Well, that’s not entirely true 😛
#Computer Cores
vestal ginkgo
Sorry, corrected, kevind was the one person that cared 😉
I was just happy back then that it "ran"
hollow ice
Haha
summer dragon
i wish I could remember “how” it ran on my childhood PC
Hell, my childhood PC was still working even after I graduated high school but my parents got rid of it at some point unfortunately
Wish I still had it because then I could know for sure
hollow ice
I was running it on a 386 20 or 25mhz so I am sure I could approximate what the experience was like.
I do remember going to Walmart and seeing the 486 demo computers that just happened to be running doom and being blown away by how well it ran.
fading roost
I actually cared about it being playable to, I realized that doom on my 386 was a bad experience.
So the first thing I played when I got a faster 486 instead, was doom, which was a better experience. I may not have counted the frames, but being a primary console gamer prior to my 386 (except playing f18 hornet and Prince of persia on my dad's macintosh laptop he sometimes took home from work) I definitely know what smooth gameplay should look like.
Likewise, though I tried them on my 486, I mostly held off on Quake and Quake 2 until got my pentium 2 300mhz, and even then I would always tinker to get higher fps.
jovial mesa
Anyone got 0MHz set to work off external hdd?
mortal hazel
Yeah, easily. Just remember that the VHDs and their structure goes on the HDD, the "_DOS Games" folder and the config folder go on the sd card
tulip atlas
I just tried to update my Top300 and I got an error claiming rsync: not enough space on device. Is there any fix?
strong yoke
... do you actually have enough space on your destination drive? rsync is usually pretty good about getting that sort of thing right
tulip atlas
There’s room on the host drive. I am pretty sure it is complaining about the top300 vhd itself.
summer dragon
@tulip atlas did you customize your VHD? I know I did on mine and then I ran into that same error. I think the only thing you can do is expand the size of the proper partition on that VHD
I ended up just removing my custom added games so I could update the pack and just moved my custom games to a different vhd
woven lava
nope 🤣 isn't the Apple //gs keyboard compatible with ADB? in that case there are ADB->USB adapters you can use
vestal ginkgo
There’s room on the host drive. I am pretty sure it is complaining about the top...
delete the PHANTASM director on E:\games. It has 4gb and the game doesn't work great anyway
so "deltree e:\games\PHANTASM" from dos. Now you can run the update and you should be fine with adding other games, etc
round carbon
let's theoretically say I am dumb
and I have 1 game that I want to add a chd for to the 0hz collection
how do I do that? get a new usb stick, format it to fat32, stick the game on in an appropriate folder, figure it, then.... export the settings somehow?
copper slate
and I have 1 game that I want to add a chd for to the 0hz collection
The always amazing @severe hull made a video covering this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inG-I2YIUEI
round carbon
thankyou!
so should my vhd in this instance be the exact size of the game + a little bit of space for a save file?
round carbon
also other question is, is it best to do this on an external usb rather than trying to make the vhd on your drive and moving it over?
karmic fog
working on an index for the MacPack dsk collection. will likely try and index the pack itself afterward
will make it much easier to find stuff
also makes it a lot easier to identify gaps
ruby hawk
That sounds nice! I enjoy the pack a lot, your efforts are appreciated.
summer dragon
@vestal ginkgo tried using your video tutorial to create my own new fresh VHD. I’m able to get it created and move my files over, but every time I try to boot it on the ao486 core, I get the FATAL: No bootable device error…any idea what I might be doing wrong?
the VHD has Dos on it already
oh maybe i need to boot with floppy and then do the partitions on mister itself
summer dragon
ok i’ll give it a try
dang trying to download the boot floppy from your video, but it seems to be gone from archive 
vestal ginkgo
look at one of the other packs
like 1990-1998 or whatever
they are there for sure
summer dragon
ok
round carbon
okay right so what I've done so far is..
I made a uhd called genemachine, formatted it to fat16 with aoemi partition assistant, copied across my game files from here and demounted
wasn't sure if I was supposed to keep the cd folder on there but I did. maybe not
then I added a new folder to ao486 -> media -> gene machine with the iso from the cd folder and the vhd
then added a new mgl file to boot it
oh sorry
included the iso too
summer dragon
@round carbon so, I tried using that aoemi partition assistant too, but every time I get to the part where I say I want to create a partition, the “apply” button is always greyed out
round carbon
did you assign the mounted vhd a drive letter and fat16 and all the mb before apply?
summer dragon
all within aoemi?
summer dragon
yep
round carbon
and you're definitely operating on that virtual drive?
summer dragon
so initialize the disk first thing right
round carbon
and you definitely didn't format it ini there, you left it blank?
create it but don't initialise it in diskpart
summer dragon
ok so leave it unitialized
summer dragon
so how do i assugn a drive letter without initializing?
round carbon
in aoemi
summer dragon
oh ok
so lets see
so first thing in aoemi is to initialize it?
oh! wait i think maybe that did it
lets see…
round carbon
okay well, it doesn't work out the box, I'm assuming there's some additional setup I need to do
summer dragon
huh weird…so this time the VHD I created with AOEMI doesn’t give errors, but it just hangs on “booting from hard disk…”
summer dragon
ah
round carbon
what was this you were saying?
what config and batch files?
are they in the vhd?
or is there something inside the Game.vhd that contains configs that aren't in our vhds?
summer dragon
yeah so the vhd has a couple files
inside the game directory with the game files, there is rungame.bat. you need to adjust that so it points to your game
hang on a sec
round carbon
gonna mount one of theirs and have a look
we are going to become the lords of vhd
within the next 30 minutes
from "wtf is a vhd" to "yes i am a 9th level wizard of vhd"
summer dragon
i wrote out a tutorial for modifying existing VHDs there
my problem is I can’t create one from scratch and get it to work haha
round carbon
yo the 0mhz collection be having some junk in it
I guess the first one is the one where they put the whole cd in
and the next one is just the necessary files, but they end up copying it over too
okay holy shit so there's a bunch of junk in here
okay so in exodos discworld looks like this
interestingly, lots of it has been stripped out here
there's a dos folder that's been entirely added
a drivers directory too, maybe that's entirely new and not from exodos
summer dragon
the dos folder is just for the dos install in the vhd right?
