Computer Cores

[final zephyr]

it also had a variant that was sub 100mhz, Not looking for some crazy rendering box, just something that can boot/run IRIX that boot somewhat near original speeds.

(I own an O2, this would be nothing like that in terms of performance)

There's a MAME Indy core, there's also Emul GX, both boot Irix but the performance is so slow it's basically not worth it on X86 PCs

[umbral oar]

interesting, for sure it'd be really cool if someone could make it work

[final zephyr]

I'm thinking R4200 80MHZ, was introduced in 1993, fewer transistors than the N64 CPU.

[hollow ice]

I remember using some low spec indys that boot irix but the performance was so slow it’s basically not worth it 😆

[void belfry]

Love this game 🙂 High Seas Trader (works on both Amiga and 486 core, better on ao486) And the MIDI tracks are gorgeous (though at some point it may be too repetitive)

[timid harbor]

apropo of nothing, I was today years old when I realized that ScummVM wasn't emulating some special operating system, but was just a software package for supporting dos games written on the scumm engine.

This whole time I thought this was a 3D0 vs sega Saturn type thing 😆

[void belfry]

I never used ScummVM (though I know of it for a very long time, have all kind of files about it for different platforms saved, even for MiSTer etc) 😄

like I barely used software emulation (some retroPI stuff, AmigaPi or whatever it is called)

except ofc cases of emulators used in conjunction with MiSTer cores (VICE/PCemu/OpenMSX/some X68000 ones)

[timid harbor]

I was looking ot loom on dos yesterday and was wondering what was different between the dos version and the scumm version when it dawned on me

[void belfry]

I still have a LOT of games I didn't play back then due to various constrains (not having proper H/W mostly lol)

MiSTer automagically makes it possible 25+ years later lol, what a great time to be alive 😄

That's why the ao486 core is so dear to me, it pretty much reminds me A LOT of the struggles I put back in the days in terms on configs/HW/etc with my real DX/4

[worthy zealot]

true, it does not even seem capable of being a launcher of other DOS apps.

[void belfry]

@worthy zealot I guess at some point the original devs had that in mind too, there is after all a DOS shell exit for running other stuff. But yeah, this OS/5 is just a gimmick and a nice retro-find 🙂

Would be for sure fun to get the sources and who knows? someone could complete/add more stuff to that :)) VB for DOS seems quite interesting and snappy

still would have been a better "Windows" than versions the official 1.x-2.x. My 2 cents, especially that it also runs on XT

[thick pendant]

first paragraph, ScummVM.org "ScummVM is a complete rewrite of these games' executables and is not an emulator."

[void belfry]

right 🙂

i'm an engineer, i have expressive eyes 😛

[timid harbor]

This is literally the main reason I got a mister. The console stuff is great, but I wanted to play my old dos stuff and I was hitting various issues with dosbox, VMware, and virtual box.

And the cost of finding real hardware made the mister a very attractive alternarive

[void belfry]

same, have (not using anymore but still) MiST before, tons of joy with that lil' one

but yeah, since MiSTer (and the ethernet capability was for me one of the biggest plusses, besides ofc normal capabilities) it just gathers dust and begs attention

[thick pendant]

same with my MiniMig 1.1

[hollow fog]

I haven't used Minimig and MiST in a long time

but I find it hard to part with them , I will probably keep them forever

I have a fpga replay + db060 for demoscene, if MiSTer had the imeplemnatation of a faster processor I probably wouldn't use it either

[thick pendant]

My Minimig has the stacked RAM and the ARM controller. too bad it can't take PiStorm

[void belfry]

Well, I had a talk with a good colleague and friend, will gift him my MiST (he has 2 daughters and wanna introduce them to his childhood games) so I think it will be in good hands and cherished. Until he will upgrade to MiSTer too 😄

He considers it already, as again, for us, network engineers the connectivity of different computer cores is a big selling point

We have monthly presentation and mine was how to connect different FPGA cores to whatever is available for them (with as maximum of external aid of just one appliance, in my case a RasPI for SSL offloading for Amiga core)

it was a blast, suffice to say. The most questions I got were on C64 and Q-Link/BBSes in general :D))

RIPScrip on ao486 was the second, also no wonder 🙂

[void belfry]

ao486 is quirky, but fun. It can run Fallout 1 better than my original DX/4 (more RAM/L1/L2 caches etc). When it comes to FPU needing games, then yeah, not much to do

I remember playing Quake 1 (not full speed ofc) on my DX/4. For MiSTer a better choice to play it would be the PSX core lol

[thick pendant]

I think you could SSL offload to the HPS to make it more portable solution.

[void belfry]

yes, I tried that targetting SSLstrip package, I have some others on test as well (for example the one from ChatGPT DOS client for XT/486). Getting them into the somewhat strict MiSTer linux is a bit of a hassle, but yeah, trying to make a cohesive HPS based proxy/SSL offloading solution

It's on the first 5 things on my never-ending "MiSTer TO-DO list" 😄

related to that is also Arachne DOS web browser which might bennefit

[thick pendant]

ick. python... anything that is c/c++?

[void belfry]

Another mistery I am digging into these days is why that LUnix networking part for C64 doesn't work with our core 😄

I mean the PPP/RS232 part, sry for confusion

Tried to look a bit through the LUnix sources, but for now I couldn't make out much

[worthy zealot]

VICE can be used with a MiSTer core?

[thick pendant]

what do you mean? its an emulator.

[worthy zealot]

I was replying to this, but I see in this context he meant he used the MiSTer "and" emulators, not that Vice somehow powered a core

[thick pendant]

There is a VICE for DOS, but I don't imagine it woulkd run well on a 486

it says its optimized for pentium

[sleek escarp]

@modern urchin my problems with ys1 2021 seems to have had something to do with graphics getting stuck in mister ram, or the way the core or ys1 handle hdf files. I was able to get things working by making sure to eject both floppy disks, then ejecting the self-booting hdf file I had been playing using the backspace key, then cutting power to the mister, reloading the core and the d88 ys1 image. Although sometimes it takes multiple Resets to get ys.x to load for some reason. Realized part of the problem was the hdf file being present when I recognized Gradius 2 graphics in the title screen.

[modern urchin]

oh, wow! yeah that looks like a screen a real n88 couldn't have ever drawn

[sleek escarp]

Unfortunately the core seems to automatically save the last hdf file loaded even after powering off the mister and there is no “eject hdf” menu option so you have to have a keyboard handy to use backspace to unmount

[fleet cave]

try holding B button and then A on the gamepad

[sleek escarp]

ty, that works to unmount the image. My fiddling has seem to gotten me back to square 1 though. Might be the core or might be my ram or the dump

[void belfry]

Yes, I meant I sometimes use them outside of MiSTer to get some things done faster/easily like creating disk images, moving files where shared folder is not available etc.

[void belfry]

I ran once VICE under ao486 DOS for giggles , it needs FPU and ofc it just crawls with Q87

[timid harbor]

Is the fpu something that could be added through the fpga?

[void belfry]

FPU = Floating point unit (math coprocessor that before 486DX it was a separate cpu for performing math calculations). I guess it can be done in FPGA, but the space constraints on ao486 would prevent that. Again, just from what I've gathered through various discussions here or on forum. Plus of course a talented dev that can implement that 🙂

[void belfry]

Since 486 DX iirc the FPU was included in CPU, thing that today we get for granted. Back in the days you had to buy it separately (and i guess bit expensive at beginnings). Its use was mostly for professional tools (like AutoCAD and the likes) and started to get traction on PC gaming with the appearance of 3D games like Quake/Tomb Raider/etc (plus ofc the advances in that era of the graphic cards)

DOS MP3 players like XTC-Play also make use of it, I used that program a lot back then on my DX/4

[timid harbor]

So what I'm hearing is we need one Mister to be the a0486 and a second mister to be the fpu and then connect them. Alright let's do it 😆

[wise drum]

Anyone assemble a C128JiffyDOS.zip that works? I put everything in there that's needed, but it only boots standard ROM without any error when I choose the Jiffy MRA

[sudden ice]

The secret of monkey island on ao486 crashes after being in the bar in the beginning

[wise drum]

Got it- you have to remove/rename boot0.rom

[nocturne nymph]

Anybody been trying Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure in ao486 with the redbook audio updates? The intro cutscene is the only part that seems to have audio for me, sadly

Actually it seems that if you let the intro cutscene play out, the entire thing crashes. I think that a few other games were getting reports of this like Monkey Island? A bit unfortunate as this is probably the ideal way to play PTMA

[sudden ice]

@fleet cave

[thick pendant]

"once" haha

[final zephyr]

From what I've seen you'd be better off splitting the audio/chipset features onto a second FPGA and doing the entire 486 CPU/FPU in one FPGA core. Makes sense to limit the latency between the CPU/FPU since they were on the same package on the original hardware.

Has anyone actually looked at the cost of hardware with multiple Cyclone-V chips? is it prohibitively expensive or just something that no company has as an off the shelf solution atm?

[woven lava]

you could theoreticall daisy chain 2 MiSTers together, but no idea of the latency between GPIO pins

using 2 FPGAs was done on the C-One, the ancestor of our MiSTers and all other FPGA gaming devices

but it's cheaper to have a single chip; plus the ARM is there to offload some things to save space on the FPGA

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/kVTumAxdgXs?si=SZ8YAJ84TrWAHFOl&t=17

It started out interesting, with it resembling the X68000 game. Now its got mishmashed assets and looks like a crappy fangame

AGA deserves better

[woven lava]

at least its better looking than the PC version😅

[burnt timber]

It's better looking than the original Amiga version

By some small degree I suppose

[woven lava]

oh! its a new game... it is much better than the original Amiga one

https://youtu.be/v7sDUSJD2_E?si=BHOAjJCIPa1H4xRd

[formal whale]

Does ao486 max out the current fpga because it's a "bad" implementation (I know it's not bad bad, but I've heard it's messy) and actually sorting it out is too big of a task, or is it even theoretically impossible to fit a 486 with fpu and soundcard + videocard on the current mister?

There was someone working on a newer more powerful fpga retro system, but I quickly forgot about it because the initial price was 700usd or something wild like that...

[woven lava]

it needs a dev to have a closer look and rework as neeeded. other boards already exist (e.g. dev boards) so that is not a bottleneck for development

creative devs have ported SNES to MiST for example, which only has 25K LEs

[fast kraken]

one of the problems is the way the cpu is written - iirc its actually written in something else, not vhdl, and then converted via a java application? into vhdl

[woven lava]

it was based on Bochs IIRC

[fast kraken]

it makes changing it really hard, since its machine generated in its vhdl form its almost impossible to read

[formal whale]

and nobody is interested in starting a clean implementation from scratch? no bounty set up or something like that?

