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After many many many many many months of inactivity drk||Raziel has finally started some real work on the dynarec on nullDC for PSP.It now features a basic IL with a working decoder frontend and backends for x86/arm/mips-allegrex.Work is also currently done to port the code to Wii/ps3/ps2 ( only if libstdc++ worked …)/xbox.
DEmul was the second Dreamcast emulator for Windows ever to be released that actually played commercial games. DEmul started to development early in 2004 year by Wind, but just Chankcast got canceled. Now DEmul is able to run most commercial releases by various groups all along with homebrew demos and free software. DEmul is still imperfect and incomplete. Demul is now available for both 32bit and 64bit Windows operating systems. This WIP update of DEmul has the following changes:
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DEmul was the second Dreamcast emulator for Windows ever to be released that actually played commercial games. DEmul started to development early in 2004 year by Wind, but just Chankcast got canceled. Now DEmul is able to run most commercial releases by various groups all along with homebrew demos and free software. DEmul is still imperfect and incomplete. Demul is now available for both 32bit and 64bit Windows operating systems. This WIP update of DEmul has the following changes:
Read the rest of this entry »
Dknute posted the following infos on his progress for his Dreamcast emulator Makaron:
The GD-EMU project has advanced a bit. Not without a fight though :)
Quartus SOPC Builder allows user to change component names to something more suitable than the default ones – so you can name JTAG UART anything you like but unless it’s “jtag_uart” there’s a very high chance it won’t work as NIOS IDE terminal.
There is a FAQ on that on Altera website, true, but it took me 2 days to find the information I was looking for…I had some trouble figuring out a way to create a register stack that could be accessed for read/write operations from two separate interfaces – one synchronous (Avalon bus) and one asynchronous (GD ATA). It finally worked today, so now I can intercept ATA/ATAPI commands sent by Dreamcast on NIOS side, using C code.
33.8688MHz clock generator is finally complete. I’ve used 74AC04, though with short connections a HC part should do too. Output is clean enough for a clock, the only thing that worries me a bit is the voltage swing. Even if powered from 3.3V the generator manages to output a whooping 5Vp-p – probably due to parasitic capacitances that create a pump. I could put a small resistor in series with the output but that will form an unwanted low-pass RC filer… Looking at the specs the FPGA should be able to handle this kind of abuse. I hope.
Lastly I’ve wasted a better part of the day chasing bugs, before I realized I’m trying to control a memory-mapped I/O via cache. Not such a great idea :) Kinda funny seeing how just a few days ago I wrote a simple memory testing routine that bypasses the data cache, for the same purpose I/O accesses should.
I’ve already a pretty good idea of how the whole data exchange system should look like. On PC every operation could block the main emulation thread (if needed). That won’t work on the hardware – I need to deliver the data on time in every case. Including situations where audio playback has been started and a PIO/DMA request comes up as well.
dknute posted the following regarding an update to his Dreamcast emulator for those having crash issues:
The idea was to have FPGA handle the ATA interface, including DMA burst transfers, while external MCU will run part of Makaron GD code and take care of all the high-level stuff. 2GB Secure Digital card will provide necessary GD data.
I realized that EP2C20 can easily host both the interface and a soft-core NIOS II CPU with all the supporting logic for onboard memory chips. Now this is neat, I can actually run the NIOS faster than my ARM7 and it has more memory too (I mean, just the SDRAM is 8MB vs 64kB on-chip SRAM on ARM). The only problem is I don’t have license for that IP core so the USB programming cable needs to be attached at all times, or the board will freeze eventually. Both ARM and Cyclone boards have SD slots so I can change my mind anytime :)Anyway, SPI<->SD communication works both on ARM and NIOS now (it’s the same C code, save the low-level I/O stuff). Now I need to handle FAT. There is a free library for that but I want to write my own with a bit more buffering as an option. Since it’s read-only it shouldn’t be much of a problem, it’s just that both target CPUs can only do aligned memory accesses and that needs to be worked around for the FAT structure parsing.
VHDL code for ATA i/f is progressing, but slowly. I haven’t done any of this before – I doubt programming GAL devices counts :)
UPDATE: There is a new MKFro
available for download. It’s a GUI for Makaron T11/1 – both Dreamcast and NAOMI versions.
MKFro requires NET Framework 2.0 or higher. Please direct any questions you might have to it’s author slrhui.Also, there are more interesting hardware projects on this page: JJ10DM
UPDATE 2: To those who reported the following problems in the comments:
- Games crashing with Internal error -1005 on STARTRENDER
- DirectSound error in UzupelnijBufor/Lock
Please download this file Inside you’ll find updated executables to replace the T11/1 ones. Try those out and tell me if it helps.
