Could this be reworked to run on a PM G5?

[TheShortTimer]

The Supermodel emulator enables the Sega Model 3 arcade platform to run on Intel machines under Mac OS, Linux and Windows.

What I found interesting is that the Sega Model 3 is powered by a PPC "603e CPU that could run at 66, 100 or 166 MHz, 33 MB of RAM and two Lockheed Martin Real3D/Pro-1000 GPUs."

My question is this: wouldn't a dual PM G5 be able to easily emulate this hardware and on the software front, could the emulator be recompiled to run on a PPC CPU? You'll have to excuse my ignorance about this but I'm curious as to whether it's possible, especially given that the target hardware involves the PPC platform.

 

[G4fanboy]

"Supermodel was written by Bart Trzynadlowski and Nik Henson. It is based on the findings of the original Supermodel effort by Ville Linde, Stefano Teso, and Bart from 2003. The PowerPC emulator is originally by Ville Linde and the Sega Custom Sound Processor emulator was donated by ElSemi. Development began in January 2011.

Supermodel incorporates code from the following projects:

• GLEW: The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library, for managing OpenGL 2.x support.
• zlib, for ZIP file support.
• Musashi by Karl Stenerud, a Motorola 68K emulator.
• YAZE-AG: Yet Another Z80 Emulator by Andreas Gerlich, for its Z80 emulator by Frank D. Cringle.
• Amp by Tomislav Uzalec, for decoding MPEG Layer 2 audio."

Open GL 2.x... Most of my G4 are Open GL 1 IIRC

An Motorola 68K "Emulator" is inside nanokernel in Mac OS 9. It is a supervisor in realtime IIRC

Maybe if we find a wrapper or Open GL 2>Open GL 1 converter it could be run as a Classic app.

Off-Topic: We need also a "Intel" Metal to Open GL2 converter to take Apple ARM to PowerPC code revival.

 

[timidpimpin]

Without a doubt the G5 has enough horsepower. It would come down to the porting method as to how good it would really be. With the source code I think something rudimentary could be put together in Mac Ports.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Without a doubt the G5 has enough horsepower. It would come down to the porting method as to how good it would really be. With the source code I think something rudimentary could be put together in Mac Ports.

I don't have the programming skills to pull this off but I'd gladly help or contribute in whatever form if this could be accomplished. It would be a great addition to the PPC Mac gaming scene imho.

 

[XaPHER]

Boredom is dangerous. It compiles fine on 10.5, save for a problem with makefile parallelism that's easily worked around. Unfortunately, the code doesn't look written with running on multiple CPUs in mind, pretty much just intel. There's more or less invasive hardcoded byteswapping at various places in the emulation, since both 68k and PPC are big-endian and x86* are little-endian of course. Make jobs aside, the OS X makefile otherwise compiles out of the box on 10.5 with the last official powerpc SDL build installed. Once built and up the 603 interpreter keeps running in illegal instructions before anything happens, which is a pretty normal symptom if everything is byteswapped.

It would possibly just need some signficiant reworking towards memory layout assumptions in the emulation. Since the sega model 3 doesn't have much documentation from what I've seen, it would depend more on the clarity of the source code documentation, I guess.

Next time I'll go to sleep instead.

 

[TheShortTimer]

@XaPHER I admire your boredom! 😀

Does this mean that there's potential for this to be worked upon - if anyone is interested enough to have a go? I'd gladly help out if I'm directed as to what I'd need to do, because this isn't my field.

 

[XaPHER]

Somewhat, but the project doesn't seem to be in development since ~2012 and the software is stated "Alpha quality" (3 games fully working according to site). It's not looking that promising to revive unless it restarts being developed, or the entity reviving it wants to continue development.. That's what I think. But yes, it looks doable to make run on powermacs, just not paying off.

 

[timidpimpin]

MacPorts Guide

guide.macports.org

That's a good place to start. If I have time later this week I might give it a go.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Somewhat, but the project doesn't seem to be in development since ~2012 and the software is stated "Alpha quality" (3 games fully working according to site). It's not looking that promising to revive unless it restarts being developed, or the entity reviving it wants to continue development.. That's what I think. But yes, it looks doable to make run on powermacs, just not paying off.

It's still in development but this is not publicised on the main page because apparently the webmaster has been too busy to update it accordingly. Instead, you have to find the more recent releases on their forum and the Mac versions are not listed in an organised fashion. You're required to search through the posts in the hope of finding what you need.

Supermodel Forum • Index page

MacPorts Guide

guide.macports.org

That's a good place to start. If I have time later this week I might give it a go.

Thanks!

 

[timidpimpin]

Have you looked into Mac Ports at all? I've been pretty swamped with work lately. I know Ports well on BSD, but have never used Mac Ports.

But this is certainly possible, though compiling from source isn't fun for anyone, other than maybe a sadist.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I don't have any experience with using Mac Ports beyond the most basic of stuff but I'm willing to give it a go, if others will offer suggestions periodically if/when I run into problems.