Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

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cyrix
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Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by cyrix »

Hey all,

I know this hardware may be a tad bit past the generations currently tackled by PCem, but I was wondering if it was possible to work on a Slot 1 P3 motherboard, specifically the Intel VC820? I ask because with specific hardware one can run an original xbox development kit, so it would be cool to emulate that hardware on any machine and allow greater usability of early xbox development kits. Here are the specs needed:

Intel VC820 Motherboard (Ebay, Germany),(Euro 24)
128Mb Ram (with terminator)I actualy got 2, 128mb and 2 terminators so 1 set for 5.75? (Tweakers.net sale, NL)(Euro 11,50)
CPU INTEL P3 SLOT 1 733MHz CPU SL3XN 133MHz 256KB 1.65V , (Ebay UK)(GBP 6,98 ~ Euro 8.50)
64MB AGP Dell 3J562 nVidia Geforce3 NV20 DVI / VGA Graphics Card (Ebay UK)(GBP12.99 ~ Euro 15,81)
Some IDE and power cables, Powersuppply (free from leftover PC, 25 ?)
Screen, secondhand, free (25 euro and you have a nice flatscreen one secondhand)
Harddrive (SDK says minimal 20GB, IDE) 80Gb free harddrive (5 euro secondhand?)

(Taken from here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160706185710/https://codeasm.com/component/content/article/37-xboxalpha/92-xboxalphabuild.html)
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omarsis81
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by omarsis81 »

that would be great! I guess the main work of the Pentium III would be to emulate the new instructions: SSE.
But realistically, we would need around three times the fastest single performance CPU to achieve 733 mhz, maybe in 10 years lol
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leilei
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by leilei »

The Xbox's more than just a P3 box. The lack of datasheets on everything else make that an unreachable enigma. This is another one of those classic old "emulate xbox it's easy it's just a pc" threads isn't it. It's the same reasons that PCem can't emulate the SGI Indy and the SEGA Katana dev boxes
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omarsis81
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by omarsis81 »

Right, the GeForce3 is almost unthinkable to emulate
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SarahWalker
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by SarahWalker »

SSE and Pentium III emulation are unlikely to ever happen.
cyrix
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by cyrix »

Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to reply everyone.
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omarsis81
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by omarsis81 »

Cyrix, if you need a dev kit it means you are a programmer! PCem is open source and anyone can contribute. If you have some knowledge everyone would appreciate your help with any small piece of code you could contribute
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leilei
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by leilei »

omarsis81 wrote: Sat 25 Jan, 2020 7:11 pm Cyrix, if you need a dev kit it means you are a programmer!
Not necessarily. The demand for Xbox dev boxes I usually see are more for hoping for a "halo beta" of some kind to be found on their drives, disregarding the earlier mac development history...
Cheez
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by Cheez »

And either way, programming isn't a limitlessly transferable skillset. Programming by itself offers nothing, you need to know what you're intending to do in detail, you need to know the relevant language(s), etc.
ecksemmess
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by ecksemmess »

The question of P6 microarchitecture emulation (i.e. Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III) comes up a lot on these forums and Sarah has patiently explained numerous times why it's likely never going to be feasible, at least not without an unthinkably drastic change to the entire structure of how PCem works. The technical details are way beyond me, but my understanding is that it's an issue with out-of-order execution being deeply ingrained in the architecture of those CPUs, and there being no real way to emulate that properly in a single-threaded interpreter or recompiler.

That said, my impression has been that it *would* be possible to emulate P6 systems at a more "HLE"-ish level--i.e., sacrificing anything close to accurate CPU timings, but emulating the general capabilities of the system at a practically usable, "near enough is good enough" level aside from that. Pretty sure Sarah isn't interested in that sort of emulation though, but maybe she'd be willing to accept it as a patch if it were done well enough? It's definitely something that would have enough practical benefits to be very worthwhile IMO.
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omarsis81
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by omarsis81 »

Regarding out-of-order instruction execution in line with what ecksemmess said:

1) K6 family uses OoO, but for was I just read in a awkward way than the rest of the P6 family, so I assumed Sarah managed to deal with the OoOE issue.
quote from PC Mag 27-May-1997:

"Using AMD's RISC86 superscaler microarchitecture, the chip CONVERTS each x86 instruction into a series of simple operations than can then be processed using typical RISC principles (including out-of-order execution, register renaming, branch prediction, data forwarding, and speculative execution).

https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=I8kDx1-auSkC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33

2) If OoOE still is a problem to emulate, then a good option I believe could be to emulate VIA's C3 that gives more power and doesn't have this issue. Quote from Wikipedia "Clock frequency is in general terms favored over increasing instructions per cycle. Complex features such as out-of-order instruction execution are deliberately not implemented, because they impact the ability to increase the clock rate, require a lot of extra die space and power, and have little impact on performance in several common application scenarios."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_C3
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SarahWalker
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by SarahWalker »

It shouldn't be that much more difficult to implement a rough model of P6 timing than it was for the K6. I simply haven't done it yet.