drivers is in all the 0Mhz vhds
round carbon
no it's in every single one
the dos is in every one too
this mister specific stuff too
summer dragon
right because every vhd has its own dos install
round carbon
and maybe util
I don't know if bootlog is necessary
so it seems to me that every single new vhd should copy and paste all of this stuff
and I'm assuming CONFIG.SYS inside UTIL
has game specific settings
summer dragon
yeah…that’s what I do with all of mine when I’ve made new ones
keep all those files
round carbon
diffing against day of the tentacle
okay those two have identical configs
maybe the drive label matters as well btw, suspecting that
autoexec.umb is also the same
right okay then day of the tentacle contains:
a hardware ini
and rungame.bat which specifies the mhz
and it seems like the iso is where the entire game runs
whereas discworld has a bunch of files
but rungame.bat disc.bat and config.bat are there
no hardware ini
oh but dig.ini
lots of inis
rungame.bat does the same initial command but doesn't need to go to a command and /R (probably because it isn't booting off the disc?)
examining run.bat in the discworld exodos vs the game I want, they both have similar results
one calls GENE one calls DISC
which is a bat
in the 0mhz collection, there is no run.bat just a rungame
summer dragon
ooooh could this mean that we can now specify if it should use the same directory as the main core if a setname is specified? that would mean I shouldn’t need to make symlinks anymore for certain vhds to use certain cfg files 😍
round carbon
that would be nice
right okay they also copy the soundblaster ini into the main folder
the thing I'm not clear on though is..
how does it know it's DISCWLD.CD
and DOTT.CD
oh those are in the base folder
now going to quickly inspect game.vhd
okay that's confusing, it seems like lots of game specific hacks
like doom
folder 16 is command and conquer for instance
has a whole bunch of stuff in there
that is worrying
okay so question 1, does deleting the big discworld file break anything, the answer is no so everyone should do that
now let's see if my vhd works
nope still booting from hard disk lol, rip
fleet cave
ooooh could this mean that we can now specify if it should use the same director...
that's exactly what it is. if you set same_dir, it will use /media/fat/games/ao486 instead of /media/fat/games/SETNAME
all the configs in /media/fat/configs/ will still be named like the setname
summer dragon
@fleet cave niiice! How would you set same_dir? i.e. the syntax
also, is it smart enough to use usb0 if that’s where your files are?
round carbon
me making a vhd
okay well, it's definitely my vhd
it doesn't appear to be a quirk with game.vhd
oh one really interesting factoid is that that discworld.old file seems to be the key to the puzzle because that lacks all the dos stuff so I can see the difference
ooh they've added files
so yeah rungame.bat is new..
okay that's the only difference
so otherwise it's entirely just these
and none of those are config files. honestly struggling to discern how it knows to boot
is it that you have to have executed it before and it will write something to one of these binaries?
gonna just get the hashes of every file in here until I find out
identical dos folders
identical drivers
mister folders
bootlogs are different
okay otherwise yeah, right, between zork and discworld the entire contents of all the folders are identical except for bootlog.prv and bootlog.txt which are just blank for me in zork because I haven't booted them
the vhd name appears unimportant
drive label unsure
ah
okay nothing I tried worked. if anyone is able to help it would be really appreciated, here's what I did: I created a vhd, formatted it to fat16, gave it enough size, mounted it
I copied all these folders over from the other vhds in the 0mhz collection
summer dragon
i think you’re still missing a bunch of other files?
round carbon
this is all that's in the other folders for zork, discworld and day of the tentacle
white siren
wondering if there's like a clean vhd for 0mhz dos only
summer dragon
@round carbon
round carbon
oh are these hidden files in windows or something?
summer dragon
every one of the 0MHz VHDs also has IO.sys, MSDOS.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, COMMAND,COm, CONFIG.SYS
white siren
probably hidden yeah
autoexec.bat is basically what makes the games run at mount after dos boots
round carbon
fast kraken
is the creator of 0mhz on here?
summer dragon
my Zork folder looks like this:
round carbon
is it just windows being annoying?
round carbon
it's weird because my zork is working too
like all these things are working, I just can't see those files when I mount
round carbon
even in command prompt
let me try elevated powershell
oh
yes they are there
fast kraken
just beware it'll unhide the same files on your actual c: drive and you can really f up things editing them
white siren
yeah that's an explorer quirk i guess
fast kraken
if elevated powershell can see them i'd probably just use that to copy them over
copper slate
@round carbon you’re my hope for a Big Red Racing vhd
white siren
round carbon
so yep it's autoexec.bat
I dunno if the other stuff is important too
but let's take them anyway for shits and giggs
white siren
well you need everything for a base DOS install and then whatever files the game needs
fast kraken
do 0mhz not have some template images?
fast kraken
you're ment to build them with a tool or something aren't you?
they aren't hand made they're xml defined or something
white siren
there's nothing on the github except some basic scripts to package a zip
white siren
im learning from this... but i dunno i want to bother going through the work
like a templated vhd and mgl would be nice
round carbon
if this works then it's actually not that much work at all, it just took a while to figure it out
moment of truth
white siren
its work to setup the symlinks per vhd on the mister side
and then go into each game and configure them / change them to mt32 etc
round carbon
wait I have to make symlinks?
white siren
if you want to
round carbon
okay so... this did not work lol
fleet cave
what do you need symlinks for?
round carbon
I'm going to go eat but here is what I did:
white siren
if you want setgame per MGL without making a ton of extra folders
fleet cave
oh, Sorg just fixed that today
fleet cave
<setname same_dir="1">whatever</setname>
white siren
there's too much voodoo in MGL files lol
it doesn't help that i come back to mister like every few months
fleet cave
uses /media/fat/games/ao486 instead of 'whatever'
white siren
yeah i wonder if that works with cifs mounts
either way it took me long enough to get top300 mostly working
and mymenu
round carbon
- made a dosgame and set the paths to the vhd and the iso of my game
- copied the iso of my game to the media path along with the vhd I made by:
- creating a new vhd, formatting to fat 16
- copying over all the dos/drivers/mister/util/autoexec/bootlog/command/config/drvspace/io/msdos files and folders from the 0mhz ones
- copying over my game's main folder from the exodos collection
- setting that folder name in autoexec
- copying the ini file from the soundblaster folder and overwriting the one in base
- deleting the mt32 sb16 and sc55 folders
- deleting run.bat
- adding rungame.bat which turns echo off, sets the clock speed and runs the game's exe
- deleting cd folder (from which I extracted the iso which now lives in the core folder)
^ that's what I did and it's still stuck on "Booting from Hard Disk..."
summer dragon
<setname same_dir="1">whatever</setname>
what does the "1" specify?
copper slate
means that attribute is set to true
summer dragon
d'oh! I shoulda known that!
