Minimig AGA 060 RTG

[joemango]

While it's possible for the Replay to be configured to emulate arcade hardware, you can't use MAME to do this. Someone will have to code the emulations specifically for the Replay.

Right.  Definitely some work to be done there.  But assuming the building-block coding structure of MAME I figure a system could be set up to load a specific set of IC cores for a given game onto the Xilinx and emulate on the ARM whatever you can't do in the FPGA (which I doubt is much, except what isn't written yet.)  I'm figuring it should be able to at least run about 1994-vintage games at best (but what do I know?)

Does the ARM have the same access to all the i/o lines the FPGA does?  Or does it have some exclusive bus link to it?  I guess what I'm getting at is, could the ARM be used as a coprocessor or is it too busy managing other stuff to be any help?

[freqmax]

The ARM does floppy & hdd  I/O asfair. The rest of the capacity should be free. The communication with the FPGA is through a few I/O lines I guess. So they could cooperate, but I wouldn't place any realtime soundprocessing etc.. in the ARM. Btw, the ARM can tell the FPGA  what to do with it's I/O lines. If the FPGA is configured that way.

An efficient option might be to use MAME as usual. But code for software hooks for chips that are too hard emulate properly in software. And thus avoid unessary (re)coding for functionality that will work just fine in software.

[Insidious611]

Wow, nice. MikeJ, definitely expressing interest in one of those FPGA Arcade Replay boards, if you think you'll have a batch ready around November/December!

[Darrin]

The ARM does floppy & hdd  I/O asfair. The rest of the capacity should be free. The communication with the FPGA is through a few I/O lines I guess. So they could cooperate, but I wouldn't place any realtime soundprocessing etc.. in the ARM. Btw, the ARM can tell the FPGA  what to do with it's I/O lines. If the FPGA is configured that way.

An efficient option might be to use MAME as usual. But code for software hooks for chips that are too hard emulate properly in software. And thus avoid unessary (re)coding for functionality that will work just fine in software.

I've never run MAME on an Amiga, but how does it run on a 68060?  If it works then the FPGA Aracde should be easy to set up with a Workbench installed with WHDLoad, MAME, VICE, Shapeshifter, DOSBox, etc.

Anyone drooling yet?  

[psxphill]

I meant that in general, a 1280x1024 screen is expected to be 4:3 display aspect which would have non-square pixels.

Tell that to all the people with 5:4 monitors.
 
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/4569-29-aspect-ratio-confused
 

Right. Definitely some work to be done there. But assuming the building-block coding structure of MAME I figure a system could be set up to load a specific set of IC cores for a given game onto the Xilinx and emulate on the ARM whatever you can't do in the FPGA (which I doubt is much, except what isn't written yet.) I'm figuring it should be able to at least run about 1994-vintage games at best (but what do I know?)

You'd definately be better off starting from scratch & emulating it all on the fpga. I don't think anyone has done a dynamic fpga image build based on what game you want to emulate before either.

[Hattig]

The old CRT monitors were 4:3 and showed 1280x1024 as slightly squashed pixels or with less border at the top/bottom.

The 1280x1024 LCDs are 5:4 with square pixels however.

[klx300r]

WoW:banana:

[joemango]

I've never run MAME on an Amiga, but how does it run on a 68060?

Godawful slow.  Running MAME on even an 060 Amiga will barely give you enough speed to run a playable game of Space Harrier, even with 50% frame skipping.  MAME isn't worth running on anything under a 1.5GHz P4 and even that's a bit slow for my taste.  

I just figured a lot of the IC emulation code could be ported to VHDL (or just use modules available now) and offloaded to the FPGA instead of using CPU.  A 6502 "emulation" in FPGA runs clock-accurate with minimum system overhead, whereas a software emulation chews up lots of CPU overhead and screws up your signal timing (hence skipped frames.)  I guess I'm getting a bit off-topic.  Sorry.

[Darrin]

Godawful slow.  Running MAME on even an 060 Amiga will barely give you enough speed to run a playable game of Space Harrier, even with 50% frame skipping.  MAME isn't worth running on anything under a 1.5GHz P4 and even that's a bit slow for my taste.  

I just figured a lot of the IC emulation code could be ported to VHDL (or just use modules available now) and offloaded to the FPGA instead of using CPU.  A 6502 "emulation" in FPGA runs clock-accurate with minimum system overhead, whereas a software emulation chews up lots of CPU overhead and screws up your signal timing (hence skipped frames.)  I guess I'm getting a bit off-topic.  Sorry.

Cheers for that.  I've only used MAME on a PC.  

[mikej]

"I just figured a lot of the IC emulation code could be ported to VHDL"
Thats exactly how it is done for the current games.

Nice picture
http://www.amigafuture.de/album_pic.php?pic_id=16914

[EvilGuy]

Godawful slow.  Running MAME on even an 060 Amiga will barely give you enough speed to run a playable game of Space Harrier, even with 50% frame skipping.  MAME isn't worth running on anything under a 1.5GHz P4 and even that's a bit slow for my taste.  

Metal Slug was playable on my CSPPC150 w/CV643D.

[fishy_fiz]

Yeah, RTG makes a world of difference for mame. The older builds are also magnitues of times faster than newer versions. That said though even an overclocked '060 + rtg system using an older/faster build will struggle to give playable results with something like Double Dragon (as a random choice of game).

[espskog]

"I just figured a lot of the IC emulation code could be ported to VHDL"
Thats exactly how it is done for the current games.

Nice picture
http://www.amigafuture.de/album_pic.php?pic_id=16914

Congrats on the front page cover Looks great!!!!

[Darrin]

Yeah, RTG makes a world of difference for mame. The older builds are also magnitues of times faster than newer versions. That said though even an overclocked '060 + rtg system using an older/faster build will struggle to give playable results with something like Double Dragon (as a random choice of game).

I'll settle for the ability to play Defender and Pheonix.  

[Mr_DBUG]

And BombJack :-D

[psxphill]

The old CRT monitors were 4:3 and showed 1280x1024 as slightly squashed pixels or with less border at the top/bottom.
 
The 1280x1024 LCDs are 5:4 with square pixels however.

It would depend on how you adjusted the h/v size. If you want full screen and square pixels on your 4:3 monitor then the only very slightly different 1280x960 is the mode to pick.
I would expect anyone that is running 1280x1024 to have a 5:4 display or at black bars. If they are stretching it to fit a 4:3 display then they deserve what they get.