Computer Cores

[mental moat]

hooray!

[modern rock]

I'm trying to run Virtual Floppy Image Converter, so that I can prepare files to use with the X68000 MiSTer core. But this program doesn't want to run on my computer, no matter whether I run as admin, or try to run in compatibility mode, etc. Is this usable at all in Windows 10?

[void belfry]

I use it in Win10 without any issues

[modern rock]

Not sure why it won't launch for me, then <_>

The very first time I attempted, it had a language selection menu pop up, which defaulted to Japanese. I selected English, and then nothing happened.

Every time since that I try to launch it, it does nothing.

[sly crater]

Worked for me last night also. Those floppy disks sure do take a while to load haha

But worked with windows 10 out of the box

Does anyone get a weird audio popping noise in the x68k core while playing Cho Ren Sha? The ost sounds great except this occasional clipping or popping sound in the audio. Tested the auto boot .hdf and the .d88 floppy

[thick pendant]

I picked up a huge blank stack of 100 from the thrift store.

Dunno why. Have not burned a CD in years.

[flint wedge]

https://tenor.com/view/winning-football-money-gif-12444258

[teal flower]

This is Amity for MiSTer FPGA, or just aMiSTer for short.
It's a preconfigured Workbench with modern tools, music software, 3d software and games etc.

Amity for MiSTer i'll release it this Xmas...

[coral coral]

Looks more tasteful than any other "modern" Amiga setup I've seen! Is that a Neo Geo emulator I spot there? That can't possibly run well, can it?

[teal flower]

@coral coral as there have been rumours of Alexi leveraging the pi for a cpu and fpu boost I tentatively leave a few things on there like demo that require a FPU just wont run on the current core. But if in the future they do, well my glass is half full, i'm optimistic and also hopeful.

[sand geode]

mister 2.0

[azure hedge]

question about top 300

do i only need to add the zipped contents to the sd card or do i need the other stuff that came with it

like the .bin addos folder and padding folder

[summer vortex]

This is the entire end-to-end pack with everything you need (cd, floppy, and vhd images.) You must set IDE 0-0 Boot VHD as your Primary and IDE 0-1 Top 300 VHD as your secondary. The CD and floppy folders need to be copied into your /games/AO486/ folder on the mister drive you are using for the core (SD or SSD/HDD)

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1531&p=12931#p12931

I just installed it a view days ago. It's great. I did have to make a Symbolic link though.

I think it was

ln -s /media/fat/AO486 /media/fat/games/AO486

So actually, I put all my files in /media/fat/AO486 and then had the symbolic link in /media/fat/games/AO486

[azure hedge]

so basically all i need is the zipped content placed into the game folder

was just curious about the other stuff that was downloaded with it

this stuff

[summer vortex]

oh I forgot about that stuff. I see what you're talking about now. Yeah I didn't use those.

[azure hedge]

cool good to know

yeah that was the only part i was confused about

just ssh'ed into my mister and currently running the update

[vestal ginkgo]

The ADDOS directory is if you want the After Dark screensaver for dos. You would add it into the vhd and make sure it’s setup, all that is totally optional. Everything else in that screenshot is junk (unless you want the dos manuals)

[azure hedge]

@vestal ginkgo tyvm for the response

I'm keeping the manuals always fun to read

[fast kraken]

some games need you to read those to pass copy protection iirc

[vestal ginkgo]

Yeah there are a couple not cracked

[azure hedge]

And I'm guessing the xml sqlite files are just part of keeping track of the content in the torrent

[vestal ginkgo]

Yes

And the padding is junk

[copper slate]

@vestal ginkgo just wanted to say you’re the reason why I’m able to enjoy DOS gaming again. Thank you so much!

[sudden ice]

Yeah same 🙂

[grim lodge]

86box and Dosbox are surprisingly useful for creating and editing floppy image files. 86box makes it easy to make blank image files. With Dosbox you can mount the image file and a directory on your harddrive to quickly move stuff over.

Also vhds in 86box, but I feel like I luck into creating functioning ones with all the options available.

[vivid seal]

Oh, I didn’t know he has created Dosbox! Noice! 🙃

[copper slate]

Hahaha, admittedly I never tinkered with DOSBox but that’s also amazing! 🍻

[grim lodge]

Speaking of dosbox, staging has really stepped up it's shader support

Need to get tandy working so I can continue my basically EGA adventures on PCXT

[novel sail]

https://github.com/dbalsom/martypc

you may want to check that out too if there's any PCXT stuff you're looking at that is super cycle accurate (like demos)

[grim lodge]

I've also checked that out, for the time being I've settled on using mips to get a close enough cycle count to a 4.77 Mhz cpu for dosbox. Wife wanted to be a cartographer for me while I play MM1, so I need something that's quick to get going

I'll likely continuing that for MM2, but MM3 runs really weird on dosbox unless you set cycle count high which makes the game way to fast.

[grim lodge]

This is a bit shallow, but I'm basing my choices almost purely on, do the shaders look nice. 86box, oof, the scanlines don't match the pixels

[deft estuary]

Hi!

I've downloaded the official Dos Tools for networking on AO486 core here https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... s_ftpd.zip.

In AO486 I've installed MS-DOS 6.22 on a VHD partition, I've launched PPPDD.EXE and I've got correctly a 192.168.1.254 ip on my local ethernet network.

Because I have a Retronas (https://github.com/danmons/retronas) instance active on a Raspberry PI4 I've successfully installed an EtherFDS server (https://github.com/danmons/retronas/wiki/EtherDFS), associated to the "dos" mount point a fat32 image and then, on MS-DOS 6.22 on AO486, I've successfully launched the client EtherFDS that "finds" my Raspberry and maps the "dos" drive to the letter X:

Problem is that, when I type "X:" and "dir" I get a "file not found" error even if in the "dos" partition there are files...

Any suggestion?

[thick pendant]

does the DOS tools come with a "ping" command? you can see if you can ping the IP of your MiSTer and retronas

I'd think doing a network drive over serial would be too slow to really be useful...

[void belfry]

It won't work. You need an Ethernet card implemented in the ao486, not the PPP over serial we are using now.

[deft estuary]

thanks. I hope one day Ethernet card will be implemented in ao486... Is that difficult?

[void belfry]

I have no idea, I am no dev 🙂 An ethernet implementation to bridge with the real eth DE10-nano has would be nice to have, I agree. But afaik ao486 core occupies most of fpga space as well, so any additions (in case it is possible and someone really does it) have to be cramped in that already almost full space. As i said, just an opinion.

Anyway, another issue is that (probably) all games in the DOS era used IPX/SPX instead of TCP/IP as we are doing today. So you will also need to do extra work in adding IPX capabilities within your LAN or even across Internet. Most OSes have dropped support for IPX a while ago. Also most routers prevents sending IPX frames and so on and so forth 🙂

[lost nest]

I have already connected an Ethernet PHY to the fake USB3 connector on MiSTer IO board. Using a "LAN8720" module.
There is not enough pins for all RMII signals... but It's possible to hack a way without CRS_DV.

[hollow ice]

Does ao486 have an isa implementation? Could the ne2000 be implemented in software and faked similar to ide?

[lost nest]

I have a Ethernet AMD "Lance" (Am7990) in VHDL

[void belfry]

Besides Dali/IPXbox, I started to test out iFrag, it looks like the most promising solution for playing multiplayer iD Software games which uses Doom Network Driver. I didn't test it full yet (building tonight/tomorrow a DOS/DOSBOX machine), but the communication seems ok.

Now.. for connecting two or more MiSter in same LAN, for sure you need to change the default .254 IP that the core gets it after PPP links is established

For exposing your MiSTer to Internet (meaning to host a server on it, so others can connect to it), I guess it can be done easy with a port forwarding towards core's PPP assigned IP if the router allows it

[void belfry]

To run it is simple, just get iFrag (https://www.doomworld.com/files/file/4193-ifrag-version-22/) , extract it to a folder on your DOS setup
Modify WATTCP.CFG (similar to mtcp.cfg as you do for usual DOS PPP) from that iFrag folder
Modify IFRAG.CFG to reflect the correct paths to DOOM/Heretic/Hexen/etc folders and their WADS respective folder
DEFAULT.RSP is the default profile file containing game name/monsters/map/etc. Should be identical on both or more machines (as the games versions as well)
Connect to the PPP solution (epppd etc etc)
Since all Internet trackers are long gone, one MiSTer/DOS machine must be launched in server mode: "IFRAG.EXE -NOTRACK -SERVER"
Others should connect to it by "IFRAG.EXE -NOTRACK -CLIENT <IP ADDRESS>"
Default port is 5029

[worthy zealot]

I thought someone had already connected AO486 to the Internet? But I guess that might not have used an ethernet setup for it?

[void belfry]

Yes, absolutely, we can and we do connect ao486 to Internet from DOS/Windows with PPP.

Who has multiple MiSTers on same LAN, let me know if you can test the above iFrag works as intended.

Also if anyone has one MiSTer and access to his/her router to do a port forwarding, we can try an over the internet match. My ISP provided router is a total piece of junk and can't host a server myself atm

[void belfry]

So the respective core would have absolutely direct physical ethernet link to LAN... now that would be awesome to have. Ofc would lose mt32pi but heck yeah, other opportunities 🙂

[lost nest]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/976290012876386354/976296287802621972/phy.jpg?ex=6541aac5&is=652f35c5&hm=31eb803212a22f42e8566b80dc448fcfa47be3d2c9977131eea92fae8da253cf&=&width=1919&height=496

[void belfry]

Looks easy enough even for me to make it 🙂

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/eFh7Zj76dFE?si=dzYA8Op_dJQ7do-b

[gloomy bolt]

Deadpan delivering 'only limited by your enthusiasm' is art.

Also this guy looks so New Zealand I Christchurched in my Wellington.

[grim lodge]

Has anyone attempted fpga connected laptops yet?

[void belfry]

what do you mean by that ?

[void belfry]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJRuzykYXYg speaking of Doom 😄

[void belfry]

Three MiSTers on LAN are confirmed working in an iFrag client-server Doom session. Thank you @modest skiff for testing it 🙂
Still on the testing table would be an over the Internet match, with one MiSTer being the server, with port forwarding and so on
Another point to investigate would be on how iFrag tracker servers functioned, afaik there are none in existence anymore. Hope to be disproved or find out how to host one.
That would open a lot of potential co-op/deathmatch sessions/even tournaments in MiSTer community 🙂

[outer viper]

I have done no reserach into it but have glanced at classicgamearena. They have their own client but dont know how it all works. They have a server list but dont know if they are ifrag or something else?

[void belfry]

probably the client is leveraging between DosBox and OS to get the packets encapsulated within normal TCP/IP. So it needs a host OS and DosBox ofc is the VM.