@round carbon yeah, when I used your exact method I get the exact same result....maybe it could be fixed by doing what Flynn suggested earlier and booting from a self-booting floppy and then running sys C:
white siren
the vhd might not be bootable yeah
round carbon
but then.. I would have to copy a floppy
and that's illegal
maybe if I start from one of their vhds and modify, did you try that grandma?
white siren
flynns video basically goes and installs dos from within a boot disk
paritions the C: and then formats it
summer dragon
maybe if I start from one of their vhds and modify, did you try that grandma?
yeah i’ve been doing that succesfully since day one haha
it’s this point where I wanted to take a crack at creating my own VHDs where I’m failing
if I modify an existing one from the collection, it works for me no problem. I’ve added several games
copper slate
ok I figured out the new setname parameter
<setname same_dir="1">NewName</setname>
NewName- enter the name of the new config you want it to be named.
By using same_dir=1 you are applying an attribute to setname that says "use the core's default directory" for games. No need to create a new games folder and have symlinks pointing to the old core folder or duplicating files.
Here is an example of where I use MGL to launch the Atari Lync game "Klax" but to use a new config I created just for vertically oriented games:
summer dragon
sweeet same_dir seems to work fine…no more symlinks for per-VHD config files!
white siren
yeah that new changes makes 0mhz more appealing to me
round carbon
because you can set up per-game settings in there?
summer dragon
you could before, it’s just a bit less hassle now
round carbon
I think there is also an advantage now that gba and gba2p could use the same roms folder?
or does that still need a symlink
summer dragon
oh yeah it could use the same roms folder now yep
round carbon
so how would one configure that?
summer dragon
just make an mgl that launches the GBA2P core that specifies setname samedir
so in your mgl, you’d just add something like :
<setname same_dir="1">GBA2P</setname>
round carbon
right okay
oh lol tried to make a new vhd off a copy
rip
so close
I wonder if I can boost up the megs
oh not without reformatting
summer dragon
yep you just need to find an existing VHD in the 0MHz collection that’s big enough for the game you’re trying to add
But yeah, that was where I wanted to make my own VHD because the next biggest pre-existing VHD might be bigger than what you need for that game
vestal ginkgo
^ that's what I did and it's still stuck on "Booting from Hard Disk..."
your MBR isn't right, didn't SYS the VHD, or you are missing Those hidden files like IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS etc
this is why I always formatted the VHD FROM dos and then brought it back over to windows to do all the copy crap
round carbon
I didi copy over io.sys and msdos.sys but maybe something went wrong or I missed a step
vestal ginkgo
so new vhd from windows, then back over to mister AO486 dos in like the 3rd VHD slot, boot DOS from a known good VHD, FDISK that new VHD, format that new VHD, then back over to windows and copy whatever you want
round carbon
I didnt sys the vhd indeed
vestal ginkgo
pain in the butt but it is a for sure way for it to work
round carbon
is it possible to shrink or expand a working vhd?
vestal ginkgo
well, I don't or when I do I just create a new VHD and xcopy everything to the new one
memaker I think made a python script that expands
round carbon
and when you do that the mbr works for you?
round carbon
so theoretically to avoid the dos step I could just start from a very large vhd that I know works, confgure it, then once it's done and tested and working, make a new one of the correct size and run a python script that xcopies and does fdisk /MBR and then theoretically that would work?
vestal ginkgo
round carbon
if there's any way to avoid constantly going between mister dos and windows that would be a godsend
vestal ginkgo
memmakers scripts, one is a VHD
vestal ginkgo
if there's any way to avoid constantly going between mister dos and windows that...
I'm sure someone did it, I am just lazy
I mean you could use DOSBOX or PCEM/86Box and do the same thing
on the windows box
round carbon
I don't think you're that lazy considering you made your mega collections haha
vestal ginkgo
known good dos environment (anywhere), fdisk, and format is a tried and true way
round carbon
alright firist of all I'm going to see if I can modify this space quest 1 vhd and get it working at all
vestal ginkgo
Windows 10/11 and FAT/FAT32 VHDs always were weird for me. And then FreeDOS adds another complexity to the way it handles the mbr
how big is it?
cold crane
😵💫
vestal ginkgo
lol
round carbon
the game I'm doing is smallish, oh actually sorry aladdin I want to work off
12mb aladdin is
vestal ginkgo
try the mbr trick first and see if that gets it to boot. I can help in a couple of hours
round carbon
wait so just grab my theoretically working vhd and do fdisk /fixmbr in cmd?
/MBR rather
vestal ginkgo
so theoretically to avoid the dos step I could just start from a very large vhd ...
could simply be something up with the files setup and a simple "SYS D:" or whatever drive could fix it
boot my main DOS 98.VHD in slot one, yours in slot 2, drop to C:\ type SYS D: then put your vhd in the primary slot and see if it boots
though that might be the wrong dos for what 0mhz is using
you could make sure sys.com is on their image, boot their image in the main slot, then run sys from their image
vestal ginkgo
wait so just grab my theoretically working vhd and do fdisk /fixmbr in cmd?
but yes, this could fix it as well. it should just go back to the prompt with no response. but I think the command is fdisk /MBR
vestal ginkgo
FDISK /MBR [MS-DOS 6.00 and above ONLY]
FDISK /MBR recreates the boot sector of the first (bootable) hard disk overwriting it with a fresh copy, by writing a new Master Boot Record (MBR) based on existent disk structure, without altering the partition table information.
