Atari Jaguar

[uncut atlas]

no they are cdi

I just mean the two cd games mentioned above

[gentle bobcat]

I'm just noticing that ftp isn't a protocol my web browsers understand anymore.

[uncut atlas]

umm Highlander and Robinson's

[gentle bobcat]

I'll check Highlander. I'll have to locate Robinson's because I don't think I have that handy.

I hadn't played Highlander before... but it seems to work for me. Maybe I didn't get far enough into it to encounter the issue TJF had? Will locate what he said and double-check.

[mental briar]

robby had the issue, I'm trying both now

Robinson's doesn't like it if you skip the intro. Sitting at a black screen with music

Interestingly, going from Robinsons to Highlander, with no reset, resulted in the jag error bios (red screen)

resetting the core (not reloading) fixed that

[gentle bobcat]

Oh, yeah... Robby said he couldn't get in-game. Well, I didn't have any problem getting in game. A dude immediately shows up and follows me around, hitting me with something until he kills me because I don't know where to go and I keep running into things letting him catch up to me.

[mental briar]

yeah, highlander seems fine

[gentle bobcat]

Vid-Grid worked fine for me too.

[mental briar]

yup. listening to a little van halen

"Right now God is killing cats and dogs because he has to" is certainly a thing you can put in a music video

God, the modern right would absolutely lose their shit over this video

"Right now someone is working too hard for minimum wage"

[dim sundial]

I got this too, just a black screen after skipping intro

[dim sundial]

I didn't get this

[mental briar]

This could be a cifs thing

[gentle bobcat]

Darn it... Checkered Flag STILL WORKS.

[mental briar]

Vid-Grid music is starting to get static-y the longer it goes

"Right now our government is doing things we think only other countries do"

fucking GET THEM, Sammy

Vid Grid is a good stress test for the streaming. You can hear every hiccup

[gentle bobcat]

Man, is it just me or is everything loading and starting faster?

Especially CDs

Not that anything is running at the wrong speed or anything... I just mean less waiting.

( me lets "No More Tears" play a bit)

I tried two games from the that FTP side. One worked... and one sorta worked.

UFO and Gorf.

Had a scratch sound in the song at one point... but other than that, no oddities noted.

[mental briar]

yeah, I think that is the streaming stuff

I dunno if november rain is just a shitty bitrate, but it's crackling a bit more than the other songs

still a banger

[gentle bobcat]

I've seen no video glitches in Streaming CD content when the OSD is brought up so that appears to have been completely eliminated.

[mental briar]

yep agreed

Found another light gun game

[gentle bobcat]

It has hard for me to judge audio quality because I'm currently using a Raspberry Pi monitor without dedicated power adapter... so it only lets me go to 50% brightness and volume... and with that, the audio isn't very loud.

downfall.cdi worked for me.

Anything else you want me to test? Did I miss something I was supposed to test??

Only suggestion I have, and it isn't something I personally want, would be to have a way to disable the BIOS start animation.

Other than that... Kitrinx... you have a yard I can mow for you... or some crops I can pick? Or maybe I could wash your pots and pans that don't fit in the dish washer?

At least you kept me occupied so I didn't accidentally turn on the TV and see Lumpy's speech.

[uncut atlas]

hehe

well the static in the vid grid audio is probably some timing or seeking issue

[gentle bobcat]

I'd say 99.9% of the time audio in Vid Grid is as expected.

Oh, I haven't tried Mortal Kombat Beta. That is the "Homebrew On"?

I don't remember seeing GameDrive.

Why yes, Mortal Kombat Beta v1.1 works fine. Tru Fun Games said he was happy to hear it was working on the MiSTer core now... and that the reason he put the GameDrive only code in there was to keep bad actors from making carts and selling them.

Which someone previously mentioned might be the reason. I forgot who said that.

Obviously, we'll have to spend more time testing stuff... as I didn't use SAM to run through loading all of the games.... but to me... this build is a keeper and a good candidate for public release / adding to update_all... or whatever the proper status/term is. From a reasonable sampling in the time allotted, no significant issues noted. An excellent experience.

The simplification / reorganization of the menu is excellent. Way less intimidating especially for new users.

Any idea how to make Audio CDs once loaded, not require a core reset for them to function? I also seem to have to force Audio CD for them to be recognized. I don't mention that to be critical... but those are the only things that might confuse folks trying it for the first time who didn't read any instructions.

There are some minor bugs with the VLM that I've reported in the past that have persisted but I know ya'll aren't that fond of audio CD stuff so I'm just happy it is working as well as it is.

[uncut atlas]

not yet, i've been working on it

there's something quirky about first load vs soft reset that I have been trying to hunt down

[gentle bobcat]

And some of those VLM bugs might be in the original VLM. I'm not sure. I don't have access to a JagCD to check.

I last used a JagCD around 1995.

I think someone described the VLM last night as "ugly dots". I can only say that their mother must be named Dorthy.

I did mail two MiSTers (a single and a dual RAM) to Shinto yesterday and he should receive them on Thursday. He has a functional JagCD, so he can compare the VLMs.

( me plays Defender 2000 soundtrack in VLM )

I did a core reboot and held down option to bring up the Memory Track Manager... which came up. No save games... because I haven't tried to save any games. Did you make any progress on that? Just curious. Again, most of the CD stuff is new (again) to me so I don't know what I'm doing very well.

[tropic rock]

Memtrack is in the same state. It works but doesn't access the SD card so is not persistent making it mostly useless right now.

[gentle bobcat]

gotcha

That does seem like quite the challenge. How to you capture the contents of a cartridge (Memtrack cart) and write it to the SD card... and then load the Cartridge with contents from SD when the memtrack is used? That makes my head hurt. Do you think it is possible without moving mountains?

I guess it is kinda like carts that have save game options but harder.

[tropic rock]

It is pretty standard save support. The problem is doing it without using more precious BRAM.

[uncut atlas]

i've been focused on cleanup and stability

features can come after this pass

[gentle bobcat]

Thank you both. It is greatly appreciated.

[uncut atlas]

I think the checklist right now for a good release is:

• Get to the bottom of those two unstable jagcd games
• Clean up vidgrid music
• Add saving to the memtrack

and then just a lot of under the hood cleanup

Single ram seems Good Enough ™

[gentle bobcat]

What were the two CD games? I think one of them had Requiem in the name?

JCD games. I take it JCD is a maker's name?

[uncut atlas]

Highlander and Robinson?

highlander is about as good as Cheetahmen 2

Robinson I can't tell if it's working or not but it gives me a disc icon and looks like it's loading

[gentle bobcat]

I found a .jcd file. Are those supposed to work (because they are the same as .cdi)? Or they need to be converted to .cdi?

[uncut atlas]

I dunno rename it and tell me what happens

[gentle bobcat]

Highlander worked for me with limited testing. Will try to put some more time into it.

Will do

Robinson's Requiem was not a finished game and I believe, at best it is considered a demo but I welcome comments from anyone familiar with it.

