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Author Topic: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?  (Read 14501 times)

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« on: July 19, 2012, 03:03:00 pm »
Back in Early 2010, Calc84maniac started working on a Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire, shortly after releasing gbc4nspire. The speed and quality of GBA emulation was similar to TI-Boy SE emulation on Z80 calculators. Unfortunately, no backup were made and then his laptop hard drive failed, causing the loss of the entire project.

Good news! Recently, he began another GBA emulator project! Although it is still not releasable due to its early stages, here is a screenshot that was posted in a TI-Planet news about the emulator last week:



Will this second attempt at GBA emulation know the same fate or will it come to fruition? A discussion topic can be found here.
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Offline renatose

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2012, 04:33:50 pm »
This is really awesome! However I think that it would be much more useful a 68k emulator :p
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Offline Spenceboy98

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2012, 05:13:10 pm »
Why can't they do anything like this for the Prizm? I don't own an Nspire.
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Offline TheNlightenedOne

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2012, 05:36:21 pm »
I'm guessing that the GBA emu runs at least a bit slower than a real GBA... and since nDOOM runs fine on a TI-Nspire without overclocking, but on a PRIZM, it's almost unplayable even with overclocking, the hypothetical GBA emu for the PRIZM would probably be really slow. It's just the fact that the PRIZM has a slower processor and less RAM than the Nspire.
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Offline annoyingcalc

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2012, 05:42:55 pm »
Well, depends on which game some games I see no differense,(comparing to a real gba, i have one)
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Offline blue_bear_94

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2012, 09:26:00 pm »
Quote from: renatose on July 19, 2012, 04:33:50 pm
This is really awesome! However I think that it would be much more useful a 68k emulator :p

I think someone tried that before. However, you'll need to emulate a 16 MHz machine on a 150 MHz machine, which is not that easy.
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Offline cyanophycean314

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2012, 09:27:33 pm »
This looks amazing. Hope it can come through and unleash Advance Wars!
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2012, 11:00:17 pm »
Quote from: Spenceboy98 on July 19, 2012, 05:13:10 pm
Why can't they do anything like this for the Prizm? I don't own an Nspire.
Given that the Nspire is 150 MHz and the PRIZM 94.3 MHz (for now), and that the Nspire version can't even run at full speed, I can only assume that a GBA games on a PRIZM will not even be close to being playable.

Quote from: blue_bear_94 on July 19, 2012, 09:26:00 pm
Quote from: renatose on July 19, 2012, 04:33:50 pm
This is really awesome! However I think that it would be much more useful a 68k emulator :p

I think someone tried that before. However, you'll need to emulate a 16 MHz machine on a 150 MHz machine, which is not that easy.
It was calc84maniac. He pretty much made every emulator available on the TI-Nspire. However, like most others, he lost the entire source in 2010. From memory, the 68K emulator did not run at full speed, even if the calc was 16 MHz.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2012, 11:01:32 pm by DJ_O »
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Offline Spenceboy98

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #8 on: July 19, 2012, 11:14:02 pm »
Quote from: DJ_O on July 19, 2012, 11:00:17 pm
Quote from: Spenceboy98 on July 19, 2012, 05:13:10 pm
Why can't they do anything like this for the Prizm? I don't own an Nspire.
Given that the Nspire is 150 MHz and the PRIZM 94.3 MHz (for now), and that the Nspire version can't even run at full speed, I can only assume that a GBA games on a PRIZM will not even be close to being playable.

I'm pretty sure they got the PRIZM to overclock even more, but it had no effect on the calc speed. I'm not sure though.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #9 on: July 19, 2012, 11:18:21 pm »
From what I remember, it just crashed the calc. But yeah, if GBA games runs between 2 and 4 times slower on a TI-Nspire, then they would run about 3-7 times slower on a PRIZM, and 3 times slower would be during title screens and menus. Also if RAM becomes an issue (100 MB of RAM on the Nspire CX vs 1 MB on a PRIZM?) like with TI-Boy SE, then even more speed would be lost due to reading from Flash.

I think it should be tried, though. We never know, maybe it will actually run a bit faster than expected or special tricks will be found.
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Offline Deep Toaster

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2012, 12:39:17 am »
Quote from: DJ_O on July 19, 2012, 11:00:17 pm
Quote from: blue_bear_94 on July 19, 2012, 09:26:00 pm
Quote from: renatose on July 19, 2012, 04:33:50 pm
This is really awesome! However I think that it would be much more useful a 68k emulator :p
I think someone tried that before. However, you'll need to emulate a 16 MHz machine on a 150 MHz machine, which is not that easy.
It was calc84maniac. He pretty much made every emulator available on the TI-Nspire.
And it's quite a list already lol

Can't wait to see this one in action though. And I hope I'll have an Nspire CX to try it on :D
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Offline calc84maniac

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2012, 01:17:29 am »
Hmm yeah, it might be good to mention now that only the Nspire CX is supported. The main reason is because it has more RAM, though full color display and higher potential overclocking are nice bonuses. There's a noticeable speed increase when I overclock my CX to 240MHz.

Side note: We may have come to the wrong conclusion on which AHB clock frequencies are "safe"... values close to 80MHz might actually cause file system corruption, and that's *not* good (I speak from personal experience here). However, I've found that if I don't exceed the OS's default value of 66MHz AHB, I never have any such problems due to overclocking.
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Offline TheNlightenedOne

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2012, 01:18:21 am »
That's why my OS somehow got deleted!!!! Now I understand!
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Offline calc84maniac

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #13 on: July 20, 2012, 01:20:00 am »
Quote from: TheNlightenedOne on July 20, 2012, 01:18:21 am
That's why my OS somehow got deleted!!!! Now I understand!
Yes, in fact I got that exact same side effect once. It's definitely best to play it safe with AHB clock speeds on the CX.
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Offline annoyingcalc

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Re: A Game Boy Advance emulator for the TI-Nspire?
« Reply #14 on: July 20, 2012, 01:42:31 am »
Good to know, mine is 66 AHB
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