Hi, all.

I'm using many of MSX emulator.
I use the following MSX emulator mainly.

BlueMSX / MESS / NLMSX / ParaMSX.

Of course I uses openMSX / MSXPLAYer too.
But I don't use them mainly.

I'm very supprised that BlueMSX is very fast growing MSX emulator than other MSX emulator. (especially NLMSX / openMSX)

I think it'll overtake other MSX emulator if this growth is more accelerated.

Also the support of H/W stretch is added on BlueMSX.

Now the screen ratio (aspect) is same as original MSX with Horizontal Stretch.


The following MSX emulator supports Horizontal Stretch.

BlueMSX (1.4.1 or higher)
MESS (0.81 or higher)
ParaMSX (0.46 beta or higher)

bluemsx can run on a old p200mmx? a full msx speeD?

will to support the emulation of the msx2 TPC 310 plus diskdriver DPF550 for full-support the second demo of the MNBIOS?

I've read in the BlueMSX specs that it runs well on a Pentium III @ 600MHz. That's my system configuration, so I'm happy ^^;

fmsx-dos runs perfectly on a Pentium 100, but it's time is over, and such a machine is considered extra-slow now and also hard to find. So, I assume 500-600 MHz as normal requirement (and I am sure it can run on a slower machines as well)

For running on a very old machines, feel free to use no$msx for DOS or CJS - if I am not mistaken, even 80386 PC should be enough.

Developing an emulator is usually an evolutionary process, so consider older emulators to be more buggy and having less features.

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bluemsx can run on a old p200mmx? a full msx speeD? will to support the emulation of the msx2 TPC 310 plus diskdriver DPF550 for full-support the second demo of the MNBIOS?

About support of diskdrive DPF550 : if I don't get me wrong, it's in fact the same diskdrive than the MB8877A used in National and Daewoo MSX2.

In the near future, the blueMSX team will improve the drive emulation, because it's a required step to support Turbo-R.

We have also problems with some demos (Fony demo disk 1 and 2). Probably a better drive suppport will resolve the problem.

In this context, it could happen that the MB8877A diskdrive would be also supported. In the future, the MNBIOS demo could be runned on blueMSX !

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fmsx-dos runs perfectly on a Pentium 100, but it's time is over, and such a machine is considered extra-slow now and also hard to find. So, I assume 500-600 MHz as normal requirement (and I am sure it can run on a slower machines as well)

About fMSX-DOS : this emulator works good also on a Pentium 75, but as you said, the fMSX-DOS time is over, because new emulators are better (more close to the real machines, more features, ....)

About blueMSX : you can indeed run it on slower machines (for example a Pentium 300), but in this case, avoid to use some parts that use much CPU resources like Moonsound for example !

BlueMSX runs perfectly fine on my P2-400, with an 4mb video card (yeah, 4Mb - my 32mb geforce1 went dead)

BlueMSX is very fast, and very well programmed. Congratulations to Daniel Vik!

Yep, blueMSX is a great emu, simply amazing. Thank you for your great work, Daniel!!

In nowadays emulators I miss more debugging functions: only BrMSX and NO$MSX are good for this purposes, but both are out-dated and not very compatible with Win XP.

There is a BrMSX version patched to work with XP, but it lacks of sound.

Any suggestions?

I have a question. Might be a stupid one, though. Howcome you need a fast 300Mhz processor to emulate a slow processor? I mean, it strikes me as odd that you need a pretty decent PC to perfectly emulate an old MSX. Howcome?

Well, better ask the emulator programmers...

CPU emulation is not very time consuming, and I think that it could be easily done in a x4 ratio. That's it, a Z80 running at 3,5 MHz should be emulated in a 3,5x4=14 MHz computer.

The problem is the input/output emulation: video renderers, sound emulation is time consuming because it has to be accurated and also "smoothed". Because of sharp definition of VGA screens, 256x192 is absolutely blocky. That is why most emulators include different renders to blur/interpolate/filter the image. And they are quite heavy in CPU time.