[woven lava]

there is a PCXT core at least

one could add an FPU there and overclock like crazy and see what happens 😅

but it wont run 386 protected mode

[fast kraken]

i'm sure some people are interested but doing a whole 486 chip from scratch is a huge effort

[woven lava]

yeah no bounty will suffice

[fast kraken]

x86 chips in general are really complicated compared to the chips used in most consoles/arcades

[woven lava]

can you or any friends of yours pay a VHDL engineer salary for a year or two? 🤣

[fast kraken]

its probably like a year long project even if you had robert on it

[woven lava]

you need somebody with the knowledge, motivation, and dedication

[fast kraken]

and it'll be a long time in the cold with no-one really caring about it until it notably exceeds ao486

[woven lava]

Robert already had a first look and optimized a few thinga, btw

a while back (before PSX I think)

[fast kraken]

all of robs changes were outside the cpu though

just adding caches to memory accesses basically

[woven lava]

yes true. wouldnt the FPU be outside the CPU as well?

although for 486 DX it was internal if Im not mistaken

[fast kraken]

you'd need to optimize the cpu to make room for an fpu, and possibly modify it to accept the fpu itself

i don't think there's dormant pins on it right now waiting for one to be hooked up

[woven lava]

that would be too good to be true 😅

there is a cycle accurate 8088 FPGA code at least, and a 80186 implementation not portrd to MiSTer yet

[fast kraken]

i thought someone ported that 186

[woven lava]

but say 386 from scratch would be more useful, perhaps easier than 486

[woven lava]

spark2k6 tried but he gave up and went with pcxt instead

[formal whale]

that sounds like a short time! 😄 if a project would be set up, and then bounties divided into... instructions? I don' t know, there's better ways to partition it... but I'd contribute money towards that

[woven lava]

I think it was fiddly to get timing right with the 186 one. It is on MiST though

[fast kraken]

as i understand it you can't really like, make a 186 then build your way up to a 486

they're radically different

[woven lava]

become a Jotego Director and vote for him and his team to do it 😅but you will have competition

[fast kraken]

if you want to make sure it never happens get JT to put it on his roadmap

[woven lava]

right. need a 386 from sratch

[fast kraken]

it'd be more exciting to swing for the fences and try to make a pentium1, it'd net you a bunch of games that don't work today too

[woven lava]

pentium + 3dfx yeah

nobody is even attempting that, at least publicly

[fast kraken]

3dfx ontop is probably way too much to even dream of

[woven lava]

I wonder if hybrid enulation would be viable running a PC software emu with a 3DFX FPGA graphifs card

hybrid emu was attempted for Amiga using the ARM for CPU but it didnt work well

[fast kraken]

there's not enough bandwidth between fpga and arm to do anything useful it seems

[woven lava]

forgot what was the bandwidth like

[fast kraken]

i can't remember the numbers but everything they tried on amiga made it slower iirc

plus at that point just run pcem or dgVoodoo or something on a modern pc

[woven lava]

now what could be done on a new board, in theory, is to try to clock the core higher. But nobody knows by how much, or even if it works, without a dev trying it in real hardware

anybody has any friends that can be convinced to port ao486 to that $10K FPGA board? 🤣

I think it has 2.8M LE? not too shabby

[umbral oar]

very affordable too

[woven lava]

you could buy that board... and still have nothing to show for it, if no dev is interested to port

[slate maple]

ZX Next core is no longer working for me, I haven't tried it in a while, but it used to work. Now it's saying "Error reading TBBLUE.FW file" I still have that file sitting in games/ZXNext as I did before

It used to work fine, dunno what has changed here

I read something about the latest fw not working, but I'm using an older version here https://gitlab.com/thesmog358/tbblue/-/blob/6b94638a1297fb4defebfa1d029d64ef480fd142/TBBLUE.FW

I tried the latest and get the same error. Is the core looking for it somewhere else now?

hmmm, working now and I'm not really sure why 😄

looks like it doesn't even use the fw file, I guess it's in the vhd?

[burnt timber]

But will it run Dreamcast?

[woven lava]

it runs all our dreams🌠✈️

[burnt timber]

PS2 core incoming!

..PS2 keyboard I mean

[hollow ice]

https://github.com/juj/KEEN70HZ

[woven lava]

I can't complain if we get this😅

[woven lava]

expectation 🔼 reality 🔽

[burnt timber]

But its PS2 native lol

[woven lava]

the core wont even the keyboard, it will be the dongle

[burnt timber]

Oh, core

[woven lava]

funnily(?) enough a bunch of cores have ps/2 keyboard handling inside already

from old fpga pcb that used that port

[wheat folio]

My first computer was an IBM PS/1

[final zephyr]

Are we limited to the open source bios on AO486?

Or can it use other PC BIOSes if we have them?

[vestal ginkgo]

only the one that comes with it as it has been changed to work with the core. The Video bios (boot1) has 3 options that work with the third option being the Triden VGA one. Look up sethgregory's repo on github for that one and the script that changes it back and forth.

[final zephyr]

Thanks, that's helpful for what I'm trying to do 🙂

one question btw, why is the ram 16 or 256?

why no 128/64/32 options?

[wheat folio]

Some older games wouldn't run if there was more than 16MB of RAM. There were no such limitations (I know of) at any other values, so there was probably no reason to include anything between 16 and 256.

[final zephyr]

Yeah, I've heard Privateer is unstable at more than 16mb ram

[low plank]

Aladdin as well

[thick pendant]

16mb is probably more than enough for a 486

[worthy zealot]

I do think 64MB could also make sense... somewhat... because of bugs in DOS4GW you can have problems at 64MB a bit similar to the ones at 16MB... but I do not know what games would benefit from having 64MB instead of just 16MB, so probably not a real issue. Also, that problem is fixed with DOS32A.

[fast kraken]

the 16MB cap only partially works iirc

[opal void]

Never had any issues with MSDOS games with 64mb RAM on a real computer

Yeah I used to play MSDOS games in early 2000s, sue me 😜

[woven lava]

many of us never stopped playing DOS games...😎

[worthy zealot]

the problem would be if you had more than 64mb RAM though. Which is why I am thinking a 16 and a 64 MB setting would make sense. More than a 128MB setting would at least

[umbral oar]

my P3 box has 256mb of ram and I don't think I've ever run a game that had issues, or at the very least didn't have a trivial workaround

although obviously I'm not playing anything overly speed sensitive that machine...

which may limit the problem area

[wheat folio]

Maybe somebody wants to setup a RAM disk for … reasons.

[wheat folio]

I use SETMUL with my P3 and holy crap does disabling cache ever cripple those.

[fast kraken]

you can get a p3 really slow

[wheat folio]

Yeah - I’ve not tried wing commander but I’d not be surprised if it got close.

[fast kraken]

i had to do it to get resident evil to work, i flips out on anything faster than like a p200 or something

[umbral oar]

I guess yeah I haven’t really been incentivised to try, seeing as my favourite games aren’t speed sensitive at all

[opal void]

256MB under DOS? I gotta try that! 😮

[burnt timber]

#share-media message

[void belfry]

lol, hope there is somewhere an English translation for this (Bible Master 2: The Chaos of Aglia) :D)) seems to work on ao486 with EMM386, no sound though..

[burnt timber]

Never heard of this one

[void belfry]

me neither, seems it was for PC-98 and DOS (explains the graphics and all)

[fleet cave]

what is this, a Macaw45 stream!?

[sleek escarp]

Japanese games occasionally use “bible” in the title as just a cool name for a magic book https://youtu.be/KfS8XvmcmQY?si=TRK3u4EV6JJbi-2w

[final zephyr]

I would love to see this integrated into MISTer: https://github.com/skjelten/emusc

Strike Commander and Wing Commander Privateer/3 sound amazing on Sound Canvas.

[thick pendant]

I'll try to make it work on the HPS once its more ready....

getting this to work was trivial https://github.com/M-HT/casio_sw-10

[thick pendant]

be nice if it was really efficient as far as CPU like Casio SW-10

[final zephyr]

I've been running MISTer with FreeDOS

got Wing Commander 1/2/Privateer and Strike Commander all working on it.

it's not entirely stable for some games like Blood and Magic which uses DOS4GW even with DOS32A

If it runs Wing Commander 3/4/Privateer 2 stable it'll achieve all my objectives with buying it.

Those games are taking longer to get because of file sizes etc

[worthy zealot]

DOS 7.x and DOS 6.22 is a bit more compatible than FreeDOS.

[void belfry]

for sure this is the same case, found this one browsing some RPG lists and yeah, the name struck me lol 🙂

thought it would be a good candidate for my DOS 6.0 JP setup which I so long neglected, just to realize it has some mem managers missing and ending up back to my main DOS 7.1 setup, with EMM386 seems ok. Kinda rabbit hole, but funny though

[final zephyr]

I got a MISTer and I was struggling to get Fat32 working under Windows98/Dos6.22

I got FreeDOS running WC1/2/Privateer/3/strike

performance in WC3 was a bit crap in SVGA mode tho

On the Victory was fine, just the 3D spaceflight was a bit slow

I got Privateer 2 to load, but it runs like crap

[worthy zealot]

Dos6.22 should not support Fat32, to begin with I made a bunch of 2gb drives to get around that although that sucks. But DOS 7.x supports Fat32, but that is the Windows 98 DOS. I think there is a few things that will only run or will run better under DOS 6.22, but I cannot think of any. But I have come across several games that wont run under FreeDOS. That said I do like FreeDOS. I try to take everything I can from FreeDOS and use with my DOS 7 setup. 4DOS f.ex. is so nice to have.

[burnt timber]

https://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=7248.0

I dont think this will work on the X68000 core since it's internally scaled at 800x600 (developed by puu originally on DE0) bvut it is neat nonetheless.

[final zephyr]

I got FreeDOS mostly working, I have a few late-stage DOS games that fail and it's probably not because of FreeDOs

[thick pendant]

I've really only noticed FreeDOS being less compatible because I can't seem to get as much conventional ram free as MS DOS

[final zephyr]

really? I have more than I had in DOS

I've got 759k free under 1mb

with mouse/sound/cdrom drivers loaded

[timid harbor]

so what does the "mute bits" of the latest ao486 build actually do?

[worthy zealot]

yeah, my experience is also that I can get more memory free with FreeDOS. But still there are a few games that do not like FreeDOS and Game Wizard 32 as well. Its a bit like Game Genie and so on for consoles that lets you edit memory addresses, take screenshots, make savestates, open a dosprompt while in game, a filebrowser, a file editor and such. It can also increase and decrease game speed, very nice to have when playing The Settlers.

[granite umbra]

With the last unstable of the core AO486, there is a new osd option "MT32 volume ctl" is someone already tried it ? How the option works ?

[thick pendant]

I must be missing some obvious in the config...

[final zephyr]

on the AO486 core, how much memory does the GPU have?

I'm curious regarding the Wing Commander 3/4 performance, the games seem to load in SVGA mode but they're super slow, wondering if it's CPU bound or GPU bound.

