I've recently had an email conversation with the developer of FreeDO, the 3DO emulator. He sounded intrigued with the idea of bringing it to the GP2X, but doesn't own the system himself. He also commented that it would take some time to bring out a usable release in his spare time.

What's a 3DO, you ask? Well, it's a 32-bit system that came out between SNES and PSX in the mid '90s. 3DO was an excellent "bridge system", so to speak. It had a nice collection of games for its time, mostly consisting of PC ports, console ports, and original games. Some noteworthy examples inlcude: Road Rash, Need for Speed, Wing Commander, Gex, D, Blade Force, Dragon's Lair, and many others. Check Wikipedia and Google for more details.

I think this would make a great addition to GP2X's list of emulators, because its extremely likely that a 100% port could be done. Not only would this mean some really good original games get released. FreeDO could bring many of the titles we loved for different systems onto one emulator.

So I'm thinking about donating money to get the developers a GP2X. I can only spare $25 this month (I am a poor college student ), but will continue to donate for this project to happen. Any other takers?

Prove the worth of the 3DO with screen caps and then beg at the virtual feet of all the members in this scene.

3DO is an alright system... I like stuff like Trip'd, weird, simple game but addictive.

anybody tried the Win-version of Freedo? Is it working 100% already? Love the 3DO, my first 3D console ever... Since it has a ARM-processor it should be that hard to make a emulator at a quite good speed. Maybe Craigx could make us a special price?

I'd donate a chunck if I knew he was seriuos. As in ASM.

I just had a go with the latest Freedo.. It works very nicely with Star Fighter but I don't have anymore ISOs to test and I can't be bothered with a 39gig torrent!

cheers

This might be a real challenge to get working at acceptable speeds on the GP2X-- a 12.5 MHz 32-bit processor is a bit beefy. It IS an ARM microarchitecture though-- if either of the ARM9s could be made to interpret this old instruction set, you might be able to dodge emulating it entirely and free up enough processing time for the complex-looking video subsystem (*2* rather beefy VDPs) plus the high-end audio subsystem. That's along the lines of the methodology behind a quick GBA emulator, though, so it may be a while unless the author doesn't mind putting in a lot of work for a pretty revolutionary setup as far as '2x emulators go.

I other words, dont hold the breath !?!?

I may have been a little overzealous with my first post, but surely GP2X could get good emulation going for a system that is around 1-2 steps below the PSX in power (and not much more complex).

Assuming once again, I would think the developer would have ARM assembly experience because they created the emulator from the ground up. So they must also know pretty well how the 3DO's ARM60 processor works. Would they be able to translate that knowledge to the increased instruction set of an ARM9? Hopefully.

Here's an excerpt of their response:
"I've seen huge homebrew support for GP2X. But unfortunately porting
to this wonderfull console will require some initial investment of both
money (as I don't have the console at the time, so I would need to buy
one) and time -- rough estimation -- couple of months (if I will work
over weekends). I see no possibility right now to invest into purchasing
the console."

He threw out the timeframe of "a couple months", assuming he put forth a good solid effort. This might be an estimate from just looking at the specs of the machine without examining closely any bottlenecks the GP2X may have. I dunno.

not really worth it as far as I'm concerned. a fair amount of good 3do games are available for psx anyway. there is not much exclusive to 3do that would justify the effort in making a gp2x emu for it.

Hey, we tried a Jaguar emulator, why not try the 3DO?

They will probably run faster if the 3DO emu reaches its potential.

I'm not too fussed either way, but it would certainly be a unique emulator for handheld!

NEED FOR SPEED
STREET FIGHTER
ROAD RASH
MYST

AMEN BROTHA!

What is the deal with all the rabbits?

It is not a matter of "power" as much as it is custom hardware that is poorly documented. The SNES is weaker than the 3DO and look at the trouble the GP2X has with that. Those twin cel engines in the 3DO would be a bitch to emulate at any decent speed.

