Computer Cores

[burnt timber]

I think I need to quit loading hard drive images over my network share, something happened and Rusty got removed from the games list

[opal void]

that's why I gave up on AO486... it is incomplete, buggy and abandoned... doesn't reflect any real/complete 486 system...

[inner relic]

ao486 also achieves it's speed through cache

two very large ones

a lot of software is incompatible with that

some instructions execute way, way faster than a real i486 and others execute much slower, like similar to a 6mhz 286

so it just means performance can be all over the place

I think it's neat that it all actually works and I'm glad we have it

but I really hope that after N64 that Robert decides it's time to revisit x86

[burnt timber]

Robert made that too?

What a cool guy.

[inner relic]

Sorg created the core

Robert made it usable

[burnt timber]

Oh, okay

[still wren]

Wow … what a legend

https://tenor.com/view/not-worthy-waynes-world-bow-praise-gif-4881098

[burnt timber]

He's got a Ferrari, money, and he makes us cores. That orange gi guy has nothing on him

[still wren]

Like I said .. LEGEND M8!

[burnt timber]

YAH M8, SHOEYS ALL AROUND

[opal void]

What's the state of the Amiga and Atari St cores?

Are they also buggy/inaccurate like the Ao486?

[burnt timber]

A lot better overall

[waxen brook]

Amiga is in great shape

havent tried AtariST

[burnt timber]

Im tempted to just throw the $10 at that one guy who made the Atari ST HDD image

[opal void]

any other 16-bit computer cores?

I know of PC XT

[burnt timber]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MacPlus_MiSTer

Maybe this counts

[burnt timber]

https://www.zuiki.co.jp/x68000z/
So there is going to be a X68000 mini

[waxen brook]

already is one

comes with gradius and a new version of cho ren sha in the box too ^-^

[burnt timber]

Do tell/link

[waxen brook]

here is the board with heatsink removed:

[burnt timber]

Huh, cool. Does it run on ARM?

[waxen brook]

https://twitter.com/iFixRetro/status/1649920019634028546?s=20

iFixRetro (@iFixRetro)

Messing around with the x68000 Z a bit more with a few hours of sleep. The system will work on a DVI monitor, but I’m not able to auto adjust the image. Also, I can’t boot into the setup utility menu as well. Next up is trying out to see what controllers can work on it.

Likes

166

▶ Play video

Twitter · Apr 22, 2023, 11:36 PM

wow looks like Exact is doing a re-issue of some classics for X68000 too:
https://twitter.com/gosokkyu/status/1649627566410727425?s=20

GSK | https://cohost.org/gosokkyu (@gosokkyu)

coming from BEEP this July: EXACT PERFECT COLLECTION -1990〜1994- for X68000, a physical reissue containing Naious, Aquales, Etoile Princesse & Geograph Seal on to 3.5/5.5" disk, ¥16280 https://t.co/8orZtiCoqC🇯🇵

Twitter · Apr 22, 2023, 4:13 AM

great selection there, some of the best I've played for the system

[burnt timber]

Oh wow, cool for collectors

Im guessing all of these minis use emulation, as is standard

[waxen brook]

https://twitter.com/IcarusFW/status/1648834077745618947?s=20

Icarus / ICR (@IcarusFW)

So Chorensha 68k ver1.10 for the X68000 Mini not only has revised graphics for the backgrounds and some of the sprites, but this little surprise at the end.

https://t.co/Q5VYZjHiN5

Hinting at something extra, maybe?

Twitter · Apr 19, 2023, 11:40 PM

[burnt timber]

Oh I uhh.. dont suppose that ROM is dumped yet..

[waxen brook]

no clue. it will be in time for sure. cho ren sha is a beloved shmup favorite

Full kit with keyboard and mouse. the mouse has a removable top for trackball mode like the old one also

[burnt timber]

Urrgh.. I dont like mini but.. its x68000.. temptation

[waxen brook]

wondering what midi support will be like, if at all

[thick pendant]

maybe the CPU is powerful enough to also run MUNT and Fluidsynth.

or at least a USB midi device which mt32-pi can do directly now on certain PIs

[waxen brook]

would be awesome if possible. mt32-pi paired with an x68000 mini sounds like a great combo.

[thick pendant]

I think there is 99% chance it will eventually be hacked to support USB MIDI

if it does not do it out of the box. All the parts are there.

[inner relic]

it's tempting to get one just for the keyboard

[void belfry]

would be even more useful if it would work with X68000 core 😄

[lunar trellis]

Aren't they disgusting expensive for an emulation box?

[void belfry]

No idea :))

[lunar trellis]

Exciting tease from Pierco:
https://twitter.com/pcornier/status/1650506121138896896

ᴘɪᴇʀᴄᴏ (@pcornier)

This is what should come next after KickAndRun. It will be a team effort, and I'll let you guess who will be working with me🤔 It's a challenging task, but I have the full schematics!

Twitter · Apr 24, 2023, 2:24 PM

You involved in this one @waxen nymph ?

[waxen nymph]

Maybe

Working on translating the fm-7 manuals.

Running into ocr issues. Need to take a few days and tackle it.

https://archive.org/details/FM7SystemSpecifications/page/n26/mode/1up

[void belfry]

Nice 🙂

also thinking, by looking to Wiki on this system : Interfaces: RS-232 😛

[opal void]

For a second I thought that guy is SaltBae

[lunar trellis]

Oh nice, good to hear your translating is working. Are you using an AI or Google lens for the heavy lifting?

[lunar trellis]

Was hoping Pierco would finish off his Basic Master Jnr core before moving onto another Japanse PC, I think it is pretty much done apart from it doesn't have cassette loading so you can't load anything. It boots up though.

https://github.com/pcornier/BasicMasterJr_MiSTer

There is the rbf is anyone wants to load it

[opal void]

what is basic master jnr 😮

[lunar trellis]

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=329

MB6885 was successor of MB6881 (Basic Master Level II 2).

This machine had 256x192 graphics feature. Color display was also available with optional color-graphics adapter. These new feature was great in "Basic Master Level2 series" but not enough in Japanese market.

There isn’t a Video RAM, so both the micro processor and the video interface use the main memory using tricky techniques.

Hitachi thought the MB-6885 as a hobby computer. But the hobby computer market was a fierce battlefield with NEC (PC-6001) , VIC-1001(Commodore) , JR-100 (Panasonic) and etc. MB-6885 was too weak for that battlefield.

[opal void]

did it even have a software library?

[lunar trellis]

We have typeins for it

[opal void]

oh nice nice

We still need PC-6xxx core... how do we get someone like Pierco interested in it 😛

there are 70 games listed for it in mobygames, I think I have a bit more than that, and countless type-ins in magz like I/O

[waxen nymph]

The ocr is a bit of a mess. But I have some prompts to get chat gpt to fix the ocr and translate. I have some python to read and write word files. I need to fix the ocr->word process. Tried abbyy, acrobat and omnipage.

[lunar trellis]

Oh very neat workflow, do you think it could be used by others to try get more things translated once you have the kinks ironed out?

Haven't heard from Jason in awhile but he has a Sharp X1 core that was quite far along, but he got stuck (I think on loading files) but it boots if I recall. He has been looking for some help back when he was actively working on it. So there is a core quite for along if any Dev wanted to pick up where he left off and help finish it off.

https://github.com/JasonA-dev/SharpX1_Mister

[lunar trellis]

@Alan, do you know what model of FM-7 it might be? Do you think it could be a later FM-77 or too early to know?

[thick pendant]

neat... this should work on Minimig core --> https://youtu.be/YatNtEO17K4

Probably faster too because the core can do PPP at 230K BPS

[burnt timber]

@lunar trellis

[void belfry]

it does, I played with it last year

[burnt timber]

Anyone speak French? 🙂

Better scan

I tried OCR-ing it and running it through a translator.. it's gibberish lol

[gloomy bolt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwODwwgE6rA

[burnt timber]

https://media.tenor.com/K2RhgugBwbQAAAAC/tenor.gif

PC98 core bootup sound

[maiden sigil]

cries in PCJr

[burnt timber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCXRerqaJI

[thick pendant]

the Amiga version was very disappointing..

[burnt timber]

I am fairly well versed on all Castlevania games.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the Amiga version of Castlevania 1 by Novotrade is the worst licensed Castlevania game ever made.

[thick pendant]

I seen much better games for Amiga written in AMOS basic

maybe they should have used that 🙂

[burnt timber]

People complain about Haunted Castle

It's a masterpiece by comparison

[maiden sigil]

People complain about pcjr not being on mister

[thick pendant]

https://z-team.itch.io/maria-renards-revenge

[burnt timber]

Ah yeah scorpion engine stuff

There is one called Castlevania AGA too

[thick pendant]

people should spend less time complaining and more time learning to code.

[maiden sigil]

😏

My brain is too full of 65816

No room for more

It’s too old

I’ll code you some starfox stuff though!

[thick pendant]

you could hack the pcJr bios to use a proper KB interface and it would work with PCXT core

[maiden sigil]

Hmmm

[thick pendant]

or just hack it to boot past KB errors and make a small TSR to drive the KB

[maiden sigil]

I saw what TO I think did on the forum, hacking the bios as he did was already past my understanding, though I did try to follow

I may poke at it again

[thick pendant]

The only real difference between the Tandy and pcJr was just the crappy NMI keyboard interface.

[maiden sigil]

Why was it bad to read kb during nmi?

[thick pendant]

Can't reliably use keyboard and COM port at the same time... that's kinda contrary to what people actually do with computers.

[maiden sigil]

Ahh

[thick pendant]

its just a silly cost cutting idea, similar to PC gameport

[waxen brook]

https://youtu.be/TYo22k4hr2E
Apidya playthrough on MiSTer's Amiga core. 1cc hard difficulty

[thick pendant]

hard difficulty? on a Euro game? You are a masochist 🙂

[waxen brook]

I played the game in an OBS capture windows in order to record 1440p also.. don't have any displays over 1080p and it was the only way to record with the filtering used.

[thick pendant]

I'll have to watch in my 4K TV then, but it looks great on my 2560x1080 monitor

like the filter

have to remember to turn that option off in NVIDA control panel that upscales videos in youtube

[waxen brook]

youtube does an admirable job of scaling videos anyways, generally

[thick pendant]

Yes, this is a AI enhancement thing for the 3000 and 4000 series cards

"Super Resolution"

[thick pendant]

I surprised you could do that playing with the OBS capture lag...