[final zephyr]

I think I'm hitting an FPU issue on Privateer 2

seeing references to SQRT

yeah there's FSQRT which is FPU

I guess they figured that Privateer 2 players would have Pentiums 'doh

[worthy zealot]

I do not get more than 650mem free. But pretty sure I get a few kb more free than with DOS 7. I have a bootdisk shared somewhere.

[thick pendant]

it does not really have a GPU. VGA is a dumb framebuffer with 64K address space. 320x200x8bpp (standard VGA) mode is 64K of RAM which is small and easily manipulated by the CPU. When you switch to 640x480x8bpp(SVGA) it has to do over 4x as much work (307K) and to make matters worse it has to do this through that 64K window by bank switching.

So to answer your question its limited by the CPU which is limited by the bandwidth of bus when talking to VGA.

and I believe the VGA has 2MB

but that is only relevant to the maximum resolution and color depth and not the actual speed of 640x480x8bpp SVGA

[naive imp]

So when’s the last time X68000 was updated? I kind of want to do a revisit vid but wondering if it’s warranted

[burnt timber]

Ive been spending a lot of time with the core

It runs a ton of stuff great, one of the few games it is glitchy on is Akumajo Dracula ironically enough

You can even run Geograph Seal on it

[hollow fog]

2022.10.22 latest release

[burnt timber]

Oh, doh

edits posts

[naive imp]

Hmm looks like maybe fun revisit could be a good idea then. Thanks!

Really I just want to play some X68000

[burnt timber]

Well, if you want any suggestions I can provide some

[naive imp]

If you have some deep cuts yeah DM me. My setup guide is still relevant so I’m just thinking of a “hey let’s look at this again” vid

[burnt timber]

Will do, one sec.

Give those a try. You've probably already tried all of them but worth a look.

[modest scroll]

Anyone using the Top 300 pack on the PC core? Does Monkey Island 1 Talkie Edition pause for a small bit before playing each line of talking for anyone else?

[topaz sigil]

Yeah, I've noticed that too. Wasn't sure if it was caused by my VHD being on a NAS or in CHD format or something but I didn't do too much digging into it.

[waxen brook]

there may have been a regression with recent changes to the core. compare what you're seeing now to my video of the talkie version from last year: https://youtu.be/iigEOKdjHSQ?si=7hO0gV-QJMq4eomL

vhd also isn't in chd format here, in case that's relevant

[modest scroll]

Yeah, perhaps, I’ve just changed so much about my setup since I tried it last that I don’t know if it’s that or a regression.

Your video is definitely smooth. What I’m currently seeing is a very obvious pause between playing the voice files. Weirdly, it doesn’t happen on Monkey Island 2.

If anyone has the pack in their SD card and has time to check I would appreciate it. Just want to rule out any changes I did to storage, I.e. using a USB HDD or CIFS.

[sudden ice]

For me the game freezes after the pirates part in the beginning

[modest scroll]

The whole game completely? Or the small pause between saying voice lines?

[thick pendant]

I think you have to put it to slower speed... 30mhz

[sudden ice]

Complete freeze

[sudden ice]

I’ll check that. Thanks

[waxen brook]

yeah there was a specific speed and cache configuration that works best for it, to minimize those freezes

[waxen brook]

here it is- disabling L1 and setting to 30mhz should help: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates/issues/49#issuecomment-774561235

[sudden ice]

Ah ok great

Need to playthrough this game

[modest scroll]

Hmm, I’ll check this out tonight and see if it helps.

[thick pendant]

I had a similar problem with The Dig and had to set it to 30mhz

[timid harbor]

what is the benefit of the MT-32 pi hat? Does it free up mister resources or give superior audio or compatibility?

[empty jewel]

The hat is for a raspberry pi. It lets the pi emulate an mt-32 and connects through the snac port

Most used for ao486. Think Amiga and x68k a bit too

It's a lot better audio for some games

[thick pendant]

If you have loaded the MT-32 ROMS on your MiSTer then you can play MT-32 and CM-32 music by simply turning on MUNT in the OSD. The issue is the onboard HPS ARM is just not powerful enough so it has tempo issues (overclocking helps a lot). The mt32-pi is almost impossible to differentiate between the real MT-32 hardware. So yes to both questions.

[thick pendant]

Don't forget the Atari ST. As far as games though you are mostly limited to Sierra titles...

On Amiga and ST I mean.

[timid harbor]

Dumb question, probably, but does is benefit non mt32 games by still providing sound?

[thick pendant]

The Interesting thing is that the Atari and Amiga only have one Sierra game in common, Space Quest 3

[thick pendant]

Unless the game supports MIDI there will be no inprovement.

The game may support MIDI (but not specifically MT-32) and then you can switch to FluidSynth with an appropriate soundfont.

I'd suggest watching some YouTube content by LGR or Phil's Computer Lab to understand the MT-32 and other GM stuff like Sound Canvas

or 8-bit guy

[timid harbor]

Will do, thanks

[burnt timber]

Has anyone had good luck running Fastdoom in ao486? I think I just need to setup the right memory manager to get it loading

Im setting up a little vhd to autoboot into it, using IDKFA's arranged music

[torn arch]

isnt that working on Flynn's Top 300 pack or the Shareware pack for DOS? Thought I recall seeing it

I could be wrong

[burnt timber]

Ill check into it

Im trying to create simple little autobooting VHDs for things that are modified in some way, or require extra stuff like FX Fighter and this

[torn arch]

nice

I want to make a big windows 95 vhd, but not sure how big to make it

last time i tried half the games wouldnt install

but might be able to fix that if i try again

[chilly rain]

i like the idea of creating smaller ones similar to the x68k hdd style ones

minimal preconfigured DOS that autoexec's into the game, etc...

windows 95 would be a stretch, it's like installing windows 95 on a 386 😛

[wheat folio]

You know what I’d like? PC Motherboard with an FPGA to handle everything but the cpu. Old CPUs are cheap and it’s the motherboard/cards/etc that get pricey. And think what all Ao486 could do it if it didn’t actually have to handle the CPU.

Or even just an ISA card with an FPGA that can be programmed to be whatever devices you want.

The PicoGUS is kind of moving that way but using a RasPi Pico instead.

Which reminds me. I need to build a PicoGUS. Couldn’t make it to VCFMW to buy one. 😦

[torn arch]

it works fine... the problem is finding games that run good

win 9x exclusive games I mean

even win 98lite (sleek option) runs decent, but on the core the windows explorer doesnt work so its not really worth it. It is suppose to work, though

also you get better performance in directx 6.1 as opposed to 6.1a that 98 comes with

in some games

and you cant install directx version any higher than that

so better to just use a slimmed down win95 I think

the biggest problem with the core was that half of the games would not even install cause it couldnt read certain files off of cds

in win 9x... something to do with long filenames I believe

the cd-rom needs a different method to install other than just editing the .ini

if there is one that will work

[tulip atlas]

I installed a bunch of multimedia cd roms on Windows 95 🙂

[fast kraken]

broken sword - the dos version has sound issues

runs nicely on windows on there tho

[torn arch]

win95 is definitely usable

[tulip atlas]

You don’t know Jack works great too on Windows 95 on ao486

[torn arch]

yea i tried a bunch of those

[final zephyr]

I want the opposite, an FPGA CPU+FPU and then real hardware for sound/video etc. Maybe an FPGA Voodoo2 core on a separate FPGA

[hollow fog]

what are the problems with the sound in the dos version?

[fast kraken]

its been literally years since i tested so this could of been fixed

but what used to happen was, some minutes into gameplay, sound would start to stutter/pop severely

like, maybe 5 minutes absolute max

it's aka "Circle of Blood" btw, if you're looking for the DOS version

[hollow fog]

I finished Broken Sword about a month ago , had no problems with the sound

I thought there was something I hadn't paid attention to

[fast kraken]

oh nice

[final zephyr]

hah, Warhammer Dark Omen loads

Unplayably slow though

is it possible to up the GPU ram to 2mb?

Windows is detecting the Tseng card as having 1mb

[thick pendant]

it has 2mb. you need the right driver

and its not a GPU

[thick pendant]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/blob/master/releases/drv/MISTERFB.INF

HKR,"MODES\16\1024,768"

1024x768x16bit = 1,572,864 > 1mb

Windows is not detecting the RAM, just simply reporting what the driver says...

[final zephyr]

interesting.

[torn arch]

i need to hook up my VGA CRT to work on my AO486 vhd

[thick pendant]

I got KDS 17" Trinitron from a free garage sale. I actually prefer the LCD due to its brighter screen.

maybe its worn out

[torn arch]

my 17" trinitron looks great

takes like 5 minutes to warm up though... has a green tint when you first turn it on

i need to setup a 2nd desk with it and another mister or run a cable from the other one to a switcher

[thick pendant]

It does look cool paired with my fake Amiga 1200 MiSTer...

[burnt timber]

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7064/

New English translation for PC98. Cleaned up machine translation and a bit buggy, but for those that need it its something.

[worthy zealot]

there is a floppy adapter on the way, and it works really well already. It would probably be great for a Amiga 1200 MiSTer I think. I plan on doing the same. I have a Pi in an A1200 using a Keyrah for the keyboard. I am guessing its a Keyrah you also use for the A1200 keyboard?

With the floppy adapter, it would get the option to load floppy games as well, even ones with copyprotection. So far I have not been able to copy floppy disks or do save games using it, but there is a chance he will get that fixed as well

[worthy zealot]

Its the one that has been talked about on the forums a bit, being developed by Rob Smith, who already made that floppy drive option for WinUAE and AmiBerry.

[thick pendant]

Keyrah V2 i think

Other than the stuff that came in the A1200 "Magic Pack" I don't have much other software. Got rid of all my Amiga stuff eons ago.

Then later bought a NOS a1200

[worthy zealot]

Okay. I still have bunch of floppies, even increase my collection a bit

[thick pendant]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=45952#p45952

[worthy zealot]

very nice 🙂

[thick pendant]

Its a reproduction case that I used. No actual Amiga harmed. When I bought my NOS PAL Escom Amiga 1200 I was also able to get a NOS Escom US keyboard, so I used the UK one with the MiSTer.

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/LYB5I87F2DU?si=v4nhtB71lRdgJlnQ

[burnt timber]

#share-media message

[final zephyr]

Is anyone working on PPC 605 or Motorola 68040 Cores? I want it for Macintosh, not sure if I need the FPU on the 68040 or not. I'd like to run System 7.1 + Super Wing Commander. It works on either CPU.

[thick pendant]

Even the flagship Minimig(Amiga) core only supports 020 CPU...

[thick pendant]

the only way it is currently possible to run MAC software requiring a 040 or FPU on MiSTer is with https://github.com/bbond007/MiSTer_BasiliskII which of course is not a core, but an emulator that runs on the ARM/HPS.

[thick pendant]

I try to run the demo, but get this:

so its supposed to be a demo, but I dunno...

[opal void]

sadness

[final zephyr]

SWC runs in Basilisk 2, I've got it working on my laptop, but controlling the speed is the issue. Also the joystick support is awful. I tried to hack on it last year.

