New Wii Port of VBA-M

Tantric · Post by **Tantric** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:31 pm

This is a shout out to the developers of VBA-M - I've been working on a Wii port of VBA-M. The project page is: http://code.google.com/p/vba-wii. It's fully functional at the moment (with the exception of the new sound core, I'm using 1.7.2's because for some reason I can't get the new one to work). I wanted to thank you for the improvements you've made to VBA - they're definitely noticed and appreciated.

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The primary problem I'm having with this port is speed - it's decent, but not always 100%. Any help or suggestions here would be very much appreciated. This is a powerpc architecture so it's currently set to use the C core. The latest source is on SVN if anyone wants to look. Is there anything that might give a speed boost? Also, for those times it has to frameskip - it currently experiences speed-ups and slow-downs rather than fluid frameskipping - could making some changes to system10Frames help? Is it possible I'll get a speed boost from the new sound core?

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Thanks in advance for any and all help!

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:39 pm

You'd have to talk with blargg about the new sound core. It's his work.

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Sorry, I can't personally offer any help. >.<

bgK · Post by **bgK** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:18 pm

Nice work !

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There is a PPC ASM core you could try to enable. You could probably reuse some tricks from the PSP port to get a speed boost.

spacy51 · Post by **spacy51** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:26 pm

Argh, too bad I sold my Wii after 2 weeks. I still have a GC lying around, but I doubt I can run homebrew on this one.

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After a short look at the current VBA-M code, I saw the following conditions to enable the PPC assembler code:

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#ifndef C_CORE

#ifdef GNUC

#ifdef POWERPC

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There is also a #if 0, so you have to take a deeper look into that affair.

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I hope Nintendo does not care too much about a GBA emulator on their Wii console, considering they sell games for the Virtual Console (which might get GBA support in the future).

Tantric · Post by **Tantric** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:02 pm

Argh, too bad I sold my Wii after 2 weeks. I still have a GC lying around, but I doubt I can run homebrew on this one.

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After a short look at the current VBA-M code, I saw the following conditions to enable the PPC assembler code:

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#ifndef C_CORE

#ifdef GNUC

#ifdef POWERPC

Â

There is also a #if 0, so you have to take a deeper look into that affair.

Â

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I hope Nintendo does not care too much about a GBA emulator on their Wii console, considering they sell games for the Virtual Console (which might get GBA support in the future).

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I did have a look at enabling this, but I get assembler errors at compile time (unless I'm doing something wrong) - 'Error: unsupported relocation against xer'. I'm assuming this code has been inactive for a long long time and needs to be updated. That, or the ppc 'xer' instruction in question isn't supported. Making whatever asm changes that're required is a little out of my depth...

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You can run VBA (and other homebrew) on GC, but yeah it's easier to set up on the Wii. As for Nintendo...well they've been quiet about all the SNES/NES/GBA/etc emulators on the GameCube/Wii, just as they've been quiet about VBA in general. I think they're probably more concerned about Virtual Console piracy, if anything at all.