OpenEMU Experimental 09.07.2015 compile for OS X

It's that time again. At the request of +Djarum Black I baked up a new compile of the excellent multi-system emulator, OpenEMU. There seems to be a few updates to the various emulation cores and the addition of the Pokemon mini game system.

You can download OpenEMU from my Google Drive located here.

Embarrassing window movement with nVidia card under Gnome 3

For a graphics card I have a nVidia GeForce GTX 660Ti. It's not hot shit new by any means but it normally does well for what I need it to. For my operating system I run Fedora 22 Linux with the Gnome 3 desktop (version 3.16.2 actually). So far nothing special, lots of people use nVidia graphic cards and lots of people use Fedora Linux. But for me this combo is downright embarrassing.

For the record I'll say games run great, emulators run great, videos play great, just about everything is great... except for the what seems to be trivial task of window movement. Window movement on my system is a gosh darned disgrace. Be it a small Gnome Terminal window or a big Google Chrome window the movement is horribly choppy. It is so choppy it makes my system as a whole look like a total slug, not the kind of thing you want to show off to your friends. This makes me so very sad. Sans video card I upgraded my entire system in March 2015. I would like to think a new system wouldn't have trouble doing something as basic as moving a window smoothly. But it does :(

OK, enough whining and complaining. I'm done bitching.

I set out to find what was wrong with my system, be it hardware or software, which leads to it's dismal desktop graphics performance. About the only thing I found was an unanswered post on devtalk.nvidia.com and a thread on reddit about the exact problem I am having. Both were fairly current, from August 2015. I set out to dive into the reddit post so I could extract what knowledge was there. It turns out (kinda) to be a card clocking issue, where as on the desktop the card is running at it's lowest speed. I suppose this makes it impossible to get smooth window movement.

As a stopgap reddit user MAH0 posted a few lines of text to add to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-nvidia.conf file. Normally I wouldn't go about adding configuration options to my system because some dude said it would work. But after checking out MAH0's reddit overview page I was pretty confident they knew their Linux shit.

And as if a gift from the heavens the few configuration options worked as it seemed they should. My window movement was quite a bit smoother and snappy. The reddit thread can be found here and is also referenced a couple of paragraphs above.

As far as I can tell there isn't any undesirable side effects thus far. The card does run warmer as the clock speed is always set to 'Performance'. This can have an adverse effect on your video card in the long run. But as of right now I'm finally pleased.

A little ditty about XBOXDRV on Fedora 22

I recently stopped using the xpad kernel module in favor of the userspace xboxdrv driver for my gamepads under Fedora 22. Once switching the only issue at hand was starting xboxdev via the service command and starting it at boot time (so I didnt have to start it via the service command). A little Google-Fu (of stuff I should already know) resulted in the easy commands to get what I wanted.

To start xboxdrv via the service command (in case you don't want xboxdrv starting at boot time) type the following into a terminal

sudo service xboxdrv start

To start xboxdrv at boot time use the command

sudo systemctl enable xboxdrv.service

and that's all I did. It seems to work fine for my needs.

Dolphin-Emu for Fedora 22 rpm updated to 4.0-git-4763

I updated the rpm package of the excellent Nintendo Gamecube / Wii / Triforce emulator to version 4.0-git-4763 (current as of 08-28-2015). The rpm is built for Fedora 22 64bit.

You can download the rpm package from my Google Drive by clicking here.

Fedora 22 and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Installation

Hot and steamy! Straight from the Install-Instructions in the OBS WIKI. I guess it looks like no more compiling from source is needed (unless you just want to, of course).

Fedora 22 installation

FFmpeg is required. If you do not have the FFmpeg installed (if you're not sure, then you probably don't have it), you can get it from the rpmfusion repos with the following commands: 

sudo rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-22.noarch.rpm

Then you can install OBS with the following commands (This pulls all dependencies, including ffmpeg): 

sudo sudo rpm --import http://repo.tech-3.net/Fedora/TECH3-GPG-KEY.public 

sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/tech-3.repo http://repo.tech-3.net/Fedora/tech-3.repo 

sudo dnf update && sudo dnf install obs-studio

Jeremy's Definitive Guide to Star Wars The Old Republic on Mac OS X

After a long absence a buddy and I returned to the excellent Bioware MMORPG Star Wars The Old Republic. At the time I was chugging along with the preview of Windows 10 on my system. Times were great and all was well in Star Wars land. That was until a weaponized space station, The Deathstar, dropped a mega shit bomb onto my operating system rendering it non bootable. You may say beta quality operating systems aren't for production systems. This time I hang my head and agree.