That's the emulator, not the Mac's fault.

[deft estuary]

Hi! I've tried it on a 31khz SVGA monitor but it doesn't work, why?

[thick pendant]

It does work on a SVGA monitor, my 17" KDS Trinitron anyway. What resolution do you have the menu core running in?

does the f9 console work?

[deft estuary]

@thick pendant I'm checking, what resolution works for you?

@thick pendant

[deft estuary]

I'm using vga analog out

@thick pendant ok it works with vga_scaler option not with forced_scandoubler!

however it "stutters" a bit, even at 800x600 on system 7.5.5 is not very fluid, is it normal or is it my fault?

[thick pendant]

I prefer 640x480. Seems to have better performance. 1024x768 gets pretty slow

Basilisk II seems to have this really inefficient screen update routine.

[deft estuary]

@thick pendant understood, and thanks for your precious port!

[thick pendant]

Also with my example configs for different resolutions, I set the frameskip increasingly higher for higher resolutions. This is so the CPU still performs like a Quadra, but you might try and tweak that....

Like 800x600 i put at 5, 640x480 2, etc...

[final zephyr]

Super Wing Commander runs at like 640x480 or 800x600 not really worth running higher resolution most of the time

[wheat folio]

DICK SMITH WIZZARD (clone)
https://www.leadedsolder.com/2023/10/03/creativision-clone-v1.html

[lunar trellis]

Is this is a current project may want to tell him about the MiSTer core, Kitrinx did a lot of digging and work to get the keyboard etc. Working on the system.

[granite umbra]

Interesting SB 2.0 was dumped
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11598

[vestal goblet]

when I first moved to San Francisco in 1997, I would show up very early to IRC parties because I was flat broke. One time at one of said parties, I started talking to a guy who was a wedding photographer. At some point we started talking about sound card clone boards, like the Thunderboard my mom bought in ~1993 or so. It turned out this “wedding photographer” was the person who did the wafer shaving and photography for reverse engineering the Spund Blaster and creating the Thunderboard.

he had also worked on the Pro Audio Spectrum

[craggy wigeon]

How good do you think the Amiga core is ?

[void belfry]

Depends on what you want from it 🙂 Some go for games, some for demos, I like to push it to limits (especially for net/mmedia/productivity apps) besides casual exploring of games/demos. I didn't experience the real H/W, but for my needs and understanding of the system, I'd say it's pretty damn good

[ocean zenith]

I would say it is very good for most purposes. Games, demos and productivity. Very little compability issues and well reliable. It only starts to feel limited if you want to run high end AGA demos which usually require 68060 @ 100MHz to run smoothly. Or if you want to do very demanding rendering for example. Amiga core processing power is roughly equivalent to 68030 @ 50 MHz (or 68020 @ 100 MHz)

Overall I’m more than happy with the core.

[craggy wigeon]

Thank you for your comments I had an Amiga 600 as a kid

I tried it today and the only thing that I noticed is that the Kickstarter window is fullscreen but if I load a game it is a bit smaller and doesn’t cover the whole screen

[coral coral]

Minimig defaults to show the full overscan area

[ocean zenith]

Yes. That's normal, Amiga has quite big overscan area which was mostly hidden on TV:s back in the day. You can adjust (zoom) the picture using screen adjustment https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Minimig-AGA_MiSTer#screen-adjustment

But you have to be aware that different games use different amount of the screen area, so if you adjust the zoom too tight then it might cut the screen on another game. But of course you can then adjust again.

Kickstart startup screen seems using full screen, because it is using the same background color for whole screen (content area + overscan area)

[coral coral]

When editing the screen area, a file named <core>_vadjust.dat is written to config/. This is the one I generally use https://github.com/amigavision/AmigaVision/blob/master/content/distro/config/Amiga_vadjust.dat

[craggy wigeon]

Thank you guys that’s really appreciated

[thick pendant]

A 68020 and 68030 are almost identical performance at the same clock rate. A 68030 is definitely not twice as fast. This is the same with 286 and 386. The even # CPUs added speed and the odd # added features. A 68040 is about twice as fast as an 68030...

That is probably why the 68060 was not called the 68050. Massive speed improvement over the 68040.

[craggy wigeon]

I wish it would be possible to have CD32 support implementation in minimig

[thick pendant]

a good # of titles work with the IDEFix CD-32 emulator boot disk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iNO0tp8hlV959-MnsI8S7j5xPWghIR0zdI9LwVyBF2w/edit?pli=1#gid=0

[craggy wigeon]

Thanks

I had a CD32

I got one in 94 or 95

[thick pendant]

I bought a NOS NTSC one back when Petro Tyschtschenko found several thousand of them in some warehouse.

Right now I have a MiSTer mounted in it, but could put it back together.

So i'm also defiantly interested in seperate CD32 core

[craggy wigeon]

NOS CD32 ?

[hollow ice]

yeah, so, commodore was patent trolled for the us market, and their entire stock of US CD32s sat in a warehouse in the philippines for years

eventually they were sold for something like $25 each

[thick pendant]

Yeah, I paid more for the shipping than I did for the CD32 itself... Had I of kown how valuable they'd become I would have bought more

[thick pendant]

I think it was for using XOR logic to draw/remove a mouse pointer, which I don't understand because the Amiga used a sprite

And awarding a patent for something that computer programming 101 is also stupid.

I guess it could have been for drawing the window bounding box for moving/resizing windows

[hollow ice]

I kick myself for not buying any

[craggy wigeon]

wow interesting

did it include any software ?

[thick pendant]

I can't remember, i think it may have had some demo disk or maybe a game

not much though

I'd have to check the box it came in. I'm sure i left everything in there if it had anything

NTSC CD32 is kinda a dud. Most of the software needs PAL in order to work correctly, and while you can get in to the early start menu and pick 50Hz, you end up loosing color signal on most TVs. You don't have the luxury of RGB, so you are kinda screwed without an Indivision AGA or some other solution.

[torn arch]

can I change the size of a vhd if I make a mistake and need it bigger or smaller after ?

its hard to tell how big it needs to be when installing a bunch of games

Im sure you can but is it reliable without messing up the vhd at all?

like if I want to make a vhd of Win3x with tons of games.... you cant tell how big it needs to be without first installing everything

and you dont want to have an extra 20gb on it that is unecessary or something

even though you can compress the non-used data when zipping/compressing the file for download

[hollow ice]

I think the issue with that isn’t changing the size of the vhd, but the size of the partition. But even saying that, for those old computers, 4gb vhds are probably the safest size to stick with.

[torn arch]

oh bad example with win3x but rather win95

i dont know yet if I will separate them or just do all the games in win95

actually would be cool to do both win3x and win95 in one vhd

but i guess win3x is limited to 4gb? partition

I forget its been a year since I worked on it

I know there is a way to get more space on a partition in win3x but it might have issues, or maybe I am confusing it with a win95 workaround

[thick pendant]

I think you can run win 3.1 with DOS 7.1

Which would allow larger than 4gb

Just install win95, remove "win" from autoexec.bat, install win 3.11..

[torn arch]

yea thats what I was referring to

thanks

I might do that

[thick pendant]

You can put a simple menu in config.sys which will allow you to check a variable in autoexec.bat to launch 3.11 or 95 depending on the menu

[torn arch]

i just heard their were some issues

on forums or something

but it wasnt mister related

not that it matters

[thick pendant]

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

[burnt timber]

https://twitter.com/RCAVictorCo/status/1710128037373808687

Wonderful news for future PC98 core implementation

[craggy wigeon]

The demo disc would be interesting to see

[rough edge]

Another one? Man, people like this chip

[thick pendant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nH0s1OKUL4

[copper slate]

Why y’all asking for computer cores? Aren’t you typing on a computer??

[craggy wigeon]

I don’t think I have ever seen this Is it the NTSC demo disc?

[hollow ice]

CD32 is a game console!

[copper slate]

Ah damn you got me there lol

You’re right

[hollow ice]

Probably the best console ever created (with 32 in the name)

[craggy wigeon]

I loved my CD32

the Core Design games were excellent in the sense that the additional Audio CD tracks were fantastic

Universe was very nice

those were the days before the internet, I was 14 when I bought Universe and there was a scene where I couldn't progress so I actually called Core Design in England and there was a guy who told me that I had to find the panel somewhere in the game and activate it in order to progress, amazing

[thick pendant]

People like to give FM Towns credit for being the first 32bit CD based console. Which it was not. It was the CD32. If you are going to call FM Towns 32bit then you should also call CDTV 32bit.

[worthy zealot]

Anyone got CD audio working for CDTV games? Especially Defender of the Crown 2?

[burnt timber]

When did the Marty come out?

[thick pendant]

93 i think

[hollow ice]

cdtv was still 68000, I don’t think that had 32bit extensions?

[burnt timber]

I mean maybe that would count?

[thick pendant]

68000 is just as 32bit as a 386-sx

[worthy zealot]

like a A500 it was partially 32bit I think

[hollow ice]

just like a jaguar is 64bit? 😉

[burnt timber]

Like an FM Towns, its just a computer. But the Marty is more grey area

[hollow ice]

but no, I am completely mistaken according to wiki

[burnt timber]

I dunno, Bond.. this one is a bit of a head scratcher for me.

[hollow ice]

of the options listed, it would appear the cdtv is the first 😄

[thick pendant]

both the 386-sx and 68000 have 32bit registers and 16bit data bus...

[hollow ice]

although, that being the case, how do you make the distinction between the 68k in that vs the genesis/neogeo

[worthy zealot]

ahh yes, that is what I was thinking of

[burnt timber]

I think Im gonna have to go with the Marty being the first. February 1993

[thick pendant]

Then why not the CDTV?

[hollow ice]

because it wasn’t fully 32bit..if it is considered 32bit, then why not the genesis?

[thick pendant]

CD based

[burnt timber]

I think it would be more fair to call the Marty a game console than the CDTV though..

[hollow ice]

yeah, just reread your full comment, I missed the cd-based

[thick pendant]

386-sx is no more 32bit than the 68000 is my point

[burnt timber]

"The CDTV was intended as a media appliance rather than a mainstream personal computer."

Pardon my wikipedia quoting.. I think thats accurate though

[hollow ice]

do you consider a cd-i a games console?

[burnt timber]

Not really?

[hollow ice]

cause, wiki does list it as fourth generation 😄

[thick pendant]

I guess it did have games 🙂

[burnt timber]

We're just splitting hairs here at this point, gentlemen lol

[hollow ice]

thats what the internet is for, arguing semantics on long irrelevant topics to waste time 🙂

and cats

[thick pendant]

Well, I guess the SCC60870 (used by CD-i) is actually 16/32bit like the 68000

[burnt timber]

Indeed

[rough edge]

I love that everyone just casually forgot about the megadrive

[worthy zealot]

the Megadrive is also 16 bit

Pretty sure its correct to say the Commodore Amiga CD32 is the first 32bit gaming console, because its the first one to have 32 bit data registers and a 32bit bus, while all the 68000 machines only had a 16 bit bus. The CD32 is pretty much the Amiga 1200 made into a console, so it uses the 68020 CPU.

