11
Software Emulators vs FPGAs
(www.youtube.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
11 points (78.9% liked)
Gaming
20021 readers
407 users here now
Sub for any gaming related content!
Rules:
- 1: No spam or advertising. This basically means no linking to your own content on blogs, YouTube, Twitch, etc.
- 2: No bigotry or gatekeeping. This should be obvious, but neither of those things will be tolerated. This goes for linked content too; if the site has some heavy "anti-woke" energy, you probably shouldn't be posting it here.
- 3: No untagged game spoilers. If the game was recently released or not released at all yet, use the Spoiler tag (the little ⚠️ button) in the body text, and avoid typing spoilers in the title. It should also be avoided to openly talk about major story spoilers, even in old games.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Isn't it better and more accessible to mod existing roms to work with software emulators instead of doing the FPGA thing? It'll help you preserve the game just the same way and won't be as difficult as learning FPGA shit.
The route most normal people think when some code is buggy is to modify the code instead of making a whole new CPU. The ROMs aren't going to vanish just because there are no more CPUs which can run the same ROM.
I think what the society
would benefit from is a centralized ROM Marketplace (Donation based) where you upload modded ROMs for obsolete consoles but of course because of how intellectual property works under capitalism this isn't possible.
As mentioned, FPGAs are super expensive, not very efficient and require a lot of knowledge of the underlying ICs.
Also there are no FPGAs for PS2 and other modern consoles
I guess the argument would be that software fixes need to be implemented for each ROM separately. Which also involves the pain of decompiling. Yes FPGAs are probably a pain, but they potentially offer perfect emulation of every game.
One thing I'm not sure about is how portable FPGA logic is. If I write a NES emulator in verilog for one FPGA, can that code be reused on a later model if, for example, my FPGA goes out of production?
There’s also an argument to be made for preserving the “hardware” - those machines don’t last forever. the Analouge guys recently made (or are making?) an FPGA that is compatible with all of the Turbografix hardware paraphernalia which is arguably just as important as the actual software