[waxen brook]

vsync_adjust 2, 1080p monitor with 2.7ms lag and years of playing PC emulators certainly helped 🙂

I estimate there is 4-5 frames lag in the capture window. ~80ms

[wheat folio]

||There are places that freeze the blood as soon as you set foot there.
Some atmospheres petrify you after ten seconds. There are castles that make you scream "mamaaaaaan" just looking at them straight through the turrets. All these impressions apply to the mansion of Count Dracula.
Note, everyone must not think the same thing, because I just saw, just now, a sort of muscular barbarian enter through the gate of the park. Moreover, he walked with a determined step, and I even thought I saw a slight smile on the corners of his lips when terrible howls rose up, coming from the castle itself. Personally, I'm monstrously cowardly, my mother always told me: "Jocelyn, you're just a sissy, and you'll never be a hero", but the willies that agitate me are much inferior to the curiosity that lives in me. That is why, to my chagrin, I followed the recklessness materialized in this young hero.
Oh, he was indeed determined, and very strong too. Besides, the monsters that approached him didn't last long, he blasted them for you with loud whiplashes, that it was moving. Yes Yes.
Of course, when he sank into the depths of the castle, I still had the option of turning back, and forgetting what I had seen, but the creatures that presented themselves to him were so vile that my curiosity took over.
This mansion was huge, the enemies there were numerous and more and more dangerous, and from one part of the place to another, he had to fight against monsters even stronger than the hordes of dogs or zom-Dies who preceded. Of course, our hero was clever, and he knew how to recover objects to make weapons, and he even unearthed hiding places where there were axes, or even explosive potions.
But the battle would rage until the ultimate fight against Dracula himself, and his servants were not determined to let us approach their master.||

[wheat folio]

||Castlevania is a very old title having, among other things, made the heyday of computers
MSX, remember. The production quality of this old version contrasts a bit with what we were entitled to ask of an Amiga in 1991.
Of course; the interest of the game is always there, and it is great. Of course the tables are very numerous. and hard action. But the graphic side, and the animations. as well as the maneuverability of the character, are far from meeting our legitimate expectations.
In fact, it is above all the character's response time that is very annoying. Because as much to tell you that at the beginning, when you are sandwiched by a wolf-dog and a zombie. by the time the character turns around, you've had time to get eaten ten times. This big flaw tends to disappear with practice, the player gets used to it and anticipates.
On the sound side, it's very successful, the music is beautiful, and the atmosphere is well rendered.
Despite a not very extraordinary technical side, Castlevania is a game that does not deserve the softs guillotine. In the purest spirit of Japanese arcade games, where you have to knock against walls to make chests appear, the game is full of little tricks in this genre, it brings a lot. After the period of nervousness, we take a real pleasure to move forward in the castle, and we only dream of meeting Dracula, history of sprinkling him with holy water, at daybreak; after throwing a few cloves of garlic while driving a stake through his heart.||

I know enough to clean up the ocr and use translate.

[burnt timber]

Awesome, thank you!

[wheat folio]

The top -
The heroes of Konami have a peach from hell. They are in such good shape that they decided to kill Count Dracula.

Peach from hell being slangy for badass or healthy or up to it

Feeling great

“Note that we also often say “j’ai une pêche d’enfer” – ‘I have a peach from hell’ – meaning that you are feeling particularly great. “

[thick pendant]

I forgot to ask if there was something specific to the pcJr that the Tandy can't run?

[maiden sigil]

No I honestly just want to see that glorious boot screen

thats all I really remember from childhood

its stupid, I know

[thick pendant]

that one?

https://tenor.com/view/1984-gif-8163424

[maiden sigil]

thats the one 😄

[woven lava]

nice review - he's a bit too generous on the scores given what he says though

[void belfry]

For C64, found out about this during my chats on Quantum Link : https://github.com/retrocomputacion/retroterm

works nice as far as i can see, streaming SIDs is just awesome lol

[void belfry]

57600 baud speeds reached on C64 core with it, will test it out for more later

[hollow ice]

The pcjr had cartridges- http://retrograde.inf.ua/pcjr.htm

[burnt timber]

Look what I found in the closet, Winchester MFM. Don’t forget the park command before shutdown

[thick pendant]

The 57600 works with the C=64 core?

[void belfry]

it appears so, though I don't really understand how. At least that is what it says when connecting (ofc after setting to 57600 baud)

[void belfry]

same dev made https://github.com/retrocomputacion/retrobbs , that was what I was testing to connect to

lu8fjh-c64.ddns.net:6402

[thick pendant]

sure enough it seems to be working at 57600... i would have not though possible

[void belfry]

me neither, I connected to ParticlesBBS, but it seems it handshake-it at 38400

[thick pendant]

that might just be the speed it operates at

TCP/IP does not really have a set speed as such

[void belfry]

anyway, connecting to RetroBBS i mentioned (didn't find any other functional atm) , SID streaming works, same as image streaming, only PCM streaming doesn't look to work, or Youtube snapshots

but yeah, didn't test it out in Vice to see if on BBS side

Wiki through that BBS works nicely, and IRC as well

since this terminal is based/optimized on Zimodem, i expect some things correlated to that BBS also to not function

The friend from QLink that recommended this has already a wifi Zimodem, and for him (on real C64) says even that radio stream works

[thick pendant]

Cool, I put that in my MidiLink.DIR and now i'm connected.

[void belfry]

SID streaming FTW lol 😄

[thick pendant]

did you have to configure dual SIDs somewhere?

[void belfry]

nope

[thick pendant]

what do you have right SID port set as?

[void belfry]

both mine are 8580

[thick pendant]

what address?

[void belfry]

same on right side

[thick pendant]

ah, then its just using both together

[void belfry]

just PAL, both SID 8580, right sid port same, nothing extra

[thick pendant]

they need to be set to different addresses do work independently

did you try the streaming audio with NTSC? maybe it makes a difference as the machine is slightly faster

[void belfry]

hmm, worth a try to test SIDs at diff addresses, as well as NTSC

[thick pendant]

what key to go back a menu?

[void belfry]

~

`

[thick pendant]

streaming audio is working for me

[void belfry]

sorry, same key, but no shift

[thick pendant]

listening to starship - we built this city

i'm in PAL.. strange

"she's like the wind" plays too

[void belfry]

lol, now works for me too,

no clue why didn't before

[thick pendant]

its breaking up on me now

[void belfry]

did any radio worked for you ?

ok, breaking up also on mine

press X (several times) and wait to stop on its own

[thick pendant]

i think it was working better in PAL mode

[void belfry]

Do you have also real H/W (plus Zimodem/Swiftlink related stuff) to compare as well ?

[thick pendant]

no

[void belfry]

from my friend: "Download files works as following: download a file as your choose, then you have to press RUN STOP, and then RUN the file" - but then again, he is using real C64 (and sometimees UltimateC64) with a wifi Zimodem

I also have seen a lot of other C64 recently developed apps using Zimodem (an ESP driven wifi modem with some enhancements after all)

so to say the heavy powerlifting on TCP connections with outside world is done in that ESP

or at least that is my understanding on how it works

[thick pendant]

do you know what CBM + F7 is?

[void belfry]

nope

just what it says on github Basic configuration screen by pressing C= + F7, terminal screen is not preserved., never tried it yet

[thick pendant]

right, but i can't seem to figure out the mapping. wonder if one can configure stuff like dual SID in there

[void belfry]

SID 6581 seems to work better also

I'm listening to Neil Armstrong's message from the Moon lol

it didn't work on 8580 before, also that creepy Celine Dion's song

to be precise :D))))

Dance Monkey too,so I might have used the wrong SID after all. SID 6581 ftw so far

no breaking up as well on songs so far

and no breakups on Starship song

Radio streaming also works

I AM BLOWN AWAY.

Internet radio PCM (11khz sure) streamed online to C64 core

This is one of the moments when it feels like hitting the jackpot in a very nerdy and satisfying way with our little bundle of joy called MiSTer and its awesome cores

for me at least

[vestal goblet]

You’ve got my child’s attention when you mention Dance Monkey 😉

[void belfry]

Back to SID version issue, I'll confirm tomorrow with my friend if he uses 6581 (though I am almost certain he does) as well on his real h/w

but so far, Retroterm on that BBS I mentioned delivers most of its services. SID/PCM/Internet PCM Radio/Wikipedia/Weather and IRC services/streams work just fine on MiSTer

[thick pendant]

probably uses a 6581 unless its a C=64c or C=128, but no hard rules on that

commodore seemed to throw whatever parts they had on hand together

[void belfry]

I'm still listening to online radio lol. It just seems surreal

switched between available stations without any issue

Next days I will stress test this against C64 core and its shenanigans, but so far this is in a nutshell what I did :

Go to https://github.com/retrocomputacion/retroterm/tree/master/build and grab RetroTerm
Get the User Port "u" one (eg. rt_u_v0.20.prg) , as the 232, sl, ulti versions refers to Turbo232, SwiftLink, Ultimate and are not implemented/tested on MiSTer
In the Mister C64 Menu, go to "Hardware", set the "Expansion" to "RS232", "RS232 Connection" to "Internal", "RS232 mode" to "VIC-1011" and save it.
Set Uart Mode to Modem / Link TCP Baud 57600. Reset UART connection and save modem config
In the Mister C64 Menu, go to Audio&Video, Set both SIDs to 6581, Right SID Port same, video PAL - for the time of testing seems to work best
Load RetroTerm prg and ATDT your way to lu8fjh-c64.ddns.net:6402 to enjoy SIDs/PCM files and even Internet Radio (PCM 11kHz) streamed online on C64 core

[thick pendant]

I'm using the UP9600

[void belfry]

i guess, no difference ? I kept VIC1011 as I mostly use C64 for QLink

and my default baud rate was (until today lol) 1200

[thick pendant]

you can also add "rbbs = lu8fjh-c64.ddns.net:6402" to MidiLink.DIR so all you have to do is type "atdtrbbs"

the newer midilink lets you have different sections like [C64] [MiniMig] [C64+MiniMig] etc...

[void belfry]

nicey, I have to explore more on it 🙂

bloody hell, over 1hr of internet radio listening and still going without issues. On C64.

[void belfry]

Gotta admit, I have listened these hours more Spanish (Argentinian to be precise) internet radios than my entire life (and I do not regret it a bit, surprisingly good selection and especially that I did it on C64)

[thick pendant]

Do you understand Spanish?

[void belfry]

a bit 🙂

I am Romanian, so Spanish, French,Italian and other latin languages are in some degree easy for me to understand

[thick pendant]

I lived in Miami area for 15 years, so I started eventually understanding it, but now that I have been away 5 years I've forgotten most 😦

I'm much better with computer languages 🙂

[burnt timber]

https://media4.giphy.com/media/pzo49Bszsudk4/200w.gif?cid=6c09b952zhie949h9iayoqydqkw11tg4pxrwp1ebc7rb7ya3&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200w.gif&ct=g

[copper slate]

Nice, I grew up there

[thick pendant]

its under 3 hours away. I can still go there if I want, but I never do

recently I got close, went to see Scorpions concert at Hard Rock, but that's not really Miami.

[thick pendant]

https://youtu.be/jIqWVO9Rd38

[thick pendant]

Me too!

somehow it bitbangs 57600 BAUD using a 1mhz 6510 and that works so well on the C=64 core.

[burnt timber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGx1iZfCweA

[tall grotto]

What happens if you do forget?

I'm not sure if park is parking a floppy reader or means something else.

My first computer was windows 95 I'll admit. I only messed with a commodore 128 once but that was without any accessories, and I could only toy with it for the day.

[gloomy bolt]

So they just put Grace Jones in a game without telling anyone?

Looks interesting!

[waxen brook]

found a weird quirk in the AO486 core.. disabling joystick 1 seems to make the core slow down dramatically. no idea why, but i needed to do this so that joystick doesnt interfere with mouse control in TIE fighter in the menus. its a real pain in the ass

👀 https://archive.org/details/TIECDJOY_ZIP

supposedly fixes for joysticks with multiple axis. this is probably the fix for this one. man so much of this stuff would be lost without the internet archive..

[thick pendant]

Probably noting if you don't physically move the computer around, but if you do the head can damage the platter...

