I am interested in using my AC100 to run some emulators so that I can play some games from some older game consoles. This isnt much of an issue for x86 machines, or ARM machines running Android. But for an AC100 running Linux, it isnt quite as easy. I am personally running Ubuntu 12.10, and I expect a lot of the AC100 users visiting this page will be running a similar setup. Whenever possible, I try to get my gamepad (a Logitech Dual Action) to work logically with the game. If anyone wants to edit this page with their experiences, or information pertaining to other Linux distributions, please feel free.

There is another ARM powered Linux machine out there that is commonly used for running emulators. It is the OpenPandora. Here is a page concerning emulator compatibility for that specific platform, but which may be of some use for the AC100:

http://pandorawiki.org/Emulator_list

DGen

FCEUX - following instructions for Ubuntu 12.10 if that is the OS you are using.

http://dgen.sourceforge.net/

Heres DGen compiled for armhf by another AC100 user. I found it here:

http://ac100.wikispaces.com/file/detail/dgen_1.30-1_armhf.deb/318451022

http://ac100.wikispaces.com/DGen\SDL

Frame rates are pretty good, but can be inconsistent. At times there is a drop in frame rate which is pretty annoying, but with some configuration may be able to eliminate this. It recognized my gamepad no problem; options for configuring it are not obvious, but default setup works well in my case. Sound works great.

http://yabause.org/

I still dont have this program actually running a game yet.

There is no Yabause-gtk or Yabause-qt package, which is one of Yabauses' dependencies. In 12.10 these packages exist, but What I did before I found the Ubuntu packages was pull packages from Debian Sid. The following is how I started to try to get Yabause running, but I never made it as far as actually running a ROM image. First make sure you have installed freeglut3 and libmini18n1 which are available in the regular Ubuntu repositories. I found an armhf .deb package here:

http://packages.debian.org/sid/armhf/yabause-gtk/download

However, the version of Yabause-common available in the Ubuntu repository does not match the one required by this version of Yabause-gtk. A compatible version can be found here:

http://packages.debian.org/sid/all/yabause-common/download

This allows me to launch Yabause and configure it, including gamepad and video. However, the program crashes when trying to load a ROM file. Hopefully the package found in the Ubuntu 12.10 repository works better.

All the required packages are in the repository, but upon launching the program, there is an error initializing OpenGL.

GFCEU is a graphical front end to FCEU, both available through the Ubuntu repository. I do not consider the frame rates good enough to be playable. Sound is sketchy. Recognizes my gamepad no problem though, and is easy to configure. This program is generally considered to be deprecated and replaced by FCEUX.

http://www.fceux.com/web/home.html

FCEUX is based on FCEU, and is an attempt to merge the best qualities of the many off-shoots of FCEU.

Here is the direct download:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/fceultra/files/Source%20Code/2.1.5%20src/fceux-2.1.5.src.tar.bz2/download

With the exception of not doing it through an SVN repository, I used the instructions found here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=971455

Extract the archive. For this example, I will just use ~/

Then open a terminal and run the following commands;

sudo apt-get install scons libsdl1.2-dev subversion libgtk2.0-dev

cd ~/fceultra/

sudo scons install

I think its important to note that following these instructions result in no graphical front-end. To help improve performance, I lowered sound quality to 22050Hz and “Low” quality. Sound still sounds good after doing this. I have not changed any of the other sound settings but they may be able to improve performance further. Configuring the gamepad is easy, and the settings are automatically saved. However, the configuration seems somewhat buggy, but not too bad. Setting the video mode to PAL seemed to make even the music run slower, which does not seem proper to me. I did not try too many other settings. All in all, Id say playable, but there is definitely room for improvement.

The FCEUX package available in the repository has GTK compiled in. The GUI front end is very nice and easy to use. I got no sound output if I set to 22050Hz, though I could still set to Low quality. Frame rate and consistency could use improvement, but again, Id say its playable.

http://byuu.org/bsnes/

Good options for configuring a gamepad. However, whenever I try to load a ROM, the program crashes, taking my gamepad configuration with it. Also seems picky about file extensions. Current versions only support .sfc file extensions, which are difficult to find, and tools available for Linux to convert other file extensions to .sfc are also hard to find. Furthermore, the programming of this software was done for emulation accuracy, and does not attempt to obtain good speed on less powerful hardware. It is unlikely that this program will be useful on an AC100.

http://www.snes9x.com

Here is a direct link for download of version 1.53

http://files.ipherswipsite.com/snes9x/snes9x-1.53-src.tar.bz2

In order to compile this, I had to setup an external hard disk for use as a swap partition. I cant say the exact size of the swap partition needed (I used 12GB), but I can say that it is at least 650MB. Compiling took about 2 hours. I should note that the high RAM use and most of the time was due to compiling one video filter called “hq2x.0”. After successfully compiling, launching the program and loading a ROM results in a black screen and nothing else.

http://m.peponas.free.fr/gngb/

I havent actually played a game, but I have loaded one. Emulation seems very fast. However, when sound is enabled, the program freezes and pins my CPU to 100%. I have to ctrl-alt-f6 and kill gngb from there, and then I can switch back to ctrl-alt-f7. The program recognizes my gamepad, but there is no obvious way to configure it, and the default configuration is unusable.

http://notaz.gp2x.de/pcsx_rearmed.php

This was designed for the OpenPandora, but can work with other ARM devices as well. Here is the direct link for download:

https://github.com/notaz/pcsx_rearmed/tarball/master

Before compiling, I first had to install libbz2-dev.

Extract the archive. For this example, I will just use ~/

Then open a terminal and run the following commands;

cd ~/notaz-pcsx_rearmed-af044cb/

configure

make

The program will be located in the same directory. The program seems to work fine, but after launching I am presented with a message “You don't seem to have copied and BIOS files to <SD card>/pandora/appdata/pcsx_rearmed/b”. You can simply use a “bios” directory within the same folder as the program. The message goes on to say not all games require one, but many do. I have not gotten around to testing out a ROM yet.