Emulation Curiosity

[Omni]

As my post says, I am merely curious, but.

For Runik, Fabian, and the other Saturn emulator writers.

Why actually are the emulators...well, you know, they could use a little polish. Even the GiriGiri and its clones have big problems. The question being, why has it not been perfected?

I haven't actually read any posts regarding emulation so I imagine it's my fault for being halfway intentionally ignorant. Is everything you can read about or study, say, regarding one part of the Saturn (the SMPC alone, for example)...is it understandable, or is it hard sometimes just to figure out what those chips and things do?

Or is it not a matter of any one element, but it's that there's so many of them in the Saturn? Or that they have to work perfectly together and it's simply hard to do?

Anyway. Not to be some forum goer for the console who wants to complain "Where's my full featured emu of awesomeness and cracked ISOs?", but I was curious.

 

[mrkotfw]

open the vdp1/vdp2/sh-2 docs, and read a few pages

 

[CrazyGoon]

As the emulation saying goes - "It'll be done when it's done."

 

[Runik]

It's a bit of everything ...

- some chips aren't well documented (cdblock anyone ? )

- some chips are well documented, but the doc contains a bunch of errors which cannot all be spotted (the VDP2 doc is a nightmare for example and the SH2 DSP is even worse)

- the multiplication of the chips needs a near perfect synchronisation, which is a real pain in the ass to achieve ...

So you can tell that making an emulator from all that isn't a walk in the park (and I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff ...)

 

[Borisz]

To put it simply, the Saturn can do a fuckton of things, all of them need implementation. Which takes time. A lot. Even if they would be doecumented.

SSF, for example, is being worked on since 1999 or possibly earlier (thats the oldest date I could find for it), and only recently did it became so damn good.

 

[CyberWarriorX]

There certainly are a number of factors involved. Some of you already hit on a few already but what I've found more of a pain than anything is that if you do happen to have a problem with a game or series of games not booting or crashing or some other strange issue, it usually takes a herculean effort to track down the bug causing it(especially if the bug is coming from the 68k/SCSP). Then you figure in how many bugs you may have to fix in the lifetime of the emulator, and yes, it can take a good few years to get the emulator to a usable level.

Cyber Warrior X

 

[Omni]

Well...that's a lot of responses

This is probably elementary, but does anyone have the web address of a place to get started learning about...er...emulation? I mean, not emulation. Emulator programming. I've got this idea on how it works, of course, but besides "emulate the processors and memory" I've got no specific clues on what it would take to get started.

 

[CyberWarriorX]

Marat's guide is a good start.

http://www.komkon.org/fms/EMUL8/HOWTO.html

 

[Omni]

That's really nifty. Thanks.

 

[Borisz]

haha, Marat. That's a name I haven't thought I'll hear today.