[waxen brook]

the sidewinder 3d pro patch for tie fighter didn't fix all the issues. still has cursor movement for every damn axis on the sticks when in menus, which makes it so you have to set throttle exactly to center to avoid the cursor moving by itself and having to fight against that with the mouse to do anything

installing the disk version now

[waxen brook]

disk version doesnt have any of the input issues of the CD version. crazy how the "Collector's" CD versions are such a mess for these. X-wing CD nukes the mt-32 music and the tie fighter CD makes controls an absolute mess

[fast kraken]

nobodies ever stiched together some definitive version patch?

kinda surprising for such a revered game

[void belfry]

RIPterm being just gorgeous on ao486 core lol 🙂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol

I knew back then it was a thing, but never truly experienced it until now lol (also helped being reminded about it by retrobits YT vid : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyEj4Rm8mzE )

RIPterm 2.3 shareware edition works perfect (shareware limitation is to some print functions anyway, rest is 100% full), just set Uart to Modem (115200 works ok) and rest is just mostly mouse GUI driven. Also tested only so far on DOS 7.1

[burnt timber]

This is lovely

[void belfry]

dunno yet other BBS than blackflag.acid.org:24, but most probably there are others too

[void belfry]

I had a really hard time to choose what to upload, those are my faves so far

else would just spam discord more lol

some are animated, it's quite a feat and as well a feast for the eyes (or what would have been back then a teenager ones for me)

[void belfry]

small "movies" also, like ANSI ones, but colored and vectorized 🙂

[waxen brook]

Looks like dosbox has a similar issue with TIE Fighter CD with the mouse cursor moving by itself and making the game impossible.. and there is some workaround by using "timed=false" for the joystick config in DOSbox, whatever that means:
https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/784

anything similar that I could do on MiSTer/AO486?

found definition for that variable

(timed=false => a specific amount reads to decide when to release an axis)```

[burnt timber]

I am playing poverty doujin fighting games on X68000

It is glorious

[waxen brook]

x68000 even has doujin bomberman x street fighter crossovers heheh

[burnt timber]

Yasss

Just gotta sift through all the (admittedly cool) doujin shmups to find this stuff

[burnt timber]

Mid Garts by Wolf Team says "Fuck you" when you exit the pause screen lmao

[burnt timber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntsMQ1xd52M

This looks pretty great

@void belfry this isnt in my year to year packs (1996), you think it would run well on ao486?

[maiden sigil]

My experience with 50gb of game pack hdd images:
Oooh that game looks awesome, let me go try it! Oh it’s not here.

[burnt timber]

I have that experience only with weird shit

My packs have Rusty and Totsugeki Mix, I did not expect Japanese stuff in there

[burnt timber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57OO9EGgdtg

[gloomy bolt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQopdEwzRj0

[burnt timber]

XD

[void belfry]

seems fine afaik. Workable setup seems to be with EMM386. No sound/music, but didn't yet ran sound setup, just confirming it works, FMVs as well afaik (died easy lol)

ok, all works fine, music and sounds (MIDI with MT32Pi, FMV music and game effects)

nice music btw

this also caught my eyes lol

Gotta admit, FMVs are also spot on

[void belfry]

For the lolz, it runs also under W95 on ao486, but while FMVs are somewhat acceptable (some sound hiccups now and then), gameplay feels like cheating due to slowness

at 640x480 that is, didn't test it lower

maybe playing around with res and speed would make it also playable lol

and it works lol. on Fast Speed setting, game feels and play normal

[waxen brook]

looks pretty awesome. hadn't heard of that one before

[void belfry]

me neither 😄

on a side note, it won't work/craps out on NT 4.0. I would expect it also to work, though way more slower, on W98, but I don't have a good image to test out

as for OS/2 Warp in DOS compatibility, I won't even try unless very drunk

so bottom line after 2 or so hrs of testing, SideLine compatibility winners on ao486 are DOS 7.1 with EMM386 and W95 with Fast Speed setting while on 640x480

[burnt timber]

Thanks @void belfry , I will try to sort out how to build a boot HDD image for it

[void belfry]

as before, easily to manually be added on @vestal ginkgo VHDs, that EMM386 option is a dead giveaway

for DOS that is

[burnt timber]

How does the menu recognize a new game being added?

[void belfry]

I guess nice... I didn't try it myself since a very long time ago, mean I could add some of my faves and all

[burnt timber]

Ill see if I can sort it out

Good entry for the 1996 vhd

[still wren]

I must play this

[void belfry]

yeah, I really enjoyed it so far. And the fact that it also run smooth (except FMVs) on W95, is a bonus on my side

[burnt timber]

Hm, the game is quite large, over 500mb

[void belfry]

it won't use much HDD, it runs off CD

I guess I could have copied it entirely and probably FMVs in windoze would be better, but heh

[burnt timber]

Oh, so I need to setup DOS cd drivers

[void belfry]

almost 2 megs on HDD for DOS

ok, got a very old and not updated top300, mounted CD, installed it to e:\Sideline, manually added and works perfect with EMM386 setting from boot menu

[burnt timber]

Allright, Ill try on the 1996 VHD

[void belfry]

sure, it should work the same

[burnt timber]

Okay, I have it installed. How do I get to the screen to add the game into the menu?

[void belfry]

Not even tipsy (one beer and a half) but couldn't resist to not do a quick test on OS/2. All versions (L1 cache on/off or not ones) while installing without issues, would crap out (no surprise, I have no EMM386 there anyway lol)

[burnt timber]

cd..

oops

These are the options here

[void belfry]

I've no idea, this is what I have on my old vhd, i go to manually added, then Edit, Add

[burnt timber]

OK, it is different in the year by year vhds. I will check into total DOS launcher documentation

[void belfry]

anyway, most important is that it works with given settings

[waxen brook]

lol its so jank. ken spamming uppercuts to become invincible from bomb blasts lol

[burnt timber]

Okay, I see how this works. Total DOS Launcher runs a python script and indexes everything in a directory, then that gets copied over to the DOS machine

[waxen brook]

im still using this older version also. need to upgrade to 2.02 soon here

[still wren]

Oh hell yes!

Now I have to play it!

[burnt timber]

TDL is kind of a nuisance to update, I think Ill just grab the top 300 and add it in on there

[still wren]

Might be a good one to throw into the random game challenge rotation at the locals

[void belfry]

Ok, this looks interesting to check it out lol : https://github.com/jhhoward/MicroWeb

"MicroWeb uses Michael Brutman's mTCP networking library for the network stack." - music to my ears

and yeah, on ao486 it just flies 🙂 for now on http sites, for the https needs an external proxy/ssl offloader , but as I did for ChatGPT client or Amiga's Ibrowse, it can be easily done

[burnt timber]

Hmm

Well I can get it running, but I cant get sound. I have sound on in the dossetup utility but the game is silent

[void belfry]

have you ran sndsetup.bat ?

[burnt timber]

Doh, sure havent. Sorry about that

[void belfry]

Creative SB (normal one) should suffice

and if you have mt32.. it's quite a treat

[burnt timber]

I dont have one yet

But this regular midi music will be fine in the meantime

Wish it had OPL2 or 3 support

[void belfry]

lol, microweb on PC XT core 😄

[void belfry]

OMFG ! Browsing web pages on PC XT core ! 🙀 and it's blazingly fast

[burnt timber]

Near as I can tell it is not possible to use a joystick with this game. Sure, it has options and calibration.. but no combination of those or any of the OSD menu options will result in anything but the ship flying straight up into the wall and exploding lol

[void belfry]

minor details 😛

[burnt timber]

Keyboard it is

[void belfry]

sry mate, that game, no matter how fun it is, just lost the match for my interest against MicroWeb on XT 😄

"not yet supported https"

[burnt timber]

Dont sweat it, I dont think it can be fixed lol

[void belfry]

FrogFind proxy-like almost works, but only for main page

[void belfry]

Sideline proved to be an easy one, Rusty was a bit more tricky (with that L1 cache off)

[burnt timber]

I forgot I had L1 cache off so I was like "Why it slow?!" lol

[void belfry]

ahaha lol, yeah, it happens to me even today

[burnt timber]

ao486 is reminding me of how tedious it was back in the 90s getting games running. I remember some of them just never ran right, or the gravis never worked with it, etc etc

[void belfry]

yeah, that's why I love having multiple setups (diff mem managers/drivers etc)

config.sys menus were a savior then, it is as well now lol

[burnt timber]

I remember building an early MAME "console" in a Compaq portable III case with an ATI All in Wonder pro to play on the family's CRT TV back in the day

DOS MAME, and all

[void belfry]

my main issue back then was having a small HDD (272 megs), but still managed to do some funky stuff with that beloved 486 dx4 i had, even "compressing" W95 to some 30 megs or so if I recall right

[burnt timber]

Oh what was it called

Doublespace?

[void belfry]

no, deleting unnecesarry crap files, like help and so on 😄 hence my "" on "compressing"

[burnt timber]

I remember we ran doublespace or some such and it destroyed the OS

[void belfry]

doublecrap prog failed miserably

that Doublespace and "double the RAM" "optimizer" ones were such a scam back then

[burnt timber]

For real

[void belfry]

lol, maybe someday I'll give them a test against ao486, though pretty much sure they won't work at all (or in case of RAM optimizers will fail miserably)

[void belfry]

68k.news site by Action Retro guy works like a charm and so (very fast as it is only text) would most of HTTP sites

So yeah, just get that MicroWeb executable (https://github.com/jhhoward/MicroWeb/releases), transfer it to XT vhd, follow same instructions for DOS PPP as for a486 and that's that. Mouse is a bonus 😉 HTTPS proxy tests would follow next days

[burnt timber]

Also TIL that MCGA resolution games can work with the scanline filters in ao486. Neat

[thick pendant]

MCGA is pretty much VGA mode 13

[burnt timber]

Yep, pardon my nomenclature

[waxen brook]

Many games dont work with joystick properly in AO486 it seems. Rebel Assault also has issues. No combination of settings in the hardware menu seem to be able to get it to work.
TIE Fighter CD is impossible to properly play also because the forced "two joysticks" option makes the mouse cursor move from any axis it detects, so you have every axis fighting to move it in some direction.

[burnt timber]

Darn. Well, at least its not just me

[maiden sigil]

has anyone tried getting BeOS working?

I have a feeling soon I'm gonna have a few dozen vhd images with different windows versions

[void belfry]

i tried at some point, but think it requires FPU if my memory serves me right. and probably some other issues

[maiden sigil]

ah

[burnt timber]

Blade Strangers just has X68000s as characters

[void belfry]

In a nutshell :)) Sorry, could not resist exploring Intel 387 utilities disk 😄

[void belfry]

Hello again, very old friends 🙂 actually needed only TASM, but oh well...

[void belfry]

Not still giving up, tested another version of Q387, specifically shareware 3.5 and at least from one test, FX Fighter for DOS works full for the 20 mins of 387 emulator. On 4.13 , game would play from 10-15 mins at most (again, shareware time limited version tested)

Running 2nd stress test (meaning 4 CPU tournament lol )

Sheba and Siren seem to be the toughest 🙂

[void belfry]

stress test 2 took the same of max 20 mins. Also without DOS32A, another thing to explore

and it was without dos32 because i simply forgot in rush to type it lol, so it might not be needed after all

[void belfry]

3rd test (and 2nd with default dos4gw) went smooth as well (Jake won this time) for the 20 min limit of Q387 v3.5 (and I did skipped all the cutscenes/FMVs/whatever to just let the raw polygon 3D stuff take action)

does anyone have running/licensed Q387 version 3.5 to test out more ? And yeah, I realize how far fetched it looks like (Q387 V3.5 Math Accelerator and Emulator that is)

[void belfry]

and 4th test went exactly as predicted (Sheba won again), so there might be hope after all

didn't try this version of Q387 with other requiring FPU games, will see on that at some other time

[void belfry]

5th (and probably last for today) test went to absolutely same results as the previous, 20 mins tests Magnon won, with Venam breathing on its neck

So yeah, anyone knowing more about QuickWare Q387 products, please DM me, I am very curious to test out some more on FPU requiring software for ao486

Rest assured, I am not asking for your (what it possibly be abandonware) license keys for this software, just if you can replicate my experiment on this game (and possibly some other) using this 387 emulator on your own MiSTer under same conditions as I did (OS/mem manager wise)

[waxen brook]

https://youtu.be/lRU3q-3OV2I

Playthrough including the cinematic mode replay on MiSTer's X68000 core

[burnt timber]

I wonder why this never got a PC port

[gloomy bolt]

I played this the other day on your previous post and it's pretty damned awesome!

