I have an AMD Dual Core 4200+ 64-bit, with 2GB of RAM, a GeForce 8600 GT
video card, and a 19" screen. I guess it could run many "modern" video
games. But guess what I am playing?

http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/nicolas/gens.png (1.4MB)

Does anyone know what the SEGA hardware specs are? :) I think it's kinda sad
to see how much CPU time this emulator is using (between 20% and 50%
depending on resolution; and jumps to 100% if sound is disabled, wtf?)

It wasn't too easy to get the emulator working. I built it from source. It
gave some really weird compile errors. For a moment I thought I'd have to
do major source changes, then I noticed the problem is it dislikes 64-bit.
I had to do everything from a 32-bit chroot (which involved installing the
dev. files of GTK+, more than 20MB). But hey, it works :)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I have an AMD Dual Core 4200+ 64-bit, with 2GB of RAM, a GeForce 8600 GT
> video card, and a 19" screen. I guess it could run many "modern" video
> games. But guess what I am playing?
> 
> http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/nicolas/gens.png (1.4MB)
> 
> Does anyone know what the SEGA hardware specs are? :) I think it's kinda sad
> to see how much CPU time this emulator is using (between 20% and 50%
> depending on resolution; and jumps to 100% if sound is disabled, wtf?)

The Sega Genesis (Megadrive in the UK) is powered by a 10MHz Motorola 
68000 CPU (maybe a 68010), and has a Z80 (don't recall the freq for it) 
doing the sound.

The screen was standard TV size, with 64 colors.  I don't know what 
internal memory it had, but given the times it can't be that much.

I run the Windows version of Gens on my 5-years-old Athlon 2400XP box. 
CPU usage is near 100%.  I would venture to say that the emulation logic 
is not terribly efficient.

Regards,
John

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John VanSickle wrote:
> I run the Windows version of Gens on my 5-years-old Athlon 2400XP box.
> CPU usage is near 100%.  I would venture to say that the emulation logic
> is not terribly efficient.

Nope, it's not inefficient emulation. It's what I'd call a bug, possibly
busy-polling instead of blocking. I got 100% usage on my 400MHz machine
too, and it was still fast (and I don't mean just "playable", I
mean "looked as fast a real SEGA").

Disabling sound and enabling vertical sync on the video instantly made it
drop CPU usage *a lot*. So it's clearly some stupid busy-loop. For example,
it may be redrawing the screen as fast as it can instead of at a sane
framerate (vsync basically does framerate limiting).

On Linux it seems to be the opposite. Turning sound *off* makes it go to
100%.

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Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
> I have an AMD Dual Core 4200+ 64-bit, with 2GB of RAM, a GeForce 8600 GT
> video card, and a 19" screen. I guess it could run many "modern" video
> games. But guess what I am playing?
> 
> http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/nicolas/gens.png (1.4MB)
> 
> Does anyone know what the SEGA hardware specs are? :) I think it's kinda sad
> to see how much CPU time this emulator is using (between 20% and 50%
> depending on resolution; and jumps to 100% if sound is disabled, wtf?)
> 
> It wasn't too easy to get the emulator working. I built it from source. It
> gave some really weird compile errors. For a moment I thought I'd have to
> do major source changes, then I noticed the problem is it dislikes 64-bit.
> I had to do everything from a 32-bit chroot (which involved installing the
> dev. files of GTK+, more than 20MB). But hey, it works :)

Gens is not the fastest around, but it's one of the few available on 
Linux. :P

In the old times, I used to get a pretty good performance -- not quite 
that of the Megadrive, but pretty playable and with good frame rates -- 
with the legendary Genecyst, on DOS and a, gasp!, 486.  Yep.  It was 
written in assembly.

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nemesis wrote:
> Gens is not the fastest around, but it's one of the few available on
> Linux. :P

There are others? (even if not for Linux)

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Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Gens is not the fastest around, but it's one of the few available on
>> Linux. :P
> 
> There are others? (even if not for Linux)

Oh, come on!

Ok, here's a pretty good and old timer (I think it's the oldest yet 
active emulation site around):
http://www.zophar.net/

Go to:
http://www.zophar.net/genesis.html

or by SO:
http://www.zophar.net/linux.html

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nemesis escreveu:
> Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
>> nemesis wrote:
>>> Gens is not the fastest around, but it's one of the few available on
>>> Linux. :P
>>
>> There are others? (even if not for Linux)
> 
> Oh, come on!
> 
> Ok, here's a pretty good and old timer (I think it's the oldest yet 
> active emulation site around):
> http://www.zophar.net/
> 
> Go to:
> http://www.zophar.net/genesis.html
> 
> or by SO:
> http://www.zophar.net/linux.html

Also, there's a fine section of emulated music for game music fans. :)

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nemesis wrote:
> 
> Also, there's a fine section of emulated music for game music fans. :)

I've been finding that some of the music composers for video game music 
write some pretty good stuff.  There are a few tunes I keep humming, 
even now, twenty years after playing the games, and I have a few in my 
Media Player playlist.

Regards,
John

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John VanSickle wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>>
>> Also, there's a fine section of emulated music for game music fans. :)
> 
> I've been finding that some of the music composers for video game music 
> write some pretty good stuff.  There are a few tunes I keep humming, 
> even now, twenty years after playing the games, and I have a few in my 
> Media Player playlist.

Who doesn't? ;)

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>> I've been finding that some of the music composers for video game 
>> music write some pretty good stuff.  There are a few tunes I keep 
>> humming, even now, twenty years after playing the games, and I have a 
>> few in my Media Player playlist.
> 
> Who doesn't? ;)

That's nothing. I _perform_ music from computer games! :-P

(I'd show you, but then I'd probably get sued out of existence...)

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