Emulation

ok will do - I'm currently at work with some other IRIX boxes (r5k 02, single 600 v12 octane, dual 360 MXE octane, tezro v12 quad 700). I'll try to do some testing with the different mames I have (mame.xgl .98, sdlmane .149 for kicks), and I'm also testing the mplayer 1.1.1 I was planning on testing for you months ago (btw, early results testing with my tezro - it was smoking fast with -vo gl_nosw)

I'll have to wait for bossman to move that file to contrib

On the MPlayer/MIPS mailing list, we have a 4x1GHz Tezro decoding "IMAX: Journey into Amazing Caves [Blu-ray]", somewhat imperfectly. Nobody really thought you could watch DVDs on an Octane, either...

If there was only 25 hours in a day...

I gotta say, I forgot just how slow an o2 really is - I dunno how I put up with it for so many years as a desktop system in the early 2000's. I had outdated neko libraries so I had to update a few to just be able to run the SDLmame .149 and mplayer 1.1.1 - after each wave of nekoware installs it took 60+ min for swmgr to run rqsall. after like 6+hours of this I still had unresolved symbols and had to just abandon ship with the o2. my old blue toaster really is a Frankenstein - it still has the original install from around 2001, with all the various stuff I tried installing through the years - its amazing anything runs on it as it is. I do think there is a serious bottleneck on those systems with bus speed to the system disk, I dunno why it takes so long to install stuff on those systems.

But anyway, I did get to do more mplayer testing on my 4x1ghz Tezro, seems the H264 MP4 video's don't perform as great as I thought they originally did - the ones I tried with no real command line ju-jitsu started playing fine but eventually slowed down and lost sync (but they have a great start, first 30 sec or so they run perfect). The XViD MP4 files I played worked absolutely great, ran without any issues with no loss of sync - currently watching Game of Thrones on my Tezro. I tried some H264 1920 videos from my Samsung Note 3 cell phone and it didn't really work at all.

Is there something more I can do to help with the mplayer testing? particular videos, formats, command lines to try? I'm not well versed in mplayer, but I'd love to know what the blue-ray fellow was doing as a command line to try out on other formats..

Yeah, the 1.1.1 Mplayer has sync issues. This was just a "test" build of something newer than what we had. I wanted to see if others could re-produce my results (ie. run the binary), and if I had the ability to actually do the port. You can run 480p H.264 on a top-of-the-line Octane with this version (with sync issues).

SGI MIPS is "officially" supported on MPlayer now and that's where my changes go, so if you want the latest and greatest, you have to go to Mplayer SVN.

Just be warned, Mplayer in its entirety is in 1000 pieces right now, so any official release, SGI or otherwise, is a ways off.

When things stabilize, I'll do another release. I haven't given up - there's upstream issues that need to clear out before we have something worthwhile to package up. I think the "re-spin" of the 1.0.4 I did is pretty darn good - just don't expect miracles.

EDIT: -- WRT to the 1.0.4. - I don't think there's a DVD this won't play now, either with AC3 or DTS. If you find a problem child, let me know, but I don't think that'll happen. I'm pretty confident I nicked *all* the DVD-related issues...

Probably should move this to an Mplayer thread...

Guys -- the Mplayer stuff is really another thread.

Please LMK if this MESS/MAME is cool, and I'll do a proper Neko package. (I think it hits the mark 10000% - but I'd like some feedback outside of one forum member).

The -06 version doesn't incorporate my OpenGL work - I'm just trying to assess games compatibility.

I had some free time at work and gave the glmame .94 a run with a quad 700mhz V12 Tezro, everything was perfect when running in a window - I went up as high as a scale factor of 3 - no issues with any games I tried. Some neogeo and cps2 games started to suffer once in fullscreen, but everything else was perfect.

I have a single 600 v12 octane and a dual 360 MXE octane i'll try to try tonight, along with the .106 build.

I have spent a lot of time through the years playing with various builds of mame on various SGI's (Indigo2's, o2's, octanes, etc), there have been some really good fast builds earlier in xmames history, there were great builds that cut out sound for playable builds - but this has been the best I have seen out all of them. Def congrats on a great job. If only I could twist your arm into looking into adding a working cps3 driver!

pics from the quad 700 V12 Tezro:

Well I suppose I will never have a more appropriate thread to post my arcade boards with SGI equipment, so here it is - my 2 slot neogeo, CPS2 and CPS3 SF3 arcade boards!



I have a whole lot more boards, not sure if we have any other arcade hardware guys here?

If only I could twist your arm into looking into adding a working cps3 driver!

You don't need to . You just need to identify which version of MAME the CPS3 stuff started shining.

I'm totally cool with trying to back port known-working and important drivers. I think this is a better strategy @ this time than trying to chase the latest MAME on SGI. We have a really good, working base right now. You do the research, and I'll attempt the port.

Ran some tests on a single 600 V12 octane, it pretty much performed close to my quad 700 V12 Tezro (not surprised, the octane is a production machine, it has everything turned off and nothing running as per regular discreet spec, so for a single threaded program it was pretty close).