They are still in share-media.

Hehe.

[burnt timber]

Argh

https://media.tenor.com/ijSgAYN6HxUAAAAC/indignation-jump.gif

[waxen brook]

Great controls, great music and overall I found it to be a stand-out star wars game also. Unfortunately has a lot of the issues that plague other X68000 games on MiSTer, but gameplay is mostly unhindered thankfully.

[gloomy bolt]

I very much dig it.

[waxen brook]

dunno what happened, maybe got caught by the spam filter for rapid-firing comments instead of consolidating them into one?

[burnt timber]

Knowing that Yuzo Koshiro re-composed the cantina theme for X68000 is amusing to me

[burnt timber]

No, Im dumb and my replies were in the other channel

[burnt timber]

Are the voice samples higher pitched because of core issues?

[waxen brook]

yeah. I noted all the issues I observed in the description including that one. All games that have voice samples seem to be effected by that issue in the X68000 core

[burnt timber]

Bummer 😦

[gloomy bolt]

@burnt timber DF actually runs super well.

Midi, the only issue is I used a gamepad and it didn't like non-joystick input. Skip ahead to 1:12 for the payoff.

[burnt timber]

Ah good, runs fine.

[gloomy bolt]

Yeah, this is better than the first machine I ran it on back in the 90s for sure.

[burnt timber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3q7jSmZFqY

[waxen brook]

Star Wars: TIE Fighter (disk version) on MiSTer's 486 core:
https://youtu.be/5EBlEffTDPM

[gloomy bolt]

TIE Fighter and Xwing vs TIE Fighter are probably my favorite SW games, including new releases. I just had more fun with them than any other of the games.

Plus I always liked saying 'frigate.' Felt like getting away with a swear.

[burnt timber]

I had Rebel Assault, not X-Wing or Tie Fighter so I'll just watch and enjoy some of what I missed.

I really like the sprite artwork in this.

[gloomy bolt]

it's really great. My storage flood wiped out ALL my OG Lucasfilm/Lucasarts games. I had big boxes of everything (even Freddy Farkas). With a full set of The Adventurer...I subscribed from issue one. I wasn't a collector, I just happened to keep them. And, well, time makes fools of us all.

[burnt timber]

Damn, sorry 😦

[maiden sigil]

Damn

[gloomy bolt]

It's been over 20 years now. I'm over it. It was my first apartment and it was trash. I should have never stored anything in the storage unit.

But yeah, it sucked.

[gloomy bolt]

This vid is making a day that was going south pull a 180. Thank you... my nostalgia tanks are filling.

[burnt timber]

Im enjoying this too, such good pixel art

[waxen brook]

Agreed. They replaced some of the intro pixel art with rendered video sequences in the CD version but it still looks pretty great though. Shame joystick support is a complete mess there. It's nearly unplayable on MiSTer, perhaps unless you have an older stick that lacks anything but X/Y control. Probably the joystick options in the 486 core need to be improved so that games like this can work properly.

[burnt timber]

Its just as bad for gamepads in a lot of stuff, as we disccused the other day

[gloomy bolt]

Yep

[waxen brook]

theyre my favorites also. It's been a joy revisiting them finally on MiSTer's 486 core 🙂

Some later star wars games are good, but none of them attempted precision joystick controls as the main interface because it's not what folks mainly had on computers/consoles anymore. When the game is build from the ground-up with that in mind, like these were, it's just such an engaging experience. Takes a bit to learn all the controls but well worth it, and not all of them are necessary.

I suppose an issue report should go in for joystick control issues in the 486 core for games like TIE Fighter CD and Rebel Assault. That one also doesn't detect a stick properly, likely because of the multiple axis' throwing a monkey wrench into its detection routine.

[thick pendant]

PC analog joystick is like the worst interface ever created. You have to time the discharge of a capacitor by counting CPU loops. But to get accurate results you have to disable interrupts.

[fast kraken]

i think it was possibly somewhat better before the dual-stick type stuff was added for psx?

[thick pendant]

So the faster your CPU is, the more clock cycles you burn. 486 probably uses 10-20% total CPU just to read the stupid joystick.

[fast kraken]

like you couldn't use a throttle axis back then but it also didn't have these problems

[thick pendant]

not sure I understand, Throttle axisis simply joystick B general axis

[fast kraken]

yeah but before we had it, you could play tie fighter cd with a stick

i know because i did

[thick pendant]

you get 4 buttons 4 axis

[waxen brook]

the problem with the current core is that the extra axis always being there does not work with some games. tie fighter CD for some reason allows all of those axis to move the mouse cursor, and it makes the menus a complete mess to try and control, with the cursor constantly moving by itself while you try and fight against that with mouse

[void belfry]

Couldn't resist to experience 1-2 FPS Quake on ao486 :D)))

[opal void]

3d accelerator when?

[waxen brook]

3dfx core with just enough pentium to get by would be nice ^-^

there is someone who made a FPGA port of quake, or was working on one

https://twitter.com/sylefeb/status/1564758778830065666?s=20

Sylvain Lefebvre (@sylefeb)

Q5K: Quake level viewer in 5K LUTs on a low cost, low power ice40 up5k #fpga! Custom #GPU, @risc_v CPU and SOC, capable of rendering #Quake's level with lightmaps.
How? Thread 👇

(Written in #Silice, here running on the #mch2022 badge fpga)

Likes

347

▶ Play video

Twitter · Aug 30, 2022, 11:35 PM

huh someone ported quake 2 to fpga also:
https://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece545/F16/reports/F09_QuakeII.pdf

oh both are hybrid with linux on the cpu being used also

[void belfry]

Fingers crossed, in 8 mins I will find out if my FX fighter test with not time limited Q387 is successful or not 😄

Ok, it seems I solved it 😄 FX Fighter for MS-DOS definitely works on AO486 core.
It was a tough cookie to crack but the winning solution is: EMM386/QEMM setup for mem management (only DOS 7.1 tested so far, also QEMM seems more stable), QuickWare Q87 math coprocessor emulator loaded (versions 3.5/4.13 20 mins demo and 4.13 no time limit tested)
Gameplay I find it fluid, no noticeable slowdowns for my very untrained eyes 🙂

So the one who can track down the creators of this Q387 emulator and obtain free licensing/approve for being considered abandonware/open source status would be the real MVP, at least so far for this game

My google skills failed to find any reasonable trace of the ppl behind QuickWare (the one that created this tool, nowadays ones have no affiliation other than the name coincidence)

40+ mins already and no game crash 🙂

2nd session test, now with DOS32A instead of game standard DOS4GW

[void belfry]

seems to work very well with DOS32A so far, lost count of tournaments lol

[burnt timber]

Nice work, TO!

[void belfry]

Thank you, but really I was just following some hints from an older forum thread: https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=8631#p8631

Q87 (didn't yet test the "special for Quake" Q87X) allows also to run Quake. Abysmal performance, but you can still amaze your nerdy friends

Other games might have a very marginal boost, if at all. FX Fighter seeems to just be a lucky case

Will see how old CAD software would fare, maybe also some graphical rendering stuff

[waxen brook]

@gloomy bolt & @burnt timber - check out this patch for dark forces! adds mouse look and advanced control configuration, amongst other things:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220504190501/https://df-21.net/downloads/uploads/1811576435/dforcedh.zip

original host is down so i checked wayback machine, and sure enough its preserved there!

runs in windows or dos and I can confirm it works in DOS Dark Forces at least

does the AO486 core support middle mouse button? doesnt seem to work in dark forces for me

[burnt timber]

That’s pretty cool

[waxen brook]

can disable auto aim, add a crosshair if you want. lots of neat stuff

fix the mouse controls so it's a linear scale instead of changing speed depending on how quickly youre moving

[void belfry]

Oh well, it appears the emulated FPU would not transcend, whatever that Intel test was ever about

[void belfry]

AutoDesk AutoCAD r10 confirmed working flawlessly as well on ao486 with Q87 FPU emu as far as I can test. Rendering those samples took between 2 to 5 mins, depending on complexity ofc

Colony Wars 2492 smth (a german RTS) would recognize that you use a virtual FPU and refuse to run. Maybe there is some trick to that game to work with emulated FPUs, but I don't know german and have little interest at this momment to explore it

Falcon 3 ( with hi-res setting that requires FPU) might need also need some more fiddling with unloading unnecessary stuff from conventional mem while using QEMM model, but that would be the fun for another day

[uneven cliff]

Oh wow! You're actually making FX Figher run, good work

[burnt timber]

Im working on making an image for ease of use right now

For FX Fighter

Just wrangling the autoexec and config sys files

[void belfry]

Sadly, the solution cannot (to the extent of my google-ing stuff or even BBSing for stuff knowledge) cannot be applied fully for all as this software is not free/legal limbo
I did a lot of research on this Q87 (as well as on Terminate - probably the best ANSI terminal, but another story) and couldn't find a mean of contacting the authors (all modern references you might find about QuickWare that made this lead to dead-ends)
So yeah, "the crumbs" are mentioned in the forum post that I linked, rest is up to each one's behaviour.
I do not encourage it and really wish someone (maybe could be possible as MiSTer gets a lot of traction in all retro communities) could reach out and find a better solution (I would pay gladly a sum for this gem if could be made possible again, or declare it abandonware/opensource by original devs etc)

[burnt timber]

Okay, I think I have this image sorted out and ready

ao486 does not support CDDA music, otherwise this game is running fine now with the Q87 program.

[void belfry]

for giggles I am running comparative tests with https://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-benchmark-pack.html

including the ones that previously not possible, as quake lol

[burnt timber]

Thanks to @void belfry for figuring all this out in the first place

[void belfry]

Glad I could help, this opens the door to many previously non working stuff 🙂

[thick pendant]

I've always wanted to run Autodesk 3D Studio MAX on ao486... maybe it would work with that FTP emu

[void belfry]

only found out working AutoCAD r10, didn't test other products that CAD versions

[thick pendant]

I just remember taking AutoCAD in college and trying a SW 287 emulator which was pretty unusable to I ended up getting a 287 FPU

that was my first FPU

[void belfry]

ain't this a throwback in the past lol ? 😄

[thick pendant]

then next I ended up getting a Weitek 387 clone

[void belfry]

anyway, discovered things I didn't know about myself: I am able to stay calm at Phil's lab Quake test on ao486, Still going lmao

freaking impressed

best part: at this framerate you can get perfect timed screenshots 😉

[burnt timber]

Hitting the right arrow key on the picture post is similar to actual FPS in game

[void belfry]

And this is in 360x480.

[burnt timber]

@void belfry what do you think the right memory manager is for One Must Fall 2097?

[void belfry]

not a clue, never played/tried that 🙂

[burnt timber]

Its a lot more fun than FX Fighter lol

[void belfry]

was it tried it before ?

[burnt timber]

It runs fine, but randomly crashes

[void belfry]

Intriguing :D)))

[burnt timber]

272Mhz huh

[gloomy bolt]

You can tell it's getting more accurate because it's now lying on benchmarks.

[thick pendant]

Not cycle accurate CPU, its like an emu

[gloomy bolt]

Just like real hardware!

[burnt timber]

Only the best for us

[thick pendant]

I had a friend who was a device driver writer for Diamond MM, anyway he told me he just made a stub driver (meaning it did nothing) implementing all the API calls. Anyway it was still slower than ATI's driver at that point... So, ya, they all cheat, re-implement and patch GDI or whatever, do whatever...

cache strings

maybe even slow down the system clock

[gloomy bolt]

When I was on the Kindle team at Amazon, we cheated our asses off. I hated it. All of the primary java benchmarking sites in Silk were detected and threaded completely differently than standard sites.