Long story shorter, I was in game when my OS froze. Upon restart Windows 10 wouldn't boot up. I know I could have researched the error and possibly fixed it. But come on! I was in the heat of battle when the crash occurred, with adrenaline pumping I hastily popped in an OS X installer USB drive. Roughly 20 minutes later all traces of Windows 10 had been obliterated and my System was booting into OS X. Great I thought, my computers working again.ts

Sadly while most everything else was working well I couldn't play The Old Republic. It's a Windows only title and requires Windows to play. I was running OS X. Oh the humanity!

I set the task of playing SW:TOR on OS X without dual booting or bootcamp. I figured failure was my best option but I embarked on the journey regardless. I tried several different methods including the VMware Fusion trial, Wineskin and Parallels. In the end I chose Parallels (version 10.2.1.29006 ) for my virtualization needs. So far I've been pleasantly surprised by my gaming experience vs the price for the Parallels software. More expensive than the free Wineskin and the $69.99 VMware Fusion. Parallels will cost you 79$ for a single user license, so I wouldn't expect or recommend someone to buy it just for a single game. But if you have other needs for windows apps alongside a game or two then it may be the product for you.

Although less than perfect you do need a copy of Windows to use Parallels. I chose Windows 7 64bit as I needed to address more than 4GB of ram. Windows 7 also has less overhead than Windows 8/8.1. In addition to a Windows operation system you'll need some pretty powerful hardware to pull this off. I recommend AT LEAST a quad core (i5 or i7) CPU of at least 3.3GHZ and about 16 gig of ram. You will also need a fairly decent video card. I'm using an older Geforce 660 Ti card, so anything within the past couple of years that's at lease the performance of a Geforce 660 will be fine. Also, your  video card needs about 1 - 2GB of RAM as 512mb of it will be used for the virtual machine. All of these specs are for Desktop products, on a laptop your mileage may vary.

Once you have created your virtual machine you'll want to configure Parallels for gaming. You'll want to go to the properties for your Windows virtual machine. Under the first tab at the top of the window (General) you want to choose Configure for : Games only. See below.

Once you have it configured for games there are a couple of other tweaks we need to make. The first tweak you'll want to make is to change the amount of RAM and CPUs the virtual machine will use. See Below.

The Configure for: Games only sets the ram usage a little high to the point where Parallels complains about not having enough memory for video RAM. My general rule is to use half the amount of cores you have for virtual machine up to a max of 4 cores, I chose 4 cores as I have 6 logical and 6 virtual cores on my CPU. If you have an i5 CPU with 4 logical cores then set the CPUs to 2.
Same goes for the system RAM (Memory), I chose 16GB of virtual machine RAM because my system has a physical 32GB of system RAM. In theory you can set the memory higher if you have more than 16GB of ram. As long as you leave about 8GB for Mac use you'll be fine.

After you configure the RAM and CPU you'll want to select the Video portion of the configuration. Leave the Video memory: @ 512MB and change the 3D acceleration to DirectX9. Star Wars: The Old Republic only uses DirectX 9 so no need to virtualize version 10. After you've finished configuring you'll be ready to move on.

Once the virtual machine is configured you can start it up and install Windows. After the installation via Parallels you'll be ready to download and install the Star Wars game. I'll not go into much detail about installing the game. It's the same as under any other version of windows. If all goes well you'll be at the Windows desktop with the SW:TOR icon on the desktop. Double click the game's icon and you should be greeted by the logon window and eventually this...

Once SW:TOR starts up it should be pretty much as it would be under non virtualized Windows. Below are my game settings for graphics, the game runs great with these settings. 

At this point I started playing and am currently questing on Tatooine. I haven't tried flashpoints yet but PvP warzones seem fine. I'm not so sure how 8 or 16 player raiding will go, If you try let me know.

