Computer Cores

[copper grail]

Also, of course, there is no motor control, so you have to do that manually.

[honest latch]

Hello everyone, I've recently setup the amigavision on mister and I'm wondering how to run .lha files and what amiga version in amigavision, I should be running these from?

[coral coral]

lha files are archives, so you extract them and run what’s inside

[honest latch]

Thank you optiroc, I know that they are archives, I'm just unsure about how to run them using amigavision. Which core do I run and I'm assuming they have to be opened from within workbench but that's what I don't know how to do once th e amiga500hd or amiga600hd cores are loaded

[fleet cave]

are you adding your own lhas or something?

[honest latch]

Yes, I'm loading my own .lha files into the shared folders of the amiga500hd and amiga600hd core shared folders

[hollow ice]

So, pretty sure there isn’t an unarchiver by default in amigaos?

[honest latch]

Is there a downloadable lha extractor that can be copied and used to uncompress these files. Or is there a utility that can extract these .lha files to a folder that can be run somehow through workbench?

[coral coral]

I'm not sure if there's an unarchiver included in the A500/A600 images, but there definitely is in the main A1200 one. The easiest is probably to unarchive on your modern computer and put the contents on the shared drive

But if you do want to do it on the Amiga side, first try running lha from a shell session

If the command is present, just go ahead and unarchive with lha x <file.lha>

If not, get it here https://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha

[honest latch]

Thank you optiroc, how would you unarchive on a pc first and what format do the files come on, not adf floppy disk files I don't think?

[hollow ice]

Probably just install winuae and do all you manipulation with that?

[coral coral]

Most archiving tools that support many formats should do it… I don’t use windows, but the 7z GUI app probably works

[quick estuary]

Anyone here use the TRS-80 core? More specifically, run NEWDOS/80 on it?

[granite umbra]

https://vxtwitter.com/pcornier/status/1752476264831610956?s=12

[lunar trellis]

Great news! Ace to see progress on this one

Still hoping Pierco goes back to his Hitachi Basic Jnr core and add in tape loading and release

[opal void]

more love for NEC computers as well pls

I still have the PC-6001 MkII if ROMs are needed to be dumped

[surreal marsh]

Are any of the obscure PC cores really mature?

Even Macintosh has stuff unimplemented.

[opal void]

sadly, even though I am not into Apple's stuff

[silver inlet]

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@ocornut/111851169297562215

[void belfry]

This is cool af. Also, I see RS232, I press like 😄

[woven lava]

there is an image for Minimig (amiga) packaged for ShapeShifter (a mac emulator) - it works extremely well, even allowing running Mac desktop at 1080p

I could play SimCity 2000 on it in HD

[void belfry]

Dual boot MS-DOS 6.2.2 and ELKS/Minix, both have 100 megs partition, bootable is the 2nd with ELKS bootloader in the MBR.

[void belfry]

It's just a minimal ELKS/Minix, but it works just fine, also it sees DOS partition just fine as well

[void belfry]

same idea of dual boot would work as well on PC XT core, a quick dirty run with ao486 image worked fine when I selected Minix partition to boot 🙂 Ofc the DOS setup I have on hda1 won't work on XT, but it proves it works

inspiration from here https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/wiki/Dual-boot-ELKS-and-DOS and here: https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/wiki#installation

booting my working MSDOS 5.0 vhd as primary, with dual boot one as secondary, doing a format /s on the DOS partition on 2nd vhd, then just copy over what I have for XT setup and that's would be all, I guess

and it frigging works 😄 Unix and DOS on the same VHD, dual booting on PC XT as well as on ao486 😛

[void belfry]

and because why not, ELKS Basic

[void belfry]

On ao486, the Nano-X GUI apps would run, but the mouse won't, as ELKS only have serial drivers, no ps/2 support.

on XT core, mouse would have no issues, as it is a serial one on COM 1 ~ /dev/ttyS0, but X apps would not run

[void belfry]

would probably work if it was a real serial mouse connected to USER I/O port and presented to the core as COM2 ~ /dev/ttyS1, but I don't have any or the means to connect it

[dusk bolt]

https://youtu.be/5-sjQYEfhHc

[stiff yacht]

Is the Macintosh II out of reach for the MiSTer's capabilities do you think? I'd like to play color mac games

[lunar trellis]

Probably a question for our resident Mac expert @waxen nymph

[waxen nymph]

Should be possible.

I thought gyurco was going to add support to the Mac plus / se core but I think he is working on other things

[stiff yacht]

i should hunt down a copy of kid pix for the mac 🙂

i played that all the time as a kid

[thick pendant]

You can use Shapeshifter on Amiga core...

[stiff yacht]

Didn't think of that!

[thick pendant]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg9epXn9CQs

its not a core, but also this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1sd9KeK1vQ

[stiff yacht]

where is that window border

i must have that window border

🙂

[wind dew]

Amazing, being a PC guy growing up, Amiga and Mac are still pretty unknown to me, love learning about this stuff, thanks for sharing!

[cedar latch]

Hello. I run update_all and ao486core would not load games from a cifs storage.

It worked fine until now

do you know where I can search for help?

[woven lava]

yep I second this, it works amazingly well AND you can use it in 1080p mode too!

[opal void]

what's the best way to start with the Amiga core?

disclaimer: I know nothing about the Amiga platform

[terse totem]

AmigaForever app on the Google Play store gets you the legal Kickstart ROMs on the cheap, that's probably the first starting point.

[opal void]

is this the same as MegaAGS?

[copper slate]

https://amiga.vision

Don’t worry about anything else. Just grab that and you’re good to go.

[opal void]

thx ❤️

downloading now

https://tenor.com/view/go-to-moon-dfl-defily-dragon-token-defily-finance-gif-22702076

[opal void]

hmmm funny, I don't have mister.ini but I do have mister_example.ini

should I just copy it?

[fleet cave]

you can, if you need to edit something

with no ini mister just uses default values, which should be what's in _example.ini

[opal void]

ah ok

been a while since last time I needed to edit mister.ini

[opal void]

hmmm I am getting a blank screen when I try to run the Amiga core...

[opal void]

https://amiga.vision/docs#setup-for-mister

I did every step mentioned here but I am still getting a blank screen 😦

[coral coral]

Are your files on the SD card or something else?

[opal void]

everything on the SD card except for the games folder

I am using a USB SSD

[wind dew]

What display device are you using?

[coral coral]

You need to go into the OSD and configure the HDFs and kickstart ROM locations if they’re not on SD

It’s a Minimig quirk

Lots of custom code in main for everything

[opal void]

The laser bear one

[opal void]

ohhh that might be it

let me check

hmmm still nothing

okay I just noticed something... the power LED is blinking when I try to start the core

and it seems like the screen resolution changes every few seconds 🤔

[coral coral]

If you remove the HDF mounts but keep the kickstart, do you then get a boot screen?

[opal void]

yes

[coral coral]

Cool, then everything seems to work except the HDFs, at least..

[opal void]

just enabled HDF back

it booted!

so odd

[coral coral]

That’s a new one, yeah.. 🙂

Minimig does behave pretty strange when not using the SD card, it seems

Anyway, now you should be good to go; enjoy

[opal void]

did a hard reset

back to same behaviour

[coral coral]

Hehe damnit

[opal void]

so I had to browse to the MegaAGS kickstart ROM

reset the core, et voila

it worked

[opal void]

thanks 🙂

[coral coral]

Cool.. did you save the config after doing the changes?

[opal void]

yep I just did

the image isn't filling the screen which is odd because it is 4:3

[coral coral]

There’s a ton of visible overscan if the “dynamic viewport” that MegaAGS implements doesn’t kick in. It needs the shared folder to be active to work, which is another thing that may or may not work as expected with USB/network drives

I never used anything but the SD card myself

[opal void]

hmm the shared folder is there with files existing inside it

[void belfry]

Work in progress: QNX 4.2.5 (maybe also dual boot with DOS) on ao486 core

and because why not, each package has its own license key I have to input 😄 just about 14 of them

[strong yoke]

Gosh. I don't think I ever saw QNX 4, that's entirely unfamiliar

[void belfry]

usually for embedded x86 thingies, from cars to medical stuff. But it has a GUI, network connectivity, browser and so on. There is a famous QNX demo 1.44m floppy with the whole kernel + gui

[void belfry]

looks promising so far, if it works, it would be first Unix based OS with GUI working fully on ao486 afaik (ELKS is text based, its semi-X apps are not really working on the core, as it will expect mouse on serial). I have heard about some ppl getting various degree of success with Linux, i didn't got into that yet

[opal void]

just like Jira... I have to manually enter dozens of license keys every year -_-

[opal void]

same, along with BeOS

[void belfry]

it frigging works. To my amazement, 9 (NINE) virtual screens on which you can run whatever stuff.

[strong yoke]

Way ahead of its time, like BeOS. How TF did we end up with Windows?

Worst timeline confirmed

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/waldoalvarez00/MyPC

[void belfry]

https://www.mikecramer.com/qnx/qnx_4.25_docs/qnx4/bookset.html - very informative about QNX

[hollow ice]

QNX has a very CDE look going on with those icons

If CDE and Win9x had an unholy marriage?

[void belfry]

it's called Photon 😄

[hollow ice]

I’ll have to play with it at some point…looks pretty interesting

[void belfry]

installation (especially from cd iso image) is pretty straight forward and GUI based. Make a raw vhd (250 megs+ for full install, dd to rescue). Then just boot from CD and follow the on screen instructions. Don't select any other video mode than 640x480x16 (vga4) and don't bother creating a boot floppy disk

some issues i see after booting from HDD is that CD is no longer recognized, most probably smth in the sysinit

[hollow ice]

The IDE code is definitely flakey

[void belfry]

yeah, but I dunno on this case. It is all working well while booting from QNX CD, so that makes me think to some configuration issues on QNX HDD first

[void belfry]

anyway, I will check these issues another day , I am glad it boots and seems to work ok

networking if possible with ppp/cd-rom support/better video mode noted for later

[stiff yacht]

Are you trying to troubleshoot no Internet connectivity?

[void belfry]

no lol 😄 didn't even started to dig in QNX networking. I have a bad feeling it might not support PPP over serial

[thick pendant]

The famous QNX demo on 1.44 did support PPP

[stiff yacht]

is SLIRP any better?

er

[opal void]

how much RAM is it taking? 😮

[thick pendant]

ao486 has more RAM than anyone could have imagined back in the 486 days

[void belfry]

I dunno yet what it supports in term of networking (other than using ethernet card we don't have). If it supports PPP, there is a chance to make it work. For SLIP it's another story. I did some tests in the past, recompiling the MiSTer's Linux to support SLIP/CSLIP, but back then only tested it with ELKS (Minix variant)

[void belfry]

no clue 🙂 will play more with it after work. LE: found a sshot

[void belfry]

PPP (probably SLIP too, but didn't bother to check) works on QNX 4.2.5 on ao486 😄

for once, I RTFM lol

Anyway, if anyone else is gonna need them, it's just these commands :

If not set already when asked during setup process, edit /etc/resolv.conf nameservers to ones from your network (usually the router) or Google's 8.8.8.8
From a terminal issue following commands:
/bin/stty baud=115200 bits=8 stopb=1 par=none -hupcl +raw < /dev/ser1
/usr/ucb/Socket -p1 node1 &
/usr/ucb/pppd defaultroute /dev/ser1

Check connection with ifconfig ppp0/netstat/ping google.com, it should work fine

[stiff yacht]

That must not be the latest ver of QNX. I remember it looking quite a bit different when I tried it.

