New emulator: Simbuino (Windows)

[Skyrunner65]

Tried to install, but WINDOWS XP (Yes, I know) doesn't like .NET Framework 4.5 .
Not your fault, I just need to get Windows 7 or something to run this.
I have no way to get Windows 7 (Don't have the money) (Except for piracy, which is just wrong).
Any chance you could port it to 3 or 3.5 (have no idea what Windows XP uses)?
Sorry for any inconveniences.

[Myndale]

@Myandale: Can you please, please add it soon?

Sorry for not responding to this earlier Muessigb, for some reason this one slipped past me unnoticed. SD emulation is the next thing on my Simbuino list so I'll be working on it just as soon as I'm done with the Gamebuino tracker.

On the practical side of things how does everyone think this should be implemented? I could tap into low-level API functions to read/write sectors on a real device, that would probably be the easiest thing to do programming-wise because I wouldn't have to write any FAT code but it would mean that people would need a physical SD card, something I'd like to avoid if possible. I could implement a virtual SD-card with it's own UI pane that you can drag-n-drop files into etc, that would have the added advantage of being able to write to it and safely "format" it etc. Finally I could just have a user setting that points to a games folder and automatically copies the files to a virtual SD card at start-up and when new files are added, that would probably be the most user-friendly and it would support using a real SD card as well, although adding write-support might be a bit tricky. Or maybe I could just go with the second option but with a user setting to copy any new/changed games that are found in the game folder?

What to do, what to do.....

[Myndale]

Any chance you could port it to 3 or 3.5 (have no idea what Windows XP uses)?

I had a quick go at building for 4.0 but unfortunately there are too many .NET 4.5 specific features I'm using in the GUI. If I get some time over the break I'll have another shot at it and see what I can manage, I might be able to get you a one-off build that will run games but with some of the GUI functionality disabled (like single-stepping, real-time memory updates etc).

[Drakker]

I'd go with the virtual SD card as a binary image. A lot of tools already exist to manipulate various type of disk/card/cd images, so emulating only the block device on the Gamebuino would probably be the best. If users want to access the files on the virtual SD card, they can either mount it with their preferred image mounting tool or write it to an SD card. This would also allow users to easily uses an image of their existing SD card on the emulator without incurring any risks to the data on the real SD card.

[Myndale]

Excellent suggestion Drakker. I normally don't like making people install additional apps to use specific features of my programs but you're right, there are a lot of good IMG tools out there. Plus it'll save me a ton of work, implementing a block device should be trivial.

[Drakker]

Trivial? It depends for whom, I'd have no idea where to start hehe.

While we're at it, I have a special request. A way to automagically resize the display area to that it renders with a correct pixel ratio, say 2:1 or 3:1 or something. The uneven pixel width drives me crazy, especially when there is checkering involved.

Also, I think there's a bug in the installer. Every time I want to update, it says it can't update from the current folder. I have to first uninstall the emulator whenever I want to update it. That's both on native Windows 8.1 and in the infamously buggy Win7 virtual machine I use in Parallels.

[Skyrunner65]

I had a quick go at building for 4.0 but unfortunately there are too many .NET 4.5 specific features I'm using in the GUI. If I get some time over the break I'll have another shot at it and see what I can manage, I might be able to get you a one-off build that will run games but with some of the GUI functionality disabled (like single-stepping, real-time memory updates etc).

I'll just use the emulator, as I can't really make out stuff like EEPROM or Flash displays (Thank you so much, hope you have a Merry Christmas[or whatever you celebrate{They're all the same,really}])

[Myndale]

Ok, I've done a build using .NET 4.0 which should be compatible with XP (that said, I haven't tested it on XP myself). Single-step is disabled as are most of the extras like GIF export, hardware uploads etc. I also had to turn off real-time updates of the registers and memory etc, seems there was a lot of optimization work that went into 4.5.

This is a one-time-only experimental build, download link is here: http://www.ppl-pilot.com/files/Simbuino40.zip

[Skyrunner65]

Thank you so much! Now I can test sound and different angles.

[Myndale]

Well that was a lot easier than I thought it would be, Simbuino now supports SD Card emulation. It's currently read-only, and I haven't tested it extensively, but it seems to be working well. Download link is the same as usual, thx again to Drakker for the suggestion of using IMG files.

Simbuino is going on the back-burner for a little while as I finish off a project I've been promising Rodot for the past couple of months, but in the mean time all feedback and bug reports etc are appreciated as always.