Game Boy Advance:
The GBA emulator was written a few years back. Now that the GBA is no
longer on the market, the emulator can finally be released. The GBA is
very similar to the SNES in design. It lacks some of the more obscure
feature and comes with a much better CPU and other more useful features.
Sound System is just a slight upgrade to the regular Game Boy hardware.
More screen shots are in "Screen Shots" section.
FM Marty:
A few improvements to the Marty emulator, the Car Marty is now playable.
The FM-Towns II UX BIOS could also be used as that model came with a 386SX,
the same chip in the Marty/Car Marty. However when using the FM Towns BIOS,
the OS will not convert the joy pad signals to mouse signals.
PC-FX:
The PC-FX's design seems to be derived from the SuperGrafx. It features a
full SCSI CD Drive, four video processors and a nice RISC CPU. Two of the
four video chips and the sound system were taken from the PC Engine with
some minor modifications. The most interesting piece of hardware is
the hardware MJPEG decoder. It outputs very good quality images, some of
which are used for backgrounds. The PC-FX also uses a YUV color space and
not the usual RGB space used by most machines.
More screen shots are in "Screen Shots" section.
The PC-FX Photo CD Player seems to only work when the two HuC6270 IRQ lines
are swapped. Actually the BIOS seems to work fine when the IRQ lines are
swapped. This is a hack and is not the correct behavior. So for
now, the Photo CD Player is not working.
Playstation:
The GPU rasterizer is complete. The image is not always 4:3 but will be
stretched to the correct aspect by the emulator.
Like the PC Engine, the Playstation allows the software to modify the
physical display parameters. The left screen shot actually has
eight pixels missing on the left and few pixels of black is shown on the
right. This is how it appears on the real hardware. They do not
always line up nicely and sometimes black borders are shown or graphics
are cut off. The right screen shot shows a 3D background with 2D sprites.
The MDEC decoder is complete. It uses a 16-bit word stream and is much
simpler than the MJPEG decoder in the PC-FX, which uses a Huffman coded
bit stream. The MDEC is much more flexible, the decode data could
be read out as data and processed like any other image data, where on the
PC-FX, the decoded data is directly output to the screen. Two different
formats could be output, 24-bit used to play movies and 16-bit GPU texture
format. The left screen shots shows 24-bit output and the right screen shot
shows a 16-bit output.
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FM Marty:
The left image is what it would probably look like on the FM-Towns
Computer. The right image is what it looks like on the Marty. It looks
like the DRAM was hooked up backwards in the CRTC. The image will be
displayed correctly if the DRAM is accessed at the correct addresses but
some games choose to access the DRAM directly.
The Marty has a 32KHz to 15KHz down scanner. It converts 576 lines to
480 lines (536 to 448 visible lines on NTSC TVs). The left image is the
original image. The right one is the down scanned version. It looks
slightly blurry just like the real Marty.
The PC-FX is mostly complete. It has some timing issues which are not
going be able to be resolved until the switch to the new execution core
is complete. Color blending and affine transforms are finally implemented.
The 1st image is a port of a DOS game. The DOS version mostly like ran at
a resolution of 200 lines. On the PC-FX this image is stretched to 240
lines using affine transforms to fill the screen.
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FM Marty:
The Marty OS. The opening screen (1st), the dictionary (2nd),
the CD player (3rd) and the main systems menu (4th) during
a floppy copy.
Town OS (1st) and a DOS game port (2nd).
Simulation games are pretty popular on the Towns (1st) and so
are arcade ports (2nd). The game on the right actually renders to the
bottom border.
Another DOS port (1st) running at 24KHz and a arcade port (2nd)
running at 15KHz. The 24/15KHz will be displayed using the full 480i/240p
lines. Since most TVs could only display 448i/224p the top and bottom are
cropped. They as well as all the above 32KHz screens will be stretched to
4:3 by the emulator.
The Marty is consolized FM Towns computer with some hardware differences.
To the software they appear the same or at least close enough to run W/O
modification. This is because the BIOS abstracts most of the low
level differences.
The Marty has a 80386SX while the FM Towns has a 80386DX (some later
revisions also had a 80386SX). The SX has a 24-bit address bus and 16-bit
data bus while the DX has 32-bit address and data buses. The difference in data bus causes the CPU to run a different speeds even with the same clock.