Pentium III is more about the speed required to do it. I have no real expectation of ever getting a usable 450 MHz P6 emulation, let alone the 733 requested here. On top of that SSE emulation would be additional work, which is only supported on CPUs that PCem doesn't run fast enough to emulate. So it's not going to happen.
ecksemmess
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by ecksemmess »

SarahWalker wrote: Sun 26 Jan, 2020 5:37 pm It shouldn't be that much more difficult to implement a rough model of P6 timing than it was for the K6. I simply haven't done it yet.
Oh, that's great news! As you say, all those later generations of P6 wouldn't be practical on any present or near-future host machine, but something a bit more humble like a Pentium II at 233-333MHz on a 440FX/BX board or something like that would be really great. I realize it's not a priority at the moment but it's encouraging to know it may be doable down the line.
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leilei
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by leilei »

given the performance of today's CPUs, probably expect more like a Klamath on 440LX at best (if there would be any proper P6 emulation at all, considering the CPU work on v15 led to a burnout)...

I'm more excited for the Mystique though :P
ecksemmess
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by ecksemmess »

For sure. Couldn't help grinning from ear to ear when I first saw those screenshots in the dev thread a couple weeks back.
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leilei
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by leilei »

yeah. while I haven't posted about the mystique much (I think the issues on non-ZP boards are already known) i've been really curious on that card and what games work with it (and what works really fast also executes pretty fast!). Lightmapped stuff like all the quakes and unreals are obviously not going to fly (much less so than later Mystique-related cards) but it was fun seeing MDK2 run "ok" on it with techland's TCMSI opengl driver for example (which is a very much unintended unsupported way to play that game). It's definitely better than Virge at the 3d department, even if it doesn't do the filtering or alpha channels, it's certainly made up for it with 'arcade performance' and precision.
tk421
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by tk421 »

I am not sure it makes sense to expect Pentium III emulation anytime soon. A very large number of Win95/98 games will work fine on a Pentium MMX system. A lot of the Pentium III games can be run on a modern computer or through a virtual machine running WinXP. Even some of the Pentium II games can be run just fine on a modern computer, or through a virtual machine running WinXP.

I would love to see Pentium II emulation in PCem but if it will only work at 20% versus the 100% performance of the Pentium MMX, then I think improving the existing PCem experience is the more sensible option. Personally, I find Matrox Mystique emulation to be a great idea for PCem. I look forward to testing this exciting new feature of PCem.

I think PCem developers are doing a great job making PCem and I appreciate the work they have done bringing us this amazing program. Thank you!

tk421
anabate
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by anabate »

Well, if Socket 8 and Slot 1 Emulations were to be possible on PCem, then it would like this....

[Socket 8] Award 440FX clone [Intel]
Pentium Pro/150
Pentium Pro/166
Pentium Pro/180
Pentium Pro/200
Pentium II Overdrive/300
Pentium II Overdrive/333

[Socket 8] Award 440FX clone [Klamath]
Pentium II/233
Pentium II/266
Pentium II/300

[Slot 1] Award 440LX clone
Pentium II/233
Pentium II/266
Pentium II/300
Pentium II/333
Celeron/266
Celeron/300
Celeron/333
Celeron/366
Celeron/400
Celeron/433

[Slot 1A] Award 440BX clone
Pentium II/233
Pentium II/266
Pentium II/300
Pentium II/333
Pentium II/350
Pentium II/400
Pentium II/450
Pentium III/450
Pentium III/500
Pentium III/550
Pentium III/600
Pentium III/650
Pentium III/700
Pentium III/733
Pentium III/750
Pentium III/800
Pentium III/850
Pentium III/1000
Celeron/266
Celeron/300
Celeron/333
Celeron/366
Celeron/400
Celeron/433

[Slot 1B] Via Apollo Pro 133
Pentium II/233
Pentium II/266
Pentium II/300
Pentium II/333
Pentium II/350
Pentium II/400
Pentium II/450
Pentium III/450
Pentium III/500
Pentium III/533
Pentium III/550
Pentium III/600
Pentium III/650
Pentium III/667
Pentium III/700
Pentium III/733
Pentium III/750
Pentium III/800
Pentium III/850
Pentium III/866
Pentium III/933
Pentium III/1000
Last edited by anabate on Tue 28 Jan, 2020 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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omarsis81
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by omarsis81 »

lol anabate, did you read the whole thread? :lol: :roll:

edit: also, to my knowledge the Pentium II Overdrive only came either 300 or 333 mhz
anabate
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Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

Post by anabate »

omarsis81 wrote: Tue 28 Jan, 2020 12:30 am lol anabate, did you read the whole thread? :lol: :roll:

edit: also, to my knowledge the Pentium II Overdrive only came either 300 or 333 mhz
Oh, sorry about that. I didn't know the Pentium II Overdrive only came with either 300 or 333 MHz! :)
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