[void belfry]

Nowadays it's version 6.something iirc

4.2.5 is from 1997. That 1.44M demo is from 1999, if you're referring to that , yes, it had slightly different GUI but in the same vein

#computer-core-testing message

[stiff yacht]

thanks 🙂

[void belfry]

Got CD-ROM working on QNX, loading manually device drivers then mounting did the trick, so it might be a driver that doesn't wait enough for other to initialize during boot. Something to tinker with, then will try to see if I can get sound working as well, plus some better resolution/more colors 😄

[void belfry]

Getting more apps than those provided within the 4.2.5 CD is a PITA. Usual places didn't give me much (to not at all). I'm looking especially for an IRC client, called PhIRC (Photon IRC), if anyone around played with it and this "obscure" OS lemme know

[tulip atlas]

I booted QNX from a single floppy back in the day. It was impressive but then I realized that Amiga OS 3.1 would also fit on a single HD PC floppy (512kB ROM and 880kb on Amiga Workbench 3.1 disk < 1.44 MB on PC disk)

[void belfry]

Yeah, that demo disk I remember as well, and that I read smth about it (maybe in a magazine, can't recall). Other than that, never had the chance to test it until now

[vestal goblet]

I saw the QNX floppy demo just a few years after I saw the BeOS floppy demo. Both were amazingly fucking cool at the time, but BeOS cinched it with its animated 3D torus + video playing + 60fps window dragging with window contents showing. I don’t think it had a networking stack, but that was the “easy” part by 1996.

[void belfry]

Well, QNX is still present today and kicking 🙂

A shame BeOS didn't caught, from what I've read/watched about it, it was quite ahead of its time

I think also my first memory about BeOS is regarding reading about it in a magazine back then.

[strong yoke]

I built my first dual-CPU machine to be BeOS ready, twin Pentium 133MHz 🙂

Couldn't ever go back to single core, it's so clunky in comparison to SMP. So for the next few years I was running OS/2, BeOS, Linux, Solaris, NT4 and only booting out to Win9x or DOS for games.

Made upgrading expensive. That machine went to dual P200, then dual P200MMX. Next mobo was dual Slot 1, started at Celeron-333 -> P2-500 -> p3-733.

[void belfry]

I missed back then playing around with OS/2 as well, it wasn't popular around

[thick pendant]

I now have a dual CPU E5-2697 v2 machine. 24 cores / 48 threads

[void belfry]

One more reason to love ao486 core , even if it's like a wild mule lol

[strong yoke]

😄 Yeah, my fattest machine would be 2 x 10core/20thread xeon E5-something. I took the second CPU out though, it's a NAS and saves 15w 🙂

[thick pendant]

probably a E5-2670

I have a few of those too

[void belfry]

Doom 1 working under QNX 4.2.5 on ao486, thank you @stiff fern for finding this gem 😄

Audio is still WIP, I got it going under Photon GUI, but still need to refine it

Got also CD audio going, but finicky for the momment

[void belfry]

QNX Photon GUI Doom .. oh well, it is what it is until I get some better res 😄

[void belfry]

IRC from QNX, because why not 😄

[tulip atlas]

Awesome. Is this running on AO486?

[tulip atlas]

I am still amazed today when I switch between windows on MacOS and videos continue playing in full speed in the litte window previews 🙂

One might think it is not a big deal, but it kind of is, knowing it was impossible for so long because OS code (both Windows and MacOS) was so rigid and inefficient.

Just tried AmIRC on Amiga 1200 on MiSTer. It also works like a charm.

It is still my favorite IRC client.

I liked pIRCh on Windows as well. Most other clients are really barebones in terms of their UI.

I am so glad I dumped my old Amiga HD into .hdf format at some point around 2000.

[tulip atlas]

Would you be willing to share the QNX .vhd? I think it is freeware, or is it still commercial?

[vestal goblet]

Whoa! Even more impressive!

[opal void]

any relation to mIRC?

[void belfry]

QNX afaik is still commercial. I have no clue on these very old versions, they could be free, not sure yet. If there are no issues, I'll be more than happy to share the VHD once I finish tinkering with it. If the software is not free (I doubt though) I will compile a detailed How-To so everyone can redo this on their own

[void belfry]

As I read more and more about it, it also might be possible to have QNX dual boot alongside with DOS/Win95/NT. This is also of interest to me, though I have found an easier way to transfer files by using FTP to connect to ARM Linux after getting PPP working.

And as a network engineer, it warms my heart when I see MTR (My Traceroute a.k.a. Matt's traceroute) running 😄

[void belfry]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTR_(software)

still using it in my work today, in its more modern reincarnations lol. To me, this finding was a very nice hit in the past, remembering first networking and unix/linux things I learned during high-school

[thick pendant]

XChat was based on AmIRC UI

[tulip atlas]

I forgot about that. I liked XChat on Windows, but IIRC it was pretty expensive.

[opal void]

ah so nothing to do with mIRC... hmmm

[opal void]

yeah I preferred xchat on Windows over mIRC, not sure why mIRC was so popular...

[thick pendant]

I remember when people would hacked keys for AmIRC.. would make you say "/me is a lame software pirate" every few minutes

[tulip atlas]

The MUI system on Amiga was the most configurable UI system I have ever seen. You could customize everything to the last detail, even spacing between elements, backgrounds, button shapes and gfx and all the fonts. You could specify for every app whether it should open in its own screen and with which resolution, and how big the window size should be. The customizability of MUI was so wild.

[hollow fog]

MagicWB is great

[strong yoke]

Still my favourite gui overhaul

[opal void]

https://tenor.com/view/surprised-sorprendido-shaquille-oneal-gif-23222312

[void belfry]

Found a workaround for QNX to load CD ROM drives at startup by calling twice the driver in the sysinit file. First time it will fail to recognize IDE 1-0, on the 2nd call it will kick it in and all work ok. CD-Audio is still finicky in GUI, I also need to play around more with the Audio driver.

[void belfry]

QNXDoom works nice from console (cdoom), audio just music and sometimes accelerated/sometimes choppy/off notes. No SFX. You also need to run "int10 &" before running cdoom
Photon Doom (phdoom) in window has choppy music/gameplay but SFX works just fine... lol.
Wolf3D couldn't make it work yet...

In theory, it can support MIDI as well, still digging on that

[void belfry]

Waaay better now to tinker around 😄

[void belfry]

FTP link working as well on MC (on GUI at least and not many files at once, otherwise it throws memory exhausted), need to see more in console. Also doesn't like spaces in path/folder/files names

[copper grail]

Post-Commodore Amiga was supposed to base its OS on QNX (I attended the presentation at Amiga '98 in Cologne). The demo was really impressive. I still have a QNX disk somewhere. They ended up using Elate, for Amiga Anywhere, which was also impressive in how it was platform agnostic while still really fast.

[opal void]

what's Elate?

[copper grail]

Elate (actually its final name was Intent) is based on virtual assembly instructions, that get converted to whatever kind of CPU is available at the time you load the executable. So you could have completely different CPU's in one computer and it would still work fine, as well as really fast. Its whole OS was written in that language, so to support a new platform, only the new (non-CPU) hardware specific parts have to be written for the whole OS to work.

In practice, the same executable can run on a phone, game console, PC etc, with very good performance, no recompilation needed. At the time when I developed games for it, that was mostly PocketPC (smartphones didn't exist yet) and PC.

The major drawback of Amiga Anywhere was that you couldn't provide free demos of games, as licensing fees had to be paid to Tao, for their Intent system, for every application, even free ones.

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

[void belfry]

Meanwhile upgraded TCP/IP to the latest version 5.1 I could find for QNX and also it auto-connects the PPP at startup (for normal setup, the alternate I keep it simpler for debugging)

[opal void]

til, thanks!

[void belfry]

I have compiled a "small" how-to for QNX install. Still refining/experimenting before I'll make a detailed forum post. But if anyone wanna play around, here are my notes:

[lunar trellis]

https://twitter.com/pcornier/status/1760560646351986952

ᴘɪᴇʀᴄᴏ (@pcornier) on X

The FM-7 sim can now load tapes and run games. I'm currently working on the sound and will then move it to MiSTerFPGA. I prefer to make sure that everything is okay in simulation because debugging on FPGAs is boring.

Twitter · Feb 22, 2024, 7:02 AM

Exciting stuff!

[lyric breach]

Nice!

Sharp X1 next? 🙂

[copper slate]

What’s the FM-7, is it cool?

[lunar trellis]

FM-7 is Fujitsu's predecessor to the FM-Towns and one of the biggest Japanese 80s computers we don't have yet, so really nice to see that coming to MiSTer. Would be brilliant to have really comprehensive coverage of the 80s Japanese PCs and this is a nice step closer to that.

[lunar trellis]

There is a WIP X1 core that Jason was working on, but it needs snother dev to pick up where he left off and try get it over the line

[copper slate]

Sounds cool, thank you!

[lunar trellis]

There are also PC-6001, PC-8001, Sony SMC-777 and Hitachi Basic Master Jnr cores in early stages if any dev wanted to have a go at some old Japanese PCs

[karmic fog]

working on my MacPlus games pack again. making the pack compatible with the SE rom, but it seems really unstable when using it. every time i shut down the Mac while using the SE rom, it seems to destroy the hardfile and i can't boot back into it. just get stuck at the smiling Mac during boot and it never proceeds. wonder if anyone else has experimented with the Mac SE ROM support in the MacPlus core

maybe @waxen nymph knows

repro steps:

boot into hardfile while running the SE ROM, then shut down/reboot. it doesn't ever boot afterward. mounting it as a secondary (non-booting) drive just gives an error that the drive is uninitialized and would you like to format

the same files that show this behvavior are perfectly stable using the Plus ROM

[thick pendant]

I wonder if thats why my Mac+ BOOT.VHD got corrupted.

[karmic fog]

later today i might try to see if i can install an OS to a fresh .vhd from within the MacPlus core while using the SE ROM, in case something with my hardfiles is the issue

but it definitely borked every one i've tried so far, regardless of size or OS version

[waxen nymph]

I haven’t had this issue. I should look at it.. let me know if you figure it out.