Got worse when they moved to cloud rendering. Then they finally ditched that half baked crap browser entirely. Thankfully.

[void belfry]

and ofc depends on the software 😛

[thick pendant]

I had the Fire phone... thank your employer for the awesome support.

[gloomy bolt]

Is that sarcasm or did you actually get good support?

We shoved so many cameras into that thing I don't think there was room for a phone, actually.

I think maybe 1/5th of the team actually accepted that (we had a choice between FF and Thor, the 8th gen Kindle and the last good one....we almost all took Thor)

[thick pendant]

It was an good deal bundled with prime, but they cut off support, but the last thing they did do was send down something that loaded it with a bunch of spam apps

[gloomy bolt]

Yeah, that sounds about right. I think it lasted like what... 18 months? If that?

13

[thick pendant]

the hardware was actually nice though

but they make apple look good as far as supporting it long term

[gloomy bolt]

Yeah, it had a good proc and would have been really nice if every single (EVERY SINGLE) feature's pri 0 goal wasn't 'get their data into the garden.'

Andy Jassy's mantra.

I still have TONS of the earbuds in boxes all over the place. When we were testing on them, we just tossed out the accessories, and I kept all the earbuds I came across.

Great 'lose them, I don't GAF' earbuds.

[thick pendant]

the screen was nice, and for whatever its worth the 3D effect (using al the stupid forward-facing cameras) was at least unique

[gloomy bolt]

I remember when they upgraded from Ice Cream to Jellybean on the firephone and we just immediately started burning proc for zero reason. It was a sleep state/threading state thing and tombstoning (going into a suspended state for background) was just keeping all the tabs alive on the high perf cores.

Yeah, that was pretty cool And the backgrounds they bundled with it looked neat.

[thick pendant]

the hardware was at parity with iphone I think, but obviously apple handed them their asses

[gloomy bolt]

The RAM was a little low. Eveyrone was at 3 or 4GB at the time and we were 2.

[thick pendant]

I never bought "Fire" anything ever again...

[gloomy bolt]

The reasoning was 'save money, offload to the cloud.'

Apple might have been 2, as well. But they managed it way better than our jank FireOS reskin of Android.

[thick pendant]

yeah, but they fatal blow of their last update with all the BS just was rude.

[gloomy bolt]

I wasn't there at that point. I got canned along with the rest of QA in May of that year.

We had to train dev to do two jobs and then were told to send our desired exit date in May ( we all chose the last work day). They used that to deny us unemployment. But they forced us to choose a day. It was .... Amazon. It was Amazon.

[thick pendant]

I think I paid $200 for it with a year of prime included, but just cutting off support so fast while finally saddling it down with an update so devoted to advertisement spam that made it basically unusable still makes me feel like i got shafted.

even though i was still using the prime

like the prime sub outlasted the phone

[gloomy bolt]

Yep

[thick pendant]

I can draw Bezos rocket in ANSI

[gloomy bolt]

I mean, that's Kindle's goal. Get you in the ecosystem as cheaply as possible. Set you up to buy at around cost (sometimes subsidized) every 2 years.

[thick pendant]

8==>

[gloomy bolt]

I knew it was coming and I still chuckled.

[thick pendant]

Thank god that fucking dicked got Shatner home safe

He is a Canadian national treasure...

[gloomy bolt]

Sad to see him doing NFTs, but it's also like...quaint in a way?

We're not in the eye of the storm anymore.

His Futurama turn is still my favorite 'playing himself' role. "And I when I directed, I got a great performance out of me because I respected ME so much."

[thick pendant]

I like him in 3rd Rock from the Sun

[copper slate]

I saw him at a comic con panel. He was an incoherent mess but it was still enjoyable to listen to.

[gloomy bolt]

The Big Giant Head was great. The Twilight Zone gag is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. At least it was at that point in time, TV wise.

[void belfry]

https://www.fractint.org/ - some fun with fractal images generation on ao486
Rendering at 320x200 and even 640x480 res on ao486 is ok-ish given the circumstances but the generated images are gorgeous.
Increasing resolution and complexity ofc increases rendering time.
At 1024x768, while seeing it rendering line by line (~2 lines/min), I can almost hear ao486 screaming in Verilog: "Stop torturing me ! Promise to be a nice core to you" 😄

and yeah, I stopped the 1024x768 one, would take probably 4-5 hours at least

[void belfry]

Planning a silly test, spanning probably several days/weeks: stress testing/time measuring by generating all resolutions and all images on non-FPU normal setup versus emulated-FPU one
Easy and raw doable by adding an "echo.|time > namet1.txt" and "echo.|time > namet2.txt" respectively before and after "FRACTINT" commands on main batch file, in order to measure delta rendering time per each image and per each resolution used
Then just let it render (it will also save in GIF format the work) over dead times on MiSTer/overnight etc

most probably could automate/find a more elegant solution on it more, but I'm lazy 🙂

[void belfry]

I know I can cheat and fast generate them in PCEm or whatever, but where would be the fun in obtaining those nice images lol and also benchmarking the core in a funky way ?
Usefulness other than getting some cool wallpapers (that are 100% already made online but who cares) and the giggles ? I can think it would also be a good way to measure Q87 FPU emu's stability/gain as well.
Also, did I mentioned nice MiSTer self-generated wallpapers ? 😄

[void belfry]

very first results (and only 320x200 , all non-FPU Plus one with Q87):

[void belfry]

Rendered results are quite nice, spotted a few for my MiSTer wallpapers once I will have them at higher res

[void belfry]

Further tests and Q87 really shines:

[void belfry]

I know it is a fringe weirdo experiment, but so far Q87 has its usefulness in running FX Fighter and AutoCAD R12. Falcon 3.0 (on high fidelity requiring FPU that is) is crapping out with QEMM, will further investigate with EMM386 variant and such

[burnt timber]

Those are pretty cool

[void belfry]

Thanks 🙂 (well, it's the programmer's work actually and the sweat of ao486 lol). But if interested, once rendered, I can share them easy (forum comes to mind)

unfortunately even with Q87, at higher resolutions rendering times will grow fast. Will see

On already working games (but who might benefit off an FPU), I expect marginal improvements (if at all, and remember the bound to EMM386/QEMM that Q87 has, so for some games you really need to shrink down memory loaded stuff to even make that game run, again Falcon3 comes to mind)

that game is a menace for DOS PC memory lol, only conventional it needs 604 kB lol

[maiden sigil]

So how do we use this q87

[void belfry]

you simply need to run it before your game/application. Attention, it requires EMM386 or QEMM, as it doesn't load into conventional memory

[maiden sigil]

where do I get it? :\

I can only find the 20 minute demo one

[waxen brook]

is there any way to set the irq to something besides 9 for MIDI in the ao486 core? im using the top300 pack, dont know if that limits my options there

need to set it to something between 2 and 7 for a program i'm trying to run

[thick pendant]

Most things using the 401 MPU don't need an interrupt

I'm not sure if the MPU 401 emulation on ao486 even supports an Interrupt. It's not a true "Smart" 401 MPU. Its fake smart...

[thick pendant]

If there is something that needs an 401 IRQ, most likely it does not need 386 32bit mode, so probably SoftMPU can work using the SandBlaster Interrupt.

So, if its something on the SoftMPU compatibility list, then you can use that...

[waxen brook]

It's a series of demos by the group called "The Phoney Coders"
Ecargxus
Even Better Than The Real Thing
X-mas 92

all three supported roland sound, but ask for an irq selection and its only between 2 and 7

Also, has anyone gotten the demo Unreal by Future Crew running on the core? It always locks up on me in the Texture segment late into the demo.

[thick pendant]

I'm pretty sure ao486 MP401 does not support any IRQ

So you could try SoftMPU

[waxen brook]

seems hard coded to 9 from what the readme says

[thick pendant]

humm

Try 2, IRQ 9 I think is cascaded.

so XT had 8 IRQs, but when 286 came out they cascaded IRQs meaning 2 was IRQ 9...

9..15 i mean

Meaning IRQ 9..15 always trigger IRQ 2

[waxen brook]

i tried 2. didnt work

[thick pendant]

Try SoftMPU then

[void belfry]

As I said earlier, Q87 is not abandonware to the extent of my knowledge. For sure, there are already cracked versions, but I don't have/use one.

You can however patch it yourselves to accept a general code, it is quite simple and requires 3-4 mins at most.

I don't think I can write that mini how-to in public channel lol, but if interested in short DYI, DM me

[waxen brook]

Was looking for a way to use a keyboard shortcut to swap disks in the C64 core, and found this feature request with the exact same purpose
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/C64_MiSTer/issues/100

wish there were at least an option to use both disk drives available in the OSD and have them work in a sequential mode with a shortcut key to swap the disks. minor gripe but it would make for a cleaner presentation mid-demo

[undone anvil]

Couldn't agree more

And man I would love it if the secondary sdcard could be used as an IEC storage for the C64 core

Or a VHD perhaps

[waxen brook]

Star Wars: Dark Forces, Hard difficulty played in MiSTer's AO486 core 🤩
https://youtu.be/gMqeUzZdTQ0

[waxen brook]

https://youtu.be/RJNfhuCDpcU

Awesome demo for the C64, recorded here with three different SID configurations 🙂

[gloomy bolt]

Is that the one that got MVG copyright struck?

I love demos.

(er, just content matched)

[waxen brook]

No idea. Didn't have any matches/restrictions for me

[gloomy bolt]

Ah, it was Cubase64. This was just another demo in the video.

Cubase starts with Tom's Diner

[waxen brook]

Original producers of demo tunes getting a cut of any ad profit I get doesn't bother me in the slightest. good for them

[gloomy bolt]

Truth. In this case though, it's Suzanne Vega's producer. Hehe.

[thick pendant]

I had some matches on my last video I did for the RetroTerm streaming on C64 core. Obviously for the Starship and Patrick Swayze songs, but they said "no effect on video" so I guess that is OK...

[copper slate]

omg there's an FMTowns core? Does it work?

[burnt timber]

Oh, did he finally release a new one?

Cause the one from before boots nothing

[copper slate]

probably the exact same one, I just noticed it

FMTowns_20230309.rbf

[burnt timber]

Oh, you must have added in dandy's list to update all

yeah that core is useless right now

PC98 is farther along though

[copper slate]

I didn't, was just perusing to see what I needed to update.

@burnt timber PC9800 worth trying out?

[burnt timber]

Oh okay. Well moondandy has a nice addition to it that will grab all those cores

I like PC98 a lot, if you want to try it out I can help you get it running

Its not a complete core by any means but it runs some stuff

[copper slate]

I'll just wait then, I appreciate the offer. Very nice of you

[burnt timber]

PC88 will run a lot more

Like the original Thunderforce

[lunar trellis]

I have a database you can add to the update all script by copying and pasting two lines to the bottom of your downloader.ini file that grabs Puu's most recent PC98 and FM Towns (and various other WIP) cores and the required BIOS files, and puts the cores in the unstable folder, if you are interested in playing about with these sort of cores

[sudden ice]

On the AO486, there are games like Rise of the dragon that has mt32 option but cannot be selected. @vestal ginkgo @thick pendant do you guys know what is wrong here?

My mt32 pi is working fine

[thick pendant]

Did you try SoftMPU?

[sudden ice]

No, I don’t know how to use it

[thick pendant]

Its a TSR you load

http://bjt42.github.io/softmpu/

[sudden ice]

Is there a special way to load it?

[thick pendant]

Run SoftMPU specifying the base port address and interrupt of your Sound Blaster, and the base port address of the MPU-401 interface, e.g.

SOFTMPU.EXE /SB:220 /IRQ:5 /MPU:330```

Getting the optimal experience in DOS requires some effort.