Can be used to repair a damaged/corrupted MBR (i.e. by a virus).
FYI:
Official MSKB info.
Master Boot Records.
Partition Table, MBR + Drive Overlays.
WARNING: Writing the master boot record to the hard disk in this manner can render certain hard disks partitioned with SpeedStor unusable! It can also cause problems for some dual-boot programs (including Windows 95) or for disks with more than 4 partitions!
DEFINITION of MBR:
During the bootup sequence, at the end of the ROM BIOS bootstrap routine, the BIOS will read and execute the first physical sector of the first available floppy or hard drive on the system. This sector is called the Master Boot Record (MBR), or Master Boot Block (MBB), or Partition Table.
A small program is stored at the beginning of this sector and the partition table is stored at the end of this sector. This program uses the available partition information to determine which partition is bootable (usually the first primary DOS/WIN partition) and attempts to boot from it.
NOTE: The largest partition MS-DOS beginning with release 5.00 and up to Windows 95a OSR1 versions of FDISK can create/recognize is 2 GB (GigaBytes).
The 2 GB partition limit has been overcome by Microsoft (FINALLY!), beginning with Windows 95B OSR 2.0. Named the FAT32 file system, it supports partitions/drives up to 2 TB (TeraBytes).
Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003 have their own 32-bit protected file system called NTFS, INCOMPATIBLE with FAT32 or FAT16!
vestal ginkgo
I'm in diskpart now and don't see any fdisk
fdisk in dos, as in over on the mister in ao486 with a good vhd booted
round carbon
I am very good at c# and C++ with almost no knowledge of python but I might be able to decipher it
vestal ginkgo
he used diskpart
round carbon
okay in the mean time in the interest of not connecting a keyboard to my mister let's see if aladdin works haha
very strange that the vhd is not the same size as its mounted size
like a vhd that has 8.9mb of space uses a whole 12mb on disk
seems like it's always about 3-4mb diff, dunno if it scales by size
one thing that's confusing about this exact game is.. in the original run.bat
it calls gene at the end
gene.bat does a bunch of funky stuff
I dunno if I have to do all that too
I guess in rungame I could just call gene
or maybe I have to do @call GENE if it's a bat? I'm not very familiar with dos, it's been about 25 years and I was a small child haha
sadly it doesn't help that I'm essentially a noob at dos while trying to do all this stuff
okay interesting, this time I got device driver not found: MSCD001. no valid cdrom device drivers selected
my DRIVERS folder has oakcdrom.sys and vide-cdd.sys in there
it definitely did run autoexec because it cd'd into genem
yeah okay so it also did run the batch file just the batch file threw a dos/4GW error (2001): exception 08h (double fault) at 70:00000e64 which is nice
ah running dos4gw vic32 did something
white siren
don't let me stop what you're trying to do, but it does seem like you're trying to merge two different things to get it to work like 0mhz setups work
round carbon
all I've done is steal a vhd from 0mhz, replaced the directory and the bat commands
with the game I want
this is on the cusp of working too once I figure out the magic dos words
white siren
yeah but top300 has like it's own install of DOS + drivers and other utilities that 0mhz might not
round carbon
ah so it might want drivers that don't exist
well, I have provided everything it came with
white siren
the whole dos4gvm stuff requires a restart too i think
round carbon
do you mean this dos4gw thing might be non original?
ah
this is like external magic
maybe I should just be running vic32 then?
white siren
like flynns launcher basically sets those flags and an autoexec and reboots
round carbon
interesting
white siren
well it uses TDL
round carbon
riiight okay
so this thing
I don't know what tdl is feel free to handle me with idiot gloves
white siren
mymenu does other things
TDL is total dos launcher
TDL does all the weird stuff like setting memory limits and folder paths
round carbon
I see, maybe I don't need all that then
white siren
here's what i would do
round carbon
one thing I do need to overcome is on boot the game says "please ensure the game cd is present in your cd rom drive, to set your drive letter use the command line option /d<letter> e.g. /dD
white siren
take a 0mhz vhd, strip out original game and get rid of the autoexec
round carbon
I don't know what the .iso would've mounted to
white siren
add your stuff to it
and then try to boot it from within dos with a keyboard on your mister
round carbon
yeah I will do that once I figure out what exactly I should be booting
yeah I am doing that now
this is where I'm at
my iso is in ide 1-0
but I don't know what drive letter it is
it's not D, I think that's Games.vhd
yeah no idea which drive the cd is at all, it's not E
white siren
im downloading a 0mhz game with an iso to see
white siren
the cdrom drivers probably arent installed in dos
round carbon
that would explain a lot. maybe it's that I need to modify a vhd that uses a disc
I modified star control
there are ones I know definitely have cd drivers but they are large
maybe I can just install the drivers myself from the drivers folder?
white siren
this non 0mhz tetris build had this autoexec
this looks a lot like a modified top 300
white siren
whats your mgl look like
round carbon
I can't get that without taking the sd card out of the mister but it was just modified from one of those so like.. wait
round carbon
white siren
okay that all looks right
round carbon
I did it like this but replaced discworld for my vhd and iso
round carbon
that definitely worked too, if you look at the earlier screenshot it mounted them
white siren
i thought
round carbon
d is definitely game.vhd
white siren
unmount it and reboot dos
round carbon
uh actually I don't know how to mount nothing
round carbon
didn't work, but also keep in mind every other game in 0mhz works like this
like they all have them mounted in that position
white siren
go to ide 1-0 and open it as if you have to mount something
round carbon
including discworld which I built my things off
white siren
then hit backspace
round carbon
okay unmounted
white siren
then reboot
round carbon
rrestarting
still starts with "device driver not found mscd001"
no valid cdrom device drivers selected
can I not go to drivers and install oakcdrom
like the root of my folder has DRIVERS/OAKCDROM and VIDECDD
white siren
i would have thought it would have done that for you
round carbon
I would also have thought that, it definitely does in others
white siren
in your config.sys
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF 8192 FRAME=D000 D=256 I=C800-CDFF X=CE00-CFFF I=D000-EFFF
BUFFERS=20,0
FILES=30
DOS=HIGH,UMB
LASTDRIVE=Z
FCBS=4,0
DEVICEHIGH /L:2,11264 =C:\DRIVERS\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:MSCD001
you can type ` three times
round carbon
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF 8192 FRAME=D000 D=256 I=C800-CDFF X=CE00-CFFF I=D000-EFFF
BUFFERS=20,0
FILES=30
DOS=HIGH,UMB
LASTDRIVE=Z
FCBS=4,0
REM DEVICEHIGH /L:2,11264 =C:\DRIVERS\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:MSCD001```yeah weird
round carbon
yeah that last line does appear to want to do that
vide-cdd.sys I am assuming is the cd driver
so what, MSCD001 is supposed to exist in vibe-cdd.sys?