But there is probably some obscure device that might have come before it

[hollow ice]

yeah, that was the argument against the marty— the 386sx having a 16bit data bus

[worthy zealot]

I think make the Mega Drive with the CD addon got a 68030 CPU as an expansion as part of it though? But that was released after the CD32 I think?

[hollow ice]

nah, there is no way the mega cd had an 030

yeah, looks like it is a base 68k as well

just clocked at 12mhz instead of 7

[worthy zealot]

I must have been thinking of the 32X expansion. But that is one strange console

Seems it added some 32bit CPUs, but them being RISC based

[hollow ice]

yeah, the hitachi superH

problem with the cd32 is even with the fire sale, I don’t think it ever got a real US release, so I am not sure it counts

[worthy zealot]

Yeah, that whole lawsuit made sure of that

But it was released though. I am thinking any device that got a release anywhere should count, even if it was maybe only released in Japan or something

[hollow ice]

CD32 edges the 3do out by a month at earliest release

which is funny, because the 3do was designed by some of the original amiga devs

[toxic quest]

Question about c64 core… I want to create multiple virtual floppies. Can I do this in the core? Or do I need to create a few copies of empty.d64 files on my sd card and rename them? Appreciate any responses… thank you!

[worthy zealot]

FM-Towns Marty... it was 68030 based? Seems like it was actually a console but the page I just sound describes the CPU as:
Motorola 32bit 386 processor running at 16MHz... so why is there 386 there?

[hollow ice]

marty is 386sx based

[worthy zealot]

Wait, Motorola 68030 32bit 386 processor it says

running at 16mhz

[hollow ice]

yeah, no idea what your source is talking about, the fm towns was a line of pc competitors

and the marty was just an fm towns in a game console shell (like the cd32)

[worthy zealot]

https://www.consoledatabase.com/consoleinfo/fujitsufmtownsmarty/

I guess whoever made this page was confused

[hollow ice]

yeah, that page is all wrong, I’ve seen the marty 2 misinformation as well…it didn’t upgrade the cpu, both use the 386

[hollow ice]

I am not sure, at some point I wound up with a blank floppy that I just duplicate as necessary

[worthy zealot]

yeah... I have thought about some way of making it easy to create extra floppy, HDF images and so on, on the MiSTer... but I think the easiest way would be to just open the console and use Midnight Commander

And copy existing images

[hollow ice]

I mean, it could be automated from the gui, since main is run from the linux side…like a hot key to create a new floppy, but I think then you need a file manager and it gets out of control quickly

[worthy zealot]

Yeah, but thing is there is a lot of ways to go with this. Floppy size, floppy name and so on. Midnight Commander... last I checked, is installed on the MiSTer by default anyway

But on the other hand, it sure would be nice to have some script or something that could help create a new ADF, HDF, VHD or IMG floppy for Amiga and AO486. Should not even be that advanced I think? There are some zip files on the forum that is just a few kb with several different sizes of preformatted VHD images in various sizes. The same could probably be done for IMG, ADF and HDF images

So I am thinking maybe some script and a zip file you download and then the script asks what type of image you want to create, its size and then a name for it

[toxic quest]

Thanks for the reply… yeah would be great to do within cores and name on creation.

[worthy zealot]

As a script it would be outside of the core. Would certainly be the most useful within the core

[worthy zealot]

I asked ChatGPT and it claims the FM-Towns Marty was the first 32-bit console. But as has been mentioned earlier, it was no more 32-bit than the 68000, so the CDTV ought to be as 32bit as the Marty...

Yeah, I asked for more clarification and the actual argument by ChatGPT is in fact that the main reason the Marty is seen as the first 32-bit console is because of its marketing as one. Its 32-bit internal databus and 16bit external databus, same as the CDTV.

Not that ChatGPT is always correct, but ChatGPT 4 is pretty good at avoiding being... well... very wrong at least.

[thick pendant]

It did get released in Canada and UK

[thick pendant]

All you really need to do is call the linux command "dd" and create a blank file... So you could have a bunch of scripts that do just that

[thick pendant]

As long as you use consistent rules to define what a 32bit CPU is, then the first 32bit CD console is either CD32 or CDTV depending on that definition applied consistently. The 16/32 CDTV beats out the 16/32 Sega CD as well as the 16/32 Marty in 93. If you go by 32/32, then the CD32 wins, but in no scenario the 16/32bit Marty wins.

ChatGPT just regurgitates inaccurate stuff...

[umbral oar]

is this "address space"/"register size"?

[thick pendant]

data bus/register size

The CD32 and Marty i believe both have 24bit address bus

the address registers are 32bit, but like only 24bits are connected, so early "clever" Amiga and MAC programmers had a bad habit of using the remaining 8 bits as some sort of extra 8 bit register which really was not good for future compatibility.

[umbral oar]

we still use tricks like that today, to make "tagged pointers"

ie. if you know only the lower 40 bits of your address are only ever going to be relevant you can use the upper bits to cram eg some enum that identifies the the type of your pointer

[thick pendant]

ah, clever indeed, but perhaps short sighted as far as upgrades

[umbral oar]

it works across a surprising number of architectures and OSes, as long as you make sure to have some relevant asserts and per-platform cases in place - in the game engine I work on we use them fairly extensively and it has just worked ™️ for a number of years now across various x64 and arm platforms

[hollow ice]

But even saying that, the genesis would be earlier than all of those?

[thick pendant]

Only its not a CD game console

[hollow ice]

Sigh, maybe I’ll remember that qualification one day. I can’t even say ive slept since

[thick pendant]

I guess the Marty can be the first X86 based games console...

[umbral oar]

I feel like those consoles that are secretly just rebadged home computers are cheating lol

[hollow ice]

So, anything post ps3? 😉

[umbral oar]

Haha true, as a developer it’s nice that everything has settled on nice standard x64 or arm

But there’s still some cool console specific stuff exposed thanks to unified memory and cool proprietary low-level rendering APIs

[thick pendant]

Atari was the honest one with the ST. ST stands for sixteen thirty-two

[hollow ice]

Yeah, and TT for thirty two-thirty two

The real reason Atari failed…they painted themselves in a corner. What would they have called their sixty four bit system?

[worthy zealot]

well, it was fully correct in this case.

[coral coral]

Fujitsu didn’t make its bitness a marketing point, so not really

[worthy zealot]

creating an empty file is not enough for VHD or at least impractical, because then you still need to format it, and that can be very time consuming if you make a 2gb disk or larger. I suspect its the same for HDF files, that it is practical and time saving to create these on a PC, zip them down and extract them as needed to a file name of the users choice.

[worthy zealot]

I mean, they did not stop it from being a marketing point either. But I cannot read Japanese so I guess its hard to say how it was marketed there:
https://techmonitor.ai/technology/fujitsu_gets_closer_to_games_with_fm_towns_marty

[final zephyr]

I use FreeDOS, I got Privateer, Wing Commander 1/2/3, Strike Commander, Syndicate, Hocus Pocus, Raptor call of the shadows, operation Neptune, Keen Games, wacky wheels and a bunch of other games running. Partition is 8gb in size using Fat32. Wing Commander IV crashes due to the disk size, Privateer 2 crashes on FPU when you're in the game. I have a 2gb with Dos 6.22 for WCIV. Win 98SE has rubbish performance, stick to Win 95C.

[worthy zealot]

Yeah, my experience is also that Win 98 on AO486 is not really worth it. Might as well use the latest Win95 instead. It should support the same things I think.

[burnt timber]

https://fxtwitter.com/tsukasa5408/status/1710884644487602660?s=20

[woven lava]

nice. breathing new life into old drives

[burnt timber]

Never a bad thing, considering how much undumped doujin software is still floating around out there in Japan for these older PCs

https://youtu.be/RBscg0yKMEQ?si=5DNSlnwi1YCJTpf_

[woven lava]

speaking of which, I finally got OCR translation going with a video capture of a MiSTer core

not perfect, but helps give you an idea of whats going on

[burnt timber]

Oh, neat

[craggy wigeon]

That game in the Youtube link looks very interesting. I like the graphics!

Is it possible to download it ?

[burnt timber]

Im sure its online, it's a PC98 game

The other one is for PSX

The PC98 core for MiSTer is pretty .. early right now but an emulator would work

[craggy wigeon]

Unfortunately, I do not speak Japanese

but I do speak fairly good Chinese, so I can read some of the Kanji

but it's not enough for a game of course

[burnt timber]

Retroarch has some solutions similar to Newsdee's there

Might be worth a try

[woven lava]

Ive used project Neko Project II as emulator

for pc98

as for the translator, its a set of tools, the creator has it available for free on his Patreon about page

https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba/about

I havent tried Retroarch's one yet (just started today to get into this)

[craggy wigeon]

so there are two PC98 emulators ? Neko Project II and the one within Retroarch ?

does it demand a powerful PC ?

[sleek escarp]

It looks like npii has a retro arch core https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/NEC_PC-9800_series

[craggy wigeon]

so it is the exact same thing ? I see

[spring lodge]

please tell me, the game on the Amiga alien breed and alien breed 2 runs very slowly, is this normal or should I enable some option to increase the speed?

[craggy wigeon]

which processor are you using in the settings?

[spring lodge]

I mean alien breed 3d

68020

[craggy wigeon]

yes hence my question

maybe it requires a more potent processor?

to be running smoothly?

[spring lodge]

there you can only choose 68000 or 68020

[craggy wigeon]

ok so I guess it's normal

I just read on youtube: I love this game, especially the music on the CD32 version. Sadly the game runs to slow on a regular CD32.

so it appears that an Amiga 1200/CD32 are simply too slow

[spring lodge]

It’s clear, what we have on Mister is apparently the maximum

[craggy wigeon]

yes I guess the Mister is simply too slow sorry

[coral coral]

The data cache (D-CACHE in the OSD) option gives a dramatic boost

(That said, any Doom clone on Amiga runs slow as hell compared to how a comparable CPU would perform on a VGA equipped PC)

[fast kraken]

yeah why is that

i always thought the amiga should be able to do a much better doom than it does

isn't it's graphics hardware meant to be pretty fancy? certainly way better than what you'd find in a 486 ?

[hollow ice]

The famous explanation: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.amiga.games/c/MZb9cC0FMhw

[fleet cave]

I like the guy that showed up 27 years later to tell someone they were still wrong

[fast kraken]

also the guy trying to tell john carmack he's wrong about programming lol

i guess that modern dread game shows you could kind of make a doom style game on it but with some concessions

and with 30 years of advances in programming

[sand geode]

Doom was a final headshot to Amiga illusions, and still is. All there is left is the Zombie fan base. The stake through the heart is there is now no point in reviving the Amiga because there is nothing left to its name worthy of reviving.