I don't know why the Roland option is disabled. Maybe the setup program is simply not detecting the ao486 MPU-401 (Which SoftMPU may help), Maybe files are missing... honestly no idea.

[opal void]

Can we combine softmpu and SBEMU together?

[thick pendant]

i dunno.. never used SBEMU

SoftMPU is open source and easy to compile with Borland "Turbo" toolchain, so You could combine it with anything I suppose.

[thick pendant]

Like that similar util that makes adlib work over parallel port.

[opal void]

SBEMU is open source too

I tried it on my modern PC

Works great

[thick pendant]

I don't quite get the purpose of SBEMU... Why not just use PCem or one of the DOSBox variations?

[rough edge]

SBEmu is like dosemu except you don't wanna run Dosemu

[worthy zealot]

SBEmu only emulates the sound card part, the rest runs natively. I mean, even on the MiSTer we emulate midi cards, so it does not seem like a big issue.

Running DOS on a modern machine is not really a problem on its own it seems, the issue is the lack of sound cards that DOS supports. So SBEmu solves that.

I have not tried DOS 7.x or 6.22 yet though. I suspect it might not just accept using my USB mouse and keyboard like FreeDOS did.

I am guessing the benefit is you wont be wasting CPU cycles on emulating the rest of the machine... if you are using an older machine then this should help run DOS better. I suspect the best thing is if you have a machine that runs Windows 98 and / or Windows XP very well, but is too modern to support DOS fully due to lack of ISA or old enough sound cards. More modern PCs can just run DOSBox anyway of course and you wont have to boot up into DOS.

It wont help with Windows 9x or XP support, because they would still lack drivers to support the hardware. Not really sure why or how DOS manages to work with modern GPUs, CPUs and RAM... but I guess all the original x86 instructions are still supported by modern CPUs and... I guess there is something similar for GPUs? Some basic functionality that covers what DOS needs. Strange how its not the same with sound cards, unless you count the PC speaker. I am pretty sure that is the same on modern PCs as well.

[thick pendant]

so I guess it might be well suited for this AMD X2 box I have with nForce chipset?

[opal void]

There's only one way to know

[worthy zealot]

I used it with my desktop computer, it runs AMD Ryzen 5700G and some ASUS motherboard. x570 I think. Seemed to work quite well. A 3080ti GPU. Was quite surprised to see it booting into DOS. Still need to test with Dos 7.x, it might be working mainly because FreeDOS supports modern hardware.

[void belfry]

If anyone is curious about it, found this Desktop environment/GUI for DOS https://psychoslinux.gitlab.io/DOS/INDEX.HTM

Since I don't really have my own FreeDOS VHD, imported it in @vestal ginkgo Shareware pack and yeah, for basic stuff it seems to works ok. Full mouse driven interface, quite nice imho.
Also imported it on a DOS 7.1 install (mostly to test out programs that require FPU in conjunction with Q87 emu)
Not all included programs would work out of the box, some would require more fiddling with their config files, some I could not yet find a way to start them

its File Manager many of you would recognize the (at least for me) amazing DOS Navigator 🙂

install is pretty easy: D/L the zip file, extract it and just copy it to your VHD. MisterFS must be ruled out as it won't play nice with long file names. So either mount the VHD in windoze or just mount it on MiSTer's linux, copy the files over, unmount it and all done

[uneven cliff]

I used the install_scummvm script but I don't know how to actually use it? Not seeing it on Computer core menu

[hollow ice]

I think it is in misc? It isn’t really a core, it just runs on the arm processor from my recollection

[thick pendant]

type ```
cd /media/fat/Scripts
wget https://github.com/bbond007/MiSTer_ScummVM/raw/master/Install_ScummVM.sh

[hollow ice]

so it does wind up in computer cores?

I keep meaning to go through your scripts and get them installed, you did doom, basilisk and scumvm, right? Did I miss any?

[thick pendant]

it goes in Scripts

[woven lava]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hand-386-handheld

has anybody seen this? not a MiSTer core but I'm sure our ao486 images would work great on it

[copper slate]

What I find more incredible is that there’s a big enough audience where a company can make and sell a proprietary handheld dos gaming machine.

[crimson fulcrum]

I mean it's aliexpress

all sorts of shit

[copper slate]

Oh I guess? I don’t really follow what’s sold there. That’s really cool though.

[crimson fulcrum]

I saw this and their 8088 portable the other day

was very tempted but then didn't

[woven lava]

its probably just some dude, not a company

[copper slate]

I’m still stuck in the “bringing new product out is a ton of research and capitol” mindset I guess

[wheat folio]

Never underestimate the capabilities of temporarily underemployed engineers with spare time.

[thick pendant]

Do want, they also have an 8088 one with 640K

[woven lava]

right - that one is a different form factor though, and the screen seems a bit small

but its tempting too

[thick pendant]

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805356267711.html?gatewayAdapt=4itemAdapt

sold out

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805347831866.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000014.2.23536154RQs5qT

but honestly, I hate CGA

if it had tandy GFX or EGA or even VGA, i'd consider it

[thick pendant]

I like the form factor of the 8088 one with the 386/VGA capabilities

of the other

also 640K is jank... needs to have EMS

its cool though

no mention of a turbo though... 4.77 XT really is painful

nobody has fond memories of a 4.77 PC/XT

everything simply was terrible without turbo

[woven lava]

yes indeed

a 10Mhz XT maybe

I have the PCXT core defaulted to that

[thick pendant]

for sure

[woven lava]

I'm guessing these are built around available SoCs, maybe there is a market for 4.77MhZ XT CPUs for old software

[thick pendant]

I'd like to see run 8088 MPH.

[burnt timber]

Great Scott

[thick pendant]

or Area 5150

[opal void]

it ran out of stock real quick... within less than a day I think...

[burnt timber]

I have fond memories of nethack and rogue on one of those.. on an amber monitor with hercules video card.

I also acknowledge that in retrospect it completely sucked.

[thick pendant]

i dunno Hercules was at least as good as Apple Mac as far as resolution.

[burnt timber]

I seem to remember playing Top Gun for DOS on that machine too.. but I could be wrong

[thick pendant]

I remember running some sort of CGA emulator for Hercules that made LSL work on a computer at my school.

[thick pendant]

also DOSBox

not really useful

[tulip atlas]

I am making some AO486 game intro recordings (MT-32 and Soundblaster) for example: https://youtu.be/WMH3VwOuZ50

I noticed some flickering lines on the recording that weren't visible on my monitor on the pass thru signal. It turned out that's because the core runs correctly in ~70 Hz like a real VGA MS-DOS PC would. I am also always using the vsync_adjust=2 low lag mode. My capture card is designed for 50/60 Hz PAL/NTSC and so it sometimes chokes on the odd refresh rate a little bit, resulting in flickering little lines. I guess that is a good problem to have, since it showcases the core's accurate refresh rate. On a later recording of Lands of Lore, I forced the core to 60 Hz using the core video option "60 Hz" instead of "variable", and those flickering lines went away.

[tulip atlas]

It looks like Dosbox can't do such refresh rate changes correctly yet, at least according to this open issue: https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/2312

[surreal marsh]

dosbox staging is a fork of dosbox, not mainline dosbox. Although people forked it in the first place because they never released anything.

[tulip atlas]

Indeed.

[frosty compass]

Is there an acceptable emulator that can replicate a P3 1000/Voodoo 5000 yet? I have so many games for that era. Wish I could play them.

[rough edge]

Technically not Emulator but wine

[thick pendant]

by the time the voodoo 5000 came out I had switched to nvidia

[thick pendant]

Prior to that I was running a VoodooII SLI config with Matrox Millennium 2D card.

so that's like 3PCI slots, but fortunately no extra IRQs required 🙂

[fast kraken]

isn't that kinda what dgVoodoo does?

[kind spruce]

hello, i'm using a mister fpga, but i also have a mist fpga, both running amiga / workbench - it appears networking is supported on the mister core, but not the mist - does anyone know how hard that would be to 'port' to the mist core? my nic is detected fine on the mist menu status, as well as within the atari st - but, the minimig core doesn't see it 😦

[thick pendant]

The Amiga is using PPP (serial) to connect to Linux network stack running on the ARM HPS. MiST has an ARM, but I don't think it runs Linux or has a network stack. You could however connect your MiST to your MiSTer (or other Linux device) via USB serial and null-modem connector and spin up a pppd and get your MiST online that way...

I used to connect my Minimig 1.1 via a bluetooth serial adapter to my PC and connect using Roadshow (which runs on a 68000)

[burnt timber]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/X68000_MiSTer/issues/25#issuecomment-1555044379

[kind spruce]

interesting okay

yeah i found a tutorial on using an esp2866 i might give a shot

sucks it 'just works' on the mist w/ the atari st /mistery core

was hoping it'd be the same on minimig

[void belfry]

And this I think concludes my tests with FXFighter and Q87 FPU emu. Setting the floor textures to high (or switching to perspective mode) would lag out and/or crash the game. On medium floor detail + high detail on players seems to be the best combo, no crashes and game is fluid as far as i can say

[void belfry]

Another FPU needing program solved with Q87 🙂 FontEdit 2.0 by Sterling Christensen. Not that I am inclined to create any fonts in MS-DOS, but yeah 🙂

[burnt timber]

I found the same settings to be right in my experiments, its what I set to default on my bootable vhd

[void belfry]

I'm very satisfied with this emulator, even if it is for one game and 4-5 apps (so far)

[burnt timber]

Strange little thing to need, but you never know

[void belfry]

hoped to be the resolution for high-fidelity mode on Falcon 3.0 or some benefit for others like MS Flight 5.0, but not such luck

[void belfry]

26-ish hours of rendering with ao486 and Q87. Without Q87, it would have been at least double for this 1024x768 3 images pack 🙂

[mental moat]

I can't seem to find docs on adding a serial port to the mister for use with computer cores. I want to hook the mister up to my ham radio setup :p

Is there a particular chipset USB to serial adaptor that works? Or is there a SNAC adaptor?

Related question: is there a way to get microphone input?

[thick pendant]

The kernel has support for FT232 USB serial converter

for other ones you may need to compile a new kernel or kernel module.

you'd select the MODEM/USB option from the OSD

[thick pendant]

this is the adapter I bought --> https://www.ebay.com/itm/153104025639

[mental moat]

Awesome thanks @thick pendant

[thick pendant]

The SNAC option may be better because then you can also use the TCP modem, and there are cheaper Ft232 adapters but that one came with a gender-changer.

[mental moat]

Any idea on what I'd need to get in order to do it with SNAC? is there something pre-made I can order?

[thick pendant]

I'm not super familiar with SNAC. Probably need something with a MAX232 or similar to convert the voltage.

[mental moat]

Understood, I'll go with an FTDI for now and figure SNAC out if needed later

[thick pendant]

I'm not familiar with what you can do with Ham radio and a computer. What BAUD does it run at?

[mental moat]

either 1200 or 9600 generally

there are some faster protocols/encodings out there, but those are the most common.

There are still a heap of packet radio BBS running too

here is a screenshot I took after downloading a picture (shown there) from my local packet radio BBS.

I'm keen to try it out on older hardware, hence getting the mister setup for it

There are also international messaging networks as well

[maiden sigil]

It’s been a while

[frosty compass]

https://aliexpress.com/item/1005005528944178.html If it was still in stock I would've bought one. Amazing!

[formal whale]

I think it was determined that it used an edited open source bios illegally and with the original author's credits removed.

[thick pendant]

I would have been more interested in the 386 VGA one...

