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N64 Assembly to PC Assembly Question.

Started by SpooKsta Dec 18, 2000 at 11:23 PM 2 replies 950+ views

Original Post

Dec 18, 2000 at 11:23 PM

Would it be possible to translate N64 (R4300i special) Assembly to PC (intel arch) Assembly as a start and use specific video cards and sound cards as the video/sound unit (RCP I think). Why I ask is because of a Assembler called MASM32. It seems to have HIGH/LOW Level programming capibilites. I know this is almost if not the same as C. I was thinking of building a porter (i think thats what it''s called) in Assembly (MASM32) that translates a .ROM (Mario64 for a start, WHICH I OWN!!!) to a .EXE PC Executable. I was going to start with a... -PENTIUM III Processor (800Mhz & 128 Megs) -Diamond Viper 770 Ultra (NVIDIA TNT2) -SoundBlasterLive! -please don''t respond as if I was crazy or a newbie that has plotted a course before he built his ship!!! I just want a "professional" opinion on this matter, not the opinion of a disgruntled know-it-all wannabe GURU!

Shannon Barber

Dec 18, 2000 at 11:50 PM

I think the big problem you run into emulating hardware is not the asm, its the IO. You can put something together that will translate r4300i to x86 in a perfectly valid fashion, but it won''t run without providing the correct bios routines, IO points, interraupt emulation, etc...

Thats why most emulators work off a virtual machine design that emulates the console''ss microcode with x86 opcodes and loads a .bin file that has the console''s bios in it.

If you could pull off a translation (ala Bleem!) you can actually run the demanding titles. Old NES emulators require somthing like a P90 to run well, and the NES was an ~8Mhz? processor...

I''m not sure how fast the N64 is, but you probably can''t have a 10:1 ratio and be able to play the games (until 3500MHz machines are available...)

SpooKsta

Dec 19, 2000 at 2:38 PM

Where in the .bin is the BIOS?
Is it the beginning code up to 0x00000040 and that up to
0x00001000 is the boot code?

Spark

Dec 19, 2000 at 3:07 PM

You can emulate a SNES on a 486 66mhz just fine and i believe the nes is running at < 3 mhz. Emulating a N64 on a pc has already been done.

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