 Mednafen for Tiny Core Linux [message #6450] |
Wed, 19 May 2021 15:15  |
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I am joining this forum because I am interested in making this emulator available as a Tiny Core Linux extension.
My motivation is that I have recently been tinkering with a very weak computer: and HP T5530 Thin Client. I have just managed to install Tiny Core Linux 4.x on it, as well as Dosbox and Mednafen. Everything works great and I am very happy with the result.
Mednafen is a great fit for these kind of systems as I you wouldn't think of running anything more than a 16-bit emulator on them (I have not tested the PS-one emulator yet). The caveat of Tiny Core Linux is that packages do not seem to be automatically made available in subsequent major releases, so it hasn't been available since TC 5.x (we are on 12.x now). I am hoping building the tcz extensions won't be too hard after reading the OS book and hopefully the process can be automated to some extent so it can be repeated for upcoming major releases of Tiny Core Linux.
I am a developer but my background is mainly on Android development with Java and Kotlin, I have not made Tiny Core Extensions (tcz) before or even built Mednafen myself, which means I will have a few things to learn. Any pointers on where to start to learn how to build the project would be appreciated. I would also like to know if anyone else would be interested on making something like this happen.
Good morning and, in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.
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| Re: Mednafen for Tiny Core Linux [message #6455 is a reply to message #6450 ] |
Mon, 31 May 2021 15:03  |
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I just wanted to give a quick update. The good news is I managed to build a tcz package and run it locally. The bad news is that I cannot get it to run at playable FPS on the HP T5530 Thin Client (128MB of RAM, 800MHz processor).
Does anyone know what options could help reduce the memory footprint of the build? And the reason I assume it's a memory problem is because I also managed to build a ZSNES extension for Tiny Core and the same SNES ROMs run fine on it, so I presume Mednafen loads more stuff in memory which may push the limits of the machine I am targeting.
I've also experimented using 0.9.x so I could bypass X11 and render on the frame buffer using SDL 1.2, but that did not make much difference, though some of the games that would not run otherwise where running very slowly instead of getting completely stuck. Does anyone know if Mednafen 1.x consumes significantly more resources than the legacy version?
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| Re: Mednafen for Tiny Core Linux [message #6456 is a reply to message #6455 ] |
Tue, 01 June 2021 11:44 |
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The VIA Eden CPU in that thing would be weak even by the standards of 20 years ago, it's doubtful that you'll be able to run a remotely accurate or modern SNES emulator fullspeed on it.
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| Re: Mednafen for Tiny Core Linux [message #6457 is a reply to message #6456 ] |
Tue, 01 June 2021 16:01 |
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Thanks for your feedback. If you don't think there is any significant optimization I could do to the build or configurations that would allow me to run a 16-bit console emulator on Mednafen I may stick to 8-bit console emulation which seems to run OK (I tested NES and MasterSystem).
Good morning and, in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.
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