[thick pendant]

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805356267711.html?gatewayAdapt=4itemAdapt

[opal void]

https://tenor.com/view/southpark-gone-gif-4781884

[waxen brook]

i've found when recording you are best off with vsync_adjust=0. scrolling will be smoother and it just gives a better fit for the signal that youtube and other platforms expect, as they don't support 70hz. In a game like dune its not much of an issue even if you do gameplay videos.

leaving it at 70hz in the core is functionally no different whether vsync adjust 2 or 0, as far as the recording is concerned. letting youtube or re-encoding software try to "sanitize" a 70hz video gives a less smooth and less consistent experience compared to letting MiSTer handle it at the video output stage, in my experience.

[severe hull]

Has anyone, been able to successfully use a racing wheel in AO486? The core was updated with wheel support a while ago but my wheel doesn't work properly.

The problem is with the accelerate and brake pedals. Older PC wheels worked by using the Y axis as the break and acceleration. However it looks like modern wheels use an additional Z axis as for the accel/brake.

And when I configure that to the Y axis on MiSTer, AO486 maps that to either Y+ OR Y-. So accel/brake are both mapped to Y+ or Y-, instead of accel mapped to Y+ and brakes mapped to Y-.

[waxen brook]

havent tried yet but i have a bunch of experience with my wheel in other cores. what are some good games to try with it in 486?

my thrustmaster wheel also has an option to combine axis for brake/gas so i'm guessing this would work for the aforementioned z-axis issue

[severe hull]

I just only tested a joystick test program, but I'll get a list of racing games that support a wheel.

[void crypt]

That is making me think of System Shock.

[kind spruce]

Hello, I'm having a weird issue with MiniMig on the MiST v1.3+ board, using a usb keyboard (from simulant) - everything works, but the 'b' key is, 'a'', and the 'a' key is 'b' - is there a way to remap this?

[severe hull]

@waxen brook I finished testing around 40 DOS racing games and the below work well in AO486. Would be good to know if the combine axis option on your wheel would help.

Some games do allow you to use a button instead of an axes for accel/brake, but then you lose analog sensitivity.

Indianapolis 500, Lamborghini American Challenge, Lotus The Ultimate Challenge, Test Drive 2, Grand Prix 2, IndyCar Racing, Nascar Racing, Need For Speed, Stunt Track Racer, Stunts

[hazy tree]

@severe hull are you making a video about using a wheel in dos games? The flight stick one you did was great. I remember wondering what the stick you used was, or if you had a list of sticks that would be most compatible and work well?

[severe hull]

Yes, that's my plan. Right now I'm doing research for the video, but having issues with analog brake/accel controls.

The flight stick I'm using is the THRUSTMASTER USB T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CXYMFS/

Any HOTAS stick "should" work. You just need to assign the flight stick to "stick 1" and the throttle/rudder to "stick 2" in MiSTer Main controller mappings.

[hazy tree]

Awesome, thanks. I’ll be on the look out, it looked like a lot of fun. I thought I heard you saying in the video that newer sticks wouldn’t work as well or something like that… or was it just that they have a bunch of extra buttons and features that wouldn’t be supported?

[severe hull]

What I mentioned was that full Thrustmaster or CH joystick mappings wont work. They have extra buttons that AO486 needs to add support for.

You still will be able to use the flight stick, throttle and rudder. You just wont get support for more than 4 buttons

[hazy tree]

Ah great, thanks for clarifying that. Looking forward to the wheel video.

[burnt timber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkufLcIQgKo

[waxen brook]

thanks! probably not going to be able to try any of this anytime soon. My MiSTer died tonight and isn't powering on anymore.

[uneven cliff]

Beautiful work. So uhh....got a tutorial for how to properly set this up 🤣

[woven lava]

so I got a Hand386 😁 will see if I can image the CF card, it probably works on ao486

the card comes with win95 installed, booting in dos, and a few games including this Chinese one that looks interesting but have no idea how to play (I dont read Chinese)

but I figure using one of my custom ao486 vhds will be better

aha - that game is called Chinese Paladin

[opal void]

You're so lucky

[maiden sigil]

Noooooooo

[copper slate]

Damn that’s really cool, please post more about it!

[kind spruce]

figured out my own issue, the mist.cfg had the keys setup reverse for whatever reason. easy fix.

[surreal marsh]

Chinese Paladin has been fan translated into English.

However it seems they fan translated the Windows one. I assume that's the DOS version.

[thick pendant]

I kinda wanted that thing when i saw it but it was already sold-out.

[woven lava]

I got it through a friend who managed to get a last batch. but the seller says he will make more

[thick pendant]

is the mouse control any good?

[woven lava]

there is no builtin mouse control... you have to use an external adapter to connect a ps/2 mouse

I havent had time to try a lot on it yet. it has adlib sound (says its SB compatible but I think without sound FX) and an expansion port to connect ISA cards

which of course makes it leas portable, but neat to have the option

[woven lava]

yes it was under a "PAL" folder

[thick pendant]

Is the screen pretty good?

[woven lava]

it's decent. even if it somehow looks better on my phone camera than real life 😅
Pros: very responsive without any ghosting (afaict), the odd aspect ratio seems to actually help in readability (surprisingly) than if it used "correct" AR
Cons: viewing angle is a bit odd, you have to look a bit from the top than straight on,
and I didnt find a way to adjust brightness

I did manage to play Jill of the Jungle in a taxi in broad daylight

[thick pendant]

awas watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eiutn-P7HVQ&t=68s

[woven lava]

I got mine from taobao... was half price compared to aliexpress😅

[surreal marsh]

Realistically if I bought one I'd try it for a few minutes and put it in a closet.

[vestal goblet]

I’m really curious what that game is. My daughter goes to a Chinese immersion school, and games with Chinese is great practice for her reading

[woven lava]

I found some info about it

[woven lava]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Sword_and_Fairy_(video_game)

theres an older DOS version which the device has

[vestal goblet]

Nice!! Thanks!

Apparently there’s also a Sega Saturn version???

[void belfry]

see DM 🙂

[void belfry]

To sum it up:
For Q87 FPU emulator you would need to use EMM386/QEMM memory managers. So best bet if you don't have your own DOS 7.1 VHD ready, you can use @vestal ginkgo's Top 300 one
Mount the FX Fighter CD and install it unde DOS
Load Q87 before playing the game.

However, Q87 demo version is limited to 20 minutes (https://www.sac.sk/download/utilmisc/q87_413.zip - link is safe, it is the Slovak Antivirus Center)
So either patch it yourself (very easy to do 2-3 minutes work, just need an unpacker and a hex editor) to accept a general code or source yourselves a ready patched/non-demo Q87
Or search on some archiving site (wink, wink) to get a ready FX Fighter VHD made by our Discord colleague @burnt timber

[frosty compass]

Does someone know what is the best way to play 3DFX games these days? For it's a must that it runs Windows 98 and it's able to use physical discs and easy swappable. 😅

[wheat folio]

I've never messed with it, but VOGONS.org has like three different forums dedicated to what looks like Glide tools (GliDOS, OpenGLide, dgVoodoo)

[vestal goblet]

doesn't dosbox trunk now support some glide/voodoo hardware emulation?

[burnt timber]

Now, then, forever

[surreal marsh]

I know dosbox-x has it, but it runs in a fixed resolution window.

[thick pendant]

The old window shaker

[burnt timber]

modern problems need modern solutions, or whatever

[north haven]

F*cking solids...

[waxen brook]

currently traveling the endless desert in AO486

[burnt timber]

Mm, EGA scanlines

[waxen brook]

they really help transform the dithering look from "checkerboard" to "mosaic". Using the "Imaging Science & Technology CFA MYCK (Lighter) [RGB]" mask with 40/70 adaptives here. gaussian sharp 80 @ 1440p Integer.

thanks again for making me this "lighter" variant @dapper otter

looks great in AO486

[burnt timber]

Ooh, Ill have to try that one

I've just been using the brighter RGB Mitsubishi mask

Closest one to the AM4201R multisync/multiformat I had

[waxen brook]

what folder path is that one in? always love pc monitor mask recommendations!

[burnt timber]

Here you go

[waxen brook]

sweet thanks

[burnt timber]

Let me know what you think

[burnt timber]

Lol

[hardy sinew]

86Box might do the job

[fast kraken]

i have a pretty good time just using an actual voodoo3

[south stirrup]

Pcem works well

[void belfry]

OpenGEM on ao486 🙂

[burnt timber]

Nice

[void belfry]

had some more fun with Q87 FPU emulator as well, some apps have significant boost, while also allowing to run some which didn't work before:

Games:
FX Fighter
Quake (just for the giggles :D)

Apps:
Autodesk AutoCAD r12
Arachne MS-DOS web browser (works also without FPU, but way much slower)
Fractint (same as Arachne, this works also without FPU, but rendering times for higher res would be atrocious)
FontEdit
Lotus Freelance Graphics

still trying to find a version of 3D Studio Max that would run on this core

[void belfry]

Arachne works now quite nice (see the 387+ on the right lower corner. If no FPU, it would write 286+). Since I have now some more free time, I'll do some more tests using also a RasPI as a proxy to try to offload SSL to it

[opal void]

is it just me or the screen is 16:9?

[thick pendant]

definitely looks closer to 16:9 than 4:3 to me too

[thick pendant]

Probably @woven lava would know for sure

[opal void]

It bothers me so much to look at a stretched image 😬

[thick pendant]

for DOS, very little software outside of demos give a flying'f about any kind of cycle-accurate timing, and there is no real standard anyway.

[woven lava]

yes its not 4:3. surprisingly it doesnt bother me. somehow it makes rhe screen more readable

[opal void]

The stretched MSDOS font bothers me a lot 🥴

[thick pendant]

The real thing that has me not buying the device (even if it was avaliable) is that external VGA competiting with the LCD to make a dim video on both...

I almost like the 8088 one better, but i just can't do straight up CGA... EGA, Tandy, sure...

[woven lava]

I just measured the screen, it's 11cm wide and almost 6.8cm high, so it's about 1 6:10 aspect ratio

I've ordered the 8088 laptop, I'm curious (and I get it 1/2 price on taobao vs. aliexpress)

[thick pendant]

haha, I'll check out taobao.... if it was cheap enough 🙂

[woven lava]

helps to have friends who can read Chinese 😅

the laptop one is bigger tho. it has the same funky screen as far as I can tell and just a CGA monitor. I wonder if it can do MDA

[thick pendant]

um ya...

[woven lava]

but it can run real CGA 16 color games that wont' work on EGA (e.g. that recent pacman clone with 16 colors)

I have a game selection ready for it that I made for PCXT a while back

[thick pendant]

well, CGA just sux so bad, shame it cant do Tandy

[woven lava]

that would have been amazing

I'd have liked it if the CGA could be toggled to monochrome with a switch though

with PCXT I found out some games looked much better in monocrhome even using the CGA palettes

[thick pendant]

hercules graphics card?

[woven lava]

no - its more the monitor in that case

hercules graphics look a bit different due to the higher res (would be also nice to have tho)

I mean we'd all want to have a portable PCXT core 😄

[thick pendant]

hercules was a game changer, because MAC looked so nice with the crisp 1 bit gfx, hercules could do the same thing.

with cheap mono monitor

[thick pendant]

Maybe that could happen on pocket?

[woven lava]

maybe; but we don't get a portable keyboard with it, so not quite the same

[thick pendant]

I thought about that.

You need mouse too...

[woven lava]

it could have an on-screen keyboard and mouse emulation with the dpad

[thick pendant]

I'd still probably just use it docked. I do have the dock now

[woven lava]

it would work nicely with a curated selection of games (same as the hand386 really)

well we do have PCXT on MiSTer (and MiST) for use on a TV; options exist 🙂

the ao486 shareware pack probably works nicely with hand386; but I don't want to wipe out my CF card; maybe I can find more 2GB ones somewhere

[thick pendant]

i'm not familiar with hand386, I'll have to check it out...

