Saturn Hackers will find this useful

[CyberWarriorX]

Well, I managed to find a couple of nice tools for ida pro last night. I managed to create a few sig files based on the various SBL/SGL libraries floating around.

http://s89133014.onlinehome.us/screenshots/before1.png

http://s89133014.onlinehome.us/screenshots/after1.png

http://s89133014.onlinehome.us/screenshots/before2.png

http://s89133014.onlinehome.us/screenshots/after2.png

Obviously it's not perfect yet, but it certainly works great on games that use the same version of SBL/SGL.

Anyway, just grab the sig files here:

http://s89133014.onlinehome.us/files/saturnsig100.zip

then extract to your ida pro sig directory.

Oh, and a few last notes. For whatever the reason, my version 2.1 libsgl.a library was corrupt, so I wasn't able to add that library to the SGL 2.1 sig. Does anyone have a working copy? Lastly, there're obviously older/newer versions of both SBL and SGL than what I've made sigs for. Anyone know any Jap people that would have access to them? (as I doubt anyone outside of japan has even seen them).

Cyber Warrior X

 

[antime]

Good work. The SGL internal variables use fixed locations, have you added them?

I don't know who would have other versions of the libraries, but they were definitely used outside Japan. In some Usenet postings from around 1995-96 an American developer mentioned using SGL1.3.

 

[CyberWarriorX]

I'm not really too sure if I did or not since the program handles what functions/variables are added unless you write an exclusion script. You could be right about the older versions of SBL/SGL, but I doubt some of the newer ones were used outside of japan. Oh yeah, if anyone has either the Cinepak or Truemotion libraries, they might be quite useful as well.

Cyber Warrior X

 

[antime]

You could try asking Azuco about libs, he has at least had access to a more complete devkit.

 

[DBOY]

Please make a Saturn emulator that runs faster than 2fps and has a trace debugger next 🙂

 

[CyberWarriorX]

Why? It'd probably be easier hacking an existing emulator like girigiri. 😛

Cyber Warrior X

 

[mal]

 

[Alexvrb]

Originally posted by DBOY@Dec 24, 2003 @ 05:28 PM

Please make a Saturn emulator that runs faster than 2fps and has a trace debugger next 🙂

I don't think your Pentauhm One computer is gonna emulate a Saturn very well, ever. :lol:

 

[DBOY]

I guess my 1.2GHz Celeron won't either. Which is sad, because it runs absolutely everything else just fine 😛

 

[Alexvrb]

Wow, you get 2 fps on a 1.2 Ghz Celeron. Ouch.

Now, what do you really get with the latest Satourne? Can't be that bad, your next computer should do it. 😉

 

[M3d10n]

Geez, GiriGiri hack runs between 20-40% on my Duron 950MHz (80% in the BIOS). Satourne runs a bit the same speed... well, the bios, at least.

I could NEVER get a single game to boot with the lastest Satourne, it always jump to the bios and keeps checking the disc format forever and ever...

Once I ALMOST could do it, by booting Satourne without any disc, letting it reach the CD player, then going to the CD block plugin configuration screen and insert the disc. The little Saturn buttom then became avaliable, and it seemed it was going to boot the game, but then it threw me back into the CD player and went into format-checking forever and ever.

 

[Alexvrb]

Really, ouch. What kind of soundcard are you using?

 

[M3d10n]

It's a nForce onboard soundcard. It's the first onboard soundcard I tested that GiriGiri seems to like, since it doesn't complains about sound buffers at start up.

Can this have any impact on Satourne? It actually reads my CD drive (the access light goes on), but seems it's not understaining anything.

BTW, I'm using the Nero ASPI driver, the only onne out of the 5 or so ASPI drivers I gathered that actually works with emulators (I also use it for Gens, GiriGiri and SSF).

The adaptec "official" driver everyone recomend and link to is useless. It installs, the ASPICHK tells everything is fine, but no emulator can ever access the CDs. A POS, IMO, looks like a dummy driver (as well as forceASPI)

 

[IceDigger]

There is a BIG difference between the performance of the Celeron vs the Duron. The Duron just crushes it.

1.6Ghz Duron kills the 2.6GHz Celeron in EVERY benchmark.

 

[Alexvrb]

Medion: Yes, soundcard has a big impact. But in your case I think your CPU is probably more of a factor... if you have 266Mhz FSB support you could slap in a lowend Athlon XP like an 1800+ for pretty cheap. Eventually. I have a Fortissimo II, GiriGiri seems to love Fortissimo II/III, and Audigy of course should be fine. For some reason Live! doesn't seem to have true hardware buffering. Although, you might want to note that many nforce 2 boards, even some of the higher-end nforce 2 boards, do NOT have "Soundstorm" sound? Some of the manufacturers opted to use cheaper sound chips instead of the Nvidia Soundstorm. I don't even know what your nforce (1?) might be using... it might be like the SB live! where I've seen it run without complaining but at a mediocre fps. I still am inclined to think that your CPU is having a big impact... I'd also said video card, except it runs fantastic on my junky old Kyro II beating even my friend's GF4 Ti 4400 machine (he has onboard).

IceMan2k: Yeah, I told Mal pretty much the same thing before he somehow ran into money. Its really sad, especially looking at the prices of the two budget chips. I bet a stock 1.6Ghz Duron would give a Celeron at 3Ghz (which would currently mean overclocking) a run for its money. The P4 architecture's long pipeline was just NOT meant for a low-cache chip! That's why the Extremely Expensive edition (Xeon) performs pretty well with that massive cache.

 

[M3d10n]

I'm well aware to expect no Saturn emu to go full speed under a ~1GHz processor 😉

Tough I was trying to point that the GiriGiri hack (at least) gets pretty darn close to it. It seems to run faster now with the nForce (it seems to have true hardware sound buffers, since GGH will run hapilly without bitching about it). Also the sound emulator seems A LOT closer to real thing than in my old mobo/soundcard. Radiant Silvergun, as an example, had almost total garbage instead of music, and now the music is almost intact (most of the fading effects are still missing, tho).

Of course, RS runs damn slow here. =]

But, yesterday I found my Wachenröder CD, and guess what, GGH is running it full speed (after I reduced the "vsync wait" for it in games.dat). As a result the sound is perfect (since it's pre-recorded ADX, anyway, it's hard for the emu to go wrong with it). But the game is pretty much unplayable because the text won't show up... oh well.

I will replace my processor one of these days (a few blocks from here there is a parts store with some Athlons 1900+ for a damn good price), since my 'ol Duron got a crack the size of a pube hair. God knows how it can still work, but it produces a really strang side-effect on this motherboard: anything Direct3D (with the exception of PSX and Saturn emulators and a few older games) runs in total madness, with polygons going crazy, jumping, flashing and distorning all over the screen.

 

[Alexvrb]

LOL, you only broke it a little. My friend's Athlon XP has a chipped die, but apparently not badly enough to interfere with its operation. Perfectly stable and no craziness. 😉