[mental briar]

I think you need to blow through all the intro videos. I got to the intro studio credits, and then got a black screen

[uncut atlas]

yeah I get the start screen with the mouse cursor, then I choose "START" and it looks like it's loading but takes forever

[gentle bobcat]

A .jcd file is a native file for CD games used by the GameDrive. They provide a converter program but other than that, I don't know how it differs from .cdi They do mention converting .cdi files to .jcd so I assume they are different.
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/319496-cd-game-support/

Here's a Jaguar freeware gamepack from Reboot software:
https://www.retrohq.co.uk/product/jaggd/RebootGamePack.zip

[tropic rock]

Translating these from bigpemu scripts seems to work

https://github.com/jguffer/BigPEmu_Scripts/blob/main/scripts/cheat_aliens_vs_predator.c#L37

[lyric pelican]

#define AVP2_SHOTGUN_BITMASK_VALUE  2

[gentle bobcat]

What is a gg file? A cheat file that the core knows how to use?

[tropic rock]

yes

(gg==gamegenie style)

[warm oasis]

Did you document these anywhere?

[tropic rock]

There are known issues with the timer. Transitioning to final digit 0 in seconds does not display correctly. Negative time also.

[warm oasis]

Ah good you know the issues, was worried maybe had been posted and lost amongst the chat which sometimes happens

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - I gave GreyRogue a list but I can remember most of it.

1. The playback clock seems to start at 3 seconds whenver a song starts to play
2. Periodically, a song will just stop playing. Sometime the next song will start up if you wait long enough, other times it just stops play completely
3. The playback clock, when it is counting up , it always skips increments of ten in the seconds position. 08, 09, 0[blank], 11.... 18, 19, 1[blank], 21, etc.
4. After loading an audio .cdi file, you have to reset the core in order to get it to play

The highest priority of those would be #2. I do seem to be able to replicate that pretty much every playback session... I just might have to wait awhile. If there is a pattern to it, I haven't discovered it.

[warm oasis]

What format do the CDs need to be in now?

[gentle bobcat]

I'm using .cdi files. If you need any sample media, just search for "Jaguar VLM"

[tropic rock]

For those curious I have tested every cheat in the above zips. They all are at least partially functional, but some will cause issues if left on.

That was all the cheats in the current MiSTer repository, plus I added all the cheats for those games from the BigP repository. (I did not add anything to Ultra Vortek so I did not post a new zip)

[uncut atlas]

I think they'll get overwritten by update_all

it would be more ideal to submit the missing ones to @mild sapphire site

[urban mango]

Blue Lightning used to get quite upset if you took a screenshot when it was playing video or audio - seems to cope fine now!

[uncut atlas]

this build is dual ram, and it seems to deal with those two problematic games better

[midnight robin]

@uncut atlas Is it a good time to ask for Jaguar games to be centered? On HDMI, they are all displaced vertically.
Since you seem to be reworking the core, I though it could be a good moment to say it 🙂

[uncut atlas]

centered? no that's the real timing

that's how the chip does it

ther ewill probably be a few more video options like most cores have

but that's down the line

[midnight robin]

I see. Even if it's something that only affects the HDMI image? On a tube using analog video, it's perfectly centered.

[uncut atlas]

what i'm saying is that's the real image

crt's probably eat some of it in their overscan

jaguar is drawing that blackness up there

on purpose

I can add a crop option in the future

[midnight robin]

Ok, ok, I understand now. The fact that all games have that blackness up there made me think it could be something with the video timing, which ultimately confused me 😄

[uncut atlas]

but it's not a centering issue, that's what jaguar does

[midnight robin]

Oh Jaguar, we love you as you are

Thanks Kitrinx for the explanation

[uncut atlas]

it was probably some atari sloppiness around arcade/pal compatibility

[mental briar]

i have to say, watching SAM go through games on an HDMI display and a CRT simultaneously, it's wild how much garbage they shoved in the overcrop area

[midnight robin]

Sounds like final Atari, yes 😄

[pallid gulch]

Yes more games working 🙂

[uncut atlas]

those didn't work before? are they cd games?

[pallid gulch]

They didn't work before there is gamedrive games

[uncut atlas]

oh, neat

I guess that gamedrive stuff I wrote helped

thanks I was looking before for things other than MK that were enabled by that

[gentle bobcat]

They are cartridge games... but I think, from the FTP site GreyRogue mentioned last night, that there must be a common way to repackage carts as CDs... for reproduction purposes... easier to duplicate CDs than carts.... because I was seeing both cart and cd files for most everything.

[warm oasis]

Do the CD conversions work OK?

[gentle bobcat]

I can't remember what if any CD versions of cart games I tried last night. Will have to check again.

[pallid gulch]

this one is little weird during the process of boot because the bios is not visible

[uncut atlas]

it might be intentional

[pallid gulch]

just black screen for 10 secondes and the games starts to run

Thanks for the work it is great to see more homebrew games running on the core 🙂

[tall musk]

So when do we tell Time Extension that Kit has once again saved Atari?

Her legacy.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/bdHka.gif

[tall musk]

"Kit has told me on several occasions that she thinks the Atari VCS is a Hidden Gem® of retro gaming." <-- if any Time Extension writers want to quote me.

[mental briar]

"Cojag should be easy and is coming soon, for all you Fishin' Frenzy-heads"

[warm oasis]

"My spirit animal is a Falcon... An Atari Falcon."

[tall musk]

Her love for Atari is so pure.

[gentle bobcat]

You guys are cracking me up.

Obviously she has an Atari tatoo.

( me would love, love, love to have either a physical Falcon 030, but more preferred, a Falcon 030 core)

[slender valley]

"Kitrinx, known for pushing the boundaries with the NES with support for additional mappers and add-on hardware (Keep your eyes peeled for Former Dawn support folks) is now working her magic on getting not just retail games but homebrew games running on the Atari Jaguar core with 100% accuracy and SNAC support!"

.... please don't kill me Kitrinx

[tropic rock]

As mentioned ULS by Reboot does this. They all show the ULS logo when booting. You just have to replace track 2 with your code. It copies the entirety of your code to the Jag's 2MB of DRAM and then runs from there. Your code does have to fit along with all your RAM usage into the 2MB so it limits the size of the code. But a lot of homebrew is fairly simple and small. https://forums.atariage.com/topic/159282-universal-loading-system/

Beebris, Klax, Frogz 64 and many others use it. They are all the same size cdi (15.6MB).

You can see from the track crcs that track 2 is the only difference between these http://redump.org/disc/80844/ http://redump.org/disc/80846/

Some may use a slightly newer version of ULS but they should be largely interchangeable.

[gentle bobcat]

GreyRogue: Sorry, but I guess I wasn't ready to receive when you sent the first time. I occasionally drop packets. Thanks for the info. I wonder what ULS stands for. I know it doesn't stand for Super Attract Mode.

[mental briar]

Unlicensed Software would be my bet

[supple finch]

Universal Loading System?

[mental briar]

ooo that's a good bet too

[supple finch]

https://www.reboot-games.com/rebootnews/a-brief-history-of-reboot/

"The Jaguar Universal Loading System is designed to remove the hassle from the process of creating and producing both encrypted single-load CDs and your own similar personal CD Images for the Atari Jaguar."

[ashen spoke]

IT HAS BEEN PINNED

[gentle bobcat]

The name "Degz" for a game inspired by "Scramble" is hill-airy-ous

[ashen spoke]

ok so, there’s no saves yet for CD games, right?

