Computer Cores

[mossy compass]

Not sure if this is related, but isn't it possible to change some settings on the ao486 core through dos itself by running some dos apps specifically made for the mister ao486 core running dos?

[hollow ice]

I am not sure what type of options we are talking about? Some options are available to tweak like CPU speed, but not many

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer?tab=readme-ov-file#core-speed-and-options-and-drivers

[fleet cave]

yeah, the old top300 or whatever had a command that let it talk to the "core" and set the cpu speed and cache options I think

that's...a hack

like i think it used some free IDE command or something to get the request into main

and there's no mechanism 'the other way'

[hollow ice]

oh god, I hope not

I swear, if my hair loss has been because of that 😄

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/blob/master/sw/sysctl/SYSCTL.C

[fleet cave]

haha

that whole mechanism is kinda gross, really

oh ok, it's not what I remember. it just uses some iobus_address

[mossy compass]

So like, on the bus that ISA cards communicate or something?

[hollow ice]

https://wiki.osdev.org/I/O_Ports

[fast kraken]

i know its primitive but what if the MGL just contained a chunk of text for it to autotype - probably after a delay timer

oh or if you could call something like sysctl and it'd tell you if mt32pi is attached

[reef gale]

Actually I have a way to do this without having to modify the core itself at all

Just put the bat file that selects your settings on a floppy disk. Each MGL uses a different floppy

[summer dragon]

yeah I mean, a lot of the 0MHz stuff should be redone to have an ExoDOS style batch file that just lets you pick the version of the game you want

It’ll happen eventually…I was planning to do it myself and life has just gotten in the way

I know a couple of that packs I put out there have the menu that lets you pick MT-32/CD-Rom/etc. when launching

That said, I guess the idea of 0MHz originally was that it would be: Pick your game and the version you want directly from the MiSTer menu and play it without any other steps

[reef gale]

You could still have it like that

1. Have a floppy disc with only a single bat file on it. Call it something like "configure.bat". You could have an mt32 floppy and a normal floppy image
2. For the autorun.bat on the main HDD or CD, modify it so it executes A:\configure.bat before doing whatever
3. This allows you to consolidate two configurations of the game into a single image. It's still one-click because you select mt32 or not mt32 when you select the MGL file

It's not worth merging incredibly small games, but for something like 7th Guest

[void belfry]

Speaking of 0MHz stuff, would be of any interest some apps/dev/edu VHDs ?
I'm willing to work on this side project, though will need some help on software selection/thematics/etc, also checking them for copyright reasons

Also extending this on the other OSes that can run on ao486, as a potential separate pack

Linux/NetBSD should be fine, but others might not fly well under the radar

especially this one

[reef gale]

I wonder if it wouldn't be worth coming up with a different name than 0mhz. I feel like the more adjacent projects use the name, the more confusing everything gets

Maybe EduHz?

[void belfry]

¯_(ツ)_/¯ 0MHz name is fine with me, don't see why it should only be reserved for games, but I'll leave that to the ppl involved in the project

Could not care less about under what name will this potential/hypothetical stuff would be tbh, just wondered if there's a need/niche for it, that's all

[reef gale]

I'd say so. Might be fun to fiddle around in wordperfect

[void belfry]

I'm open to sugestions

My thinking is having also some kind of "theme", like Office/Prod/Dev under which several products can be installed (eg, BC/BP/NASM for a Dev one, or full on MOD trackers one etc)

[hollow estuary]

I like the idea of having collections or themes in the pack. For software I could see it getting pretty annoying having just a single app in a vhd

[void belfry]

yeah, who the heck would like a TASM only VHD and what use could it ever be 😄

[reef gale]

Which is why I think a useful thing would be having the logical shared software in a bit of a suite

[void belfry]

As I previously said, I'm open to sugestions as well as I need some help to navigate through copyright crap we should avoid in official releases

I am thinking for example a DEV VHD for DOS with C/Pascal/ASM/others, NET DOS one with most of serial/PPP progs needed for browsing the net or connect to a BBS and so on ready

same for windoze or some other OS

so yeah, any ideas are more than welcome

[hollow estuary]

How about a Business Pack ™ 😄 Setup with WFW3.11, Office 4.3, MS Mail and After Dark

[void belfry]

agree with most, but why MS Mail though ? 😄

I am really oblivious, had anyone really used it ?

[hollow estuary]

Only because it'd be comically useless. It only works if you have MS Mail servers, which were Microsoft's ancient predessor to Exchange Server

If you have a WFW network setup you can have an adhoc MS Mail setup as well though

[void belfry]

meh, in the same vein I can do a Bonzi VHD and would be more useful 😄

[hollow estuary]

Hmm, looks like Wordperfect 6.1 is the version to go for if you want a suite of programs and not just WP

The suite contains WordPerfect 6.1, Quattro Pro 6.0, Presentations 3.0, Flow 2.0, Sidekick 2.0, Dashboard 3.0, and Envoy 1.0.

Personally I've got good memories of Lotus Smartsuite from that era

[void belfry]

iirc i tried it on the core and worked fine (though i don't remember if it was under DOS/Win or OS/2)

[hollow estuary]

It'd be funny to cram MS Office 4.3, Wordperfect Suite 6.1 and Lotus Smartsuite 4.0 into the one VHD

[hollow ice]

You don’t run an exchange server on nt on the ao486 core?

[void belfry]

not yet

[hollow estuary]

MS Mail server or cc:Mail server would run in the ao486 core 😄

[void belfry]

yeah, sounds good tbh, maybe also some paint shop pro and the likes in the mix as well

[void belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/lord-of-the-rings-gandalf-dont-tempt-me-gif-18418543

still trying to get NT 4 server to work on ao486 lol

[hollow estuary]

With cc:Mail I know it has SMTP and UUCP gateways for getting email to the outside world 😆 I ran a cc:Mail UUCP gateway in my first job when my company first got onto the ✨ Internet ✨

It was connected to an ISP over dialup with a 2400bps modem that dialed up every 15 minutes to send & receive mail

Those were the days 😅

[void belfry]

cute, another rabbit hole to sink in 🫂

[void belfry]

back to topic, will see over this weekend how would those fare under W9x/NT 4 WS.Highly think NT would be the winner, but downside is the OS loading time (about 1-2 mins)

[reef gale]

Is this a constant for NT, or just 4.0?

Also I'd love to see experiments in how far you could extend Windows 9x

[void belfry]

NT 4 Workstation is the only NT variant I know to work on ao486

yet

[reef gale]

Interesting. Older NT versions don't work?

[void belfry]

I tried to install at some point 3.5, but failed

Now I am trying to use same method as Alex Oughton did use on WS , but for server variants

Not that would be much to gain tbh, but I want to run a SQL server and load a specific SQL dump

[reef gale]

I'm also curious what could be accomplished with Windows 95 in regards to "playing a Visual Novel"

[void belfry]

can try if you give some examples 🙂

The only real use for Win95 i had so far on MiSter was to finish Fallout 1 lol

[reef gale]

Maybe White Album? (The original not the remake)

[void belfry]

have no frigging clue what is that game, noted to check out tomorrow (wel;, today to be precise but much later lol)

also, it is already on the known archive site. i presume ?

[reef gale]

Yeah. And it seems like it's unmodified

[hollow ice]

Haha, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil needs a pentium 500mhz?

[void belfry]

ok, had a quick search, it seems in the vein of True Love and the likes. Will see if it runs 😄

[hollow ice]

Hmm, it is crazy to me looking at some of those old doujin game specs. 200mhz to show a static image and play music?

Also, if you are trying to install those you most likely will need j-win98?

[void belfry]

think it really depend on the program, most of JP games I tried didn'd need special OS variants

[reef gale]

It would be relevant for 95, since it predates Unicode (UCS technically) being default

[hollow ice]

Visual novels tend to

Granted I haven’t played around with any of that stuff in a very long time.

[reef gale]

Yeah and the funny thing is that even the recent official Fate release had a locale bug that wasn't caught until launch

[hollow ice]

Used to play higurashi daybreak at lan parties, too bad that is way too resource heavy for mister.

[void belfry]

well, in that case DOS/V, Win 3.X JP and OS/2 JP ver are working for sure

[hollow ice]

Ugh 20 years ago. That is a way larger number than I wanted to see

[void belfry]

didn't try W9x Jp versions, but i think those would work fine too

[reef gale]

It's one of those "black swan" bugs because it was something like it using system.locale for a conversion when it expected it to instead convert to shift-jis

A bug that would work fine as long as your locale was shift-jis. So it's possible that even if they tested the English version, they didn't test on a PC set to English

[void belfry]

¯_(ツ)_/¯ your guess is most probably better than mine lol

[mossy compass]

We should call it ZeroMHz to avoid confusion

[reef gale]

Ömhz like it's a metal band

[mossy compass]

Or, instead of 0MHz we could call it OMHz

[granite umbra]

Fixes for PC8801
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PC88_MiSTer/pull/59

[void belfry]

yeah, seems I need to source a Win95 JP after all
ok, time to hunt some isos

[void belfry]

WIP

[copper slate]

pins updated

Does anyone use the pins in here? I am fishing for compliments to be clear.

[void belfry]

no 😛

Meh, guess my first W95 JP VHD will be kinda low on space, made it 256 MB and windoze occupy 196 megs...
Gonna do another after, 512 megs this time. But first wanna see that Winter Album running or not and its requirements for space if needed

[shrewd gull]

i programmed my own client of discord that hides any pins you've made

[copper slate]

fair tbh 🤣

[granite umbra]

On PC88, Mugen no Shinzou (1984)(Xtal) goes in game before it shown a disk error !

[void belfry]

ok, Win95 JP with cdrom support done, now le's try the game

[void belfry]

and it runs ok i think 🙂 @reef gale

[short finch]

https://giphy.com/gifs/s01e08-11vUtLUUATEwIE

I've not seen that name since ages.

[void belfry]

hope not to jinx it, but W95 JP seems much more stable that EN version, didn't get any errors so far

[void belfry]

actually in the end it was less than estimated, so with WA game installed I still have 110 megs free (game uses about 45 megs)

[void belfry]

could be worse, I'm seeing it for first time lol

ok, made autorun to work also, so guess the VHD is ready. @summer dragon @elder cove when/if you have some time, ping me and let's get this puppy tested/add MGL magic and ship it 😉

Meanwhile, I'll do some more W95 JP template VHDs , 256M/512M/1G

probably can squeeze one in a ~128 megs one, will see

[elder cove]

Would that Win95 JP template work with some Windows 3.1J-designed games?

I’ve gotten Chu-Teng’s English translation running in a stock Windows 95 English installation with some added DLLs, but it was having several glitches with the inventory not working correctly.

[void belfry]

not a clue , but we can test it out

[void belfry]

lost count how many times i agreed with MS terms and conditions

mkey, will do higher than 181 mes vhds...

standard hostname and domain

[void belfry]

finishing touch and this 256 megs W95 JP template is done (except PPP, not really needed atm)

[void belfry]

done

[reef gale]

Honestly this is really cool. Playing a 1998 title on a pre-Pentium CPU

[void belfry]

well, first W95 JP 256 megs VHD finished, will work on some bigger templates and hopefully will get more traction on these games too

any game suggestions to test are more than welcome, I have zero exp on those (except True Love one)

[hollow ice]

Is there an all ages Tsukihime from that time frame?

[void belfry]

White Album is now on Elphive's hands to test out some more and sprinkle the MGL magic, so hopefully it will be part of 0MHz collection soon

[hollow ice]

Maybe the original Higurashi releases

[void belfry]

not a clue whatsoever 😄 working now on 512 megs VHD

[hollow ice]

I still find visual novels requiring such high spec pentiums ridiculous. I read through the umineko series on an atom powered netbook but who knows if it could run on the core.

[reef gale]

I sometimes wonder if the spec is just "this is the shittiest CPU we tested"

[hollow ice]

Well, i do have to remember that some of the audio codecs are actually pretty cpu intensive.

[void belfry]

depends on the platform , mp3s can be played on Amiga core even without the FPU

always found this thing amusing lol

[hollow ice]

A shame that a bunch of the classics have some pretty dubious adult content

[void belfry]

define dubious 😄

512 megs vhd in the works, forgot to switch to your core 🙁 will do it on the 1024 iteration one

[granite umbra]

last time I tested win95 JP (2023) it was to play this game but it was kind of slow ...
https://eggerland.fandom.com/wiki/Eggerland_for_Windows_95

I wonder if it is better now

[void belfry]

noted for future test

will do some DOS/V + Win3x template setups next (will see if tomorrow or next days)

[granite umbra]

Rusty works great on DOS/v+ win3x 🙂

[void belfry]

i knowz 😉

[granite umbra]

since some updates of ao486 before it was wonky

Puyo Puyo on Win3x works great also
This one also

[void belfry]

nicey, more incentive for me to work on dos/v and jp w3.x

and no, can't read/speak Japanese, but dos/windoze is after all just click next next anyway, not a big issue to setup those

[void belfry]

512 megs W85 JP VHD also finished, will do a 1GB then W3.x ones tomorrow

[hollow ice]

Age of characters

[void belfry]

not a clue on this too, will see tomorrow lol 😄

i take it is nsfw and all, right ? 😍

[hollow ice]

Yeah, although you would have to play a bit to get anywhere near those situations.

