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Author Topic: GBA emulator for nspire?  (Read 17703 times)

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Offline fb39ca4

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GBA emulator for nspire?
« on: July 07, 2010, 06:16:07 pm »
Would it be possible to emulate a GBA on the nspire?

If speed is an issue, instead of emulating the GBA, could a recompiler be made? GBAs have ARM7 processors, which I believe are backwards compatible with ARM9s. On a computer, the ROM could have all its memory addresses changed to work on the nspire, and include extra code to convert the display image to grayscale.

I don't know much about ASM, this is just an idea I'm putting out.
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Offline Ancient Power

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2010, 06:18:16 pm »
calc84 said it was possible, and it seems very possible hardware-wise, but nobody has tried to make it yet
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2010, 06:38:04 pm »
If I recall correctly, Calc84 told me if such thing happened, it would be the TI-Boy SE of the Nspire. What he meant by that is that like TI-Boy SE, it would only emulate a bunch of games and games using some special effects would not work properly. Some effects would just be beyond the Nspire capabilities, like some GB effects on the 83+SE/84+ calcs.
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Offline calc84maniac

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2010, 06:46:20 pm »
If it was just the ARM CPU code in the ROM we had to worry about, it might not be a very big deal. But there's also all of the other hardware that needs to be dealt with at the same time, that the ROM expects to work in a certain way. Also, the graphics hardware is quite complicated -- most of the time we're not just dealing with a bitmap that has to be converted to grayscale, it is also possible to display 4 tilemaps at the same time, a ton of sprites, and even scaled/rotated maps and sprites are supported.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2010, 08:37:05 pm »
gah I can't imagine how hard it must be to emulate all that stuff x.x, especially if, for example, you wanted to emulate Doom or 007 Nightfire x.x
« Last Edit: July 07, 2010, 08:37:49 pm by DJ Omnimaga »
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Offline kyllopardiun

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2011, 07:16:20 am »
Now that exists the CX, wouldn't it be easier to do the GBA for this new nspire?
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Offline Yeong

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2011, 07:17:56 am »
I heard that cx hardware is good enough to emulate gba. :D
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Offline calc84maniac

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2011, 10:43:46 am »
The only thing that would be easier on the CX would be not having to convert the color into grayscale. It still requires a lot of power, as I detailed a few posts above this one.
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Offline ralphdspam

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #8 on: December 06, 2011, 12:03:41 pm »
You also have to emulate the GB/GBC's modified z80 core as the secondary processor.

Quote from: calc84maniac on July 07, 2010, 06:46:20 pm
Also, the graphics hardware is quite complicated
Yes, it is.

It's not impossible, but the people who are willing to make the emulator probably already had the idea anyway.  Most of these emulator requests turn into, "this is the hardware you have to emulate, but nobody has done it yet," type topics.
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Offline JosJuice

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2011, 12:13:01 pm »
Quote from: ralphdspam on December 06, 2011, 12:03:41 pm
You also have to emulate the GB/GBC's modified z80 core as the secondary processor.
That processor can't be accessed by games running in GBA mode as far as I know. The only way for games to use it is to be a GB/GBC game, and we already have an emu for that.
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Offline ralphdspam

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2011, 12:22:44 pm »
Quote from: JosJuice on December 06, 2011, 12:13:01 pm
Quote from: ralphdspam on December 06, 2011, 12:03:41 pm
You also have to emulate the GB/GBC's modified z80 core as the secondary processor.
That processor can't be accessed by games running in GBA mode as far as I know. The only way for games to use it is to be a GB/GBC game, and we already have an emu for that.
I heard that you're able to use it as a sound controller, but I'm not entirely sure.
Wait, that wouldn't make sense.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2011, 12:23:35 pm by ralphdspam »
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Offline calc84maniac

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2011, 12:23:32 pm »
Quote from: JosJuice on December 06, 2011, 12:13:01 pm
Quote from: ralphdspam on December 06, 2011, 12:03:41 pm
You also have to emulate the GB/GBC's modified z80 core as the secondary processor.
That processor can't be accessed by games running in GBA mode as far as I know. The only way for games to use it is to be a GB/GBC game, and we already have an emu for that.
Yes, this is true. The only part of the GBC hardware that the GBA could be said to use would be the sound chip.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2011, 03:02:16 pm »
Basically, as I said once before, GBA emulation on the Nspire series would be like GB emulation from the first version of TI-Boy SE on the 84+ (the one that required extra RAM pages): lots of glitches and unsupported graphical effects. I think for now the best thing would be to try Sega Genesis/Megadrive emulation and maybe SNES, although it might be problematic for games like Star Ocean or Star Fox that uses special chips.
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Offline Keoni29

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #13 on: December 08, 2011, 01:39:12 pm »
Even my nintendo DS can emulate a snes :P The nspire runs at almost 3 times higher clock frequencies.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: GBA emulator for nspire?
« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2011, 03:02:34 am »
But doesn't the DS have the hardware to emulate those games? Calcs probably lacks any video card or chip that are required for such intensive tasks. Of course A SNES emu on the Nspire would be doable and could even have speed up functions, though.
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