white siren
yeah that should install the cd driver and register MSCD001 as the name
then MSCDEX.EXE mounts that device as D:\
round carbon
it's weird, I don't get an error when I minally type the rem ocmmand
white siren
the error isn't from the REM command but hte other one
round carbon
the mscdex?
white siren
okay in your config.sys
white siren
remove the REM that's in front of your DEVICEHIGH
white siren
yeah do that and reboot
round carbon
thanks for your help
you know
I should've fucking known lol
notepad2 literally commented out the rems
I just thought "oh it probably doesn't understand dos"
sorry I ever doubted you notepad2
vestal ginkgo
REM is really rem in those files
white siren
🙂
round carbon
what does rem even mean
white siren
remark
vestal ginkgo
remark
round carbon
ah haha
round carbon
are you sure? I am still x to doubtful about that
white siren
pretty certain if both are mounted to D:
round carbon
maybe the cd will just boot it off
white siren
#1047332497492553799 message
round carbon
btw
<rbf>_computer/ao486</rbf>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="2" path="media/gene machine/GeneMachine.vhd"/>
<file delay="0" type="s" index="4" path="media/discworld/thegenemachine.iso"/>
<reset delay="1"/>
</mistergamedescription>
that's the mgl
white siren
gotcha
vestal ginkgo
where did game.vhd come from in your screenshot though?
have you all moved past that?
white siren
i got him to unmount it
vestal ginkgo
ahh ok
white siren
before troubleshooting MSCDEX.EXE not working
vestal ginkgo
he's close
white siren
looks like it
vestal ginkgo
yuuuup
round carbon
what do people use, filezilla?
vestal ginkgo
yeah or just network sharing, samba
round carbon
okay so here, D is still the game thing but I am allowed to switch to E: now
though it does say not ready reading drive E: when I try, but it is an iso so.. let's see what happens when I vic32
fleet cave
use scp or something. but if you insist on using filezilla, you gotta change that transfer type setting off of 'auto'. it'll eventually cost you a bunch of time
round carbon
please ensure that the game cd is present
round carbon
yeah maybe this is the drive conflict then
it's weird though because E: definitely works
like I am in E:
I just can't type dir
round carbon
it says not ready reading drive e, abort retry fail
D: is game.vhd
which.. I think came with 0mhz??
vestal ginkgo
get rid of that game.vhd
round carbon
okay restarting
vestal ginkgo
select it in the mister menu it will take you to the listing to mount something else, then hold backspace
round carbon
dir still doesn't work in D
yeah I did that
volume in drive D has no label
this is the iso
vestal ginkgo
mount the iso manually in the menu
round carbon
it is
vestal ginkgo
without rebooting, and try browsing again
round carbon
but it's in ide 1-0
vestal ginkgo
if you put flynnsbitisawesome.iso on the MGL it will take it, and it will "look" fine
round carbon
supposedly
vestal ginkgo
but never find the file and never mount
vestal ginkgo
so find it manually, select it in the menu, make sure you have IDE 1-0 set to hotswap
then try DIR
round carbon
worked
vestal ginkgo
and dir worked
vestal ginkgo
yeah or case sensitive
round carbon
path*
vestal ginkgo
path or case
round carbon
oh okay so vic32 booted but iti says unable to store game.. but I booted from D... wait
okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
vestal ginkgo
that looks promising
round carbon
okay so now I need to fix that path and change rungame to run vic32
fuck yesssss thankyou gang I love you all
vestal ginkgo
success feels good
round carbon
god damn that should not have taken me 4 hours I'm so bad at dos
vestal ginkgo
imagine being 10 years old staring at a dos prompt for the first time. WTF is this, I just want to play a game
round carbon
but I might be good enough to make vhds now. I guess the next step though is making vhds of performant size instead of modifying existing ones
well I did do this when I was like 3 but I was like a sponge, my brother told me what to do and I just did it. I didn't retain any of it into adulthood except not to deltree
vestal ginkgo
and if you figure out the process where you don't need to drop over to dos to get the disk MBR and FAT setup right, share here
I'm interested
round carbon
well, I didn't have to drop over to dos here but I had no control over the size
but.. presumably..... can't aoemi partition manager expand a partition? I know paragon partition manager 9 could back in the day
vestal ginkgo
if it can handle expanding FAT, yeah
round carbon
couldn't I just build off the smallest one and expand the vhd size and then expand the partition size?
shrinking would obviously be preferable
but that sounds less possible
fleet cave
imagine the catastrophic failure when your sdcard filled up
vestal ginkgo
then all this BS could go away
VHDs on an SD card? you crazy. 😉
but that's fair
I would just hide on discord "offline" again
fleet cave
would also require someone to write real vhd support in main. it's not exactly...correct as is
round carbon
you can't imagine the jealousy my brother is going to have when I show him the mister and it can play the gene machine without dicking around in a vm
vestal ginkgo
would also require someone to write real vhd support in main. it's not exactly.....