The difference in address bus causes the the 2 machines to have completely
different memory maps above the 1M range. The Marty BIOS will setup
page tables to map the SX memory into the DX memory. Software wont know
the difference unless they handle paging themselves.
The video output is also quite different. The Marty has as 32KHz down
scanner to convert hi-res video to low res NTSC TV signals. The 32KHz
conversion is not 1:1. The scanner generates a image of 576 lines
and compress it to 480i (448i visible on normal TVs or 536 lines of
visible graphics). The sprite system usually runs at horizontal
resolution of 512 (256x2). Since the physical horizontal display
resolution is fixed, There are huge borders to the left and right,
about 1/5th of the screen.
When using the Marty BIOS, most game will accept the control pad as a mouse.
It is possible to freely navigate menus using the pad. A few games
requires a mouse regardless of which system. However when using the Towns
BIOS a mouse is required.
Status wise, emulation is almost complete. A few clean ups and few problems still needs
to be resolved. Floppy drive timing is off and a few CD Command status are incorrect.
Most games will run properly though.
The X68000 is similar to the Towns in terms of graphics and sounds.
It also has many really great arcade ports. CPU and Sound chips
for that system are already implemented in the CPS Changer. Too bad there
is no consolized version like the Towns...
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Neo Geo:
Finally added support for the various extra devices in newer Neo Geo games.
CPS Changer:
It appears despite what everyone thinks, Changer games are NOT
the same as the CPS1 versions. The graphic / sound and Z80 ROMs are
identical to the CPS1 version, the 68K ROMs are not. Emulation
is now correct for CPS Changer. Although CPS1 games are identical to
Changer games in terms of hardware, they use the input ports differently.
This means that buttons on the kick and extra player harness will
not be supported. Although not confirmed, it is very likely that the 2
Q-Sound games for the Changer are converted to YM2151/MSM6295. So until
Q-Sound is confirmed to be in Changer games. Q-Sound is dropped. This
means, CPS1 Q-Sound games will no longer be supported.
Various Systems:
Bomberman, the most well know multi-player game series. Up to 6 Players
are now supported. From left to right: Famicom, PC-Engine Mega Drive and
Super Famicom.
FM Marty:
The Marty now boots some games. Video timings are not yet supported so the
images are parts of the frame buffer. Sound is actually complete due the
fact all the sound components are the same as the Mega Drive. Neither the
Marty nor the Marty 2 has an 486. They are both 386s. As a matter of
fact, forcing the system into a 32-bit address bus (368DX or above) mode,
the system will boot up like the FM Towns computer. It won't even load
the Marty OS.
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CPS Changer:
CPS Changer is now supported. Street Fighter Zero the only game for the
Changer that comes with an option screen and a pause button.
PC-FX:
Implmented the IDCT and RLE decoder. Screen shot 1 use RLE to display the
PC-FX logo. Screen shot 2 uses IDCT to display the background. Screen shot
3 and 4 uses IDCT to display in game video. Screen shot 5 uses IDCT for
the backgrounds. Screen shot 8 is a IDCT movie still.
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Famicom Disk System:
FDS is now supported. 2nd Screen shots shows an error message if the
wrong side of the floppy disk is inserted. More FDS screen shots in the
Screen Shots section.
PC-FX:
Implmented many new features, almost every game will play to some degree.
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Game Boy:
Game Boy BIOS is now supported.
PC Engine CD-ROM2 & Mega CD:
It's now possible to open the tray and switch discs with the machine on.
Neo CD tray status is also supported, but it's BIOS do not generate a
tray open message.
PC-FX & Saturn:
It's now possible to open the tray and witch discs with the machine on.
Playstation tray status is also supported, but it's BIOS do not generate
a tray open message.
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PC Engine / CD-ROM2:
Ten No Koe memory bank support. It's now possible to backup internal
PC Engine CD BRAM like the real machine.
6-Button Pad could be enabled for either or both players.
Mega Drive / Mega CD:
RAM Cart support. It's now possible to backup internal Mega CD BRAM
like the real machine.
6-Button Pad could be enabled for either or both players.
Neo Geo:
Memory Card support. It's now possible to copy memory cards since the new
Memory Card options allows the insertion and removal at any time.
Neo Geo CD / CDZ (11/11/05):
Implemented/fixed several CD commands. The error message is now correctly
displayed. This error message is only displayed with valid Neo CD discs.
