ZSNES on mac [not a request :)]

jkenney · Post by **jkenney** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:38 am

I have decided to look into the possiblity of compiling the linux source code on mac osx.

As all know gcc is capable of cross-compilation, and therefore I will try and do some reserch and see if it can just compile x86 assembly for the ppc. (Slashdot had something... but the link is dead).

Another option is porting it from x86 to ppc assembly or C.

If anyone has any help they would like to share that would be appreciated.

Noxious Ninja · Post by **Noxious Ninja** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:48 am

jkenney wrote:I have decided to look into the possiblity of compiling the linux source code on mac osx.

As all know gcc is capable of cross-compilation, and therefore I will try and do some reserch and see if it can just compile x86 assembly for the ppc. (Slashdot had something... but the link is dead).

Another option is porting it from x86 to ppc assembly or C.

If anyone has any help they would like to share that would be appreciated.

Cross-compilation is having, say, a machine running x86 Linux compile binaries for a Mac OS X machine. GCC can't do what you want; you'd have to write a auto-translating version of NASM. Good luck with that.

As for porting the assembly, sure, it can be done. If you know both x86 assembly and PPC assembly, feel free to give it a shot.

Aerdan · Post by **Aerdan** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:49 am

I'm not an official dev by any means, but feel free to port ZSNES to OS X. I'm not going to stop you, and if you end up doing it and making it work, we'd be happy to include your changes in the sources.

Kagerato · Post by **Kagerato** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:58 am

Personally, it would seem that if you were actually going to do the kind of monumental, inconceivable task of porting all that code to another architecture, you might as well try to re-write the emulator in C instead. It would be approximately the same amount of work, and you'd likely achieve compatibility with many architectures simultaneously.

jkenney · Post by **jkenney** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:19 am

Interestingly enough nasm was ported to osx.
My first attempt will be to compile it as per instructions for linux and see what doesnt work.

Ill post the results.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:26 am

nasm on osx will produce binaries that run on 80 x86 machines.

not PowerPCs.

its a 80x86 assembler. thats all it will do.

Noxious Ninja · Post by **Noxious Ninja** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 4:18 am

jkenney wrote:Interestingly enough nasm was ported to osx.

That would be an example of a cross compiler.

jkenney · Post by **jkenney** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:41 am

It seems that way.

Though seriously assembly is just another language albiet more hardware specific.

Although a headache its not impossible to compile x86 assembly for another architecture.

Well now i have to look through each assembly file and convert it. If anyone else here knows ppc and x86 assembly then help would be appreciated

There are a lot of files.

On the plus side, i got configure and make to work it compiles but then stops once it realizes that the object files are x86. But theoreticly that means once i convert the assembly it should work.

Noxious Ninja · Post by **Noxious Ninja** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:47 am

Like Kagerato said, if you really intend to start on this somehow, convert the code to C, not PPC assembler.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:10 pm

FYI, total size of all ASM to convert is close to 4.5 megs.
Noteworthy, zsnes/src/cpu holds ~1.24 megs and zsnes/src/video holds ~1.67 megs.

ZSNES board

ZSNES on mac [not a request :)]

ZSNES on mac [not a request :)]

Re: ZSNES on mac [not a request :)]