[karmic fog]

alan, if you have a hardfile you use with the SE ROM, could you possibly share it or let me know what method you used to format it or where you got the volume from. i don't have the issue when i boot from floppy (since those are locked), but that's obviously slow and i also have to stick with 8MHz since the floppy drive doesn't work at 16

this is the first time i've used the core much since the update last march

it's very nice having the keyboard work properly with the cursor keys being mapped correctly now

[karmic fog]

OK, i think maybe the issue actually is size-related. my 20MB hard drive works fine after rebooting, seems like

my 80MB hard drive gets corrupted after a single session > reboot or shutdown

the SE originally only supported 40MB max iirc, so maybe that's what's going on here, some kind of hardcoded something, idk

i'll see if i can get a 40MB drive to work here shortly

[karmic fog]

no dice on a 40MB drive, i get the same issue. i even formatted it on the core itself this time, but it didn't help

i'm going to try a 39MB drive just in case

hmmm, well i can see that a Macintosh SE can address drives of up to 2GB, so the size shouldn't be an issue

it must be something with the SCSI driver or image. i format using the patched Apple HD SC Setup utility and it works fine if i use the Plus ROM, but will only boot once when using the SE ROM before dying on reboot

my 20MB image is one i repurposed from something i found online, presumably the driver is somehow different...

[thick pendant]

my image that got corrupted was 1gb

[waxen nymph]

I think I have used all different sizes. Let me play with it tomorrow.

[karmic fog]

If you'd like to test it alanswx:
Format a blank .vhd of any size (up to ~2GB) with the "patched" Apple HD SC Setup. Copy a system folder over to it. Set it to the primary SCSI device and boot it up on the SE core. In my experience, this will work one time. If you shut down or reboot, the .vhd will get stuck at some point during the boot process. Usually this was on the smiling Mac icon, but a few times after a reboot it'd get stuck on the dithered background with no icon at all

Mounting it as a secondary afterward will not be able to see any of the data, it'll just try and format it

the only time this didn't happen was when i used a specific HD20SC image i've found online and repurposed (but haven't reformatted or updated the SCSI driver on)

[waxen brook]

not necessarily MiSTer related, but I love the thoroughness of the author here: https://blog.johnnovak.net/2022/04/15/achieving-period-correct-graphics-in-personal-computer-emulators-part-1-the-amiga/

really wish i had the knowledge and patience to write up something similar regarding my filter experiments on MiSTer

[karmic fog]

hm, i'm having better luck now. i think the determining factor could possibly be that my existing volumes were "unpartitioned" - just initialized and had the SCSI driver installed, but not clicking "partition" in HD SC Setup as that isn't necessary (seemingly)

if i create a 1.5 GB drive with HD SC Setup and Init > Update > Partition > Maximum Macintosh, I seem to be able to consistently reboot with the SE Rom and not have my drive die

I haven't tested with 16MHz again yet, tho, I'm vaguely suspicious that could be a culprit as well. Or possibly the 020

[waxen nymph]

That is great news. Someone on discord made a couple of nice Mac images.

[karmic fog]

OK, i think it is the 010 and 020 combined with the SE ROM that causes issues

all is well with Plus/SE, 8MHz/16MHz, 1MB / 4MB RAM, but as soon as I switched to 010, my hardfile corrupted on reboot

something about the SE ROM warm boot process fails on 010 and 020

possibly a bug, possibly SE ROMs don't tolerate processors with later instruction sets (maybe Pluses do, since they don't have this issue? just speculating)

so, new repro steps for @waxen nymph if you wish to see what i think is the issue:

1. boot core with SE ROM and 68020 (or 68010, it seems either will fail)
2. reboot, or shutdown then click reboot
3. boot process hangs, boot hardfile will be corrupted

the 20MB drive i found online is still resilient to this, though

it can survive a reboot with the 020 even while the secondary drive is corrupted

[waxen nymph]

Weird

[karmic fog]

very weird... makes me back to thinking somehow this thing wants something different SCSI-wise than the Apple driver that the HD SC Setup tool gives it

so

the drives i make myself, of any size, with Apple HD SC Setup (Patched), cannot survive a reboot with the 010 or 020 while using the SE ROM

this one i found online can, though

meanwhile if you stick to 000 those same drives are fine

with the SE ROM

i think i might need to install the driver on an emulator instead of on the core

MAME possibly

or SoftMac is the one i used years back

something with some kind of SCSI support which Mini vMac and Basilisk lack

if i can figure out the driver this random 20meg drive i have used, i'd like to format a drive with that and see if i can replicate it

that, or maybe the core has some bug or incompleteness in the SCSI bits, something something

still need to mess with it more to narrow it down

oh, interesting. if i try to even format a drive using SE + 020, it seems to work, but doesn't actually populate the drive like it normally would (and does if using the Plus ROM)

it does a progress bar, but then the drive never appears on the desktop

[opal void]

where do I get them from? I never tried anything Apple on the Mister 😮

[waxen nymph]

Maybe https://archive.org/details/macpack-20211212

[opal void]

downloadin, thank you kind sir! 🙂

[waxen nymph]

Oh a newer one

https://archive.org/details/mac-pack-20240219

Try both

Wait. Did I just send you your own file back?

[opal void]

oh the 2nd one is very recent

[waxen nymph]

@karmic fog are these the images we debugged years ago together?

[opal void]

🤔

[karmic fog]

haha, yeah those are my images

i'm working on a new one and trying to make sure SE isn't going to break it

i don't really see any reason to use the 010 or 020 anyway, but i'd rather it not break things if i can figure out how to avoid that

i think i need to install the driver using softmac and see if that makes it resilient to the later processors

DesertPanther, if you use that image, just use it with the Plus ROM for now, the SE ROM won't want to boot with some of the extensions installed on there

the new one i'm making should be able to boot on either

that recent one up there is basically the last one from 2021 but with a virex 6.1 scan and relatively minor changes, some extra disk images

i've got a proper update for it now but i need to figure out this drive corruption thing

[opal void]

MacPlus or Plus Too?

[karmic fog]

MacPlus core

in the 2023 core there's a ROM selector, just leave it on Plus for now

if you use that 0219 image

[opal void]

interesting

I'll try to get it to work tonight, thanks 🙂

[karmic fog]

you could use SE if you want, but you have to hold shift when booting to disable extensions. SCSI accelerator doesn't work on SE

once you boot up once, you can delete it from the System 7.5.5 > Extensions folder

[spice hound]

Is there a section for Apple // core for MisterFPGA?

That will be THE FIRST core I will use when I build my MisterFPGA

[waxen nymph]

Section? The Apple two works well. Just missing a mouse.

[spice hound]

coool

[young sigil]

Thanks you for sharing your images. The last one (20240219) works pretty well so far for me (on Mac Plus boot). I can now explore that former luxury computer i was never able to touch back in the days.... 🤓

[karmic fog]

👍

[young sigil]

I love also trying the Amiga core, another computer that i skipped back then for the X86 rising platform from the CGA, EGA then VGA

[torn meteor]

been having quite a bit of fun with Minimig on MiSTer lately

it is QUITE A BIT more stable and compatible than that Vampire V4 crap

but I wonder...it is possible to configure 384MB of Fast RAM, but where does the extra 128MB come from? 🙂 Since my build has only 2x 128MB SDRAM modules installed, and as far as I understood - onboard DDR memory is only used for the ARM side of things

[coral coral]

512MB of DDR is accessible by cores

Some of that is used by the mister framework. The scaler uses a fair bit. The other 512MB is used by Linux.

[torn meteor]

Hmm, I see

[karmic fog]

@waxen nymph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDetZDiLoNw

[deft estuary]

Yes, I can confirm

[waxen nymph]

Does this only happen on soft reset from the menu? If you “shut down” then restart the core does it also corrupt itself? Maybe soft reset isn’t resetting scsi somehow.

[karmic fog]

happens regardless of how you do it in my experience

Special > Shut Down > Restart
Special > Restart
Special > Shut Down > Reset via OSD

had it happen all 3 ways i believe

i did not try restarting the core itself via Load Core > MacPlus, though

i'll try that after a shutdown with SE + 020 and see what happens

[tawny egret]

gonna start calling the Archimedes a pi minus one

and no one can stop me

[karmic fog]

this also seems to corrupt it, but in a different way. when done this way, you'll just get the flashing ? icon on the diskette

oh, nevermind

it seems to do that because when i reloaded the core it put me back into Plus mode

if i switch back to SE + 020, i get the usual stuck on the happy mac

so, it does not prevent the issue

[elfin oxide]

Any C64 fans especially ones who like scene demos, i recommend trying the test build with the toggle to turn off the digifix. It was affecting the 8580 a lot. From what i can gather the core was automatically applying the fix even for 8580 samples and causing a lot of extra noise

[karmic fog]

this Mac SE + '010/'020 bug is really nasty. annoying to test, too, since the symptom is your hardfile is corrupted

[lunar trellis]

https://twitter.com/pcornier/status/1762483164260237312

ᴘɪᴇʀᴄᴏ (@pcornier) on X

I'm verifying the IO mapping of the Pasopia-7. Mame has all good so far.

Twitter · Feb 27, 2024, 2:21 PM

Pierco also working on another obscure Japanese computer?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Pasopia_7

[void belfry]

Unix FreeBSD 2.1.5 almost working on ao486 (it boots... but fails at IDE controller detection and keeps on rebooting). But it can be booted in config mode (F1 and -c) 😄

Making a VHD was far from easy, had to make it in VirtualBox (PCEm couldn't use the CD image, ao486 doesn't see the IDE controller ) then convert it to raw. Install-wise it missed some packets (but not that important ones) and it boots fine in PCEm.

Maybe also my provided image (my very own backup , but I don't really trust the USB dvd reader i used) could be faulty on missing packets, but as said, not that important

Meaning this: #general-banter message

[hollow ice]

Wonder if that is related to the openstep ide issue. Did jobs use bsd code in next?

When starting disk detection it can see the drives, but at some point the SPT value gets reset to 0, so it can’t find data on them. I did some debugging a year or so ago, but I never could figure out what message reset the value.

If you give it a shot, the iso handling is buggy too, I had to convert the disc to chd- it is a weird disc that had multiple versions of the install for different architectures

[void belfry]

Yeah, I don't think I can troubleshoot further on this IDE issue 😦 I am at least happy it works in PCEm, though probably I would need to seriously polish it up lol, it's just a very quick and dirty install

[opal void]

Please try 86box

[void belfry]

On my to try someday list 😄 tbh, I mostly use software emulators to help out when doing images for MiSTer cores, if needed. Or for comparing/tshooting fringe stuff

[opal void]

Pcem is abandoned since 2021

While 86box gets updates and bug fixes almost daily

[void belfry]

My most used 🙂

I try to do most of the computer cores related stuff within MiSTer, either ARM or core's side, from generating/installing vhd images to networking

[copper slate]

@chilly rain Can you use MGL to load an HDF?

[waxen nymph]

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/362182-colecovision-basic-compiler-cvbasic-v010/

[void belfry]

This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship :D)

[strong yoke]

More like a PTSD trigger for some of us!

SCO was.... special.

Not as special as AIX, tbf

[void belfry]

never had the "pleasure" 😄

[spice hound]

I made promise to myself the 1st core I will use once I receive my mister is apple // for three month straight

Can I use real apple // keyboard and joystick for apple // core

?

[waxen brook]

https://youtu.be/GsPwLgcP-I4

Full playthrough on the 486 core with recommended settings to get the most of it on MiSTer

[floral robin]

Thanks for this. We had this on all morning for our lazy family Sunday, and our 1yr old spent half that time standing Infront of the TV mesmerised.