Also, is it possible to get automatic CDi loading if it’s the only CDi in a folder?

lol we do with bin/cue and CHD

[fallow salmon]

feels like the year of the jaguar in here

[gentle bobcat]

up in here up in here

[stiff pebble]

Why does the jaguar need to run cdi games? We already have a cdi core

[gentle bobcat]

.cdi is a disk format that originally came from the Sega Dreamcast folks. Not a platform. (just in case you were serious with your question)

[fallow salmon]

is that really the origin of cdi?

[dreamy hinge]

it did not come from 'dreamcast folks' it's a proprietary file format from diskjuggler

[fallow salmon]

i wonder why it was used so much for dreamcast

bin/cue works fine for that i think

[dreamy hinge]

well, dreamcast people used 'gdi' too

.cdi has info on sessions and doesn't require two files to follow each other around and be named properly

[fallow salmon]

early ps2 pirates missed a golden opportunity to use .nod files

[dreamy hinge]

if you look at jagcd cue files, the session info is in a comment "REM SESSION 02" etc

[ashen spoke]

Thank you, citizen

[fallow salmon]

yeah i guess cue files have been kind of ... extended beyond the spec, to put it politely

ah and if you took a bin/cue like that and burned it on software that ignored those comments you'd get a coaster

[slender valley]

It does not, not if you wanted a burnable image that would self boot. And burning was all those images were good for back then since it's not like a Dreamcast emulator that was usable would exist for a while. Self-booting disc images relied on a bug in the Dreamcast security design that needed a multi-session disc, you could not do that with Bin/Cue

[fallow salmon]

ah

[slender valley]

I think GDI came much later and was made to solve the problem of Dreamcast images being in this ancient proprietary format

[fallow salmon]

that makes sense so these days with ODEs it doesn't matter but back then it did

[slender valley]

Since like you said, it wasn't a standard format, it was just a format used by the program Diskjuggler that happened to support the multi-session info self-booting Dreamcast discs needed. It has long since stopped being updated and is very obsolete

[slender valley]

Yeah, an ODE would just need the tracks. This even bypasses the issue some of those images had in that a Dreamcast disc could actually hold about a gig so for games that were larger than the 700 MB a CD could hold they would have to find ways to shrink them, or split them. Many games had some extra stuff removed or fmvs and audio downsampled to fit

[fallow salmon]

yeah i remember they'd like, even take out music and stuff sometimes

[slender valley]

Retail Dreamcast discs also contained a very small section that was PC readable. For the majority of games they just contained three text files with copyright information, but some games added extra content in there like wallpapers or screensavers or even some mini games playable on PC

.... Or in the case of Atelier Marie + Elie, include a really nasty computer virus by accident that goes off on Christmas and would wipe your hard drives and even corrupt your bios

... Oops?

[fallow salmon]

jeez could viruses actually write to bios back in the day

[dreamy hinge]

now they can just reside in your efi partition!

[mental briar]

Was it CiR that was the bad one? I remember being very frightened of one in the late 90s

CIH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus)

[uncut atlas]

Highlander is such a bad game

the worst

[timid snow]

Def the worst Jaguar game imo

[dreamy hinge]

there can be only one....worst jaguar game

[timid snow]

But at least the Jaguar CD has Battlemorph

[gentle bobcat]

Zakk: Bad wording on my part ("came from the Dreamcast folks"). .cdi was picked by the Dreamcast folks who used it... and from my questionable perspective, they somewhat popularized it.

I think there is some competition for which is the worst Jaguar game. My vote would be for Checkered Flag... at least until BigPEmu supposedly came up with an alternative control mechanism that supposedly makes it easier to steer properly. I haven't tried that yet though.

[slender valley]

On the Dreamcast game? It was called Kriz
http://virus.wikidot.com/kriz

[uncut atlas]

is there like a demo cdi audio cd available somewhere?

[ashen spoke]

It’s pretty impressive

[uncut atlas]

@gentle bobcat this should load your audio discs when they are audio discs, though you still have to soft reset to play them

[gentle bobcat]

@uncut atlas - I assume you found them but the search term would be "Jaguar VLM" Thanks I'll try that. It is dual-RAM I assume?

[uncut atlas]

yes thanks

[gentle bobcat]

I just packed up my MiSTer system and put it away for bedtime. Will try it sometime tomorrow. Sorry for the delay

[ashen spoke]

Why not just leave it connected

[gentle bobcat]

Because I don't want to leave a TV tray sitting in the middle of the living room floor.

[gentle bobcat]

@uncut atlas - Tried it out for a bit this morning. I had "Force Music CD: Off". If I start with an audio CD, it comes up, needs the reset as you mentioned and works. If I load a game CD, that works, if I switch back to an audio CD, I usually have to load it twice before it gets recognized, but that is an improvement. It seems the JagCD BIOS is harder to tame.

Were does the "Help" stuff go? Is there a directory to drop text or PDF files in?

[uncut atlas]

pdf?

like you can drop a pdf here

as long as it's not like, an ebook of a novel or something that's for sale on amazon

[grizzled mantle]

I believe he's referring to the OSD 'Help' item, which will call the framebuffer pdf viewer: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PDFViewer_MiSTer. He's asking what directory to put Jag pdfs in. I'm not near my working MiSTers to look up the answer.

[gentle bobcat]

What cmstar0 said. Sorry I wasn't verbose enough.

[uncut atlas]

oh, that's a question for @plucky wharf

[grizzled mantle]

I think it's /media/fat/docs/[corename]

[gentle bobcat]

Cool. That makes sense. I'll try that after work tonight.

[grizzled mantle]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MiSTerFPGA/comments/xguer6/howto_adding_custom_docs_to_mister/

[mental briar]

@warm oasis is (was?) cooking something for that

I have a docs folder full of CDi docs, so I know we did something. But I don’t remember where it landed

[gentle bobcat]

I'd be nice to drop all of the game manuals and the PDF with all of the overlays in it, and a guide for the VLM in there.

Oh, I've been emailing with Shinto... and he has a functional JagCD. He said the visual glitches with the VLM playback timer are not present in the real JagCD... but that when opening up the lid to change media, it reboots the Jaguar so that kinda makes sense why the VLM doesn't work unless it gets rebooted. For cd loads, it does reboot the Jaguar (not sure if technically that is correct but that's how it appears). If we have any other questions about what the real thing does, we can ask him. He was in this channel briefly the other day but I hope to get him in here more often. He is the host of the Jaguar Game by Game podcast. He is extremely detail oriented and I'm pretty darn sloppy.

[warm oasis]

You might be better just having a section in the readme for how to use CDs, you can read that on GitHub or bring it up from the Help option

You could make a .pdf and add that, but may be overkill. I have one I made of all the game overlays that could be added. Right now it is in the WIP DB.

I did a POC for a wider project of grabbing game manuals for different systems but the real blocker is how to scale down the size of hundreds of manuals so there isn't a massive reduction in quality and the file size is much smaller, and then how to automate that. That was the sticking point there.

The .pdf viewer is a really nice feature too few people know about or utilise

[uncut atlas]

I wonder if some internal thing toggles the lid if you just power it up with the lid closed

[wicked thorn]

If you power up the Jaguar with the CD lid closed (and no disc), and then push the button to pop the lid, the system will perform a full reset, so I suspect something in the lid mechanism is triggering that. Closing the lid does not reset the Jaguar, just opening it.

