5 ms·

He mentions archival as a motivation but can we trust the rest of the hardware to last more than a few decades? Isn't emulation the real archival solution?

by pedrocr 10y ago

ekianjo 10y ago
Yabause already exists but it's not a perfect emulator yet. So right now the best way to enjoy games as they were is still the original hardware.
- pedrocr 10y ago
  Thanks, hadn't found that one with some quick googling, only found some horrible binary "freeware" stuff. He also mentions using his reverse engineering knowledge to help emulation authors so hopefully that includes Yabause. Having an open-source emulator is particularly important if we want to be able to archive these games forever.
- erikj 10y ago
  SSF exists and is much better than Yabause, although it's not open source.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Non Open Source emulators are dead in the water in terms of archiving. 10 years later if the original author is not around anymore, you won't be able to rely on it nor improve on it. I wish all emulator writers understood that. PPSSPP and Dolphin have made great progress BECAUSE they were open.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      I would imagine a fair few emulator writers don't much care about maintaining the "backups" fiction, even under the classier name "archiving"
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        Historians in 2200 will be thanking them none the less, we lost a lot of early film lets not let that happen to this art form.
        rbanffy 10y ago
        And it's not only film. Early television, audio recording, books (in special in times when copying them was costly)... The list of information we lost is enormous.
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        There is zero value from games not being published or sold anymore, so the term archiving is very much appropriate.
    - bane 10y ago
      Saturn emulation on MESS is surprisingly good. Not up to some of the others, but I was pleasantly surprised last time I tried it with how many games were playable.
stepvhen 10y ago
It would be, but cycle perfect emulation is very difficult and costly. Higan (formerly Bsnes) manages it with Snes emulation and it requires a cpu with a rate over 3GHz. I remember reading the N64 would require a 10GHz cpu to emulate with 100% archival accuracy. long story short, it is the real solution, but its not a practical one by any means.
- aperrien 10y ago
  Have there been any efforts made with FPGA emulation? It might work out better for this type of project.
  - abrasive 10y ago
    That would definitely make cycle accuracy easier between all the system parts. The hard part is for someone to actually develop the emulation for all the custom chips in the system. In particular, the two graphics chips are very complex and the documentation is very hard to understand. The same goes for the sound chip. The others are all standard enough to be reasonably straightforward (if not actually easy).
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    Yes, FPGA implementations exist for some classic systems, including some game consoles. Here are some relevant links (I'm sure there will be other systems that have been recreated in FPGA form): http://www.retrocollect.com/News/super-nintendo-recreated-in-fpga-clone-console.html http://www.retrocollect.com/News/super-nintendo-recreated-in... http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/stuffing-an-nes-into-an-fpga/ http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/stuffing-an-nes-into-an-fpga/ http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?12847-fpgagen-a-SEGA-Genesis-Megadrive-clone-in-a-FPGA http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?12847-fpgagen-a-... http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/ http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1chipMSX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1chipMSX
bane 10y ago
Yes. In general there are two real paths to long-term archival of games: emulation and reproduction. Emulation is the best possible path IMHO since it enables the games to be played (and experienced) on pretty much any hardware. I think this work may do quite a bit to help in that area, there's really no reason the Saturn isn't nearly perfectly emulated these days. Reproduction is the next best and much harder than Emulation. Basically figuring out how to build the hardware again. There's several versions of this with much older hardware (C64, 2600, etc.) with new hardware being produced that can run the old software natively. There's also "lesser" versions that use modern CPUs, etc. to run the code basically also in emulation, but this is not the same thing. However, reproduction is both technically more difficult and has a smaller audience who's willing to add yet another machine to their collection to see old games. also, MESS's emulation is also not too terrible, I was pretty surprised with how many games worked under it
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Emulation is far from perfect even for older systems. Amiga emulation is still being worked on. Less popular systems have poor standars of emulation too.
  - bane 10y ago
    Yeah of course. But there's a lot of distracting work that's being done to try to keep old, rapidly failing and limited quantity systems alive (for various definitions of alive). In a hundred years, the only practical way to experience classic software like this will be via emulation and I believe that's where resources should be put. There's a weird kind of snobbery in classic gaming that, unless you're playing original games on original hardware, you're doing it entirely wrong and emulation stuff is basically just dirty piracy. Fast forward to today and the talk of the community is that old game and hardware prices are getting sky high, and in the case of some systems (like the 5200) finding working equipment is getting to be impossible. No duh, sucking all of the inventory for a product that's not going to be manufactured in anymore and allowing the prices to slip into normal supply-demand areas means that's what's going to happen -- even worse, the new audience who can be exposed to this material shrinks even smaller every day. For almost all practical purposes, systems like the Amiga or the SNES or similar vintage are pretty much complete in terms of emulation -- the entire known software libraries are basically completable. In many ways, emulators like UAE offer better software compatibility than real hardware!
abrasive 10y ago
As I think I mentioned that's been another major outcome. I've been working with Yabause developers both to improve their HLE of the CD block, and to implement full low-level emulation using dumped ROMs.
- goldenkey 10y ago
  Awesome that you are an HNer. What are you getting your PHD in Professor Abrasive?
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
Personal archiving is allowed under USC's Fair Use terms AFAIK whilst emulation isn't; might just be legally protective wording (or an attempt at that).
illinx 10y ago
Longterm yes, but the cd drives on these things die decades before the roms and processing hardware. He had mentioned in the video that he was surprised that the solid state laser died so soon but I was under the impression that it's almost always the drive motor that's the first to go.

