Aemulor

With the anticipated soon (Wakefield?) release of Aemulor for the Raspberry Pi, I have been thinking of buying a copy to move my last few bits and bobs from Virtual Acorn to the Pi.

I know what it does, but how does it do it? Does it work behind the scenes to load 26bit apps as if they were running nativly on the desktop, or does it load up its own emulator like environment? Does it need a copy of an older OS Rom?

Cheers,
Becky.

Does it work behind the scenes to load 26bit apps as if they were running nativly on the desktop, or does it load up its own emulator like environment?

Probably both but perhaps neither.

To answer in practical terms, the normal arrangement is to load aemulor onto the icon bar as part of the boot process. While it is there, you are limited to an application slot of no more than 28M for all applications. You tell it as part of the configuration which apps that it needs to be active for (e.g. Impression). Other apps run at full speed but those marked as 26 bit run a bit slower – the overall effect is that something like Impression runs about as fast as it did when it ran natively on older hardware.

You can kill off aemulor to recover the larger permitted application space.

It has one or two minor bugs – for example Messenger Pro and Photodesk don’t always run at the same time with aemulor running – with Messenger Pro running, Photodesk stiffs the machine if you start it. So it is a good idea to kill aemulor whilst it is not needed.

Thank you Chris for the information. I Do use Messenger Pro, so it is particularly useful to know they dont play well together.

Cheers.

Aemulor and Messenger co-exist happily together for me on my Iyonix. If someone sends me a jpeg file by e-mail, I find that if I double click it to load Photodesk that’s when the machine stiffs. I suspect a bug in Photodesk.

Photodesk has its quirks. FWIW, I load SwiftJPEG on boot up to view jpegs that I merely want to see, and Thump to view jpeg directories. I only fire up Photodesk to do actual image retouching.

I have rarely noticed any problem running PhotoDesk 3.12(•)—Aemulor and Messenger Pro being always active. But, as privately reported to Chris Hall, his !Cat application fails here on trying to Save out any version of the accumulated directory data, giving ADT apparently in the Aemulor module. Since he cannot reproduce my error condition, we have shelved the issue, but that still leaves me suspicious of Aemulor.

• except when it replots a window in an unexpected place, but that’s probably PhotoDesk not getting along well with MoreDesk, and MoreDesk can be used to reposition an awkwardly placed PhotoDesk window!

(Of course I can run !Cat across ShareFS from elsewhere if I really need it).

Do you people know if Aemulor for Raspberry Pi was presented at the Wakefield show? Any pictures of it? Did it run Archimedes games? Is it available for purchase already? :D

Do you people know if Aemulor for Raspberry Pi was presented at the Wakefield show?

It was on sale at the show and is available as a demo for free download from here – the demo will work for a few weeks after which you need to purchase the full version. The web site will ask for your machine ID and your download will then only work on that machine.

It’s nice to get Impression Publisher, Publisher+, Style, WordWorks and TableMate working on my Raspberry Pi. Once I find the MathGreek font, I’ll get Equasor running too.

My advice is to try the demo and see whether it does what you need. You can then purchase the full version later.

I downloaded the Demo version this afternoon and it works fine- It does everything I wanted it to do.

I was quite amused to see even the select version of !Paint running with it (I had to comment out the lines in !Run which RMEnsured SpriteExtend 1.52 and WindowManager 5.58).

I look forward to buying the full version of Aemulor on pay day.

Oh, and if anyone is worried about trying to find their machine’s ID, dont be concerned, a small app is provided on the site to do that for you.

Chyeers,
Becky.

@Chris Hall: Thanks for the information :)

I’ve been playing around with Aemulor on the Pi today. I’m mainly interested in gaming on Risc OS, so I tried some games with discouraging results:

-Nebulus: black screen. Tittle screen music on the backgroud.

-Mad Professor Mariarti: Same black screen + music.

-Speedball 2: Intro is correctly displayed. Black screen when trying to start a game.

-Pacmania: Black screen.

…and so on. I was using a MDF for an old Acorn monitor whose resolutions are displayed in my monitor with no problems at all, and has 320×256 and 640×480 modes.
It seems impossible for the Raspberry Pi to be configured in 8bpp modes, so I guess it’s a no-go for Aemulor games. Correct me if I’m wrong.