Unless they listen on iFrag tracker ports and accept connections from real/not-connected-with-their-client machines, not much of an use i guess

90's networking is quirky but it is also fun lol

[void belfry]

As it seems, the tracker server listened on TCP 6666 for example in order to match players/game versions/publish game servers etc. Or at least is that what I understand atm

but yeah, back in that time we had full IPX networks at school/company where we held first Doom local tourney etc, I don't remember using much TCP/IP in gaming until around 2000

[opal void]

what is that text eidtor? certainly doesn't look like the one shipped with MS-DOS 6.22 😮

[void belfry]

Dos Navigator's embedded one 🙂

[opal void]

oh an NC clone? looks nice!

[void belfry]

imho it is better than NC 🙂 plus it can be interfaced with other external apps (from compilers to archivers and so on)

Besides its own utilities (cd player, file editor, terminal and so on)

[grim lodge]

Nothing beats edlin

[opal void]

I should try it

I remember my dad using Xtree

some 30 years ago

but when I tried it recently, I really hated it lol

I guess I am married to NC

even at work I like to use MC a lot on my Linux servers

[grim lodge]

What's a decent period appropriate assembler for a PC xt 1986

[young zealot]

Hmm, tried to use the Ao486 Top 300 pack after a successful update but I'm getting this error where it's not seeing the filled VHD slot. Did I miss some kind of step?

[thick pendant]

I'd look into whatever is creating that runtime error

[grim lodge]

Heard a little tip that DOS 2000 actually runs pretty well on 5150 hardware

[opal void]

from which animes are these?

[woven lava]

TASM maybe?

or Macro Assembler, from a quick google

[burnt timber]

16 Bit Sensation: Another Layer, and Angel Cop

[woven lava]

wonder if one could use a modern assembler for more optimized code, though

[thick pendant]

An assembler does not optimize code like a c compiler. It simply translates mnemonics into op-codes. The EXE produced by one assembler should be pretty identical to any other assembler.

optimization is done by the programmer...

[grim lodge]

Yeah, I'm just looking for something that won't be incredibly slow, which nasm apparently is on older machines

I found tinyasm which uses a ton of nasm conventions

[thick pendant]

generally the inline assembler in Turbo Pascal/c is good enough for me...

[coral coral]

Watcom C was great for assembler in the DOS days

[grim lodge]

One of the area5150 devs used the Borland Pascal 7 suite, so I'll try that

[thick pendant]

I know Jim Leonard uses TP7

The debugger is very nice

[grim lodge]

Whelp, I think I have my answer. Thanks fellas. Now to find some good reference material...

[thick pendant]

Check out SWAG

[grim lodge]

That is a very difficult term to Google...

Found it. I'm actually more interested in the assembler side that Pascal itself

[thick pendant]

It has quite a few snippets using inline asm

[grim lodge]

Ah, okay

[grim lodge]

It's also includes in Borland C++...

If only I had space for both!

[frozen mason]

Can I just say, and I’ll keep it vague because I know we don’t want to talk about downloading stuff here, but to whoever this Gruby is, thank you for the most amazing collection of dos floppies I’ve ever seen

[sand geode]

without amiga vision or top 300 i wouldn't use either core

[grim lodge]

Without 86box and martypc, I don't think I'd have the patience to use either core 😛

[still wren]

Yo what’s the RMB button ?

Press RMB to start the game ?

DUH NVM ! It’s right mouse button

[crimson fulcrum]

next you'll ask where the 'any' key is

[still wren]

Im new to this comppoooter core stuffs

Im just a man trying to play some Elvira mistress of evil

[woven lava]

true - in that case why not use a modern text editor? though the oldschool IDE has its charm

(or no IDE if you're so inclined...)

[grim lodge]

I decided on Turbo Assembler 4.0, because I ran out of space with the other options

[thick pendant]

The debugger in the Turbo products is pretty nice...

Watches, etc. Very modern features

I have masm, tasm, TP7 and Turbo c installed. They all came on a handfull of floppy images... I'm not understanding the space issue...

[grim lodge]

I'm currently doing my testing in martypc which has a 20m hdd limit at the moment

My mister currently isn't in a good space to comfortably do PC stuff

[thick pendant]

And Martypc can't have like a 10mb vhd?

[grim lodge]

20mb vhd max, it's due to a limitation in the ide rom it supports

[thick pendant]

20mb is more than enough.

[grim lodge]

was less interested in pascal and tried to sub with c++, that hit the limit pretty quickly

I also have dos 7 installed

[sudden ice]

Wow big coco3 update

[void belfry]

6. Moved CoCo Hardware RS-232 from always existing to only existing in multipak slot 1. --- and where exactly is that slot 1 ?

[high urchin]

with the last X68000 core version, Granada crashes in intro scene, when tank shoots, using .HDF file

[waxen brook]

its done that for a while. gotta skip the intro and it plays fine iirc

[high urchin]

from floppy disks it works ok, but more loading time (it may have been so initially)

[thick pendant]

Granada?

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/commit/4fab9a5aa78a333941ab19398e6e2610396f0c12

Do you know what core is Uneon ?

[rough edge]

Uneon

[lunar trellis]

I was wondering the same thing, what is Uneon? Is this some computer someone is working on that hasn't been mentioned before?

[spare spindle]

Codename for PS5 core. 100% compatibility. Or a typo. Nothing coming up on Google.

[worthy zealot]

What is Uneon core? I am guessing its a computer core since it has gotten IDE support?
[Sorgelig 2023-10-24 346ecf3] IDE support for Uneon core.

[worthy zealot]

ahh yes, seems I am not the only one 🙂

[lunar trellis]

I wonder if Sorg made a typo

[sand geode]

his finger slipped 15 times

[fleet cave]

also typoed it in the code!

I can't even google that. I get nothing

is it 'micro neon'? even that gives me nothing

[novel sail]

google turns up nothing, I tried too

[grim lodge]

My guess Soviet Union era PC

[novel sail]

is there a google.ru to search

[grim lodge]

Google translate actually picks it up as a basque term.

[sand geode]

google translate also translates "sorgelig" as "caring" so

[granite umbra]

maybe he is working on a brand new core for PC

[lunar trellis]

Yeah I did wonder if this was something he was doing himself which is why nobody has seen it mentioned

Have to wait and see I guess

Maybe something he used as a kid

[void belfry]

Now, this is a proper GUI for DOS : Breadbox Ensemble. Also has a very interesting browser, still need to figure out connectivity part, plus a full office suite, games, utilities etc

[grim lodge]

Found at the hard way that tlink from anything past turbo assembler 2 doesn't work 8088 machines

[waxen brook]

does the amiga core support chd images for cd32 games?

[grim lodge]

Do any of the computer cores support CHD?

[waxen brook]

i think ao486 does? not sure but the github readme suggests it does

For CD images, the typical location is games/ao486/cd/ and you can either have the game folders, or CHD, IMG, ISO, BIN/CUE files in the root for mounting. The imgset command can be used in DOS to mount/unmount images placed here by passing the exact path.

[fleet cave]

both amiga and ao486 support it

[waxen brook]

sweet. wanted to try out cd32 support in the amiga core tonight

any special steps to get it working? the github readme doesnt mention it at all..

[fleet cave]

what? cd32?

[waxen brook]

yeah just converted 4 games to chd and cant figure it out

reading the forum makes me think i need some idefix97 cd32 emulator?

[fleet cave]

you need to ask some of those weirdo amiga people. there's some 'emulator' in the idefix package? yeah

[waxen brook]

but i cant find that either

lol "those weird amiga people"

[fleet cave]

it's on aminet or wherever people put amiga stuff

but it's a 'demo version' that will pop up a nag screen

[waxen brook]

i'll call my amiga lifeline later tonight ^-^

[fleet cave]

I'm sure there's a not-demo version somewhere

but again, weird amiga people etc

[grim lodge]

Took some doing but I finally found a decent editor that works on 8088/8086 machines

It's shareware as well

[thick pendant]

The Soviet Union had like 90 different ZX Spectrum clones... so probably one of those

[lunar trellis]

Would one of those require an update to Main though?

Genuine question, I have no idea

[thick pendant]

well, its not a typo

char is_uneon()
{
    if (!is_uneon_type) is_uneon_type = strcasecmp(orig_name, "Uneon") ? 2 : 1;
    return (is_uneon_type == 1);
}

but it would seem whatever it is has IDE, so probaply not a Spectrum clone

[lunar trellis]

Maybe he has a new repo which has more info...

[thick pendant]

I did nost see one

I guess it will remain a mystery 🙂

[lunar trellis]

Very mysterious!

[thick pendant]

https://tenor.com/view/it-is-a-mystery-butt-head-mike-judge's-beavis-and-butt-head-s2-e3-it's-a-riddle-gif-11206365824536170941

[timid harbor]

I grew up with only dos and I'm curious, what non dos system had your favorite games?

[grim lodge]

Settlers on Amiga is a certified hood classic

[wind dew]

We had a VIC-20, Downhill, Gorf, Frogger, Choplifter

[woven lava]

does Apple II count as DOS?

predating almost everything, there's quite a few solid titles on there

e.g. Prince of Persia was an Apple II game before the MSDOS port

[novel sail]

I was all about that lemonade stand on apple ii

[grim lodge]

Might and Magic 1 was developed for apple ii

[thick pendant]

This Uneon core is really cool. Playing some games on it now...

[woven lava]

tell us your secrets...

[timid harbor]

I would count it as something different

[void belfry]

Lol, that Breadbox Ensemble also has one of the best screen savers I ever saw :)) Bobbin, a dude who gets the screen back on its wire spool and leaves the scene like a boss.

What I like is that is also blazing fast, kicks Windoze a#$ in loading times. But I guess it was bit too late to make a difference when it appeared, even as a GUI alternative for lower end machines

[void belfry]

Now going back further in time to check out New Deal Office suite, that looks nice too. Also quite entertaining story to follow through its development/companies/etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(16-bit_operating_system)

[wind dew]

I love oddball stuff like this, thanks for sharing!

[void belfry]

Digital archaeology gets me back in those times I only heard/read about these systems/OSes/whatnots 😄

[grim lodge]

I've been running IBM DOS 2000 and I really think it was better than msdos at the time

[void belfry]

New Deal 2000 also works without issues. I kinda like BreadBox Ensemble more, but this one is also quite nice

[thick pendant]

I'm not sure if Apple II even counts as a computer 🙂

[fleet cave]

Woz will cut you with one of his $2 bills

[novel sail]

wow the disrepsect.

[burnt timber]

IIGS is neat to be fair

[novel sail]

Apple //c was the pinnacle of engineering in its day

they took all of those expansion cards and made it portable

[burnt timber]

Well, for a given value of portable. Much more portable than a luggable for sure.

[thick pendant]

Apple IIgs is very cool, but they had to get a former C= engineer to do the audio chip 😛

[burnt timber]

I had a IIc before, thought it was neat

[woven lava]

blasphemy 🤣

[wind dew]

I gotta find one of those bags for my classic

[thick pendant]

I think I have one!

its grey as I remember

yeah, I do have one. I store extra bed sheets in it... but its blue and not apple branded.