OpenEMU Experimentel build from 07-14-2015

I updated my build for the experimental flavor of OpenEMU. For those who do not know , OpenEMU is a excellent multi-system emulator shell for OS X. It includes modules for almost every classic system out there. You can download it from HERE.

Emulator updates for Mac OS X - OpenEmu and PPSSPP

I compiled up a steaming bag of horse shit otherwise known at OpenEmu Experimental. The build date is 05.18.2015. I think the newest experimental build offered on OpenEmu's site is from October 2014. You can download my build form here.

I also built up a fresh plate of the most excellent Sony PSP emulator PPSSPP. This build is a little different than the one offered on the official PPSSPP site. To run this build you do not need to install Homebrew from the command line, but you only need to have the SDL2.framework in /Library/Frameworks. You can download my build from here.

MacJesus ProGold - 20 Year Anniversary

Happy Birthday MacJesus!

The ProGold edition of MacJesus was released 20 years ago. Although I'm not sure of his exact day of birth, I propose a year long celebration for our personal savior on a floppy disk. Check out the archives below to begin your ascent.

Original MacJesus ProGold .sit file

For use with real 68k / PPC mac computers. MacJesus has a real problem with Mac OS 8.5 and above so keep it real and use sub 8.1.

mini vMac archive for Linux 64-bit

This archive is for modern Linux computers with 64-bit CPUs. Un-tar this puppy and fire up mini vMac. You'll want to drag and drop the disk.img into the mini vMac window to resurrect MacJesus. I have tested and MacJesus has graced Fedora 21 and Ubuntu 14.10 with his blessings.

mini vMac archive for Mac OS X

This archive is for modern Mac Computers with Intel CPUs. Mount this DMG and fire up mini vMac. You'll want to drag and drop the disk.img into the mini vMac window to resurrect MacJesus. I have tested and MacJesus has graced Yosemite 10.10.3 with his blessings.

Dolphin Emu 4.0-5960 RPM for Fedora 21

I updated my RPM of Dolphin Emu to build 4.0-5960. This lovingly handcrafted RPM is for Fedora 21 64bit.

Download Here from my Google Drive.

Asus X99-Pro Motherboard and OS X Yosemite (Hackintosh)

Let me start off by stating that this is NOT a how-to for installing a Apple's OS X on an ASUS X99-Pro motherboard. A how-to is way beyond the scope of what this blog post is capable of. I am writing this as a informational log of the tasty morsels I have collected over the past few weeks. With that being said... LET'S GO!

The motherboard in question is ASUS's X99-Pro. This fine slab of PCB provides a 2011-v3 CPU socket complimented by Intel's X99 chipset. My particular board is paired with an Intel i7 5820K processor. Other compatible CPUs differ in clock speed, number of cores and the amount of cache. I chose the "low end" 2011-v3 chip due to budget and personal computational need.

The ASUS X99-Pro motherboard has a number of features which I found really nifty and at the time seemed desirable. Of them we have onboard WiFi a/b/g/n/ac & Bluetooth v4.0, 8 DDR4 quad channel RAM slots, a nice sounding Realtek ALC1150 audio codec and a plethora of USB 3.0 ports (USB 3.1 with latest BIOS update, 1401 from 02-17-2015). To me these features were things I had been wanting in a motherboard and helped make the purchase decision. Instead of yammering on about the X99-Pro and it's hardware let me make a quick reference list of the boards finer Hackintosh related points.

Chipset: Intel X99
CPU Socket: 2011-v3
Audio Chipset: Realtek ALC1150
WiFi Chipset: Broadcom BCM4352 (PCIe via shared miniPCIe slot)
Bluetooth Chip: Broadcom 20702A3 (USB via shared miniPCIe slot)
Network: Intel i218v

I'm going to start with the CPU. Depending on the number of cores your CPU has will determine which VoodooTSCSync kernel extension needs to be installed. I have a 6 core CPU, therefore I used the VoodooTSCSync-6.pkg. If you have an 8 core chip use the VoodooTSCSync-8.pkg. From what I understand this is necassary for booting our board into OS X.

