well,not abandoned,just not possible. Chilly Willy only ported over the PC Saturn emu just to show it would be impossible.Like x3sphere said, the architechure is just too complicated to emulate. Hell, I can't even get a Saturn Emu to run full speed on my computer and barely full speed on my mum's bf's computer
I didn't port it. Like I said in the post, sofiacat did. I only added the ability to load CD images so you could actually try playing a game (I have played Panzer Dragoon and Nights on it).
Also, I think the Saturn is very doable. Let's look at the specs:
Two 28 MHz SH2 processors. Emulating this CPU is simple. The tough part is there are two of them. Put one on each CPU in the PSP for best speed. Each PSP CPU should have no trouble emulating one SH2 CPU.
One SH1 processor. This doesn't need to be emulated. The only thing it does is process requests for the CD. There is no direct programmer control over this CPU, so all the emulation needs to do is catch the requests and handle them natively.
One 68000 + sound hardware. Can be ignored for the moment like many Saturn emus do, but it's not a really tough part to emulate.
One 2D video chip. This chip is the bulk of the emulation problem. It's a sophisticated 2D chip aimed at making platform type games. If there would be a slow down in the emulation, this would be the main source.
One 3D(ish) chip. This chip can draw raster lines in various modes. Not really too tough to emulate, and is reasonably fast with 3D hardware in the target system.
Misc control chips that handle things like DMA and IO. Not a big deal.
Overall, the biggest issue is the 2D video chip. It's a real bugger. You'd want to do this section in 100% assembly for best speed. You could probably also skip emulating parts of it depending on the game. As for the main CPUs, I'd put one on each PSP CPU as I mentioned, and not worry about cycle counting. Accurate timing between the two CPUs probably isn't important for most games, and that would improve the speed a little. I'd do this part in assembly as well.
That's the main issue with doing a Saturn emulator on the PSP - you really need to do it mostly in assembly. There aren't many folks left that program in assembly. Emulators these days are mostly C and C++. Back when PCs still used 400 MHz P2s, we saw quite a few emulators that were 95% or better assembly. There are only a few of those left now in an age of 2GHz+ CPUs. Programming emulators for consoles beyond the old 8bit consoles or the 16 bit Genesis requires the same kind of programming you saw on those old PCs.