[wind dew]

Neat!

[thick pendant]

is that it you think?

it needs a good vacuum haha

it came with a smoke damaged MAC in it which had been in a fire. I stripped down the MAC and cleaned it really well, replaced the floppy drive etc.

[wind dew]

That looks correct, should have a little sleeve inside for the keyboard

[thick pendant]

I've been pondering getting a MAC case and build it up with a RPi or MiSTer or even small PC.

Ipad screen

[wind dew]

There's a few builds like that on the MiSTer forum

[burnt timber]

https://hoffman.bandcamp.com/album/metal-gear-amiga-ost

[wind dew]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=24389&hilit=mac#p24389

[uneven cliff]

Found in box of my old stuff today haha

[woven lava]

i had this exact bag!

[vestal goblet]

my mom loved one called Multi-Edit, had syntax highlighters for over a dozen languages, and execute-command-on-save configurations per file extension

it advertised in Doctor Dobbs' Journal right up until it went out of print. we have it on our Amstrad 8088 back in ~1988 or so, so it shouldn't be hard to find

(note: I haven't used it in decades, so it may actually suck compared to something else that runs in 8088)

[teal flower]

Public beta for this Amiga distro coming next month..

[woven lava]

yes please

[teal flower]

Not sure where to host it, VIP FTP is fine, but maybe MEGA as well so I can share a link here..

[woven lava]

archive.org?

[teal flower]

hmm possibly

not a bad idea

thanks

[copper slate]

Can’t link it here though. We don’t allow links from that site.

You can definitely tell people how to find it though.

[teal flower]

okay thank you

[burnt timber]

https://tenor.com/view/paul-blart-mall-cop-kevin-james-gif-4287430

[teal flower]

😄

[copper slate]

lol it’s true

Sorry @teal flower lol

[teal flower]

lol no problem

[undone anvil]

ooo can't wait to try it

[fleet shale]

same!

[thick pendant]

I'll definately try it...

I was just trying this NeoGeo 8Bitdo controller https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=79558 with Minimig core... honestly very nice. I would have loved this controller on my A500 back in the day...

[gloomy bolt]

Well, Erin knocked my birthday out of the park...

Now, to fit all of this into a MiSTer case....

[wind dew]

She bought you the computer?

(PC-98?)

[burnt timber]

Tandy 1000 SX, neat

[wind dew]

Ah, sweet get!

[summer vortex]

Very nice details with the pseudo perforated hole dot-matrix printer paper

[copper slate]

Your name is Andy??

[woven lava]

that's real love right there

[chilly rain]

New mister core dropped https://github.com/Kyp069/ep/raw/main/releases/ep-20231031-mister.rbf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_(computer)

@lunar trellis might be excited

repo https://github.com/Kyp069/ep

[lunar trellis]

Oh nice, is this a different Enterprize than the one that was being worked on before?

[chilly rain]

there was one being worked on before? i would assume it's the same

it's the same author as the lynx48/96 core

[lunar trellis]

I had this link on the tty2oled (AKA all the cores) sheet

https://retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=200037978&p=200154146#p200154146

Probably the same dude?

Ron

[chilly rain]

yup that's the same author

kyp

[lunar trellis]

Nice it is being worked on again

Hopefully he is aiming for Main

[chilly rain]

i don't know what ron has to do with it, unless that's rampa's forum name there?

[void belfry]

wow, SymbOS on Enterprise now can use the mouse, not the controller as before (or as for other cores supporting it) 😄

[gloomy bolt]

In life, a man has no name.

[teal flower]

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

[opaque birch]

Hello everyone, I am experimenting with the X68000 core with the mt32pi. I can get a few games to load but noticed something strange.

Using hdf files, for example AKUMAJOU Dracula.hdf or Akumajou Dracula.HDF these images will not auto load.
However Akumajou Dracula.hdf or Akumajou Dracula (testing) .hdf will auto load and works as expected.

With Final Fight, I need to rename the image to "FINAL Fight.hdf" for auto loading to work.

Did I miss something in my core setup?

[tall grotto]

Sad to state the unfortunate truth but the x68k core has been unfinished and untouched for over a year. 😦 the author moved to work on other projects and nobody else in the community has popped up that knows how to code in verilog, understand microprocessor architecture, and be able to understand 40 year old Japanese PC documentation.

I am also sad about it but some games do not function as they should. Some games work though and work beautifully. Just depends.

For example, the mt32-pi functionality does not work with geograph seal.

And some games have massive visual glitches on boot.

Cho Ren Sha and Bosconian work great as two examples.

[round wave]

I still live in hope that someone will pick up the x86k core one day

[worthy zealot]

ReactOS is improving it sounds like. Has anyone managed to get it to run on the AO486 core?

[fleet cave]

i486 class CPUs are not able to boot ReactOS due to their lack of the CMPXCHG8B instruction

[summer dragon]

Was trying to update the Top 300 pack for ao486 and I get this error. Does it mean my VHD is out of space perhaps? I have added a handful of my own games to the pack…

[worthy zealot]

ahh, oh well.

[round carbon]

any idea how big the exodos collection becomes once you've like.. installed them and got them as cds for mounting too?

I have the collection but I don't know what size drive to put it on

need to buy a drive first

[round carbon]

another question, trying to play the amstrad

but after I cat it wants me to press PLAY but I can't see a way to map it

and obviously.. my keyboard does not have a play button

any ideas?

[sand geode]

no keyboard has a PLAY button

[jolly kraken]

Are you trying to run things from a tape?

If so, from memory, you need to go into the OSD, load the tape, then enter |TAPE into the prompt to change to that, then RUN” to play the game

(It should auto play, so you just need to hit any key)

For what it’s worth, it might be a good idea to enable tape sounds in the OSD. It’s more authentic to back in the day, and gives some feedback that something is happening

[sterile ether]

He is in 464 mode so just load tape and cpc start to load

[jolly kraken]

Ah yeah, didn’t spot the BASIC 1.0

[sleek escarp]

You can try asking the author on the forums but the top 300 pack and its update script are kind of a mess

[round carbon]

I was trying to run from a disk

and all the guides say I should type CAT to find out the name of the executable and then do RUN

but when I type cat (or run, or anything like that) it asks me to press the play button then any key

[sand geode]

@wind dew grrr

[wind dew]

Sorry I couldn't resist

[sand geode]

@round carbon google the mister computer cores cheat sheet, it is looking for a tape whatever you've done...thus the play button

[wind dew]

I'm sure you've seen this but if it helps https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=88

[round carbon]

I'm not trying to load a tape though or inputting a tape command, I'm trying to load a disk

the cheat sheet says type |DISK then CAT then RUN the thing but when I type cat it tells me to hold play and press any key

the amstrad keyboard had a PLAY key

I dunno if I'm missing some bios or something

[fleet cave]

even when I set it to the 65K model, mine says 'v2' and basic 1.1. maybe you need a newer boot rom

I bet you are using a 464 rom

[round carbon]

it's quite possible

[sand geode]

||no PLAY key||

[sterile ether]

On Amstrad v2 is the 664 … 6128 is v3

place this roms in game/amstrad it is all amstrad version rom

the default is cpc 6128

[modern rock]

Do you happen to know offhand, which games are confirmed to work or not work in the X68000 core? I've noticed some games work better than others - for example, Mad Stalker: Full Metal Forth loads and plays fine, and has music, but the sound effects are muted, interestingly-enough 🤔

[tall grotto]

unfortunately no

[tall grotto]

do you mean working with mt-32pi or just in general?

Geograph seal, for example, plays fine but there's no mt-32 working music

If you enable mt-32 in the menu, no music plays

[modern rock]

I was meaning more just in general - but I do have an MT32-pi, so knowing what games can utilize that is helpful too

[wind dew]

Sounds like a great episode for @naive imp to make, X68000 core games working and nah

[naive imp]

Stop watching me when I work

@wind dew made and scheduled. Probably next thurs

[wind dew]

yuuuuus!

[naive imp]

I did it to see if I needed to update my setup guide but it’s still relevant so I did a revisit.

And it has Geographic Seal in it too

[sly crater]

Yeah I’ve had mixed results with the 68k core, hopefully it gets an update at some point! But Cho Ren Sha and Castlevania both run well so that’s a good start

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/zDEALWZV3JU?si=bdLzkUIyuK1iZtBW

[round carbon]

@sterile ether thanks so much for the help

it's working for me

[round carbon]

wow.. the amiga core is cool huh

[void belfry]

yup 😛

[round carbon]

question when it comes to saving on the amiga

I've found blank disks

but where should I put this? should I just put it in the folder and mount it tto the second disk or something?

want to play some monkey island but I want it to save haha

[coral coral]

Playing Monkey Island from floppy is a blast from the past that I wouldn’t want to relive

[round carbon]

oh actually maybe I just didn't hit DEL and that's the problem

actually I was spoiled by the windows version of monkey island because the amiga version other than the title screen are.. not bangers

or dos maybe, I don't remember if I played on dos or windows 95, I was very young

right.. this weekend my plan is to at least figure out how big a hard drive I need for the exodos collection

[tulip atlas]

One nice touch about ao486 is that it will actually vsync like a real old PC: Epic Pinball is perfectly butter smooth (at least with vsync_adjust=2). On Dosbox I still get occasional microstutters.

[modern rock]

I am interested in this, for sure. Looking forward to it

[void belfry]

Getting somewhere 🙂 Kali 1.4a running and connecting to the only tracker still in existence today from ao486 core.

http://maraakate.org/Kali/servers.html - there you can also find Kali packages etc. kali.cfg needs to be updated with the tracker server/port, and in wattcp.cfg set PPP to 0 and put the core's IP address accordingly (the .254 one assigned by PPP)

Kali was/is the successor of iFrag, a client-server solution to run/match multiplayer IPX based games in the DOS/W95 era

[outer viper]

EPIC! will try and give it a test

how the heck did you find the tracker?

[void belfry]

googled the heck out of it 😄

lemme know when you try, we'll see if it worksand how on connecting games

[outer viper]

will do, i should google creating a tracker aswell. I assume its just a server computer sitting somewhere?

[void belfry]

yeap

"kali /s" should list the users connected on that server, and the Process the game/app running

I didn't try yet the W95/98 client, will see later if that works too

[void belfry]

Frigging amazing lol 🙂 Kali95 runs and connects under Win NT 4 (throws some errors about missing IE 4.0, but basic functions seem to work). Couldn't run it under W95 so far, and my W98 image is a total crap to even try

[outer viper]

edit kali.cfg

hah guess what i'm doing 🙂 (forgot to press my keboard switcher)

[void belfry]

closing work crap in a few and will get to testing too

[void belfry]

and make your life easier, use Dos Navigator's editor. (F3 to view, F4 to edit). Think of it like the NotePad++ of that day.