Let's all come back in December 2023 and celebrate the 30 empty years of a "still nope" lack of anything on the Amiga that truly competes with Doom.

[fast kraken]

doom was pretty significant to the rise of ibm-pc gaming

somehow i doubt they would of ever imagined the probably thousands of people still keeping the amiga torch lit to this day though heh

[sand geode]

that was written two years ago!

also i can't wait to celebrate in two months

"suck it, max!"

[thick pendant]

The main issue is that Doom is Amiga uses bitplane graphics. Had Commodore included a 8BPP "chunky" it would be a different story. Using the Picasso RTG graphics can make it perform like it would on a similar powered X86 system.

The CD32 "Akiko" tried to address this by doing chunky to bit plane conversion, but by then C= was sucking wind and it was a poor attempt that needed to be spoon-fed and was not DMA driven.

this is an interesting thread about Doom https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=51616.0

Amiga Cammy does a lot of tests

[final zephyr]

Doom is open source, just port it yourself if it can be done LOL.

[hollow ice]

But even carmack addressed that- a 68k or 68020 isn’t a 486 competitor. He specifically called out the need for 040.

[round carbon]

what's the state of exodos on the ao486 nowadays

I saw a while ago someone doing a livestream of them configuring hundreds of games to get them all working

but I lost the link

all I can find now is the exodos 300 stuff

and how can I estimate if a game will be able to run

I loved this game in my childhood, 1996

would love to play again on mister but unsure how to guesstimate whether it would be possible

[void belfry]

best guesstimate is to try it yourself if this game is not already covered either by some VHD packs like top300 or mentioned in Discord/forum 🙂 Other than that, this games asked back then a 486/DX2 , 8 megs of RAM and SVGA. Now, if it really uses the FPU from the DX2 description

kinda vague, I wonder if it really needs a FPU or it works also on SX

[void belfry]

Seems to work (tested with DOS 7.1), but you need to replace the dos4gw.exe with dos32a (rename it) 🙂

[round carbon]

omg amazing

thanks so much, I will give it a spini

does CD audio work too? because the whole game is voiced

I mean in general on this core

[thick pendant]

if the whole game is voiced, its likely it does not use CD audio for the voice as that would be a lot of tracks and a lot of data

most likely is using digital samples just stored on the CD

[round carbon]

ahh okay

awesome

[copper slate]

Why do people like PC98 so much

[sand geode]

don't. bite.

[hollow ice]

Because it is a larger number than pc88

[chilly rain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym9YkH8xciE - evolution jrpg

music composed by the great koichi sugiyama

[copper slate]

omg I played the pseudo remake? The one for SNES

[chilly rain]

yup

i have it too 🙂

one of my fav's

E.V.O. Search for Eden

also cool sound chip on it that sounds good - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4utqUaZv-0

actually lemme link our friend artemio's vid on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuydP6su4Fg

same sound chip, just older system

[burnt timber]

OPNA, lovely stuff. Ika is working on a nice FPGA implementation of that right now.

[sand geode]

those are the most relaxing streams ever

[void belfry]

for this game BinaryBond007 is right, it does not have audio tracks but digitized speech samples, which work fine. As for CD audio, except one single game (Betrayal at Krondor), all games with cd tracks i tried worked (or at least the audio part if the game is too high specced)

[void belfry]

Work in Progress 😛 first pic is me (in green) and @burnt timber pointing the gun on me 🙂 And I think it can be safely said that this is the first time two MiSTer ao486 cores are connected over the Internet , using IPX and all. Games (tried so far Doom 1 and 2) seem to freeze after spawning, but at least in principle the method works

[hollow fog]

very nice!

[void belfry]

now, the game itself does not freeze, just you cannot move the character. The initial communication with the IPX server, assigning IPX addresses (over the DOS PPP link) and matching opponents work

i kinda doubt this is a bandwidth/network latency issue, more like the IPX driver and server were designed for DOSBOX and that would be the issue

I'll dig more into this, i'll probably build an IPX gateway/server on my own LAN and since I don't have a 2nd MiSTer, will replace it (also for comparison) with another RasPi DosBox.

[worn wyvern]

nice!

[fast kraken]

very cool

i wonder how many different games that run on ao486 also support online multiplayer

[void belfry]

from my notes:

Doom I/II, Heretic, Blood, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad - should be fine i guess for now (in terms of connectivity)
Blood & Magic seems to detect/connect as well

Heroes 1 freezes (it needs additional netbios driver loaded) when launching a host network game
Heroes 2 seems to work with netbios, at least initializing smth and allowing to stop it. GOG version seems better. Also needs netbios, tcp/ip and ipx are greyed out
Warcraft 1 seems to connect to smth as well, but weird sounds.. tbc
Warcraft 2 recognizes the IPX but the Start game on create is greyed out
Hammer of the Gods might seem to do smth then locks up, need netbios

as i said, i only tested Doom 1 and 2, and mostly in terms of connectivity. games listed above I just tested to see if the IPX part of it talks to the driver at least

so i guess all iD Software shooters since Doom have IPX and/or modem/serial capabilities

https://www.mobygames.com/attributes/attribute/82/page:1/ - 327 games are listed, a lot will not work for sure, but still leaves a lot to test.

[final zephyr]

I run AO486, be careful with the online videos, what they show working isn't always working

e.g Privateer 2 launches, but crashes ingame due to missing FPU and is unplayable.

Wing Comander IV launches but is too slow in SVGA mode to play, Wing Commander III has similar issues.

But AO486 is awesome for 386 games. I prefer to think of it as a 386 PC.

Wing Commander 1/2/Privateer/Armada all run well.

[void belfry]

have you tried it also with Q87 FPU emulator ? I know it was on my to check list (this game) but I forgot about it

[final zephyr]

q87 FPU?

[void belfry]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=6639

you have there links you can track the full discussion also on this channel (bit up )

in a nutshell, it is the fastest FPU emulator for MS DOS, written back in the 90's. It helps out so far in 2 or 3 games and several apps to run ok enough on ao486

with the demo version you have 15 minutes to test out, it also needs EMM386/QEMM as it does not use conventional mem

[void belfry]

depends on the game, it can have sometimes unexpected surprises:

[zenith radish]

HOLY SHIT

[void belfry]

as i said, not a full working solution yet, but at least it demonstrate there can be IPX over TCP/IP over DOS PPP from ao486 and link 2 or more MiSTers over LAN/internet 🙂

[craggy wigeon]

Is it possible to download single PC games for the AO486 core without having to download an entire collection of 500+ games?

[final zephyr]

Of course, All you need to do is create a hdd image, and install dos to it, you can then use ISOs and Floppy images to get data onto it.

I use two different images, one is a 2gb dos 6.22/win95 image

and another is an 8gb FreeDOS image.

FreeDOS supports Fat32, but some games like Wing Commander IV don't like drives over a certain size.

There's also a driver for AO486 that mounts a shared folder from the MISTer Linux host.

Put files in /media/fat/games/AO486/shared and they appear in DOS.

[craggy wigeon]

interesting, thank you, DMJC

how good is Soundblaster "emulation" in the AO486 core?

[copper slate]

AMAZING

[final zephyr]

Soundblaster Emulation is excellent.

[craggy wigeon]

Nice

[thick pendant]

Not bad but missing the hard coded percussion in the OPL

[craggy wigeon]

too bad

[summer vortex]

So cool!

[burnt timber]

Are thera and I first to achieve MiSTer netplay? 🤔

[void belfry]

using IPX and TCP/IP for sure 🙂 using modem/serial for sure not 😄

[burnt timber]

Aw, ok

[hollow ice]

also have to contend with the weirdos who got networking working in win95 too 😛

granted, I never did anything with it, so I can’t claim netplay

[thick pendant]

I'm pretty sure I was the first one to get modem/serial play to work 🙂

[void belfry]

If anyone else wanna try this method of getting IPX working , here are my short notes for now :

1. As explained here (https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/advanced/computer/#ppp-connection-in-ms-dos-on-ao486), you first need to have a working PPP connection under MS-DOS
2. Download Dali0.3 IPX driver (or newer version when available): https://github.com/fragglet/dali/releases
3. Copy and extract it on a folder of your convenience on the MS-DOS VHD (e.g. C:\NET\IPX\DALI03)
4. Edit connect.bat from the Dali folder as follows:
   -- the line "set use_dhcp=y" to "set use_dhcp=n".
   -- the line "set MTCPCFG=mtcp.cfg" with the path to your mtcp.cfg file generated at point 1 (e.g. C:\NET\MTCP >> "set MTCPCFG=C:\NET\MTCP\mtcp.cfg")
   Optionally, you may also change "set check_connection=y" to "set check_connection=n" - it just pings 8.8.8.8, if the connection already is proven to work, not needed anymore
5. Connect the core to internet ("epppd com1 115200 local" from point 1)
6. Run the Dali IPX driver (the above connect.bat from point 4) and it will connect by default to a public IPX DOSBOX server and assign you an IPX address
7. Go to Doom/Heretic/Duke3D/whatever game folder and run ipxsetup (default it would create a coop map 1 match, otherwise, use setup, network game like in the good ol' days etc)

Notes:
Important: before attempting to do anything further after getting the PPP connection under MS-DOS, check the DNS resolution ("ping google.com"). If name resolution fails, you need to remedy that first
If you plan a match over internet with above method, the two up to 4 players must have same settings of the network game (see DeathMatch Manager screenshot). Same game version too.
As mentioned, the default server is an external one (using https://github.com/fragglet/ipxbox/). For sure this solution can be made on a local RaspberryPi (or maybe even on MiSTer's ARM), I need to investigate more on this.

by "DeathMatch Manager screenshot" I meant this one:

As previously mentioned, only quick tested Doom 1 and 2, the connectivity and game matching are working

These two (Dali driver and IPXBox) are designed with DosBox and its emulated NE2000 or smth like that in mind, so I fully expect the solution to not work out of the box with MiSTer. On the other hand, its sources are available and maybe we can cook smth up with that

[void belfry]

IIRC, was it that Battle Chess between Amiga and Atari ?

[thick pendant]

Either Amiga and Atari Battle Chess or Amiga and PC

Can't remmeber

[summer vortex]

Did you need to setup something like an ssh tunnel to allow the other person onto your local network?

I'm not familiar with Dali. Does that do some kind of handshaking outside the LAN?

[void belfry]

no

as I said (point 6: it will connect by default to a public IPX DOSBOX server and assign you an IPX address)

[summer vortex]

Got it. Thank you.

[void belfry]

Dali is a TSR driver/API which presents to the games supporting it as an IPX interface, with an address assigned and so on. For that, it also connects to an external (can be your own) IPX server which manages the matching queries coming from connected players/devices

also both epppd and dali consume quite a lot of conventional mem 🙂

[summer vortex]

very cool

[thick pendant]

Did anyone play Flashback?