[waxen brook]

Haha nice. Glad the kiddo enjoyed it 🙂

[granite umbra]

https://x.com/furrtek/status/1764323766174204353?s=20

Furrtek (@furrtek) on X

Paula is full of🐍 and👉
(Die image by @johndmcmaster)

Twitter · Mar 3, 2024, 4:15 PM

[tulip atlas]

Are those analog LC circuits?

[granite umbra]

Paula is the audio chip so maybe

https://twitter.com/pcornier/status/1764682989915529336?t=cXPVOyjz57uyouFDnjcjEQ

ᴘɪᴇʀᴄᴏ (@pcornier) on X

A better one, with the "Ready" text :)

Twitter · Mar 4, 2024, 4:03 PM

[granite umbra]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=84020#p84020

[opal void]

wow... never heard of that one...

[void belfry]

Playing around with old RedHat versions is fun 😄

[vestal goblet]

at the ISP I worked at in ~1994, we had to keep the boot disk in one floppy drive and the root disk in the other, with a special kernel so it would recognize the SCSI adapter that hosted the disks for /usr and /home

kernel compiles would take half the workday

[void belfry]

oh yeah, the joys of compiling kernel to support different stuff 😄

[opal void]

4:3 pls

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Minimig-AGA_MiSTer/pull/173

[vestal goblet]

Anyone try this on minimig yet? https://youtu.be/49wRpg3nWDc?si=nYAdcuId1W1XG-mA

[fallow topaz]

works fine

sorry for the lousy snapshots

I use the AmigaVision Setup, which includes settings for a shared folder with MiSTer

use scp to copy the file to the shared folder and then in the minimig core leave the menu with ESC and navigate to that shared "MiSTer" folder within workbench and click the EXE to start

[lunar trellis]

Did red book audio get added to 486 core or was it just Amiga?

[modest scroll]

I did some searching in threads, looks like it was added

[lunar trellis]

Ah nice, thanks for confirming

[chilly rain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx8gN5maZ_E - i had this game kind of on my mind for a long time and never remembered what it was called until just now

such a good game

anyone try it on MiSTer yet?

[ruby hawk]

That video doesn't have the in game music! Not the same without it.

[vestal goblet]

game blew me away when I downloaded it from a BBS overnight ~30 years ago

there was this marriage of demoscene and indie shareware gaming happening that was just amazing at the time

[ruby hawk]

I had it on ah, this shareware disc

[karmic fog]

there's a new version of my "MacPack for FPGA" on a certain archival site, very happy with this release

i spent a lot more time on the application/utility side this time, there's a lot of really good software on there

[chilly rain]

holy crap, i had the same one and that's where i played it too i think LOL

[void belfry]

will know in a few 😛

works fine I guess 🙂 Never played it lol

Fast tested on DOS 7.1, similar config as in @vestal ginkgo Top 300 pack

[void belfry]

All 4 disks (missions 1-8) can be found in the archive site

[versed tendon]

So on the subject of DOS gaming with the A0486 core has anyone had any luck with One Must Fall 2097? It's one of my favourite childhood games and is in the top 300 DOS game pack, but it keeps crashing when a fight loads in either Arcade or Tournament mode. The demo fight between CPUs works fine though.

Good to see Zone 66 too. I remember playing the shareware version as it was also published by Epic Games at the time

[void belfry]

Yes, OMF 2097 works fine. Be sure DOS4GW is replaced by dos32a

[versed tendon]

Ah, so do I just need to replace the file somewhere on the SD card? Thanks!

[void belfry]

yes. Check the OMF installation folder and replace (after renaming) the DOS4GW.EXE with DOS32.EXE.

for ease, you could use a file manager like Norton Commander or Dos Navigator

[versed tendon]

Oh aye, I can't access it directly from FTP because it's a virtual drive?

[void belfry]

I meant from DOS

ofc, you can mount that VHD and replace the file via Windoz, sure, why not

[versed tendon]

Aye, that sounds like a good idea

I'll just remove the SD card and do that on my laptop then

[void belfry]

I prefer working directly on the core, as the shared folder eases even more file transfer between my normal PC and the DOS/other OSes VHDs running on the core

[versed tendon]

Oh yeah, the disk image is actually on my PC and accessed through the network. Forgot that!

I'll work it out somehow. At least I know what to do now, thanks. Is this a problem with a number of the games then?

[void belfry]

Yes, some games need replacing dos4gw with dos32a for better compatibility with the core

[versed tendon]

Great to know. I wonder if Megarace is there too. Forgot to check!

[void belfry]

sometimes it is as simple as replacing/renaming the executable, sometimes it is embedded in the gam exe and in some cases (Command and Conquer) is embedded in another file than game EXE launcher. In which case you need to perform additional steps

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=13211#p13211 (see the discussions around the it, and much more on this thread)

Also important is the amount of conventional/expanded/extended memory a game needs, therefore certain configurations/tweaks as using different memory managers/drivers and so on

[versed tendon]

Thanks. I actually managed to get it running by changing the emulated computer from 486DX to 486SX and it seems to be working OK now

[brave sentinel]

Any chance to get starcraft, diablo and diablo 2 running on any computer core?

[undone anvil]

I think they all "run"

I remember seeing the shareware version of d2 go ingame, but it's unbearably slow

I think starcraft was also slow enough to be a slog

[copper slate]

Play the superior version of Diablo on PS1 and Star Craft on N64

[jolly kraken]

Is Diablo on the PS1 actually any good?

Oh wow - it doesn’t even support the mouse! 😄

[opal void]

is it really superios? 🤔

[copper slate]

No lol, but they’re not bad at all

[undone anvil]

it's still a good game, just takes getting used to

though considering the source code had been reverse engineered, you'd think someone would add psx mouse support

[jolly kraken]

It wasn’t necessarily a criticism - just surprising! I had assumed it was a bad port, but the reviews actually suggest it’s quite good.

[opal void]

I should give them a shot 🙂

[undone anvil]

You can even play it with two players, I had so much fun playing it with friends.

[brave sentinel]

The psx version of diablo is the only one I ever played, and boy does it hold up.

[spice hound]

Can I use a real apple // keyboard for the apple // core?

[cerulean rivet]

https://0mhz.net/2024.03.20

[copper slate]

Yeah this is pretty cool. Been keeping up with development, didn’t know he had a site for it.

I’ll check out his newest release. The original one had a bunch of incorrect MGL names for games and directory errors.

[main violet]

oh this looks sick

[copper slate]

Also you can convert all the disc images to CHD, they work.

[main violet]

I still have some space on this 2TB SSD so I'll just try wedging this in as well

I just got the MacPack setup on here as well because I was hurting for kidpix lmao

[copper slate]

Oh shit KidPix is cool as hell

[main violet]

IIRC I ended up having to use Shapeshifter to run it, some days you just need to relive your childhood lol

Thinking about computer-related items, I decided to do a build of OpenWatcom to look into something I remember reading about Duke3D

(slopes are implemented with floating point, but there's a couple assembly loops written in the original source for slopes without an FPU that go unused)

[karmic fog]

there is kidpix in the non-shapeshifter version but it's b&w only obv 🙂

not quite as entertaining

[round carbon]

damn this is a really cool idea

is there any way for the community to help with this, like.. some method for testing other games and then generating config files for them in the same way?

there's plenty of games I love that are rarer that it would be really cool to get new eyes on, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er66Pk-gtk8&t=5238s

[copper slate]

You could make your own VHD and MGL files and submit them to the GitHub repo as a PR

[round carbon]

so it should just be a singular VHD with the one game on it?

and how does one make the MGL files?

if there's any documentation about this I'd be down to make entries for my favourite games

[copper slate]

Just make a text file and rename the extension to MGL

copy the same info from one of the example MGL files into your new one and change the files it points to

I don’t know how to make a VHD

[final zephyr]

WRT FPU support in AO486, I haven't programmed in Verilog or VHDL, I'm curious, can you implement just a few functions from an FPU rather than a complete unit? e.g I have a game which only seems to use SQRT function. Would it be worth implementing just the most used functions.

[round carbon]

how big is the msdos collection unzipped?

[round carbon]

30.9gb is the answer

deleted some mario 64 hacks and had space haha

[round carbon]

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn! daggerfall and arena!

what a list!

[brave sentinel]

Wait, on which core do these run?

[round carbon]

ao486

but you don't have to boot the core anymore you just go into _DOSGAMES and click a game

railroad tycoon!!!!

[jolly kraken]

The collection above, or top 300?

[deft estuary]

the collection above

[summer dragon]

I think you should be able to just make a copy of a working VHD, then mount it as a drive in windows and swap out the game files with whatever you want and then adjust the config files and batch files accordingly. I did a test one earlier for Commander Keen 6 and it worked…the only thing I forgot was that part 6 has some copy protection thing built-in, so I need to look for a patched exe or something 😅

or maybe the gog version just has it removed…I bought those games once upon a time, but I suppose I can just rebuy them too

oh, apparently I just need v1.4

[brave sentinel]

I need to set that up at some point... including getting a keyboard and mouse 😅

[tropic latch]

so... this channel seems lively lately

[round carbon]

anyone seen this issue before? my mouse is just going haywire

everything was working for like 10 minutes

then I pressed ctrl on my keyboard and suddenly the mouse started flipping all over, multiple mice tested

persists after reboot

[hollow fog]

I have already seen such a topic about c&c on MiSTer forum

I have not experienced such problems , except that I never used ready-made solutions (top300 or Dos collection )

[brave sentinel]

Are there premade images for the ao486 core? Or do I need to set it up and install everything manually?

[hollow fog]

#help message same topic , 2021

[void belfry]

@brave sentinel There are, Top 300 being the most known/used I think, 0MHz new one and some others as well. You can search the certain archive site for ao486, also in the forum you can find some more info

[round carbon]

thanks @hollow fog

I'm assuming mouse speed refers to mouse_throttle

[round carbon]

it seemed to work so far

I wonder if two player mode works for settlers 2 if you plug in two mice or if that's not supported

[gloomy void]

The following PR I have just created may be of interest:

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/pull/887

With this, we can indicate in the MGL file, a CFG file associated with a core set. Not only that, but any change to it inside the core will affect only this CFG in core...leaving ao486.cfg, pcxt.cfg or any other of the default config path, untouched with its original configuration.

I will at least use it for my new-features fork, in which I foresee other changes to make more flexible the use of MGL on the x86 platform without the need of having a TapTo device, and always with the aim of also having the possibility of using a single VHD with all the games of interest, and with its own internal launcher from MSDOS.

[rapid sail]

Hello,

Just a question about the C64 core latest release version of 24.01.10.

Delta +9HD [1999] Remember

When i choose for Highscore game and fill out my name. The save file will then be a corrupt file *prg

With IK+ &H [2000] Remember

It works just fine.

Someone here that could test this?

[rapid sail]

Just tried it on the latest unstable core and it also does not work on that one.

[vestal cypress]

Hey guys

Anyone tried the 0mhz collection yet?