At some point i used it exclusively, especially when doing some programming (ASM, Pascal, C), integrating DN with compilers and having the end result executable done with a simple Enter on source file 😄

I see you 😄

[outer viper]

oh thats wyrd, cause i couldn't see anybody else 😛

100 packet loss 😛

[void belfry]

yeah, smth is wrong on your end

[outer viper]

i don't think iw as connect at the time, i need to reconnect to the tracker and then kail /u then kali again i think

[void belfry]

unload kali first

then connect specifically to that IP and 2271 port

[outer viper]

in kali.cfg i've got 192.107.41.17:2213 port for the tracker, should i end it 2271?

[void belfry]

didn't try. maybe. anyway, for time being forget it and just "kali 192.107.41.17 2271"

you should get this:

when there, kali /s

*Side note: I imagine now the server's owners/admins looking what the heck is with the new activity and from what platform do these guys come from ? 😄

I wrote them a message during NT tests, hope it went through lol

[outer viper]

nah i'm geting no response from 192.107.41.17

so i've setup something poorly 😛

[void belfry]

wattcp. cfg one ?

in the same folder

[outer viper]

in your wattcp.cfg is it

myip = core ip (192.168.1.250)
netmask = 255.255.255.0
gateway = router path (192.168.1.254)
nameserver = 8.8.8.8

my core ip i had to reset to end 250 to not clash with my stupid router

[void belfry]

right, i remember that

[outer viper]

and i did put ppp = 0 too

[void belfry]

pinging that server works, right ?

[outer viper]

good idea to check 😛

yeah 1 sent 1 recieved 0.16 rtt

[void belfry]

first time in tshooting networks try ping to host IP, THEN with hostname to check if DNS is working as well

ok, then kali to that ip on 2271 port fails ? sshot on Dm

[void belfry]

So far tests (Doom 1, first map, 2 players deathmatch): @outer viper and me saw each other over the net on that server, could connect the game but it gets stuck. I think of the same behavior with Dali/ipxbox solution I experimented with @burnt timber (difference it was the freezing moment, which was after drawing/entering the spawn place)

[austere bronze]

Can anyone point me to a resource for configuring the Atari ST core , I have managed to set up to run off floppies but cannot figure out how to setup a HD image , it appears that alot of HD images for specific games are pre built but I cannot figure how to set any up

[surreal marsh]

That seems to be a general problem with Mister. Setting up a HD image for anything is difficult, and poorly documented.

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/RbxRoDDtVLU?si=M8Mvhh6mjoYKOF27

[void belfry]

Depends on user I guess... and their ability/knowledge about the specific computer they wanna use plus how much time are they willing to use for searching these specific topics. I never used before Amiga/X68000/MSXes (only 486+ and a bit of Speccy), but that didn't stop me to get enough info on how to create/install OSes/programs/etc for each platform.

There are a lot of infos/links in the Discord pinned messages, the forum and so on.

[outer viper]

I thnk those systems are from a non intuitive time aswell, i grew up with spectrums, amiga, dos and windows but in the last 2 months i've probably learnt as much as i ever knew before just reading stuff

pre internet it all came on printed media with whatever was boguht, and trying to digitize that decades after the fact or create tutorials for stuff would be hard as chewing nails and probably as fun. Despite how helpful it would be

[woven lava]

do what the kids do... watch a youtube tutorial 😅

[thick pendant]

Setting up Amiga and ao486 HD images are done exactly like you would on a real machine once you create the unformatted VHD file with "dd" or something, so the process is not MiSTer specific.

I uspect the ST is the same...

[woven lava]

I've used the same techniques to build an HD for my real Book8088 and Hand386

and for Spectrum you can use the same setup as the DivMMC SD card cartridge

[surreal marsh]

It may be hard to find out how to create the unformatted vhd file. It's not hard to create something that's just a blank file of size x, but it's not obvious that that always works.

[thick pendant]

That is exactly what I've always done...

[woven lava]

I think there's some blank VHD images around

[thick pendant]

I believe anyone with a github account can add to the documentation...

[final zephyr]

dd + linux gparted if you're lazy

cli partition tools if you want more options

[wheat folio]

Hmm. Do any computer cores need SDRAM?

I have a KVM with an open spot attached to my 486 and monitor. It’d be nice to grab just a de10-nano and turn it into an Amiga/C64 as well.

OTG Hub to USB KB/M, use a direct video adapter for VGA out scandoubler.

Hmm. If I was to remove the hard drive and replace it with something modern, I could fit the de10 in the 486.

[silk scaffold]

Is it possible to get the CD32 BIOS to load on boot for the Minimig core (or is it possible to enter it at all?)

[thick pendant]

Minimig (Amiga) does

[austere bronze]

Just tried Magic Candle 2 on A0486 Setting with Soundblaster for sound and Adlib for m usic seems to work fine picking Roland as Music (via MT32pi) and the game locks at the first splash screen no sound (should be playing music) any other PC games display this behaviour ?

[thick pendant]

I thought that game worked. Maybe you have the IRQ or DMA settings wrong..

[regal steppe]

Hey folks. I've been having trouble installing games on AO486. I tried installing Syndicate last night and when I go to run the game, I get a "divide overflow" error.

[austere bronze]

Do you need IRQ or DMA settings for Roland Midi ?

[thick pendant]

Sometimes IRQ for stuff that likes a smart MPU 401. But a lot of stuff also supports Sandblaster for digitized sound in conjunction with Roland MIDI

[void belfry]

some games require different memory managers (like EMM386 or QEMM). Also some will work with DOS32A instead of DOS4GW.

[frozen mason]

I think Kane has my issue where I never bothered to setup softmpu in config sys and just played what worked out of the box, but I think we need to actually assign the port and IRQ formally for some games right?

[thick pendant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNOqu4vcDto

[regal steppe]

OK, I'll research this. I tried following Lu's AO486 setup, but I think I messed something up.

[void belfry]

it will throw this socket state error (from what i briefly read in WolfSSL library), tbh not sure it can negotiate fast enough the TLS and so on. I saw it does start indeed the connection to openAI, but then a lot of TCP retransmissions and after a bit it errors out.

I don't have a real machine to try to test it unfortunatelly

[thick pendant]

bummer

[tawny egret]

Daft question. How does one get Sonic to run on the commodore? Whatever I try it seems to get stuck on a black screen? I am using the DolphinDOS rom much better say loading disk files EDIT: fixed it. Used fast load problem solved 😉

[modest skiff]

I get the same error using MiSTer Windows 3.1, 95, 98. Me, and NT4. It does run on my Windows 10 launching using otvdm-v0.9.0 (Launch 16 bit software)

Running from Win 10

[void belfry]

a quick tcpdump , it does reach and try to communicate with api.openai.com

[void belfry]

I wonder if this works on a real 486 SX lol.

Also on a DX. If it works on a DX, we have the answer then

[modest skiff]

The author mentions a 386 on dialup.net WinGPT

[void belfry]

anywhere than this ?

[modest skiff]

That is what I saw.

[void belfry]

I kinda don't think ao486 can do reliable TLS/SSL. I'm no expert, but I think these DO need an FPU to encrypt/decrypt packets

I tried at some point SSH for DOS, but failed, maybe will redo those tests with the FPU emulator

with an external proxy to offload SSL, we can enjoy DOS ChatGPT even under XT core lol

[coral coral]

You don't use floating point operations for that type of cryptography

But some parts of it is quite slow on old CPUs

Shouldn't be a huge deal though.. It's just the initial handshake that does the heavy number crunching

[void belfry]

That's why I am curious how it would work on real machines, to have a comparison

I don't think it would be the bandwidth (115200 baud is not much, I know), but since it works for DOS GPT, the data transfer is in no way high (after all is just a glorified telnet of sorts to talk to api openai and just text)

[sly crater]

So is development on the x68k core ongoing or paused?

[void belfry]

Preparing for few hours of suffering/frustration/disappointment 😄

[outer viper]

https://tenor.com/view/godspeed-mac-cliff-curtis-meg-2-the-trench-good-luck-gif-18133389825715381971

[void belfry]

I am not expecting it would work on ao486, but doing it in paralel with a VM/PCem, for re-learning stuff from a very distant past now lol

while working on creating all those (a lot lol) slackware floppy images, put ao486 to do POV Ray tracing for fun 😄 50 mins passed on a scene and only about 1/10 of it rendered

Sadly it doesn't like to work with Q87, so yeah, it will take a while

[deft estuary]

I there! I don't know if the author is here, but please take a look to this "containerization" project of Dos Games for Ao486 core: https://code.area536.com/DOSContainers/games, it seems to me a very good approach to perfectly load games!

[void belfry]

MS-DOS POVRAY 3.1 on ao486 core 🙂

[void belfry]

Yeah, I can see the appeal of this especially for newcomers/people un-accustomed to DOS/Windows shenanigans of that era.

[deft estuary]

but also for those accustomed, because the author will release the tool to make everyone free to build and optimize its favourite game/s!

[void belfry]

I don't fancy having VHDs for each game I like, and so on. I know what my preferred games need in terms of mem managers/other stuff and I just switch to required setup accordingly (I have several defined and inspired form Flynnsbit's work)

a 2 GB VHD with DOS 7.1 is currently my most used setup

[wind dew]

The flynnsbit top 300 (500 now is it?) isn't hard to setup and has a good chunk-o-games

[fast kraken]

we experimented with this before making top300

it's pretty workable, it costs you about 10MB per/game (plus the actual games size)

[void belfry]

Don't get me wrong, I fully support the idea and would gladly help with any advices if needed for setup, as I do like to experiment any game I didn't back then lol

[fast kraken]

the idea of like, what if we need to update the mouse driver in 300 VHDs was kind of offputting

you could automate that kind of thing though for sure

[void belfry]

that's why I encourage people to actually DIY, as it is not overly complicated to create a vhd/install DOS or whatever then games etc. The whole learning process is very much eased up by the plenty of docs/links/advices/etc present on forum or Discord + ofc YT/other sites etc

I dunno about others, but for me actually the whole journey to make (or not) a thing work is sometimes more rewarding (in terms of things learned as well) than the reward itself (the specific game running). But yeah, not many are interested and a quick ready to launch setup is more apropriate, I can fully understand and support that as well.

[fast kraken]

if you really enjoy doing that please submit some patches to the top300 repo 😄

there's plenty of games that just need some small tweaks

[void belfry]

lol, seems I have deleted from sd card quite some time ago 😄

[sand geode]

i see zero advantage to DIYing if all you want to do is play games

not to be a wet blanket, but we don't have unlimited time on this earth, and the last thing I would want personally is to inflict the pains of DOS on somebody in the short time they do have

[void belfry]

to each their own 🙂

[burnt timber]

I've been rekindling my DOS knowledge lately mainly due to the ao486 core, and getting things working that weren't, or were not to my satisfaction. I also am only interested in having maybe 20-30 DOS games playable and the giant packs are not ideal for me. So I've been making individual VHDs that autoboot into the game I want and for many of them that have joystick/gamepad support I dont even have to KVM switch over to use the keyboard.

