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Help On Porting An Ai Prog

how hard is it to port windows progs to run on ppc (wm5) there is a great product for the pc called ulta hal heres a link to see what it is
http://www.zabaware.com/
now if this could be ported to ppc it would turn si-fi to si-fact it would open up a whole new world to the ppc
any info you guys could give me would be a great help or any guides on porting software
please guys id love to see this software running on ppc
for now its a dream but please help me make it reallity
thank in advanced

Ok here goes:
1) As this is a commercial product and there for getting its source code is not an option porting it would really mean just writing the whole thing from scratch. Not really feasible.
2) From just reading the intro on the site it seems that PDA type device don't really need this kind of app. After all all that 'secretary' like functionality is already exposed for one click use and there is no shortage of various reminders (built in and 3rd party apps).
4) Microsoft Voice Command and Cyberon Voice Commander (full version, not the built in voice dial crap) can launch apps and do other stuff as well as dial the phone so there goes that functionality.
5) For most devices having 2D / 3D animation constantly taking up part of the screen and all that other functionality running in the background may just be to much of a drain on resources.
Sorry. I didn't mean to pummel your idea in to the dirt, but I just can't see something like this happening with the current abilities of our devices.
Perhaps in a few more years as the phones / PDAs get more powerful, but not now.

thank you for you reply well iguess ill just have to wait but it would be nice to have it on ppc as all the app out for ppc at the min dont learn as hal does if i was running hal i could say for eg becky it my hair dresser her phone number is 00000000 and if later on i wanted to ring her i could say ring the hair dressers of i could say who cuts my her and hal would reply becky cuts your hair
its not a nessasery prog but it would make a great protable personal assistant

could i use this to do it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochs
it allows you to run x86 code on a ppc
i know i should probable drop this idea but i cant i really want to see it running on a ppc

Close but no cigar, as they say.
This thing will emulate the PC but not the OS which means you somehow need to stick (what is the minimal version HAL runs on?) desktop windows on you device, and get it to run under the emulator.
Do I need to continue?
It might be possible to create something like this for the newer high powered devices (certainly not my Jamin or your k-jam). Perhaps you could peach the idea to the manufacturer.

i have already got intouch with the makers of hal and am still waiting for a relpy
yer i think i may have to give up on this one as hal uses the ms assistantce so id have to get them working before i could even mske a start on the speach system and that would take up most of my mem but yer there is a but i dug out my old pc the other day its has a 350 cpu and 64mb of ram which is way below my ppc and hal was running fine and i was also able to have enough mem to run ms media player and ie exploerer and my ppc has a 400mhz cpu and 128 mem so there is still hope

You can't really compare PPC CPU and computer CPU speeds like that - they're different types of chips off the bat, and also they run different operating systems, which almost always means the computer ends up doing more things and doing them faster. Take the difference between Intel XScale chips and Texas OMAP chips for example - both are PPC CPUs, but the OMAP's 200MHz can almost match the Intel's 416MHz, despite the former being less than half the speed of the latter.
It's not to say that running this software isn't possible, but you might need a lot more grunt than you expect. Remember, the Playstation 1 had a 33MHz chip, yet if anyone wants to emulate a PSOne on the PC it'll take >400MHz for good performance (though note that this is emulation. Obviously if someone was able to recompile the PSOne's software to run natively on PC hardware, then it would be significantly more efficient.).

Windows CE

Hi all, hope u had a nice week-end
I have resuscitated an old HP Jornada, and I was wondering if one can still find softwares for windows CE. Especially games, even basic ones since it is intended for use by my kids.
Thank you and take care

i believe that games for the cpu will work
as in if it have an arm cpu arm based games will work
and if it's mips mips games will work
games are typicaly written in asm directly for the cpu and the os dont mean that much

Redugar - I don't mean to be rude but are you leaving in the 80s?
No one has bee writing games or anything other than drivers and other OS / basic components using assembler in over a decade and a half!
It's way way too much work and not at all necessary.
But you are right about one thing - I've seen on some freeware sites like www.pocketpcfreeware.com apps that were compiled for CE2.11 so yes I do believe there is a good chance to find a few games.