I had a few questions

[summer dragon]

I have yeah @vestal cypress

I can try to answer questions. I’ve messed around with it a fair bit and added some of my own games. Nothing that’s required too much custom configuration so far, but yeah

the one thing I realllly sorely want is the ability to save preconfigured keyboard>joystick bindings per VHD

that feature would probably make this core become one of my most played cores.

[cold crane]

I'm about to try this out for the first time, and yeah, that will easily be the number one issue for me since computer games tend to be all over the place for controls in my experience.

[vestal cypress]

Thanks! So, I have to a specific config which will interfere with my flynnbit top 300 collection, right ? Or can they co-exist?

My second question is, how is it different from the top 300 collection? Just different games? I saw some repeated

[fast kraken]

it's more a-la-carte than top300 you can pick and chose individual games. they launch out of the OSD menu instead of having a menu inside dos

no mt32pi support yet

probably slightly less space efficient for the same number of games

[summer dragon]

@vestal cypress Each setup would need it’s own configuration. I need to look into it more, but it sounds like we should be able to specify different configs using MGL files

[fast kraken]

but its under more active development so i'd expect it to improve rapidly

[summer dragon]

so you’d have a bunch of MGLs that launches your games with the 0Mhz cfg file, and then another MGL that launches your Top300 pack with the Top300 config file

[fast kraken]

should work yeah

[cold crane]

So I got the 0MHz stuff up and running, but something is wrong with the video settings. It keeps cutting the video signal nonstop. It only briefly flickers back on for a brief moment once in a while.

I noticed that it only happens with games that don't run at 60hz. Each game is set to "variable" in the video settings, and when I change it to 60hz, it fixes the problem, but then the games don't run at their proper refresh rate. I run all my other cores with VRR enabled with no problems. Arcade cores or something Wonderswan all run properly at their intended refresh rates without issue (like R-Type arcade runs at 55hz for example).

It's also frustrating that every game is defaulted to variable, so that also means that I have to blindly "fix" it in the OSD for every game by counting button presses.

[fleet cave]

are you running with vsync_adjust=0 for that core?

[cold crane]

I'm using vsync_adjust=1 for everything.

[waxen brook]

doe the AO486 core work for you normally at 70hz or is this your first time trying it?

[fleet cave]

if you are 100% sure you are using vsync_adjust=1 for ao486, maybe try setting vrr_max_framerate to 72Hz

[final zephyr]

Has anyone considered dumping a lot of the sound parts from ao486?

E.g write a modified core with fpu that drops a lot of the audio support

Wing commander 4 doesn't even use midi. Privateer2 gets no benefit from sound modules outside of Sb16 etc

AO486 handles 386 era games excellently. It's 486-486+ that struggles. I'd be curious to see what could be done by cutting back the audio support.

[vestal cypress]

How do I create an MGL file?

[copper slate]

Copy an existing one and open it in a text editor to change it

Or create a new txt file and rename the extension to .mgl

[vestal cypress]

ohhh that easy huh

BTW, I tried testing 0mhz on an external HDD and didn't work, I will try it in the main sd card soon

[summer dragon]

@vestal cypress I run mine from an external SSD just fine. Make sure that the games/ao486 folder on your SD card is empty and that boot0.rom and boot1.rom are in the games/ao486 folder on your external drive

and obviously, the media folder from the 0MHz pack should be inside the games/ao486 folder on your external drive

[vestal cypress]

all of that was considered, in fact, I deleted the games/ao486 folder in my sd

[summer dragon]

hmmmm

trying to recall if I did anything special for the ao486 core when I first got my drive…

I don’t think I did

[vestal cypress]

I did overwrite the AO486 config file that they ask you to use

but some of my old configuration is still there

for example

my vhd for the top300 is still set on IDE2

[summer dragon]

@vestal cypress before deleting the ao486 folder on your SD card, did you try leaving it empty and running it

oh, yeah thats probably your issue

[vestal cypress]

the config file?

[summer dragon]

i would backup those configs and then delete them

[vestal cypress]

delete and replace, not overwrite?

[summer dragon]

then add the config from the pack

yeah

[vestal cypress]

ahhh this is just like in the old DOS days

troubleshooting crap hahahaha

[copper slate]

[void belfry]

unmount the IDE 0-1 and Apply & Reset ?

[summer dragon]

@vestal cypress this is what mine looks like if I boot a game from the 0MHz pack via MGL

interestingly, my top 300 pack is still showing as IDE 0-1, but that seems fine…nothing mounted for IDE 1, though

i’ll try the game you tried to boot here

[vestal cypress]

I tried many

Albion

Aladdin

Leisure suit larry

Karateka

I wanted to make sure it wasn't just cd games

So I tried disk games

This was supposed to be plug and play 😂

[summer dragon]

ok so for albion, I get this

so actually, it’s asking me to insert the disk…but it is

[vestal cypress]

Those are my son's Pikachu slippers 😂

[vestal cypress]

So it won't let you run the game? Not even manually by searching for the exe?

[summer dragon]

so when I switch to D:, it says STUBDSK is there

which is something from the top300 pack

let me delete and replace my config file agaib

[vestal cypress]

I did that too

[summer dragon]

well it’s weird that top 300 drive is still showing as mounted

[vestal cypress]

I guess that answers my question

[summer dragon]

@vestal cypress deleting and replacing the a0486 config fixed it for me…Albion booted

[vestal cypress]

Flynnsbit and 0mhz are incompatible with each other, they cannot co-exist

[summer dragon]

I deleted alll the config files that had ao486 in the name, btw

[vestal ginkgo]

oh they should probably force an unmount of IDE 0-1 in the MGL, that could bite them later especially when CD mounts will try to be on D: and my second IDE drive has two partitions. Maybe they already thought of that.

[vestal cypress]

Yikes so no backups then, or at least not in the same folder

[vestal ginkgo]

I'll bet their MGL isn't doing anything with IDE 0-1 so it is going to be there if the Top 300 was the last thing you did (and saved)

[summer dragon]

so, using MGL files, we should be able to have specific config files renamed for each setup that will work as long as you launch the core with MGL

i haven’t messed with it yet, but I will hopefully later or tomorrow

[vestal ginkgo]

the MGL should clear any drives it isn't using. I'll bet those images are not doing that

just a guess

[summer dragon]

ah interesting

[vestal ginkgo]

or you could unmount them using autoexec.bat too so it is always clean.

[vestal cypress]

We now need a way to marry both collections, I have the games split between the two

[summer dragon]

but if I specify a specific config file that should be used in the mgl, that should work right?

@vestal cypress I think there will be soon

I think it’s specified in the setname parameter?

[vestal ginkgo]

two different concepts though. There isn't anything stopping this though.

[vestal cypress]

How so ? Is there any way I can easily change from one to the other without having to reconfigure ?

[vestal ginkgo]

someone is doing a lot of work on the 0mhz side for the games

[vestal ginkgo]

yeah of course, just have an MGL for Top 300

[vestal cypress]

What should I add on the mgl? 🫠

[vestal ginkgo]

I thought you were trying to MERGE them

[vestal cypress]

Not a bad idea either but your approach was different, I do prefer the games listed under a dos menu, that way I can reset the core if I want to change games, instead of resetting the mister

[summer dragon]

@vestal cypress wait why would you have to reset the MiSTer to change games with 0MHz pack?

[vestal ginkgo]

you would add the two .vhd references for Top 300, IDE 0-0 boot whatever.vhd and IDE 0-1 Top 300 games whatever.vhd, I can create one later when I am at home. Just use any of the 0mhz examples or my Mortal Kombat II MGL on archive as an example

[summer dragon]

@vestal ginkgo thanks for the tip! Grabbed the MKII mgl, but I’m not totally clear on how to add references for both VHDs, so perhaps I’ll wait for yours 😅

[vestal cypress]

wait, where is it?

[summer dragon]

If I’m understanding right, though, If I make my setname Top300, for example, and then make a copy of my top 300 ao486.cfg files and rename them Top300.cfg, that should work too? I may be totally off base

just search for archive flynnsbit top 300

[vestal cypress]

nevermind, found it

I was looking for it on his github when he said archive 😅

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_Computer/ao486</rbf>
<setname>Mortal Kombat II</setname>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="2" path="Mortal Kombat II.vhd"/>
<reset delay="0"/>
</mistergamedescription>

so index="2" is IDE0-1?

[summer dragon]

yep, I’m just not sure how you add in the reference for the second vhd

[vestal cypress]

or is index 2 IDE0-0?

[vestal ginkgo]

I've got 8 min before a very long meeting but you are figuring it out

[vestal cypress]

lol, I'm liking this

[vestal ginkgo]

https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/advanced/mgl/#mgl-format

[vestal cypress]

awesome flynn, thanks!

will tinker a bit and figure it out

ok, so "index: Pointer to slot where file is loaded in core."

[summer dragon]

lemme know if ya figure it out Lion!

[vestal cypress]

we need to make sure flynn's VHDs are mounted in index 1 and index 2

but I also need to make sure nothing else is mounted, to ovewrite previous configs

[vestal ginkgo]

I think it's 2 and 3

[vestal cypress]

oh

so index 1 is disk

[vestal ginkgo]

some reason ao486 does something weird for index

if I remember

[vestal cypress]

index 0 and 1 are probably floppys

[vestal ginkgo]

just trial and error, you will see it mount

[summer dragon]

that makes sense

[vestal ginkgo]

oh yeah, that

and if I remember I needed to add <reset delay="0"/> to the bottom of my MGL to get disks to mount on time, but that could have been a bug that is fixed

so just do whatever the 0MHz team is doing

[vestal cypress]

what are the names of the flynnsbit vhds? I'm not near my mister

[summer dragon]

one sec

[vestal cypress]

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_computer/ao486</rbf>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="2" path="media/albion/albion.vhd"/>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="4" path="media/albion/albion.chd"/>
<reset delay="1"/>
</mistergamedescription>

that one is from 0mhz

which means

index 4 is IDE1-0

[summer dragon]

yep nice that solves that

[vestal cypress]

we just need to change the reset delay to 1

[summer dragon]

IDE 0-0 BOOT-DOS98.vhd
IDE 0-1 Top 300 DOS Games.vhd

[vestal cypress]

and make sure we get the VHD names correctly

[vestal cypress]

awesome!

so our MGL is now obvious

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_computer/ao486</rbf>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="2" path="IDE 0-0 BOOT-DOS98.vhd"/>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="3" path="IDE 0-1 Top 300 DOS Games.vhd"/>
<reset delay="1"/>
</mistergamedescription>

[summer dragon]

the IDE stuff is part of the filename actually

[vestal cypress]

really?

alright

[summer dragon]

yes

gonna test real quick

[vestal cypress]

alright

its done

but how do we make sure IDE 1-0 and 1-1 get unmounted?

we need to make some kind of statement in the MGL

[summer dragon]

they don’t just switch when changing mgl files?

[vestal cypress]

wasn't that the issue we were just having though?

that they have left overs from previous configs

ok, here is our prototype MGL

[summer dragon]

ok, i booted a 0MHz mgl followed by the top 300 and it worked…let’s go the other way

[vestal cypress]

so it worked then

[summer dragon]

seems fine?