I agree with you: 600 MHz to emulate a 3,5 MHz computer is too much. If you really want to see FAST MSX emulation I would recomend you the following emulators:

CJS - Compujunkies MSX emulator. Weird, not very stable, lovely real hard-disk commands. Works fine in 80386 computers. Nasty sound.

BrMSX - Best MSX1 emulation. Also very fast, it needs a 80386 procesor, and it would run fine in any 486 system. Powerful debugger, good sound emulation but some pc-hardware compatibility issues. I love SCC sound in this emulator.

NO$MSX - Another really fast emulator. It even has a 80286 version (never tried). DOS version is cool, but Windows version is not that good.

With all these emulators you could run a MSX in a, let's say, 80486/33 MHz computer.

And I know what I am talking about. I have developed some simple emulators in the past. If you want to see the smallest emulator ever (and probably one of the fastest too) try this: www.robsy.net/pc.htm. It is a Space Invaders arcade emulator and it runs fine in any 80286 machine (or higher). Pure assembler and I must admit that it could be improved.

Regards,

Ed Robsy

P.S: About FAST emulation, GEM is a Gameboy emulator for MSX2 and up systems. Guyver800 is the only one that has dared to code a dynamic recompilation system for MSX.

would a normal msx2 with a gfx9000 be sufficient to emulate at least the visuals of a c64 then ? Sound would be a bit more difficult I guess..

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CPU emulation is not very time consuming, and I think that it could be easily done in a x4 ratio. That's it, a Z80 running at 3,5 MHz should be emulated in a 3,5x4=14 MHz computer.

Actually on PC there generally is a x30 ratio for emulating a system.
Some systems, like MSX, are more complex than others.

A Z80 CPU emulation with mapped memory system like MSX and synchronisation between system devices with a 4:1 ratio on any x86 CPU is impossible.

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I agree with you: 600 MHz to emulate a 3,5 MHz computer is too much. If you really want to see FAST MSX emulation I would recomend you the following emulators:

None of the programs you mention properly emulate MSX, they make a good effort, but that's all.

You need a 100+ MHz Pentium to emulate a 2 MHz Atari 2600, which is a very simple system.

Maybe you should try writing a CORRECT and FAST MSX emulator, and then see if your statements hold water.

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would a normal msx2 with a gfx9000 be sufficient to emulate at least the visuals of a c64 then ? Sound would be a bit more difficult I guess..

To emulate the whole system (without sound, or with PSG approximation) you will need some more speed.

Purely talking CPU here, C64 has a 6510 CPU at 1 MHz. This CPU is hard to emulate for a Z80 because the architecture is very different.
Z80 is a register based architecture, it has many registers and can execute operations on them efficiently. Accessing memory is not Z80's strong point.
6502 is a memory based architecture, it only has 3 registers and most of it's instruction can access memory as if it were a register. For this purpose the 6502 has a special 256 byte area called ZeroPage, which it can address by specifying just one byte, and therefor is very quick.

The complicated and diverse memory addressing modes the 6502 offers further complicate the emulation.

Having said that, I did write a 6502 emulator for Z80 and I can tell you it's gonna be slow, although I haven't tested it yet...

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A Z80 CPU emulation with mapped memory system like MSX and synchronisation between system devices with a 4:1 ratio on any x86 CPU is impossible.

I am sorry if my statement was not clear: to emulate JUST the CPU, without envolving anything else.

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None of the programs you mention properly emulate MSX, they make a good effort, but that's all.

I should disagree with that: BrMSX is one of the most accurate MSX1 emulation around. I know it does not include all V9938 commands and has other issues on MSX2/MSX2+ emulation, but I am talking about MSX1 emulation. BrMSX hasn't been matched yet.

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You need a 100+ MHz Pentium to emulate a 2 MHz Atari 2600, which is a very simple system.

Again, it is not the CPU emulation the problem, but the weird video chip that allows the user to program directly the CRT. The emulation of this feature is rather buggy and difficult in a PC computer.

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Maybe you should try writing a CORRECT and FAST MSX emulator, and then see if your statements hold water.

I would like to, but as you know, emulators do stimulate piracy