It also worth noting the power management does NOT 100% work on the X99 chipset motherboards. Since there is no Apple hardware which use the X99 this is completely understandable. The best I could muster up was stock clock speed or overclocked speed all the time. Sadly, nothing in between. As a saving grace I have found you can use NullCPUPowerManagement.kext to gain 2 to 3 frequency steps. My CPU scales between 1.2GHz, 2.4GHz and 3.3GHz. This goes a long way to keep power consumption and temperatures down. For CPU frequency scaling you'll need to change the UEFI/BIOS setting to allow speedstep to run but disable turbo ratio. Configure your BIOS and install NullCPUPowerManagement.pkg if this sounds good to you.

To make full use of your USB 3.0 and SATA III ports you'll want to install AHCI_Intel_Generic_SATA.pkg and GenericUSBXHCI-v1.2.8d9.pkg. Also and while not directly hardware related you'll need FakeSMC to boot your system. I highly recommend installing FakeSMC-v6.14.1364.pkg,  FakeSMC-v6.14.1364-Plugins.pkg  and FakeSMC-v6.14.1364-HWMonitor.pkg. This will provide a really slick app to monitor your systems sensors, fans, CPU temps and voltages. I use it all the time and like I said, recommend it.

For Internet or network access you'll need to install the AppleIntelE1000e-v3.1.0a.pkg. Nothing special to say about it. The Intel i218v is fast at copying files across my gigabit network. No complaints or issues.

The Audio circuitry on the X99-Pro is provided by a Realtek ALC1150 chip. I tried and tried to configure it via ways of clover patches and the AppleHDA.kext. I ultimately failed in this endeavorer.  For my audio kernel extension I ended up using VoodooHDA.kext version 2.8.7. Everything except SPDIF seems to work. Install the VoodooHDA-v2.8.7.pkg for working audio.

The Broadcom 20702A3 Bluetooth functions thanks to the BTFirmwareUploader.kext. Nothing special here, just install the kext via your preferred method. I tested bluetooth by pairing my Sol Republic DECK speaker. It worked splendidly.

Of the X99-Pro's hardware, WiFi is the only component I cannot persuade to function as intended. OS X will not even boot with the card enabled, resulting in a kernel panic on the Broadcom WiFi kext. I was forced to enter the UEFI/BIOS and disable the mini PCIe slot which houses the WiFI card. The Bluetooth will still function with the WiFi's PCIe slot disabled, it's actually considered USB.

UPDATE 02.28.2015 - After doing some reading I was able to get the WiFi to work. It was fairly easy once I found out the card is actually well supported. Instructions and needed files are included in v2 of the X99-Pro DMG on my Google Drive.

Again, this is not hardware related but you'll need a software bootloader to get OS X to... well... boot. I recommend Clover, but there is also Chameleon. Clover is the most compatible as it provides on the fly kernel patching for our CPUs. With Chameleon you'll need to manually patch OS X's kernel via a perl script to boot. A Clover vs Chameleon debate is something I do not want to get into. Pick one and read up on your choice.

Just so everyone is clear, I did not create or magically discover any of the kexts used to make our Motherboard function. Most of the kernel extensions were ripped from Multibeast 7.2 as well as postings on various forums. The only thing I did was place finger to keyboard and write this piece.

Click here to download the X99-Pro kext pack from my Google Drive.

UPDATE 09.10.2015  - As requested here are the Clover boot flags used to boot my system. This is under the 'Boot' section of Clover Configurator.

Also here is the 'Kernel and Kext Patches' section of Clover Configurator.

Also for the SMBIOS section of Clover Configurator use iMac14,2 for your computer type. Hope this helps :)

UPDATE 11.25.2015 - To keep your system from kernel panicking at boot time when using the two Bluetooth kext's in the driver pack you should disable the Serial Port in the UEFI BIOS.

Variety 0.5.0 Wallpaper Changer for Fedora 21

I looked and looked for a Fedora 21 release of the wallpaper changer, Variety. I found a couple of prebuilt Fedora 20 RPMs but nothing for 21. What I did find was a SRPM. Honestly, I had no idea what to do with a SRPM. This is where my friend Google came into play. I found out how to build the SRPM and ended up with a working RPM of Variety.

You can download the Variety RPM from my Google Drive.

New Dolphin Emu RPM for Fedora 21 - git build 4.0 5474

I updated the RPM of Dolphin Emu for Fedora 21. For those who aren't sure what Dolphin is... well, it's a Nintendo Gamecube/Tri-Force/Wii emulator for really fast computers.