[vestal cypress]

I will try it and if it doesn't work for me I'll have to figure out why 0mhz doesn't like my mister

[summer dragon]

booted top 300 and then went back to a 0MHz game and IDE 0-1 is properly empty

[vestal cypress]

hmmm

my mister is moody

[round carbon]

settlers 2 is such a banger but also terrible, but also great. it's sooo sloooow lol but it's just addictive for no apparent reason

[summer dragon]

ok lets go back to top 300 and then back to a CD game

ok, yep, just switched from Top 300 back to Albion and everything worked fine! 🎉

[vestal cypress]

ok, I will delete all of my config files

and just use the one from 0mhz

[summer dragon]

glad that’s squared away! Now we just need to be able to save Keyboard>Joystick mappings per VHD and I’ll be totally set with this core

[vestal cypress]

say what?

how do you do that?

[summer dragon]

so there is that setting where you can assign keyboard keys to controller buttons

and it is permanent now, but only at the core level

[vestal cypress]

but you can do it per vhd?

[summer dragon]

so, in Commander Keen, for example, I mapped space bar to R2 on my DualSense

[vestal cypress]

that would kind of leave out flynnbit's since he has everything on one vhd

[summer dragon]

but now no matter what I pull up, space bar is always mapped to R2

right it wouldn’t work for flynn’s pack, but for 0MHz it would be amazing

[vestal cypress]

also, not all games use a joystick right?

[summer dragon]

no, but this method gets around that

[vestal cypress]

right, it maps the keyboard unto the joystick

[summer dragon]

like, I want to be able to emulate twin stick controls for Doom or Chex Quest and have the config saved

If I could do that, I’d absolutely be playing a ton more of the ao486 core

[vestal cypress]

is that actually possible?

if so, I'm game

I thought that in doom you could only aim horizontally, am I misremembering?

[summer dragon]

I think it might be…i’m not sure…i can’t recall if those games offer Left and Right strafe or if it’s just like hold a button to strafe

true, but you can use the right stick for turning

ah yeah strafing in Ultimate Doom is hold down alt

[summer dragon]

If you can map a two key combo to a controller button then we could get it working 🤔…I don’t think you can do that, but I can’t remember

[fast kraken]

you can map proper strafe buttons for doom in its setup.exe

they're < and > by default i think or something, or maybe they're unmapped even

[vestal ginkgo]

I suggested that the 0mhz team add a jchoice option at the "end" of autoexec so you can exit the game, get a jchoice with audio and or setup access and then right back into the game. It's a bit hacky but I think works well if you know it is there

that would be an easy way to add sound options, custom controls, Game Setup access

[round carbon]

got some kind of nasty memory dump on discworld after going downstairs

anyone managed to play this?

[vestal ginkgo]

with all the MGLs this way, you wouldn't really ever intentionally "exit" a game now, so gives a feature there if needed

[void belfry]

I don't think EVERY game is fully tested, that's why 0MHz guys opened a github for game issues. Heroes Might and Magic 2 for example boots default in CD Audio mode, which is actually unplayable. SB16 (or MIDI) choices would have been better

One can modify the rungame.bat ofc, not a big issue

[vestal cypress]

this is also why I choose to play every game I can in scummVM, and leave the non-adventure games for flynnsbit and 0mhz

missing from both collections is diablo, I'm guessing it doesn't run well?

or maybe both set the limit for games at '95 or something

[void belfry]

Yeah, Diablo can run, but is not really playable.

[vestal cypress]

low FPS?

[void belfry]

yeah

[vestal cypress]

I remember it ran well on my pentium 100mhz, the first pentium. I guess we're one hw gen behind to play it

[void belfry]

Surprisingly, Fallout 1 works actually ok-ish, I did complete it under W95 on ao486 (DOS version really crawls)

[vestal cypress]

that IS surprising. games are supposed to run faster under pure DOS

[void belfry]

under DOS the FMVs are working, under W95 not 😄 but the gameplay is better under W95 for this

[vestal cypress]

weirdly programmed game

[void belfry]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZTJgbiP2IM

[cold crane]

It's my first time ever trying it. I know next to nothing about DOS/PC gaming. I grew up as a strictly console gamer and only ever owned Mac computers my entire life!

[void belfry]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=6639 - For some games there is a workaround with a software FPU emulator

[cold crane]

How would even know if it was set to something different? In my ini settings for my MiSTer, I set it to vsync_adjust=1 a long time ago, and checked it again to ensure it was still set that way. Is the AO486 core set differently than the rest of the cores in that regard?

[summer dragon]

yeah at the moment my suggested solution was to exit to dos prompt and then just type dir to find the setup file and then run it…works fine, but your method is better for those that are unfamiliar with DOS or don’t want to deal with it

[vestal ginkgo]

I assumed people going this route have no clue what DOS is 😉

[summer dragon]

I actually have knowledge of it since I used it back in the day, but I don’t really have nostalgia for the interface, I’d just like to boot directly to muh games

[cold crane]

I assume DOS stands for Doesn't Operate System.

[vestal cypress]

I know DOS but its not a past I wish to go back to hahaha, automating everything is truly the lord's work

I even forgot most commands by now

my first pc was in 1997, a windows 95 pentium 100 pc, technically I had 386 or 286 a couple of years before but I didn't do much with it

[void belfry]

Lately I had some fun testing old Unix/Linux/other OSes on 86Box , mostly to test out a SX more or less similar to our core (except for BeOS, that requires Pentium right away lol) against ao486. Unfortunately all the above (again, BeOS is for show off) fail due to IDE controller implementation 😦

[strange heron]

Oh wow, SCO UNIX is triggering for me, forgot about it haha, at least it supported symlinks (unlike SCO Xenix)

[hollow ice]

One day I am going to get back to trying to solve that, but probably not any day soon 😄

I did a brief comparison of the mister ide code against qemu and it didn’t look that dissimilar

[void belfry]

Quite a lot of these Unix-like OS-es would work even without FPU, mostly using whatever 387 emu they had. QNX 4.2.5 is a good example ( and the only Unix with a GUI as well I found working).

the other would be ELKS/Minix, but that is more novelty for XT core

[void belfry]

It was quite a smooth install (at least for this version lol). Intel Unix was annoying as hell just for sheer number of floppy images lol:D RedHat and FreeBSD were picky as hell, had a lot of trials and errors 😄

[hollow ice]

Any luck with the dell unix install?

I randomly sampled some of those old installs trying to get them running on mister, but gave up pretty quickly

qnx is one I didn’t try, and I fully intend to follow your guide one (maybe the same day as I setup my dev environment for mister again) 😄

[void belfry]

No, Dell Unix didn't work either

[void belfry]

From QNX family, 2.2.1 would also kinda work, I managed to make a suitable VHD, it sees the bootloader but then it throws "missing OS" error, though all the files are actually on the VHD (mountable and accessible via a boot floppy)

[hollow ice]

I wonder if that is still the same SPT reset bug

[void belfry]

But 4.2.5 is the clear winner, earlier versions are not much use I guess, other than novelty and probably on an even earlier system

[vestal ginkgo]

If I remember correctly, Warp 3 had the same IDE issue unless you got those working. I think 2.1 worked fine but any after that would bomb on something to do with the disk.

[hollow ice]

I actually would prefer the “newest” experience available…a bash shell is only fun for so long 😄

[vestal ginkgo]

I spent far too many hours trying to get Warp going on AO486 for no real reason

[void belfry]

I installed Warp 3 as well, just the L1 issue. IIDE worked fine as far as i remember

[hollow ice]

you are responsible for the nt instructions, right?

nope, that was alexoughten

[vestal ginkgo]

No that was Alex from the forum

also did the UNIVBE stuff, masterful!

he swooped in a bit like Robert did with the caches, and fixed some really nagging things

[hollow ice]

yeah

[void belfry]

@vestal ginkgo but also I installed OS/2 2+ on FAT FS, HPFS wouldn't work

[vestal ginkgo]

I tried to get HPFS going, even all the way up to eCommstation and it just couldn't get there. I still have all of those VHDs archived of my progress. Was fun trying to get it working.

[void belfry]

OS/2 2.0 is the only one that would ran on HPFS

[vestal ginkgo]

there is just something funky still in the ao486 setup/bios

[hollow ice]

if you want a quick way to demonstrate an issue, just convert the openstep 4 iso to chd, then try to install

[vestal ginkgo]

I've been having fun with DOSbox-X this week, they finally have a fully working LFN as of the 3-1-2024 build so everything with MyMenu, Imgmount support, etc all works natively. Just a few find and replace commands for cd mounts and all the packs work perfectly on my Linux and Windows systems. It was a little thing I don't think they realized they fixed, but LFN is a bit of a must with MyMenu.

[hollow ice]

install in verbose mode, and when it is detecting the hard drive, it will tell you that it reads it as 0 SPT and therefore a size of 0

[vestal ginkgo]

Voodoo support as well, not sure how long that has been there

[vestal ginkgo]

ahh good to know!

I might go back and crack those vhd's open one of these days

[hollow ice]

I have been meaning to file a ticket for like two years now, but I keep pretending I am going to fix it myself

[vestal ginkgo]

lol

I'm glad the 0mHz stuff has sparked some interest in the core, usually when that happens we get some new features or nice to have bug fixes

[hollow ice]

I did a bunch of logging and debugging, and I saw it have the correct SPT values on startup, but I never caught what reset it

[vestal ginkgo]

I am also hoping for the keyboard/joystick cfg per VHD/MGL thing . That would be amazing

[hollow ice]

the iso itself is interesting because it supports different arch’s….the mister iso code was broken when I first tried it; the only way to actually get it to “work” is to convert it to chd

[vestal ginkgo]

oh I was going to ask that

as you specifically calld out chd earlier

I think ISO had an order of operation thing where the OS was freaking out, when CD-Audio code was added, but I thought that was fixed

unless you tried it before cd-audio was there

[hollow ice]

I haven’t tried it in a long time, and this was before cd-audio was added

[vestal ginkgo]

ahh okay

[hollow ice]

yeah, I am happy to see interest picking up again

your collection is still one of my main gotos when I have free time

although if they start targeting the pcxt core with the 0mhz collection as well, that might change a bit….I still have a fondness for super old dos games

especially with the pcjr/tandy graphics+sound capabilities

kitune started his experiment repository for a pcjr implementation, I am hoping that materializes and then is accepted into the family

[void belfry]

@hollow ice You should also try ELKS/Minix on XT core, works even dual booting etc 😄 I like this micro-kernel OS as I used it for SLIP/CSLIP support tests 😄

and yeah, over did it with the VHD size lol, a 200 meg one was more than enough later.