He mentions archival as a motivation but can we trust the rest of the hardware to last more than a few decades? Isn't emulation the real archival solution?

by pedrocr 10y ago

He mentions archival as a motivation but can we trust the rest of the hardware to last more than a few decades? Isn't emulation the real archival solution?

ekianjo 10y ago

Yabause already exists but it's not a perfect emulator yet. So right now the best way to enjoy games as they were is still the original hardware.

pedrocr 10y ago
Thanks, hadn't found that one with some quick googling, only found some horrible binary "freeware" stuff. He also mentions using his reverse engineering knowledge to help emulation authors so hopefully that includes Yabause. Having an open-source emulator is particularly important if we want to be able to archive these games forever.
erikj 10y ago
SSF exists and is much better than Yabause, although it's not open source.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Non Open Source emulators are dead in the water in terms of archiving. 10 years later if the original author is not around anymore, you won't be able to rely on it nor improve on it. I wish all emulator writers understood that. PPSSPP and Dolphin have made great progress BECAUSE they were open.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    I would imagine a fair few emulator writers don't much care about maintaining the "backups" fiction, even under the classier name "archiving"
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      Historians in 2200 will be thanking them none the less, we lost a lot of early film lets not let that happen to this art form.
      - rbanffy 10y ago
        And it's not only film. Early television, audio recording, books (in special in times when copying them was costly)... The list of information we lost is enormous.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      There is zero value from games not being published or sold anymore, so the term archiving is very much appropriate.
  - bane 10y ago
    Saturn emulation on MESS is surprisingly good. Not up to some of the others, but I was pleasantly surprised last time I tried it with how many games were playable.

stepvhen 10y ago

It would be, but cycle perfect emulation is very difficult and costly. Higan (formerly Bsnes) manages it with Snes emulation and it requires a cpu with a rate over 3GHz. I remember reading the N64 would require a 10GHz cpu to emulate with 100% archival accuracy. long story short, it is the real solution, but its not a practical one by any means.

aperrien 10y ago
Have there been any efforts made with FPGA emulation? It might work out better for this type of project.
- abrasive 10y ago
  That would definitely make cycle accuracy easier between all the system parts. The hard part is for someone to actually develop the emulation for all the custom chips in the system. In particular, the two graphics chips are very complex and the documentation is very hard to understand. The same goes for the sound chip. The others are all standard enough to be reasonably straightforward (if not actually easy).
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Yes, FPGA implementations exist for some classic systems, including some game consoles. Here are some relevant links (I'm sure there will be other systems that have been recreated in FPGA form): http://www.retrocollect.com/News/super-nintendo-recreated-in-fpga-clone-console.html http://www.retrocollect.com/News/super-nintendo-recreated-in... http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/stuffing-an-nes-into-an-fpga/ http://hackaday.com/2013/01/23/stuffing-an-nes-into-an-fpga/ http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?12847-fpgagen-a-SEGA-Genesis-Megadrive-clone-in-a-FPGA http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?12847-fpgagen-a-... http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/ http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1chipMSX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1chipMSX

bane 10y ago

Yes. In general there are two real paths to long-term archival of games: emulation and reproduction. Emulation is the best possible path IMHO since it enables the games to be played (and experienced) on pretty much any hardware. I think this work may do quite a bit to help in that area, there's really no reason the Saturn isn't nearly perfectly emulated these days. Reproduction is the next best and much harder than Emulation. Basically figuring out how to build the hardware again. There's several versions of this with much older hardware (C64, 2600, etc.) with new hardware being produced that can run the old software natively. There's also "lesser" versions that use modern CPUs, etc. to run the code basically also in emulation, but this is not the same thing. However, reproduction is both technically more difficult and has a smaller audience who's willing to add yet another machine to their collection to see old games. also, MESS's emulation is also not too terrible, I was pretty surprised with how many games worked under it

ekianjo 10y ago
Emulation is far from perfect even for older systems. Amiga emulation is still being worked on. Less popular systems have poor standars of emulation too.
- bane 10y ago
  Yeah of course. But there's a lot of distracting work that's being done to try to keep old, rapidly failing and limited quantity systems alive (for various definitions of alive). In a hundred years, the only practical way to experience classic software like this will be via emulation and I believe that's where resources should be put. There's a weird kind of snobbery in classic gaming that, unless you're playing original games on original hardware, you're doing it entirely wrong and emulation stuff is basically just dirty piracy. Fast forward to today and the talk of the community is that old game and hardware prices are getting sky high, and in the case of some systems (like the 5200) finding working equipment is getting to be impossible. No duh, sucking all of the inventory for a product that's not going to be manufactured in anymore and allowing the prices to slip into normal supply-demand areas means that's what's going to happen -- even worse, the new audience who can be exposed to this material shrinks even smaller every day. For almost all practical purposes, systems like the Amiga or the SNES or similar vintage are pretty much complete in terms of emulation -- the entire known software libraries are basically completable. In many ways, emulators like UAE offer better software compatibility than real hardware!

abrasive 10y ago

As I think I mentioned that's been another major outcome. I've been working with Yabause developers both to improve their HLE of the CD block, and to implement full low-level emulation using dumped ROMs.

goldenkey 10y ago
Awesome that you are an HNer. What are you getting your PHD in Professor Abrasive?

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

Personal archiving is allowed under USC's Fair Use terms AFAIK whilst emulation isn't; might just be legally protective wording (or an attempt at that).

illinx 10y ago

Longterm yes, but the cd drives on these things die decades before the roms and processing hardware. He had mentioned in the video that he was surprised that the solid state laser died so soon but I was under the impression that it's almost always the drive motor that's the first to go.