You can download it form my Google Drive.

Desmume Nintendo DS emulator 0.9.11-svn5068 for Ubuntu 14.04

I compiled up and packaged a steaming pile of Desmume version 0.9.11-svn5068. For those who don't know, Desmume is a Nintendo DS / lite / DSi emulator capable of running most homebrew and commercial games. This package is compiled for Ubuntu 14.04lts 64-bit but should work on Ubuntu 14.10 64-bit too.

Download package from my Google drive.

PSP Shrink with GUI for Ubuntu Linux

Tonight I was in the mood to compress some of my Sony PSP ISOs. I needed an app to do so, and after a little Google-Fu I found a few to do the job. Most were console and all were source releases. I was looking for a .deb package and a GUI. No love in most of my searches but I did happen upon PSPShrink. I couldn't find a .deb of it BUT it did have a GUI + console binaries. The source release was fine with me, I don't mind compiling up some software. After compiling I also whipped up a .deb package for Ubuntu 14.04lts. My PSPShrink .deb might also work on 14.10 but I can't test it after switching back to the 14.04lts release.

Download - PSPShrink 1.1.1 .deb package from Google drive

Open Broadcaster Studio and FFMpeg binaries for Ubuntu 14.10

A couple of days ago I posted a compile guide for Open Broadcaster Studio and FFMpeg. Today I present to you binary packages. They were compiled on Ubuntu 14.10 for 64-bit CPUs.

You need both .deb's to run OBS, so grab 'em and install.

FFMpeg Binaries .deb package from my Google Drive

OBS Binaries .deb package from my Google Drive

The above packages work great on my system, but your mileage may vary. If they don't work then try starting them form the terminal and see what's missing. Or leave a comment, I'll help where I can.

HD Homerun Prime Config GUI for Ubuntu Linux

I had the need for Silicon Dust's HD Homerun configuration app on my Ubuntu Linux box. Silicon Dust makes it readily available but it's only as source from their site. I was feeling pretty nice and compiled it up for anyone else who needs the app. Basically it allows you to upload new firmware, scan channels and open them in VLC. It's pretty bare bones but does work.

After installing you'll need to start it from a terminal. There is no desktop shortcut for the app. So pop open a terminal and enter hdhomerun_config_gui. If it starts up then great, if not make sure you have the gtk+1.2 libraries installed.

If you're searching for HDHomerun Prime configuration software for Linux this might help. If you're looking for a way around the QAM channel encryption this will NOT help. I know, it's a bummer.

Download deb Package from my Google Drive

Compile FFMPEG and Open Broadcaster Studio for Ubuntu 14.10

Hello? Is it twitch.tv streaming you're looking for? Well, last night I was looking for it too. Luckily I read the INSTALL file included with the source to Open Broadcaster Studio (OBS). Below are a simplified set of instructions to compile OBS and it's dependency FFMPEG on Ubuntu 14.10. As far as I know the resulting compiled software streams fine to twitch.tv.

First we need to use the package manager to install what software we can from the repositories. (one really long command)

sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config cmake git checkinstall libx11-dev libgl-dev libpulse-dev libxcomposite-dev libxinerama-dev libv4l-dev libudev-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig-dev qtbase5-dev libqt5x11extras5-dev libx264-dev libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxcb-shm0-dev zlib1g-dev yasm

Next up we'll download and compile a very minimal install of FFMPEG. FFMPEG is needed by OBS to transcode videos into a usable format for twitch.tv. (5 commands total)

git clone --depth 1 git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git

cd ffmpeg

./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/usr

make

sudo checkinstall --pkgname=FFmpeg --fstrans=no --backup=no --pkgversion="$(date +%Y%m%d)-git" --deldoc=yes

Now finally building and installing Open Broadcaster Studio. (6 commands total)

git clone https://github.com/jp9000/obs-studio.git

cd obs-studio

mkdir build && cd build

cmake -DUNIX_STRUCTURE=1 -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..

make

sudo checkinstall --pkgname=obs-studio --fstrans=no --backup=no --pkgversion="$(date +%Y%m%d)-git" --deldoc=yes

After all the compiling takes place you should have a menu entry for OBS. It should be ready to configure for twitch.tv and start streaming.