[cold kelp]

@wheat folio ok moved away from the Saturn channel

[wheat folio]

Haha

[hollow fog]

Yes 🙂

[cold kelp]

my 3 favorite retro things:

1. MiSTer
2. RGB-Pi OS4
3. Backbit Pro

https://store.backbit.io/product/backbit-pro/

[wheat folio]

Interesting - like an Everdrive with adapters?

[cold kelp]

Multi platform flashcart

https://store.backbit.io/product/backbit-pro/

[thick pendant]

looks like there is a new one coming out in about a month,,,,

[wheat folio]

I use a BOOTI on my Apple II. Lets me use a USB thumb drive as a hard drive.

Which I didn't even realize Apple II's could even have hard drives...

[cold kelp]

Take it out of the Apple //e and the plug it into the Atari 2600 adapter on a ColecoVision.

don't even have to change SD cards...

https://streamable.com/nhjbiy

[hollow fog]

Yeah, Flashback 2 but I always thought Fade to black was the second part

[thick pendant]

ya, same

[burnt timber]

https://tenor.com/view/excuseme-princess-rude-snobby-sassy-gif-4929694

Kidding, congrats on your accomplishment

[void belfry]

hah, i knew i tested it but very shortly: 🙂

FMVs are working fine afaik with Q87 FPU emulator loaded and i could buy a ship and get out in space for a bit. Tested under DOS 7.10, QEMM and Q87. Also replaced the dos4gw with dos32a.

can't say the game runs great, but i have zero experience with this game

[thick pendant]

what is 2) RGB-Pi OS4?

[cold kelp]

The super best RGB output image for Raspberry Pi 4's

https://streamable.com/u5ehs6

https://streamable.com/arz5sh

https://streamable.com/xzedcz

[thick pendant]

@void belfry https://kangaroopunch.com/software/apcidoom

was a friend of mine who wrote that

[void belfry]

never heard of this before 😄 thanks, i'll take a look on this too

[void belfry]

well, it gets the node address right 🙂

[fast kraken]

i thought there was already a flashback2

it was on like, ps4

[hollow fog]

On ps3 , remake

[final zephyr]

The pad would crash on sqrt

Sounds like you fixed it

Exciting

[craggy wigeon]

Well Flashback 2 was also released on PSX which was not a remake

[fast kraken]

thats fade to black

[craggy wigeon]

Yes

[fast kraken]

its also pretty bad, i tried playing it

even with savestates its a drag lol

[thick pendant]

I thought that was a Metallica song 🙂

[void belfry]

yeah, with Q87 loaded it works. But I cannot how good/bad it runs as i never played this. You should try it yourself, even with demo version you should get an idea.

[mental moat]

Is there an inbuilt terminal for the Altair8800 core? I'm wondering if there is a way to use it (other than the front panel) without plugging in a second computer or a teletype terminal.

[formal whale]

Oh, wow... I thought Privateer 2 required a Pentium!

Man, I remember the FMVs being blurry even back then... wonder if the original cut-scenes are preserved somewhere? But EA so probably not.

[final zephyr]

holy crap, yeah P2 runs

[final zephyr]

Good news! one of the devs about 2-3 years ago dug up a master tape for Privateer 2, we have about 90% of the cutscenes as the original masters.

yeah it's not very playable in terms of speed

[formal whale]

wooooow... that's wonderful to hear! wonder how jank the sets will look when they're not as blurry, though... 😅

my boxed copy is still in the garage somewhere

[final zephyr]

here ya go

https://youtu.be/Vpit0ctcyoE

There's a slowdown patch for Windows btw

also a no cd patch so you don't have to swap disks and can run off the HDD.

I'd love to see it run through an AI upscaler

Wing Commander 3 had stunning results with AI scaling.

[formal whale]

oooh, the memories come flooding back after seeing that! amazing!

so many great actors!

[final zephyr]

Privateer 2 had so many issues, but artistically it's such a bold game.

[formal whale]

my rose tinted glasses don't remember any issues 😆

I already bought the GOG version years ago, but still haven't installed it to try I must confess 😅

[final zephyr]

The main issue is the Speed, you need a P1 166mhz to really enjoy it

P2+ it runs really fast.

I had 486 DX2 66 and a P2 333Mhz so it was never really playable for me back in the day.

[formal whale]

(Wing Commander 3 however... I do remember it being the first game we had to buy a new PC for... daaamn, that game was a hog... like most of Chris Roberts games... Strike Commander didn't run great either, I recall, but we never bought a new PC to get it running.)

[final zephyr]

The slowdown patches let me enjoy it.

Wing Commander 3 is awesome, I have Kilrathi Saga, WC3 rewritten for Windows 95

They upgraded the music as well, pre-rendered SC-88 tracks instead of Midi files.

All the Wing Commander games run in Linux through WINE and DOSBox

Shame about the performance but I guess it's to be expected, still it does suggest FPGAs are the future for this sort of DOS gaming.

My takeaway from MiSTer: Wing Commander 1/2/Privateer Perfection. Wing Commander 3/4/Privateer2: Stick to WINE.

[formal whale]

I'll replay Privateer 2 the day we get a Pentium core 😉

[final zephyr]

It's pretty cool seeing the cutscenes running

[formal whale]

yeah, I'm downloading that Youtube video so I have it just in case it ever disappears

[void belfry]

I count this as another semi-victory for Q87 with Privateer 2 anyway 🙂

[scenic lava]

I'm looking at ao486 setup videos online but they all seem to be about two years old. A lot of them install the older DOS game pack from flynnsbit but it looks like he has a newer version out now? Is there a modern ao486 installation video that also covers the new MyMenu setup?

[thick pendant]

You just need to follow the basic setup and run the updater...

[scenic lava]

Can I run the old setup and it'll move to MyMenu with the updater?

[thick pendant]

yes

[scenic lava]

Okay, thanks!

[copper slate]

I love computer people. So smart and kind!

[round carbon]

@scenic lava do you have a link for the newer version?

I only ever found that exo pack of 300

woould be nice to have a bigger working pack

[gloomy swift]

poking around Amiga core (using AmigaVision). when i'm in the AmigaVision menu the keyboard cursor keys work fine, but when i boot into a game the keyboard Cursor keys seem to be disabled.
i've used ScrollLock to cycle through keyboard modes to Normal but still not working. the other keys are working fine, it seems to just be the Cursor keys specifically

any ideas what settings i need to look at to get the keyboard cursor keys working in games?

[round carbon]

you know exodos

492gb of dos games

when you unzip that, then chd it

[scenic lava]

I found a pack on Archive titled "MiSTer AO486 ExoDOSv4 FlynnsBIT Collection v17" or something like that which has 7000 games. That same pack does have a link to the installation of ExoDOS and a link to a walkthrough from FlynnsBIT. Obivoulsy not all these games are vetted as working by FlynnsBIT and/or BinaryBond007 in the new MyMenu setup. I have not installed DOS on the ao486 core yet so I'm learning this as I go.

[round carbon]

will it become less than 492

that's interesting

have they done anything special too it to make it mister compatible

or is it essentially no different from the official exodos releases

Ii see there is an exodos v5

[scenic lava]

I just search "mister dos" and it's like the fourth link

[round carbon]

ohh is it jusst one giant vhd file?

[scenic lava]

The top comment says if you dowload by torrent then you don't need to download that exoflynn_17.vhd file as it is also contained int he 7z archive prefixed with IDE0-1

[round carbon]

from what I can tell right, the ide thing is an image of a hard drive with all the games already installed

[scenic lava]

ah

[round carbon]

and then you also need the cds to "put in" when you're playing, right?

[scenic lava]

I don't know

[vestal ginkgo]

I'm here. What can I answer for you? 1. Yes it is a conversion process (using a tool called ExoDOSConverter on github, the conversion has a mister option). This would be if you wanted to create your own "packs". 2. There are multiple images that were created with the attempt to make it plug and play, download, put it in the right place, mount the images, play games. 3. yes you need the CD's, the scripts to start games are tied into the mister framework and will automatically mount the CD to the right location as you start the game. 4. There are some packs with more work put into them than others, the Top 300 has the most and has an updater that is on github that will fix a bunch of games. Any other pack is probably a first run conversion from exodos with no games tested, including the 7000 game pack. The Shareware pack had a bunch of testing before I released that one. So in my opinion, if you just want to play, then Top 300, or Shareware pack. If you want to "tinker" I would create your own pack using the converter.

Top 300 updater and instructions are here: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates#how-to-install-and-update I can't link to the larger pack with actual games in it but you seem to have found that. Here is the full shareware pack if you just want to play some games and see how the core runs. Shareware pack is fully on github and you can download the vhd here: https://github.com/flynnsbit/DOS_Shareware_MyMenu#dos_shareware_mymenu mount it, and play.

[scenic lava]

Is it recommended to host games on a separate drive that's connected via USB or just put everything on a single MicroSD card (or does it not matter?)

[void belfry]

To each is own and budget/passions I guess. I use the sdcard, some use USB drives, others cifs/samba. Each has its pros and cons, in terms of costs/time to setup

[round carbon]

thanks flynn

[scenic lava]

If I install the top 300 pack but then want to manually add games later, do I need to rebuild the entire pack or can I individually add games?

[round carbon]

there are some specific games I'd like to play that are in the 7000 pack

I'm watching your 1 hour video now

rather than bothering you haha, and if I don't get it I'll ask after, I will educate myself to the best of my ability first

I heard btw that the gobliins games from the 300 pack don't work? is the core still in development or is it basically like "if it doesn't work then sucks to be yyou, try configuring it and then if it doesn't work it doesn't work"

[fast kraken]

btw don't forget top300 is open source - if you can develop fixes for it please make a PR

[vestal ginkgo]

If you update it with the script, it will change the front end to MyMenu which will allow you to add your own games. MyMenu is driven off of directory structures so if you put the game in the right place or add your own games section to the mymenu.ini then you can do what you want

[fast kraken]

300 games with 5000 sounds modes is too many for one or two people to fix up 😄

[vestal ginkgo]

At this point, "Doesn't work and it sucks" Gobliins 3 works I think

[fast kraken]

if you check the github issues list a lot of the broken games have been quite extensively investigated

some hardly at all

[vestal ginkgo]

with maybe 4 people doing all the work 😉

ok, crawling back into my hole for now

[void belfry]

ahem

and yes, it actually has CD-Audio, even if it is one track only 😄

[fast kraken]

really glad we decided to leave that all in just-in-case one day it works

for a minute there we considered ripping all the audiio out of the cd-images to make them smaller 😮

[round carbon]

wait cd audio works now??

[void belfry]

I don't use the Top 300 for a long time, but it still the core of my own setups. And a lot of games I imported from there

[fast kraken]

yeah cd-audio got added like a month+ ago

[round carbon]

also btw am I right in understanding that the dos core doesn't have like.. a soundblaster

oh really? amazing

[fast kraken]

its got a soundblaster pro

[round carbon]

interesting

for gammes that have midi though it can't like.. do fancy soundfonts right?

it's just beeps and boops?