I'm really surprised it works as well as it does, and then the way we did all the update scripts mounting and unmounting them through the loop device.
my big mistake was not leaving enough head room in the partition size of the second vhd. ahh well.
will this "unmount" from the MGL? <file delay="0" type="s" index="3" path=""/>
I assume it does and if so, all these 0mhz ones should be doing that
round carbon
question, the cd audio in this game sounds a bit like it's clipping or struggling to read at the right rate
what would one normally do to fiddle with that
the midi sounds great
vestal ginkgo
could be 100 things
round carbon
or maybe clipping is the wrong word, it sounds like there's noise simultaneously with all the audio. crackling
vestal ginkgo
try playing the cd audio using a player outside of the game, could be sdcard speed, could be core is too slow
round carbon
dunno where I'd find a player outside of the amiga core haha which I don't know is able to mount isos
vestal ginkgo
likee sound blasters cd player they had
vestal ginkgo
round carbon
setsound.exe
oh it basically just lets me choose creative labs sound blaster, roldna rap 10, media vision pro audio spectrum, gravis ultrasound, new media coropration wavejammer, ensoniq soundscape, microsoft windows sound system, ess technology es688
I am assuming this core only supports sound blaster for cd audio
vestal ginkgo
setsound is for the game audio
but the core supports CMS, SB, SBPro, SB16 (ish), MT-32, SC,
I think thats it
round carbon
well, it says MIDI music and Digital audio, I thought that was the cd
vestal ginkgo
oh and CD audio
fleet cave
I can't remember if the cd audio mixer got implemented. I think it did
fast kraken
make sure whatever soundcard you set for digital audio matches whatever you have set in the core osd
round carbon
fm mode.. c/ms.. stereo mix.. yeah I dunno
fleet cave
cd audio in that era was literally just the cdrom playing the cd and you routing the audio somewhere
if you were fancy you routed the audio to the soundcard with a special connector
round carbon
where does one set the audio hardware in the core? like I see audio & video but I don't see like a "sound blaster/mt32" or whatever type option
fleet cave
ah yeah, the sb cd audio mixer did get implemented
round carbon
my audio in the options is set to Sound Blaster or AWE32
fast kraken
been forever since i've fired up ao486, flynn do you remember what i'm talking about? somewhere you can set the SB type right?
oh wait its called OPL2/OPL3 right
vestal ginkgo
your getting into a "taste" era depending on the game. The only real gotcha is some games won't play SB if CMS is enabled, and then SB=OPL2 and SBPro/16=OPL3
fast kraken
yes thanks
vestal ginkgo
it says OPL2 or 3 in the mister side
round carbon
my fm mode is opl3
vestal ginkgo
yeah you can't use AWE32 in the core at all, don't bother with that option
maybe just pick Sound Blaster and be happy 😄
fast kraken
the option might literally be called "soundblaster or awe32"
vestal ginkgo
but CD "should" work fine for a game like that
fast kraken
old pc games 🙄
round carbon
well, that's the only option
fleet cave
and in this core changing the sound card type doesn't really change anything about cd audio
vestal ginkgo
can you just snap a pic real quick of the options
round carbon
vestal ginkgo
its the top one
fast kraken
loads of stuff can cause crackly audio, core too fast, core too slow, memory manager, wrong memory manager
round carbon
fast kraken
absolute mystery (discworld2)
round carbon
I could try putting the core slower
fast kraken
try OPL3
vestal ginkgo
change FM mode to OL3,
fleet cave
although if it's just cd audio that is odd
vestal ginkgo
but like Zakk said, probably not the cd problem
vestal ginkgo
I'm back to playing the audio cd outside of the game and see if it still does it, would rule out core, sdcard speed, crap like that
round carbon
omg!!!
fast kraken
if it even is redbook audio
vestal ginkgo
if it doesn't crackle then something with the combo of game+sb+ cdaudio
round carbon
opl2 works!!!
fast kraken
you can put that in your custom .cfg for that game then
round carbon
whereabouts does that go?
fast kraken
if you're alredy launching from an mgl with a setname its already done it
vestal ginkgo
I dont think it has CDAudio
round carbon
wait should I click save settings then?
fast kraken
yeah
round carbon
and that won't fuck up the whole ao486 core?
vestal ginkgo
Sound Devices Supported:
Adlib Adlib Gold Ensoniq Soundscape ESS AudioDrive General MIDI Generic MPU-401 MIDI devices Gravis Ultrasound / ACE Microsoft Sound System PC Speaker Pro Audio Spectrum Roland MT-32 (and LAPC-I) Roland RAP-10 Roland Sound Canvas Sound Blaster Sound Blaster 16 Sound Blaster AWE32 Sound Blaster Pro Sound Galaxy NX Pro 16 Tandy / PCjr Thunderboard WaveJammer (PCMCIA)
no, when you launch an mgl that mgl has all its own settings
vestal ginkgo
and that won't fuck up the whole ao486 core?
did you use a new setname?
fast kraken
if you used a new setname yeah
fast kraken
no thats always been the case
fast kraken
add this:
<setname>Gene Machine, The</setname>
round carbon
underneath reset delay?
fast kraken
anywhere xml isn't really ordered
fast kraken
looks like people usually put it under rbf tho
fleet cave
you kids and your punctuated and having spaces setnames
fast kraken
i did wonder if putting a coma in it was brave
vestal ginkgo
you kids and your punctuated and having spaces setnames
Sam Altman = Zakk
round carbon
this is such a rare game, no one's played it and it's excellent. had no other ports. company went bankrupt, it's basically vapourware
fleet cave
I wonder how that looks in the osd, lol
fast kraken
what genre is it?
round carbon
point and click adventure
fast kraken
oh nice i like those
round carbon
the best aged genre
fast kraken
you going to contribute this to 0mhz?
round carbon
yeaeh it's like monkey island tier, it's fantastic
sure
I mean it's bigger than it needs to be by a little, I don't know if I can figure out how to shrink it
I am wasting 2.87mb
fast kraken
i'll look forward to checking it out 🙂
fast kraken
2.87MB is fine "wastage" i always put a 10% pad on everything at the absolute minimum for saves
also there's a minimum size vhds can't be smaller than anyway
round carbon
also in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad because the iso is much, much larger
vestal ginkgo
wow, I randomly clicked in the worst/best spot of the game it seems.