Implemented CDZ copy protection. The original Neo CD BIOS is no longer
required to play newer games. The logo is displayed in the CDZ BIOS
(top left) and various custom loading screens used by newer games.
Game Boy:
Some games will only run in color mode (left), other will run in both
color and mono mode (right).
Neo Pocket:
Some games will only run in color mode (left), other will run in both
color and mono mode (right).
Wonder Swan:
Some games will only run in color mode (left), other will run in both
color and mono mode (right).
PC-FX:
Various BIOS screen shots. The BIOS screen (top left), the memory manager
(top right), the Photo CD Player (bottom left) and the CD Player
(bottom right). Transparencies is still missing from the BIOS screen.
The FX-BMP memory card is now implemented. It's shown in the memory
manager screen shot.
Playstation:
Memory Cards are implemented as well as improved control pad input.
A few games actually boot. The first screen shot is missing the polygon
demo in the background due to missing GTE in the R3000.
Saturn:
The RAM Cart is now implemented in the Saturn. Transparencies are still
missing.
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PC Engine / Super Grafx:
PC Engine 10 MHz VCE dot clock. It could generate an image with a
horizontal resolution of 512 pixels.
Mega Drive:
Mega Drive interlace mode. It could generate an image with a vertical
resolution of 448 pixels.
Super Famicom:
Super Famicom Hi-Res mode and interlace. It could generate an
image of 512x448 or 512x478.
Super Famicom Hi-Res mode and Pseudo 512 mode. The top and bottom parts
of the image uses Hi-Res 512 mode and the middle part uses Pseudo 512 Mode.
As with all the above images, Xe will correct them to 4x3 aspect if raster
aspect is used.
PC-FX:
Implemented 256 color dual VDC mode as well as 7 MHz VCE dot clock.
PC-FX emulation is stalled until I get back my PC-FX PCB for further
testing.
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PC-FX:
Most of the hardware are implemented. Still missing are the Motion Decoder,
and sound (PSG / ADPCM / CDDA). There are still some problems with the BG
generator as shown in the second screen shot, the black bar on the top
should not be there. The last screen shot is missing the background
graphic layer which is generated by the Motion Decoder.
The Motion Decoder supports 2 types of images, lossless RLE and lossy
Huffman coded DCT (similar to JPEG, different layout). The sound system is
the same as in the PC Engine with twice the ADPCM channels.
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PC-FX:
No screen shots yet. The V810 and memory system are implemented. However
the the BIOS is missing the vector table. This is might be a bad dump.
Emulation can not continue until a good BIOS is dumped...
Saturn:
Implemented parts of the CD controller. The audio CD player is now fully
playable.
Playstation:
Same state as the Saturn, the audio CD player is now working.
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Neo CD:
Finished the CD controller. The BIOS is now able to recognize a Neo CD
disc. The 1st screen shot shows the "PUSH START BUTTON" message. This
message only appears when a Neo CD disc inserted. It's still not able to
boot any game. Emulation of the Neo CD won't get any further without the
information on the DMA & IRQ controllers.
If anyone has any information on the LC8953 (any information beside the
datasheet) or Sanyo programmable DMA controllers please contact me.
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Saturn:
Added polygon and zoomed sprites. The orange square is actually a polygon.
The CD Player buttons are zoomed spites, previous images treated them as
normal sprites.
Playstation:
New polygon code. Fixed distortions from previous images.
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Saturn:
Implemented more VDP functions and corrected some rendering bugs. System
is able to boot into the CD Player.
Playstation:
Implemented serial input for the control pads. It's now possible to navigate
through the different BIOS menus.
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The SH2 CPU core is finished. The SH7604 support so far is just the
division unit. Along with some basic SCU, SMPC and VDP code, the system
actually boots.
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Other than COP2 (GTE) the CPU (CXD8530/MIPS I) is mostly finished.
The GPU is very preliminary, there are some inaccuracies in the polygon code
as you can see in the 1st screen shot.
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Neo Geo CD:
It can't play any games yet but the CD Player works perfectly. The DMA
controller is not yet emulated. It is a programmable microcontroller
most likely to be the one in the LC8953. This is the ONLY thing that keeps
games from working. If anyone has any information on the LC8953 or
Sanyo programmable DMA controllers please contact me.
Mega CD/Sega CD:
Same status as the Neo CD, only the CD Player works. Still quite buggy
and hangs sometimes. Most likely due to the missing GFX processor
emulation.
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