Careful.. people around here get mad when you donate a system to someone just for the sole purpose of getting them to dev for it. I'm afraid!

By far the best 3DO game was Star Control II, which can already be played on the GP2X anyways

But hey, the more the merrier!

--Zero

I would definitly donate for a nicely running 3do emulator. Sounds really good

I think logically we need to ask a couple questions and get a couple yes answers to a couple of things.

1> Can the ARM9 handle all the instruction sets of the ARM60, with little to no conversion/emulation.

2> Will the extra CPU power gained from the processor similarity help with emulating the video system? (2 sub-processors, I think I'm reading here. Am I wrong?)

3> Could Squidge's MMU hack be implimented to gain a sizable speed boost?

4> Is there a complete list of 3D0 games for those not very familiar with the system to peruse?

5> When the second CPU in the 2x is more understood, could it be used to handle some of the load of the CPU in emulating the system?

Here's a good one.

--Zero

Exactly, plus we would have another thing over those damn blasphemous PSP owners

Seriously though, there are probably about 20-30 good games worth having. Many of those not available in playable form on the GP2X yet. Out of over 200 titles (including a lot of soft-porn japanese stuff ), this isn't a great ratio, but I don't think all 1000 PSX titles were good either. Here's another link:

http://fz1-3do.blog.co.uk/

Btw, any mods want to start a paypal account for this idea?

It would be amazing to see this system emulated at a decent speed. Look at all those FMV games.

I just saw all 4 of those games sitting in a used software bin for the psx for $1.99 each at the local GameCrazy. Given, the Street Fighter title was something like Street Fighter II Turbo Deluxe Super Fantastic edition, but close enough.

Now, Way of the Warrior and Putt Putt Joins the Parade might be worth it.

My only complaint would be the fact that load times on the real 3DO were awful. It would probably take 5 minutes to load a game under emulation, and I imagine it would be a real battery drainer.

ooh! http://www.digitpress.com/DP/cmf/game.cmf?gameid=15526. Gotta love Samurai Showdown!

Yes (with provisos). The ARM9 provides a superset (v4t) of the ARM60's architecture (v3). The gotcha is, as always, the memory stuff. If the ARM60 is running in 26-bit mode then things would be extremely nasty, too.

Would compensating for that take up too many CPU cycles to leave enough for emulating the viddo system?
(again, theoretically of course)

If not, there seems to be a valid interest in this project.

Panzer General! I'm game.
And Incredible Machine...

I wonder, whether the 3DO version of any of the games also on other systems is actually superior to the others...

This is a good question.
Here's another one: How does the video processing hardware on SoC work? Could it help with FMV or other video?

In general it might be best to figure things out first like Winterkid's questions, and then show the developers what they have to work with. That way no one has to waste any time or effort if it's not possible.

It's very specifically tuned for MPEG decoding; perhaps only MPEG-4. MagicEyes (maker of the MMSP2 SoC) has a real MPEG-4 fixation. (And then some.) To be honest, and not to sound like a wet blanket, but this project is probably impossible to get away with at acceptable speed. The hardware's not that well understood and is just out of the league of the GP2X with all the overhead entailed by handling its strange mix of hardware.

Another chat with FreeDO's developer:

"Some time ago I've created arm60 emulator form xscale cpu which
allows arm3 code to run natively. I see no problem in porting this to
arm920. My idea was to run hw emulator on coprocessor, since it will be
efficient to leave graphics and sound aside from main cpu, now in 3DO main
cpu shares memory with HW, so in some cases it's being held in halt by
other devices. I assume to use minimum ram on 2nd cpu, so preferably
onchip sram should be sufficient for the task. Worst case -- hey, arm60
runs at 12 mhz only!!! Code on arm920 in native mode will run 20 times
faster!!!
But once again-- I have no time to message arround the gp2x community
for this. If someone will come up with gp2x console and contact me-- I
will invest my time to port the emulator.
Do you want to make administrative tasks for this? Also I prefer to
meet in person so I will be able to return the console latter on, thus
florida is preffered."