Thanks folks for your replies.
I've tried very "basic" games like ICBM, but they won't run.
Visual basic stuff works provided one downloads the appropriate dll.
Will keep searching.
Take care,

well i may still look like this
http://thor.mirtna.org/features/titular_movie_themes_limahl.jpg
but my dukenukeem3d and warcraft2 are just in dirs on my sd card and they run under wm2002 to wm2005 3.5AKU without even a reinstall
so they are not really taking advantage of any newer features of the os
same with this doomCE port
http://www.revolution.cx/DoomCE.htm

levenum said:
Redugar - I don't mean to be rude but are you leaving in the 80s?
No one has bee writing games or anything other than drivers and other OS / basic components using assembler in over a decade and a half!
It's way way too much work and not at all necessary.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out SmartGear (see my emulation-related articles) and the new Pocket QuickView ( http://www.modaco.com/Pocket-QuickView-40-looking-for-ideas-t255364.html )
The mission-critical sections were all written in assembly. This is why it's WAY faster than any other, C-based emulators / image viewers.

maybe using gcc for arm to some some nativ arm code would also have less overhead then win32 stk
though not sure how many libs would be required to be linked to so could end up a drag

Ok, I know when I am bitten but I am just no willing to quit!
(Just to reiterate - to 80's remark was meant in good fun and not intended as an insult, plus this was written late at night after a long work day)
Any way it does make sense that for high speed some graphics rendering routines will be written in assembler (note that unfortunately eVC tools do not include inline assembler so modules have to be compiled separately and then linked)
I do remember taking a peak at the DOOM port and it is mostly C. (Though I am sure it has assembler sections).
What I was trying to say is this:
a) You can't write a whole game like DOOM in assembler only in reasonable time.
b) Even assembler modules need to be eventually linked in to an executable so the OS (what ever it is) can load them - and here is the problem. Every exe has a header that states what processor and what OS it is designed for. Even if your app does not use new OS features, but is linked using a higher OS SDK settings the exe header will contain a version number unknown to the OS and it will refuse to load stating that it is "illegal file".
A less prehistoric example would be files compiled with WM 6 SDK refusing to run on WM 5 despite the fact that there is almost no difference in the OS.

"(Just to reiterate - to 80's remark was meant in good fun and not intended as an insult, plus this was written late at night after a long work day)"
dont think anybody took it any other way at least i did
what i should had said maybe rather then that they were in pure asm
then maybe that they were not that depending on the os and version of the os itselfs
and maybe of those fps like doom and nuke3d and such
are ports of old dos games where that was more the custom then later on when windows gaming took off

[Q] NT emulator on ARM?

I remember my first Windoze NT was running fine on a 133MHz/64MB box, so it isn't much of hardware requirement nowadays even for our smartphones - I guess the only problem is different architecture, but IIRC there were many NT4 builds for various CPU architectures before M$oft limited NT line to x86 with NT5.0 or NT5.1, so is such emulator doable? and if so, has anyone tried to do it before?

If you really wanted to do almost nothing I am sure it wouldn't be too bad writing an arm hypervisor to run an old Arm copy of NT. Mind you the architecture has change a lot since. Clock Frequency = Nothing you already know that. Having to change over instructions to the host platform makes for a very nice drop in speed.
Guy had an app for running Linux and 95 through XP on an Evo 3D so why not. Plenty of open source x86 emulators out there. But your performance experience will vary. The classic Bochs is horrible but good for compatability. Seems like whatever this guy ported to android did well for 95.

RainMotorsports said:
If you really wanted to do almost nothing I am sure it wouldn't be too bad writing an arm hypervisor to run an old Arm copy of NT. Mind you the architecture has change a lot since. Clock Frequency = Nothing you already know that. Having to change over instructions to the host platform makes for a very nice drop in speed.
Guy had an app for running Linux and 95 through XP on an Evo 3D so why not. Plenty of open source x86 emulators out there. But your performance experience will vary. The classic Bochs is horrible but good for compatability. Seems like whatever this guy ported to android did well for 95.
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Thanks. I digged around after I asked, and found good start here

Please use the Q&A Forum for questions &
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Moving to Q&A

Using 'Reverse-sharpen' to port C# to Java?

