do have some access to that processor, but that's not really the problem. The problem is (as DanTheManMS said) that GBA games have really fast read speeds due to the type of memory the ROM was stored on, and the DS doesn't have anything in it that fast. Even the Slot-1 connection itself is actually too slow.

So we can't pass the GBA rom to the DS's processors at anywhere near fullspeed. That's why the SCDS2's on-board processor is useful- the rom data can be read straight from the SD card without having to go through the Slot-1 connection. Then the SCDS2 just uses the DS as a form of input/output.


PS: If anything in this post is wrong, I'm sorry. It's quite late where I am).

 

[Melter]

I thought the DS Lite has 4MB of onboard SRAM, couldn't that RAM be used to load a 4MB game? I realize there are games larger than 4MB but some games are 4MB like Super Mario Advance 2.

Also, the RAM expansion pak for the browser adds 8MB to the 4MB of onboard RAM, for a total of 12MB.

 

[The Catboy]

I thought the DS Lite has 4MB of onboard SRAM, couldn't that RAM be used to load a 4MB game? I realize there are games larger than 4MB but some games are 4MB like Super Mario Advance 2.

True, but he is talking about using the power of the Supercard Two to use the emulators

 

[Terminator02]

There are several technical reasons why that wouldn't work. First off, once in GBA mode, you have no access to slot-1 at all. Secondly, there's nothing on the DS that's fast enough to run the game without it freezing. The DS's 4 MB of RAM would be enough for small homebrew games, but that too gets locked out when in GBA mode. The GBA's own RAM is 256 KB, enough for tiny multiboot homebrew files, but even that gets cleared out by the GBA's BIOS when it loads.

In short, no. That's why for the DS Phat and Lite, you MUST have a slot-2 cart of some sort, and for the DSi and beyond you have to rely on software emulation.

you realize this is in the DS2 forum?

anyway i'm pretty sure fearofshorts is right, but porting it over wouldn't be easy if it is possible

 

[DanTheManMS]

Terminator02, Melter said:

By the way, isn't it possible for a hack to run GBA games from a slot 1 flash card using the native hardware? (for the DS Phat and Lite anyway)

Which implied to me that he wanted to use the "native [GBA] hardware" of a DS Phat or DS Lite. I answered under that premise.

I'm fully aware of which forum this is. His post was somewhat off-topic for the thread, sure, but I felt it warranted a response nonetheless.

what if you're in DS mode, you have no access to the ARM7?

The ARM7 functions entirely differently when you're in DS mode than when you're in GBA mode, though trust me, you're not alone in that misconception.

EDIT: Perhaps I should have quoted Melter in the first place, as it seems people thought I was responding to the original poster instead of the one directly above mine.

 

[Terminator02]

my bad