I have another octane (dual 360 MXE) I want to try out tonight if time permits

Axatax_ wrote:

If only I could twist your arm into looking into adding a working cps3 driver!

You don't need to . You just need to identify which version of MAME the CPS3 stuff started shining.

I'm totally cool with trying to back port known-working and important drivers. I think this is a better strategy @ this time than trying to chase the latest MAME on SGI. We have a really good, working base right now. You do the research, and I'll attempt the port.

I think a working cps3 driver appeared in .111u6 or something like that - I will be hunting down some older versions and trying them out, I also want to figure out what versions some of the other drivers started working - give me a few days to do some leg work

edit: cps3 decryption was added .116u2

Octane MXE had an issue (I'm wondering if this is a shared issue with mplayer as posted in that thread).

But here are the results, the few games I tried all had the same "need texture, too big" output, failed then gave up.



I gave the sdlmame .149 a try, it worked, but slowly when set to soft, setting it to opengl gave strange artifacts in the menu and also resulted in a white screen when actually playing a game

There is commonality in the OGL renderers. I don't have an MXE, and I target VPRO -- See my response in the MPlayer thread (regarding the 1.1.1 renderer).

The OGL stuff works like **nobody's business** in this MAME and the MPlayer 1.1.1. I think this port really pushes boundaries and the state-of-the-art (as much as you can on a ~10 year old platform). It's the best the SGI platform has ever seen WRT to these type of software (ie. games and "trivial stuff"). The MPlayer 1.1.1 in /beta, and this MAME version are really the best we've ever had on Nekoware (period!!). It's gonna get better, but stuff doesn't happen overnight.

Absolutely no question this is the best we have seen, just doing my part in testing the boundaries

Now that the multi-platform part of my tests are done I will start digging through mame drivers, trying didn't ones, also gonna look for a cps3 driver close to that era that works good enuff ^_^

Just wondering, if I find drivers/games not working in
.94 but working in .106 (or previous to .94) do you want me to compile a list or do you just want to know about major things?

gijoe77 wrote: Octane MXE had an issue (I'm wondering if this is a shared issue with mplayer as posted in that thread).

Does the MXE by any chance have Texture Ram? I cannot tell from the hinv on the screenshots. It would explain the inability of using texture with MAME and MPlayer

dexter1 wrote:

gijoe77 wrote: Octane MXE had an issue (I'm wondering if this is a shared issue with mplayer as posted in that thread).

Does the MXE by any chance have Texture Ram? I cannot tell from the hinv on the screenshots. It would explain the inability of using texture with MAME and MPlayer

yes, the MXE has TRAMS

Just wondering, if I find drivers/games not working in
.94 but working in .106 (or previous to .94) do you want me to compile a list or do you just want to know about major things?

This thread is as good a place as any to list anything not working. Major or minor, that's fine. But something like CPS3 not working, yeah, that's major (if MAME has a working driver) and needs to be brought front and center. You gotta do the background work though, and let me know which version of MAME first produced a working version.

I spent some time digging through the MAME docs - It seems there is a lot that does not get documented with that project!

but anyway, here is what I found regarding mame and cps3:
.116 initial encryption cracked, but it seems it was not big-endian friendly
.117 fixed the CPS3 code to be big-endian friendly
.123 Improved linear zoom effect resolution to address gaps in CPS3 rendering.
.128 Removed per-game hacks from CPS3 (moved to DMA callback in SH2 core). Removed Speedups from CPS3 / PsikyoSH, while they do still give a decent speed boost they're not really needed with the DRC and just clutter the code.

so It would appear to me any mame between .117 and .127 would be a good candidate to get the cps3 driver, I really don't like hearing how they removed speedups from cps3 at .128!! I read in some mac/mame forum that cps3 emulation was good in .124, but I dunno how that was decided.

also, regarding the other drivers/games I tested and were having issues in .94: zn.c (street fighter EX, etc), stv.c (die hard, etc), model1.c/model2.c (virtual fighter), vector games (star wars, etc); they all work fine in the .106 release of mame, so it appears to have gotten fixed somewhere between .94 and .106 but I really couldn't find anything mentioned in the docs

edit: I've been doing some more tests in dos mame, it seems .117 runs a good bit faster than .124, not sure if its specifically related to the cps3.c driver or a general mame-slowing-down-as-the-versions-increment sort of issue, but here are the numbers

MAME .117


MAME .124

Thank you, and stay tuned...

dexter1 wrote:

gijoe77 wrote: Octane MXE had an issue (I'm wondering if this is a shared issue with mplayer as posted in that thread).

Does the MXE by any chance have Texture Ram? I cannot tell from the hinv on the screenshots. It would explain the inability of using texture with MAME and MPlayer

Textures have to be the right size to work with it, I believe. Too bad there's no way for someone to create and sell a modern TRAM module that doesn't burn up and has a ridiculous amount of memory.