By now, I suppose we've all heard about the Xobot project from Xamarin. If not, here's a short introduction: Xamarin have their own C# runtime, Mono, running on both iOS and Android.
However, Android is based on Java whereas Mono obviously uses C++. So, one day the Xamarin team came together and decided to build a proof-of-concept C# port of Android and it turned out that it outperformed the 'Java-version' of Android.
Android consists of over a million lines of Java code, making porting it by hand nearly impossible. The Xamarin team built a tool called 'Sharpen' which translates Java to C#, which also makes it fairly easy to port Android apps to the Mono runtime.
I've been thinking and I suppose it's possible to make a 'reverse-Sharpen', so a tool based on Sharpen that does exactly the opposite: Translating C# to Java. This would open a whole jar of possibilities. One of the options I suppose I'm the most excited about is porting hardcore Windows applications to Android, like, for example, Visual Studio or a port scanner app. I suppose reversing Sharpen should be relatively easy as all the links between API calls are already made. They just need to be executed the other way around.
Please keep in mind that I'm not an expert - far from it - and all I write here is just a result of my brainstorm-sessions. Now, on to my next point, as I feel that my two ideas are relatively tied together.
With the always-improving mobile GPUs, like for example the Tegra3 and the Mali400 in the Galaxy S III I'm currently using, mobile games are becoming more and more comparable to Console Quality games. Yes, they're still far from it but the question 'Does it run Crysis?' could very well soon apply to mobile phones.
I'm not sure if it's possible but I suppose I could contact Crytek about it: Wouldn't it be awesome if the SGS3 could run a 'lite version' of CryEngine? The Mali400 is one of the most underestimated GPUs to date, and although benchmarks show that the Mali 400 @ 400MHz outperforms both the A5, A5X and Tegra3 GPUs, the Tegra3 is for some reason still the mobile game industry standard.
With some heavy optimization, and the Mali 400 offers optimization options, we might even be able to run a trimmed-down version of the CryEngine on, say, the Galaxy S III.
So, what are your thoughts about this? I'm not a developer - far from it - but I'm wondering what a developer thinks about my thoughts.

x86/64 bit emulator for ARM Processor

So I was wondering if its possible for someone to create or start developing an application that can emulator x86/64 code on an arm architecture?

What x86 code, exactly, do you mean? Do you mean running native x86 code directly or do you mean taking Java or .NET code and running it?
Ultimately, pretty much *anything* is possible to emulate. However, emulating it in a way that it can run in a reasonable amount of time is unlikely to happen. There are just so many things that are limited in the RT version of the .NET Framework.

ok, im not exactly best qualified for this but ill try and explain
in short, no, you could potentially make an emulator for a given program, but to make some be all end all x86 emulator to cover everything would be massively inefficient and probably not possible
you primary obstacle is that RT uses managed code, that means MS tells you want you can and cant do, it gives you the frame work if you like and you can build what you want within that frame work but step outside it and do your own thing isn't possible (yet)
once you got over that barrier, next up would be to port every single function and call sent to the CPU to an ARM equivalent, ARM is like a tadpole compared to Blue Whale of X86 so it wont do everything on chip meaning youd need to also convert it in software to something it can do
It would be like trying to blow a golf ball through a garden hose
however, small limited programs that don't rely on many hardware functions and with limited calls outside of its own program would potentially be possible to emulate assuming you can get native code to work anyway

Surface RT - Paperweight
Surface Pro - Glorified Tablet/Notebook
Just go with the Pro, it will make life much easier. The whole emulator debacle isn't even necessary if you just go with the logical choice.
I mean the Tegra 3 is awful as an SoC--I don't know what moron said Quad A9's are better than A15's, not to mention the GPU is junk compared to an SGX.
Overall Micro$oft shot themselves in the foot.

qhdevon43 said:
So I was wondering if its possible for someone to create or start developing an application that can emulator x86/64 code on an arm architecture?
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Click to collapse
Actually Visual Studio 2012 could technically support building desktop applications to run on Surface RT and other RT (ARM) tablets. However, at this time, Microsoft is also allowing Microsoft signed applications. And, I heard that if you disabled that check in the registry, then you get blocked by RT. It is definitely possible that in the future, Microsoft might allow desktop applications to be recompiled for RT.
In the meantime, Remote Desktop is wonder in that I can connect to my Windows 8 laptop and use it to run any application with almost full touchscreen functionality. So, combining a Surface RT and a Windows 8 computer is ideal for me.

wrexus said:
Actually Visual Studio 2012 could technically support building desktop applications to run on Surface RT and other RT (ARM) tablets. However, at this time, Microsoft is also allowing Microsoft signed applications. And, I heard that if you disabled that check in the registry, then you get blocked by RT.
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Click to collapse
Add it stands, you can't even really disable UAC without breaking Metro in full Windows 8 (the UI setting to disable it doesn't really disable it). They have that thing locked down pretty well!

You can enable test-sign mode on RT, this would allow you to run your own ARM desktop apps, signed by your own cert, not with MS one. This is absolutely legal, but it can be closed by MS in some of the new hotfixes (and they'll definitely will, when this mode would be used to run cracked apps).
It is really possible to make a working x86 CPU emulator that would allow you to run x86 windows programs on RT. Just remember my port of "heroes of might and magic" 1 and 2 for Windows Mobile - it was more difficult to make it, as WM had a more limited Win32 API than Windows RT has.
I'll make a nearly universal emulator for RT when I'll buy a device, project is already started and has good results. But I'm waiting for a device that is based on quad-core Snapdragon S4. I would not recommend buying Tegra devices, 4-core Krait beats them in CPU and 3D speed. And high CPU speed would be necessary for smooth x86 emulation.

