We’ve been away for half a year so there is a lot to talk about in this new upcoming release. Rest assured I’m working hard as hell to meet the Christmas sweet spot. It will take a couple of blog posts to go through it all. So let’s start with the first one. I’m putting these articles out now because I really don’t fancy having to write all this stuff later on in the holidays when I drop this stuff.
In this blog post, let’s talk about something else than cores that’s going to be new in v1.1
RetroArch on PowerPC Mac
Some generous gifter called nogagplz has been sending me some PowerPC Mac-based laptops over the past year and that stuff hasn’t been gathering dust to say the very least.
So RetroArch now runs on Mac OS X PowerPC. The cores that are known to be endian-safe (basically all the cores out now for the big-endian PowerPC based game consoles like the Wii, PlayStation3, etc) will be making an appearance on RetroArch PPC OSX.
Not sure how big the Mac PowerPC community still is but my main motivations for getting RetroArch out on this (by now obsolete) platform is that it is a lot easier to debug code on something resembling a PC than it is to be mucking about with gimped consoles that don’t even support gdb out of the box. So it makes PowerPC development a lot easier and what’s more, I personally want to see libretro (and by extension RetroArch) running on everything. So going even further back in time in the past and making sure RA runs on that is all part of the plan.
What’s been done?
– RetroArch OSX PPC runs on OSX starting from 10.5. It might be possible to lessen the requirements even more. Only time will tell.
What’s to be done in the future?
– Get better performance out of it (could be better at least on my iBook G4). The OpenGL renderpath must be suboptimal given how ancient and suboptimal GL implementations must have been back in those days. Hopefully there’s something lower-level to tap into.
OS9 port after v1.1??!
If I’m REALLY crazy (no promises) I might attempt a port of RetroArch on even OS9. The only main motivation for this would be that the guy who supplied me the Powerbook G3 stocked that HDD with a truckload of old classic games, some of which are quite some nice ports that are actually better than their PC equivalents (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Hexen, Quake II is a solid port, Killing Time, Carmageddon, etc, etc) so it’s quite a nice game box right now. Having RetroArch on here would sweeten the deal even more and it would add yet another platform to RetroArch’s belt.
PRagon
December 12, 2014 — 10:32 pm
What about Metro devices (Windows Phone)?
uyjulian
December 18, 2014 — 10:25 pm
PPC linux?
Radius4
December 18, 2014 — 11:09 pm
complete sentences?
uyjulian
December 18, 2014 — 11:17 pm
http://www.mintppc.org/
matpower
December 24, 2014 — 9:22 pm
I think he means a port of PPC versions of Linux.
KillDashNin9
December 19, 2014 — 5:37 pm
This could be interesting. I miss my iBook G4 and so far it was the best laptop I have owned. G4s and G5s hold up pretty well.
Phredreeke
December 20, 2014 — 12:10 am
my understanding is that most PowerPC users prefer 10.4 for various reasons.
Luigi Burdo
December 20, 2014 — 11:21 pm
it is perfect working on my Quad G5 PowerMac .. Only 4D0 and Psx emulator are not working…probably it need better fix about endianess .Virtual Jaguar and the others are running good!
Gurbz
February 7, 2015 — 11:16 am
Can I test this on my G5? is there a DMG file?
Luigi Burdo
February 12, 2015 — 7:30 pm
Nope you need to download it from github and build it
theelf
February 12, 2015 — 11:21 pm
Oh god thats amazing!! but for G3 maximun is 10.4
No retroarch for me yet…
Luigi Burdo
April 8, 2015 — 9:28 pm
Just test today Libretro Super on My Quad G5 on Lubuntu and !
This is a great result!
54 core(s) successfully processed: 2048 3dengine 4do bluemsx catsfc dosbox fb_alpha fceumm fmsx gambatte gpsp handy meteor nestopia nxengine o2em prboom prosystem quicknes snes9x snes9x_next stella tgbdual tyrquake vba_next vbam vecx virtualjaguar bsnes_accuracy bsnes_cplusplus98 bsnes_mercury_accuracy dinothawr emux_chip8 emux_gb emux_sms genesis_plus_gx gw hatari lutro mame078 mednafen_gba mednafen_lynx mednafen_ngp mednafen_pce_fast mednafen_pcfx mednafen_psx mednafen_snes mednafen_supergrafx mednafen_vb mednafen_wswan picodrive scummvm yabause pcsx_rearmed
15 core(s) failed:
desmume bsnes_balanced bsnes_performance bsnes_mercury_balanced
bsnes_mercury_performance emux_nes fuse mame mupen64plus stonesoup
ffmpeg ppsspp bnes testgl test