[hollow ice]

haha, 200 mb is like infinite storage on a xt 😄

[void belfry]

yeah, went that much just out of laziness for future file moving around

copy all the crap in one place and sort it out later

[hollow ice]

haha

[vestal ginkgo]

me too, I have a Top 80ish pack for PCXT focused on Tandy sound and graphics but never completely finished it so never released it

[hollow ice]

if you would have told me back when I suffered with the pcjr that one day I would be nostalgic for it, I would have laughed at you….I still remember being in Sears and looking at the box art for all those games, and they always showed the c64/atari/amiga art

[vestal ginkgo]

memory + tandy graphics was a bit annoying, not the cores fault. I think MGL "booters" is a better option

[hollow ice]

I’d get it home and I would then play in horrible 4 color CGA

california games surfing stage was always hilarious, I had no idea what I was even looking at

[vestal ginkgo]

I have one sitting next to me. We have a love/hate. Just like me and DOS. Always so jealous of Amiga stability. lol

[hollow ice]

I keep meaning to get one….I wish I still had “mine”

[vestal ginkgo]

Some of the new boards, sidecar, SDcard slot,etc make it manageable but still nostalgic.

bbond and I spent a good two weeks getting MyMenu running smoothly on a pcJr. It works great

[hollow ice]

Recently dug out this beauty, I really want to type some of these in again:

as you can see, that book was well loved when I was a kid

[vestal ginkgo]

very nostalgic.

[hollow ice]

if I had a way to get it scanned, I would…it is a pretty incredible resource

[vestal ginkgo]

My two babies 🙂

[hollow ice]

nice!

funny thing: I had the basic cart, but we never got any other game on cart…so the modern sd cart thing is one of the big things I wanted to play with

[vestal ginkgo]

they are cheap too. I only ever had basic on cart as well, never had a game that wasn't on floppy.

this is the killer product for it now: https://texelec.com/product/jr-ide-for-the-pcjr-by-retrotronics/ and they also have an OPL3 sidecar

binary bond is going to make fun of my pcJr again and all the limitations compared to his Tandy 😄

[fleet cave]

if you use setnames in mgls you get per-mgl config for everything

[hollow ice]

haha, my best friend growing up had a tandy

definitely had those arguments

[vestal ginkgo]

would that include a key-to-key mapping now (saved) as well now? Example Mortal Kombat II is hard coded to use the F keys for Player 1 and player 2 start.

[fleet cave]

yes

[vestal ginkgo]

I some how missed that, been away too long

very cool

[fleet cave]

anything that generates a save file name with the corename in it gets changed with <setname>

[vestal ginkgo]

well that solves a lot, especially with what the 0mhz stuff is doing. nice

[hollow ice]

would be nice if you could set a “custom” config directory in the mgl so your config root doesn’t wind up with 1000 config files though

or did I miss that?

[vestal ginkgo]

yeah I can imagine that will get quite messy. I originally went down the TDL and then MyMenu route because I was going down the 7000 games route...

[sleek escarp]

Loading up the 0mhz package of Blood, does it run like crap on the core I do I need to change something?

[hollow ice]

it was a 97 release, so I suspect it won’t run great

but I haven’t validated that statement

[void belfry]

Didn't try 0MHz version, but from my own tests (usually on DOS 7.1, various mem managers/other stuff like UNIVBE/Q87/etc), Blood doesn't play nice with the ao486 😦

[sleek escarp]

Not sure what the point is of packaging up games that run so bad they're unplayable. Just going to cause confusion.

[hollow ice]

I think it is all part of the process of discovery, this is a relatively new collection

[void belfry]

yeah, some games would not really work outright, some will require more fiddling and so on

[summer dragon]

ohhhh so the key to joystick stuff does work that way!! ok, looks like I’m definitely trying that and 0MHz is probably gonna have to update all of their MGLs again 😅

[void belfry]

but that is what comunity is for, to provide feedback/help. my 2 cents

[jolly kraken]

Thanks to all you testers, lazy people like me can swoop in in a couple of weeks when everything is perfect

[copper slate]

yeah, I now have a custom AO486_Top300 setname applied

just wrapped up all the symlinking between the two

[hollow ice]

shouldn’t you be busy playing with something that has SEGA branding?

[jolly kraken]

Who, me? 😄

[summer dragon]

hmm I must still not be understanding this setname stuff…I probably did this wrong, but I tested with Bio Menace in the 0MHz pack…I added <setname>bmenace</setname> to my MGL. Then, I copied my existing AO486.cfg and renamed it bmenace.cfg and placed it in my config folder…now the game doesn’t boot 🤔

[hollow ice]

Nah, Robby is supposed to be playing the secret 3d sonic game on the Saturn right now

[round carbon]

wow arena is really fun

much better than daggerfall

[summer dragon]

ok, I figured it out…I had to create a games/bmenace folder that houses the ao486 bios files and also the VHD for it to work…is there a way to set the path for a setname inside of MGLs so that I could theoretically just nest these game-specific folders inside ao486/media/game_title?

Edit: also realized that symlinks might work for this purpose…that would at least be significantly less tedious to setup 🤔

this is still great because it should mean I can do all my keyboard>controller button remaps and have them be uniquely configured for each game and also not have to worry about games that want you to reconfigure your joystick every time you load it

someone on the forum is working on a way to specify which cfg file to use for specific games in MGLs…may just wait for that as it would be a cleaner and less tedious method

[ruby hawk]

Dosbox-x is pretty sweet, I've been trying it out lately for it's pc98 mode and been getting nice results.

[vestal ginkgo]

yeah I saw the pc98 stuff but haven't tried it yet. It runs really well on the pi5 as well.

[fleet cave]

I'd really rather have main go the route of using setname and falling back to corename for config files instead of adding yet another rando thing to MGLs

but ultimately sorg will do whatever

[waxen brook]

thats awesome. Using weird controllers like the microsoft strategic commander may be feasible now. i was hesitant about the new 0mhz pack for a variety of reasons but this may be the way to go

[fleet cave]

it changes the game directory too, so it is annoying for bios files etc. Although maybe that could do fallback too

[waxen brook]

oof.. having hundreds of new directories just for individual DOS games in the main "games" folder does seem like it would be very inconvenient

[cedar isle]

Memories for sure. I had the PC JR back then. Those big old spiral binders.

[proper zodiac]

Maybe the only one who would ask this, but if I wanted to play yoda stories on the mister, would I have to install that as an application on windows running on the ao486 core? Or can I somehow set that up like the new dos games method?

[copper slate]

You could always play the Game Boy Color version

[proper zodiac]

is it a faithful port? maybe one for the pocket

i know people dont like the game but I grew up with it as a kid and loved it

[copper slate]

It’s a bad version of it lol, no randomization

I liked the PC version, it was like $5 at the comp USA cash registers, instead of asking my dad for a candy bar I got a game!

[summer dragon]

I’m about to test symlinks because I think that would be easier to do and accomplish the same thing

[summer dragon]

Yes, that sounds like the best way to fix it. In this case though, it would still need to launch the VHD from the setname folder. I’m thinking symlinks might be the easiest and least tedious way to do this

yep, symlinks do the trick

[waxen brook]

but this doesnt take away the need to have multiple dos game folders in the main "games" directory on the SD card, does it?

[summer dragon]

for some reason though, I copied the exact same ao486.cfg file for my first new “set” (Bio Menace) and when I load that games using the ao486.cfg file (without setname specified), the d-pad on my DualSense works just fine…when I load it using the bmenace set name, the d-pad doesn’t work in the game menu anymore

@waxen brook I mean, it just means multiple symlinks instead of multiple folders. At least you can just make a symlink and point it at your ao486 folder and you won’t have to move all the game files to new folders along with multiple copies of the bios files

[summer dragon]

yeah, this is weird…it’s the exact same game with the exact same configuration as the mgl without the setname specified and for some reason the d-pad does not work in the Bio Menace menu if I’m running it from the MGL with a setname specified 🤔

[green zinc]

Does this 0MHz collection work if I place the "games" folder on a USB device, and the other folders on SD? Would like to know before trying to transfer 20 GB...

[summer dragon]

@green zinc yes

just make sure the games/ao486 folder on the SD card is empty and that you move the boot0.rom and boot1.rom bios files over to the games/ao486 folder on the usb drive

[thick pendant]

I'm sure the footprint of the fake-intelligent MPU-401 is tiny. Also most of the stuff that uses MIDI is 386 era stuff which is what ao486 does best. I'm not sure you'd want to drop SB/OPL3 support as you'd only have pc speaker. I suppose you could drop CMS.

[final zephyr]

I'd also be curious to see how much fpu is needed

E.g what are games actually using vs what an fpu is. Privateer 2 only seemed to use square root.

But yeah, by dumping parts we're not really talking about making them unavailable. Just making different cores that load the same dos hdd images

CMS for wing commander is redundant mt32 is way better

For privateer and wc3 you want sound canvas/general midi

Wc4 has no midi support

[cold crane]

I was trying to play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and I'm finding that the mouse control when using a controller isn't working right. Every once in a while, the mouse cursor starts moving around on its own. It seems to happen regardless of whether I use a d-pad or an analog stick to move the cursor.

[fading roost]

Anyone else missing music on the 0mhz Doom?

Also I have weird stuttering in doom, heretic and so on, on the 0mhz versions.
When I run my own installed version of doom on (bought on gog) on the ao486 core it seems to run in few frames per second less than 0mhz version, but the stutter is more or less gone.
Anyone else have the same experience?

[woven lava]

how? real Apple II keyboards are not peripherals

[copper slate]

Yes, setnames don’t automatically generate folders for you. It just expects stuff to be in those folders but no harm done. You’d just need to juggle multiple config files and input files per each setname.

But symlinks can handle that. Just be aware that multiple thousand symlinks can cause tremendous slowdown when accessing the config folder. I would know lolol

[spice hound]

I though perhaps there is an adapter to convert it to usb

[void belfry]

but that would be pure novelty and good luck doing it 😄

https://hackaday.com/2011/06/06/apple-converted-into-usb-keyboard/

[woven lava]

yes it can, its just really cumbersome compared to other keyboards though

you could put a MiSTer inside maybe

[spice hound]

No no no I mean apple //gs keyboard not apple //e

I thought that was understood O_o

[summer dragon]

yeah, I knew it wouldn’t automatically generate folders, I just thought it might at least be smart enough to use the cfg file that matched the setname

[summer dragon]

wait, you’re saying multiple symlinks in the games folder can cause slowdown accessing configs in the configs folder?

[copper slate]

I mean multiple symlinks in the configs folder

[summer dragon]

oh yeah I don’t need to do that

I’m saying place a symlink in the games folder. So, if my setname is biomenace I place a symlink with that name in my games folder that points to games/ao486 then I just create a biomenace.cfg in the config folder

[sleek escarp]

Is the audio in the FMV intro to Dune slightly garbled or is it just my setup?

[versed tendon]

So I've been played about with the AO486 Core and having quite a lot of fun with the eXoDos games library. However I've noticed it has Screamer as an included game and it frankly it's completely unplayable due to the frame rate.

Is there something I've missed or is just an odd inclusion as I was under the impression that peak performance of the core is not even comparable to a Pentium 75 which would still probably struggle a bit with that game from what I recall.

[cold crane]

So I fixed the mouse cursor drifting issue I was having by simply redoing the mapping of my PS4 controller in MiSTer main. No clue why or how it was a problem since I didn't have those issues in the Amiga core, or any other core I use the controller for.

Still have the video cutting out issue though unless I change the core to 60hz. No clue why this core is the only one that gives me that problem.