Call it curation if you will.

[void belfry]

this reminds me to get a KVM myself lol 😄

[void belfry]

go, ao486, go ! 😄

damn, I miss my old DX4, I used it to render my feeble attempts over night back then, had a short period of interest on PoVRay and such

as we had crappy PCs home, we often did this on school's linux (think it was slackware) server lol

[strong yoke]

I was thinking about this the other day. I'd have my computer sat for three days rendering a pixel at a time, single-tasking, and think little of it.

Same year - 1992 - at university, five friends had one PC in the house and the guy who owned it kept it in the shared area for general use

Different world 😄

[void belfry]

well, my 486 followed me (and shared it ofc) in the first two uni years :)) Had another colleague with a pentium, was so jealous he could host a RedHat (iirc) server , X Windows etc

btw, I chose this sample .pov because it is called "mist.pov"

seems appropriate for me to render it on MiSTer

[vestal goblet]

WTFF

[void belfry]

takes about an hour and a half to cook this 320x200 beauty

next will see how better/worse is it for Amiga core 😄

[worthy zealot]

Nice 🙂

[void belfry]

16 hrs for the sunset one, 7 hrs for the other

[thick pendant]

Have you tried Vista Pro on Amiga? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UMcB8dTxPQ&t=517s

I remember messing with that back when I had my 500 and later 1200

[void belfry]

Not yet 🙂 looks interesting

[sudden ice]

https://vxtwitter.com/nukeykt/status/1728824487834268123?s=46&t=j33yLl8p3dP1uKNH2get5Q

[fast kraken]

rad

[thick pendant]

I have one of these... https://shop.sudomaker.com/products/retrowave-opl3-express wonder if it could be connected if you tap in before the USB

[austere bronze]

TI-99/4a any good resource as to how to configue and get to boot , I must be missing some bios/roms as the best I can get is a blank screen

[opal void]

Happy DOScember!!!!

https://tenor.com/view/space-bob-prince-of-persia-sword-faster-gif-25399765

[burnt timber]

Indeed. One Must Fall 2097 to kick things off, I do believe.

[opal void]

why that game

[burnt timber]

Well, I am of the opinion that it is quite a good game, for DOS

[void belfry]

Ahh... DOScember, high time to finish this gem, Betrayal at Krondor

[raven stratus]

Gotta play some DOS games with epic Christmas midi music!

Perhaps Duke Nukem's holiday DLC? Or Jazz Jackrabbit's Christmas levels?

[woven lava]

maybe I can get back ro Wizardry 1. Been playing the remaster, wonder if I got better at the original

[void belfry]

Happy to announce DOS ChatGPT client working on ao486/XT cores WITHOUT an external proxy machine, but using ARM side to host it 🙂 The program is written by same author of DOSGPT and works without issues. Link to his Github: https://github.com/yeokm1/http-to-https-proxy

[void belfry]

Easy to setup as well, you only need to copy the ARM binary from the releases folder (https://github.com/yeokm1/http-to-https-proxy/releases/download/v0.3/http-to-https-proxy-linux-arm) to a folder of convenience (e.g. /media/fat/Scripts/) and run it. Of course, the doschgpt.ini must be updated with MiSTer's ARM IP address

[void belfry]

And finally SSH client for DOS, connected to ARM side from ao486 😉

https://github.com/AnttiTakala/SSH2DOS

[void belfry]

SFTP working as well from DOS 🙂

[opal void]

really disappointed that the mods of #game-challenge and #game-of-the-month ignored DOScember

[burnt timber]

cough

https://youtu.be/6fGM1cvUQv8?si=jabt-KkRjHBR3EfA

[opal void]

it is obvious that they are anti-computer

[burnt timber]

Props to anyone who can get that working right on ao486, it crashes for me. Ill just dosbox it up I guess

[opal void]

which is ironic because the earliest cores in MisterFPGA were computer cores

oh well

let's have our own "game challenge" and "game of the month"

[burnt timber]

With blackjack

and hookers

[opal void]

and coke

https://tenor.com/view/cat-gif-22727788

[opal void]

does it crash for anyone uses AO486?

how about you try it in 86box?

[burnt timber]

Running it on my PC is no problem, Im not sure what 86box is

[opal void]

a fork of PCem

but with more options, features, and emulated hardware

[burnt timber]

Oh cool, does it do GUS?

[opal void]

I think so

let me check

[opal void]

@burnt timber it does ^

also I get hungry whenever someone mentions GUS

[burnt timber]

Beautiful

OMF 2097 sounds best in GUS

[wind dew]

Xmas lemmings time!

[void belfry]

😛 not the best play, but oh well 😄

[burnt timber]

^_^

[woven lava]

loved the career mode in OMF

[void belfry]

getting better 🙂

[burnt timber]

A very solid fighting game for that time

[woven lava]

it was also a time where there were almost no fighters on PC

[woven lava]

I remember we had mK2 (solid) but the rest wasnt very good, auch as SF2 DOS and Amiga ports of Body Blows

I'd still play them though

[thick pendant]

I think people who never had a GUS when it was new look at it through rose covered glasses. The real experience was you got it, the SB emulation sucked and used a load of you precious conventional RAM. The native support sucked, so you used it in conjunction with a SandBlaster card. You had no IRQs or DMA because you also had a SCSI adapter (for your CD-ROM).. You finally tossed the GUS in a parts bin and years later it becomes recognized or compatible with demo coders....

It definitely played MOD files better than a SandBlaster, but unless you came from the Amiga scene you hardly appreciated that.

[opal void]

no it made me hungry because Gus means shawrma in my native local dialect 😛

[opal void]

mmm SandBlaster

https://tenor.com/view/kids-predicaments-beach-sand-gif-3823779

[thick pendant]

BTW: use of the "SandBlaster" term was deliberate...

It always sounded grainy

[opal void]

Haha true

[woven lava]

it was good for MOD and demos

plus games with native support

but as you say it also had problems

[thick pendant]

years after the fact unfortunately

[opal void]

GUS was very expensive and thus obscure in my home country, so it is a curiousity to me

[waxen brook]

we're only a couple days in 😜
I was planning on doing something for it with the next challenge, starting friday or saturday

[wind dew]

Good modern take on the GUS if anyone hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92olhbB3KKM

[vestal goblet]

niiice

my first was the GUS ACE, and I even bought the memory chips to upgrade it to... 1MB? I forget the exact upgrade amount

turns out they were the same chips to upgrade VRAM on the first 3D accelerated card I bought, an S3 ViRGE (IIRC)

[strong yoke]

Heh. I used the ram chips off my original 1meg Trident VGA ISA card to fill the 256kb GUS to 1meg, conversely

[woven lava]

I had the GUS PnP, I think I had upgraded it to 4MB (or maybe 8MB, cant recall the limit)

I like to listen to MIDI with it, it wasnt as good as a MT32 or SC55 of course. But I couldnt afford those

[opal void]

ah yes LGR before watering down his vids

[opal void]

speaking of Gravis, I got my Gravis gamepad ready for the DOScember challenges 😉

[woven lava]

anybody down to play Wizardry 1 on DOS? - or give me your preferred class and you can be a character 😁

I will try to keep everybody alive

[hollow ice]

Haha

Why not just take a list of everyone here and play through angband, I’m sure there are enough usernames here to beat it 😆

[waxen nymph]

what is the best way to get started with the tandy / xt core? is there an image with some good games?

(setting up a mister for a friend, exploring the cores I haven't used before)

[summer vortex]

Is this offer still good?

ooh you are ambitious

Best of luck! I don't think I'm so brave. Please pencil me in as a Mage if you got some space in the party and haven't started yet.

[torpid vale]

Does anyone know of a way to use a real Tandy 1000 SX color monitor with the MiSTer???

[burnt timber]

That monitor accepts RGBI signals, MISTer cannot ouput those.

[torpid vale]

Thanks for the quick reply batty.

[opal void]

most of the games back then were PC booters, no?

maybe "Gruby's IBM PC Compatibles Floppy Images" would be a good start

also check this out https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=5368

[woven lava]

in theory the core could have an option to support RGBI but given the rarity, I dont see any dev being interested

[burnt timber]

There are enough pins on the analog I/O board VGA connector to support it in theory, but since 3 of the 6 signal pins are TTL intensity Im not sure tbh

[woven lava]

could it work via SNAC maybe?

[woven lava]

I dont plan to complete it necssarily 😅 thanks for the input, will make a character

[vestal ginkgo]

I worked on a pack image for the Tandy but ran into compatibility issues with loading different games without reboot. Minor issues a pain in the butt, even with those systems. Probably the better route is the pc booster route, search for “pcxt play it by year” on an archive site and that might be the best out there

[burnt timber]

RGBI output is an interesting idea.. maybe someone should ask the devs about it

[woven lava]

I found the pc booter archive had lots of interesting Tandy and Composite games as well

composite DOS games is something I hadn't explored before

it feels like a more powerful Apple II 😅

[vestal ginkgo]

Nothing beats Oregon Trail on apple II

[woven lava]

the Apple II is a treasure trove of weird / forgotten edutainment games

[vestal ginkgo]

My first true programming experience was on an apple II in 5th grade. Can’t beat those days 🙂

[burnt timber]

Oregon Trail and Odell Lake

Those of a certain sub generation know it

[woven lava]

I had an early version of oregon trail without the graphics

it evolved quite a bit

to hunt you had to type a word fast enough (which would change, like "POW" or "BANG" etc)

[burnt timber]

wickerwaka says probably not possible for analog i/o output for RGBI due to no extra pin access for the intensity bits. Worth checking!

[vestal ginkgo]

I feel like I played a version of that on a bbs at one point.

[woven lava]

it would have been a good fit for a BBS door game, yes

[vestal ginkgo]

Good eating tonight 🙂

[woven lava]

another good educational game was Rocky's Boots - teaches you logic and digital circuits

there was a (spiritual) sequel, Robot Oddisey, where you have to program robots wiring simple chips. But I didn't have that one

[vestal ginkgo]

Somehow I missed rocky boots completely, I would have loved that as a kid.

[burnt timber]

Sticky Bear Math

Ah the memories

[vestal ginkgo]

“Number magic” on the ti99/4a for me lol

It’s really bad, but it is all I had. That and “Parsec” and the mountain climbing game

Apple II was only available at school

[summer dragon]

OMF 2097? I’m like 99% certain I streamed a little bit of that game a while back without issue on ao486 🤔

[burnt timber]

thera34 helped me clear that issue up, I needed to use dos32a instead of dos4gw.