[granite umbra]

kevind also fixes cdrom issue (not implemented) for Rema the Thruth 🙂

[void belfry]

speaking of nsfw, need to test out virtual valery too at some point 😄

for scientific purposes ofc

[hollow ice]

Yeah, I have some ide fixes I need PR

[void belfry]

why do I have the certain feeling I'm transforming into a digital pimp ?

[granite umbra]

new one ?

[hollow ice]

Yeah, been trying to get ide working for other operating systems

I have a few fixes for things I have found that don’t really fix the main issue but should probably be corrected anyway

[granite umbra]

Great 👍

[void belfry]

2026 started quite nice on computer cores improvements, eh ? 😄

[hollow ice]

Yeah, I need to clean up the c16 change and pr them too- update Ted and Sid so far

And the pet core I’ve gotten 40 column crtc working, but I broke memory moving to sdram

So, I’ll try to debug that tonight.

[void belfry]

Checked my old DOS/V + W3.x JP vhds. gotta re-make those as templates, ones i have are full with various crap tests i made throughout last 3-4 years

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/humply/ao486_MiSTer/commit/1dbd0662555bb915509e1a89ef51c30455cd736e

[robust monolith]

Thera34 has more OS'es, than I've had hot dinners.

[hollow ice]

I am more interested in that vga_fix branch

and sound

[granite umbra]

there is some update forprotected mode for win9x
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/pull/1121

[hollow ice]

hahaha

has that been my issue all along?

[fleet cave]

yay but also oh no

[hollow ice]

well, it still has the issue of reporting the same data on both channels, lets see if there is a PR for that 😄

I was just telling thera that as soon as I started working on mister projects again, I find someone has beat me to the punch for every one….started to add kikikaikai to the existing KickAndRun core, and sure enough I find out the CoinOp people finished it two weeks ago. Then I think, well, maybe I can look into the Lisa, and AlextheCat (pretty famous in the Lisa scene) already has a mostly working fpga core done for his own project

I just need to start working on things to encourage others to get it done 😄

[fleet cave]

how interested are you in dreamcast?!?!

[mossy compass]

Oh, so by White Album you didn't mean some game based on The Beatles

[mossy compass]

I believe that's true. There are laughably low-resource indie games on Steam that have surprisingly high requirements, but people report they run perfectly fine on significantly lower requirements. It's almost always a case of "This is the shittiest hardware we had to test the lowest specs on"

[mossy compass]

"In 2000 the game was rereleased under the title Fukkatsu! Eggerland" Sure this is not one of those adult games?

[void belfry]

nice, i am sick of this extra step i needed to do

[void belfry]

ok, done with 1 1Gb W95 JP template, first time i did not do the renaming esdi_506 file , used kevind's modified core

[void belfry]

WIP

[granite umbra]

What are the big issues still present on ao486 ?

[hollow ice]

Wait, my change fixed the rename?

Ugh, that means I need to actually put some effort to clean that up and pr it 😆

[void belfry]

yeah, didn't had to do that dance anymore with the JP install i did this morning

ok, i'm done with a first 40 megs DOS/V 6.2 and W3.1 JP template, got sound working, mouse/cdrom/mem exclusions for misterfs etc

not really liking this, will see what I can improve

[vestal ginkgo]

OS/2 Warp (I think any version after 2.0 but it has been years) Disk detection issue during install. Same across most OS/2 stuff I tried including eComStation. Maybe thera34 had better success and I missed it. Was the issue with the original packaged version of DOS/4G 1.95 not running on some games and needing to be replaced with dos32a fixed? That game list from my original work: THELIONK, DUKENUKE, MAGICCAR, MORTALKO, DESCENT1, ORIONBUR. Obviously this has been years so not sure how valid this is here in 2026. 👋

[void belfry]

actually planned to re-do some OS/2 clean installs, but there was always smth else to get in the way last weeks 😄

[vestal ginkgo]

I've also wanted to eventually go back and test to this in Windows 3.1 and see if ao486 VESA works with it: https://github.com/PluMGMK/vbesvga.drv

[vestal ginkgo]

So no more disk stops on installs even for Warp or you haven't gone back yet?

[granite umbra]

On Settlers 1 still has time to time dos/4g issue

[void belfry]

didn't try yet, just prepared the files, but had some other stuff intervening 😄

[vestal ginkgo]

ha OMG, I tested it in 2020: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/issues/25 6 years man...

[void belfry]

you need to disable L1 cache

[vestal ginkgo]

So in theory if you have to do that, I would consider that still broken 😉 but I havent tested

[void belfry]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=46068#p46068

so yeah, need to see if it still applicable after all the changes in the past years

[hollow ice]

So, I may be conflating issues, but my changes didn’t seem to help netbsd or openstep. Not sure they would do anything for warp.

Netbsd crashes because it couldn’t create a console and openstep just bails with a generic trap message.

[vestal ginkgo]

OS/2 disks were always complicated on ao486 and I had to use the dani506 version to make some progress. I have a special place in my heart for OS/2 as that is where I ran my BBS when we switched from DESQview

[hollow ice]

I actually gave my core to Thera because of the way that qnx has to be configured. There is a bug that the controller will repeat the same data across both channels which can confuse the os. It was causing openstep to break trying to query a non existent cdrom.

[vestal ginkgo]

maybe those new changes IDE changes will do something different

[hollow ice]

Here is netbsd showing the effects of the issue. I only had one hard drive mounted.

[vestal ginkgo]

well those are the ones I remember, it's been fun seeing the little updates from afar and that there and people continuing to work on ao486. I dig all the different OS testing yall have been doing.

You could probably quickly vibe code a full automated way to make these packages/0mhz with a few prompts and the base code from https://github.com/Voljega/ExoDOSConverter. the Mister python code probably needs so love based on new exo versions but again, probably one shot those changes with opencode/copilot cli/codex. Now I will run away for bringing up AI 😂

[short finch]

Sound: SB Pro/16 fixes + improved accuracy, PIT: Allow uninitialized counting in modes 0, 2, 3, 4 & VGA: Simplify code for better maintainability added from the pending PRs

[vestal ginkgo]

That would at least give an easy path to creating curated or per game setups for EDU / Educational Pack

[hollow ice]

Bas’s dos containers thing from the forum was supposed to sort of do that?

[vestal ginkgo]

it's been too long for me and not sure how far that went, I was always keen on either using exodos or Total Dos Collection archives as the foundation and build a packager for mister on top of that.

[hollow ice]

I will say I actually prefer your approach. It feels more “classic ms dos gaming” like

But I can imagine how much more difficult it becomes

[vestal ginkgo]

I expect all that work to be so easy now with the AI tools available as opposed to how long that took before. I do like the single game solution as it is nice to contain dos into a specific setup (I just want to play the game) and not have the complexities of memory managers, multi game hard drive drama, etc. I miss the DOS frontend feel with the single game setup personally, but I am also someone who likes the flair of game descriptions, player modes, input options, and screenshots of the game before I play, especially when there are 7000 options

[hollow ice]

Yeah.

Dos just doesn’t want to be a console though 😀

[void belfry]

after all these years, still using same setup 😄

[vestal ginkgo]

I still use all that original work on my real dos machines, and now with PicoIDE it is an easy switch to have it mount CDs from the run/start scripts for the CDs.

[hollow ice]

Oh nice. Yeah, that would be great for the picoide.

I’ll have to bug you when I get my real pcs set back up.

[vestal ginkgo]

I use the IDESimulator the same way, and built a fork of ZuluIDE just so I could have ATAPI vendor commands calls from a dos util to change the discs for games. Mister always had the best setup for that

but PicoIDE is going to be on par

[hollow ice]

Yeah, I went ahead and ordered one even though I am nowhere close to having my computers together.

Luckily my mister won’t need to be recapped for another 15-20 years 😀

[vestal ginkgo]

It's going to be the best setup across so many machines. I think I ordered 3 lol. I can't wait to test across all the oddball ide machines/consoles/arcade machines I have

ok we have veered off of Computer Cores topics, nice to chat!

[hollow ice]

Back to this topic is os/2 also lacking a good video driver?

[vestal ginkgo]

oh yes, right, you could only do vga

[void belfry]

that and also had issues trying to get PPP working (no matter wht serial drivers i tried back then)

[vestal ginkgo]

thats as far as I got

[hollow ice]

Humply is working on vga so maybe that will help.

[primal meteor]

Maybe Scitech SNAP drivers would work? Haven't used ao486 a ton yet, so can't remember if it has VESA VBE support or not.

[void belfry]

tried them at some point didn't work

but will see, trying now to get Warp 4.0 reinstall

[void belfry]

meh, still need to set L1 cache to OFF, and still same issue with the mouse driver, will have to use RODENT drivers

[vestal ginkgo]

and you cant ever turn L1 back on or is it only on installation?

[void belfry]

this is the error with L1 cache ON

[void belfry]

will see after installation is finished

[hollow ice]

Hmm, I should try l1 off when installing openstep and netbsd.

Wasn’t it a crash in Solaris as well?

@void belfry

[void belfry]

yeah

[hollow ice]

Hmm, l1 cache test?

[void belfry]

error persists 🙁

finished the install, copied over the rodent driver , modified config.sys but yeah, L1 must be off

[void belfry]

@hollow ice , neah, no change on Solaris with L1 cache off, just tested

[hollow ice]

Oh well.

[void belfry]

having to set L1 cache to OFF slows things down quite a bit for any OS/2 versions higher than 2.0 🙁 also used FAT, HPFS didn't work for Warp 4.0 at least (iirc it does for 2.0)

[void belfry]

will retry OS/2 ver 2.0 in the very near future, but next days I'll get back to improving DOS/V +W3.1 JP on memory/VGA driver as well as adding PPP

[weary umbra]

This should be fun to try as well:
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/clean-room-reimplementation-of-dr-dos-hits-early-beta-modernizing-the-operating-system-38-years-after-its-debut-runs-doom-warcraft-simcity-and-other-period-appropriate-titles

[safe quest]

I read a bit about that the other day. It struck me as a little bizarre that the new author/owner (?) talked about building something true to Gary Kildall's vision when AFAIK DR-DOS is very much a descendant of CP/M-86. But just about anything beats the status quo ante of an extremely dead corporate entity with a webpage that I'm pretty sure got hacked by gambling promotion bots or something.

[copper slate]

pins updated

[bitter yoke]

Did the latest ao486 core break VGA output? #unstable-nightlies message

The other seems fine

Elgato capture card doesn't like it either

[hollow ice]

Humply is working on vga so very possible

Wait, when you say the other? Which other? Can you try the last three in succession?

[bitter yoke]

I tried them all, its just the one with soundblaster fixes that has issues with displaying for me

[hollow ice]

Hmm, maybe a seed issue?

I don’t see anything in the commit that should affect that. Granted, does the p320 mean it is detecting 320 fps?

[void belfry]

just rename the .img to vhd, boots instantly, will see at some later point how games are running on it

[mossy compass]

I just realized I was confusing Dr DOS with FreeDOS, no wonder I was confused how old Dr DOS was and that it was a detail product.

Is there a reason though to still be updating it over using freedos? I thought the point of freedos was to basically be a modern updated open source dos replacement?

[void belfry]

https://www.dr-dos.com/documentation.html

[fast kraken]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/pull/211

some awesome fixes there, prince of persia freezing stands out though

pretty sure i spent ages on that assuming it was the game

[ruby charm]

Are you guys able to set up joystick correctly on Tyrian?
I am getting constant drifting, even with my digital-dpad-only joystick disconnected (8BitDo M30 2.4G).
This is on the Tyrian joystick calibration menu:

And in-game, the ship moves to up-left all by itself sometimes...

It seems that setting "Joystick Axes" to "Count 8+141" works around the issue. But I don't even know what that setting does or if it's expected to be enabled normally.

[short finch]

I finished the first episode like yesterday with my M30 controller.
Standard settings, no calibration needed.

[hollow ice]

Getting there:

Rhialto did all the hard work, I am just crashing into learning how to use SDRAM 😄

And Erik, between the 8250 implementation and the structure of the 128 core

[reef gale]

Honestly I'd love a 0mhz collection equivalent that's just "here's a weird OS"

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/pull/214

[void belfry]

I am toying with the idea for some time, (started at some point a mini-series of forum posts like this https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=8035, but had/have some hectic schedule and bit of parked that series for a time)
I'm not sure I can share some of the OSes (still need to ask QNX ppl about very old versions), but other Unix/Linux variants for sure (already published some Debian Etch/NetBSD 1.6.1 on the known archives, same username for quick search)
My next mini-projects are to recompile SkatOS kernel to remove ethernet and add PPP for LAN/via IRC multiplayer) and improve some DOS/V + W3.1 JP ver

Maybe some day will find some time to retry Hannah Montana Linux, I got it at some point almost booting iirc

[reef gale]

In the case where rights are unclear, maybe at least list interesting OSes?

I'm not the biggest expert on various platforms

For example, I'm guessing there's no MIPS based PC core, so no Irix

[void belfry]

well, for unix/linux based (there are some more for sure) see the list here #1047332497492553799 message

we also have SparcStation though. and it can run Quake iirc 😉

There are also some OSes for some 8 bit computers (Lunix for C64 or Uzix for MSXes come to mind at first) that I tested and worked fine on MiSTer cores

Not to mention SymbOS, which works perfect on MSX, CPC, Enterprise cores (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlJlJMiurEU)

Also ran Minix on MacPlus and Atari ST or XT (ao486 too, but that's too "mainstream" lol).

some old MSX sshot with SymbOS (this one was from OCM core) , multitasking just fine on a mere Z80

[void belfry]

For QNX there's a how-to on the forum, anyone can duplicate it easy https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=7943

[void belfry]

OS/2 from v2.0 up to 4.0 versions are also in the cards, though for full speed on ao486, only ver 2.0 is doing fine, any upper versions ( 2.1+ ) will suffer from L1 cache needed to be set to OFF (also can't use HPFS other than on 2.0, just FAT for upper ones, not really a big issue i think...)

Also having drawbacks on finding a better VGA driver or making PPP to work, tried quite a lot of drivers/versions with no luck so far

Modem connections work fine on OS/2 (tested also some SIO drivers at some point iirc) https://youtu.be/WwXnxgOE1Po?t=196

sry for crap audio 😄

[void belfry]

as for most weird I ever play with, guess Amoeba OS is on the top list of working ones (#1047332497492553799 message)

[hollow ice]

Can someone refresh me on MGL files and alternate configs? If I use an MGL file, will main look for a cfg file with the mgl name or with the core name?

[granite umbra]

It is the setname on mgl file used

[hollow ice]

Will that update where the core looks for files?

[granite umbra]

Yes but there is one core Minimig where setname is not working. Minimig is kind of special

[hollow ice]

ah, that is why I was wondering— minimig didn’t seem to change the location

I am working on backporting some pet changes, but the new core should effectively support the entire range. The problem is each needs their own system roms and some tweaking of settings, so it would be really nice to just create MGL for each

[fleet cave]

there's also a setting in mgl that uses the same game/content dir but only changes the config file names

[hollow ice]

oh, that is exactly what I need

[fleet cave]

it's an attribute of <setname> same_dir or samedir?

[burnt pelican]

My god. This!!!

I've just read through the rest of the thread. This is amazing work guys, and with the SB16 too!

[copper slate]

pins updated

[willow pond]

anyone know if it's possible to not have QEMM do the memory scan on boot ? takes time to go through 256MiB trying to speed up dos boot

[hollow estuary]

I had luck with leaving l1 cache on but definitely needed L2 cache off

Not being able to find a working VGA driver is super frustrating though

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/NullMagic2/98Bridge

[reef gale]

Are you sure QEMM is doing a memory scan?

https://youtu.be/f6gEDUigoXw It would be cool to set something like this up

Though it seems like some OSes that this thing "supports" turned out to be vaporware

[willow pond]

yes it's scanning then verifying the memory (according to what it is saying)

[willow pond]

short video on the boot process

While i can use himen.sys and emm386 i then are unable to get uvefb working to get vesa for doom/doom2 etc working, hence going the QEMM route

ok first time uploading a video, i kind of expected discord to put it in a player wrapping :S

[reef gale]

I opened it and I see what you mean. One tip for video is that Discord doesn't like MKV. WEBM works better, and some mp4s work

[willow pond]

i'll see if obs can do webp, i don't really use obs much, i mostly use it so i can have the window open on my screen (i need a more realtime capture card though)

[fast kraken]

if you turn the memory down to 16mb or whatevers the lowest does it fool qemm?

[willow pond]

it'll just load faster iirc, been some time since i've done that

[fast kraken]

not like you need 256mb for doom anyway

i found having that set higher was more trouble than its worth

[willow pond]

true, not like i need that much and i can update the .mgl file to have its own name so that it can have the config saved

but in the end i still do want to setup QEMM to not scan if its possible, hence asking 🙂

[fast kraken]

can you find qemm documentation anywhere

it might have some arg you can throw it to not

[willow pond]

I have not found any :S but i may have missed it... google's ai search said a quiet argument, but that did not exist, it just halucinated it

[fast kraken]

top300 loads qemm like this:

C:\QEMM\LOADHI /RF C:\DRIVERS\SHSUCDX.COM /D:IDE-CD /L:F /V /C
c:\qemm\loadhi /rf C:\DRIVERS\CUTEPACK\CTMOUSE.EXE /O
REM C:\QEMM\LOADHI /RF C:\DRIVERS\SOFTMPU\SOFTMPU /MPU:330 /OUTPUT:COM1
C:\QEMM\LOADHI /RF C:\DRIVERS\DOSKEY20.COM /INSERT
c:\QEMM\LOADHI /RF C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV.EXE 65536 /E:65536 /B:0
GOTO COMMON```

idk if any of that skipped anything like the scan though

[willow pond]

your missing some of the config.sys

likely in the [QEMM] section

[fast kraken]

ah yeah i thought that seemed light

SET MEMMGR=QEMM386
device=c:\qemm\dosdata.sys
SET LOADHIDATA=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.RF
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM BE:N FRAME=D000 ARAM=D000-EFFF ARAM=B000-B7FF RF
device=c:\qemm\dos-up.sys @c:\qemm\dos7-up.dat
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.SYS /RF C:\QEMM\QDPMI.SYS SWAPFILE=DPMI.SWP SWAPSIZE=1024
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.SYS /RF C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
SHELL=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.COM /RF COMMAND.COM /P /E:640
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.SYS /RF C:\DOS\IFSHLP.SYS 
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.SYS /RF C:\DRIVERS\XCDROM.SYS /D:IDE-CD

[willow pond]

yep that's about the same i have except the cdrom stuff (i have it divided around, as if i do not need mouse, no need to load it etc)

[fast kraken]

your best bet is probably the actual qemm readme if you can find it

it might even need to scan all of memory to do what it does actually i'm not sure

[willow pond]

yep, unless we have a dog guru in here, thats used it before 🙂

i just used himem and emm386 in the past and loaded my keyboard layout and fonts in the past, today i like to optimize the base memory etc

you are probably right, but it could have an option to have already loaded a presaved.. the optimize program needs to be run sometimes when you make changes anyway (it complains about that)

[fast kraken]

maybe you could limtit the range it operates in

rather than find a silent or skip, some kind of cap

[willow pond]

a cap would be fine too... ie set it to 64MB (use some as a ram disk or something)

been thinking about going that route to speed some things up

[fast kraken]

ask your ai that

[willow pond]

ao486 is painfully slow with disk access... i've gone the NFS4 route and i think it helped

haha, just google results i don't really use ai personally, but it's what google has become

[fast kraken]

the disk speed is to do with how mister addresses storage iirc, like zero buffers allowed, everything to disk immedietely, blocking

[willow pond]

yep it interfeers with hdmi as well

[fast kraken]

thats a new one on me

[willow pond]

run a scandisk surface scan notice the HDMI going funny

does not happen on the VGA though (i had them side by side)

[fast kraken]

like dropping signal funny ?

[willow pond]

no half the screen going funny

moment ill try and make a screenshot

looks like it's not happening right now :S

maybe a heat thingy

i've ordered a copper heatsink and a noctua fan, should be getting some time soon

but i'll describe it, half of the screen is shifted to the side (bottom half)

not like it effects me i use vga for anything that i dont want high latency on

just happened again, but was not fast enough

[vestal ginkgo]

old notes, I think USERAM

How to Limit the RAM QEMM Uses/Manages

QEMM does not have a simple "EMS=nnnn" or "XMS=nnnnK" parameter like EMM386.EXE.
It automatically manages a shared pool from all available extended RAM.

Main method: Use the USERAM= parameter on the QEMM386.SYS line in CONFIG.SYS

Syntax examples:

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM USERAM=1M-16M
(or UR=1M-16M)

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM USERAM=00400000-01000000 (hex format)

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM USERAM=1M-64M
DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM USERAM=1M-256M

Recommended way:

1. Run SCANMEM.COM (included with QEMM)
2. It will scan your extended memory and suggest the exact USERAM= value
3. Add that value to your QEMM386.SYS line

This tells QEMM exactly which physical RAM range to use for its
XMS/EMS/VCPI/DPMI shared pool, effectively limiting the total RAM it manages.

Other useful methods to restrict memory:

• Run QEMM's own XMS utility to allocate and free large XMS blocks
  (temporarily consume excess memory)

• Use external tools such as EATXMS.EXE or XMSDSK.EXE to create a RAM disk
  that eats up unwanted XMS memory before running a program

• Add NOEMS parameter (disables EMS, frees the 64 KB page frame,
  changes pool behavior)

• Use X=aaaa-bbbb exclusions to prevent QEMM from using specific memory ranges

• In older QEMM versions the built-in maximums were lower (no USERAM needed)

Typical base line in CONFIG.SYS:

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM ST:M USERAM=1M-16M

After changing, run OPTIMIZE.EXE to re-tune your high memory loading.

UR= or USERAM=, normall it is for going over the 64MB limit but I think it would work going the other way

hidden QEMM flag, https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/10044591/Win95-only-sees-64MB-in-a-128MB-PC.html

IF that is what you are looking for

I dont think it will scan outside of the space you set if you set it

[willow pond]

@vestal ginkgo i'll look into it, did you have a url with that or write the whole lot ? going to save what you wrote 🙂

[vestal ginkgo]

no, just references to old newsgroups and that old post. the 16MB setting in mister might be easier but run optimize after. I save a bunch of old crap locally and had opencode look through it 😄

[willow pond]

ah, would be nice if ao486 had a 64MB option 16 to 256 is a big jump, most of us never use that much

but i guess it's an option that would require too much code

[vestal ginkgo]

comp.os.msdos is a gold mine for stuff like this. Yeah we had talked about it a very long time ago, most just fill the memory with a ramdisk way back when

[willow pond]

fallout 1 is one of my options to use a ramdisk if its big enough (loading times are rough)

[vestal ginkgo]

I remember we had to do it for Lion King originally but it looks like we went back and just set it to 16MB instead and it had the dos4gw bug: '''cd TheLionK
@echo off
echo.
echo This game requires CLEAN, 16MB Memory, no L2, and lower MHZ.
dos32a LIONKING'''

[willow pond]

oh looks like master.dat is ~300MB etc

ah

i've started to use dos32a for games

[vestal ginkgo]

I really wanted fallout 1 to run well on mister but couldn't get there. Someone here had better success with Windows NT 4 and it, if I am remembering correctly

[willow pond]

I have it running on the ao486 in dos, runs like crap though

I can send what i have except the actual game, it's still actively sold so not considered abandonware

[vestal ginkgo]

I think it was thera that did it. it was a different version from the dos one, yeah dos was like 1 fps

[willow pond]

i could try win95.. i've been working on some "0Mhz" windows stuff i just call it 0config though.. did true love, civ 2

[vestal ginkgo]

Top1 😉

[willow pond]

i'd love to find some nice nebula fighter for dos with full game, but alas can only find the windows version that's full (on their own website)

but the windows version requires MMX and likely a FPU

duke 3d, i have it runnuing somewhat in potato mode with dos32a and uvesafb in lowest vesa resolution and a modified exe file

doom2 runs very well with fdoomvfb ~30-40fps non potato mode

[mossy compass]

Is there anything that can run on the AO486 core that would ever come close to needing even 128? Hell, I would be surprised if something can use 64. Feels like you are more likely to break some software by having an absurd amount of RAM.

[fast kraken]

i'm sure there's something you could do with it, ramdisks is obvious

but in general, no, even 16mb is excessive for most thing you'd actually enjoy running

[mossy compass]

Yeah, I have mine set at, I think either 16 or 32

I remember when I was trying to install a game once that boasted how little space it needs to install, because it basically completely ran off the CD and just installed a 20 KB or so file for settings and progress on your hard drive.... but would refuse to install on my computer because the drive was so big it just read it as 0 bytes

[void belfry]

yup, played it on W95, plays better but you will loose the cutscenes (need to skip them)
Also copied all the files from CD to HDD (master.dat, critters.dat and some other) and pointed to new location in the config file
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZTJgbiP2IM (ending cutscene was taken from DOS after i finished the game and saved before talking to Overseer. Should have killed the bastard though when I had the chance :D)

Tried under NT at some point, but it had corrupted graphics iirc

Fallout 2 is also "possible", tested on W95, same all files copied to hdd, did the Temple trial and Arroyo quests, but when going to big areas is running mollasses, so yeah... not really playable

[void belfry]

Win NT 4, Linux, NetBSD can and are using it

[valid cape]

New version, Fixed GUS 4.11 driver CONSCAN.EXE detect card. Please test!

[copper slate]

Do you mind if I FWD this to #test-builds ?

Also thank you!

[mossy compass]

In any meaningful way? Or do they jsut simply support that much ram?

[void belfry]

yup, they use it afaik, at least in Linux saw with top at some point around 200 megs usage

QNX iiirc used/recognized less (64 or 128, don't remember), but can't confirm atm, been a while since i used that OS

[valid cape]

Ok

[willow pond]

which distro's have you gotten working ? I tried netinst debian etch yesterday it hanged on just before partitioning (not sure if it has PPP support built in but figured netinst would of been best) also which openbsd version, i figure it's likely an old version supported as 486SX support in general is not exactly well supported anymore

[hollow ice]

There is a long standing IDE issue that tends to break more "advanced" operating systems.

The NT installs by using a more lenient driver

[willow pond]

yep i noticed, was the same with NT4

corel linux hangs on the boot loader

i used to run corel linux on a 486DX2 66

[hollow ice]

I have been trying to solve it off and on for like 2 years now. Humply is a dev who checked in a change recently that targets that system too, so maybe we will see progress.

[willow pond]

I wish i was able to help with anything beyond testing, i'm not smart enough with programming low level or even the hdl stuff which is just even more low level 🙂

[hollow ice]

Heh, yeah, I wish I were a bit better at this as well, I just keep swapping focus rather than truly getting the problem fixed

I've been promising Thera a working linux system for pretty much the whole 2 years 😄

[willow pond]

i'd be jumping in as well if the opotunity was there, i'm currious in nature, hence why i started to use Linux as a 13 year old when i heard of it the first time.

[void belfry]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=8714

I used pcem first, then moved the image to MiSTer. Also, if you really search the known archives, some dude put it there 😉 it also has same username as me, that was really strange

[void belfry]

Corel Linux will need kernel recompilation for non-FPU machines as ao486(i tried at some point)

[fast kraken]

oh you're the developer! welcome to the discord we have been following your work for some time 🙂

[willow pond]

ye that would mean setting it up on the 86box and recompiling a kernel for it there

or cross compile to i386

but i think it'll be easier to do on the 86box to have the right gcc version etc

[void belfry]

Actually qemu, for some reason Corel Linux didn't like pcem or 86box 😉

[willow pond]

😮

i'm sure i had it running in 86box at some point

yep i have it in a Pentium 86box it seams

[void belfry]

my problem then was to source the correct kernel and some more stuff (been 3 years ago), but don't really remember exactly what were the issues atm. Still have that vhd backed up somewhere, will have a looksie at some point

[willow pond]

it's a shame most old distro's and OS's are useless on the internet atm

ie browsers.. since we started to use SSL certs

[void belfry]

internet is not just html 😄

[willow pond]

i know, i use IRC and shoutcast as well 🙂

[void belfry]

there is a modern Gentoo (check forum), but needs PPP added (had in plan to play around with it more and add that, but there's always smth else lol)

[willow pond]

oh no i am never doing that again... i did compilation of gentoo stage 1 on a 80486 20Mhz, it took weeks for us to compile kernel and gui etc

we did it on an old laptop as a project

[void belfry]

SSH 😉 or use it as a slow traffic generator

[willow pond]

I may try an old version of LFS though, very old

[void belfry]

or use a proxy/ssl strip on either an external PI or ARM linux. Did it for Amiga and some DOS stuff

[willow pond]

oh thats an idea, and i've got plenty of vm's i can boot up... My firewall is a VM on one of those topton box's, i've got 64GB of ram on it, so plenty of space to spin up VM's

[void belfry]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=80660#p80660 one example, did smth similar for AmiWeb (i think that was) on Minimig core as well

MiSTer ARM linux could handled it as fine iirc

actually for DOS stuff i only used that, Amiga stuff i tried some time before and used a PI

[willow pond]

i think i've seen you do some video's on youtube as well, i think i used your video to help me with ppp for nt4

[void belfry]

"videos" is bit much said, those are raw captures, I'm noob on video editing stuff 😄

[willow pond]

well it does the job 🙂

[void belfry]

anyway, that dude i mentioned before also put a NT and netbsd on archives, with ppp and all

[willow pond]

sounds fun 🙂 while some of the fun is getting it working, sometimes just using an vhd helps a lot 🙂

[void belfry]

anyway, Debian Etch is the best imho (from those linuxes that are running), as the old repos are still online 😉 so a simple apt-get and you have whatever you want installed in no time

[willow pond]

debian has always been good to keep their old versions

[void belfry]

image on archives has also those repos set up, for GUI i would recommend AmiWM, it was very responsive (bettern than jwm or some others i tried)

[willow pond]

i actually never used a gui on debian, i used to use it for servers, when my desktop broke down, i added more TTY's, used screen, irssi, links and mpg123 to have stuff to do 🙂

[copper slate]

I use arch btw

[void belfry]

we know... go home, you're drunk 😄

[willow pond]

oh no not that line

[void belfry]

Anyway, the list of what i tried on Unix/Linux so far (and working) on ao486 is here #1047332497492553799 message (i still have some more on the pipe and ommited to add some yet as i need more testing, but probably gonna need to make a 2nd list, this one is almost at characters limit)

Some, like QNX I could install directly, for some used PCem/86box/qemu to prepare and recompile kernel if needed

[scarlet spear]

A big thanks to that guy to have shared some of his work... I hope he'll keep on doing that 😄

[reef gale]

I'm honestly surprised there's no 0mhz for the MSX

[mossy compass]

Did the MSX normally have a HDD?

Or did it just boot games directly off the floppy

[reef gale]

One of the two MSX cores can only boot games off hard drives currently (although there's a program that runs on actual hardware that can make any game into an HDD game)

[mossy compass]

I see, so it does have a HDD, I thought it was a floppy only system

[reef gale]

It also supports cartridges and casettes

[mossy compass]

Supporting carts and tape was standard for computers in the '80s wasn't it?

[reef gale]

Were cartridges that common?

[mossy compass]

I think they were at least for the Commodore 64, though they rapidly I believe hit memory limitations

Tape was just very cheap to release games on back then

I wonder if any of the cartridges for '80s computers used Bank switching like the NES did

Those computers are a bit before my time, I didn't have a computer until I was almost done with grade school, and by then it had Windows 95

.... just barely, Win95 was so new back then that even the demo unit for the same model I got was still on 3.11

I remember being confused when using it "So this is that windows 95 thing? Looks exactly like 3.11 to me, and what was that weird thing I saw that one computer with the Start button?"

.... I was dumb with computers back then, I used to think DOS was a password screen to get into windows XD

And "win" was just the default password

[hollow estuary]

There is a 0mhz style HDD image which has most of what you'd ever want to play on the msx

Search Google for "Mister MSX Boot Harddisk Image (boot.vhd)"

[hollow estuary]

Given the history of the person who used to maintain this perhaps there should be a concerted 0mhz type group effort

[mossy compass]

If there is a sucessor would it be called 1MHz?

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PC88_MiSTer/pull/63

[void belfry]

Both OCM and Molekula's WIP MSX2 can use HDD.
I prefer Molekula's as it can also boot directly off floppies ot cartridges

[copper slate]

pins updated

[wheat folio]

How does Ao486 work with 31khz CRTs nowadays?

[worn oxide]

I want to check out Project Firestart but typing LOAD "EA",8,1 only gives me a file not found error

feels like I don't actually grasp the fundamentals of launching C64 games

it's, uh, it's this release

'k, I've misled myself, you start the fancy readme file and then hit RunStop (ESC) and then to switch to disk 1

[robust monolith]

@worn oxide You twisted firestarter, you. 🙂

[worn oxide]

The game is really cool, every horror fan should check it out

[copper slate]

pins updated

[copper slate]

pins updated

[tender rock]

If you want old Linux versions there's some cheap*bytes archive discs backed up on archive org

[still coyote]

Has anyone been messing with the updated/nightly PC88 core? Disks that loaded fine before (Super Mario Bros. Special, Super Pitfall) don't seem to be loading anymore, I've got Neo Kobe sets and TOSEC here and I haven't found a disk that loads yet.

Saw that most of the recent commits are around disk-related stuff, just not sure what changed or if there's anything I need to do differently on my end to get things to load.

[surreal marsh]

There's an article linked from Hacker News about a Voodoo done in fpga. Could Mister use this someday? (There isn't an obvious license on it though.)

[bitter yoke]

I don't think on the de10 nano on the ao486 core. Can't imagine there is enough space for it to all fit

Maybe if there if the MiSTer successor is ever chosen, it'll be possible

[tender rock]

https://github.com/fayalalebrun/SpinalVoodoo

[sterile ether]

Perhaps to have only 3dfx Card implémentation with gus only ?

[willow pond]

would likely need to be very powerful and likely very expensive, tbh getting somewhere near the minimal requirements for windows ME would be good. 166Mhz Pentium 1. perhaps go as far as 200Mhz with a screen card that can output 1024x768 in 24 bit color would be fine enough. Going any higher and we can clearly get it done on todays hardware some way or another. (even the last AGP motherboard should be able to run windows 98 quite well and manage a 3dfx card or perhaps get one of the FX 5000 series or geforce 6/7 (they also had AGP support) and i think a win9x driver. Should be more afordable, at least until people keep selling off the gold from those parts...

[topaz sigil]

I hadn't used it in a while but just downloaded the new core and the few games I tested seemed to work fine (Ys and a couple of english translations I have on my NAS). I'm using the latest unstable main as well, just in case that makes a difference.

[burnt pelican]

This is cool, and once things like the signal timing generator gets sorted I can see this being a great modern FPGA/ASIC in a retro PC!
As mentioned by others, making it fit should be interesting. I remember people saying the 486 barely fit as-is, though I'm unaware of any optimisations that may have improved that situation since!

[void belfry]

Was re-checking my notes/doing some more research and tests on Pick OS for a near future forum post (initial convo: #1047332497492553799 message) when imho I simply struck gold finding this amazing product promo from 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFpK8440HZA

[dawn cove]

is the idea for this for someone to put a FPGA on a PCB that would plug into a retro PC motherboard and replace dying Voodoo cards?

[safe quest]

Probably either that or hooking it up to another bus to integrate into some of these sort of neo-retro/SBC x86 platforms that are popping up.

[wild spruce]

A configurable 3DFX replacement could be handy for situations where an uncommon config was used like the arcade boards.

[safe quest]

They might have disappeared by now, but there used to be off-the-shelf chips to connect PCI devices to PCIe hosts.

[still coyote]

Thanks, I'll keep poking at it and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

[worthy zealot]

Could be quite interesting to have an FPGA on a PCI or PCIE card that could then be configured to f.ex. run as a Voodoo card. But I think I remember there was a series of FPGAs where they were designed to be put into PCI or PCIe slots, for servers or something?

[hollow estuary]

There's the a2fpga which is an fpga card for the Apple II so I'm sure doing something like that with a PCI or PCIE card is within the realms of possibiluty

[worthy zealot]

Nice 🙂

[exotic prairie]

[copper slate]

lol ass 2 FPGA

[fast kraken]

i was thinking about this, there's probably enough pins on the de10nano to connect it to a pci bus

[dawn cove]

Maybe a super niche product but putting a de10/mister on a pci board so that you could run mister cores on your PC would be an interesting product. Could the PC theoretically handle the functions that the ARM CPU on mister does?

[reef gale]

I think the ARM CPU is actually on the die

[dawn cove]

Ah so no real cost savings there. Not much reason to use such a device

[ruby charm]

I fact, if you're on a properly setup GNU/Linux system and properly configured dosbox-staging, I would say that using that instead makes more sense than using a MiSTer which would drive it's own HDMI output anyway.

dosbox-staging + VRR on a lightweight Wayland-based desktop is fantastic

Of course I like ao486 even more, but... it makes no sense to put it on a PC expansion board

[mossy compass]

There are already FPGA devices that come in a PCI or evne M.2 form factor, I remember seeing them when people were considering a sucessor back when they thought an N64 core would be impossible.

Like this:

[limpid tiger]

Yeah that one won't fit in a laptop...

[mossy compass]

That's just the heatsink, and since when do laptops have pcie slots?

[limpid tiger]

Thought that was M.2

[mossy compass]

It is m.2, the person I responded to though said a "pcie board" so I assumed they meant a desktop

Also, I think that manufacturer just went insane with the heatsink, I am seeing several other m.2 boards with the same FPGA chip and no heatsink

[limpid tiger]

Yeah, was just going to point to this

https://www.crowdsupply.com/rhs-research/nitefury

So, M.2 PCIe

[willow pond]

I finally got the disk usage and HDMI interfeering thing to happen while recording, sorry coulld not find webm in obs so stuck with regular mkv

It only happens on the HDMI (not VGA) and i've only seen it happen on ao486 at least so far

[fast kraken]

that definitely looks unusual yeah

ao486 tends to push the scaler harder than most other cores because of the whole 70hz thing

is your output resolution any of the borderline ones?

[willow pond]

My video mode in the MiSTer.ini is set to 1024x768@60 and running in DVI mode

also a note it's not like it's a big issue for me, i use VGA when doing anything important due to the latency over my HDMI-in on my PC at least for now... for some small PC tasks its fine, but any gaming it's unbearable.

but it could be an issue for some as VGA is not exactly a standard anymore in monitors

[final zephyr]

Why not just make a multi-fpga board? Surely it's not that expensive to get several of the Intel FPGA chips and shove them on the one motherboard.

[mossy compass]

Oops, All FPGAs

I'm pretty sure the most expensive component of the de-10 Nano is the fpga chip so...

[fast kraken]

making multiple fpgas work together isn't easy, especially fast

[final zephyr]

Pretty sure I saw the raw Alterra Cyclone V for about $40-60. Of course you have to build a board around it, but if it was 2x the cost of the current MiSTer clones Taki is making, that's quite affordable

Especially if you made it into a laptop form factor.

[mossy compass]

The clone boards are 90-99, so a 40-60 component would definitely be the most expensive thing on the board. Also, you can't just simply toss another chip on the existing board and call it a day, you would need many other supporting components, and most likely a second set of ram which would be the second most expensive component

[mossy compass]

At that point might as well just connect two DE-10 Nanos together.

[lunar trellis]

Just came across this digging through Brian Eno's discography. Assuming this is dumped, could it be made to be easily playable on the 486 core? Maybe a 0mhz set up?
https://www.discogs.com/release/1452850-Brian-Eno-Generative-Music-1

[hollow estuary]

That'd be so cool

[void belfry]

It's gonna need Soundblaster AWE32 (also apparently there are no online dumps as far as I could search). More infos here https://productionadvice.co.uk/generative-music-1/

[young gust]

I loved the awe 32 card. I wish It had a pi that could connect to mister like the Mt 32 pi

[void belfry]

Also only 1000 copies of that album were made, so yeah, no wonder why it is that rare or didn't get dumped 🙁

[void belfry]

However, I found some freeware W95 implementation of Oblique Strategies, will give it a spin in the evening (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies)

[lunar trellis]

That's weird if it hasn't been dumped, I find that hard to believe. 1000 copies isn't terribly rare and the three copies that sold on discogs in the past weren't terribly high. Maybe just need to get someone with a copy connected to someone who can dump floppies.

Obviously soundcard an issue for MiSTer but still very surprised if this hasn't been dumped, I will dig in further.

[frosty cosmos]

Finally custom palettes for the C64 core!!!!

That's a matter of personal taste, but on my LG OLED G5 via Retrotink 4K the Vice6569R5 palette looks best.

[granite umbra]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/pull/220

For opening of Rusty 👍

[ruby charm]

yay! Let's-Get-Rusty! 😄

[reef gale]

I was able to get a kind of 0mhz working on PC88. The biggest hurdle ATM seems to be that there doesn't seem to be an easy way from an mgl to set the speed and mode and such

[hollow estuary]

Is speed and mode a core setting? If so just bundle the CFG file with the settings saved in them with the mgl and vhd or whatever

[hollow estuary]

Oh yeah it is. So then use <setname> in the .mgl file, then it'll have its own unique CFG file. Its what a bunch of the neon68k games do:

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

[verbal mango]

Am I reading it right that ao486 stable core is still at 20241227? It seems there are no less than 10 unstable releases since, what are the process for unstable to get promoted and any recommendation on whether any of these recent ao486 unstable are stable-ish?

Another question - I notice that ao486 gus core is often distributed as ao486_gus<ver> and when placing along side stable ao486 cores, _gus is treated as version and the gus core would take over ao486 workload because _gus is > _20241227 or any numeric version. This seems… unintended?

[elder basin]

the ironic thing is 20241227 is not even stable. Many users have reported visual artifacts that are fixed by rebuilding with a different seed

the release process is essentially broken

[young gust]

I just choose to live on the bleeding edge and always use the latest unstable of every core! 🤡

[elder basin]

the ao486 core is tricky because it's not even close to meeting timing, so you can't really tell if it will work from the timing reports. What may work on one board may not work on another board. But I think what we know is that a "broken" build seems to be evidenced by visual artifacts. I think what needs to happen is someone (not Sorg, too busy I think) needs to shepherd the release process and have many people test an RC, particularly those who have had visual artifacts on previously "good" builds. When one is found that passes everyone's board tests, that can be marked stable and released. I don't have the time otherwise I might volunteer. It might be a good way for a non-dev to contribute

[fast kraken]

we can probably organize that here, thats what happens with psx

especially now i think we have devs actually visiting the channel sometimes

[valid cape]

In my work with GUS for AO486, I've built this core dozens of times. I can say that failures are usually immediately visible in the VGA video output. I haven't kept any statistics on the percentage of failed builds, but in my opinion, they're not that common. I simply changed the seed and rebuilt.

[fast kraken]

there's been a few cases we've seen where a build works on some misters but not all

even just amongst the 100% certified terrasic ones, now with all the clones we sometimes see issues unique to those

[elder basin]

correct. 20241227 stable doesn't have visual artifacts on my board (and apparently Sorgs), but others have complained

[verbal mango]

@valid cape - should the GUS core be named ao486gus instead of ao486_gus to coexist with stable ao486 core? In my testing, it would still fetch media from games/ao486 folder correctly. Personally, I would like to have stable core handle 0hmz collection and I have specific GUS games that I assign to gus core in MRA file. But if the core is named ao486_gus, then it takes over as the latest version of ao486 core for all workloads. Of course, if you envision gus core to be a superset of all ongoing ao486 core improvements, that behavior makes sense and we can help test the GUS core more widely beyond GUS games.

[copper slate]

pins updated.

[elder cove]

Got a new 0MHz pack going up for April Fool's Day - Dangerous Streets in its MS-DOS version, widely regarded as one of the worst fighting games of all time:

[hollow ice]

oh wow, I think I may have owned that

[mossy compass]

Is this the one where one of the guys has a move where he opens his body like a cabinet and a smaller version of himself pops out to attack?

[elder cove]

yes

[neat lintel]

April fools joke: Puu has completed the TOWNS core 😮 @lunar trellis @granite umbra

[final zephyr]

Has there been any news/progress on that 68030 core?

[terse totem]

Still finishing a few tests that fail in cputester (division flags, and a regression in RTR) , and trying to fix the MMU

[compact dew]

68030!!! Are we talking about a CPU for Amiga computers?

[terse totem]

I'm also porting emu68 to arm 32bit

[terse totem]

That's what she said 😉

Technically, it can be used wherever tg68k is used

[void belfry]

18th entry on my Unix/Linux list (#1047332497492553799 message) PiTuX, a floppy sized distro which has minicom 2.1 and can be used to connect to BBSes (details and link for d/l: https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=106037#p106037)
Apparently it doesn't like 90MHz speed, so you have to set it lower and also will throw some floppy timeout errors, otherwise is usable and fast

[willow pond]

it seams most stuff don't like the 90Mhz, unless in dos4gw or something like that

i am actually thinking though, those of us who have the MT32pi is there a way we could use the CPU on the Rpi we have for it for ie offloading a FPU ?
I tried getting wireless working on it, but without luck could be becuase the PI i have does not have wifi i don't know i have no experiance with Rpi, or becuase the software on the PI is fundamently different when used as a MT32

[void belfry]

The kernel panic when CPU is set to 90MHz:

[void belfry]

Short answer: NO 🙂

[willow pond]

a shame, it's processing power availible 🙂 but i guess i am hoping for a mister 2 with more logic's availible
To be honest i don't want a big box to play retro games, my PC is big enough

[void belfry]

There was at some point some work to get a hybrid Amiga with ARM side of MiSTer as "accelerator", but it didn't work in the end iirc

[void belfry]

Back to PiTuX, side effect of those floppy timeouts is that I couldn't save the settings, in theory just use a script/command "persist" on a secondary tty (ALT+F2) and won't bug you next time
I'll probably do that in qemu/other emulator, so it won't prompt me about those settings, but after a 2nd coffee 😄

Anyway, it's not the single Linux that has issues with the floppy controller, think Debian/Slackware have the same problem. I need to recheck which ones, but for sure I saw the same errors on other distros

[void belfry]

And yeah, on qemu works fine and can read the settings files, however when I try that image back on MiSTer, it will do the same, as the files are in /floppy which cannot be mounted due to said errors 🙁

[willow pond]

ah understandable then, i guess going "more logic elements" is the only way

[ruby charm]

@waxen nymph I have been playing with today's IIgs core build, and it's fantastic! 🙂

There are some pops and clicks with sound however

[waxen nymph]

the floppy support needs help, but it is getting better - i am just focussing on floppy right now (woz read and write support)

[ruby charm]

It can be noticed on California Games tittle screen music

[ruby charm]

Ah, great! 😄 I follow this core closely

I never though I would see the IIgs on the MiSTer.. has me amazed

[waxen nymph]

i never thought we would see it either!!!

[ruby charm]

Well, apparently you took it personal with that "never" thing and made it happen! 😄

[undone anvil]

I'm excited to see IIgs getting so much love

Can't wait to use it as my daily driver for all my productivity needs

Hopefully I'll be able to print documents with it too

I love using old computer cores for distraction free productivity

[waxen nymph]

we are getting close to that on the iigs - but i think the Mac SE core might be a better choice. both will crash and wipe our your work just like 1985

[hollow ice]

Have you seen https://github.com/lampmerchant/tashmachine

Post on 68kmla https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/tashmachine-verilog-iwm-clone.51863/

[waxen nymph]

neat - i need to look at that more closely. I think a lot of my debugging is building a sony 3.5" emulation

[tame kettle]

do yall know if Gnop is compatible with the mac plus core?

[karmic fog]

i believe it does work. should be fine in System 6 or 7

[tame kettle]

https://tenor.com/view/sixseven-six-seven-six-seve-67-gif-14143337669032958349

messing around with old mac is so fun because what do you mean some of the design issues people have with apple was there from the jump

[undone anvil]

Do you think stability fixes in the core itself might be feasible or is the issue with the software?

[waxen nymph]

Did you use the Mac in the 80s? If so you must have lost a term paper draft with a crash. If not…

[undone anvil]

Oh I absolutely have lost stuff

Until I started saving after every line 😆

I kinda started treating saving as a carriage return

[safe quest]

The main reason machines of that era crashed so catastrophically is that they didn't have memory protection. There were MMUs at the time, but they were separate chips, and in any case the OS would need to support it. That didn't go mainstream until years after the MMU started being built into the CPU (386/030 generation).

[undone anvil]

Thank you for your explanation. It's unfortunate that a fix for this wouldnt be possible without altering the OS somehow.

[void belfry]

Another day, another OS 🙂 This time SharpOS , written in C# 👀 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharpOS) running fine on ao486.
Floppy/iso/sources are stored here : https://sourceforge.net/projects/sharpos/files/sharpos-project/0.0.1/
Their website is long gone, but it is archived on Wayback Machine.

And they had a cool logo 😄

You can't do much with it, but it is quite a novelty. Apparently there are 2 more OSes written in C#, never knew about an OS written in this :))
Also very glad to see another Romanian involved in a niche OS (like SnowDrop OS one) 😛

[granite umbra]

Fixes REU for C128 and C64

[fallow topaz]

I think wark means this: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/C128_MiSTer/commits/master/?since=2026-04-08&until=2026-04-08

[granite umbra]

it will helps Freud demo

[hollow ice]

interesting, I was having REU issues with OS128…I swapped in gideons implementation and it didn’t fix the problem, so I figured there were other problems…hopefully that fixes them

[small ore]

REU issues with OS128 should have been fixed by last February's update. The latest fixes were specifically for demos like fREUd, they were even more broken on the C128 core than on C64. Add a comment to issue https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/C128_MiSTer/issues/43 if there are still more issues with OS128. Can't fix what I don't know about 🤗

[hollow ice]

You did fix those issues (I appreciate it). The remaining issue is that the size detection isn’t working properly and only works with 512k. I didn’t file a ticket because I wasn’t sure if there was a valuable indicator that could be used for testing or if it was an issue of the OS128 implementation.

I was playing around with it to see if I could narrow down the problem, but I was unsuccessful so didn’t really have enough data to file anything with actionable data other than “REU is broken for this esoteric case”

[small ore]

I'll look into it

[hollow ice]

I’ll also check after work, I didn’t have time to test against yesterdays changes

[small ore]

I checked it still only detects 512K

[small ore]

Found the issue, but I think the way OS128 checks the size is incorrect, and will likely also fail with other (real hw) REU implementation. I've explained more in the GitHub ticket I created for this: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/C128_MiSTer/issues/46

[hollow ice]

thank you for looking into it!

[spice sand]

I was the one who logged the issue on the fREUd demo 🙂 I'd like to ask you a question about the difference between the Mist core and the Mister core. If I'm not mistaken, the C64 core on the Mist implements a “logical” cartridge port, whereas the C64 Ultimate core doesn't implement any logical cartridge port. I also noticed that there are several “BA” signals in the Mister’s C64 core, whereas there is only one BA signal on the real machine. On the Mist, the C64 architecture seems to be much more faithfully reproduced. Don’t you think it would be better if the architecture of the C64 core on the Mister were in line with what exists on the real machine? I understand that there will never be a physical cartridge port on the Mist or the Mister, but does that justify making simplifications that ultimately make things harder to understand, especially if we’re trying to reference the actual architecture? Frankly, I was shocked to see that there were several BA signals. I admit I don’t understand these implementation choices because they seem to me to deviate from the goal pursued with an FPGA 🙂

[small ore]

I don't know the design decisions behind these things either, you'll have to ask sorg

[spice sand]

Ok so i already know the answer 😄

[small ore]

Some bits of code come from the original FPGA64 project from 2006...

[spice sand]

Of course but I'm just wondering why the Mist went for something which is more "in line" with the real architecture. when you know what BA is meant for, seeing different BA signals is really disturbing when you know about the real machine 🙂

[small ore]

🤷‍♂️

I just fiddle with it until it does something resembling a C128 feature

[spice sand]

By the way, nice fix for the REU 😉 I thought it was a timing issue while it was the way the REU registers are populated. And i don't remember having seen this being documented in the official REU documentation.

That's insane how it did not disturb the other REU demos.

[small ore]

It triggers only on a specific way of partially updating the registers. fREUd doesn't update the low address byte, which causes the issue. The REU uses the latched older address instead of the current address in that case.. very weird

[spice sand]

I think I've read it's a rarely used optimization used by some demos when accessing REU. But I have no more insights about it.

[maiden yoke]

Gradius, Sharp MZ-700

[granite umbra]

ASCII mode 🙂

[maiden yoke]

California Games, Apple IIGS

[wheat folio]

I’d still love to see an FPGA x86 motherboard. Simulate all the hard to find glue logic and some peripherals but find a way to plug a real 486 into so those are typically cheaper than the motherboards they go in.

Or just wait for Ian Scott to reimplement an entire goddamned 486DX2 on three pi picos.

[mossy compass]

Isn't that not far off from simulating voodoo on the de 10? You would still need to plug it into a computer

[hollow ice]

I thought someone already did that?

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/the-m8sbc-486-is-an-open-source-intel-486-mobo-built-from-scratch-in-under-6-months-the-original-idea-was-to-achieve-linux-and-doom-compatibility-but-it-achieves-far-more-than-that

[void belfry]

Would a VHD packed with DOS ASCII/ANSI games be of any interest ?
I am thinking not to a single VHD per game (those games are mostly in terms ok KB, so would be a waste of space imho), but a single one packed more in the style of Top300, with a menu/launcher, categories and so on.

[hollow estuary]

I'd be interested in that

Launchbox DOS edition for the launcher?

[vestal ginkgo]

If you used MyMenu you could easily grab a screen capture of in game and use it as a screenshot for the game in the menu.

there are some dos tsrs that will screenshot to ansi/asci then just save as readme.ans within the game program folder. just a thought

[void belfry]

Yup, I was thinking on MyMenu 🙂

I found over 150 games just at first searches, so it would be some testing/categorising time for sure.

[vestal ginkgo]

that would be fun and ZZT is already done for you https://github.com/flynnsbit/DOS_Shareware_MyMenu/tree/main/GAMES/ZZT

that one is an animated mymenu "screenshot" which was fun to see in the interface

[void belfry]

😄 I remember that one lol

[hollow ice]

Elphive was working on a zzt pack

What would be interesting (if a little pointless) is setting up an image with a bunch of doors- legend of the red dragon, etc

[void belfry]

Have to dig my old 272 megs HDD's backup, fairly sure I still have some 20-30 of ascii/ansi games (most probably would find them online as well, but just a fun trip to memory lane)
And in spare time, still working to get my LAN MiSTerFPGA Synchronet BBS game doors to work (especially Virtual SysOp/BBS Simulator)

[hollow ice]

Now can it hand off to lotrd?

[void belfry]

Most likely yeah, still need to figure out where/how to setup things on it

I tried (briefly) WildCat for DOS, it runs.. I guess, but again, no exp on setting it up

Big plus for Synchronet is that it has support for tcp/ip (telnet/ftp/etc) and much intuitive for noobs like me 😄

With a competent router and firewall , someone could host a MiSTerFPGA BBS just fine, I suppose. Synchronet is quite snappy running on ao486

[hollow ice]

Maybe even use ipx to simplify things? 😉

[void belfry]

Why and how lol ? really doubt any BBS software used IPX

that was Novell stuff and Doom-like games ()and some other game genres of the era ofc) teritory

On a serious note, I am wondering if it is possible to also dial in using the serial/modem (not PPP) to a BBS listening on COM 1.
Smth like minicom could open the connection from ARM side, i suppose

COM 2 (USER I/O port with an adapter) could work too, again, I suppose

[void belfry]

Tbh, I never used it, but noted it. Nor that I ever configured MyMenu either (just used it when playing around with flynnsbit's work).
For the moment I am just doing some research on those games, hoarding and some basic categorization. Menu/Launcher integration would come at some later point, after testing

[vestal ginkgo]

Mymenu is easy and the biggest difference is being able to dynamically add games to the launcher just based on the directory structure. Can do SFN or Long file names if support is loaded. You can just manually launch the bat or exe from the menu or set it up to auto run any specific settings or file with autorun.bat and if it finds a readme.ans it will show it. That could just be the title name, text info, controls and keyboard quick start, or ANSI. The rest is in the mymenu.ini file for more complex scenarios. Shareware pack is a good reference . I've loaded thousands of titles into it.

[mental moat]

Are you sharing vhds for these somewhere?

[copper slate]

No posting of VHDs here or links to VHDs. Vague hints are fine.

[mental moat]

Even for open source Linux stuff?

[copper slate]

Oh my bad lol

I use arch btw

[mental moat]

I get it though, this is probably one of the only totally unambiguously legal vhd requests on here, ever :p

[copper slate]

Yah sorry

[mental moat]

All good!

[void belfry]

Debian 4 and NetBSD 1.6.1 - some weirdo who uses same username as me put them on some known archiving site
Gentoo is not my work, check forum for link, same for NetBSD 1.4M
Some like QNX are still in the gray area, don't have a definitive answer if that can be shared.
Floopy sized ones (like SkatOS, PiTuX, picoBSD) -- just check my posts referring to them, I always put links where those can be d/l

Need to revisit/clean up the Slackware one, didn't played much with it as I prefered Debian.
As well, need to revisit ones which needed kernel recompilation for non-FPU machines, I still have several to make them work (e.g Hannah Montana now boots, but I am still missing some modules/other crap iirc)

[willow pond]

i doubt for long, so many people are melting the gold down now

old cpu's in general is going to be hard to get hold of

[void belfry]

This will take a while lol 😄

[mental moat]

Thanks for the great work. The main reason I got the MiSTer was for the computer cores, so I absolutely appreciate the great work going into testing and getting all of these operating systems working.

[void belfry]

50 working games added so far, ~300 more to go 😄

[granite umbra]

https://x.com/i/status/2043325217670656286

nand2mario (@nand2mario)

Good progress on #386fpgacore last month 🚀
Now running on Tang Console 138K + DE10-Nano (MiSTer)
+I/D caches, lots of fixes
Doom runs
75MHz with decent CPI
3DBench: 24.1 FPS
Possibly the fastest 386 ever 🙂

X · Apr 12, 2026, 1:47 PM

[vestal ginkgo]

lots of great screen capture tsr's for dos that could grab ANSI from those screens for the "coverart" let me see which one I used, I think it was Screen Thief

[void belfry]

No rush, that would come in handy at a later time. So far 75 working games and around 10-15 non-working (motly due to cwsdpmi)

Including Eliza 😄

[wheat folio]

Ugh, but I’m also kind of surprised old cpus were as available as they are.

[wheat folio]

This new 386 core is one that’s been written from scratch, not the big autogenerated one in ao486, right? It’s great to see so many approaches at once.

[willow pond]

Well to be honest they could probably get more for the CPU than for the gold on the CPU

[granite umbra]

yes that's right

[willow pond]

oh its a DX 😮

[wheat folio]

I have a slocket 1 PC I am pitching because the motherboard is bad I should at least try and salvage the p3 from it.

[willow pond]

should probably, the P3's are actually somewhat in demand, they have the ISA slot AGP and PCI slot, good oppotunities for retro gaming

deactivate the cache on it and downclock it and you'll have a slow machine still... prefably with a board that can edit the FSB/multiplier in the bios rather than jumpers

[willow pond]

but in regards to the 386 core on Tang Console 138K, makes it really show why we need more logic units

lets hope for 500K logic units on mister 2 😛 okay maybe a bit overkill but still

[sharp kindle]

I have two K6-2+ socket 7 systems, they can change FSB multipliers in software using DOS and Windows utilities along with enabling/disabling caches. They're not super fast even at around 400mhz, Unreal is a bit slow on them with either a Voodoo 2 or a TNT2 64, but they can go slow enough for a lot of older DOS titles and have onboard L1 cache which helps with newer software from the era. Software which is too much for ao486 tends to go on one of those.

[toxic drift]

i am not a big computer person and haven't dived into this side of mister much but would it be worth making a list of games that can be played without much compromise on a gamepad given how consolised the mister platform is?

[hollow estuary]

For which computer core?

fwiw you just plug in a keyboard and/or mouse and the mister is just as much a computer as it is a console

[toxic drift]

yes but it's also very good plugged into a tv in the living room

[toxic drift]

any/all

as long as the games work well in the core to begin with

[hollow estuary]

Analog TV or HDMI?

[toxic drift]

hdmi

but why is that important?

[hollow estuary]

And obviously you can plug in a keyboard and mouse while its plugged into a TV in the living room too

[toxic drift]

yes but no desk

[hollow estuary]

Because if it was a analog TV lots of the computer cores aren't going to work automatically with a regular consumer TV CRT

[toxic drift]

i have a keyboard and trackball plugged into my laptop which is plugged into the tv but it's not a great option for gaming

maybe some games would work well like that

or even just w trackball and the rii thing i have

[hollow estuary]

I'm not suggesting you 100% use the keyboard and mouse for gaming. If you want to use computer cores lots of the games will require you do say press a key on the keyboard to make a selection for example

[toxic drift]

yeah

exactly

which is why i was curious if a list might be good

[sharp kindle]

The Amiga tends to be pretty good for that sort of thing.

[toxic drift]

i noticed commander keen which is in the dos collection seemed great w a gamepad for example

[hollow estuary]

Oh yeah, AmigaVision has been setup to be pretty close to being just a gamepad as possible

[toxic drift]

yeah i've messed about a bit w that

some of those are much better with a joystick tho

seems like it wouldn't make much difference but it does

[sharp kindle]

It's probably the most console-like computer. Some games might require a mouse, but overall it's probably the most accessible with just a gamepad. The MSX tends to be good for that too.

[toxic drift]

yeah until recently i'd only set up the msx and amiga cores

maybe it could be a ao486 specific list idk

or just mention the cores that will work with just a gamepad quite well as standard

(besides OS navigation which i think should be a given you'll need a rii or whatever)

[sharp kindle]

I have no idea if such a list exists, it'd need someone motivated and with more time than I have.

[toxic drift]

maybe we could just do a spreadsheet and have people add stuff kind of thing

i certainly don't know much about old computers so i couldn't do it alone

[sharp kindle]

The term "Couch Compliant" tends to be used to describe this aspect a lot in the Atari community at least, you might find related information online if you search for that term. Older PC games tend more toward keyboard input though, at least the ones I want to play.

[hollow estuary]

I found there's lots of Sharp X68000 games that seem to work with just a controller too

[valid cape]

Fixed an issue in the previous version 20260319 with some games.
Synchronized with the AO486 main branch update.

[hollow ice]

@void belfry https://github.com/sbelectronics/nostos?tab=readme-ov-file

[granite umbra]

https://forge.djehuti.com/bcox/sbc7/releases/tag/v1.3.7

[static galleon]

Is the ao486 core particularly sensitive to drive seeking in terms of lag? It seems to really jam up if there's disk read writes but my vhd is on my server, often it'll be nice and smooth but man when it lags it really does freeze up for like minutes at a time

I compiled the latest btw from the mister devel github, is there a better fork or anything?

[fast kraken]

yeah thats pretty well known about the computer cores but most noticable in ao486

its to do with how mister interacts with the vhd, its extremely pessimistic and waits for every write to be confirmed flushed to disk

retronas basically lies about the disk flush to make it go faster you might want to take a look at that

[valid cape]

And now another new version! The slow tempo of the song in Stream Tracker, FastTracke II, many demos and games has been fixed.

[fast kraken]

are you working towards a merge into the main ao486 one day? its such a cool core it'd be great to get it in more hands

[copper slate]

pins updated

[valid cape]

Merging with the main branch can be done at any time, but I want more people to test it first.

[granite umbra]

https://x.com/i/status/2044071348423799288

nand2mario (@nand2mario)

New post: 80386 Memory Pipeline 🔬

A microcode-based analysis of the 80386 covering:
- efficient segmentation
- early start
- bus pipelining
- cache
- what this means for my FPGA 386 core

https://t.co/vr3L76XVBz

X · Apr 14, 2026, 3:12 PM

[woven lava]

seems very promising!

[ruby charm]

Indeed! I imagine the CPU implementation on the ao486 core would eventually get replaced by this new/better 386, so ao386 anyone? 😄

[woven lava]

not just that, pc98 and other Japanese computers too...

[ruby charm]

Oh yes!! Proper PC98... that will be awesome! 😄

[short finch]

Could someone check if Shadow of the Beast works on the newest AmigaVision version (2026.04.15) ?
All other games I tried so far on the compilation seem to work as intended.
Thanks.

Dos-Error #205 on loading ShadowOfTheBeastv21B.Slave

[copper slate]

pins updated

[mossy compass]

Yeah, would be great if we can get a PC-98 core, there were some notable series that started on that thing, IIRC we already have a PC-88 core, though I am not sure how complete it is

[jaunty iron]

PC-88 core is quite decent actually from what I've tested. We also have a PC-98 core, it boots and can load some games. It's just a pain to use, the games have severe graphical glitches, freezing problems, or just run way to slow to be playable. It's also been abandoned for years... but we do have it 🙂

[mossy compass]

Yeah I know, it was very unfinished and given up on 😛

Obviously I meant a re-attempt at actually making a finished core

[jaunty iron]

Yea, I would love to see some serious love given to the PC-98... it's where all the english translations live

[reef gale]

Having a PC98 emulator on the MiSter would be transformative

[frozen prism]

Is there a specific channel for the FM Towns wip core? I just got it, and didn’t realize it even existed. I’m not sure what it can even do yet, but I’m interested to learn.

[undone anvil]

That 386 core really is showing a lot of potential

[reef gale]

https://discord.com/channels/647909397477195803/1318339507950587944

[hollow estuary]

I made my first 0mhz pack for the surprisingly decent DOS shooter Sideline

[stiff steeple]

hey

how does modem emulation work on mister?

[summer dragon]

sweet! I gotta grab this

[hollow estuary]

Hmm, it seems to glitch out and hang after about 10 minutes

Ah its crashing on a specific boss on the first level, that's interesting

[hollow estuary]

Perhaps I should try with freedos and jemm or something

[sharp kindle]

I tried setting up Sideline maybe a year ago, it always crashing during the first boss fight. Typically after it moves to your left from what I recall. I tried a few memory configuration variants of EMS/XMS/Both, including using JEMM, loaded HDPMI32 first, and even different sound drivers. It was never stable in DOS under ao486. It runs in Windows 98 without crashing, but it's slower and there are audio repeating glitches.

[hollow estuary]

Bummer

[void belfry]

iirc it worked fine on W95 with the Fast Speed setting on 640x480, and think it was ok also on DOS 7.1 with EMM386, but need to recheck (#1047332497492553799 message)

[sharp kindle]

I used DOS 6.22, but I could build a DOS 7.1 image to try it.

[void belfry]

See if it runs fine on W95 with that fast speed setting , I cannot check myself until evening

[sharp kindle]

Did you make it past the first boss in DOS 7.1? It runs fine up until then.

[void belfry]

hmm, don't think I played that much

Does it give any error or just exits ?

[sharp kindle]

It crashes with horizontal stripes through the display in my case at least, in the middle of the first boss fight. No useful errors or opcodes sadly.

[void belfry]

damn 🙁

lemme know how it works for you on W95, should be better than W98

[sharp kindle]

I just played through to the boss again in Windows 95's DOS mode and the stripes were vertical, it's entirely possible I mis-remembered.

[void belfry]

I meant try it directly on Windows, not via it's DOS mode

[sharp kindle]

Sure, I was in the middle of a playthrough already though to verify.

[hollow estuary]

I'll have a poke around with win9x later too

[sharp kindle]

Sound glitches don't seem to be there in 95, I might have to check whether I had it running under 98 with the fast setting.

Sadly, the configuration is not conducive to a small bootable game image but it does work.

[void belfry]

Just wondering if it will run on W3.1 with Win32s

[hollow estuary]

Looks like it needs/wants directx for the win95 version

[void belfry]

ahh ok then

makes sense

[sharp kindle]

Sideline under 95 does survive the 1st boss where it crashed under DOS, and without audio glitches as seen in 98. The fastest setting is reasonable, if not as smooth as in DOS. The MIDI music sounds nice routed through an MT32-Pi too.

[hollow estuary]

I just played up to the first boss too. Only glitch I hit was a hung midi note

I quite like this game

[hollow estuary]

Hmm, I tried DOS 7.1 (basically booted w95, hit F8 and got it to a DOS prompt) and it still crashed at the level 1 boss

oh interesting there's a 0 byte API4GW.SWP file left behind

[void belfry]

I didn't play it much, was just testing out how/if first stage works on various setups at a friend's suggestions back then and just used a Top300 vhd

[summer dragon]

what about Windows 3.1?

[void belfry]

No go, it needs directx, thought about that too lol 😄 see dave's reply #1047332497492553799 message

Anyway, I'll try it on my own 7.1 setup, probably won't make any difference.
I saw on the SL Resurrected site they used JemmEx on their DosBox setup and while I didn't had much use of it on a DOS 6.2/7.1 setup, think I saw it on one of @vestal ginkgo FreeDOS setups (shareware one maybe? ) being used for some progs there if I am not mistaken
Think I still have one vhd on sd card, might give it a spin there too

[vestal ginkgo]

Yes the shareware build is fully freedos

The full vhd built is on GitHub so you can just grab it. There were actually a few games that ran better with freedos but some that still had issues, but the 100 shareware in the pack are fine. I have no idea what changes in freedos have been made since then, it is probably way better

[void belfry]

Not a clue, I still have on my long to-do list (somewhere at the bottom :D) a point to make a fresh freedos vhd, but never got incentive for that, since 7.1 is more than ok for me

[void belfry]

I assume this is the first boss crash, right ? It happens on FreeDos with JemmEx too

[sharp kindle]

It usually looks like that, yes

[void belfry]

same on my 7.1 setups, no matter of QEMM or EMM386 used

Well, guess W95 it is for the moment on this game

[verbal mango]

There is a 0mhz styled pack for Sideline, will that be repacked to win95 base? Was great to see community figures out what works.

[sharp kindle]

I suppose you could make it launch automatically like a shell in 95, but you'd probably see Scandisk a lot and get filesystem corruption eventually.

[void belfry]

To disable scandisk at boot after a forced shutdown, you need to edit MSDOS.SYS. Add the line AutoScan=0 under [Options].
As for W95 auto-launch, just copy/make a link in the StartMenu/StartUp folder (or smth like this)

[sharp kindle]

I'd probably set the shell in the registry to avoid loading the desktop, I doubt people would let it it shut down properly even with Explorer open. The scandisk just finds problems from what amounts to crashes which will accumulate if you don't. 🤷‍♀️

[void belfry]

StartMenu\Programs\StartUp, the correct path for autolaunch

[void belfry]

That would be neat, though anyway one can just replace the broken vhd with a fresh one

[sharp kindle]

True, it just isn't as simple/resilient as distributing a DOS image which doesn't load a lot of state prior to the game. OTOH crashes at the first boss are arguably a bigger issue from an end user's perspective.

[void belfry]

Oh well, ascii/ansi game testing time

Clearly Flapscii won't make it in my fave list 😄

[void belfry]

Not a football management games fan, but this one gets me lol 😄

[thick pendant]

what would you like to know?

[stiff steeple]

I sort of figured it out yesterday, it was more how to get it to dial up, but it turns out the internet connection for the particular machine is text only, so it really needed some kind of bbs style interaction

connecting just gives it a blank screen

[thick pendant]

just ATDT[ip or host name]:port#

with default port being 23

[stiff steeple]

what would that get me?

[thick pendant]

you are trying to dial out with MiSTer or receive incoming calls?

[stiff steeple]

dial out

the characters I can put as a phone number are retricted

[void belfry]

what core/terminal program are you trying ?

eg: https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/advanced/computer/#serial-connection-on-c64

[fleet cave]

I think what she's getting at is the core's interface to the modem has limited input options

i.e it's probably a 'enter phone number' so there's no way you're going to put hostnames or ip addresses in

[void belfry]

In that case I think you can save a BBS address to a "phonebook" entry for the modem and just dial that entry. @thick pendant isn't that right ?

[thick pendant]

you can also modify MidiLink.INI and put an alias in there

[void belfry]

ATDIR smth smth iirc to show the dial entries

[thick pendant]

8675309:31337=www.jenny.com

[thick pendant]

but yes, you can put in both hostnames and ip

the modem emulation does not dial phone numbers, and if you did put one in it would try to lookup the IP via DNS and probably fail.

i'm not sure if it will accept every character that is valid for a URL, but i've never run into any problem...

the modem emulation anyway. But I think I understand what you are getting at. For example the Amiga game "Knights of the Sky" wants a phone# and to get it to work I had to use a Alias in MidiLink.DIR

[hollow estuary]

Yep! If you search for 0mhz and sideline it's on the archive

[void belfry]

Goal94 is definitely going on my fave list of ascii/ansi games (even if it is a game genre that I almost never played)

Quite complex tbh, and even has Replay function, or save goals/matches individually for later watch.

[void belfry]

2hrs later 😄 dang, this game really brings me back to '94 World Cup, like I vividly remember the moments after we beat Argentina and went outside after watching the match on TV with my parents and cheered with the huge crowd

[deft estuary]

what game is this?

[void belfry]

Goal 94 by New Era Software from Livingston, Scotland 🙂

They put quite an effort on this game, with animation (controllable speed/player view and so on), beeps and pc speaker sound effects etc

[ruby charm]

Is that game supposed to work right on a real 486 computer? If so, has the issue been reported on Github? The core is on active development BUT it needs issue reports to progress! 🙂 Humply is very active on fixing the bugs

[void belfry]

I have no idea, I didn't play/know about it back then and nowadays I do not have a real 486 anymore.
And no, don't think it was reported on Github, or at least didn't check

[ruby charm]

I'll test it on dosbox and on my vortex86-based WeeCee and report

Thanks @void belfry

The game is called Sideline, right?

[void belfry]

yup

the 0MHz one is already on archives, w95 ver i think now

Dosbox probably will have no issue, think I saw it in some video at some point

D'uh, it is also mentioned on their site https://sideline.ghegs.com/

[ruby charm]

wow, big download, does it feature audio CD tracks?

[void belfry]

don't think so, but MIDI is nice

anyway, install itself is small, few megs. But it does have some nice FMVs on CD

[hollow estuary]

The CD appears to be mixed mode, so I think some of the audio are CD tracks

Yeah, I just mounted it. 8 tracks of CD audio

FILE "sideline.BIN" BINARY
REM SESSION 01
   TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
      INDEX 01 00:00:00
   TRACK 02 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 20:37:42
   TRACK 03 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 25:57:66
   TRACK 04 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 31:21:41
   TRACK 05 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 36:33:46
   TRACK 06 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 41:56:04
   TRACK 07 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 47:19:61
   TRACK 08 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 52:41:55
   TRACK 09 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 58:24:64

[void belfry]

I see, good to know 🙂

[hollow estuary]

I had a play around with using jemmex earlier but it crashed in the exact same spot

[void belfry]

yup, same for me, tested also FreeDos with Jemmex, no luck (as well with different cpu speeds/mem size)

[hollow estuary]

I'll have to fire up my itx llama later and give it a try

[hollow estuary]

Well sideline doesn't crash in dosbox. The really weird part is that in the demo loop where it fights the level 1 boss the demo player gets killed by the boss before the part where it'd normally crash, which I've never seen it do before

Oh no here we go. It got up to that point properly and didn't crash

[sharp kindle]

Sideline doesn't crash on a K6-2+ system in DOS, admittedly I don't have a 486 anymore to try it on.

[ruby charm]

After doing my own test on the WeeCee, I have reported the bug affecting Sideline on the core here:
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/issues/224

[hollow estuary]

Not sure if anyone else noticed but when it crashes it crashes back to the DOS prompt. Hit enter a few times then type cls and you'll see the prompt.

[vestal ginkgo]

that reminds me of another game that is doing that or close to it with the bars and being back at the dos prompt in a different mode. let me see if I can find it

I think it was Oddworld - Abe's Oddysee (1997) but that game never started, had lots of vertical bars after it started. might not be the same thing. This also might not be needed anymore but there were a few other vga cards that worked with ao486 that you could swap out

[hollow estuary]

SideLine is looking pretty good on the llama. I even burned it to CD to get the full experience

[void belfry]

Abe's Oddworld needs FPU, I was able to "run" it with Q87 but it was 1-2 FPS at most (#1047332497492553799 message)

[fleet osprey]

https://x.com/nand2mario/status/2045358232450089116

nand2mario (@nand2mario)

Squeezed more performance out of #386fpgacore on DE10-Nano 🚀
• Optimized branch prefetch → lower CPI (line 1→2)
• Reworked paging + L1 → 85MHz (from 75MHz, line 2→3)
≈30% uplift. This little core has serious potential.

X · Apr 18, 2026, 4:26 AM

damn, this is getting close to ao486

[surreal marsh]

Is it enough smaller that the saved space will be useful for something?

[fleet osprey]

https://x.com/nand2mario/status/2029552201539174456/

nand2mario (@nand2mario)

The CPU uses about 20K LUTs, while staying quite faithful to the original 80386 design and running real 386 microcode.
Current Fmax is roughly comparable to ao486. With further optimization it should go higher.

X · Mar 5, 2026, 1:38 PM

[surreal marsh]

What does ao486 use? (I can find what the entire ao486 core uses but not just the CPU.) And if it saves space, what things can we use the space for? A fpu or a Voodoo board are too big I believe.

[scarlet spear]

and 640kb should be enough...

[fast kraken]

someone could work it out exactly but ao486s cpu is probably at least 50k lles

the main benefit would be accuracy presumably

how big is that voodoo1 fpga implementation?

[fleet osprey]

386/486 with voodoo is pointless anyway

[dreamy comet]

Lazy day. I asked Gemini a question and was surprised by the outcome

The gist of it: MiSTer is lacking the by FAR most common japanese computer system

[mossy compass]

Wasn't Descent among those?

[limpid tiger]

There were a lot more than 150,000 X68000's sold - there are about a dozen different variations of the machine's hardware, so that figure is probably only tracking one hardware revision

It's probably in the 1,500,000 to 2,500,000 area, looking at comparable machines

[shy imp]

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

you can enjoy this on your mister but the audio is really glitchy

[summer dragon]

via Amigavision or disk? If Amigavision, it’d be worth reporting the bug

[shy imp]

not via amigavision

more like program files for unfinished prototype found on archive dot org

[summer dragon]

ah so maybe the audio just be like that then

[shy imp]

could be but the videos on youtube of it doesnt have those audio problems

[summer dragon]

if it’s not supposed to be it could be worth installing it inside Amigavision and running it of the virtual hard drive to see if it improves

[shy imp]

ive been running it off the shared folder since its not a disk image its just program files

[summer dragon]

ahh

[maiden yoke]

Out of this World, Apple IIGS

[wheat folio]

Wanting to setup Amiga for a bit. Are the 60hz hacks out there enough that I can just use a small NTSC CRT or should I pull out a VGA monitor and scandoubler if all?

[maiden yoke]

Prince of Persia, Commodore Plus/4

[wheat folio]

Was PoP originally released on that platform? I though I remember seeing the C64 port being a modern thing.

[warped hare]

Amiga... headsup hdf 10gb issue...

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/issues/1160

[deft estuary]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=106589#p106589

a big tool for AO486 game consolization is out!

[reef gale]

I wonder if we'll ever see a Lisa core

[hollow ice]

Yes

https://lisalist2.com/index.php/topic,694.135.html

There is a dedicated fpga implementation being built by one of the current Lisa experts. He plans to open source everything after it is done.

[elder cove]

New batch of 0MHz packs today - a package for Moon Child is going up now:

It's running a bit slow, but the game is fully playable.

[copper slate]

is AmigaVision fixed now?

[exotic prairie]

No

[summer dragon]

what’s wrong with it?

[copper slate]

People here said there were issues.

[summer dragon]

I just read limi’s bug report. Seems like an odd issue

[copper slate]

Ohhhh do you have a link?

[summer dragon]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/issues/1160

looks like he closed that one, though

[elder cove]

Chu-Teng - the sequel to Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou - is going up:

These two feature a new install based on Windows 95's Japanese edition, which can not only run a number of Japanese-exclusive titles, it also seems to run more stable on the core with existing Win95 software. Huge shoutout to thera34 for his work on getting the configuration behind these packs together.

[void belfry]

Meanwhile found some really cool ASCII/ANSI games for the upcoming pack (some even with SB support beside pc speaker, not to mention ansi animations and so on). Just some teaser sshots (still have around 180 more to test from the initial downloaded):

[surreal marsh]

I was under the impression that even systems we have are often not very complete.

[sharp kindle]

Zet98 is a very incomplete PC98. No hard drive support, and what's there is kind of glitchy.

[copper slate]

That’s pretty damn cool

[granite umbra]

Rogue 😍

[void belfry]

There will be quite a few rogue-like games in the pack, some very hard actually 🙂

Also found many multiplayer ones (from edu/trivia to action/turn based strategy/etc)

eg:

Found even one that supports IPX lol 😄

[granite umbra]

Great !

[hollow ice]

now to get ipx working hint hint

granted...it is going to take me a few days to remember how I got all that stuff compiled....I really need to start taking ample notes

[granite umbra]

With need fake BNC and when we touch it have a kind of "electric shock"

[void belfry]

Still think that a kernel recompilation would be better, as I am also thinking on SLIP/CSLIP support as well (made some test a very long time ago, involving Minix at that time iirc)

[hollow ice]

well, depends on if people get antsy from seeing their kernel is dirty 😄

[void belfry]

SLIP could be used also by PDP11 core

maybe OS/2 as well, could not make PPP to work, no matter what I tried

[cerulean rivet]

I made some tests with the DOS 0mhz collection with my newly made mt32pi lite and i notice that the correct configuration for the mt32pi does not work automatically as in the top 300 dos games.

In the top 300, iirc, the mt32 config will automatically switch to soundfont for doom or the different munt ctrl/pcm rom versions for other games. Am i missing something or is it just not supported? Another thing is that the mt32pi configuration is not saved in the mgl config, each time the mt32 settings are changed, they stay as is in the next launched mgl (i.e. if i set soundfont in the doom mgl, it will still be soundfont if i launch the monkey island mgl).

[verbal mango]

Inside the hdd, the autoexec.bat has to run a cli exe like misterctl and one for the mt32pi to switch the hw to correct mode like fluidsynth or munt, variant or sound font slot.

[cerulean rivet]

Thanks, when i have the time i will check the vhd files to see if there is something like that in the autoexec.

[cerulean rivet]

ok after some diggings here is the autoexec of the doom ultimate 0mhz collection (perhaps not the last version) :

@ECHO OFF
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
REM LH C:\DOS\DOSLFN /Z:C:\DOS\CP437UNI.TBL
REM LH /L:1,21744 C:\MISTER\MISTERFS.EXE Z
REM LH /L:3,28032 C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /L:D
LH /L:0;2,3328 /S C:\DOS\CTMOUSE
REM LH /L:2,13648 C:\UTIL\DOSKEY.COM
REM LFNFOR ON
SET PATH=C:\DOS;C:\MISTER;C:\UTIL
SET DIRCMD=/4
PROMPT $P$G
CD DOOM
RUNGAME

and the rungame.bat :

@echo off
REM uvconfig -s10 -c13 -m4096 -l248 -d9 -k54
REM config -s10 c13 -m4096 -l248 -d9 -k54
REM univbe
sysctl SYS 90Mhz L1+ L2+ > NUL
REM FDOOMVBD
FDOOM13H

There seem to be no trace of a mt32pi control program. In the top300, there is this tool : https://github.com/gmcn42/mt32-pi-control and in the final doom run.bat, there is this call in the sc55 section :

:SC55
mt32-pi -g -v
cd TNT
del DEFAULT.CFG
xcopy .\sc55\*.*
cd ..
cd PLUTONIA
del DEFAULT.CFG
xcopy .\sc55\*.*
cd ..
cls
goto game

Where -g : "-g/--fluidsynth: Switch mt32-pi to FluidSynth mode." and -v for a verbose output

[hollow estuary]

There's a program mpuctl.exe, perhaps that might do want you're wanting? https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer#core-speed-and-options-and-drivers

Yeah, looks like that can be used to switch sound fonts https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/blob/master/sw/mpuctl/MPUCTL.C#L16

[patent temple]

printf("  n     - (optional) either MUNT ROM or FluidSynth soundfont number\n");

[cerulean rivet]

yes you are right and it is in the c:\util directory \o/ but i haven't found it used in the different bat files. I will continue the search later and modify the vhd file to add the correct call to mpuctl.exe if necessary.

[cerulean rivet]

I've made several tests/modifications, here is some of them:

• i test soundfont and munt games from the top 300 pack (doom and monkey island) and my setup work (mt32pi lite with munt rom from the mame set and a sf2 made from kitrinx sc55 to soundfont converter with the sc55 roms fromn the mame set)
• i test the same games from the 0mhz collection : mk1 munt sound is working but i do not think that the doom ultimate sc55 sound is working
• i add "mpuctl munt" in the rungame.bat of mk1 and "mpuctl fluid" in the rungame.bat of doom ultimate : the OSD message display correctly but the music in doom still does not seem to correctly work.

The pb is that the MT32 config part in the OSD does not reflect the config set by mpuctl (it also does not work in the top300 which seems to use another mister mt32pi controller), it is a bit confusing. The fact that there is no save of this part is also a pb, with that no need of an external program to configure the sound for an mgl (and a specific setname).

When i have the time, i will submit a ticket(s) in the 0mhz collection github.

[vestal ginkgo]

the one I am using is from Dale and mt32pi, dos exe is from here: https://github.com/gmcn42/mt32-pi-control/tree/main/dos_bin . MK1 has some config files I swap out depending on what is picked at launch: https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_updates/blob/main/games/MORTALKO/MK/RUN.BAT see the MT32 or SC55 section. hope that helps with what is needed in the 0mhz version

the run.bat files for each game can be pulled from the top 300 repo if needed, just dupilcate those setups for the single game 0mhz version

[cerulean rivet]

Thanks for the info 👍🏻. I like both approach (top 300 and 0mhz collection) but i like better the choice approach for the different sound configurations in the top 300.

I think it is compatible with the 0mhz collection philosophy and prevent from having/downloading almost the same game several times.

[kindred wing]

Short question guys.
There's a monochrome and this beautiful colorized and optimized version of Prince of Persia for the Macintosh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjR_AhxPnVM

Is there any way to run the latter (aka the colored one) on the MiSTer currently or not?
I'm aware I can just enjoy the DOS version (and I did), but I'm a die hard PoP fan and always wanted to try this version out.

[hollow estuary]

The MiSTer Macintosh core is a Mac Plus which is a black and white only Mac

[karmic fog]

the color version actually has different graphics for LC resolution, fun fact

a lot of early Mac II games couldn't cope with sub-480p resolutions so wouldn't run on LC

the PoP devs made sure the game worked on LC and adjusted the graphics for that resolution a bit

i cannot recall if PoP runs on ShapeShifter but I want to say it doesn't

or does with horrible audio, something like that

it's been too long to say for sure, and the minimig core has had some fixes since then too. so... there's a chance you could run it on mister, but it'd be an adventure 🙂

or you can wait for the Mac II and LC cores that are coming down the pipeline, see the #1466808873485598833 channel

[kindred wing]

Cool, thanks guys. 🙂

[granite umbra]

@void belfry
https://codeberg.org/hails/wsl9x

[void belfry]

What the .... ??

[granite umbra]

DOS 7.1 + Win95 + Linux great combo 😅

[void belfry]

building seems easy enough, noted for weekend fun 😄

[hollow ice]

is there a port for xp?

[granite umbra]

I don't know

[void belfry]

Looked superficially on defconfig files, saw PPP/SLIP, which is good, but nothing related to math emulation (FPU) though.. will see