[uncut atlas]

the problem we're seeing is something with power up. Things are set up such that loading a disc from the stream option considers the disc inserted, the cd hardware present, and the lid closed

but it boots to non-functional vlm playback

until a soft reset

I feel like it's somehow related to the full jag bios showing which im still trying to figure out

[gentle bobcat]

@uncut atlas - Here is a less elegant solution that you have likely already considered and dismissed, but you could just change the current stream CD entry into two entries: Stream Game CD and Stream Audio CD. Then you bake-in the "Force Audio CD: On" into the later.

[uncut atlas]

no

that's good for like 0.1% of the users

bad for everyone else

[gentle bobcat]

@Robby - Here's a typical MiSTer session for me. Sorry for my disgusting carpet:

[wicked thorn]

Please forgive my ignorance; I'm new to MiSTer. Would it help if you check stream source to see if the disc is single- or multi-session? That's basically what JagCD BIOS does to determine whether it should play a game disc or audio CD. If it's single-session, you could force audio CD mode.

[lyric pelican]

    move.l    (a1),d0        ;pick up session count & lead-out time
;
    rol.l    #8,d0        ;get session count in d0.b
    cmpi.b    #2,d0        ;session count 2 or greater?
    bcc    GPU_init    ;br if so, multi-session disk
    cmpi.b    #1,d0        ;only 1 session?
    bne    pauz        ;br if not even 1 session

[gentle bobcat]

Shinto: Thanks detail oriented guy! 🙂

( me notes that Shinto [attempted to] describe[d] all 9 of the VLM effects groups as well as the 9 sub effects of each group verbally in his last podcast. Now that's details! )

[wicked thorn]

Ugh, don't remind me. That was a slog. But I was able to work in a Star Wars joke, at least.

[urban mango]

I have a jag cd unit but it struggles to spin discs so is off for repair soon so double checked what it does @uncut atlas with no cd it boots to the Jaguar logo with the vlm like pattern behind. With a cart it boots to that same Jag logo with pattern then boots the cart. Similar with cd.
With cart & cd it doesn’t spin the cd but boots the card in pref.
Never see the cube/roar screen with cd attached. Opening cd lid resets console.

[tropic rock]

Oh my. I really wish I had known about this repository a year ago.

[uncut atlas]

it does do that

the cube thing is confusing though

I dont understand why the cd bios isnt interrupting the jag bios

[gentle bobcat]

I wonder if that source code came from the Atari History Museum done by Curtis Vendel... that has luckily been preserved since his death. I believe a lot of the source code to many of the original Atari produced Jaguar games is in that archive.

[uncut atlas]

I have it

[tropic rock]

I now have most of those files. But that is nicely organized and appear to be the correct versions of the files. Plus the extra stuff done for it.

[slender valley]

A Multisystem 1, neat. Also, how does that USB controller handle controlling deep underwater submarines?

[gentle bobcat]

I did try an AvP cheat last night where I had infinite shotgun ammo and health. Worked!

@slender valley - The Logitech Gamepad F310 is my go-to controller for all cores except the Jaguar and N64 cores. I do want to buy more SNAC adapters and get more original controllers. It's on my list of things to do when I'm willing to spend the money.

[slender valley]

Heh, I was using 8bitdio's controllers but I have since switched to a gulikit one

Mainly due to the d-pad

[gentle bobcat]

Here's a can of worms for you... feel free to do a Nancy Reagan on it (and "Just Say No!") but should we switch to the .jcd format for optical media? That's what most of the current Jaguar community is using with the GameDrive... that is published in the HGSTD (or whatever the correct acronym is) collection??? I defer to those that would have to do the work. But then again, I don't think BigPEmu uses .jcd format either.

[dreamy hinge]

is that format actually documented anywhere?

[gentle bobcat]

They have published a converter program. I don't know if the source is available or if they published any specs.

[warm oasis]

All the ones in the HTGDB pack seem to be .jcd

[gentle bobcat]

Even though I have a GameDrive, I haven't used it in quite some time and I'm probably behind on the firmware... but I never got CD games to work on it. Not only do you have to have them in the jcd format (which I did), but you have to write them to the microSD card first so that they will be contiguous sectors (or something like that) or it won't work. I tried doing that and it didn't work... but it probably has gotten better with firmware updates. I don't think GameDrive supports audioCDs at all although I've seen a forum post saying it does... but not real proof or instructions on how to go about it.

[warm oasis]

Does game drive only support .jcd format for discs?

[gentle bobcat]

That is my understanding.

Will try to find link.

[uncut atlas]

If it's documented and has all the info we need it can be added

[warm oasis]

It would certainly make finding the files a lot easier if it could be

[uncut atlas]

If it's hacky and incomplete not much reason

[gentle bobcat]

Here's a date reference but I think it is current:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/319496-cd-game-support/

I concur.

I'm going to pretend that Shinto is my Jaguar A.I. and the only one I would agree to use. @Shinto - What do you know about the .jcd format?

[wicked thorn]

Very little. SainT promised to release the source code for cd2jcd back in 2021, but has not yet done so. It's fairly-portable C code, as I understand it, and I'd think enough information could be gleaned from that to understand the format. If we had the source, of course.

[uncut atlas]

Probably

[warm oasis]

Is SainT the person behind the game drive?

[gentle bobcat]

To stray off-topic... when I referred to Shinto as A.I. I was reminded of the automated voice thing he has in his podcast. What is the name of that character and how do you create/generate it?

I'm reminded of the "Macintosh Librarian" on YouTube who has a side-kick named Maccie(sp?) which is a talking Mac Classic with a digital face that is animated and in sync. I've asked her how she is doing that and she says it is a secret that she doesn't want to reveal to the world. She has a fake story on his origin in her first episode.

[wicked thorn]

Bishop. It's an actual computer in control of many things throughout the house, though I may exaggerate its capabilities from time to time. Its voice is synthesized with a slightly-tweaked eSpeak.

[gentle bobcat]

For .cdi creation we have DiskJuggler that is found on the archive for Windows (or emulators) users... and the fine .c program GreyRogue wrote a while ago that works on Linux.

[uncut atlas]

There are lots of tool for cdi

[gentle bobcat]

With the capital T at the end of SainT I'm guessing they have an Atari ST background.

Not being a Windows nor macOS user, I'm not familiar with the more mainstream / commercial optical disk utilities that might support .cdi. I'm not aware of any Linux native ones. What tools does anyone else here use? (likely there hasn't been much of a need for conversion)

[uncut atlas]

There are no mainstream disc utilities

Discs are a relic

[wicked thorn]

Yes, he co-wrote an ST emulator of the same name.

[uncut atlas]

Atari survivors should start a group

[dreamy hinge]

honestly cdi is kinda bad for this too. it's still proprietary, the only documentation is what people have managed to reverse engineer. all the code feels like a game of telephone where it's all "we did it this way because I guess it works"

but there's nothing else so we do what we can

[gentle bobcat]

Its the devil we sorta know.

[uncut atlas]

There somehow isn't any perfect disc format

[dreamy hinge]

the format that delayed any progress on CHD was supposed to be that. but the person took forever and it feels perpetually 'almost done' now

[uncut atlas]

Your think mames format would have considered this

It's really not hard

Just release it with versioning

[dreamy hinge]

the problem is of course that almost none of the existing cd rips out there contain all the actual info to create 'correct' representations in this mythical best format. so you define a format and then everyone has to re-rip decades of stuff

chd is versioned

[uncut atlas]

Yeah well you can't invent what isn't there

[gentle bobcat]

Audio CDs are making a comeback... or so I'm told. More than vinyl?