The issue now is one that plagues a lot of games.. I cant calibrate the joystick properly in the game

[summer dragon]

yeah, that seems fairly common. a lot of times I have to test all the different memory managers and configurations before finding one that works…can’t recall if I was able to get that one working with my DualSense or if I had to use keyboard

[burnt timber]

I spoke to sorg about this, he said that the cpu handles joystick polling and the issue would be there

[summer dragon]

ah

[burnt timber]

I had a gravis gamepad in the 90s so Im used to using that for many of the dos games of the time

I could get used to keyboard but honestly since I have my entire controller bank switchable with a A/B switch from MiSTer to PC I can just use dosbox or similar

[summer dragon]

I used to have one of these bad boys

[burnt timber]

https://tenor.com/view/american-psycho-impressive-very-nice-coping-patrick-bateman-gif-26518058

[summer dragon]

lots of commander keen, duke nukem 1-2 and jazz jackrabbit was played

That said, I think I usually would just use the keyboard back then most of the time 😅

[burnt timber]

Jazz Jackrabbit ^_^

[summer dragon]

jazz cd was the first pc game I ever bought with my own money I think…I remember ordering it from Epic over the phone and the probably nearly month long wait for it was absolutely excruciating

[burnt timber]

hah, OMF 2097 was my first pc game that I bought like that

I have lots of memories of DOS gaming. Bio Menace, Raptor, etc

[woven lava]

did you try mapping keys to a usb controller? worked great for me before

not sure if it saves the settings now, but its quick to do regardless

[burnt timber]

joy2key, I could give that a try

yeah

I make individual boot vhds for the games I want, so I could set it specifically for each game

[summer dragon]

yep, I had and loved those too. Bio Menace took some tinkering to get working right on the core, but it works pretty well I think.

[wind dew]

Picked one up at a thrift a while back, nice clicky buttons on it

[woven lava]

or even the built-in feature in MiSTer (not a DOS TSR)

not sure which one you are referring to, so mentioning just in case

[summer dragon]

I really should try to reacquire one of these…actually, there is a very slim chance my original could be at my Mom’s somewhere 🤔…it’s most likely gone, though

[woven lava]

I think I had both Gravis gamepads. but no clue where they are now

[burnt timber]

Nostalgia inducing certainly, though I dont think I'd use one nowadays.

[burnt timber]

I don't believe Ive used this before, sounds ideal

[woven lava]

give it a try! I used it with SF2LIU and it worked great

[burnt timber]

It handles fighting game dpad motions well, then?

[woven lava]

yes, at least I had no problems mapping the USB dpad to arrow keys

[burnt timber]

Im not sure what Im doing wrong. The remap setting in ao486 doesnt seem to support key to button remapping. It supports button to key, key to key and button to button

[burnt timber]

From a friend's recent trip to Japan

A certain hard off has this spread

[strong yoke]

Oof prices. I'm used to Japanese retro stores being Pleasingly Cheap, not two grand for an x68000

[burnt timber]

Crazygonuts prices. But a spread like that would be a thing to witness if nothing else.

I never paid a ridiculous amount for the Japanese PCs I had. I bought a XVI Compact domestically for $120 shipped back in the 00s, spent maybe $250 or so for my F1XV

[strong yoke]

I do love the way the akihabara shops just clingfilm their machines up. Probably to keep the nicotine from drowning the store...

[crimson fulcrum]

those prices make me so sad ;_;

[burnt timber]

Apparently older computers are hard to find in general

Or so ive been told

[crimson fulcrum]

I mean they're there, on YAJ and sometimes used shops

but the prices are wack

[woven lava]

I can try it on my end, but couldnt you use button to key mapping, and configure the game to use keyboard? (when in reality iyou still use a physical gamepad)

do you have any example game you were trying it with?

[burnt timber]

One Must Fall 2097

I can just install a TSR in the image if thats easier

[woven lava]

works fine for me with my Neogeo 8bitdo gamepad

1. Set the game to use keyboard

2. Map the gamepad to the keys defined in "Custom" controls e.g. Enter and Right shift for buttons

would also suggest to map the Start button to ESC so you can pause and open the in-game options

[copper slate]

One Must Batty 2097

[burnt timber]

Huh, I couldnt get it to work before

Wonder what Im doing wrong

[woven lava]

here's what I did: you press the gamepad button (or dpad direction) first, then the key you want

(it's easy to get wrong, I've done it the other way before...)

to test: open EDIT or some text editor, map the gamepad to some keys and see if text input works

[burnt timber]

Ohh

Let me try that one sec

[burnt timber]

Eyyyy it worked, thank you sir

[woven lava]

enjoy!

[burnt timber]

Played 2 player with my wife for 20 minutes, we both had it as kids. So much fun

[woven lava]

nice! glad I could help

[void belfry]

Decided for this week rabbit hole: to test out myself which of these fighting games https://fighterslibrary.fandom.com/wiki/MS-DOS can run on ao486 🙂
Some I know for sure to work (FX Fighter, OMF 2097, Metal & Lace). I liked back then Body Blows, seems to have some issues with it on the core.

[thick pendant]

Did you try CatFight? That game looks pretty good...

[void belfry]

Not yet, will see 🙂

[thick pendant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AzlvErlF8

[void belfry]

win 3.1 game huh ?

[burnt timber]

Thats quite a thing you've unearthed

[thick pendant]

The sound effects sound like they were done by Southpark characters

[burnt timber]

Trash like this is always uhm.. well its not good or fun to see. But its hilarious.

[thick pendant]

I still like Way of the Warrior better...

[thick pendant]

Yeah, in 1996... interesting

[copper slate]

Someone get Matt McMuscles on the line!!

[woven lava]

its almost as bad as Strip Fighter II 🤣

https://youtu.be/OiVHnGWvZkA?si=VLzr_9jPvBSGi-wx

I had this gem, plays great on the core

[void belfry]

Kinda works in W95, in a window ofc 🙂 Install doesn't work, just via autorun. Doesn't seem to run under Win 3.1

[thick pendant]

Maybe it needs win32s to run on 3.1?

[void belfry]

probably, I don't have it installed, as not much use for 3.1 for me

[thick pendant]

Well, it looks like a very compelling game

[void belfry]

Savage Warriors - maybe needs FPU ? not working with Q87 apparently, but gives more output, not just hanging after movie, needs EMM386, QEMM fails

I dunno this game, but has a cool intro movie and awesome CD audio tracks

[outer viper]

pretty cool handrawn art, feels very flash/newgrounds

[void belfry]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaPRtPc9B6k

[void belfry]

The more I look into its gameplay, it looks to me as a mix of FX Fighter-style polygonal characters on 2D scenes, so I would not be surprised to actually need FPU for that. Initial tests with Q87 instead of black screen outputs a lot of code for a while, but too fast and bit scrambled to even try deciphering

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/xolod79/MC1201/commit/94adbfc40ecfa308121badb9b2e5caad1514144b

[undone anvil]

I used to play CatFight on W95, apparently my brother's friend found it in a public library and borrowed it

[thick pendant]

Probably donated, can't imagine a library going out of their way to acquire that title.

[sleek escarp]

It’s extremely good and awesome that thanks to the tyranny of the default like 80% of the footage of dos games on the internet have a stretched aspect ratio

[tawny egret]

if I want to give CP/M a try, what’s the best system with a mister core to try it on?

[void belfry]

I don't have much experience with CP/M, but I think it runs on C128, MSX (Molekula's core) for sure as below, probably also Apple II, Amstrad, Multicomp ?

[tawny egret]

got it! I’ll do a little research and see which one’s more powerful for CP/M

I just got Jill of the Jungle started on ao486 and it’s fucking great

[thick pendant]

Well there is also CPM for 8088 Cpu which probably would be most powerful, but you probably want Z-80 binary compatibility

[tawny egret]

good point, it’ll get boring playing with it if there’s no programs to run

[thick pendant]

CPM will probably get boring reguardless 🙂

[tawny egret]

that is true, but I’m in the mood to dive into an old OS. the mood may fade quick but that’s what all the games on my mister are for

[void belfry]

Battle Arena Toshinden "runs" on ao486 with Q87 FPU emulator and dos32a with both EMM386/QEMM. Unfortunately, performance is not great at all ofc, but still an interesting case to troubleshoot and another to add to my FPU needing games collection 🙂

[granite umbra]

Regarding FPU there is this project
https://github.com/SamanMohseni/FPUSB

[woven lava]

FPU would be so nice to have; but maybe it will require taking some features off the core to make it fit

[teal flower]

FPU for the Amiga core would be amazing, it would open the door to a massive amount of excellent software for grpahics and music and everything else, I'm deleting applications due to the lack of FPU sadly.

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/aggQL412Yf8?si=RqnWyEXTFSplpsOV

[thick pendant]

Agreed, the early 3D rendering and terrain generating software on Amiga would really benefit from FPU.

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/Rf2Eq8jtG-g?si=fjzUryv5ZlEnhdgn

[slate maple]

there's still a weird issue with the C64 core on the game Athena. It seems to run at half speed. Setting the Turbo Speed to Smart 2x makes it run properly, but I haven't had to do this with any other game, it's weird

it works fine on a real C64

[teal flower]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Jj9A8u6Q0

tracked in ahx on mister in the amiga core

[copper slate]

@opal void sorry I removed your gif, it was because of the flashing colors

[opal void]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-vibing-jam-gif-18774874

what about this 😦

[copper slate]

That’s great, thanks my dude.

Appreciate you

[wheat folio]

Super Sweet.

[thick pendant]

I love thta movie and tune

[wheat folio]

@waxen brook https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=1410436

[jovial mesa]

Yeah I get it as well, that flicker gfx, no core settings fixes it beside Turbo=Smartx2. But even at x2 speed it is not the correct speed the game should be played in

[slate maple]

yeah, I don't see that in anything else. I should raise a ticket for it I guess. I keep trying in every new version of the C64 core and it's never fixed 😄

[jovial mesa]

yeah do so, it might be a simple fix or an obscure settings that fixes it? No idea

[opal void]

reminds me of Stargunner

[void belfry]

Another victory for Q87 FPU emulator, it allows to play Humpty's Scramble (only heard of it today lol) on ao486:

[burnt timber]

https://youtu.be/5exFKr-JJtg?si=4q5m5q3-3mHCtuWm

An interesting primer on the VGA "standard"

Im trying to find something that goes into more technical detail on the Amiga 500's video resolution as well

Seems like it could do 640x512 on PAL units, though only 16 colors

[tulip atlas]

736x567 in hi-res interlace. Amiga 500 games usually run in lo-res without interlace, which has 376x286 max overscan. Some games like Babeanoid use almost all rows (280 in the case of Babeanoid) because they draw in the overscan region.

[burnt timber]

AGA chipset seemed more capable in higher res modes, though the original VGA "standard" had been out a while by then. HAM mode must have been seriously impressive in 1985 though..

[copper slate]

New AmigaVision release!

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7514&sid=88059bf58a951028dd66b1835a73d02f

[opal void]

where is that guy who said they have Amiga stuff in their FTP but they won't be sharing 😄

[hollow ice]

well, if you search your archives, you might find it, but it has been known to disappear so you should probably move it to a more secure location

[opal void]

was it you?