PS: I made a similar post in the IconBar forums. I don’t think there’s much people interested in Risc OS retro-gaming, so I’m trying to get to all the people I can to collect/rise interest in this archeological hobby of mine.

If you want to get the old school games working, most will work. However not using Aemulor.
Use !ArcEm that works really well for old games.
Nebulus, Speedball and Pacmania work well.
There’s not a lot (although there are some) that don’t work using !ArcEm

Thanks for the suggestion, Malcolm. However, I’m not a player really: I just admire games for their technical archievements. I admire perfect scrolls, color-cycling and cool raster effects.
In that regard, ArcEm isn’t for me: it completely ignores host system vsync so games with scroll are jerky and full of tearing. That’s unbareable for me.
Aemulor on the other hand works “well” on the Pandaboard ES (with small compatibility, but WAY higher than what the Pi version seems to do). And Aemulor DOES include some VIDC emulation too, so games should be playable… if the Pi could work with the graphic modes they need.

Hi Senor, Aemulor Pro on an Iyonix doesn’t run many games, it’s not primarily aimed at games emulation.
On the Pi version I wouldn’t expect much if any improvement.

I’ve had no luck with aemulor on my ES for games, which do work?
However Arcem I haven’t had any tearing etc that I’ve noticed, certainly not in the three you mentioned or any of the one’s I’ve tried as well.
Maybe it’s a Pi issue?
I’m trying to get Sphere’s of chaos 2 working at the moment, with a crash with aemulor and unavaliable screen modes with arcem so far….

*Edit (6/17/13): I tried the latest version of ArcEm and everything is running great.

I tried the demo version of aemulor and I’m not able to get any games to work. The last time I tried ArcEm, I wasn’t able to do anything. It would boot into RISC OS 3.x, but the emulator would lock up and do nothing.

Games I tested on Aemulor:

Lemings – Game would load for a moment then crash
Phaethon – Crash
BunnyRace 1 and 2 would crash.
DarkWood would show the cursor then crash.
Elite would also crash.
*Note: The games I tested were from the IconBar in the downloads section
*When I mean the games would crash, the screen would turn black and show an error message. I would get a error followed by a message telling me to click or press a key to continue, or something like that.

I’m using the ‘first generation’ Raspberry PI with 256MB of RAM. My native screen resolution is 1280×1024 (5:4). I’m new to the RISC OS scene, so I don’t have physical copies to test. Are there any games that were reported to run out of the box (or require modules)? Is ArcEM the best current solution for playing 26bit games?

Aemulor is best described as a compatibility layer; it does not provide a full machine emulation, which would be much slower and not permit 26-bit applications to interact with/work alongside newer ones. Whilst many games certainly ran under Aemulor Pro on the IYONIX pc at the time of its release – I had a number of very helpful testers, thank you Ian and Matthew, especially – it is subject to OS changes too.

The current release of Aemulor Pi is targeted primarily at desktop applications, and we’re not recommending it for games because of the OS and hardware differences between the Raspberry Pi and the IYONIX pc. As time goes on, and – hopefully – RISC OS migrates to newer hardware, with different capabilities, full machine emulation is the way to go for running very old games/applications. ArcEm and RPCEmu are the only real options at the moment, each with their deficiencies.

Sad to read that, Adrian.
I have been waiting for Aemulor on the Pi even before I got the Pi itself. Using Aemulor on the Pandaboard ES I got some games to work, with audio pitch problems due to the absence of <44Khz audio, so I hoped the same games could work on Aemulor on the Pi, but it’s not the case: Aemulor is even more incompatible with games on the Raspberry Pi than it is on the Pandaboard.

For me, the Risc OS road ends here. An OS with no demos and proper games (as in tearing-less raster games) is boring. I’m also a programmer but I don’t get much inspiration for “serious” OSes. I hoped Risc OS native on the Pi would be something like Amiga OS on the FPGA Arcade board, keeping some compatibility with it’s old software: VIDC emulation on Aemulor also made me to keep hoping for that. For all this time I wondered why Risc OS community didn’t show much interest on old games/demos, while Amiga community is so passionate about these topics.
But now I see Risc OS is aiming for the “future” and has broken bounds with it’s past. It’s ok, but it’s not my thing. Linux makes a great work as a “modern” OS already and I’m at home with it anyway.