Quad A9's are better than A15. If you wasnt too busy kissing jobs ass, you would know this. Tegra line is alot better that any apple "cpu"
Ace42 said:
Surface RT - Paperweight
Surface Pro - Glorified Tablet/Notebook
Just go with the Pro, it will make life much easier. The whole emulator debacle isn't even necessary if you just go with the logical choice.
I mean the Tegra 3 is awful as an SoC--I don't know what moron said Quad A9's are better than A15's, not to mention the GPU is junk compared to an SGX.
Overall Micro$oft shot themselves in the foot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

@Jaxidian: Disabling UAC disables Mandatory integrity Controls, which is how the sandboxes for both IE and Metro-style apps are implemented. Metro-style apps check, when they are launched, if they are running in such a sandbox, and exit if they aren't.
Disabling UAC is, and always was, a terrible, idiotic thing to do, and I truly don't know why MS made it an available behavior. Just set it to auto-elevate without UI instead, if you really can't stand having proper principle of least privilege in your OS. This is a little more complex (you have to use the Local Security Policy editor, which can be launched by typing "secpol.msc" into Run or by going into the Administrative Tools) but is a much better solution as things which explicitly want to be run with limited permissions (sandboxing) still can be.

@dazza9075: Dosbox is an x86 emulator that is already available on other ARM platforms. It just doesn't support the (many) x86 opcodes that have been added since the 386. It certainly can't do 64-bit. However, it's fine for running old DOS programs, including games. Somebody should port it to the Windows Store if possible, or at least see about making a homebrew build of it that we can run on RT devices. This is totally not my area of expertise or I'd do it myself.
A full x86 emulator, like Microsoft's old Virtual PC for Mac (except running on ARM instead of PPC), is technically possible. It's just hard. It sounds like some people are already working on this, though.

Regarding publishing DosBox, Bochs, Qemu, ScummVM and other emulators to Windows Store - they would be unable to pass the certification. Read the requirements here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh694083.aspx
3.9 All app logic must originate from, and reside in, your app package
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For emulators - app logic resides in an emulated program that is typically not present in app package.
By the way, Microsoft Internet Explorer can't pass this check too - as it downloads and executes flash from web. But MS is already known for its double-standards.
The other reason why those apps may be refused:
3.5 Your app must fully support touch input, and fully support keyboard and mouse input
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Old programs (games at least) may be unusable without keyboard or mouse. My own program was refused for this reason, because it is unusable without hardware keyboard.
It is possible (and really easy) to port Bochs or DosBox for RT as a "desktop" application (making a "metro" port would be a bit more difficult). I can do that myself when I'll get hands on a Krait-based quad-core RT device, if someone would not port them earlier.
Regarding Tegra 3 vs Krait - Krait is not directly based on A9 nor on A15.

mamaich said:
You can enable test-sign mode on RT, this would allow you to run your own ARM desktop apps, signed by your own cert, not with MS one. This is absolutely legal, but it can be closed by MS in some of the new hotfixes (and they'll definitely will, when this mode would be used to run cracked apps).
It is really possible to make a working x86 CPU emulator that would allow you to run x86 windows programs on RT. Just remember my port of "heroes of might and magic" 1 and 2 for Windows Mobile - it was more difficult to make it, as WM had a more limited Win32 API than Windows RT has.
I'll make a nearly universal emulator for RT when I'll buy a device, project is already started and has good results. But I'm waiting for a device that is based on quad-core Snapdragon S4. I would not recommend buying Tegra devices, 4-core Krait beats them in CPU and 3D speed. And high CPU speed would be necessary for smooth x86 emulation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mamaich said:
Regarding publishing DosBox, Bochs, Qemu, ScummVM and other emulators to Windows Store - they would be unable to pass the certification. Read the requirements here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh694083.aspx
For emulators - app logic resides in an emulated program that is typically not present in app package.
By the way, Microsoft Internet Explorer can't pass this check too - as it downloads and executes flash from web. But MS is already known for its double-standards.
The other reason why those apps may be refused:
Old programs (games at least) may be unusable without keyboard or mouse. My own program was refused for this reason, because it is unusable without hardware keyboard.
It is possible (and really easy) to port Bochs or DosBox for RT as a "desktop" application (making a "metro" port would be a bit more difficult). I can do that myself when I'll get hands on a Krait-based quad-core RT device, if someone would not port them earlier.
Regarding Tegra 3 vs Krait - Krait is not directly based on A9 nor on A15.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But its only a matter of time before we figure out a way to sideload metro apps without going through the store.