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Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:21 pm
by tepples
There are three consoles: PC, XT, and AT. The differences among these are analogous to the differences between a Game Boy and a Game Boy Color. Yet VisualBoyAdvance emulates not only the Game Boy and Game Boy Color but also the Game Boy Advance, a completely different platform.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:31 pm
by cpow
tepples wrote:There are three consoles: PC, XT, and AT. The differences among these are analogous to the differences between a Game Boy and a Game Boy Color. Yet VisualBoyAdvance emulates not only the Game Boy and Game Boy Color but also the Game Boy Advance, a completely different platform.
I want to emulate emulating.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:32 pm
by Alegend45
cpow wrote:tepples wrote:There are three consoles: PC, XT, and AT. The differences among these are analogous to the differences between a Game Boy and a Game Boy Color. Yet VisualBoyAdvance emulates not only the Game Boy and Game Boy Color but also the Game Boy Advance, a completely different platform.
I want to emulate emulating.
What? Anyways, I do understand that there is a multitude of hardware available, but what about the VGA? I mean, can't people at least get THAT right?
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 8:29 pm
by koitsu
When you say VGA, are you referring to video adapter emulation in general or do you quite literally mean classic 320x200x256 (i.e. segment A000) mode? Or are you talking about VESA?
To me, the funny part is that you're wanting accuracy and clean code -- yet PC architecture in general is far from clean. In fact, it's a complete clusterfuck. Do not even for a minute think that just because we're into the 21st century that somehow PC emulation is "easy" -- it's not. My point is that "PC emulation" -- the term -- is simply too vague. And don't get me started on the utter disgusting mess that is the ""evolution"" (double-double quotes!) of x86.
That said, I have zero complaints about VMware Workstation other than it's fairly slow (it doesn't offer paravirtualisation to the same degree that, say, ESXi does). But I wouldn't use it to play old DOS games, for example.
Honestly I think that most folks who go apeshit over use of
HLE are usually wanting to waste CPU time emulating hardware down to the transistor/gate level for little-to-no gain. There are emulators which do this of course, and the system requirements of such emulators are preposterous; the trade off isn't worth it in most cases.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 8:50 pm
by lidnariq
Alegend45 wrote:What? Anyways, I do understand that there is a multitude of hardware available, but what about the VGA? I mean, can't people at least get THAT right?
What is incorrect about DOSbox's emulation that is not a raster effect? (Best raster effects "abuse the video card and monitor" I've seen is this demo:
Copper by Surprise!, or either of Tran's demos that I previously linked to). If you can't find anything wrong other than raster effects, what games use them?
I loved running Copper on my 386
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 8:56 pm
by Alegend45
Look, there are some bugs that even DOSBox has. For example, one the MESS team found in both DOSBox, and MESS, is that 0x3C0 bit 5 on the address portion of the register is not emulated. At all. This made it to where some stuff that would run in DOSBox and MESS, would not work on real hardware (e.g. something like the PS/2 Model 70 with the original IBM VGA).
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 8:58 pm
by lidnariq
tepples wrote:There are three consoles: PC, XT, and AT. The differences among these are analogous to the differences between a Game Boy and a Game Boy Color. Yet VisualBoyAdvance emulates not only the Game Boy and Game Boy Color but also the Game Boy Advance, a completely different platform.
I think it's hilarious how your list leaves out the one that actually tried to be a console (the PCjr)
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:10 pm
by lidnariq
Alegend45 wrote:Look, there are some bugs that even DOSBox has. For example, one the MESS team found in both DOSBox, and MESS, is that 0x3C0 bit 5 on the address portion of the register is not emulated. At all. This made it to where some stuff that would run in DOSBox and MESS, would not work on real hardware (e.g. something like the PS/2 Model 70 with the original IBM VGA).
The very fact that the MESS team unconvered that inaccuracy surely implies that they do care, and are working on it, and will fix it eventually? If not, why are you spending energy trying to convince
us that it matters? Surely that effort would be better spent convincing MESS's &// DOSbox's dev teams instead.
Anyway, is retrodev for the XT a real thing? I guess Trixter wrote
Monotone and
8088 Corruption, but beyond his contributions?
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 1:17 am
by rainwarrior
What is it that you're trying to do that all existing emulators are failing you for? You've described a few things about how you would like it to be implemented, but what actual function are you missing because of this implementation difference? Is there a particular program you are trying to run that you can't?
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 9:44 am
by Alegend45
No, it is not a particular program. What I am looking for is the ability to have an emulator, test a program on it, and if it works, be sure it works on real hardware.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:03 am
by keropi
^ baloney
even if you lived in DOS era and wanted to be sure that the program you made in REAL hardware would behave the same in all configs you NEEDED to test it in many hardware configurations, from different vga cards to different sound cards and stretch as far as to test with different memory managers on the same machines. And then make adjustments on your program to make it compatible with said hardware/software if issues arose or advise how to run your program with that combo.
You obviously missed all that back then and made this boo-hoo thread that borderlines with trolling.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:07 am
by cpow
keropi wrote:^ baloney
even if you lived in DOS era and wanted to be sure that the program you made in REAL hardware would behave the same in all configs you NEEDED to test it in many hardware configurations, from different vga cards to different sound cards and stretch as far as to test with different memory managers on the same machines. And then make adjustments on your program to make it compatible with said hardware/software if issues arose or advise how to run your program with that combo.
You obviously missed all that back then and made this boo-hoo thread that borderlines with trolling.
Code: Select all
Jan 01 20:18:52 <alegend2> I'm just a 14-year-old kid, though.
According to #nesdev comments, he's 14. So yeah...missed it by miles and miles. I remember it taking longer to configure a game's settings for your combo than it did to actually complete the game. That was while I was an Amiga die hard, though, so I was mostly standing on the sidelines laughing. Not that Amiga didn't have its own combo problems -- OCS, ECS, AGA, PAL, NTSC, not to mention the Kickstart/Workbench mayhem.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:21 am
by tepples
koitsu wrote:When you say VGA, are you referring to video adapter emulation in general or do you quite literally mean classic 320x200x256 (i.e. segment A000) mode? Or are you talking about VESA?
I meant the original Video Graphics Array, introduced in 1987 alongside the Personal System/2. Both the VGA and the MCGA support the mode 13h to which you refer, but only VGA supports tweaked "mode X" variants of this mode.
Honestly I think that most folks who go apeshit over use of
HLE are usually wanting to waste CPU time emulating hardware down to the transistor/gate level for little-to-no gain.
I agree with you that especially on battery-constrained hardware, emulators with anal-retentive accuracy provide little benefit to end users. But to developers, a laptop with a perfect emulator is a way to ensure no reliance on emulation defects that's easier to lug around than the original machine and its monitor. I think that's what Alegend45 is talking about.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:21 am
by blargg
Yeah, you can't even write a program on most hardware, run it on a machine, and be sure it'll run the same again on the same machine, let alone another machine of the same model, or another PC model/manufacturer, because there can be unpredictable effects. So forget having it run on an emulator and then run exactly the same on hardware. Even hardware fails at this.
Re: Why do existing PC emulators suck so bad?
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:42 am
by HardWareMan