unless it's all like that
fast kraken
this is neat flynn, it sounds like MGLs have solved a lot of the issues we ran into when we tried to do per-game vhds
round carbon
no, the whole game is that good, you just clicked to an absolutely average spot of the game
vestal ginkgo
yeah, agreed. And having the ability to save per dos game controller configs and key remappings.
round carbon
if you click randomly you will probably get a laugh
fast kraken
is it svga?
fast kraken
yeah, agreed. And having the ability to save per dos game controller configs an...
finally! they can do proper gamepad support for tons of games
should be awesome
fast kraken
is he? if its already working
round carbon
it also autosaves in case it crashes you can run REPLAY and it will fetch where you were
vestal ginkgo
well is it?
round carbon
I have no idea if it is or isn't working, looks great to me
vestal ginkgo
I don't think super vga would run in the core without UNIVBE
fast kraken
is mister reporting 640x480 out on the osd?
round carbon
I played on a shitty old computer though so like.. my standards aren't high
I will check in a sec, I'm just fixing the autoexec a sec
vestal ginkgo
something for version 2 of your vhd anyway, no big deal if it isn't setup
all the hard work is done if it does need it
fast kraken
maybe the 0mhz image he started from had vbe done already somehow
round carbon
by everyone who told me what to do haha
vestal ginkgo
could have yeah!
fast kraken
readme makes it sound svga only
round carbon
I built off Star Control
well okay so here's the thing about my cd drive, on my thing it was mounting to E: because GAME.vhd was D
and I have to specify drive
so I'm thinking to do VIC32 /dE
vestal ginkgo
for reference, https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=46620#p46620 but if it's working I guess maybe the ET implementation has the video mode without the Linear Frame Buffer and the game doesn't need it. That's cool.
round carbon
which would mount E, in rungame.bat
also btw, what's the maximum hz
because it was running great at max
is that 90hz
round carbon
I just in the osd set it to max (unstable)
vestal ginkgo
you can leave the CD like that unless the 0mhz team have a standard preference on disc letter
round carbon
but in rungame.bat it was using 90
vestal ginkgo
or they can just fix it when you submit it, probably a 10 second change for that team doing all those games
fast kraken
some games panic if the cdrom drive isn't exactly D:
vestal ginkgo
hence my stupid stub disk
round carbon
where would I also add a .cfg for this setname to zip up with it so it has the right setting for people?
vestal ginkgo
anyways, looks like @round carbon has a process now
fast kraken
mister will make the cfg for you now you have a setname
round carbon
yeah although it does involve guesstimating off the mhz collection until I get one of a similar size
fast kraken
it'll be in \mister\sdcard\config
round carbon
sure but I'd like to also package the cfg
cool
okay let's see if this works
oh wait I didn't change the vhd
oh
that config broke everythingi
the setname
it says Missing Directory: Gene Machine, The
round carbon
it just says "No Files!!"
vestal ginkgo
games/ao486/blah
round carbon
yeah
vestal ginkgo
where did you put the vhd
white siren
update core, add the new flag with setname lol
round carbon
getting dangerously close to downloading that ftp software as a sidequest
vestal ginkgo
update core, add the new flag with setname lol
ha ha, todays change
round carbon
oh yeah I haven't done updateall today haha
white siren
is that change not out yet?
vestal ginkgo
todays change technically will fix your problem, or work around it, but you should fix the directory name and set name to exactly match
vestal ginkgo
is that change not out yet?
I think it's still sitting in unstable
white siren
ah yeah
okay
without that new build you'd have to make a new dir for each setname
so it can write the config in there
but you'd also have to have a copy of the boot roms
vestal ginkgo
and copy... yeah
lots of bios files
that was a good change today
uggh, MGLs are interesting, love/hate
round carbon
still missing directory gene machine
update all? haha
like I'm unable to mount any images because it can't find the directory
white siren
just change the mgl back and remove that setname flag for now
vestal ginkgo
yeah, you are in bleeding edge territory. this will be fixed pretty quickly, but if you save it is going to be global to the ao486 core for now. that's not a big deal unless you are making a bunch of controller changes that are specific to that game
(without setname)
it's fine
vestal ginkgo
I expect it's just working like Freddo said
but I swear VBE Vesa 2 resolutions required a utility called UNIVBE to be running. But that could have just been for the buffer to work and some more resolutions. be thankful it is working because that is another rabbit hole.
thinking through it, that must have been the case because there are plenty of 640x480 games in Top 300. 7th Guest, Scorched Earth, etc
Scorched goes up to 1024x768 which is kind of fun on the core
round carbon
okay zipping this up
where should I put it?
does someone want to archive.org it or something?
vestal ginkgo
no clue how 0mhz is handling additions
round carbon
yeah because it's not even like they're on a repo, they're just on a random archive.org page
is anyone around to test whether it works on their mister just so I didn't make a mistake?
vestal ginkgo
ping limi or emubastard on the forum https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=7818. I'm not home yet so can't test
round carbon
not sure I can pm on a new account
says "contact emubastard" and then nothing
same for limi
I'm going to update all and see if I can get that other magic working
maybe I will do toonstruck next
vestal ginkgo
FastDoom got an update too, fun
round carbon
okay I did update all, on 240110 now
os v231108
wait are those not up to date? I would have thought it would be 240326
summer dragon
it says Missing Directory: Gene Machine, The
Right now you need to use unstable MiSTer main, but inside your MGL, you’d specify setname like so:
<setname same_dir="1">MyGame</setname>
that will let you use a custom config without having to make a folder matching the set name
round carbon
yeah that's what I triied and it broke everything on the prev core
summer dragon
probably because you didn’t have unstable main?
