Rockbox.org home
Downloads
Release release
Dev builds dev builds
Extras extras
themes themes
Documentation
Manual manual
Wiki wiki
Device Status device status
Support
Forums forums
Mailing lists mailing lists
IRC IRC
Development
Bugs bugs
Patches patches
Dev Guide dev guide
Search



Donate

Rockbox Technical Forums


Login with username, password and session length
Home Help Search Staff List Login Register
News:

Thank You for your continued support and contributions!

+  Rockbox Technical Forums
|-+  Support and General Use
| |-+  Plugins/Viewers
| | |-+  gba support in rockboy?
« previous next »
  • Print
Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: gba support in rockboy?  (Read 11300 times)

Offline n16ht5

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 49
gba support in rockboy?
« on: August 15, 2006, 03:33:00 AM »
will ipod ever be able to play gba games? i have a bunch of gba roms...
Logged

Offline Llorean

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 12931
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2006, 03:33:27 AM »
Probably not.
Logged

Offline Suntiger

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 96
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2006, 04:41:36 PM »
This is like saying "can you port Halo 2 to the Palm OS?"

Never going to happen. The chips in iPods are simply NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH.

I wish people could learn a rudimentary grasp of hardware requirements and stop asking these questions...
Logged

Offline RotAtoR

  • Developer
  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 170
  • Somewhere but not here
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2006, 04:59:16 PM »
Quote from: Suntiger on August 15, 2006, 04:41:36 PM
I wish people could learn a rudimentary grasp of hardware requirements and stop asking these questions...

Easy there, I think it's a fair question to ask. ;) After all, Rockbox already supports GB and GBC, so GBA support may appear a logical extension. Even though the GBA is still a GameBoy, AFAIK it's more powerful than even the SNES system. It's highly doubtful that any of the current Rockbox targets could even emulate the SNES with decent speed. To put things into perspective, some people over at the ipodlinux project are having a tough time getting even the NES emulated well.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2006, 05:13:07 PM by RotAtoR »
Logged

Offline n16ht5

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 49
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2006, 02:07:42 AM »
i thought the ipod had some new chip that was supposed to be good/..? i have no idea what is in the ipod hardware.. and snes is extremely slow, even the playstation only had like a 133mhz processor or something
Logged

Offline Llorean

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 12931
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2006, 02:10:27 AM »
The iPod is a 75mhz arm core. Fixed point math only.
Logged

Offline Yotto

  • Artist
  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 826
  • Every Silver Lining has a Cloud
    • My Blog
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #6 on: August 16, 2006, 02:57:03 AM »
Quote from: n16ht5 on August 16, 2006, 02:07:42 AM
i thought the ipod had some new chip that was supposed to be good/..? i have no idea what is in the ipod hardware.. and snes is extremely slow, even the playstation only had like a 133mhz processor or something

The bigger the chip, the faster the battery drain.  Doesn't take that many mHz to play music.  I don't think the engineers at Apple expected you to want to turn it into a $300 gameboy emulator. :D
Logged
Pulp Audio Weekly - Where we talk about News, Reviews, and pretty much anything else we feel like discussing.

Offline n16ht5

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 49
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #7 on: August 17, 2006, 05:09:35 AM »
pfft apple.. if only they had teamed up with sony on the psp...
Logged

Offline Mathlar

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 8
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #8 on: August 17, 2006, 06:01:17 AM »
The GBA only contains a single 17MHz ARM7 core.  In that respect the iPod has way more power...  But we lack the graphics hardware and nintendo are very good at exploiting that.

Just look at how the DS (with it's single ARM9 and ARM7 cop) plays Mario64... guess those funky 3D chips do a hell of a lot of work.
Logged

Offline RotAtoR

  • Developer
  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 170
  • Somewhere but not here
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #9 on: August 17, 2006, 10:00:02 AM »
Quote from: Mathlar on August 17, 2006, 06:01:17 AM
The GBA only contains a single 17MHz ARM7 core.

And look at the original GameBoy, it only has a 4.19MHz Z80 processor and still can't be emulated at full speed on the ipods yet. Emulation requires at least an order of magnitude more work.
Logged

Offline ZeRøB

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 54
  • PMiP
    • PMiP
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2006, 01:23:23 PM »
VisualBoy Advance (a gba emulator for the PC) runs at 300-400% with a GBA game on one core from my computer (AMD Dual: 2x 2,2GHz)
Logged
OMFG NO DON'T CLICK HERE SERIOUSLeH!

Offline Llorean

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 12931
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2006, 03:31:16 PM »
In terms of "way more power" we only have approximately 4 times the speed. In terms of emulation this is NOT a lot of space to work with.

As well, that's simply a comparison of raw computing frequency, and says nothing to the additional hardware in the Gameboy Advance.
Logged

Offline travishayes89

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 243
  • !!!AC/DC Rocks!!!
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #12 on: August 17, 2006, 05:54:34 PM »
Quote from: ZeRøB on August 17, 2006, 01:23:23 PM
VisualBoy Advance (a gba emulator for the PC) runs at 300-400% with a GBA game on one core from my computer (AMD Dual: 2x 2,2GHz)

thats because desktop and laptop units are equipped with 3D graphics chips, and look at your cpu frequency, 2.2 GHz, versus the iPod Video's 75 MHz chip, and with a quick calculation on windows calculator , 2200 / 17 is approximately 117.64, thats a whole butt load of space to work with. why do you think you can run Windows Media Player while playing video games on some computers and not experience anything, but when you are playing music in Rockbox while playing bubbles, it skips like heck.
Logged

Offline ZeRøB

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 54
  • PMiP
    • PMiP
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2006, 07:33:42 PM »
That wasn't my point, my point was that even with 2,2GHz you can't run a GBA emulator very fast (300% isn't that fast if you think of it). 17MHz * 3 == 52MHz =! 2,2GHz
Logged
OMFG NO DON'T CLICK HERE SERIOUSLeH!

Offline travishayes89

  • Member
  • *
  • Posts: 243
  • !!!AC/DC Rocks!!!
Re: gba support in rockboy?
« Reply #14 on: August 18, 2006, 10:31:10 PM »
but one thing, what would you do for buttons, the GBx (1980s/1990s), has 8 buttons, the GBA has 10, the DS has 12, 13 if you count the touchscreen, the iPod only has 7, and thats counting scrolling left and right as two different "buttons".
Logged

  • Print
Pages: [1] 2
« previous next »
+  Rockbox Technical Forums
|-+  Support and General Use
| |-+  Plugins/Viewers
| | |-+  gba support in rockboy?
 

  • SMF 2.0.17 | SMF © 2019, Simple Machines
  • Rockbox Privacy Policy
  • XHTML
  • RSS
  • WAP2

Page created in 0.195 seconds with 21 queries.