Just to clarify, I told him much about GP2X's bottlenecks as discussed in this thread. I mentioned that some of us would be willing to a buy a console for him. Looks to me like he just wants to borrow one since he's such a nice guy

I saw a couple of games on the list, and i have to admit that they are pretty cool!

*bump*
No interest in these new developments?

That's a brilliant breakthrough, Jaguarandine! I can't believe this thread hasn't exploded in excitement! (Although, I dread to think of trying to hit diagonals on Dragons Lair on my Gp2x! )

Anyone from Florida?? Ah... David Beoulve! Step forward!


Gulp.. Just imagine... http://www.digitpress.com/DP/cmf/game.cmf?gameid=15424


Although, from the PC readme.. " P3-1.0 GHz or faster processor. P4-1.4 GHz recommended for close to 100% speed."

3DO emulation would be sweet, there are some nice games out for it.

EDIT: Aah, there is Alone in the Dark for it, that would be really really sweet!

Yup, this is AWESOME!!

I'm also suprised by the lack of responses. To do virtualization AND solid use of the second processor would be a big step in GP2X emulators. It might even make virtualization of other systems like GBA and N-Gage more likely. I'm probably getting too excited again, but it seems that the cheering section is quite small atm

I've been bumping this too much. People will come around I suppose..

I still don't see why people want ngage emulation

yeah, this would be cool to see, for the reasons mentioned above.



Pathway To Glory, of course. ..maybe J2ME emulation as a side-benefit...!!

how can we resist a sequel called wing commander 3: heart of the tiger. I didnt even know there were tigers in space...one good reason to support this emu, and before you ask..my computer is slower then my gp2x so its my only chance

This looks like a fun one but I'm not able to send my gp2x for development, so I can only hope for the courtesy of others. One thing I dont really like the idea of is...gp2x on a promise, its difficult to say this will actually be possible until you try (donate a gp2x and find out its not so probable would just kinda make people sad.) Best of luck on your project.

WOOOO space tigers.

lol, how old is your computer?

On someone's suggestion, I've decided to come up with some reasons on why a 3DO emulator is a good idea. Here they are:

-Psx will not be 100% (btw, this isn't a knock on the Psx4gp2x emu guys; I think they're doing a fantastic job)
The PSX emulator is coming along nicely, however, full speed for many games is in the distant future. Games available on both platforms are more likely to run faster on the 3DO emulator. Which brings up the second point:

-FreeDO port will be close to fullspeed
Due to the 3DO ARM60's code being run natively on the GP2X ARM9, emulation of the sound and video processors will be MUCH easier. Worst case, games will run at close to fullspeed, which isn't bad at all.

-Open doors (or, provides the key at least)
The sucessful development of this emualator will set new highs for 2X programming. Taking the information learned from FreeDO, full speed on systems such as Gameboy Advance and N-Gage (and I suppose Symbian OS as well) sound much more realistic. One might be able to sqeeze more power out for other emus and games by way of the 2nd processor.

-It will cure cancer

-Good Games
This is by far the most important one, I think. Back when the 3DO came out, most of its titles could be ignored because they were either available for other systems (Sega CD, PC, Amiga) you had or they just plain stunk. Nowdays, the bad games still suck ( , worse even!), but those ports are great for the GP2X. Most of these games came out on systems that are "unemulatable" at the moment and are quite good(e.g.; Policenauts, Syndicate, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, etc.).
Then there are those ports that are better than the games they're based on; Madden, Another World/Out of this World, and Star Control 2 are good examples.
Finally, there's the good original games made just for 3DO like Lucienne's Quest, Immercenary, and Killing Time, amoung others.

So there you have it! The 3DO laid out for what is. I'll be starting a Paypal account for donations toward the developer's GP2X if interest picks up (I've never done this before, so I might need help). Unless someone has an extra 2X lying around, loaning one out doesn't seem like a great idea.