I just tried it earlier and it worked
round carbon
indeed
well, I will try that in a sec, first I want to make HUGO'S HOUSE OF HORRORS
to reinforce what I learnt
855KB
sounds like a job for oregon trail.zip
oregon trail and space quest 1 have identical sized vhds
HMMMM
to the byte
oh they're exactly 8mb that's why, okay I was calling shenanigans but that makes sense
hollow ice
Oh man, Hugo. It is surprising to me how many people played that series
round carbon
haha
what I really want is a dos demake of Peasant's Quest
right okay let's see if hugo works first time
tulip atlas
delete the PHANTASM director on E:\games. It has 4gb and the game doesn't work ...
Should I run the Pre-release update script, or the normal release one?
vestal ginkgo
normal. they are the same now
tulip atlas
Sweet, thanks. Deleting PHANTASM right now.
round carbon
if this works, I reckon I could write a script that would automate all of this
could probably scrape run.bat for exe names and shove that into rungame.bat
or in absence of run.bat grab the first exe that isn't from a forbidden namelist or something
vestal ginkgo
my Top 300 was stuck in IDE 0-1 which we are back to that REALLY screwing up all this 0mhz stuff
need to test an idea.
round carbon
1-1 it lolz
white siren
hugo was a big shareware game
round carbon
okay latest core got too
white siren
im debating if i want to switch off top 300 for 0mhz ... hmm
round carbon
okay someone remind me again the simplest way to ftp into mister from windows?
white siren
the only dos game i really want to play is like blockout
find y our mister's ip address
download winscp or filezilla
round carbon
although filezilla does annoy me tbh, I don't like the ui
feels very winrar
does annoying things
white siren
the default password is "1"
round carbon
hugo worked first time
just havin some hugo fun
god I love dos
this is actually just the best core isn't it
everyone is so hyped over n64 and psx and saturn but it's always been the ao486
we just need to give it the life it deserves
that's two games down
were Dogz and Catz and Oddballz dos games or windows
windows 3.x apparently
I'm thinking of doing.. liero.. toonstruck.. word rescue.. constructor.. destruction derby 2.. dungeon keeper.. gobliins.. chip's challenge.. incredible machine..
word rescue time, obviously the top requested game in this list
ms dos 5 or higher and an ao486
it's max and the machines time
MAX AND THE MACHINES
you all thought you were teaching me how to make 0mhz suggestions so I could bring cool games like dungeon keeper to the list
what you didn't realise is I'm about to flood mister with UK edutainment games from the 90s
freddie fish here we come
kid's typing by sierra
vestal ginkgo
you have the drive set to E, but if you don't have a disk mounted in IDE 0-1 it will be D:/ so what I would suggest is clearing IDE 0-1 using the mgl file but I don't know the correct syntax
doing it like this does "work" but it isn't quite right
round carbon
ah and then using D
vestal ginkgo
I dont think so, I looked through them on archive and didn't see that one
round carbon
so as it is it will conflict with the config potentially
if anyone can give me the magic words to clear the mount I can switch E to D
vestal ginkgo
right, if people have saved the cfg with Top 300 in IDE 0-1, which I expect a lot have
about 70K downloads and 39K runs of the update script 👀
round carbon
I wonder how many misters are out there, do we have stats on update alls?
vestal ginkgo
leaving it like "" does work but there has to be a better way as it doesn't look the same as an unmounted disk
let me look at the mgl docs
round carbon
oh my hugo core was accidentally much larger than it needed to be too
I assumed oregon trail was small but it's actually like 8mb and hugo is like 1mb
oh I can do pizza tycoon too!
damn hugo is smaller than zork!
how can that even be
has dungeon keeper been tried btw? I don't want to waste my time with it if it's been done and doesn't work
seems like a very high end game
hmm
oh that's interesting, I read gobliiins doesn't work but someone on the forums said that maybe it's just a bad rip in exodos
vestal ginkgo
could be, I think it works with the same exact image in DosBox though
I can't figure out how to gracefully unmount an image that is already saved/set using an MGL, but "" does work
it just blanks it out
round carbon
can you give me the line?
vestal ginkgo
<file delay="0" type="s" index="3" path=""/>
I dont actually think you can officially "unmount" from the MGL but making it blank works. All the setname changes should resolve this
as you have per game cfgs then and all the left over Top 300 stuff wont matter. Then Top 300 needs an MGL as well just like everything else
then the default/fall back AO486.cfg probably shouldn't have any saved IDE disks at all. I need to think through that
round carbon
okay I've fixed it
hypothetically
going to sleep now so I haven't tested it but..
fast kraken
I dont actually think you can officially "unmount" from the MGL but making it bl...
iirc when we unmounted in top300 we found the same thing, we used to just set it back to... whatever the placeholder text is meant to be
instead of blank
summer dragon
im debating if i want to switch off top 300 for 0mhz ... hmm
just run both with custom MGLs
white siren
considered it
haha
i forget if i converted my top300 to mymenu or not
maybe if i get bored
vestal ginkgo
i forget if i converted my top300 to mymenu or not
if you run the Top 300 updater it is going to force mymenu
vestal ginkgo
you have a good network then
I mean I've never had an issue either but it takes a stable network or linux will put the vhd in readonly then all hell breaks loose
white siren
here goes nothing
white siren
that's what the error says
vestal ginkgo
I wish I would have made that disk bigger
white siren
write failed on "/tmp/dos_vhds/E/games/D ... "
vestal ginkgo
yeah you need to go delete something
white siren
i dont even remember what i added
vestal ginkgo
#1047332497492553799 message
white siren
sounds good
vestal ginkgo
delete E:\games\PHANTASM
its like 4GB and you will never have this problem again
then we can have the 0mhz team create a Phantasm image if it is really wanted lol
vestal ginkgo
I suck
but people would have complained if the VHD had a bunch of empty space taking up space on their SDcards too
white siren
cifs tho haha
vestal ginkgo
right, I have about 20 copies of Top 300 on my cifs share
white siren
does it just need space to extract stuff?
white siren
i downloaded the "lite" exodos and that 's still massive
vestal ginkgo
its just all the little changes, plus mymenu, screensavers, etc
fast kraken
and any gamesaves user makes
white siren
here comes phantasm back lol
white siren
Successfully updated to v.2.0.2!
white siren
thanks for the pack lol