Tons, and I mean, TONS of new screenshots from the author dknute of Makaron:
DEmul was the second Dreamcast emulator for Windows ever to be released that actually played commercial games. DEmul started to development early in 2004 year by Wind, but just Chankcast got canceled. Now DEmul is able to run most commercial releases by various groups all along with homebrew demos and free software. DEmul is still imperfect and incomplete. A lot of work still needed. Sound, timing and graphics need improvement and speed up. This WIP update of DEmul has the following changes:
Read the rest of this entry »
Makaron Test 11/1 is a new Dreamcast emulator for Windows. This Dreamcast emulator is still in the testing stages but is able to run some commercial games, but still should be considered WIP and probably isn’t as advanced as nullDC or Chankast (at this point). Make sure you read the Makaron readme.txt file for info on configuring this Dreamcast emulator. Makaron Test 11/1 has the following changes:
drkIIRaziel has released the update for the nullDC-Naomi input plugin to version1.0.4 version got delayed i decided to release the updated input plugin separately.
DEmul was the second Dreamcast emulator for Windows ever to be released that actually played commercial games. DEmul started to development early in 2004 year by Wind, but just Chankcast got canceled. Now DEmul is able to run most commercial releases by various groups all along with homebrew demos and free software. DEmul is still imperfect and incomplete. A lot of work still needed. Sound, timing and graphics need improvement and speed up. This WIP update of DEmul has improved sound support, but this may affect speed especially on slower processors.
Download DEmul at our Sega Dreamcast emulation page
geminihc has released a HDR plugin for many d3d games called ENBSeries. He modified it abit to make it work nice in nulldc. But it is not compatible with NullDC PVR, it works only with Chankast PVR. Also, he believes u must have at least shader 2.0 vid card. and gets a 3-6% performance impact when using these. here are some shenmue 2 before and after screens:
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DEmul was the second Dreamcast emulator for Windows ever to be released that actually played commercial games. DEmul started to development early in 2004 year by Wind, but just Chankcast got canceled. Now DEmul is able to run most commercial releases by various groups all along with homebrew demos and free software. DEmul is still imperfect and incomplete. A lot of work still needed. Sound, timing and graphics need improvement and speed up. This WIP update of DEmul has improved sound support, but this may affect speed especially on slower processors.
Download DEmul at our Sega Dreamcast emulation page
nullDC is the best Sega Dreamcast emulator available for Windows. nullDC runs several Dreamcast games at good speed, with full sound and music. This latest version of nullDC now includes support for VMU’s as well as well as better Dreamcast games compatiblity and with increased speed performance. In addition, this version of nullDC is a lot more stable than the previous beta release. There are two versions of this nullDC release. The standard nullDC for Dreamcast games and now nullDC Naomi for Naomi based Dreamcast games. The author decided to split the emulator into two versions for easier coding. A list of changes in this version is as follows:
DEmul was the second Dreamcast emulator for Windows ever to be released that actually played commercial games. DEmul started to development early in 2004 year by Wind, but just Chankcast got canceled. Now DEmul is able to run most commercial releases by various groups all along with homebrew demos and free software. DEmul is still imperfect and incomplete. A lot of work still needed. Sound, timing and graphics need improvement and speed up. This WIP update of DEmul has improved sound support, but this may affect speed especially on slower processors.
Download DEmul at our Sega Dreamcast emulation page
You can also check out the compat list.
Dknute, author of Windows Dreamcast emulator Makaron has posted news about his emulator progress:
found and squashed a bug in new GD code. Not only Elemental Gimmick Gear boots again but it also cured Street Fighter Zero 3, which now seems to work just fine.
Dknute, author of Windows Dreamcast emulator Makaron has posted news about his progress with GDROM and Giana’s return support for this Dreamcast emulator:
Makaron 9/4 is a new Dreamcast emulator for Windows. Looks like dknute was infact pulling an April Fools joke regarding the release of Makaron 10. This Dreamcast emulator is still in the testing stages but is able to run some commercial games, but still should be considered WIP and probably isn’t as advanced as nullDC or Chankast (at this point). Make sure you read the Makaron readme.txt file for info on configuring this Dreamcast emulator. Makaron 9/4 has the following changes:
Unless this is some sort of April Fools joke, it looks like Makaron is going the way of Magic Engine, and the author has gone to the idea of Pay to Play system for Makaron – prepaid style. Makaron will be free to download and try out but to play longer you will need to purchase an activation code. Simply put, in exchange for money you’ll be given a limited time to use my emulator. Once that time is up you’ll need to pay again, very much like you would for a cell phone number. Payment options will include credit cards and other common money transfer services, but he hasnt yet decided on the rates so it’ll take a few days to set everyting up. He will be done with the activation code shortly too.
Dknute, author of Windows Dreamcast emulator Makaron has posted news about his progress with GDROM support, and says to expect a release sometime during the first week of April:
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DKNute has posted some screenshots of more of his increbile work and progress on Dreamcast emulator for Windows Makaron. Makaron is one of the more complete Dreamcast emulators available for windows that runs commercial games:
