Computer Cores

[void belfry]

NT might be slow on booting but afterwards it is exceptionally responsive

Not much game friendly, but in some cases... Panzer General 2 for example works much better

[ruby bramble]

Uploading to archive I’ll pm you a link when it’s done

[void belfry]

just a thought: Can you (and everyone else contributing) sync to Grandma/Limi/0Mhz team generally to have everything structured in one place ?
I'm saying this as I see over 500 entries on a simple search, which for new users especially might be a bit overwhelming and imho a single point of D/L folder structured would be more useful and easier to maintain, even with multiple contributors

[ruby bramble]

Yeah he’s working on putting everything in one place and we’ve spoken about it. Hopefully it will be less overwhelming in time

[void belfry]

Disclaimer: I don't necessary use 0MHz as I prefer to test/play around on my own setups, but at least for Win3.1 games, those template VHDs are a gift from heaven

[ruby bramble]

I don’t think I’ve uploaded one since last summer. I ran out of weird Korean dos games to hold my interest lol

[void belfry]

I meant the different sizes W31 template VHDs.

Btw, DarkSeed 2 VHD is missing setver.exe (though it is called in autoexec.bat). Not needed imho, line can be removed

[ruby bramble]

I got you

Speaking of which w95 templates coming your way

Random question if I buy an amiga game digitally is it complicated to add it to the mega ags menu?

[void belfry]

aaaaand DarkSeed 2 plays fine (at lest the TV scene and the near ones) under Win95 !

@ruby bramble

re-loading again to confirm, but for now it seemed very fine to me. Installed it (full 150 megs + vfW) on your template

also, you might want to reduce resolution to 640x480 x 256 colors, to have it full screen

sound (music) is a bit off maybe ? again, no experience on this game and how it was on a 486 back then

wandered around, some cutscenes encountered, no glitch

My conclusion for this game is:
Win95 all-round winner for boot loading times and game performance
Win NT 4 - ok game performace, NOK loading times for impatient ones plus size
Win 3.x - nupe, better suited for Sierra Win games (Dr Brain and the likes)

[jolly kraken]

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up

[void belfry]

@elder cove you brought this game in discussion, now there you have the full answer 😄

[jolly kraken]

Heh, turns out I already have 1-6 on GOG 😅

[elder cove]

Awesome - thanks!

If memory serves, I think this game is one which benefits from changing OPL mode to OPL3.

That being said, the Darkseed soundtracks were always kind of weird & pitch bend-ey in places. The first game is especially notorious for that.

[hollow ice]

haha, complaining about 2 minute boot times…I am pretty sure my real pentium would push like 5

[void belfry]

feel ya, bro, but these whathchamacallit 0Mhz youngsters .. all they want is speed...

https://tenor.com/view/dissaproval-dissapointed-dissaproval-grandma-grandma-no-gif-18487258

[void belfry]

didn't know about OPL, will check it also

it actually seems to have some stutters with OPL3, but only very beginning in dialog/scene

neah, it's fine

[worn oxide]

okay, so I tried to make my vhd's for ao486

now I realize why certain games from 0mhz weren't picked

System Shock is an assault to my ears

on top of it being real unstable

and I can't configure sound in Fade to Black

bummer

[worn oxide]

yeah, don't try to play SS1 on anything below Pentium MMX

[lunar trellis]

It is probably worth collecting ones done for games not working and document what the issue is. It would be good for documentation so punters know they won't work, stop future people trying and getting the same results, and also have them sitting there ready to try on any future board with a beefier 486 core.

Are there any other computers on MiSTer that could potentially get the 0mhz treatment?

[worn oxide]

Apple II has a MiSTer pack already

the Play It By Year collection

[hollow ice]

PCXT booter collection would be nice

[lunar trellis]

I am not an expert on this, but would the format work for anything that currently uses VHDs?

[granite umbra]

Mame set booter not mfm format working great

Using somes

[void belfry]

i managed to install it under DOS 7.1 using dos32a on install.exe, but it had graphical glitches all time installing.
I am trying now with Q87 emulator and no glitches on installer so far, will see how it goes

[worn oxide]

Neat, will try, thanks

Also Blackthorne is missing from 0mhz, should be easy

[void belfry]

game itself doesn't seem to need actually FPU, I guess just the installer has some issues that are partially solved with dos32a (the 3D menu will glitch) or solved with Q87 apparently

[fast kraken]

fade to black used to run on my 486DX2 back in the day

[worn oxide]

there's also this pack of games for BBC Micro

[elder cove]

Here's a list of some games I tried under ao486 which failed to run, and the issues I encountered:

Ceremony of Innocence: Video is very slow. Audio mixer stutters significantly. Disc had issues reading mixed-mode CD image; fixed by extracting the files to a hard drive and rebuilding the CD image with only the ISO9660 partition.
I Spy: Spooky Mansion: Game does not detect the CD-ROM after installation, as the installer fails to complete correctly due to being unable to detect a file with a long filename (“Make Your Own README.txt”.)
The Day the World Broke (Windows 3.1): Missing audio - this is a known issue with running the game on some platforms. Fixed by moving to the Windows 95 version, which uses a different executable.
Amazon Trail 3rd Edition: Seems to have some similar issues with having difficulties reading the mixed-mode CD in the installer. Needs further investigation.
Myst Masterpiece Edition: Requires updated graphics drivers that seem to crash Windows 95.

[summer dragon]

this is something I want to see (and potentially help with) down the road

[fast kraken]

broken sword 1 (aka circle of blood) has sound issues that only present after its been running for a minute or so, the audio will get increasingly choppy until its unlistenable

thats the dos version, it's okay on windows95

i've not retested for several years however

[elder cove]

That actually poses a good question - has anyone tried running the Windows 95 version of Discworld II?

[worn oxide]

I wonder if Fallout 1 will even launch

[fast kraken]

oh man discworld2 issues bum me out that game is so cool, i think i tried it on win98 and its the same

it's actually the same on my real win98 pc too iirc, very fussy game

ended up running it on scummvm for win98 iirc

the PSX version is respectable as a workaround too

[elder cove]

I believe I heard it runs, but is slow.

[void belfry]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZTJgbiP2IM&ab_channel=thera34

I finished it on ao486, keeping Dogmeat alive too

[worn oxide]

oh that's not too bad

[void belfry]

FMVs were captured under DOS, gameplay in Windows 95

you have to skip them under Win

[elder cove]

Might be a silly question, but have you tested running it under Windows NT?

[void belfry]

yes actually

no go

[elder cove]

It looks like there are some extra steps to running it on NT

Here's the setup instructions for it:

(EDIT: setup instructions were here, but deleted to save space in the thread)

[void belfry]

#computer-core-testing message

I did all that, plus some patches iirc

It's not that it doesn't run, the colors will be off completely

[worn oxide]

Cruelty Fallout Squad

[elder cove]

It looks like I found two solutions to that in NT - it appears to be a known issue.

Some people suggest it can be fixed by simply setting mode=4 in ddraw.ini, though I also see mentions that it might come with a performance hit. Alternatively, there's also a comprehensive fix package for some of these game issues called Fallout FIXT, which specifically mentions a utility included with it for fixing the scrambled colors.

[worn oxide]

I doubt that adjusts well to a 486 system with Windows NT

[gritty python]

I finally had time to work on getting my MiSTer up and running. I have the AO486 running currently and I am curious if I can simulate a COM device like a modem to be able to connect to telnet based bbs and such.. I found the option for the IO for COM2 in the OSD

[void belfry]

will give it a spin in the weekend, though yeah, I am not expecting to be better for this game than W95.

[void belfry]

yes you can, use any terminal you like. I personally prefer Terminate.
or go PPP way : https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/advanced/computer/

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

[gritty python]

i'll have to look at getting terminate..

i have telemate but even with selection of COM2 it does not appear to see it

[void belfry]

no. Leave User I/O to whatever it is

you will use COM 1

[gritty python]

standard it was MIDI i think

[void belfry]

COM 2 would be if you actually have a modem (+ adapter) to plug in USER I/O. Didn't try it myself because I already have a MT32 PI there lol

yes, leave it MIDI anyway

[gritty python]

switched to MIDI, reset, but telemate still does not see it as COM1.. no response for me to connect

[void belfry]

hold

go to OSD, 2nd page

you have UART mode there

Select Modem

underneath select baud speed

Then Reset UART connection, eventually save it if you will use it more

for PPP and TCP stuff, see the Wiki I linked above

for modem mode, be sure to have same baud speed as selected in terminal software

[gritty python]

just missed the uart>modem.. that was it.. thanks!

was able to connect to my bbs. bingo...

[void belfry]

you run a BBS ?

[worn oxide]

okay, I just wanna know

Atari ST, the computer I have the most bitchin' time getting to work

is it normal for it to pulse this little tile at the top left?

okay, no, that was just a weird version of a game I launched

[waxen nymph]

https://github.com/alanswx/Apple-II_MiSTer/tree/master

we need to think through the slot mappings

[woven lava]

thanks for adding it!

for slots, you can make it interchangeable with the Mockinboard

[waxen nymph]

sounds good.. So "Mockingboard Off / Mouse On" in the menu?

[woven lava]

we might want to disable both though, so maybe have:

Mocking board: On/Off
Mouse On/Off <--- gets grayed out if Mockinboard is on

H{Index} - Prefix which hides the option if menumask[Index] is set.

or

have a "Slot 4 = Mockingboard / Mouse / Off" option

although that means the Audio/Video menu becomes a bit odd vs. Hardware

Maybe rename Audio/Video to just "Video" and move Mockingboard+Mouse under Hardware

[woven lava]

sent you a small code snippet in the forums

[lyric fox]

Is this the topic for minimig mister core?

[copper slate]

Yeah unless you want to create a specific thread for it.

[lyric fox]

Cool.. I read at GitHub there is serial port implemented.. like to emulate or hookup a modem. Can you?

Love to run a BBS using the core. Wonder if it's possible

Is there a Mister minimig manual or docs?

[lyric fox]

Found a thread on GitHub seems like it has been done

[worn oxide]

I wonder what exact specs ao486 core goes for, ideally

I had a hewlett packard 486 PC but I don't remember any boomer shooters being really chuggy and slow at times

0mhz cheated and put Fast Doom to make Doom appear to run a bit faster

this is Doom engine's performance in ao486

https://imgur.com/xLC7RJR

I just wonder what causes these tremendous freezes in the midst of the hot action

funny enough, however

Dark Forces doesn't reach fullspeed but it maintains excellent frame pacing all throughout

https://imgur.com/24BQaJ1

and it's a game from a year after Heretic

maybe early form of multithreading actually works magic

there has never been a moment where suddenly the system dropped to 0 fps

[woven lava]

it's roughly a 486 SX 33 Mhz

there is no FPU - so that slows down many things

[fast kraken]

its kind of weirder than that, it's a 486SX with some weirdly slow ALU but an insanely fast pentium pro class L1/L2 cache

[woven lava]

yes, it's like a weird clone. in truth different games respond differently to that setup

[fast kraken]

yeah

[woven lava]

but it is known the base it's build upon is inefficient (code originally inspired from bochs)

[fast kraken]

yeah its a shame it seems no-one really knows how to alter the cpu part itself, there's a few instructions that could really use speeding up

[woven lava]

I suspect that is as hard as starting from scratch...

[fast kraken]

i mean, even robert was like, nah sorry too hard so you know it has to be crazy lol

[copper slate]

The core seems pretty decent though, right?

[fast kraken]

its amazing

[woven lava]

the core is great for what it is

but the DE-10 could do more in theory

[copper slate]

Oh nice

[woven lava]

I don't think anybody wrote even a 386 core yet

[fast kraken]

there is a 186 and 286 core iirc?

[woven lava]

there is an "XT" that attemps to be cycle accurate,

and it can be overclocked to reach some 286 speeds

it does Tandy too

[fast kraken]

i was hoping that would evolve into a 486 one day but i guess not

[woven lava]

in other boards e.g. MiST FPGA, there is a "186" core, but it does not have a full 286 implemented. It's just overclocked

well basically, we have 8086 and 186 mostly; plus a weird clone CPU living inside ao486 that is between a 386 and 486

[fast kraken]

the best approach would probably be to make something highly custom designed to get every drop of performance out of the de10 architecture then give it optional limiters to reign it into realistic 486 class chip performance buckets

[woven lava]

nobody did an accurate 286 or 386 yet

[woven lava]

forgot who mentioned this but the reason the core is roughly 33Mhz is because many instructions takes 3 times more than a normal 486

[fast kraken]

iirc it'll need an FPU and look-asside-buffer thing similar to n64

[woven lava]

yes

[fast kraken]

so its a huge effort then people will want a soundblaster and a reasonable vga card ontop aswell

[woven lava]

easy to talk about it, but much much harder to actually do...

[fast kraken]

yeah

i'd bet (based on nothing but hanging out here too much) you could maybe scrape into pentium60 class performance or close

so for years of effort you'd unlock like, 1-2 years more games, including some heavy hitters like duke3d and quake but still

[woven lava]

I don't know. Maybe Robert may have some tricks for that, but unless he bumps his head and suddenly falls in love with 3DFX gaming I don't see it happening 😂

[fast kraken]

zero chance you get a 3dfx chip ontop of all that

even the weakest ones had multiple chips

[hollow ice]

The sparcstation core can do quake pretty well.

[woven lava]

Pentium may be a bridge too far due to the chip's complexity

we haven't even got a 386 DX yet

that may outperform ao486 if it can run at 100Mhz

[fast kraken]

i think between PSX and N64 we have all the pentiums best performance tricks on mister already

[woven lava]

yes

Robert did make changes to ao486 too

so I assume the core is as good as it gets now

[hollow ice]

I don’t think either are superscalar?

[fast kraken]

ps1 has some superscalerish features

the mips cpu can do other stuff while it waits for memory or something

thing is you shouldn't aim to recreate the pentium 1:1, "just" make the fastest x86 cpu you can in the fpga, take ideas from it sure but there are also newer better ideas you could use, and take maximum advantage of the particulars of the bram/ddr3 setup

[woven lava]

you do want a 386 at least for the 32-bit architecture, protected mode, etc

also btw, old thread comparing different speeds of ao486: https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=5855

again - this is an approximation based on a couple of benchmarks. perf varies per game

[hollow ice]

Yeah, from my memory, it runs a lot of things better than my dx2 66, but we are also 30 years removed from that thing so who knows how accurate my memory is.

[woven lava]

they may run better, depending on game

i.e. the L1/L2 caches are faster than the original 486, if I remember correctly

[hollow ice]

I remember running sf2 turbo on my computer and it ran perfectly fine, but it definitely doesn’t on ao486

Hmm, now I need to check what version is on top 300, I wonder if it is patched.

[worn oxide]

Jazz is pretty spot on

https://imgur.com/nFAHLyd

-# but also this game is such a mess, dawg

[worn oxide]

his nerdsona is so damn funny

[tulip atlas]

Magic Carpet 0mhz crashes back to DOS after a while of playing. It is a bit random when it happens, but after about 30 minutes or so it just crashes for me.

Comanche has the same problem… crashes after a while

[elder cove]

I’ve noticed that the current builds of ao486 tend to have some issues with crashing when hitting the full 90MHz. It seems especially true of the current development build.

Try replacing your ao486 .rbf with this one and see if it helps:

[summer dragon]

oh that’s interesting

just an update on the 0mhz community megapack guys…had some stuff around my house and personal life that’s gotten in the way a bit, but I’m still forging ahead slowly. At the moment, I’ve also been working with a few others on a new X68000 pack and that one is further along, so I’m actually going to devote any spare time to helping get the first release of that pack over the finish line. Once the first release of that pack is out, I’ll jump back over to 0MHz

[copper slate]

Hey please don’t worry about us. You do so much wonderful things for the community and we’re all in your debt. Please focus on yourself first and foremost.

[short finch]

Take your time, that's not a race.

[summer dragon]

aw shucks, thanks Robby! It’s more of a “keeping myself accountable” sort of thing because it’s something I really want to get done even just for myself 😂 . It’s like how I started streaming mostly to force myself to stick with games until I actually beat them because I found that I would quit them too easily before

[copper slate]

Bruh you’re awesome. You’ve probably given more joy to people with all your amazing work on the 0Mhz stuff than you realize.

I’m also being super selfish because you relaxing means you’ll be back kicking ass and over delivering lol

[fast kraken]

bit random but is there any way to reasonably run 0mhz on a real old pc?

[elder cove]

Probably not, at least without significant additional work.

The configs are for the MiSTer’s specific architecture, and there’s no guarantee it will match your system’s unique configuration.

[void belfry]

actually, the only thing you really need to edit is the EMM386/QEMM related stuff

DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF 8192 FRAME=D000 D=256 I=C800-CDFF X=CE00-CFFF I=D000-EFFF
the Include and eXclude ones

most are ao486 speciffic in order to make MiSTerFS (and floppy iirc on some cases ? ) work under DOS

so yeah, I don't see other reason why a VHD from 0MHz could not be flashed on a drive/CF card and work on old PC

Now, as @elder cove pointed, might be difficult as well if that old PC is not that "generic", not that much of a standard was existing those days 😄

[worn oxide]

I wonder if any progress with Apple II GS core was made at all

I just want to see this on a CRT

-# guess I'll just Groovy it

[vestal isle]

My Mister Pi seems to be dead. I've taken it apart and put back together but not to any avail. it worked for a couple of months and then died. Has anyone else experienced this?

[exotic prairie]

how do you mean dead?

does it not power on at all?

also, let's take this to #help

[vestal isle]

not at all\

[old stag]

for what it's worth I was able to get through the X68000 castlevania without too much issue using one of the recent unstable builds. Only issue I could see was the save menu popping into the background on some of the levels, but it was very playable.

i remember when i tried this a few years ago, the background would disappear on the clock tower level. You could only see the character sprite, so I'm glad to be able to play through the whole thing now.

[exotic prairie]

Oh nice! I’m glad that worked, man

[old stag]

Yeah thanks for all the hard work ya crazy geniuses

[exotic prairie]

Wish I could take credit. I just play visual novels

[worn oxide]

oh so it wasn't just the game being weird, okay

[void belfry]

SkyGlobe 3.6 on ao486. Quite handy, as it is cloudy and rainy outside in RL here 🙂

but if anyone around Portugal have clear skies and can confirm it looks like predicted in this old DOS program, much appreciated 😄

[mental moat]

I'm using AO486 to run Windows 98 SE, my current disk is 400MB and I want to enlarge it while preserving my windows install.
I figured it would basically be:
1. Add some space at the end of the file

dd if=/dev/zero of=100mb.bin bs=1M count=1024
cat win98se.vhd 100mb.bin > big98se.vhd

I thought at this point it would boot, but not show the additional space, instead it just hangs on "Booting from Hard Disk"
2. Resize the partition
I resized the partition using Partition Magic.
3. Boot it
It doesn't boot here either, I get a disk i/o error.
Does anyone have any thoughts?

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding the disk format used by ao486, or if I'm just misremembering how 486 used disks or what

if I boot a dos floppy and look at the hard disk through that it looks fine o_0

[strong yoke]

Easiest fix I'd suggest would be to revert back to the old win98se.vhd and set up a second vhd for the D: drive in the capacity you want; use Partition Magic to clone old to new with expansion.

Or just add a D: drive vhd and use that

Even on real hardware back in the late 90s, Windows was always failing to boot for some reason or another. The MBR and boot block were just very fragile, let alone the FAT filesystem itself which was even more breakable.

[mental moat]

Thats a great suggestion @strong yoke thanks.

I'll try now.

I do remember boot issues coming up quite a bit, but back then I had a few floppies with the tooling needed to fix it and I could remember how to do it 😛

[strong yoke]

Yeah, same 😄 It was a while ago!

At least now you can easily keep the old vhd. Back then it was a struggle every time C: trashed itself.

[mental moat]

So I created a 2GB file just full of zeros

touch bigger.vhd
truncate -s 2097152000 bigger.vhd

I've mounted that, no disk appears in My Computer, but I've got Partition Magic 4.0 installing right now, I'm hoping that will see it.

[old stag]

hey all. is there some sort of trick to using hte Button/Key remap option in the OSD to remap a d-pad to keyboard presses? it doesn't look like d-pad inputs are registering.

[mental moat]

It does in fact see it!

[strong yoke]

Yeah, DOS or Windows won't see it unless it's MBR'd and partitioned

PM4 will 🙂

[mental moat]

Sorry I'm not sure 😦 I've not tried that

[old stag]

no worries m8

[mental moat]

I've noticed that sometimes I can't map certain buttons to certain things, on a bunch of cores.

I'd love to know why thats a thing

[mental moat]

well, the partition magic approach didnt work, for some reason it blue screens on boot.

I'm just doing an over the top install of win98 now to see if that helps, failing that I'll do what I should have done in the first place and do a fresh install.

[elder cove]

I got the Windows 95 version of Gex running on the core, but it’s a bit slow. Really only runs at playable speeds in windowed mode.

[exotic prairie]

Don't tell @earnest ridge

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Amstrad-PCW_MiSTer/pull/9

[void belfry]

going to re-play for a bit Fallout 1 on ao486 under W95 (couldn't yet make heads or tails with it on NT), because why not. If anyone curious, give me a thumbs up and can start a voice chat sharing the gameplay on the core

[weary umbra]

You're creating a sparse file, that could be a problem.

[strong yoke]

touch defaults to sparse now? I can foresee no ways in which this causes havoc 😄

[weary umbra]

Truncate does

[strong yoke]

Phew

I was reading the reply quote and thought that was a one-liner

[weary umbra]

Touch still just creates an empty file, ofc. With "truncate" he's probably aiming to cut corners and create a 2g file in seconds. Which is mostly fine when file is used on Linux machines, but creates problems with vm's and most likely ao486 core as well in this case.

[strong yoke]

Does seem likely

Would probably be fine on an extfs or similar, less likely on a fat variant

[weary umbra]

Just "dd if=/dev/zero ..." it, shouldnt take that long to do a real 2g file

[willow pond]

Hmm fallout 1, sound like something i should play with... just finished making a "0Mhz" Truelove windows 95, allthough i could probably make the c_drive a bit smaller to save space on the vhd

[fast kraken]

make sure you leave plenty of room for saves

[willow pond]

for fallout ? Still trying to get it working... the dos version was too slow so working on win95 🙂 but yes i plan to have about 50MB extra (should be enough for how things were then)

[fast kraken]

fallout is a game where you might want hundreds of saves, people go deep on that game

[willow pond]

oh its not something i can share, it's copyrighted and not abandonware yet

best i could do is guide people into it...

i even had to get the old version less legal (well i have a GOG and steam version of it so figgured my morals were covered)

[mental moat]

Thanks! I ended up trying a few things.

The combination of using dd to write a file with 2gb of zeros and @strong yoke's suggestion of copying the existing partition using partition magic ended up working perfectly.

Now for my next ao486 question, is there a way to do 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratios with this core?

I can make windows 98 try to output at that aspect ratio but it just ends up getting stretched and cropped back to 4:3.

I suspect it might be a limitation of the display adaptor itself, but thought it worth asking

[elder cove]

Got the Westwood version of Monopoly working on the ao486 core under Windows 95. Some minor occasional skips in the FMVs, though - will also try on 3.1 before I pack it for 0MHz to see if that is any better there.

[mental moat]

Oh awesome

[void belfry]

@willow pond thanks for reminding about this game 🙂 Played it back then and tested over an year or so on ao486 but it had bad colors/glitched a lot. Now I see it plays just fine

[young gust]

someone posted a citra nightly torrent in the 0mhz archive

[robust monolith]

That appeared in a lot of Retro posts on the archive, I noticed that yesterday.

[void belfry]

think USSR is cooked 😄 Panzer General 2 style lol

[willow pond]

yep plays quite well, only just tested it though 🙂

[void belfry]

fair warning, contains NSFW scenes 😛

[willow pond]

iirc it's not that bad, but i would'nt mind if it was another POV 🙂

[vestal isle]

I used to work on a Data General Eclipse system, was wondering if there is anybody working on a core for it?

[strong yoke]

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of anyone talking about doing one. But are you aware of http://www.novasareforever.org/emulators/emulator-downloads

[vestal isle]

Yeah, and simh can emulate a nova, I want AOS (eclipse)

[hollow ice]

I see some documentation on bitsavers….wonder if anyone has dumped the gals and created schematics

[lost nest]

Mandatory: "The soul of a new machine" by Tracy Kidder. The book is light on techical details, but good on the teamwork to design a minicomputer in the 70's.

[elder cove]

Here's something a bit unconventional - setting up a 0MHz config for Kid Pix for Windows today (also referred to as Version 2.5).

Will also try Kid Pix Deluxe 3 tomorrow, which adds some additional features to the program at the expense of some more menus to get started & longer load times.

[copper slate]

Oh shit I loved Kid Pix!

[mental moat]

Are 0mhz images typically shared anywhere? Other than the official ones

Oh my, I see the archive collection

That is indeed a lot

[willow pond]

I was actually wondering, is there any way to get the mister to shut down the ao486 core when done with a game, ie after the game in the bat file automaticly reboot to the menu (trying to make things more children friendly, and a dos prompt does not look friendly) ?

[void belfry]

To shutdown the core after a game (DOS ? Windows? other Os ?) then go to OSD ?? not that I could think off. If you're referring to a game launcher menu (like in AmigaVision), closest one I think is @vestal ginkgo Top 300/Shareware packs

Occam's razor: Children must learn DOS (preferably Linux too) !

[willow pond]

oh that much i know, its what i do myself, but i was wondering if there was a dos way to do it, just like with the cpuset util changing the cpu options

[void belfry]

no, not that i know

[willow pond]

in some sense yes, but one of the children is mentally challlenged sometimes and its extremly hard to teach her things

[void belfry]

I learned DOS (and Linux) in my very childhood and nobody took pity on my pain 😛

[void belfry]

yeah, was joking. Wasn't thinking on those cases

[willow pond]

the same here and i beleive everyone should learn, but not everyone is able to 🙂

hey it's no problem 🙂

[void belfry]

Wish there was a way, but for DOS at least just reseting from OSD is ok

Win 3.1 as well

[willow pond]

would be nice for windows 95 as well to act like a ATX motherboard 🙂

but that's easy to explain to someone... just do the power button 🙂

nice orange letters make it easy 😄

[void belfry]

but W95+ induce another issue, needed the scandisk crap if not shutdown proper and so on

[willow pond]

true, but iirc it's just a little wait for it to finish

[void belfry]

so yeah, for DOS I think the Top 300 idea, with a menu and all is more suitable

[willow pond]

at least it was with win98 (no interaction needed)

i'm doing the .mgl solution, for gameboy, psx games etc as well, trying to keep it all simple that way

[void belfry]

I saw some menu launchers for W95+ too, but think it would be not that feasible (too many variants, need to setup for sure 2nd drives and so on)

[willow pond]

ye that part is a bit more issue, also with registry etc 🙂

[void belfry]

mgl for sure is the cleanest way for consoles (and SOME computer cores)

[willow pond]

so far i only have true love in the windows 95 folder, i'm only doing what i legally have, either in physical copies, abandonware or digitally (even if i need to archive.org or torrent the old versions, my conscience is clear)

i agree, and it makes it simple 🙂 and with mgl method i can have custom keypad settings for each game

[void belfry]

You have True Love legally ? 👀

[willow pond]

no that's abandonware iirc

[void belfry]

I use my very 90's copy rescued from my 272 meg Seagate HDD from my OG 486 DX 😄

[willow pond]

got it from abandonware site

[void belfry]

and no, back then I 🦜 it from whatever was comon back then (can't recall)

Honestly, now I would actually pay for a copy of it 😄

[willow pond]

I lost a lot of my old IT equipment breaking up with boyfriends and moving out. and some of my cartridges are damaged

true, a lot is hard to get hold of now

I was moved to a orphanage when i was younger and a lot of my stuff i got for free back then and at fleemarkets (not sure if the name is right in english)

[strong yoke]

Very close - fleamarkets 🙂

Or 'car boot sales' in the uk too

[willow pond]

ah okay 🙂

[strong yoke]

Sorry for your losses! At least you can play all of them again now easily

[willow pond]

That's why i got the MiSTer... software emulation is not always good enough for some games, it works but sometimes you need to press the button before you are surpost to 🙂

[copper slate]

Cars don’t wear boots hahahahahaha

[willow pond]

Robby, boot is the trunk in american 🙂

maybe sarcasm ? i don't understand that too well

[strong yoke]

USians love to laugh at UKian words differences 🙂

[copper slate]

Sorry, I am a goofball

excuse me while I go to my market for fleas

[willow pond]

oh right you call it a garrage sale 🙂

[copper slate]

oh oops yeah

Damn can’t even get that right lol

Please buy my garage

It stays attached to my house though

[void belfry]

@willow pond Speaking of kids games/apps, I see a growing number of them as well within 0MHz (Dr Brain series 1-3 already on (4 will be published soon) comes to mind at first. Not sure if anyone made MS BOB, that is nice edutainment/novice learning tool)

[strong yoke]

Didn't you get that up and running recently yourself?

Ship that hdf!

[copper slate]

Someone did, doesn’t work that well but it’s there lol

[willow pond]

I can try them out, but i try and only keep what i know as .mgl menus so i can help, but the children are 14 (15 in 10 days) and 11 so the kid apps might be for too young 🙂

[void belfry]

hmm.. it worked fine for me a year ago lol #1047332497492553799 message

[copper slate]

Oh damn did you convert it yourself? Or maybe I did something wrong. I had some graphical corruption in mine but I grabbed a premade version.

[void belfry]

yes, I installed it myself

[willow pond]

i tried to get Nebula fighter working, the shareware version... it works but the mister is not fast enough (gets really laggy when the area is busy), i'll be checking it on each core update in case it fixes things 🙂

did not try the windows 95 version as it advertises MMX which the ao486 core does not support (and it has slowdowns at least with windows 10/11(

[void belfry]

Raptor: Call of Shadows FTW 😛

I never played Nebula game tbh 😄

[willow pond]

nebula is quite fun, i used to play it at the orphanage on their computer, even had 2 players where we could each have part of the keyboard or one uses mouse and one keyboard

[void belfry]

Noted to try it as well.. might try it against Q87 , though it doesn't seem to explicitly need FPU, might have a marginal performance effect like Versailles game (built on Omni3D iirc). But again, this is just a wild thought, need to RTFM about this game

[willow pond]

just got wolfenstein 3d with midi patches installed (might as well use my mt-32pi when i have it)

I used my steam files for it though

[void belfry]

mt32-pi is a gift from heaven 🤘

[willow pond]

it sure is, the only drawback is that we only have one SNAC, i hope the mister2 taki is making will have 2 or more SNAC's

[void belfry]

Sry FR...

[void belfry]

now... I know this is a game from 97.. but would it work with win32s under W3.1 ? 😄

scratch that, stupid idea as it needs directx, dunno why thought about WinG

It plays fine as it is on ao486 under W95 (or NT 4) - not full speed obviously, but not that far off so perfectly manageable/playable

W98, no. just NO

[elder cove]

I’ve decided my next 0MHz pack is going to be an April Fool’s-themed set of some of the worst games I could find on PC.

So far, I’ve got LINDA, Time Slaughter, and Tongue of the Fatman, but I’m open to suggestions.

[exotic prairie]

Myst

https://tenor.com/bCYpZ.gif

[young gust]

What game is this?

[young gust]

Accurate.

[void belfry]

Panzer General II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_General_II)

[young gust]

oh shit

i never knew there was a 2nd one!!

[willow pond]

anyone actually got a hiram and example config laying around ? 🙂

[void belfry]

there's even some 3D crap one, never bothered to play that

[void belfry]

[HIRAM] SET MEMMGR=HI DEVICE=C:\DOS71\HIMEM.SYS /Q /TESTMEM:OFF DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\HIRAM\HIRAM.EXE /Exclude=CE00-CFFF DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS71\SETVER.EXE DOS=UMB,HIGH,NOAUTO DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRIVERS\XCDROM.SYS /D:IDE-CD

from my config.sys section of HiRam (though honestly I don't remember last time i need it)

[willow pond]

I just keep getting Error no upper memory found Hiram was not loaded, maybe its the binary thats borked

[void belfry]

where does it says it ? at boot ? also why do you need it really ?

[willow pond]

it says it at boot when loading config.sys

I'm loading it for fastdoom to increase performance as the performance i'm getting is around the 18FPS durring a timedemo

[elder cove]

Oh, there is a sheer deluge of Mystlikes on PC. You have no idea how much worse that style of game design can get lol

[exotic prairie]

I think I remember

Wasn't there one on the fucking Titanic?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/785480/Titanic_Adventure_Out_Of_Time/

Steam

Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time

A Race To Alter History On A Ship Out Of Time...

Intrigue and adventure await you on board the Titanic, the most famous ocean liner in history. As a British secret agent on a vital mission, it is up to you to change the course of history as you explore the world’s most luxurious ocean vessel in all its original splendour.

Navigate the amaz…

Price

$5.99

Recommendations

374

▶ Play video

[elder cove]

There’s also Titanic: An Undersea Adventure

Which is barely even a game, and I’m pretty sure doesn’t even actually feature the Titanic

[void belfry]

more important: do they run on ao486 ? 😄

[exotic prairie]

oh maybe that was the one

The only good one was 7th guest. I will take no further questions at this time

[elder cove]

Speaking of terrible Mystlikes, I am 100% going to include Area D now, though

Terrible CGI dinosaurs, awful composite shots, some of the worst dubbing I’ve ever heard (I think the whole game is performed by like 2 actors, and your protagonist has a deep voice filter on him the whole time)

[exotic prairie]

Was Trespasser DOS? or was that windows

[elder cove]

Windows

[fast kraken]

that titanic game is surprisingly okay from memory

adventure out of time

[elder cove]

Yeah, Adventure out of Time is pretty well-made. It was also a really accurate recreation of the Titanic for its time - I don’t think that’s the one @exotic prairie was thinking of

[exotic prairie]

Yeah maybe not. There was definitely one that was not great

[hollow ice]

I haven’t tried FastDoom since the recent core updates, but @vestal ginkgo configuration seemed pretty performant for fast when I last tried it. Granted, I didn’t run any time demos so I guess it could dip into low fps depending

[willow pond]

i actually got QEMM working instead, along with VBE getting around 30 FPS with fastdoom

[hollow ice]

yeah, 30 sounds about right from memory

[willow pond]

sometimes going beoyond 40FPS, but thats not the average

[hollow ice]

haha, FastDoom is great, but not a miracle worker

[willow pond]

true, but i refused to run it in potato mode 🙂

next step finding an engine for hexen 🙂

[elder cove]

LINDA seems to be another title which requires the FPU.

Seems to run fine under Q87 (while slow with some black frames, as far as I can tell, the game runs at about the intended speed - any faster starts having issues with crashing under emulation).

[gritty python]

can I change the inbound telnet port on the mister fpga for the ao486 core?

[hollow ice]

@void belfry https://github.com/mezantrop/i486SX_soft_FPU/issues/1

[void belfry]

thanks mate, will have a look. NetBSD 10 would be quite a feat to get it working 🙂

[hollow ice]

Still going to have hard drive issues but looks like that person is close to getting the fpu emulation back in

[void belfry]

Still have to try to patch a modern linux kernel for CR4 as well

[hollow ice]

I really need to get back to hard drive issues. Hopefully next quarter isn’t as busy.

[void belfry]

@hollow ice will see how it goes

[willow pond]

i tried getting corel linux working, could'nt boot, wanted to try for nostajgiareasons 🙂

i ran it on a DX2 somewhat fine though back on real hardware

[void belfry]

It is on my list, it needs the kernel to be recompiled to use MATH EMU as well iirc 🙂

[willow pond]

oh i thought it was the controller driver or something

then i get why it was not working...

[void belfry]

might be as well an IDE issue, don't really recall on this specific distro atm

What I can confirm it is running on ao486 on Unix/Linux area I report in this list #1047332497492553799 message

[willow pond]

considering linux is pretty much running just as good on modern hw it's not really some big priority

uhh nice

gentoo, so i can cross compile binaries

they make it nice and simple generally to get stuff working 🙂

i remember we had some old 486 laptop that was trash we managed to get gentoo compiled with an X server running back in 2008 i think it was, took weeks and weeks to compile it all, with a very minimal kernel

[void belfry]

#1047332497492553799 message --- See this as well for a list of topics on MiSTerFPGA forum about Unix/Linux variants on ao486

[willow pond]

OS/2 could be fun, i only had a little experiance with that

[void belfry]

You can find some Debian Etch, NetBSD vhds on the usual archives

[void belfry]

I never had any before trying it on ao486 😄

[willow pond]

well i doubt ao486 is 100% accurate, it's not like there is an abundance of logic elements to get it all right

[void belfry]

From all the OS-es I've been able to install on ao486, this is so far the one I am most fond of and consider it my greatest achiev on this core when it comes to Unix/Linux

[willow pond]

sounds like a lot of work 🙂

tbh i would'nt put much work into getting linux running, as i can get it running on a regular PC and things will still work... however where dos games were concerned the speed of the PC was often a problem getting games running on faster hardware... supaplex was unplayable on a K6-2, simply too fast (sure there are tricks i know of today, turning off caches etc, but i did not know of those tricks then)

[void belfry]

tbh not that much, but patience. I usually install them within an emulator (Qemu/PCEmu/Box86), d/l the kernel, do the make menuconfig ritual to enable math emu , disable some other stuff (SMP, paralel port, USB, whetever else), make sure to also have PPP support and that's it. Make, make bzImage, make modules etc , modify grub/lilo and voila

[willow pond]

oh i see

well if you get something running, put it up on archive.org with the vhd, as long as it's legal to do so 🙂

[void belfry]

dang it, made the VHD too small to also contain NetBSD sources

plan B, make a 2nd one for storage, mount it and use it temporarily for kernel recompilation

[willow pond]

86box sounds like a solution for getting things running, as it's kind of a drop in solution iirc it uses vhd format as well and you can pick quite a bit of hardware to make the job easier

waiting on the postman, my 8bitdo controller should be comming very soon 🙂

[void belfry]

ok, now we talk business

[void belfry]

My Debian 4 and Slackware 12 initially were made under 86Box (and PCemu). But lately I tend to use more Qemu, much more powerful and quite easy to use it as well, even from CMD

[willow pond]

Ah i see 🙂 sorry went a bit afk had to setup controller 🙂

going to need to get used to it, it's rather different 🙂

[void belfry]

see my notes from MiSterFPGA forum, also if you have issues, feel free to ask , happy to have more people on this nerdy train

[willow pond]

I'll look into it when i have time 🙂 I'll probably have most luck with linux, as the only BSD i have some experiance with is freebsd, and it's rather limited (i used it for an IRC server for fun once)

[void belfry]

FreeBSD is a no go so far, still have issues on IDE afaik 😦 NetBSD is a good solution as well (well, for me it became one after compiling bash/nano/mc/ncurses directly on ao486)

[void belfry]

speaking of IRC, one of my very first tests after I confirm PPP is working is getting (usually with BitchX for Linux/Unix) on ##MiSTerFPGA channel on irc.libera.chat:6667

[willow pond]

i'm on there too, but i use quassel for all my IRC (same connection for my mobile, laptop or desktop pc) 🙂

i've tested out PPP quickly in win95 but that was it, no need to be online 🙂

[void belfry]

Debian 4 shines in this perspective, as Debian org still maintains repos for older versions, so you can easily apt-get install whatever you want

[willow pond]

that i did not expect, what about debian 3 ?

[void belfry]

one of the reasons i put the image on archive without much that basic connectivity (also not the final image I want/work on)

[void belfry]

same, I just go for highest version possible

[willow pond]

i used debian 3 a lot, it's lightweight kernel (i think it was 2.2) was quite fast on my hardware back then 🙂

i must say i am impressed with debian they are still maintaining it

hell... even forgetting to emerge --sync on gentoo for a month and you risk being unable to get the software without syncing first

becuase the file is gone

[void belfry]

I am a noob on Gentoo, just used sajattack's image (still have to try to add pppd package at some point)

[willow pond]

I kind of like it, allthough i use mostly binary packages now as i see no real need to self compile if not needed

[void belfry]

FFS..

[willow pond]

ouch :S

[elder cove]

Anyone know what’s going on with the setup for RCT Deluxe on Windows 95? It says it’s requesting a _Setup.dll it can’t find.

[elder cove]

Area D, Tongue of the Fatman, and LINDA are up.

I think I’m going to work on some publisher packs next - I pushed the one Bloodlust Software game to do a larger pack for the studio, as their history is actually really interesting (Bloodlust developed a number of the earliest emulators for PC, and I want to include some demo packs for them as well.)

[willow pond]

Got Civilization II up and running, allthough i am unable to take a screenshot, the winkey+print screen gives a garbled screenshot

[wheat ridge]

hi computer core people

does the amstrad core work in 2025 cuz my amstrad core seems real fucky

it wont switch to 128k even with that one selected and when I Try to mount a disk and type "cat" it shits itself

and says " press play "

im like bitch that aint no tape

[elder cove]

Seems to be working well for me - I was able to load into the Amstrad core and play a game without any issues.

Make sure you have the right ROM images for your system - if it’s refusing to switch to the 128 mode, it’s likely that it can’t find the BIOS ROMs for that system.

I’ve started sorting the 0MHz .mgl files by Publisher. About 520 in at the moment.

[robust monolith]

CPC works fine, but yes, you've got to load the 6128 rom.

[wheat ridge]

I see so it's not the one that comes with update all?

I feel like that's the same one that is on the github

Can you point me to the right ROM in some way?

I have the one boot rom and then I have the extension file thing... Halp

[lunar trellis]

Is there something that could be added to the BIOS DB, or does something need tweaked so the user experience is smoother?

[wheat ridge]

@lunar trellis do you know which .rom files I need or should be using? this is whats on my mister

and I believe these are from update_all aka the github

basically I load eagle's rider and hit cat and it says this :

I also unzipped that game cuz I dunno if maybe zips are the issue

[lunar trellis]

I am afraid I don't off hand. If someone who knows the system is able to confirm that update all isn't grabbing all the files needed via the BIOS DB, and what these missing files are, I can see about getting them added as I have a bunch I need to get put in there.

[wheat ridge]

all good! yeah im here to learn

I dont mind but would appreciate specific guidance @robust monolith

or @elder cove

[elder cove]

Hmm - offhand, those look the same as mine

[lunar trellis]

Any ways we can add files to the BIOS DB to make these old computers set up and ready to use without finding other (non game) files would be good to know from users of these systems. We have quite a lot covered already but if there are ones that need a BIOS etc. that isn't in there then please let us know.

[elder cove]

I’ve tried loading the game @wheat ridge mentioned - currently, I just seem to be getting a black screen

Ah, figured it out - needed to disable the Multiface 2

Ah, okay - figured out what’s going on

The 464 expansion is loaded, which is forcing a tape drive

[wheat ridge]

is that loaded by default or somethin?

let me show y'all whats happenin on my end

I can share vcideo

also does it matter if the game is zipped? for future rference haha

@elder cove what should i do?

[elder cove]

Yeah, so no fault on your end. For some reason when you set that as enabled, it stays persistent

[wheat ridge]

if I mount the dsk it and hit cat it still thinks its a tape I guess I see I see

so we gotta disable it

(but how)

[elder cove]

It’s essentially loaded into a 464 mode by that .eZ0 file. Should fix by renaming/deleting it on your drive

[wheat ridge]

oh I see let me delete it real quick

[elder cove]

Wait - that just gave me a black screen

Hmm - let me figure this out real quick

[wheat ridge]

thank you for your help on this homie

still stuck doin this on my end

settings for reference

e file deleted

oh wow lol

yeah rebooting the mister gets me this now :

oops and nothing on the screen

I dont think should have deleted that file hahahahahahaha

let me try to bring that back but delete the config file or something

gonna delete these first

AYEE!!!

HELL YEAH~~~

thanks you gave me the clues I needed!

deleting the config files seems to work

VIDEO GAMES

[elder cove]

Awesome!

In case it happens again, it also seems like you can also create a copy of the main ROM (boot.rom) under a different name (ie main-cpc.rom) and load that from the Load Main ROM *.ROM option.

Should also fix that without having to edit the drive contents in future.

[wheat ridge]

ah I see I see that is helpful!

yeah seems the CFG gets stuck

like once you go tape (which I dont remember doing )

you just get stuck

which is ab ug'

not sure who to tell that to lol

but I have my answer

the beautiful bounty in case anyone wanted to share in our success

[robust monolith]

Sorry been at work all day, pleased you got there in the end, there's some decent games, and demos for it.

[wheat ridge]

Selfishly I needed to get in there for my other discord, shmup junkies, because we have randomly picked 1990 as our year to explore shmups and there's quite a few random amstradians on there haha

And some choice Amiga joints too

[void belfry]

ffs again (but at least compiled the kernel with 486sx patch)

and yeah "ffs" sometimes is not really what you might usually think off 😄

[hollow ice]

So close.

[void belfry]

fingers crossed 🙂

apparently didn't like Qemu after install (remembering now why I parked it a while ago), plus I had to dpkg every needed package from CD (luckily they were available on it), but seems PCEmu will do the job so far

slower, when it comes to compiling, than Qemu but yeah, if it works...

make dep and make bzImage done, now make modules ... quite fast tbh

[void belfry]

while the new compiled kernel boots fine on PCEmu, it freezes at this on ao486 😦 to be continued

and the new kernel boots also fine in Qemu, while the old one doesn't.. this is getting more rabbit hole than I expected

[elder cove]

Next two 0MHz packs going up now - two titles from art collective De-Lux'o, one of which was previously lost media until last night.

[lunar trellis]

Oh, that's neat lost games are now appearing and are playable

Let me know if we ever get 0mhz Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor 🙂

And, you know, that black and white game about the adventurous French lady...

[willow pond]

looks like a boot loader issue though, it's typicle LILO with the LI error, maybe reinstall the boot loader to MBR ? (could be the switch between the harddisk file, using a different format or something, so maybe use partition magic on ao486 to clone the data (can't remember if partition magic can handle linux filesystems, otherwise use parted magic)

[robust monolith]

In the 0mhz collection it pulls downthing that Mistertea, has added. Could one of use geniuses, modify that dowloader to grab Italian Granma, Elphive, and any others? Many thanks.

[exotic prairie]

Italian Grandma is putting together a new pack

with everything

[elder cove]

While I wait for another piece of lost media to arrive, I’m going to work on some titles that are near and dear to my heart - the Tonka series by Hasbro Interactive.

So far, I’ve got Tonka Construction and Search & Rescue running - going to also at least do Garage and Raceway as well, but I’ll see how many of the series entries run (there are quite a few).

[lunar trellis]

Oh nice, are you hunting down non redumped old PC games?

[elder cove]

Yep! I’ve actually got two discs coming over the next week which I don’t think have been documented anywhere.

[lunar trellis]

Oh nice, English friendly?

[elder cove]

Yep - both originally UK releases, I believe.

[lunar trellis]

Oh nice

I didn't appreciate there were UK titles lost, these on a list somewhere? I could keep an eye out if there are more UK discs undumped

[elder cove]

Not sure. Theoretically the Redump undumped discs list, but neither one of these was on there.

[lunar trellis]

Yeah the undumped lists for certain things are far from extensive, I found that out with Photo CDs.

[elder cove]

Anyone have any luck getting Win32s to work on ao486 under Windows 3.1? I keep encountering Error 21 messages.

[void belfry]

yes, it works. I used it for Time Warp of Dr. Brain

[elder cove]

Which version did you use, out of curiosity?

[void belfry]

*think it is the last, **e **one* this think it was smth else

i need to check what version is on that iso

Version 1.30

[elder cove]

Interesting. Just to verify, it runs FreeCell without an Error 21 message?

[void belfry]

hmm... i didn't install Freecell tbh 😄

For sure it is used by the game, along with WinG

just launched Freecell from CD, it seems to work

[elder cove]

Interesting - yeah, I’m getting a error message box when I try to load that.

Did you tweak anything in your system settings before you installed it?

[void belfry]

nope, just installed Win32s and WinG as they're both required to run Time Warp of Dr. Brain game on a Win31 vhd template

Then packed it up and shipped to Grandma to sprinkle some MGL magic and publish it on the revised 0MHz

[void belfry]

Yup, thought of that and tried re-installing Lilo, no luck. It looks exactly like the issue I encountered on RedHat based distros. And even if Corel Linux is based on Debian, might actually be there some code from RH ?
I'm basing this assumption on discovering after install that rpm support is there, as well as existence of empty redhat (with lots of subfolders like RPMS, build and so on, the usual) folder in /usr/src.. Might be dead wrong though ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Now wondering if I can get grub instead and if that would make a difference

[elder cove]

So, continuing our discussion on this - various versions of Win32s seem to have different levels of compatibility on ao486.

The version Sierra packed with Time Warp of Dr. Brain seems to work the best so far, but common downloadable versions & the version packed with Tonka Construction seem to have issues. It’s to the degree that FreeCell, the game packaged with the software to test compatibility, doesn’t even load.

Most commonly, the error seems to be Error 21, Unexpected error: 21, or DOS Error 21. This error also seems to occur with certain programs even under the Dr. Brain config.

[void belfry]

until now I barely touched Win32s as I had issues as well in the past. This version came quite as a surprise. And tried it only to see the 4th Dr Brain game running on ao486 lol as it was the last one not covered by 0MHz

[void belfry]

just what the doctor prescribed

[void belfry]

As we know already, Minimig core is the one that can also play MP3 files afaik. Sure, not at much quality BUT for 90's Black Metal is just frigging perfect

Also some modern ones sound even better "downgraded". Reminds me of some of my tapes, copied over from friends on dubious decks (not that my friends tapes were top quality to begin with)

Recording from dedicated radio stations as well 😄

[elder cove]

I’d be really curious to try out Minimig for certain early CD-ROM Macintosh titles in ShapeShifter.

As long as we can configure a setup which autoboots into the OS and mounts the CD, I can configure the same type of automation as we’ve done in ao486. (I’ve done something similar on modern computers using Basilisk II/SheepShaver.)

[void belfry]

Disclaimer: NSFW 😄 or ears if particularly sensitive

Also SDN48 is there for scientific purposes, as japanese songs have also a certain allure on lo-fi

[void belfry]

rest you can search/watch/listen on YT/whatever else media 😛

[young gust]

It really whips the Llamas ass!

[void belfry]

just a bit of original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xO04dJX57A

[karmic fog]

let me know if you need help with this, i have spent a lot of time messing with shapeshifter and am planning on making a new image for it soon

[worn oxide]

I wonder

in the X68000 core, what is the "CPU Turbo" setting equivalent to what machine?

Expert? Super?

is the "Normal" one the first X68000 from 1987?

[granite umbra]

CPU Turbo is around 20Mhz so it could be XVI (16Mhz)

[worn oxide]

I see, thanks

[elder cove]

Awesome - will let you know!

Planning to do some tests with this in a few hours with PSY-S City RECODE!, a really lovely fan translation/remaster of the first game by the developers that would eventually become Nana On-Sha (Parappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon, etc.).

[wheat ridge]

advice pls what is the best TOS for ATARI ST

im just runnin 1.02 with floppies right now

so weird that a "BASIC" TOS doesnt come standard with update all, I had to go find one, was bizarre, I know its "copyright" or whatever but was still not great, also downloaded .vhds that simply arent showing up on TOS1.02 so im ditching those, the tosec floppies seem to run fine

im hearing 1.04 and 2.06 are "da ones"

ok yeah 2.06 is fire

[gritty python]

I know the new Amiga OS 3.9 will run on the mister as I have it running. It offers a internet web brower and email application. Does anyone know what needs to be done or even if it is possible (yet) to be able to setup something like AMITCP to get an IP address so you can access amiga internet resources directly from the mister amiga core ?

[wheat ridge]

would be quite insane

I will grab 3.9 🙂 thanks, add it ot my stack

2.06 is what im runnin atm seems good enough for the shit im tryna get movin

[hollow ice]

Technically 3.2 is the newest version 😉

[gritty python]

yea, I have 3.2 but I also got the 3.9,which has both workbench 3.5 and 3.9 on it as well. If I recall it was really done by a 3rd party. It runs and runs pretty good

I even have Picasso installed and have a resolution of 1920x1080 going at true color..

I was at least able to get a shared folder going that the amiga core has access to. So at least now I can just drop files from my PC there and it will see them

[elder cove]

Have you been able to use the Removable/CD option for a Macintosh CD-ROM in ShapeShifter?

I’d like to try it to get CDDA audio working, but I’m not sure quite what I need to set under Volumes/Disks to get the disc to recognize under ShapeShifter.

[lyric fox]

Im going to assume this is a Mister issue. In minimig I go to Dopus config menu, and resolution goes crazy

Also anyone know where I can find info/docs on mister UART function?

[karmic fog]

have not gotten CDs to work but also haven't spent much time working on it yet

[void belfry]

https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/advanced/computer/

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PC88_MiSTer/pull/47

[lyric fox]

So interesting that I was trying to find out how the UART function works with the Atari ST core (says it does) and yet there is no description in those doc's as to how it was setup on that core. Every other core, not Atari. When I try I get 2 bombs ( memory addressing error) and the core locks up.

[void belfry]

I lack the knowledge on Atari to write a decent write-up for PPP setup, I know it works as I tested it at some point a pre-made vhd (think it was using STinG or something like that)

[lyric fox]

Ok. I can do that.. but what about the modem emu? Which is what I really want

[void belfry]

Think the MiSTerFPGA forum area on Atari has some more info as well

[lyric fox]

Internet on Atari is pretty useless.. but bbsing is alive and well

[void belfry]

then is just as for other cores, set the UART mode to Modem, adjust the speed accordingly to your teminal and atdt your preffered BBS

[lyric fox]

I'm one of the few that does use internet. For email nnpt and ftp

Oh and IRC 🙂

So what is happening is I go to the Atari serial configuration.. I assume something it's looking for has not been emulated.. and it locks up

When you did sting you did it ppp through the serial port?

Oh.. you had a premade image.

[void belfry]

yes

[lyric fox]

So no changes were required

[void belfry]

as always it goes through serial port. in every core

for ao486 is seen as COM1 for example, you establish the PPP through it.

[lyric fox]

There is the issue. An Atari Ste or MegaSTE (emulated in the core) has 4 different networking outlets not just the serial port. So you have to set it up in the control panels. It does not default to com 1

There is midi, apple talk, 4 serial ports with different UART abilities

[void belfry]

COM1 was as example, I said i dunno Atari.

[lyric fox]

I hear ya.

[void belfry]

Amiga uses serial.device driver and so on

[lyric fox]

But I wonder if the control panel is looking for something that the core did not emulate.. and that's causing my crash

Minimig is a much more mature core.

[void belfry]

https://misterfpga.org/viewforum.php?f=10 -- see this area, but you might dig a bit 🙂

[lyric fox]

Thanks

Lol.. yep I'm on that forum

Unfortunately not much drive on the Atari core. But I'll try and dig some more.

[void belfry]

Amiga/ao486 are on these cases much better suited imho

My most used AmiDock's Internet/Comms bar, from PPP dialer and browsers to AmiTube or IMP3 etc

[willow pond]

I really need to learn amiga... i bought the licence on amiga forever last month, but have not had the time to look at it properly

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PC88_MiSTer/pull/48/files

[granite umbra]

Hang-On is running now 🙂

[ember crane]

i'm trying to get my 8bitdo m30 working on ao490 in flashback. Anyone know if it's possible?

[elder cove]

Not sure if the PC version of Flashback supports a joystick - if not, you could map the buttons to keys with the keymapper.

[ember crane]

Apparently yes, when you are on the menu of the game and go to info, they show how to use the stick ingame

[ember crane]

done! thx

but keymapper is core config or game config?

[elder cove]

Usually keymapper is core-level, unless the pack has a specific .mgl name (something ItalianGrandma is going through the packs & doing for the megapack).

[final zephyr]

Anyone else getting corrupted audio in Hocus Pocus on MISTer AO3486 PC Core?

[willow pond]

i use keymapper for games that do not support joystick, i configure the game like a 0Mhz dos game and give each their own name, so each game can have their own bindings

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PC88_MiSTer/pull/51

[summer dragon]

hmmm just in general? I have played this and don’t recall audio issues with it. I can check this and see

[karmic fog]

i've thought more about this and it seems like getting CDs mounted through the Amiga would be huge for ShapeShifter. my Shapeshifter image is ultimately largely limited by the maximum disk sizes supported in Mac OS and Amiga. With external CD support, I could leave the disc images external to the drive images and include vastly more software

once i get the process down, i can start streamlining creating individual games with autoboot and working configurations

i think those are most attractive for most people

the "0MHz" style is very nice

as yet unconfirmed if this will all work (is the CD support in Minimig good enough to allow this ShapeShifter function is the question I suppose), but it would be quite excellent if it did

my existing solution is just to use virtual disc mounting software within Mac OS itself and have the images included on my drive image

so, that does work for basic CD support in Mac OS, but obviously you don't get CDDA that way for the games that need that

but it does mean quite a few games are doable even without having the disc image mounted externally from the MiSTer OSD in Minimig

i think most of the CD games we can realistically run given ShapeShifter's performance profile don't use CDDA

but there are definitely some

i wonder if there's a list of CDDA games on Mac... i know it causes some kerfuffle when dealing with these on the Mac side as most of the Mac image capturing software from back then (e.g. Toast) was not reliable at capturing these discs, so some of the archived discs were made incorrectly and are still floating around

[granite umbra]

At least two more games are running now and Casablanca ni Ai o with last update before both showing black screen with sounds

[elder cove]

100% agree - it would be awesome for automation, and being able to load the CD from the MiSTer OSD would make it a lot easier to add new games.

[elder cove]

The ones I can think of off-hand are Settlers 2, Over-Ring-Under, and the original Japanese version of PSY-S City (the NO-CD YO! And Recode versions both patch this out with audio played through Director). I’m sure there are more, though - I’ll do a bit of research later today and get back to you on that.

[deft estuary]

is this game working?

[granite umbra]

yes with last unstable of PC8801 core

[deft estuary]

thanks! is it in english?

[granite umbra]

It is just japanese texts

[deft estuary]

and is the core working also on VGA crts?

[granite umbra]

If you CRT permits 31Khz I think it works but I don't have it on my side to test

[deft estuary]

ok thanks I'll try!

[deft estuary]

It works (sort of)

🤔

[granite umbra]

yes ... weird

[deft estuary]

Is it normal?

Sorry my fault!

[granite umbra]

On HDMI it is correctly printed not sure why you have this case

[deft estuary]

I did it launch the stable one

Here’s the unstable!

[granite umbra]

better 🙂

[deft estuary]

However the man I love doesn’t start… have I to type some command to load the disk?

[granite umbra]

this game have two floppies, you need to put disk 1 on 1st drive and disk 2 on 2nd drive and reset on the OSD

it will launch automatically the game

this game also required a japanese keyboard because commands needs to be type

[deft estuary]

Yup, thanks!

[granite umbra]

it sounds great 🙂

[deft estuary]

Yeah!

[granite umbra]

You need a keyboard with a numpad to go left and right (4 and 6)

[young gust]

There's a tab for Mister Distribution updates. I see there's a bunch of new ones recently. Is this something that gets applied when we run update all or something we need to do manually?

[granite umbra]

I don't use update all so maybe it could be downloaded with an option activated.
A automatic build is generated for PC8801 (like saturn core unstable).

[deft estuary]

Yes I have it, thanks!

[elder cove]

The materials for my next 0MHz Triple Pack arrived.

What do an undocumented port of a 3DO exclusive, a video game you could buy without knowing it, and a disc full of pseudoscience from a company that made off-brand licensed Mario games all have in common?

[hollow ice]

Sounds like the topic of an @naive imp video 😉

So far, my guess is something to do with Time Warp Productions

[void belfry]

NetBSD 6.1.3 boots on ao486, but other than uname/cd/clear/some other minimal commands it doesn't like to run anything else (even halt is giving same error)

[hollow ice]

Seems to be fpu? https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-bugs/2002/03/07/0004.html

[void belfry]

yeah.. will see if I can recompile this (and if it works any better). Loading time though is amazingly short

or it's just innefective/not working and that's that

[vestal isle]

That's great!

[void belfry]

With this occasion, found out about https://archive.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/ --
kinda similar to Debian one, though it has some limits.
Used it during installation under Qemu to get some packages not available on CD, worked like a charm

[elder cove]

So, I'm wondering if we should change how we sort directories for 0MHz in the default folder structure of its .mgl files.

There are a number of games where publishers released games in a series across DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 compatibility, and in most cases they were expected to be run on the same system. As such, I'm wondering if we want to move all these categories to a _PC Games folder, and have _Browse By System Version be a subfolder of that - in that first directory, we could also have a universal _Browse by Series directory that shows series entries on DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 95 together.

That would also clean up the amount of folders on the drive root. Thoughts?

[summer dragon]

I’m down for it. This would essentially just be another way of doing MGL organization if I’m understanding correctly and not affect where we actually store the game VHDs, yeah?

[elder cove]

Yep, essentially.

[summer dragon]

that’s easily updateable too even if release 1 doesn’t have it that way

but considering how long it’s taking me to get back to this, we should be able to make that happen right on release 1 most likely 😅

[elder cove]

Announcing my next 0MHz pack set: HEX Collective on PC - Triple Pack!

[young gust]

Thank you for your work man

I'm trying to put together my first game

Doing Seal Team from Electronic Arts

Seems to play fine

[young gust]

I'm trying to play thru at least half the game to ensure there's no random crashes

[robust monolith]

JUst to let you know, on TA, search for 0mhz, someone has just posted what looks like a new project, but it's a virus that's passworded. Don't download that. Wait for an official notice of release I guess from Elphive / Italian Grandma

[young gust]

What scumbag would do that?

[elder cove]

What has the virus?

[void belfry]

he "released" quite a lot ...

new account... hacker wannabe

or just want to destroy IA reputation, saw this kind of things in the past as well

@elder cove I assume your AV detected it. What was it (the virus) ?

[elder cove]

No - I didn’t download it. I’m assuming you’re talking about the fake 0MHz DOS Collection listing there with no image & 0 views?

[void belfry]

yes

the same user uploaded same day 23 more "packs" with various apparent content

but ofc, only a torrent file

so my alarms ringed as this is suspicious right away

[robust monolith]

Yeah they're just torrents but I wanted to see what they were, I was in a sandbox so okay.

[void belfry]

Did you had the chance to inspect what was the thing they tried to inject ? Or some whereabouts on torrent seed source ?

[void belfry]

yeah, now coffee really kicked in :D, read diagonally before and mistook you for @robust monolith

[void belfry]

this one.

[young gust]

Well F that guy

Is there a way to get that crap removed?

[void belfry]

each of its "packs" have this sketchy link as well, so make sure you DO NOT click it

[young gust]

Dude needs to be reported or something to get that crap taken down

[void belfry]

tried to find a way, flagging it is BS:

other than mail... didn't find any other way

maybe someone more versed here on IA knows more

[young gust]

Well it's certainly misleading

[void belfry]

yeah, that is what I flagged it for

[elder cove]

Just to clarify, the recently added “Prince Interactive” and “Kid Pix for Windows” packs in that first image are safe - those two are both mine.

Same with the two De’Lux-o titles. That’s not my upload of Venetian Deer, but to be fair, that’s not even a 0MHz package - it’s an in-browser player for the game. I suspect they just saw my 0MHz package for the game and copied the category tags from it.

[void belfry]

yes, we are only referring to the false 0MHz from that user mentioned above (and his other "releases")

[worn oxide]

human malice can get really stupidly petty

[void belfry]

it's not just 0MHz targeted, that's why I think it's similar to the past attacks (not DDOS ones, there were also malicious uploads/links/spam etc etc)

and "somehow" most of them came from RU/NK/BY and other delightful countries

[young gust]

Kinda makes sense.

They got nothing else to do in those countries

Russians LOVE the 3DO though. So I give em credit for that

[void belfry]

goes even deeper 🙂 they are not independent in any measure, but state owned and funded

[young gust]

Indeed

When I got my DNA test and found out I was 78% Russian I was like well now it all makes sense why I love the 3DO so much 😂

[void belfry]

and yeah, destroying reputations of someone/some site is one of their fave actions

[young gust]

Literally in my DNA

[void belfry]

yours, I presume ? 😄

[burnt pelican]

It may be worth going to the host with an abuse complaint...

Only consideration is will it bring 0MHz into copyright holder's sights?

[void belfry]

yes, that too. I'm still trying to get my hands on a sandbox/isolated test environment to have a look myself

but probably the most rapid way is to document and report to IA

again, never done it, so yeah...

also a warning on this (or other as well related) Discord

[void belfry]

Meanwhile got a colleague of mine to help, will see what we can check/test in an hour or so, hopefully

this was fast:

[strong yoke]

From previous experience archive.org are extremely variable about getting these things deleted etc, so that's good news 🙂

[void belfry]

i only flagged 0MHz fake one few hrs ago lol

[copper slate]

@void belfry doing the computer lord’s work

[void belfry]

I'm really curious what is that malware and where it might originate

From what i see, it seems to target random but with high exposure topics/packs (Batocera, PS3, MS windoze/office)

and ofc 0MHz and MiSTerFPGA lol

[copper slate]

We did it! We’re popular enough for targeted malware campaigns!!

[void belfry]

High times that MiSTerFPGA to have its own private BBS 😉

only half-joking, we DO have a lot of ex-SysOps in the community

[void belfry]

Security alert: 0MHz users (and not only), be aware that on IA appeared these days a fake "collection" amongst some more others, uploaded by same user (see pics below). Those uploads mimic existing ones and only contain a link + a torrent which contains a collection of malware AND they are not linked to any of 0MHz creators/contributors/MiSTerFPGA community !
Please DO NOT download those fake uploads and DO NOT click on the links presented there !
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/b08a1f2ebdeaeb4d2d05cb5fbf9335ba29598811432717e978cb7caeb5392705?nocache=1

Basically AVOID ANY of that "user" uploads (#1047332497492553799 message), stick to ONLY the known creators/contributors !

guess next step is to report to IA.
Anyone here done smth similar before ? I saw there's a forum as well, but didn't had time to browse to see if there's a reporting section

[lunar trellis]

This is very disappointing someone would do this. Having the proper ones be grabbed via script should massively mitigate the risk though, once that is all set up.

[void belfry]

also to notice, someone already checked some of these hashes on VT yesterday or a day before 🙂

[void belfry]

disappointing ? meh, it was to be expected. After all, they targeted some of most searched items on IA

in that setup.exe you get from torrent/direct link is quite a whole archive of malware, stealers of all sorts, loggers and so on

[bitter yoke]

I went and flagged it too

[void belfry]

the BIG kudos is to @robust monolith , he discovered this in first place ! 🍻

[void belfry]

it has 23 more fake uploads 😄

[bitter yoke]

Oh boy, yea even if it one get s taken down, 10 more will pop back up

[hazy tree]

there was another fake 0mhz a couple of weeks ago too

[void belfry]

same pattern, huh ?

[hazy tree]

yeah, same format, except the cover graphic

[void belfry]

again, not surprised, seen this crap on many scales over and over again

this is bit more personal, as it touches what I enjoy most (fpga and software preservation)

[void belfry]

until this gets properly reported/handled, posted a warning on forum as well : https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=97191#p97191

[summer dragon]

i tried to search for 0MHz and even sorting by date wasn’t seeing it int he top results, fortunately…had to dig around for it. I’ll go and flag it later too

[void belfry]

it is showing the 4th link

and as @elder cove said, the Venetian Deer seems to be just some playable in browser one but with some of tag copying mistake crap, so unrelated for now

[robust monolith]

Well I saw it, and thought as Elph and Italian Grandma were talking about a new 0mhz project, and we all know where it'll be posted, thought I'd better warn folk, just in case.

[void belfry]

And did a very good job, mate ! Apparently, this is not the first time this kind of crap happens, so we'll all have to be vigilant 😦

tested about 60-70% of the files, most of them are carrying various malware(s)

also great news that most of them were already reported on Virus Total a day or two before by some other people

also, the AI that I wrongly called before as a ||HR piece of crap #bot-play message || actually helped me formulate a nice template

[void belfry]

Will see how fast that bugger disappears, or rather how the IA mail reporting thing works

[elder cove]

Back on the pack updates, I finished up two packs last night: Kid Pix for Windows and Prince Interactive.

The HEX Triple Pack is going up now - after that, the Tonka games are going to be next.

Beyond that, my hint for the next Triple Pack is to “keep an eye out”. I’ll let you guess the meaning of that one

[opal phoenix]

Does anyone know how to reset a keyboard remap to defaults in ao486? I remapped some of my joystick buttons into keys for a game and noticed it isn't temporary as when I first used that feature.

[summer dragon]

delete the AO486sys.cfg file from the config folder

[elder cove]

You can also open up the keymapper, hit a button on the controller, and hold the button labeled “Clear” on the OSD.

[summer dragon]

@opal phoenix if you’re using MGLs to launch the game (i.e. 0MHz style), I’d suggest adding a setname to the MGL for that specific game by adding a line like <setname same_dir="1">AO486-MyGame</setname> to the MGL and then doing your remaps again. That way it’ll save that map only for that specific game to a AO486-MyGamesys.cfg

[opal phoenix]

Thanks, I am using 0mhz now, but really was just playing around, and couldn't find a way to reset from the osd, holding menu just exited the remap menu. I have found some .map files in config/inputs corresponding to my keyboard and my joystick. Will deleting those work?

[opal phoenix]

This did it, couldn't figure out I needed to press a button to remap first before clearing. Thanks!!

[granite umbra]

https://youtu.be/Ljz59JXGrN0?feature=shared

[opal phoenix]

Ok, this one is kinda niche but maybe someone will find this useful.

I used to own the gameport versions for games like tie fighter and wanted to see if I could get the USB versions working on mister ao486. Both are recognized, and the key remap is great for that. Only thing I haven't been able to do is use the ch throttle axis in games, I can only use the buttons as remapped keys.

[elder cove]

Nice! Is that with a Gameport to USB adapter?

[opal phoenix]

No, these are the USB versions, I sold the gameport ones years ago. The ch pro throttle gameport version only worked with a din keyboard, and it connected directly to the combatstick so it replaced its built in throttle. No way to do that with USB so it is what it is.

[elder cove]

Fair enough - if anyone knows of a good solution for Gameport joysticks over USB, though, let me know.

[opal phoenix]

I did have a gameport to USB adapter with the stick gameport version but it only worked as a 4 button controller.

[elder cove]

HEX - Triple Pack is up. Next multi-game pack is going to be Tonka.

However, for the next single game pack - I think it’s time for some random Tim Curry, don’t you?

[elder cove]

Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster is going up now:

[young gust]

I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO PLAY THIS!! THANK YOU!

[copper slate]

I’m sure the PC version is better but there was also a Saturn port that works perfectly on the core.

[young gust]

Yeah I have it on my drive. Just never got around to playing it

Like the 8 million other games I need to get around to

[copper slate]

amen brother 😆

Same

[young gust]

I'm honestly glad modern gaming is mostly shit

It's given me the time I need to play all this amazing stuff I missed out on

[elder cove]

It does - the Saturn port is a bit of a downgrade, though, as it runs at half the resolution of the PC original.

[elder cove]

Tonka Triple Pack is going up:

This includes Tonka Construction, Tonka Search & Rescue, and Tonka Garage. (I pulled Tonka Raceway due to it having some performance & crashing issues.)

[void belfry]

Great news, those malware uploads are gone, IA team removed those.
But ofc, you clean up one, another one is still there:

same links, same modus operandi

[young gust]

Awesome!!

[void belfry]

aaand ofc the rabbit's hole goes deeper and deeper
From what I am seeing on IA (Search for description:(download here) and filter by Date added), a ton of new posts (now also masqueraded as "Community images" or "Movies" etc) , each and every one containing a link to malicious sites.
So yeah, stay vigilant people !

[young gust]

Is it possible to create an official 0mhz IA where only selected people are permitted to upload to it so we know it's trusted?

[void belfry]

no idea, but most important rule is to check for files.
IF there's no files but a sketchy d/l link --- alarm (don't click it, but hover the mouse to see its address)
IF there's no 0MHz structure (meaning a vhd, mgl/cfg files and sometimes a chd/iso CD image) also alarm, might not be what it claims to be.

But yeah, fully agree that a single place to get 0MHz is most desirable

[young gust]

Yeah I always check, but I also was thinking this way if a script gets created for people to just pull everything down, they won't get any nonsense pulled down with it.

[void belfry]

this is a fresh one, wasn't 2 hrs ago

meanwhile : https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=9206 😍

[exotic prairie]

@lunar trellis ^^

[strong yoke]

Oh hello!

[granite umbra]

it is based on X1 Clone FPGA using a fpga named spartan3

[exotic prairie]

Is JasonA going to be the hero that the x68k needs? 🙏🙏🙏

[lunar trellis]

I don't think so, but he is on a roll for knocking out the 8 bit machines

[void belfry]

<<--- already started to see if it can run Unix 😄

[lunar trellis]

It would be great to get Jason's recent computer cores tested to the point they could be added in into Main

[elder cove]

Next pack going up is Extreme Pinball, the third and final game in the Epic Pinball series:

After the discussion earlier with Robby, I got thinking about games with bad console ports that played better on PC, and this one immediately jumped to mind. Extreme Pinball got released on the PlayStation with some severe compromises, which for some reason caused the port to have much longer load times and framerate issues.

[copper slate]

Wow I didn’t even know it came out on PS1!

Those pinball games were sweet

Well still are

[void belfry]

Fruity Loops guys for sure are not happy too :D) A friend (and colleague) of mine raised awareness on their community as well earlier today.

[elder cove]

I felt like if I was doing Extreme Pinball, too, I might as well also do the first game in the series, Silverball:

This wound up being a more complex config than I expected. I wound up building two versions of the game into the pack - the original release version with an additional table (NOVA) you could get free from Epic MegaGames, and Silverball Plus 2, which didn't work with my NOVA install media but features 2 tables of its own (WARBOT & DUEL) that are essentially reimagined versions of Epic Pinball tables.

[void belfry]

Avoid using "download here" or variants in description lmao 😛

On a serious note, been a while since I last played pinball games, high time to do so lol

[vestal goblet]

wow!

I still remember when Epic Pinball came out, that Android (Cyborg?) Table was mind-blowing

[iron bluff]

So ”Z X - R A” are the safe one? ☝️

[void belfry]

yes, is legit/safe. 0MHz packs on the IA from different contributors from this community are legit.

They DO NOT put "download here" links in description 😄

apparently since last night the "hackers" moved to post fake movies

and no response from IA 🙂 maybe hoped too much after initial fast enough response + maybe weekend,,

but posting rate seemed to slowed down, so think they are working though..

[iron bluff]

I see! Thanks 🙏

[exotic prairie]

@lunar trellis have you spoken to jason about the x1 core? I'm wondering what disk format I should grab to prep for testing 🙂

[lunar trellis]

That's a good question, I don't actually know, I need to ping him a message so will ask

[robust monolith]

x1 disks I've got are a mixture of 2d, cas, d88, hfe, scp, tap and wave @exotic prairie That's everything that been dumped for the system

[exotic prairie]

Yeah, that is what I see too. but are there different games between those? Or are they the same set in different formats?

[granite umbra]

here the list https://seesaawiki.jp/chitentai/d/List of X1 with tape or floppy format

some are on both format

[worn oxide]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1bIRV86Q5U

it's a very cool thing

it's also part-time a PC-Engine too

[elder cove]

I actually used a track from this system’s version of Space Harrier (Valda) as a piece of temp audio for a subway transit theme in a game I was working on a few years back.

That was the first I’d ever heard about it, but I learned about the unique Mario/DK games later on - definitely an interesting piece of history, considering how protective Nintendo are these days of keeping their games off PC.

[exotic prairie]

Just watched the macho nacho video. I am so stoked for that core

[lunar trellis]

X1 is one of the more exciting of the old Japanese PCs we don't have for sure. I suspect Jason will get loading via ADC done pretty early, as that always seems to be an easy thing to wire up and support (but is a clunky and frustrating way to try load games). You might want to check what X1 games are on Gaming Alexandria, may be some archived by them and typeins up in that section.

[elder cove]

I'm still really looking forward to the Japanese x86 variants (PC-9801/FM Towns), too. They've got some really interesting games there, like Touhou Project, Dead of the Brain, Policenauts, and the FM-Towns enhanced versions of the LucasArts adventures.

[lunar trellis]

I am not getting my hopes up we will ever get stable and easy to use versions of those machines sadly

[elder cove]

I wouldn't count it out. puu's last post on their blog was 5 days ago, and it still seems like they're working on supporting Japanese PC components in FPGA.

[lunar trellis]

I appreciate Pu's work, but he has never released anything that works well and is easy to use. His PC-88 and x68000 cores both required a lot of work from other Devs to port over and they are both still pretty jank. His refusal to use GitHub or any version control, and ignoring any updates other people do, just compounds issues.

[exotic prairie]

I wish someone would just fork and do the x68k core on their own. No disrespect to puu, but that core deserves more love

Fork isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean

[lunar trellis]

These Japanese machines seem to be a bit of a nightmare for non Japanese people to work on, even the old 8bit machines that on paper are the same hardware as the score of 8bit machines we already have, but they aren't straightforward to wire up and get to work.

[exotic prairie]

yeah, so we just need to find someone who understands japanese, loves the x68k, and can write verilog

[granite umbra]

PC8801 is good state maybe 85% of the contents are playable.
It sounds great.
Also It is an hobby so we can force someone.

[lunar trellis]

PC88 has had a lot of work from others to get to the state it is in now, and am I right in thinking it needs a reboot after loading a ROM to boot it?

Nobody should be trying to force anyone to do anything with their free time, but I don't think anyone should hold out for nice to use, stable, feature rich cores for PC98 and FM Towns coming into Main based on Pu's previous output and method of developing cores in isolation.

[elder cove]

That is the most succinct description of peer pressure I've ever heard lol

In all seriousness, I really need to try out the PC88 side of things. Wonder if we can easily create 0MHz-style packs for it?

[granite umbra]

Yes for pc8801, Yosinda made a lot of updates on github and using work for other like JT.
You need to reset the core after loading d7 on osd.
It will the same for X1.

Puu-san on the other hand develop all parts following his way but yeah it is not easy for a community project if the core is still wip.

[lunar trellis]

Hmm, I think the system is probably too basic for that, in the same way it wouldn't be worth trying to 0mhz the ZX Spectrum

[granite umbra]

PC8801 doesn't have HDD officially.
But 0mhz is only for HDD and CDROM ?

[elder cove]

No, you can use the .MGL format for any form of disk automation.

I'm already working on a pack set for ZZT that runs entirely on DOS boot floppies, for instance.

[lunar trellis]

I was wondering what other systems could benefit from the 0mhz, x68000 presumably, maybe some of the apple cores? Maybe Amiga and Atari's?

[granite umbra]

Is mgl could rest the core after d7 are loaded ?

[elder cove]

It's mainly helpful when you're swapping multiple disks at any given time, or setting up specific system settings for compatibility with a certain game.

AmigaVision & similar configs are a better setup at the moment for Amiga, thanks to WHDLoad simplifying a lot of the setup process.

Though, I could see 0MHz configs being useful in the future for a more direct CDTV/CD32 loader.

Macintosh could definitely use it, though. It's about as straightforward to autoboot software on a Mac as it is under Windows.

[elder cove]

Generally, it sets up the automation so that the drive is loaded on boot with the disk image.
You can, however, set a reset after loading by sending the reset command in the MGL.

[granite umbra]

Thanks do you have an exemple with reset ?

[elder cove]

Sure. Here:

You can find the identifier for your drive in the .sv file for the core.

Type equals the first letter, index is the number proceeding it. (ie. FDD0 would be "S0,D88,FDD0;", meaning it's type="s" and index="0"). Path is simply the path to your image, relative to the directory under /games.

[granite umbra]

I will test with some games and share mgl 👍

[copper slate]

I hate to make a request but can anyone do King's Quest VIII? That was part of Top 300.

[elder cove]

Probably too heavy to run, given Mask of Eternity uses a 3D game engine, but I’ll take a look at it. (Same with GK3.) Are there any other mainline Sierra games which don’t have packs?

Thinking about it, I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone do GK2: The Beast Within. That one should hopefully run given it’s the same engine as the Phantasmagoria games, so I’ll look into it as well.

[elder cove]

In the meantime, Beachware CASINO! is going up, a pretty fun little casino game I used to play when I was younger with an incredibly '90s aesthetic:

[mortal trench]

i am really enjoying OMF's tournament mode, I forgot how much fun this game is

i don't get to upgrade blanka's legs in street fighter

[elder cove]

Kid Pix Studio Deluxe is going up! This is an enhanced version of the original children's art suite, including several new modes (most notably Moopies, a simple 2D animation builder):

[elder cove]

Out of curiosity, did you mean King's Quest 7?

I built a setup for 8 (haven't tested yet to see if it gets anything, but I'm not super hopeful given 3D). But looking now, King's Quest 7 also doesn't have a config.

[elder cove]

I got all of two frames into Mask of Eternity before it hard crashed lol. I’ll get started on King’s Quest VII

[copper slate]

Yes oops, I meant 7.

[copper slate]

Castle of the Winds for Windows 3.1 is another classic

[elder cove]

No worries - honestly, I was mostly curious what would happen, myself.
It would be really interesting to find a 3D game that runs under DirectX on Windows 95, if only to get a good metric on performance & see if anything could be done to improve it. I'm sporadically testing things way beyond what a 486 should be able to handle with the hopes of finding something that pushes the hardware as far as it can go.

[elder cove]

I'll add it to the list for tomorrow - tons of classics I'd love to see still. Kingdom O' Magic and The Quivering are also on my todo list for DOS over the next few days, alongside several cult classic Win 3.x titles.

[hollow ice]

It would be a stretch on ao486, but has anyone tried return fire?

[elder cove]

I haven't, though I've heard the PS1 version has a better framerate & some quality of life improvements if you're looking to play it on MiSTer.

I'll test it alongside Castle of the Winds tomorrow.

The Amtex pinball simulation Royal Flush is up:

[elder cove]

I've got a sporadic audio popping through certain lines of dialogue in the DOS version for KQ7. Does anyone know how I might fix that?

Moving over to the Windows 3.x version instead for the time being.

[elder cove]

Probably for the best, actually - the Windows version appears to be faster, too.

[elder cove]

Going to rebuild my KQ7 setup on a smaller drive image to save a bit of space.

In the meantime, another pinball game is up - Tristan: Solid State Pinball:

[elder cove]

King's Quest VII is going up:

Similar to Commander Blood, it's packed as an xDelta patch since it's still currently being sold.

Apply it to the most recent Windows GOG installer, then rename the extension to .7z and extract.

[elder cove]

Finally, tonight, I'm going to strongly recommend you check out Psycho Pinball - a really spectacular yet forgotten pinball game by Codemasters which holds its own with some of the generation's best:

[strong yoke]

Oh wow, I’d completely forgotten about that game! Windows 3.x desktop games are in a bit of a memory hole for me

University years; swamped by so much other stuff

[copper slate]

Oh shit I didn't know! Wow, you're an awesome dude, thanks for looking out like that. I should get the GoG version!

[void belfry]

get it while it's not yet tariffed as well 😛

[hollow ice]

50% more bits…just imagine how many extra sd cards we are going to need.

[granite umbra]

update of Sharp X1
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=97279#p97279

[elder cove]

Interplay's two Lord of the Rings RPGs are going up:

[hollow ice]

Are those the ones that have cutscenes from the 70s cartoon movie?

[elder cove]

Yep!

The first one has cutscenes from Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 film, along with CD audio & voice acting for certain sequences.

As the Bakshi film cuts off partway through Two Towers, the second one just uses in-engine cutscenes made up of stills drawn by in-house artists at Interplay.

[cedar isle]

Great table!

[elder cove]

Wow - Return Fire actually runs quite well under Windows 95.

Will definitely be making a pack for this one.

[elder cove]

Shoot - I may have spoken too soon. The framerate gets pretty bad once the action gets more hectic in the later levels.

I’ll keep working on it - see if there’s anything I can do to increase performance.

[young gust]

I had Return Fire on my 3DO back in the day. It's a ton of fun

[copper slate]

@elder cove is there a way I can modify music settings for the King’s Quest VII release? The music is all sorts of wacky for me, very discordant.

Just in-case i looked up a video to compare and it sounds right here - https://youtu.be/7rfVE2JvLqA

[elder cove]

Change OPL2 to OPL3 in the MiSTer OSD menu under Video & Audio

Sorry - meant to include that preset in a .cfg. That affects a number of Win 3.x games

[copper slate]

Ohhhh, that simple. Wow, thank you!

[elder cove]

No worries 👍

[elder cove]

Castle of the Winds 1 & 2 are going up:

[copper slate]

WOWOWOW

[hollow ice]

It’s on that leading edge of 3d. I wasn’t expecting miracles but that it is playable at all is impressive.

[limpid tiger]

If you ever watch Basement Brothers PC-88 Paradise (or PC-98 Paradise), you'll know that it was difficult to balance the memory, the CPU speed, and vearious other things in order to get games to run on original hardware - even for the people of the time, who could speak the language. There's even utilities to help people adjust these settings for various games....

While I would also like to play some of the games, it really sounds like an unpleasant experience getting them to run properly

It's like you need some sort master list of all the settings for each piece of software...

[west spoke]

Hey all, I just want to run Windows 95/98 Apple II and other cores for nostalgia purposes, not really to game on the computer cores.

Is there an easy way to get all those roms setup?

[opal phoenix]

Maybe we could get a basic dos + windows 3.1 pack in 0mhz format. Opened from the dos games directory.

[void belfry]

just the OS ? there already are VHD templates around

[copper slate]

Yeah, they’re online somewhere. Just need to look. Sorry can’t share that material here though.