Nintendo NES Emulator For Palm OS 5
KalemSoft has released NesEm, a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for Palm OS 5 devices. NesEm is the first Palm OS Nintendo Emulator and runs a number of classic NES games.
NesEm runs on Arm compatible devices with Palm OS version 5.0. The emulator supports the NES 4 channel sound and 8-bit color. The game comes with a ROM converter utility for windows, and lets you store game roms in memory or on a expansion card. The emulator has configurable controls and even supports the Sony game controller.
The developers site has a list of 70 games that have been confirmed to work with NesEm. The list includes such titles as Super Mario Bros, Excite Bike and the Legend of Zelda.
NesEm v1.0 is shareware and registration costs $18. There is a limited demo available that will only run roms that are smaller than 32k.
Thanks to yOyOYoo, gfunkmagic and David for the tips.
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RE: why only os5? :<
Tony
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With great power comes great responsiblity.
RE: why only os5? :<
RE: why only os5? :<
Thanks,
Ricky
------------------------
The stylus is mightier than the pen!
RE: why only os5? :<
-James.
RE: why only os5? :<
-Kevin Crossman
RE: why only os5? :<
The 486 also has memory caching that provides a major reduction in the time needed to retrieve instructions from memory. The Dragonball doesn't have an instruction cache, which leads to even slower performance.
--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com
RE: why only os5? :<
The Motorola processors may take longer for each instruction, but the instructions in general, do more on the Motorola. i.e. you need several x86 instructions to be equiv to one Motorola. Isn't that correct?
I seem to remember a comparison from the old Motorola/Mac / Intel/PC discussions, saying that on average a 40MHz 040 is about 95% of the speed of a 66MHz 486 DX2. I do realise that the Dragonball is not an 040...
Cheers,
-James.
RE: why only os5? :<
--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com
RE: why only os5? :<
Ah, well there's something I didn't know. I thought the 68K dragonballs were based on the 68020. Definitely not as optimized as I thought...
Thanks for the info.
-James.
RE: why only os5? :<
IIRC, a 486DX could do a no-op in one cycle if the instruction was in it's smallish icache, but on average took around 2 or 3 cycles per instruction (almost the same as an ARM9 CPU) on some small benchmarks.
My guess is that an emulator in OS4/68k code would be around 20 times slower than the same emulator under OS5/armlet code, given the current CPU frequencies. That would seriously impact game playability.
RE: why only os5? :<
RE: why only os5? :<
RE: why only os5? :<
Wrong - pay attention before posting yr thoughts:) Liberty is a gameboy emulator - this is an NES emulator (u know - a console machine that connects to a tv set).
Cool
RE: Cool
- Ancient Art of War
- Gato
- Mechwarrior 1
- Castle
- Red Baron
...just to name a few.
RE: Cool
the VisorMiser
_______________________
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. -- Sir Winston Churchill
RE: Cooler would be...
However, i would prefer an ATARI VCS 2600 or Commodore C64 emulator.
Why?
The screen of the Palm-based PDAs is limited in size. Though the resolution might be - depending on the PDA model - even better than the C64, the emulated systems all were designed to be displayed on a *TV*.
Thats why I would say Atari 2600 - the games were made with TV in mind, too, but the little resolution makes the screen better "readable" on a PDA.
And, the games were great considering playabilty - anyone remember Pacman, Pitfall / II, Decathlon, River Raid, DigDug, Chopper Command, Galaxian, Joust, Missile Command, Vanguard, Defender and all the other titles?
THATS what we need!
And of course, a C64 emulator - no other system has software en masse like the C64.
RE: Cool
My friends and i recently gathered together some 2nd hand Atari 2600 gear that we had - some we picked up recently at a yard sale. We planned on having a 'Atari 2600' nostalgia party of sorts. We had been going on about how great those games were - how in many cases they were so much more entertaining than todays games. So we got together, hooked it all up, and began going through those games. After about 25 minutes we came to the sad realization that - in fact - these games were 100 times more boring then we remembered:) Oh well.
Fortunately - i DO still get much enjoyment out of C64 games - the complexity of the games and the graphics was great enough AND the gameplay good enough (in many cases) that i still get a great amount of entertainment value out of these games. So i want a C64 emulator for PalmOS 5.
>>Thats why I would say Atari 2600 - the games were made with TV in mind, too, but the little resolution makes the screen better "readable" on a PDA.
>>And, the games were great considering playabilty - anyone remember Pacman, Pitfall / II, Decathlon, River Raid, DigDug, Chopper Command, Galaxian, Joust, Missile Command, Vanguard, Defender and all the other titles?
Yeah but - all of these games are available for this NES emulator - and they are MUCH better than on the Atari 2600. Of course - the NES was meant for a TV as well - so the resolution is fine on a Palm OS 5 device.
RE: Cool
RE: Cool
RE: Cool
C64 resolution was 320 x 200 pixels, which would fit just so, and allow a 320x120 window below for disk drive controls and special characters (i.e. run-stop, C=, and function keys).
My only problem was with how the SID could be emulated effectively on such a tiny speaker.
I've got quite a bit of C64 stuff at my house to play with which I revive with VICE and Frodo, but of course that's just me.
I saw the PocketPC C64 emulator advertised-- lo and behold, just like I envisioned it. Only no Palm version, and apparently not anywhere close to being in site. http://www.clickgamer.com/screenshots.htm?pid=4
I disagree with the "readability" issue... this was used comparing VIC-20 games to C-64 games when they were released. I've only seen that on "simple" games-- when the time was taken by a developer to fully use the functions a computer could provide, there were some awesome results. When they spent most of their time trying to appease all people/machines, the visual effects suffered because they had to meet the common denominator (mind you, not the *lowest*; I've spent some time with the Atari 2600). I've had "Pong" and "Defender of the Crown" playing on a Commodore 64 (okay, not at the same time), and the differences are obvious :)
"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces." --Aldo Leopold
Slick as snails
RE: Slick as snails
RE: Slick as snails
As best I can tell, the ROM PDB files have creator 'NESE' and type 'nROM'. Record #0 is 16 bytes and has the iNES-format header. Record #1 is the PRG ROM image, while record #2 is the CHR image. I don't yet know the split point for PRG/CHR images that are >= 64K.
You could use PAR to assemble a PDB from this info after using a tool to split the .nes file into multiple parts.
--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com
RE: Slick as snails
p.s. kidding aside, thanks for the info Ben. that was helpful for those who did understand what you said. ;)
Nes roms?
RE: Nes roms?
-James.
RE: Nes roms?
http://www.kalemsoft.com/nes_list.txt
... other stuff works that isn't on the list - but list contains roms that are confirmed to work. remember - the demo limits you to 32k roms(i think thats right? go look it up for yrself on the site).
Slow?
-Kevin Crossman
RE: Slow?
30fps is what near perfect speed should be, at least for pNester. 50-60 is ultrasmooth. Most 400mhz machine should give above 50-60fps on all ROM (ie. sound and picture run faithfully like on original version)
Games that work on Demo
It ran like a charm on my NX70. It might have been even a bit fast. :-)
Ted
RE: Games that work on Demo
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why only os5? :<