[uncut atlas]

Not really

[gentle bobcat]

I guess like us retro gamers... there are retro audiophiles.

[uncut atlas]

Not audiophiles

Just retro weirdos

Audiophiles want high quality audio

[gentle bobcat]

Someone was telling me that there is some uber program audophiles use to rip audio cds in a hyper way where it takes a really long time... and that is how the audiophiles prefer their media for collecting.

eac Exact Audio Copy for Windows... and whipper for Linux. I haven't used them.

[uncut atlas]

Uh huh

[gentle bobcat]

A co-worker provided these links:
https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper

[warm oasis]

EAC was the go to for ripping CDs when I was doing it 20 years ago

[uncut atlas]

https://gizmodo.com/audiophiles-fail-to-hear-difference-in-signal-passed-through-copper-cable-banana-and-tray-of-mud-2000723435

[warm oasis]

That was posted and debunked a few days ago

[uncut atlas]

Uh huh

Bananas. It's what audiophiles crave.

[gentle bobcat]

Oh, I totally agree... at least with my old ears I can't tell a difference and I used to prefer 128Kbit encoding... and only went up to 192Kbit so I'd get looked down on a tiny bit less.

Although for backup purposes I did start using flac.

Umm, when is the Jaguar core going to support reel-to-reel?

[tall musk]

128kbps MP3 I can hear the compression. 128kbps AAC I can't. Use modern codecs.

256kbps AAC is essentially transparent to CD audio

[gentle bobcat]

I mostly use opus. Did I say mp3? 🙂

[tall musk]

ohhhh...

one of those people

Don't worry though: I live in a glass house of lies. My collection is primarily FLAC CD backups with a sprinkling of 24/96 for albums I love.

[gentle bobcat]

The OneLoad64 project figured out how to turn tapes and floppy disks into cart images... if only we could convert optical disks to .j64 format. (I know that's impossible)

[tall musk]

So is the Jaguar core done yet?

The children yearn for 64 bits

[supple finch]

DO THE MATH!

[gentle bobcat]

Someone has a shower curtain with the Jaguar 64bit bus diagram on it proving the 64bits.

[wicked thorn]

Yeah, I made that, based off of a block diagram Atari released in '93. https://www.redbubble.com/people/shinto314/shop?artistUserName=shinto314&collections=606422&iaCode=u-shower-curtain

[gentle bobcat]

I'm certain Kitrinx has one of those.

[uncut atlas]

Ew

[gentle bobcat]

I know... showers are outdated technology.

[supple finch]

That'd be kinda cool to hang in the game room

Keep my games from getting wet when I shower in there. 🙂

[uncut atlas]

does the My Arcade Gamestation Retro Gamepad work with mister?

[ashen spoke]

don't anyone answer, I want to be the one

[gentle bobcat]

I'm not a fan of modern Atari company stuff so I wouldn't know.

[ashen spoke]

#controllers message

[gentle bobcat]

Although I do admit to having an Atari VCS... that I bought, tried to use, couldn't get it to connect to my Specrum provided wifi AP and then shoved in a drawer. Anyone want it?

I did try to run Linux on it but my preferred distro was not stable on it.

[ashen spoke]

@uncut atlas it works but there are several issues - #1055574003810578503 message

the * & # buttons are swapped on the controller and they're keyboard shift combo button inputs which the core does not recognize so they're not usable.

but everything else works wired, wireless does not

it's just really crappy

[uncut atlas]

something is really broken with controller mapping

[gentle bobcat]

Go on... (in John Stewart voice)

I've had some issues with my Reflex Adapt plugged in, in Jaguar mode using the original controller... while having the F310 plugged in as well... where it thought the F310 was controller 1 and the Jaguar controller was controller 2 which made the Jag controller not work... but I realized the issue and fixed it in the controller settings in the core... or I unplugged the F310, reset the core and then plugged the F310 back in. Only noticed that once but that's the only issue I've noticed in over a year. Granted I don't use a wide variety of controllers.

[mental briar]

I have one if you need me to test something, kit

[ashen spoke]

So how did you end up liking the controller? Was I too harsh?

Part of my harshness was because I was frustrated it didn’t meet my outlandish expectations. It really was such a perfect “Atari” controller with all the bullshit it supported.

[gentle bobcat]

@Robby - I think you said you sent it back or was that something else?

[slender valley]

I doubt that, the vinyl shelves in stores that I see these days are much bigger than the CD shelves, if they have CDs at all

It's bafflingly anachronistic to see vinyl records being sold with a sticker that says they come with a MP3 download

[slender valley]

Still is today, also, it only takes a few seconds to at most a few minutes. I have no idea where this takes forever came from

[gentle bobcat]

@slender valley - Probably from older/damaged media with errors... which some programs give up on immediately... or take forever and hang. Or more likely just an unnformed me.

[mental briar]

Oh it’s still in the box. But I will be willing to decimate its value by opening and using it, if it means the jaguar core is ready

[slender valley]

I'm assuming Maybe whatever program they're using to encode audio after it's been ripped is probably set to some laughably absurd settings that take forever

I just have EAC set to encode in MP3 using LAME

[ashen spoke]

yeah I returned it

[warm oasis]

They are probably ripping it at 1x speed. It was always recommended to rip your discs at the lowest speed your drive could do

[slender valley]

Pretty sure modern drives can't even go that slow

[uncut atlas]

by the way where can I get the program that converts to jcd files?

[gentle bobcat]

https://www.retrohq.co.uk/product/jaggd/cd2jcd.zip

Linked to from here... this is the company that distributes it:
https://www.retrohq.co.uk/products/atari-jaguar-gd-flash-cartridge

[tall musk]

I'm still waiting on your review. I read Robby's report but, well, he's Robby.

[uncut atlas]

some human validate this

[ashen spoke]

@gentle bobcat ^

[uncut atlas]

is there some author named TAIR?

[gentle bobcat]

@Shinto ?

[wicked thorn]

No, sorry, I have not heard the name TAIR before in any of my research or community engagements.

[dreamy hinge]

it's almost ATARI

[uncut atlas]

if that's accurate, it doesnt really have session info

[dreamy hinge]

is that what the 0x09-0x0B MSF bytes are? where the 2nd session starts?

[tropic rock]

You are activating my PTSD

[uncut atlas]

I am?

[tropic rock]

I posted this in our chat

[uncut atlas]

anagram of atari?

[dreamy hinge]

ah a fellow big brain who does all work out of ~/Downloads

[tropic rock]

It is endian swapped version of the codes atari required in cds. They are used for two purposes.

