Re: GSport-ers on Pi?

[Ivan X <ivan@ivanx.com>]

I didn't put a lot of time into it, but my first pass at compiling GSPort and KEGS-SDL failed on the Pi for reasons I no longer remember. Rather than reinvent the wheel, if anyone wants to provide me with steps to compile, I'd be happy to post them and the precompiled binaries on the page where I've got  standard KEGS and LinApple up (http://ivanx.com/raspberrypi/raspberrypi_emulators.html).

On Monday, April 22, 2013 11:31:47 PM UTC-4, David Schmenk wrote:
> On Monday, 22 April 2013 11:13:40 UTC-7, Steven Nelson  wrote:
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> > On Apr 22, 10:15 am, David Schmenk <dschm...@gmail.com> wrote:
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> > > Not a simple change, but how about a SDL driver?  X11 on pi is painful and sucks some of the performance from gsport.  I compiled KEGS-SDL on the pi and got it running with the exception of getting a disk image loaded.  It gets a little performance boost from running with SDL and full-screen mode is much better as it isn't trying to scale a 640x200 window to 1280x1080 in software.
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> > > Also, in your spare time, the 65816 emulation should be rewritten in ARM assembly.  That would be sweet!
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> > > Dave...
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> > I am not disagreeing with Dave Schmenk, but I am not following the
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> > logic.  Running GSport in the native X graphics (LXDE or whatever)
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> > performance is quite good.  Running X11 on a Mac (osx 10.8.3) and
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> > using ssh to the RPi, then yes performance does suffer a bit
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> > (emulation speed does not, but console (keyboard/mouse/screen) does
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> > suffer).  I have never knowingly used SDL so I can't comment if it
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> > would help.  I think Kegs/GSport both run well natively on a RPi.
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> > Yeah, 65816 emulation in ARM would be sweet ;-)
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> >   --Steve
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> It has to do with the way the X server is currently implemented on the RPi.  As it currently stands, it uses the framebuffer X driver - not taking advantage of the GPU for anything.  Not too bad if you run the emulator in a non-stretched window; the X server shares the memory for the window with the emulator so there isn't any unnecessary copying.  But if you want that fully immersive feeling where the window goes full-screen, the poor ARM processor is replicating those pixels in software.  Running remotely can't share the window memory, which is why that is so slow (copying the pixels over the wire).  If the X server was accelerated, running full screen wouldn't be much of an issue.  Someday this will happen.  SDL just changes the screen resolution so that it's the monitor doing the scaling to fill the screen.
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> I guess for me it's just a matter of the emulator feeling more like a native environment rather than another app running on the desktop.  Just my $.02
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> Dave...