[hollow ice]

Not me.

[opal void]

haha ok may bad

looks like "something" has happened yesterday

[thick pendant]

Good advice. I'm printing it to punch cards...

[opal void]

https://tenor.com/view/punch-card-stamp-gif-13420436

[wintry forge]

any news?

[kind agate]

After running the latest unstable Mister build, AO486 is now missing. Does anyone know why?

[errant apex]

It might appear as PC 486SX

[kind agate]

Not there, either. I'm hoping that, if I just manually add back the rbf file, all my setup work will still be remembered. lol

That worked. Everything, like the mouse drivers, is still setup.

[kind agate]

I actually have another question concerning that core (ao486), now. Is there a way to setup game saves? I tried to save in both Secret of Monkey Island and Loom but neither worked.

[opal void]

do you mean save states?

[kind agate]

Just normal saves. Does the core have a savestate option? I didn't think it did.

[opal void]

I would be very surprised if any computer emulator has it

not sure what you mean by normal saves

I am pretty sure Secret of Monkey Island does have the feature to save game progress to a file

[kind agate]

The ability to save your progress in game. When I try, it says it failed.

[opal void]

where are you running it from?

[kind agate]

I'm using MISTERFS to mount onto the F drive and running from there.

[opal void]

sorry but MISTERFS sucks

it is a hit or miss

in my experience it is a miss for most of the time

I suggest you create a VHD image to store your games in

install your games into*

@kind agate btw you can easily and quickly copy your games' files into a VHD image

using a modern Windows machine

[kind agate]

Thanks! I'll give it a go. I'm not super familiar with doing so, so I'll have to find a tutorial online somewhere. Hopefully, it will fix the problem, though. Thanks again!

[opal void]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSqGTil-N38

this is a good start but you do not have to install MS-DOS if you already have a VHD with MS-DOS installed on it

just create a new partition in the secondary VHD and format it

then mount it on Windows and copy files to it

keep in mind that MS-DOS 6 can't create a partition larger than 4GB

[kind agate]

This is great! Thanks! I'll let you know if this ends up solving my game save issue.

[kind agate]

It worked! Thanks for all the help!

[kind agate]

I have another issue that I can't wrap my head around. The mouse cursor now flickers. This is happening for any game that I try in the AO486 core but not for other cores. I did a fresh install of the core, following Lu's Retro Source's YouTube video, but it didn't fix the problem. I've tried both the mouse.com and ctmouse.exe drivers as well. I also plugged in a different mouse. Nothing worked. Any ideas?

[vestal ginkgo]

ctmouse versions can cause different funking things.

you can try this version here: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates/tree/main/_C/DRIVERS/CUTEPACK

[kind agate]

It's working now. Thanks!

[waxen brook]

https://youtu.be/MYawahBTJaI?si=8-xwG0Er1jDjocvK

[waxen brook]

Never realized this one was so complicated at its core. So much that the player will likely never see while going through it

[thick pendant]

Yeah, it is pretty buggy and usually I just want to transfer like one small file or something onto my VHD so I use Procomm+ or Q-modem and just send it via z-modem.

you can use the console and the sz/rz commands or use the modem with ATSZ/ATRZ commands

its not for like sending over a huge amount of data, but say you just want a MIDI file or a device driver or something, its pretty convenient

That was what I did before misterfs, and honestly less problematic. That being said, somehow with misterfs, xcopy does seem to work more reliably than copy...

[void belfry]

I've never had issues with misterfs... Admittedly, I use Dos Navigator exclusively (old habit lol) for any file manipulation. Had no issues transferring files between the shared folder and VHD, no matter how large/many files there were.

[tulip atlas]

You can mount the vhd in Windows on a separate PC even over SMB and copy files easily that way.

[opal void]

oh wow didn't know this is possible ❤️

[opal void]

what's your secret?

[void belfry]

I just use it for transfer :). Not for running games from it or anything else

[opal void]

maybe it is read only?

even reading fails in my case

[void belfry]

hmmm... can you show your config.sys file ?

I have a hunch you didn't exclude CE00-CFFF

When using memory managers (EMM386/QEMM/HIRAM), you can (and need to) exclude/include some memory spaces. The aforementioned CE00-CFFF needs to be excluded from use, so for example my EMM386 line looks like :

DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS71\EMM386.EXE AUTO 32768 RAM FRAME=D000 D=256 X=CE00-CFFF I=B000-B7FF I=D000-EFFF I=C800-CDFF

for QEMM:

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM BE:N FRAME=D000 ARAM=D000-EFFF ARAM=B000-B7FF RF X=CE00-CFFF

and hiram: DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\HIRAM\HIRAM.EXE /Exclude=CE00-CFFF

[void belfry]

and no, it is not readonly

[thick pendant]

no secret, the minimal linux has sz and rz commands by default so you can send stuff over zmodem

or fetch stuff

[carmine thunder]

does anyone know if is there a general 'good' config floating around for a vga crt monitor and the ao486 core, that makes text look resonablly decent but also has good compatiblity with games ?

[formal whale]

There's a 5 page long thread on the forums about it, just try the one which works for you.

Seaking of which, my config stopped working since I got the active YC composite adapter...

Or rather, I just get black and white in AO486 now...

[formal whale]

@trim herald do you know if the AO486 core is updated for use with the active composite adapters?

[trim herald]

Ao486 runs as 31khz so there is really no way to run it on a consumer crt

[wind dew]

No "normal" way that is (excuse the green tint, not sure what's going on there and I'm not sure why I have to reload my vhd's every time to get it to boot, I think that's an error from when I moved from an external drive to the SD card with all my files) Also it's hard to video that 1802 with it's tinted plexi cover, it looks good in person.

Green tint turned out to be I bumped the knob at the back 😔 better now

I found this thing in the trash, didn't think to try it until I seen this post and it sure works. Takes VGA in, has VGA out (so you can keep the PC monitor hooked up) RGB Scart out (side 15pin port, adapter needed), Composite and S-Video out, Position and overscan adjustment and a sharpness button that actually is kind of like composite blend in the Megadrive core.

Now does AO486 Doom look good on a commodore 1802? I'd say it looks as good as the PSX version. Neat anyway. But I'd be playing on the PC CRT any day give the choice between the two. So yeah, it's another piece of hardware but it works.

[formal whale]

I have two PVMs and I've run AO486 on both of them over component, for example here (JVC TM-H150CG): https://oldbytes.space/@eobet/110804991198450293

So not sure what hacky things AO486 on Mister does to achieve this, but it would be nice if a similar hack could also achieve composite on PVM...

[wheat folio]

IIRC there’s a TSR that’ll force vga to output a 15kHz signal. I’ve used it on real hardware to force 60hz so I could capture video.

NVM the tsr only does 60hz not 15kHz

[carmine thunder]

Yeah was hoping to avoid the trial and error of sifting through that thread picking configs hah, but yeah went that route and think cobbled something together that works for the most part .

[formal whale]

Also, there seems to be a few people running AO486 on consumer CRTs in this thread... https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=2574&sid=892e9ed069d47b64fcddc55fe2794a8b

[copper slate]

Damn I hope you C64 fans are happy. Sorg is going to town lol.

[wheat folio]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed

Everybody else is drooling over Perfect Dark or something and Sorg is being true to thine own self over there.

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/xolod79/UNEON

[opal void]

The computer looks very MSX-like

[granite umbra]

Yes the form factor is kind similar difficult to see it is a pdp-11 just by looking it.

[opal void]

indeed, it seems the case is a copy of one of the Arabized Yamaha MSX models that I have...

https://www.msx.org/wiki/Yamaha_CX7/128

[rough edge]

Here is it

[stoic ore]

Hi Everyone, quick question regarding the BBC Micro core. I've seen a post that this year Elite 1984 will be getting 40 years old on September and I wanted to try the game. I'm having a blast 😄 I just figured out how to dock But I cant save the game. Only setup I did was to copy an BEEB.MMB (renamed boot.vhd) into a external HDD in the BBCMicro game subfolder. The game is only detecting disk 1 as a read only drive. Do I have to set up the BEEB.MMB in a secondary SD card (I have the Analog IO board) in order to be able to save? Thanks for your help

[stoic ore]

Tried secondary SD card, didnt change much, I believe its trying to save on tape I might be out of my league on this haha

[woven lava]

Im not very familiar with the BBC Micro core, but most cores do not require the 2nd SD card

is the file write protected by any chance?

[stoic ore]

Oh thank you! Write was activated only for the owner (chmod 755)

Weird results, I did chmod 777 on the boot.vhd of my external drive and it didnt work, I then did chmod 777 on the file on secondary card and it worked

Good enough for me its working 😄 thanks a lot! never though id use that SD card slot haha

[woven lava]

weird. but as long as it works, great!

[summer dragon]

I’ve got the Top 300 pack VHD for the ao486 core…does anyone know if it’s possible to expand the size of the VHD? I’m guessing there’s probably some max filesize limitation or something, but I’m curious

[umbral oar]

probably 2GB?

[slate maple]

I tried ages ago and it expanded ok, but I had issues in the core

I ended up starting from scratch

I think I could do 128GB or something from memory

This was a long time ago

[summer dragon]

oh dang ok

I finally updated to a newer version of the Top 300 pack too and noticed that it uses a different version of the front end menu (My Menu?). Does anyone know how to manually add games to the list? It used to be pretty easy/straightforward in the older menu.

[vestal ginkgo]

It's dynamic based on folders now, in E:\GAMES\MYMENU in the Top 300 pack is where I put all the long folders. Just look at any of the folders in there for an example. you can also just add a drive/folder to the mymenu.ini if you want a different location/vhd/etc.

you can look through here for examples, batch scripts etc. https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates/tree/main/games/MYMENU

to answer your space question, easier to just create another VHD to the size you want and copy everything over, using your PC.

[summer dragon]

@vestal ginkgo thank you so much!!

[thick pendant]

Why not just add an additional VHD and put more games on that?

[summer dragon]

@thick pendant Yes, now that I realize I can do that, that's what I plan on doing for sure!

[carmine thunder]

Also I think his new ‘shareware’ vhd is possibly a better one to build on than the updated top 300 if adding your own stuff. Seems to have more features / be better configured.

[undone anvil]

Doesn't it use a newer version of mymenu or something? I thought the other packs were updated to use it as well

[tawny egret]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=4421 @hollow ice linked this in the jaguar channel and now I’m really hoping this works cause I’ve got a hankering to run nextstep on my mister

[hollow ice]

Next step is pretty buggy. I also get to a brick wall on the ao486 core. I really need to file a github issue. I was hoping to figure it out myself but just haven’t had the time. From what I remember, at some point in the initialization process the SPT value gets reset to 0, so it can’t read the drives.