I know people have done that roland pi stuff

[fast kraken]

for midi stuff you need an mt32pi

[void belfry]

what Freddo says 😛

[fast kraken]

to like do the midi externally - it all gets mixed back into the core audio though its neat

soundblaster music can be alright tho

[round carbon]

how does the mt32 connect? could you theoretically use any midi device

like could I plug it into my keyboard

lol

[fast kraken]

into the snac port

and yeah, depending what hat you get for the mt32pi - its a generic midi device too

it just has special features for mister

https://youtu.be/B1WP-LPw1Bk

[round carbon]

when I'm back in the UK I will think about getting the mt32pi

[frozen mason]

It’s the best mister accessory for dos core aficionados imo

[round carbon]

although I don't mind the boopity beepitty tbh, I didn't have a good audio setup growing up

[frozen mason]

It’s so plug and play easy with immediate results

[fast kraken]

yeah mt32pi is like the setup you wish you had in the 90s

most of us didn't 😛

[round carbon]

some games it actually sounds like.. WRONG it sounds too good

like what is this sound doing on this game

[fast kraken]

#midi on here for like - more indepth midi talk if you want

[round carbon]

cheers

so wait, games that have like.. recorded .wav voices and stuff

soundbites

[fast kraken]

definitely not required to enjoy top300 though

[round carbon]

that stuff just works right?

[fast kraken]

yeah digital sample playback

[round carbon]

so why didn't they just package soundfonts with games back then?

[fast kraken]

most people didn't have a synth hooked up

[round carbon]

I mean in terms of.. you can play a digital sample

so what's stopping you from just playing them as midi

[fast kraken]

oh, they did kind of, but midi lets you do way more than just playback samples

its got like reverb, chorus, symphony etc

[round carbon]

yeah fair

[fast kraken]

and midi can do way more voices

[frozen mason]

It’s amazing how many games support MT32 or general midi

Sierra was so good about it, blessed Ken and Roberta

[round carbon]

it's funny how every single video shows monkey island

[fast kraken]

its kind of a trope 😛

[round carbon]

looking forward to playying some sierra edutainment games

Kids' Typing 1994

Word Rescue by Epic too

[frozen mason]

The percussion is used well in those but honestly there’s all the origin games, wing commander sounds great

[fast kraken]

its kind of like playing a hd remaster but just for sound 😛

[round carbon]

there's like 15 videos that show off this tech and every single one are secret of monkey island

yeah I get it I've heard the theme

show me something else

I actually like the beepy boopy secret of monkey island

[fast kraken]

https://youtu.be/u5IF2cI2eKk?t=282

timestamped for some none-monkey island games

[sand geode]

mt32 is the neo geo of sound output, none of us could afford it back then

[void belfry]

plus you can look up for X68000 core games with mt32pi, think there are some vids on YT

[fast kraken]

i think it technically works on amiga too there's just barely any games that use it on there

[void belfry]

and Atari ST ofc 🙂

[burnt timber]

There some great ones. Bosconian, gradius 2, etc

The best are the handful that mix fm with mt32

[void belfry]

that reminded me to check puu-san's site, from what I get he is focused on the FM-Towns project

[burnt timber]

I dont think the blog has been udpated in months

[void belfry]

September 14, 2023

He doesn't update often, that yes ofc 🙂

[burnt timber]

Oh allright.

[thick pendant]

If you have a USB MIDI adapter then you simply plug the keyboard in to your MiSTer. I've used my Yamaha PSR-290 which supports GM (General MIDI)

[round carbon]

my wife's keyboard is actually midi through usb straight out

I have a midi output on mine that I plug into an interface

[thick pendant]

Just plug it in to the MiSTer then...

[round carbon]

but would one of those work? like a usb one

damn

[thick pendant]

yes, plug into the USB port, not SNAC

[round carbon]

and we can just play monkey island tunes through her piano

yo that is incredibly sick

[thick pendant]

I also have a USB keyboard like that... Yes it works just plugged straight in

[void belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/fire-gif-10341555270454130792

[round carbon]

does percussion get played through the.. current soundfont?

like if you have it on piano 1 will it ALL be piano 1 and drums are piano 1 too?

[thick pendant]

You can also get this thing called "MiSTer MIDI 1.4" which is a MIDI adapter for USER IO. I've had no personal experience with it though

[thick pendant]

If the keyboard supports GM and so does the game, it should be pretty good.

[round carbon]

damn that is pretty hype

her's has a pretty decent soundfont too

[thick pendant]

I also have a CASIO USB keyboard, works great except the keyboard came from the thrift store with the wrong polarity of AC adapter and it actually only runs off of batteries, so it goes to sleep if left idle, which is an issue for the linux kernel...

sometimes causes the linux kernel to lockup

[void belfry]

the User I/O port is extremely useful for a lot of stuff to interface MiSTer with external devices, ranging from MIDI stuff (most commonly amongst users would be mt32pi's) to SD2IEC/real 1541 FD drives stuff for C64 or real modems etc etc

[thick pendant]

I've tried making the polarity correct, but that must have damaged the KB

[round carbon]

turn the keyboard upside down

[final zephyr]

is there a midi port for mister? I have a real Roland SC-55 and an MT-32

[sterile ether]

You can use usb to midi converter

[final zephyr]

ah, I have those already cool.

[sterile ether]

I have test ok with UM-ONE

[thick pendant]

avoid the ones that look like this:

http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-midi-cable-some-self-assembly-may-be-required/

In addition to the issues stated there, they have trouble with sysex messages over 250 bytes... making them unusable for MT-32

[vestal ginkgo]

https://github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi/wiki/USB-MIDI-interfaces

tested ones

[final zephyr]

HOLY CRAP

this is on an Amiga 500

https://youtu.be/doD7hmlKun8

[thick pendant]

Tested with mt32-pi, but results may be different with MiSTer/Linux. The only one I know for sure works is UM-ONE...

[vestal ginkgo]

ahh I figured they would exibit the same issues. Good point

just dont cheap out on the cable

[thick pendant]

Well, most likely, but Circle is different OS than Linux..

[thick pendant]

Exactly, like spend 200bux for a MT-32 and use that $5 adapter made without op-amp... what you are really paying for is a wire with 2 resistors.

Could damage your equipment without the optical isolation.

Would be interesting to try my MT-32 connected to my Casio KB (via DIN) connected to MiSTer (via USB) to see if it handles sysex correctly...

[tulip atlas]

This works at least for me: ESI Midimate EX https://www.esi-audio.com/products/midimateex/

[hollow fog]

I played a bit of this demo on mister yesterday, it works very well

[mental moat]

So I've been trying to play Warcraft 2 from the top 300 pack.

It works for about 5-10 min then everything freezes.

Anyone else got this issue or any advice?

[mental moat]

This time it died as soon as I finished the first stage in the orc campaign

Crashed the mister completely, I can't open the mister menus either

[timid harbor]

I'll pull it up and see what happens

you doing soundblaster canvas or CD Music for sound?

[timid harbor]

It's been working fine for me, using Sound Blaster sound, I had some initial sound issues, but once I turned off C/MS for sound it worked just fine

[thick pendant]

Have you tried it with a MT-32 or a mt32-pi? The issue is that a lot of USB MIDI adapters work fine for normal 3 byte MIDI messages, but fail on longer than 255 byte sysex messages.

MT-32 soundbank is reprogrammable though sysex messages and generally GM typically uses the standard soundbank.

[tulip atlas]

I am using two of those interfaces to connect my mt32-pi to MiSTer. The reprogramming in ao486 games like Dune 2 works great. I recorded some of it, for example here: https://youtu.be/WMH3VwOuZ50?si=huTquuFCbeRFWooi

Without the reprogramming, some effects like the whoosh of the sand would be missing in the intro. They are played through mt32-pi.

[void belfry]

Anyone been able to run the CD version of Betrayal of Krondor on ao486 ?

[hollow fog]

No luck ☹️

[void belfry]

I'm assuming you use the same image from the certain archiving site, right ?

[hollow fog]

Yes , correct

[void belfry]

tested that image under PCEm, there it is recognized. Didn't try other emulators

this would be the only image i tested and not working on ao486, but I don't have a physical CD version of this game to source my own to compare

[thick pendant]

Absolutely would not be working 🙂 It looks like an alternative to the UM-ONE

[flint wedge]

Anyone know the trick to the amstrad cpc keyboard and the " (double quote) Like when try to do RUN"GAUN3 my double quote comes up as + as in RUN+GAUN3

edit: Figured it out, it was shift 2 or @ and that did a " on the cpc

[sly crater]

Got the Amiga core running last night, was amazed to see the mouse emulation kicking in via the dualsense trackpad! So cool

Anyone got some Amiga-exclusive recommendations I should try?

[mental moat]

Thanks for checking. It's crashing on the victory screen for me but multiple people are reporting no issue on their end.

Can you tell me what memory manager you chose?

[timid harbor]

ah, I didn't go to the victory screen, I just pulled it up and let it run and fiddled here and there

[woven lava]

what kind of games do you like? plenty of variety

[mental moat]

all good, it appears one of my vhds is corrupted, which may or may not be the issue

either way, gotta download a new one and update it

[sly crater]

I don’t think the hardware is built for arcade ports, but any shooters/shmups that are good on there?

[woven lava]

Apidya

Z-Out, Agony, Disposable Hero

[sly crater]

Wow!! This one looks crazy I’ll give it a shot

Ty

[thick pendant]

Anything by Psygnosis, while the may not be exclusive to Amiga, they play best on Amiga. If you like Outrun style games, first off, don't try Outrun, but look into Lotus Turbo Challenge.

Bitmap Brothers, Team19

[sand geode]

super debateable but who cares the amiga is awesome

and those three houses in particular are best there

it is spelled "the chaos engine"

[mental moat]

Argh ok, warcraft 2 still crashes on victory, the core is defs crashed, linux is still running though and I can ssh in fine

nothing weird in dmesg

huh ok I reset the core settings and it works now, so it was something in my core config

yeah seems fine now, I tested it in CD audio mode and it throws a copy protection error though, which is kinda funny. I've not seen "insert your CD to play" in a very long time.

[umbral oar]

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

[void belfry]

Speaking of CDs, while working on resurrecting this weekend an old Dell Optiplex XP machine, I discovered I had no blanks anymore :D)) Luckily a nearby shop had a last box of 10, forgotten on a shelve since years. Think it's been 10 smth years since i burned the last ones lol

[mental moat]

hah lucky

I've been burned on that and now keep a stock of blank cds, dvds, and blu rays for safety

I need to get a usb floppy drive as well, I need to preserve a heap of floppies from a deceased family member.

Woo, just made a couple of fixes on the top 300:

• Theme Park: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates/pull/106
• Return to Zork (MT & SoundCanvas): https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates/pull/105