[uncut atlas]

well mystery solved

[uncut atlas]

well, then you can look through that text gray

[tropic rock]

Getting those to line up correctly led to this nonsense https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/blob/menu_cleanup/rtl/Rework/butch.v#L949

[lyric pelican]

if ((faddr[1:0] == 2'b01) && (gframes[2:1] == 2'h0)) begin // handles throwing away first 16 bit value and using fifth in its place (plus endian/ordering nonsense)

[uncut atlas]

I wont have time for a while to search through it

lets see if this is accurate for baldies

[tropic rock]

The description is very likely true. It is fairly similar to the binary cue file I invented

+0x04 1 u8 Track type/control flag (parser-derived)
This likely the session number

It matches the toc the bios creates

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/blob/menu_cleanup/rtl/Rework/butch.v#L1901

[lyric pelican]

//;    +0 - track # (must be non-zero)

[tropic rock]

Comparison from my cue.bin to jcd

Descriptor format:
Offset  Size  Type  Meaning
+0x00   1     u8    Track number (1-based)
+0x01   1     u8    Track start MSF minute
+0x02   1     u8    Track start MSF second
+0x03   1     u8    Track start MSF frame
+0x04   1     u8    Track type/control flag (parser-derived)
+0x05   1     u8    Track length MSF minute
+0x06   1     u8    Track length MSF second
+0x07   1     u8    Track length MSF frame
+0x08   1     u8    Reserved (written 0)
+0x09   1     u8    Data start LBA[23:16] (512-byte sectors)
+0x0A   1     u8    Data start LBA[15:8]
+0x0B   1     u8    Data start LBA[7:0]

cue.bin
Descriptor format:
First line is all 0s to imply 1- based 
Track number is inferred from which line it is (16 byte lines)
Offset  Size  Type  Meaning
+0x00   1     u8    Track start MSF minute
+0x01   1     u8    Track start MSF second
+0x02   1     u8    Track start MSF frame
+0x03   1     u8    Track length MSF minute
+0x04   1     u8    Track length MSF second
+0x05   1     u8    Track length MSF frame
+0x06   1     u8    Pregap length MSF second
+0x07   1     u8    Pregap length MSF frame
+0x08   1     u8    Track type/control flag (parser-derived) = session
+0x09   1     u8    Data start[31:24] (byte addreess)
+0x0A   1     u8    Data start[23:16]
+0x0B   1     u8    Data start[15:8]
+0x0C   1     u8    Data start[7:0]
+0x0D   1     u8    Session end MSF minute
+0x0E   1     u8    Session end MSF second
+0x0F   1     u8    Session end MSF frame```

[uncut atlas]

it seems to think 0x08 is the session count

[tropic rock]

It almost certainly is

Wait 8?

[uncut atlas]

yeah

[tropic rock]

oh yeah. 8 overall not track+8

That matches this https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/blob/menu_cleanup/rtl/Rework/butch.v#L1894

[lyric pelican]

//;    +4 - total number of sessions

[tropic rock]

0x00    4     char  Magic = "JCD\0"
0x04    1     u8    Reserved (written 0)
0x05    1     u8    Reserved (written 0)
0x06    1     u8    Format version (written 1)
0x07    1     u8    Track count (N), max 120
0x08    1     u8    Reserved (written 0)
0x09    1     u8    Disc/session MSF minute (inferred lead-out related)
0x0A    1     u8    Disc/session MSF second (inferred lead-out related)
0x0B    1     u8    Disc/session MSF frame (inferred lead-out related)```
For this part +4 and +5 are always 0
+6 is actually minimum track number = 1
+7 is inferred from the number of lines in cue.bin
+8 is actually number of sessions and is the last value of track+8 with an increment for 1 based in cue.bin
and +9 +A +B are the values of track+D track+E and track+F in cue.bin

As for the actual data he endian swaps in the conversion so he does not need to the swapping I do in butch.c #1055574003810578503 message

The checks for TAIR are just validating that it is an actual jag game cd

It all makes a lot of sense to me.

He does not keep pregap info so it assumes it is either ignored or follows a standard pattern

[uncut atlas]

updated it

[tropic rock]

Did you see my note about 6?

[uncut atlas]

no

[tropic rock]

+6 is actually minimum track number = 1

This group matches this

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/blob/menu_cleanup/rtl/Rework/butch.v#L1890

[lyric pelican]

//;    +0 - unused, reserved (0)

[tropic rock]

4-B is 0-7 of that section

[uncut atlas]

ill update

[tropic rock]

I dont know if any cd starts with a minimum track of anything but 1 so it does not really matter. But I am pretty sure that is what it means

[uncut atlas]

it could also be version, ill check what the source is

in the code it's hard coded to 1

[tropic rock]

Yeah I assume all CDs have minimum track as 1. But all 8 lines match so I think it is correct.

[tropic rock]

The eight lines are from comments in the cd bios source code.

https://github.com/jaguar64/samples/blob/e701c6b4d408c9f2c42262028a6dd0d72cffe46a/cdbios/cdbios.s#L979

[lyric pelican]

;    +0 - unused, reserved (0)

[tropic rock]

as are the eight line 0-7 in the track descriptors

https://github.com/jaguar64/samples/blob/e701c6b4d408c9f2c42262028a6dd0d72cffe46a/cdbios/cdbios.s#L990

[lyric pelican]

//;    +0 - track # (must be non-zero)

[uncut atlas]

oh that's basically a cheat

[tropic rock]

The cdbios creates that format of data in memory (0x2C00 if I remember correctly)

It then checksums it with RSA and verifies it matches data in the last track

[tropic rock]

The CD BIOS wont play the game if it does not match

(Copy protection)

[uncut atlas]

okay well that's probably a solid enough spec to implement

[tropic rock]

It is relatively easy to convert between my cue.bin and this

The only major difference is the data has been endian converted

[uncut atlas]

yeah

ill do it in a bit

[tropic rock]

The one gotcha I wonder about is the weird offset

All jagcds are slightly mis-aligned like that. (sections don't start at 0). That messes with the endian stuff and lba address if not careful.

[uncut atlas]

"atari"

[gentle bobcat]

Putting all of the PDF game manuals in the docs/Jaguar/ directory works pretty good.

[warm oasis]

I started doing this as part of a POC DB project, but if I recall they are generally really large files and need sized down. Let me find my DB and you can have a play with it if you want. I could maybe chuck the remaining ones in there over the weekend, I think I have them in a folder still

Or maybe I did do all the Jag and Jag CD ones... There are quite a few in there...

https://github.com/ajgowans/faqs

If you were interested in resizing lots of .pdfs down to a sane resolution and compression then maybe we could turn this into an actual DB that could be added as an update all option. For some systems it would be a lot of work, but for systems with smaller libraries it would be quite easy to get them all in there.

But anyone who wants to try it as it is right now can just add this to their down ini

[ajgowans/faqs]
db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajgowans/faqs/db/db.json.zip

[sacred blade]

CD is an audiophile format if mastered properly. Hi def audio is just a scam

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Monty is the creator of the open source ogg vorbis format and knows all the stuff about psychoacoustics and the human hearing capabilities

[radiant cradle]

CDs do have very good audio yeah, theres a reason they replaced vinyl in the first place

[sacred blade]

If you are not a bat there is no reason to replace CDs

[radiant cradle]

the problem with cds is that they are boring and common and thus no fun for collectors and audiophiles

[keen zealot]

TLDR; Use better masters, better technical headphones/speakers & don't use DACs with shitty decimation algorithms/creating lots of noise.

[radiant cradle]

the high quality digital audio files are boring, its a lot more fun when the needle vibrates on grooves

[keen zealot]

I see people who champion vinyl as their preferred listening format, just like those who swear by CRTs for classic gaming.