Epicenter's last comment kinda killed it for me. I might still donate a few bucks though if this developer is really serious.

To be honest, I'm waiting for the PDA version of the emulator. Since PPC mostly use ARM9, it would be a good indication as to whether a donation would a waste of money or not.

If it works, I'm sure we can raise enough cash for a GP2X. I pledge $40 (Australian) right now. (if ti works well on a 400mhz strongARM PDA)

And the 3DO version of Star Contol 2 has already been ported. It's UrQuan Masteres in the RPG section.

Well it is obvious that he really doesn't understand the 2nd cores limitations

"I assume to use minimum ram on 2nd cpu, so preferably
onchip sram should be sufficient for the task"

He thinks the second core has it'own RAM. It doesn't and 4K isn't nearly enough to emulate 2 cel engine co-processors.

Yono: What would you need to know he's serious?

icurafu: Were'd you hear about a PPC version of FreeDO? About Star Control 2, I haven't checked out the port in a while; but heard that it was missing some features.

DaveC: Here's mainly what I told him about the specs originally. Maybe it wasn't enough?

-the 2nd ARM processor (940t) is not recognized by
Linux. You'll have to program it completely in ARM
assembly. We assumed you'd have exeprience in ASM
though as you built the emulator from the ground up.

-Both ARM processors cannot access the RAM at the same
time, which slows things down considerably, unless you
can get get them to work togther effectively. Most
programming done up to this point only uses the main
ARM processor (920t).

-Finally, most agree that in order to free up CPU time
to emulate the sound and video processors, you'll have
to get the 3DO's ARM60 intructions to run natively (or
close to it) from one of the GP2X's ARM9s. Which would
of course, require much assembly knowledge.

What? You never even checked the webpage, and you're trying to get funding for a port? My dodgy senses are tingling.

http://www.freedo.org/HTML/project_status.html

nice, I must've missed that

Not enough. You need to let him know that the second core only has 4K of cache, has no MMU, and does not have any dedicated RAM to that core (all RAM is shared).

You touched on the last part about the shared RAM but not the cache size and lack of MMU.

Here's his response. Shortened to pertinent info

>What do you mean by administrative tasks?
>
>
By administrative tasks i mean real project management -- i will make
the port but
i need help to handle community support.
> A couple GP2X developers thought I left out some
> important info on the specs.
> -Namely, the 940t has only an 8k cache; 4k for
> data/intructions respectively. It has no MMU, only a
> simple TLB. The 920t however, has a 32k cache and an
> MMU.
> -Theres a seperate video processor that might be able
> to do simple math operations. Normally, it's used for
> decoding MPEG4 in video playback.
> -Lastly, all RAM is shared. I think you touched on
> this in your previous response though.
>
>
I know this. I'm planing to use video coprocessor as pixel processor of
3do
> Finally, someone noticed that you're still working on
> a PocketPC version (aside from the Palm, PS2, Xbox,
> and Mac versions that I've heard about). Has there
> been any trouble getting this to work? As some believe
> a port to PPC would be a good indication if the GP2X
> version would work as well.
>
>
Well -- pocketpc version is done. I'm using it on my iMate JAM. and it
works just fine.
I'm not planning to release it to public due to lack of good controls
(namely joypad).
I was planning to make external 3do joypad adapter for pocketpc... but
majority of them don't have any external connection besides USB
lately....
and it's not directly accessible under windows ce.

PS2 and XBOX versions are not released due to political/legal issues.

and PALM just moved to windows ce

-----

So I guess the question it comes down to is can we trust him to stick to his word. I talked with him a bit and he seems like a stand up guy. I did a little searching on the other versions planned and the response seems like a reasonable explanation for why they haven't been released (which was a sticky point on some other sites).

DaveC, I see your pessimism extends to devices other than the GP2X from my google search. Do you have a Palm-based PDA? I've got a Blackberry myself.