[woven lava]

hand386 is the name of the 386 device we were talking about earlier

the handheld

[thick pendant]

oh, duh, haha

[cold swan]

Hi, I need help from the how-to knowing people. I'd like to play rick dangerous enhanced on minimig but I don'tknow where to start. The game comes as an .lha. As of now, I've just set up minimig with mega-ags which was just a piece of cake. But I don't know if/how I can add a game within mega ags. My guess is it's not so an easy task.

So is there any esay way to run the game without setting the whole amiga environment, kickstart and stuff aside of mega-ags ?

[woven lava]

i have no idea about mega-ags, but if you can find an adf version of it, you can just boot that?

[cold swan]

Sadly there isn't, I managed to get an WHDL version but I have no clue what to do with it lol . It's packed in a lha

[burnt timber]

Can't 7zip open those?

[thick pendant]

you can unpack an lha with "lha"

[granite umbra]

you need an Amiga OS setup with workbench and lha
to extarct it lha x file.lha and click on the executable

[thick pendant]

lhx x [filename.lha]

[granite umbra]

also you have a Win64 version of the game it is maybe more simple
https://z-team.itch.io/rick-dangerous-amiga

[cold swan]

Yeah thanks for the advice. But after tinkering for a while, I managed somehow to set up Tinylauncher which is very convenient for what it does : launch whdl games. It's quite a straightforward process to add games once set up.

[woven lava]

AmigaVision (latest rebranded AGS version) has a mode that launches as an Amiga 500 on desktop, that could be an easy way to get a desktop setup

I don't know if it has lha installed though

but it can also be installed via MiSTerFS/Shared folder: https://retrogamecoders.com/mister-fpga-amiga/

[granite umbra]

normally tinyLauncher have lha builtin

so normally you can unlha the file with the amiga shell

[supple storm]

Hi, can you help me with tinylauncher? I have set up everything, and can start games from tinylaucncher but while loading it gives me a "DOS-error 218 (device (or volume) is not mounted) on locking SaveDir "WHDSaves" " I suspect it is something about the TinyMemoryCard.vhd, I put it as the second drive, where do you have to put it?

[supple storm]

Got it working

It had to be in Pri. Slave

[woven lava]

does anybody know a good tool to install DOS on a 1GB image?

I want to setup a 1GB CF card with DOS (for my hand386) but I only have 2GB images.
Tried dumping a blank FAT16 formatted image for it then opening it up in PCEm, to install DOS 6.22 from floppies

but I only managed to create a 504MB partition (and it doesn't boot) so I'm doing something wrong

[wheat folio]

I could make a copy of my 1Gb image

I think it’s 1Gb

It’s on a 1Gb CF card at least

[woven lava]

should work

[granite umbra]

Maybe an interresting post with changes on AO486
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=6582&sid=e199a3580be5ec550bf3db63f8b9a46a

[surreal marsh]

Hmm. I wonder if the "memory problems" known to exist are related to CPU detection.

[sterile ether]

It doesn’t seem dos4gw probs aren’t gone

[void belfry]

Adding to the list (more of a novelty than real use, but still)
+++ Jukemp3 works with EMM386 (needs a lot of conventional RAM, didn't try yet to offload QEMM stuff) - mod/s3m/xm play ok, mp3... neah, same as below.
+++ Aegismp3 (this one works on QEMM, not EMM386 ) - just that it runs, no real use as mp3 decoding is too slow on what I had at hand

[uneven cliff]

https://amiga.vision/2023.06.06?s=09

🔥

[burnt timber]

Dyanamic Pixel Aspect Ratio

Neat

[wheat folio]

I’m not a fan of the Amiga but the amount of nitpicking they’re doing over pixel aspect ratios makes me inordinately happy.

[coral coral]

It's pretty neat. 🙂 After the last update to MegaAGS I said it was the last one I would work on, but I couldn't leave my TODO list unfinished.. So I've spent quite a lot of time implementing favorites and the dynamic PAR thing, along with much more. NOW I'm done. 😄

[uneven cliff]

I've really enjoyed using it

Is there a way to incorporate other games yourself into MegaAGS/Amiga Vision?

There's a bull in a china shop game I really need to find and play....

[waxen brook]

It's awesome that you got favorites in. I remember requesting this back when first trying MegaAGS because the Amiga library is dauntingly huge and can be somewhat difficult to remember which games you liked with such massive lists to peruse. Thanks for your continued work there 🙂
Time to convert my text documents to proper a favorites list 🎉

[copper slate]

MegaAGS / Amiga Vision is a dream come true for someone who wants to enjoy the Amiga but has no idea where to start or what to play.

It is truly a wonderful gift

[waxen brook]

I just finished my Quest for Glory II video, clocking in at nearly 11 hours 😅
Really wanted to import the character-save file from my video of the DOS original to the sequel on Amiga when I saw it had MT-32 support, but the loading times would have easily made this video ~15 hours. Perhaps I'll use the "suck blue frogs" cheat and do a quick play of it on there instead though, just to showcase the palette differences and MT-32 performance in the Amiga core.

[coral coral]

Btw I responded with this to another user who had a lot of favorites..

“The regular operation is as such: When you add a favorite a new entry will be written to WHDSaves:Favorites. There are also a few special cases for demos, disk mags and such (they get stored in their own subdirectory).

But the Favorites directory is of course just a normal directory on the file system that is parsed by the AGS menu as any other. So after adding stuff it's simple to just move the entries around into new subdirectories (which need to have the .ags suffix to be picked up by the menu program). So with a bit of manual file management you should be able to have this new feature fit even the more advanced use cases you mentioned...”

Bottom line: if you’ve added a lot of favorites that you’d like to organize into sublists: open up DOpus, navigate to Saves:WHDSaves/Favorites and organize away

[waxen brook]

Noted, thanks!

[void belfry]

Again from the ao486 and Q87 FPU possible uses, one very impractical/useless but fun nonetheless is the VICE - DOS version of C64 (and others) software emulator - runs with QEMM and Q87 FPU emulator. Well... crawls would be more accurate term, but it runs 😄
From same package: XVIC, XPlus4 work. X128 doesn't seem to work or I didn't give it enough time :))

fast giveaway for what that program needs 🙂 same helped me spot other progs needing FPU

[burnt timber]

I didnt even know you could do that

[void belfry]

my recent notes: --- Nesticle - DOS NES emulator works (2-3 games quick tested),
Bad Apple demo is a bit .. hasty on video, let's say ? - sound i have to cross-check more with NES core
--- ZSNES - DOS SNES emulator - QEMM needed, no sound so far, only 2-3 games quick tested to run

went all "Inception" 😄 software emulating on a fpga core 😄

[burnt timber]

Nesticle, the good old days

[void belfry]

to my surprise works pretty well on ao486

not that I would play any game in it, but yeah, was fun to see it run 😄

[burnt timber]

Nostalgia

[void belfry]

Marginal effects of Q87 on Descent 2 (640x480), maybe like +2 FPS at most, but still playable

[fast kraken]

if you drop the res down it gets much more playable

[burnt timber]

I remember everyone back in the day praising this game over Doom

[fast kraken]

its more technically advanced than dooms engine

[gloomy bolt]

It blew my mind as a kid. Definitely impressed me more than Doom, but I came back to Doom much more often. Still do.

[fast kraken]

i remember it being like insanely hard

it isn't really, playing it now with years of fps experience

[void belfry]

yeap. wanted to test at higher res to see the gain of the FPU emulator.

[fast kraken]

the fpu emulator doesn't get tomb raider to run does it?

[void belfry]

I read at some point that Descent 2 needs FPU, but yeah.. it works without and if any gains, they seem a bit marginal (to my very untrained eye and ofc taking in account it is a software emulator)

[void belfry]

didn't try that yet lol

[void belfry]

will see 🙂

[void belfry]

😛

I would have been genuinely blown away if at least would have worked on my real old 486 DX4 (lousy graphic card, 12 megs of ram and some ESS SB clone)

seeing it on ao486 seems a bit unreal and bridge over times lol

As for setup, used DOS 7.1, QEMM and Q87 FPU emu before launching the game. Directly from CD image, didn't test anything else (like sound)

Without FPU emulator, it would just froze at cave entrance. Also, game menu is very fluid/responsive with Q87

Dunno if DOS32A instead of DOS4GW would improve things much (it does for other games), but will see

[fast kraken]

whats the fps like? playable at all?

[void belfry]

a few... but clearly better than Quake, you can almost control the character 🙂

[fast kraken]

you wont get much in the way of audio, its almost entirely redbook

[void belfry]

hah, feared so 😄

[fast kraken]

like you'll get some sfx and i think a few voicelines but no music at all

[void belfry]

couldn't make it sound at all 😄 as i said, just ran it off CD image. And "install" program doesn't seem to save the audio config. Maybe a lousy iso

[fast kraken]

it should save it onto C:\

iirc

like C:\TRAID or something

[void belfry]

nupe.. as I said, probably weird iso, just one of the first i saw on archiving site

maybe it as smth to do with that file (for convenience, I also moved CD contetc to VHD).

doesn't seem to change, though it looks like a good candidate for a config file. Again, I might be dead wrong on this lol, just browsing it around

bad iso, disregard lol

Sound works and all, now watching (first time LOL) the FMVs

[waxen brook]

huh.. i wonder if Q87 would help the high res mode for TIE Fighter actually be a playable framerate

[void belfry]

noted to check. Didn't help on Falcon 3.0 hi res btw

[waxen brook]

there was a racing game i tried that had a higher res for DOS also that was nearly playable but not quite.. trying to think of the name

oh yeah! Hi Octane

[void belfry]

heard of that at some point...

[waxen brook]

visuals in that one kinda remind me of the descent engine

[void belfry]

what's the fire key in Tomb Raider lol ? figured Space is unholster guns

nvm, figured 😄

here end my patience :D)) it's a fun experiment, but I don't have the nerves to finish first area

[umbral oar]

there's nothing scarier than the combination of tank controls and wolves and bears

[void belfry]

I'll do a proper forum post at some point with my findings on use cases for Q87 FPU emulator on AO486, but until then these are my findings:

Games:
FX Fighter - check above Discord findings, suffice to say game runs very well with Q87
Quake (just for the giggles :D) - not playable but the fact that runs is a feat itself for this core
Tomb Raider - also for the giggles, it is too slow to be playable on this core even with emulated FPU, same as Quake

Apps:
Autodesk AutoCAD r12 - works fine, renders ok... I am not too familiar with CAD products, but imho this one is a winner for Q87
Arachne MS-DOS web browser - works also without FPU, but way much slower >>> operating speed gain observed when using Q87
Fractint (same as Arachne, this works also without FPU, but rendering times for higher res would be atrocious, didn't dare to go over 320x200 without FPU). Reasonable with Q87 except one, see below screenshot with rendering times, went up to 1024x768.
FontEdit - For some reasons this requires FPU. Works fine as far as i can tell
Lotus Freelance Graphics - Works fine with Q87, I never used this ever before

Adding to the list (more of a novelty than real use, but still)
+++ Jukemp3 works with EMM386 (needs a lot of conventional RAM, didn't try yet to offload QEMM stuff) - mod/s3m/xm play ok, mp3... neah, same as below.
+++ Aegismp3 (this one works only with QEMM, not EMM386 ) - just that it runs, no real use as mp3 decoding is too slow on what i had at hand in terms of mp3s
+++ VICE - DOS version of C64 emulator - runs with QEMM and Q87 FPU emulator. Well... crawls would be more accurate term, but it works 😄

--to test as suggested or read about: World Rally Fever, TIE Fighter, Hi Octane, FLAC decoding, maybe more on Falcon 3.0 hi-res/MS Flight 5.0 hi-res in conjunction also with GenuineIntel modded core ?
***still trying to find a version of 3D Studio Max that would run on this core