We know how to do better, cheaper, less polluting, and less bulky things, but we cling to an older technology because of nostalgia and a flaw that has become a strength.

Both tend to use their imperfections to make the end user more appealing. Vinyl has physical limitations in its bass dynamics (otherwise the needle would jump off the track), which necessitates creating specific masters, centered on the midrange (much more pleasing to the human ear as well).

With CRTs, pixel artists have worked with composite signals and light convergence through masks to create effects that appeal to people. CRTs are also limited in the number of lines that can be rendered, which reduces the sharpness and colors rendition, however they are very practical on moving images without leaving any afterglow, no ghosting or shimmering.

[warm oasis]

I tend to find when people are railing against vinyl or CDs they often don't actually have a decent stereo, with a turntable and CD player. They listen to music primarily on their computer or their phone, and even stream it. It is akin to me claiming Ferraris are better than Lamborghinis, when all I have is a bus pass.

Anyhow, this has nothing to do with Jaguar.

[keen zealot]

Personally, when it comes to audio, yes, I have a very specific system that costs as much as a (EDIT : small) sports car, but I can listen to a 320 kbps MP3 file with Amazon Basics cables, and it doesn't bother me at all.

[radiant cradle]

true atari fans drive jaguars

[warm oasis]

Would love to see a pic of your set up, sounds exciting. Although not in this chat

[ashen spoke]

Are we talking about the game or Atari fans?

https://tenor.com/view/fozzie-muppets-waka-gif-5564088

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - I'll check out the docs stuff this evening/weekend. Thanks for the info.

[gaunt spoke]

okay, so I had an itch to binge Rayman

and then right now I realized oh yeah, I can emulate Jag on single dram

is this normal slowdown for Rayman or it's the single dram thing?

[gentle bobcat]

It isn't the way the original hardware went. I do remember original hardware occasionally having studders but not extended periods of slowdown in Rayman. Would have to compare to dual-RAM to see if it is present there but am guessing it isn't. What level is that? I think there is a way to save RAM where you can give the file and they can pick up right at that spot?!?

[keen zealot]

Third stage on first world - Forgotten Swamps.

[gentle bobcat]

In the case of Tempest 2000, that game actually seems faster on single-RAM... especially with regards to the enemies coming up the web... in some levels.

[ashen spoke]

Do you still have original hardware to compare against?

[gentle bobcat]

I do... but it's in my closet at home (currently at work) and it takes some effort to get out and setup. I did ask my older son last night to get his Gamecube and Wii U out of the room so I would have some place to put a MiSTer setup... or a Jaguar setup now... but I'm sure I'll have to tell him again when I get home from work tonight... so I can't check it for a while. Sorry. I have both the original Rayman cart as well as the rom on GameDrive.

I also have a JagDoomEvolved test rom that was released by Tolbat yseterday to test against original hardware.

[ashen spoke]

It would be good to gauge performance against actual hardware whenever you have time.

[gentle bobcat]

I was hoping to get @Shinto to do that for the single-RAM, dual-RAM, original Jaguar and maybe BigPEmu (which isn't really trying to be cycle accurate I don't think) all side by side for more of a scientific style comparison whenever he has some time. He also has a functional JagCD to add to the mix. No real timeline set on that though.

I can really only set up one at a time or at best two (two TV trays)

Although I'll have to locate another screen. I was thinking about buying a few additional Raspberry Pi monitors (and maybe power supplies for them) as those things are darn handy. I know lots of companies make portable monitors too.

[gaunt spoke]

okay, here's another speed test - Doom on single dram

it's not as bad as 3DO or Saturn, but yeah

E1M3 "Area 3"

[fallow salmon]

that looks surprisingly playable

[gentle bobcat]

It is playing background music as well... I believe.

[gaunt spoke]

is it? doesn't seem like clownspeed to me

[mental briar]

dual ram is going to be pretty close to accurate. I would (if you can) compare single to dual first, and then go from there

[gentle bobcat]

On T2K, it doesn't start immediately... and it isn't on every level... but when it happens it happens. Would probably take a lengthy-ish play session to notice. I have seen it several times... and when it kicks in... I go... oh, yeah... I'm on the single-RAM core.

[gaunt spoke]

I was about to post about Bad Apple

but monochrome version doesn't boot on single dram

surprisngly no issues running the color version

[mental briar]

are you running the latest test cores, @gaunt spoke ?

[gaunt spoke]

yes, from the pin

[mental briar]

Ok perfect

[humble bluff]

I had tested ~500 pieces of homebrew, all converted to the proper format(J64) first. I have 440, that seem to work. I don't have a real Jag to compare their accuracy, though.

[gaunt spoke]

AvP has very good framerate on single dram

[gentle bobcat]

kconger - 500? Wow. That's a ton. Must be all of the competitions / demos from all of the years when there were Jagfests? Those years are really a blank for me and I'm really not that knowledgeable on all of the commercial third-party stuff that has come out over the past 25 years.

I have been watching the commercial stuff that has come out over the past few years.

[humble bluff]

I've been collecting for decades 🙂

[gaunt spoke]

Jag's gamepad is kinda cool but I don't have anything that can actually comfortably map out the entire numpad

.. so do I just glue these together?

[mental briar]

Get yourself an NTT controller and a reflex adapt

treat yourself

[gaunt spoke]

Oh

That works!

[gentle bobcat]

If anyone is interested in the the RetroHQ GameDrive cartridge development and hardware details, this podcast goes very deep:
https://atarijaguargamebygame.libsyn.com/s02-jaguar-gamedrive

[slender valley]

No problem, I have klipsch speakers connected to a discrete soundcard.... playing music downloaded off of youtube 🙂

[uncut atlas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLlO4-YZWzU

[uncut atlas]

I have a pretty good understanding of its api now and could probably generate a custom rom and most of the emulated functions

if it was needed

but currently it isnt

[gentle bobcat]

I believe the reported problem section starts at 05:20-06:31 in the Rayman video. I don't see any slow down in the video.

[uncut atlas]

yeh I think it's probably a single ram thing

it's possible messing with some of those advanced settings could make it faster

[gentle bobcat]

I'm listening to the GameDrive cart podcast for the first time. I originally skipped it because I thought since I had one already, I didn't need to listen to it. Anyway, they had 500 pre-orders on the first day. I wonder how many they have sold to date? I know they have had a few production runs of them.

[gentle bobcat]

@Shinto - In your description of the game Degz you said you didn't really know where the name came from. Likely you have since figured it out, but just in case... as you mentioned it was inspired by the Atari 7800 homebrew port of Scramble. Now, take "Scramble" and then add "Degz" and what do you get?

[glossy iron]

Just for the sake of interest there are more GD locked games, available digitally for sale from homebrew developer reboot.

So it might be more relevant then just the MK beta demo.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/rebootgames/shop

Jumping at shadows is an amazing achievement for a homebrew game

[ashen spoke]

Yes

[tropic rock]

Do you have examples that do not work?

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, from the podcast I learned that a game can be tied to a specific GameDrive serial number if a developer ever wanted to do that. Are there any? I have no idea.

[uncut atlas]

if you can give me some of the non working ones i'd love it

they can

I don't know if any do

they can use cart or sd card serial numbers

[slender valley]

Kinda crazy that a flashcart is adding drm options

[ashen spoke]

Is it actually drm

[uncut atlas]

yes

[gentle bobcat]

@gaunt spoke - I can not duplicate the Rayman slowdown issue on the dual-ram core.