[vestal ginkgo]

Odd inclusion if you are talking about my pack. I have a few of those, and no, it's not close to a pentium anything.

[summer dragon]

after some more tinkering, I gotta say…doing this symlink method while specifying the setname in the MGLs is definitely the way to go with the 0Mhz pack…no need to configure my controller every time anymore 🎉

[summer dragon]

huh…except I can’t get button/key remap to work for my joystick in Ultimate Doom 🤔

[summer dragon]

@stoic junco post this in #dev-talk

[stoic junco]

will do, thanks!

[summer dragon]

you might need to get access…

[stoic junco]

It does show a little lock, but it did seem to let me post. Can you see my post in there?

[summer dragon]

yep, you’re good

[stoic junco]

Thanks Granny 😉

[versed tendon]

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure if there was an update or setting I was missing with a performance breakthrough that would make it playable. Shame as it's an excellent game. At least DOOM and Heretic run well enough - for me at least! I've also managed to get my GOG copy of MegaRace added and it's working great. Very pleased about that.

[summer dragon]

Annnd I’m dumb 🤦‍♂️ the 0MHz collection has Ultimate Doom set to the WADS control scheme 😅

[jolly kraken]

I was under the impression that Doom didn’t run at the full 35fps on the ao486 - is that not the case? If so, then that’s great news. 😄

(Not without shrinking the screen, I mean)

[opal void]

I don't get the benefit of 0MHz... sounds like a huge waste of space to me...

[vestal ginkgo]

Fastdoom for sure does, especially the VBR version with UNIVBe and 100mhz set in the core

[jolly kraken]

That’s good to know. Thanks

[copper slate]

It’s a different way of accessing your games. Instead of one giant VHD it’s a VHD per game so users can more easily pick and choose what they want installed. MGL file sizes to launch games are inconsequential so instead of using a built-in DOS menu to load a game you just use the MiSTer’s menu.

I think both are super cool so I have both.

[opal void]

you must have a lot of disk space 😛

wait I think I am the only here who has a 2.5" SSD hooked up to their Mister via USB 😄

[copper slate]

Haha, yeah I just have a 512GB lol

[summer dragon]

You are not alone! I have a 4TB SSD hooked up via SSD

[opal void]

I am only on 1TB for now 😄

[summer dragon]

I futureproofed

[jolly kraken]

512GB SSD over here but it’s plenty after converting everything to chd

[summer dragon]

I stream and like to discover lots of random retro titles I’ve never heard of, so I’ve got full sets pretty much across the board

PS1 and Saturn are really wittled down to basically 1G1R with all the heavy Japanese stuff removed

[jolly kraken]

I have full sets for most of the non-cd consoles, but just in 1g1r format since I don’t need 800 versions of Mario

And then for PS1, Saturn, maybe like 150ish titles. Enough to capture everything that’s worth playing 😜

(150ish on each)

[summer dragon]

Yeah, I recently went through all my non-cd sets and did pretty much the same thing…My leftovers folders with all the non-US regional variants, revisions, etc. live on my backup drive

[jolly kraken]

Ditto. On my makeshift NAS (pi + 6TB usb hdd)

[summer dragon]

also added tons of unlicensed and bootleg games to my sets for fun

[jolly kraken]

I’m really getting into _good_romhacks recently

[summer dragon]

@jolly kraken wanna ask about those are, but we should probably continue in #general-banter since we’re getting offtopic

[jolly kraken]

But the computer cores are definitely on my radar. Want to try 0mhz tomorrow 😎

[summer dragon]

oh nice back on topic lmao

@jolly kraken if you need any help with 0MHz feel free to hit me up

[jolly kraken]

Will do. Thanks

[copper slate]

It gets updated daily it seems like

[jolly kraken]

I wonder if it’ll slow down after a few weeks, once a lot of the early issues are ironed out

[summer dragon]

oh, I’m sure it will, but there seems to be a decent amount left to do…lot of potential games to still be added

[jolly kraken]

This might just be the thing I need to finally put my MT32-pi to use. I know you have to exit the game and adjust the settings to get it to work, but still seems a relatively low barrier to entry

[summer dragon]

That’ll probably get ironed out

[jolly kraken]

Hoping someone does something similar for the X68k at some point. I watched @naive imp’s videos on it, and from what I could tell, the curated sets that most people were using seem to have disappeared. There’s a slightly less complete one circulating, but it feels like I might need to go to the effort of manually installing things to get a wider selection

[summer dragon]

@jolly kraken yeah there is a starter set that is also self booting vhds, but it’s not in the greatest shape yet

[jolly kraken]

And the x68k looks a lot less friendly to me than DOS, which I have at least a small amount of experience with 😅

My understanding is that the MiST -> MiSTer communities really grew up around computer cores (e.g. ST, Amiga), but it doesn’t seem they get as much love nowadays as the consoles and arcade, which is a bit of a shame

I guess consoles are just a lower barrier to entry

[naive imp]

That’s been done. Hasn’t it?

Or did it disappear

[jolly kraken]

The one you showed in your most recent video, I couldn’t find. Atrac put one up, and there’s another set circulating whose name escapes me at the moment

[naive imp]

No there’s def an X68000 “starter pack” with over 300 HDF files ready to go

Obv can’t link it here

[jolly kraken]

I’ll Google

[naive imp]

It was done by the always charming atrac lol

[jolly kraken]

Yeah, I’ve seen that one and a Ghostware one. It seemed, at least historically, that there was another that used to be more popular but no longer exists

Not sure what the “best” is nowadays. Will have to give them a spin and find out

[jovial mesa]

This issue has been fixed

[opal void]

it is a massive shame

the reason that arcade and console cores are being developed actively and well maintained is that because core developers are being paid handsomely for that (via Patreon etc)

[jolly kraken]

I suspect that can help oil the wheels a little, but there also needs to be the interest of developers as well as just general demand. Plus I don’t know how “complete” any of the computer cores are. I guess some are pretty close to perfect, others maybe less so, whereas it seems most of the “big” console cores seem close to perfect.

The more time I spend with the MiSTer, the more I am motivated to dig in and learn some of the development side of things. It would be nice to give something back - the barrier to entry just seems very high 😄

[summer dragon]

oh wait whaaat? I must be way out of date on that pack because mine definitely doesn’t have that many games. That said, I’m fairly sure atrac did the pack I have too, but it must be v1

[slate maple]

When? That particular issue was fixed a while ago, but then I played the game some more and found a different issue when you go down to a lower level

I added that to the GitHub issue I raised

Has that been fixed as well?

[jovial mesa]

Fixed a while ago. I just couldn't remember where this conversation for Athena I had was lol.

I used
C64_unstable_20240106.rbf

And it worked..

If you could explain olthr issue later on in more detail I can chase it up

[slate maple]

It's on the GitHub issue. I'll see if I can make a video of it

[summer dragon]

One thing that would be great for ao486 would be the ability to remap key combos from keyboard to controller. That would let me have dedicated L/R strafing in Wolfenstein 3D, whereas now I have to settle for just holding down an additional button while moving since I can’t map Alt+Left, etc. to a single controller button

[slate maple]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/C64_MiSTer/issues/162#issuecomment-1879735194

[rapid sail]

Hello, I’m getting a lot of dos games looking like this. I’m using hdmi to vga on a crt with direct_video=1 is there anything i can do to correct this?

Also with the X68000 i'm getting nothing because there is someting with the resolution.

[fast magnet]

Is there a way to apply ini settings to all '_DOS Games' like with [arcade] for example. [dos games] does not work.

[summer dragon]

@fast magnet if you aren’t specifying setnames in your MGL files and just using them the way they come, you would use [ao486] in the ini

[fast magnet]

Talking about 0MHz set, setnames doesn't seem to be set but [ao486] does not work either.

[rapid sail]

is there a way to change resolution with the ao486

For me its booting with 720x400 31.48KHZ 70.1HZ my Commodore 1942 monitor can't handle that.

[summer dragon]

Yeah I figured you were…that seems odd, because by default it just runs everything in that core, so I would think that would work…maybe you have to type it as [AO486]?

[fast magnet]

Yeh have to tinker a bit. And double check it's not something else. But I just ran vanilla ao486 without problems.

[versed tendon]

It's definitely not solid 35 fps, but I'd say it's playable. Similar to the performance on my old Amstrad 486 33MHz DX.

[proper zodiac]

Are people using USB keyboard to play these 0mz dos games?

Also I'm a little confused that all the games have their own config but they have the same name, so they override each other when moving over to the SD card

[summer dragon]

they just did that to make sure no matter which game you download you always have the needed config file

@proper zodiac I’m using a controller for most so far and specifying setname in the MGL files so I can save custom keyboard>controller mappings

[copper slate]

Damn how are people having problems, the 0mhz set literally works without any setup required

[copper slate]

These aren’t arcade games. These are game launch shortcuts. Every single one of those games just use the AO486 core so any configuration settings you do in one will automatically apply to all the others because they use the same core.

So you don’t need to apply any global ini settings in your mister.ini. Just change your settings in the AO486 core.

[copper slate]

Yes, keyboard and mouse is required because it’s a DOS core.

[round carbon]

I'm using a controller to play arena

[copper slate]

Some games do work with joystick but you often need to use a keyboard to get to the controller input options.

[round carbon]

and a mouse for settlers 2

yeah you need a controller to remap the buttons

a keyboard*

but I don't actively play with a keyboard

you might need a keyboard to type in save file names too if you're on a game that doesn't have defaults

it's a shame we can't remap joysticks to two button combos like ctrl a or whatever

[summer dragon]

or just do what I do and remap everything from keyboard>controller

That said, I’m certain there are some a lot of games that are just better with mouse/keyboard.

[copper slate]

oh wow

[summer dragon]

I have found that if you do that, there are some games where you have to go into the game’s Setup program and set the controls to keyboard only

Chex Quest, for example

[fast magnet]

It was an ao486 config issue, 0Mhz defaulted to variable sync which didnt work.

[copper slate]

Nice, glad you figured it out!

[rapid sail]

Finaly found out what this was. I had put menu_pal to on in the ini sittings.

X68000 core still not working because of some strange resolution i think.

[summer dragon]

How do you set the core to 100MHz? I’m trying to specify that in my batch file for fastdoom but it keeps saying it’s running at 90Mhz….that said, the game does ~seem~ to be running a bit smoother to me compared to when 90MHz was specified

[vestal ginkgo]

you have to force it, and could be unstable depending on your chip lottery. I forget the key combo

[summer dragon]

ooh ok

I’ll have to look into that further

[vestal ginkgo]

for now you can force it with my cfg file

follow the VESA 2.0 thread on the forums for the UNIVBE setup if you are going to use the VBR version of fast doom

[summer dragon]

awesome going to give it a try!

I was actually using the version included in the 0MHz pack (which does appear to be Fast Doom)

it seems to run ok for now actually

but i’m definitely going to check that out and see if it makes things better

[vestal ginkgo]

yeah you are probably already pretty close to max, good enough, especially if you compare to what we ACTUALLY ran Doom at back in the day. No one cared about FPS back then