[tawny egret]

hmmm I wonder if there’s an openboot hack that’d remedy that

[hollow ice]

Well, if you want to try it out, make sure to convert the openstep iso to chd- because it is that weird multi format to allow multiple architectures to use it, it breaks the iso reading functionality.

From there it won’t take you too long to see it report your vhd size is 0 due to that bug.

[tawny egret]

ahh thank you! I’m gonna boot it up tonight but I probably would have run head on into that issue with the iso. I’ll see if I can dig up some docs and maybe find a workaround for the other issue

most openboot docs seem to be locked away on oracle’s site now, a terrible fate to meet

[hollow ice]

Ah, sorry I am talking about the ao486 install. If you want to install on the ss core, there are instructions (sort of) in that thread I linked. I never tried a next install, just Solaris 8

[tawny egret]

the SparcStation 5 core still seems to boot nextstep just fine! it takes about 2 minutes to get to the bootloader and a few more to boot though (which is probably true to the real hardware — I can’t remember how long my sparcstation took to boot but I don’t think it was fast)

and now I’m realizing I didn’t sync the disk or halt the machine before I switched cores… oops

[hollow ice]

Oh yeah, those disk images get trashed fast 😆

[tawny egret]

man 😦 good reminder to scp over the compressed original images before I forget at least!

[vestal goblet]

oh wow!

I had a ReadyNAS that has a SPARC Leon chip in it, and bootstrapping new toolchains/kernels on it was ridiculously slow. (It turned out samba file transfers were CPU-bound on it, so I was trying to squeeze more perf out of it.) I eventually got a SPARC qemu image up and running with "expanded" RAM etc, and was ableto make a cross-compiler from there.

for my first job in silicon valley, me and another guy were the last people standing after a layoff at McAfee and we built a SPARC-based testing lab from scratch. I'm sentimental for the platform as a result 🙂

[tawny egret]

SPARC is a lot of fun to play with! there’s just so many historical Unixes available for it, plus the firmware lets you mess with the machine on a low level if you want

[hollow ice]

Well, the sparc quake is actually pretty impressive on the mister

[opal void]

there is a Sparc core? 😮

[tawny egret]

yep! https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=4421 there’s a smaller but more compatible core that implements a 65MHz MicroSparc II CPU, and a larger but I think less complete one that implements 3 50MHz SuperSparc CPUs. plus there’s images for nextstep, SunOS, Solaris, and Debian etch

[hollow ice]

I never got around to installing bsd to try out the multi core system

[tawny egret]

once I finish my current core (or give up on it, whichever comes first) I’d really like to get more old workstations on mister. it feels like there’s a lot of good low hanging fruit there, and the results are cool

well, CADR itself is an early workstation so my current core’s a workstation too, I think

[vestal goblet]

When I learned about the register renaming, I thought it was just ingenious to bake in the 4GL semantics at that level

it’s been fascinating to watch X86 slowly pull in all these neat RISC features

[tawny egret]

oh absolutely

I didn’t know until recently that SPARC is a Berkeley RISC-II descendent, but it makes sense. it’s cool that the design lineage is still going with RISC-V

[vestal goblet]

yea, there was a whole Berkeley vs Stanford RISC rivalry going on. then DEC said "hold my beer"

(HP repeatedly beat themselves in the head with a hammer in the corner)

[hollow ice]

Most interesting thing in that thread was grabulosaure saying he might be able to implement Ethernet over the snac port.

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=50123#p50123 really wish I would have bugged him for that back when he offered 😄

[tawny egret]

I wonder what kind of speed we could get out of snac Ethernet

my current core will eventually need to route chaosnet packets to finish booting (lisp machines usually relied on an external file server)

[lost nest]

@hollow ice It works. 100Mbps RMII "LAN 8720" module directly connected to the USB3 socket.
There isn't enough signals for RMII... but there is a trick : using the CRC to detect end of frames to avoid RX_DV.

[tawny egret]

ooh

[hollow ice]

Oh x2

Can’t remember if I thanked you for all the improvements in that thread, so- thank you!

[hollow ice]

Haha, I never actually looked at your commit log, there it is-

/* ETHERNET PHY
0 : RX1
1 : RX0
2 : RX_CLK
3 : TXEN
4 : TX1
5 : TX0
6 : NC
*/
I’ll have to try that out when I dig my old hub out of storage.

Is there any reason that the core isn’t considered main worthy?

[tawny egret]

thank you for the sparcstation cores from me as well!

[lost nest]

It needs some cleanup. Change copyright. The goal was to make a triple CPU SS20 able to run Solaris or SunOS. Emulating well enough SuperSparcs with cache coherency is tricky.

[hollow ice]

Definitely would like to see that, but even the single cpu core is incredibly impressive.

[tawny egret]

agreed!

[hollow ice]

I am having trouble finding clear documentation that is dumbed down enough for me to understand. Does anyone have pinout for the user port? I am pretty sure I have an analog 5.5 board before the jumper to swap between 3.3v and io.

[hollow ice]

Okay, I think I have this mapped out correctly, if anyone who has intimate knowledge of the user port sees an issue, let me know:
USB A DE10 USER
1 VCC - VDD 5V - 5V
2 D- - IO14 - USER1
3 D+ - IO15 - USER0
4 GND - GND - GND
5 SSRX- - IO8 / 3.3V - USER6 / 3.3V
6 SSRX+ - IO13 - USER2
7 GND_Drain - IO12 - USER3
8 SSTX- - IO11 - USER4
9 SSTX+ - IO10 - USER5

[summer dragon]

That’s a solid idea actually, I hadn’t considered that

[deft estuary]

hi all! Sorry if I make a tech mistake, but I wonder if the ETH implementation could be ported also to AO486 core, because it would be very convenient to use retroNas to mount via ETH trough etherDfs a virtual volume of infinite size! https://www.reddit.com/r/retroNAS/comments/u5fyid/msdos_etherdfs_fat_advanced_guide/

[fleet cave]

does the existing etherdfs TSR not work?

[deft estuary]

no it doesn't because ao486 has no eth implementation

[thick pendant]

can it work with this you think? https://web.ncf.ca/ag221/pppstart.html

[hollow ice]

At this point in time, I assume there is at most 1 person who exists who has actually used Ethernet from a mister core 😄

Also, I wonder how many people have pre 6.1 io boards who don’t even have all the signals on the user port without a mod.

[woven lava]

havent people been using Ethernet for modem emulation?

ie to connect to bbs over the internet

[hollow ice]

Using serial

[woven lava]

oh right

so it's the linux side handling the ethernet

[hollow ice]

I am assuming that the question was porting the direct Ethernet over user port from the sparcstation core.

I plan to give it a shot in the sparcstation core, but I am going to wait until I can get a digital io board since I have an early analog board.

[deft estuary]

uhm I don't know... the problem is that the remote volume is mounted but it always returns error, see a complete description of the problem I made here: https://github.com/danmons/retronas/issues/367

[slow girder]

Has anyone been able to get to the new English translation patch for MSX 1 Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei (the Telenet game NOT any of the Atlus games) to work on the MSX 1 core in MiSTer? I just get a black screen after the Microsoft copyright

I was getting the same behavior on BlueMSX until I uninstalled BlueMSX and got a newer build than I had and that suddenly made it work fine in BlueMSX, but still no luck in MiSTer

This patch: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/7180/

[slow girder]

I even tried several different BIOS files but no change

[void belfry]

couldn't make it to work either on Molekula's core (I'm using latest unstable, usually with a Sony HB-F1XD mk2 pack, tried some other MSX1/2 configs as well). However, it works on OCM core with Sofarun and so on

[granite umbra]

It works on release MSX1 Molekula's core but it doesn't work on the unstable one

[copper grail]

3.5 years after I posted a ticket about the score graphics corruption in the game Hybris on the Minimig core, it has finally been fixed! Thanks to @tulip atlas for noticing the fix in the Mist version of the core!
This is a really nice step in getting the Minimig core to be more accurate timing-wise. Hybris does a massive amount of sprite tricks, racing the beam, so it is a really good timing test. There's still a smaller bug with a jittering sprite in the score overview, so we're not completely there yet.

[swift river]

Hahaha that is so awesome! 3.5years is NOTHING in retro land 🤣

[opal void]

computer cores do not get as much attention as they used to be 😦

which is ironic since Mister and its ancestor Mist were created to emulate old computers

[opal void]

there is a thread dedicated to the MSX, btw 🙂

[copper grail]

Hurry up, while we're still old 😅

Hmm, yeah good point @opal void that is a shame. I guess they are just not as popular as other hardware.

I should post tickets for analog axis input paddle controller support for the 8-bit Commodore machines. The solution Kitrinx made for the 7800 core is fantastic.

[wheat folio]

Don’t threaten me with a good time

I’ve been using this in lieu of EtherDFS on my real DOS machine

http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_NetDrive.html

[woven lava]

indeed. you can see it on the Pocket - we've got amiga and then... nothing

still hoping for a full Alice32/90 implementation, but I'm probably the only person who'd like that, and the games arent' even that good

[hollow ice]

It seems like it goes in spurts. Moleculas msx core and Eriks c128 core are relatively recent.

I would like to see some more workstations. A vax based computer would be awesome.

And the inclusion of the sparcstation core into main 😄

[tawny egret]

I would love a vaxstation core! nothing came up when I looked for an existing vax fpga core, but there’s plenty of emulators to dig into of course

[hollow ice]

And wow, this is good news, hope he can get it working: https://github.com/kitune-san/KFPCJr

[void belfry]

this is cool af : https://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/ , but on Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600.

[tawny egret]

that is cool as fuck

[void belfry]

and quite a story on getting that old data / OS etc preserved as well

[tawny egret]

What Hardware is emulated with the archie core? CPU(Clock?), RAM, ...?

[hollow ice]

Nice, I came across that a while ago, I didn’t remember the is being available.

Although I can’t access the project files on Google 🙁

[void belfry]

yeah no luck on google code, only those two zips from his site. Also https://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/ has nice material/links, even a simulator

[deft estuary]

sure but is it limited to 2gb partion, isn't?

I've tried it and it works

[wheat folio]

I think? I stuck with that to be safe.

[deft estuary]

yes it it but etherdfs allows infinite space and you can copy/paste games directly in a NAS folder without opening HD images...

[granite umbra]

https://vxtwitter.com/pcornier/status/1749355822864290130?t=gfGZgU_dg-LSbHsgvcWUzw&s=19

[lunar trellis]

Oh, great progress!

It would be nice to get some more older Japanese PCs on MiSTer this year, we still have several in WIP stages for a long time that could use a helping hand.

[crimson fulcrum]

can't wait to play the fm7 version of telenet's DDS megaten game

[opal void]

has anyone actually tried the ADC In?

[wheat folio]

I’m not even how I’d try it

Load a game from tape?

[opal void]

I think that's the idea haha

[wheat folio]

I guess I could try it on Apple ii

[copper grail]

I tried it a while ago. It works better from digital audio players than actual tape players (because of missing decoupling caps or something).