Amiga was always mainly a games machine. RISC OS was always mainly a machine for serious use. So it should come as no surprise that the Amiga community (which is also a lot larger) is more interested to keep the old games running on modern hardware. There are very few “native” RISC OS games that are worth playing, and ArcEm caters for them (or better: is the best platform you could hope for playing RISC OS 2 ARM2/ARM3 games).

Maybe ADFFS will help in the far and distant future – not sure if 26bit emulation is even planned though.

An OS with no demos and proper games (as in tearing-less raster games) is boring.

I understand where you’re coming from. Without this at the moment, I hope you still have enough interest in the RISC OS scene for you to occasionally pop in and see if the situation changes.

There are very few “native” RISC OS games that are worth playing

Maybe, but there were some cool demos.

Maybe ADFFS will help in the far and distant future

I hope so. The Pi kids need to be attracted to the platform!

Amiga was always mainly a games machine. RISC OS was always mainly a machine for serious use.

That’s not true. Amiga was so excellent that it inspired programmers all over Europe to create the best home games of it’s period on a computer, yes. But it was oriented at image processing, video editing and audio production. It had a complete set of productivity software for all kind of tasks, nothing to envy from the Macintosh or Acorn computers. It wasn’t a console-with-keyboard as many people think.

There are very few “native” RISC OS games that are worth playing

I don’t agree here. There are great RISC OS games, some are exclusives (Chocks Away, Starfighter 3000, The Dungeon, Hamsters, Technodream), some are poor Amiga conversions (James Pond) and some are exact or improved Amiga conversions (Lemmings, James Pond 2, Zool, Lotus II, The Chaos Engine, Speedball II, Cannon Fodder, Pacmania best version I’ve ever seen! etc). There are even great PC ports like Alone in the Dark or Wolfenstein 3D.
It’s not about number but quality.

ArcEm caters for them

ArcEm makes them run, but it’s broken: it ignores host’s vsync and lets the games swap buffers whenever they want to on the emulated system, so games have horrible tearing, making them technically uninteresting and ugly as an in-browser java game. It’s insulting for how these fine games must have worked on a real Archimedes.

I understand where you’re coming from. Without this at the moment, I hope you still have enough interest in the RISC OS scene for you to occasionally pop in and see if the situation changes.

Of course. It’s just that I won’t fire up Risc OS until / if things improve for my archeological game / demo interests :D
I know it’s technically possible to emulate the custom chips of an Archimedes and have the the games run natively on the CPU: I’ve seen it with my own eyes on the Pandaboard with Aemulor. So there’s hope after all, I suppose.
Maybe someone fixes ArcEm and makes it usable for games, who knows. But if it hasn’t been fixed for years and people insists in saying that they can’t see any tearing (aaaargh!) I wouln’t hold my breath.

Remember that there is quite some variation in the OMAP4 chips.

So it is entirely possible for someone else not to see tearing yet you do.

It is a known hardware issue not software.

Remember that there is quite some variation in the OMAP4 chips.
So it is entirely possible for someone else not to see tearing yet you do.
It is a known hardware issue not software.

Sorry but that’s nonsense. ArcEM’s video is NOT synced to host’s vsync. What does it have to do with OMAP4 chip variations?
The same games are smooth under Aemulor in the exact same machine (Speedball II for example). They only show tearing under ArcEM. Not to mention Hamsters, Zool or Twinworld, all of wich work NATIVELY on the same exact machine and have ZERO tearing, with perfect, smooth scroll.
When a game/emulator swaps buffers outside the vsync period, tearing is seen. If it’s properly synced and frames per second equal que physical refresh rate (wich IS the case), you get smooth scroll and no tearing. Even if game/emu refresh rate doesn’t match physical refresh rate BUT you wait for vsync to swap buffers, you still get tearing-free scrolling.

So it’s ArcEM, not my Pandaboard ES or my Raspberry Pi.

ArcEm makes them run, but it’s broken: it ignores host’s vsync

Then that’s something that could (and arguably should) be addressed by the ArcEm developers which, as it’s on SourceForge, could include you.

Meanwhile, RISC OS 5 (in particular) is more concentrated on the future and compatibility with “well written” software, rather than emulation of older features, and I think that’s appropriate.

I did say /current/ release of Aemulor Pi. The VideoCore hardware in the RaspberryPi is very capable. And Aemulor has at its heart an ARM-on-ARM emulation engine that is faster than either ArcEm or RPCEmu. RISC OS itself should most definitely be focused upon the future.