[uncut atlas]

the dual ram core, as far as I can tell, runs at pretty much an identical speed and accuracy to a real system

[gentle bobcat]

I'm terrible at Rayman. It took me a while to get to that level and it's very near the beginning of the game.

[gaunt spoke]

It gets harder at Bandland

Speed is almost never an issue and I am having fun

When I am not getting kicked to a curb

[uncut atlas]

this is a program to convert cdi to jcd files, if anyone wants to try it

[gentle bobcat]

It compiled in a second. Now to do a conversion.

./cdi2jcd Vid\ Grid\ (USA).cdi
Converted 'Vid Grid (USA).cdi' -> 'Vid Grid (USA).jcd' (17 tracks, 2 sessions)

[uncut atlas]

I verified the output against an existing jcd that seemed to be verified to work on a gamedrive

[uncut atlas]

let me know if it works on your gamedrive

i'd also be interested if your music discs work on the gamedrive

[gentle bobcat]

I've never been able to get the GameDrive to play CD games. The GameDrive doesn't currently support VLM.

[tropic rock]

I added an unlock all levels cheat to Rayman in the zip I posted

[tropic rock]

On old builds you can set single ram on dual ram builds but it looks like it has been cleaned out of the menu on latest.

[gentle bobcat]

Ok. I did use a few of the cheats this evening.

[uncut atlas]

if it's valuble I can add it back

it just seemed like it wasn't really clear if it worked or what it was doing

[tropic rock]

It is only a debugging thing. Its purpose is for exactly this type of testing. Not sure how valuable it is.

It does not work on the fly though

Requires a reset if changed

[gaunt spoke]

I need to try this in Rayman

[gaunt spoke]

okay, I just wanna mention this

the 4:3 output on the new core is a teeny bit skinnier than how it should be

-# I do not like these DE scanlines

also DE didn't actually bother emulating the zoom out transition at all and skip it

and hearing new music in the jaguar port is so bizarre

like a Jag CD rerelease 30 years later

and if there's any redeeming factors to the rerelease - it clued me into this fun secret

[ashen spoke]

When you say, how it should be, is that based on playing the Atari Jaguar version on a real CRT?

[gaunt spoke]

it's square pixels versus non-square pixels thing

on a real CRT it looks like the left screenshot

[ashen spoke]

Right but where is that image from?

[gaunt spoke]

Rayman 30th Anniversary

[ashen spoke]

I wouldn’t use that as a comparison point. They may have gotten things incorrect.

It may be perfect I dunno

[gaunt spoke]

there's a longplay on youtube that also has proper 4:3

[ashen spoke]

I believe it, I’m just saying that only comparing against real hardware on a CRT is what we should be looking at.

[gaunt spoke]

it's the kind of thing I'd solve if there was a setting for wider integer scaling

[ashen spoke]

Because who knows, maybe Rayman doesn’t fill out the whole 4:3 image.

You’ve got Primal Rage with a weird ass video output ratio for example

[gaunt spoke]

I am sorry for using a facebook link but it's the only source I can find

https://www.facebook.com/636359332/videos/pcb.2961849550619881/449646511312083

my point of reference is tings on the top right

would be even more obvious if there was a medallion with cage progress, which looks hella skinny

also Rayman just dies if you press left and right together

this is why we have dpad pivots

[uncut atlas]

is that from the core?

the core definitely doesnt use square pixels

[gaunt spoke]

yes

the same will happen on real Jag, if you somehow rewire dpad to input left and right simultaneously

[uncut atlas]

I meant the aspect ratio

[gaunt spoke]

okay, so if they're not square then they are skinnier than they should be

this is 1920x1080 if that matters

I also noticed that "primal" crop doesn't line up with pixels too

[urban mango]

This is core vs console on the same tv (scart)
Core:

Console:

Sorry it’s a quick phone pic for each

[mental briar]

they look pretty similar. are you seeing any differences?

[urban mango]

Pretty much identical - maybe a tiny bit of horizontal shift rightward on the core

[gaunt spoke]

lemme do a crude comparison

it does display like it should be on CRT so this is definitely an HDMI thing

[urban mango]

Yeah I should clarify my comparison was CRT

[mental briar]

hdmi can be weird because you're seeing the overscan area too

[wintry lynx]

Hey, completely random thought, and no idea how difficult this would be: back in the day Jag CDs were hardware modified so that DJs could pipe audio through a the JagCD VLM. Would it be possible to add an audio line-in to the Mister, and modify the Jag core so that the VLM could see it?

Bypassing entirely the need for dealing with .cdi files for the VLM?

[slender valley]

There already is an audio-in line on the mister isn't there? It's an optional upgrade but I think a lot of the IO boards are just including it nowadays?

Meant for cassete loading on PC cores though, and I think paddles for some cores

[wintry lynx]

Yes I believe so. Would be pretty rad if there were a way to run audio through the Jag VLM that way. I know for sure it was done with original hardware, for projections at raves and such.

[wintry lynx]

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/20263-external-audio-vlm/

There’s a thread I found about it.

Seems like it should be possible, but I’m no FPGA programmer 😅

But man it would make the process of using Jag VLM so much easier, and better. Could route anything through it from Vinyl to minidisc!

[gentle bobcat]

Prince did an appearance on the British tv show, "Top of Pops" and he had a VLM display projected behind him. I can't find a video for that anymore but I've seen it a few times.

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - I got all those text files for the Jaguar (and the others) and those are pretty need. What is the magic exit button to get out of the reader?

[mental briar]

does the b button work? I can’t remember

[gentle bobcat]

I don't think it does.

[tropic rock]

The crop values were not done scientifically. For Primal rage I tried to completely get the smallest background image from the stage (not counting the sprites in front of it that are used for depth) and made sure the boot fmv looked ok. It was done by eye and may need some minor adjustment.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/blob/menu_cleanup/Jaguar.sv#L882

[lyric pelican]

if (hcount == ((status[18] ? 14'd1394 : 14'd1365)<<2)) begin // 1394 works well for NBA Jam and Flip Out; 1365 for Primal Rage

[uncut atlas]

if you are cropping, rather than masking, the aspect ratio will be off

[tropic rock]

These are not cropping that the hardware does. It just makes pixels black https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/blob/menu_cleanup/Jaguar.sv#L853

[lyric pelican]

.R(crop ? 0 : vga_r),                  // Input [DW:0] R (set by HALF_DEPTH. is [7:0] here).

[tropic rock]

The sides will be forced black. I tried to make the black on the sides at the top continue the whole way down.

It only affects r g b. Blanking does not change

[uncut atlas]

that's masking then

[humble bluff]

Just finished testing GreyRogue's UART fix. All Jaglink games are working over SNAC.

[gaunt spoke]

I wanted more comparisons with an object that is clearly meant to be a perfect circle and not an eggy oval (Jag, PS1, PC)

in actual Jaguar captures it is a perfect oval circle

-# oh great, I ruined my PS1 recording, god damn it

[ashen spoke]

Ah yeah that’s my favorite band, A Perfect Oval

[gentle bobcat]

@humble bluff: Jaglink works? You interconnect MiSTers running the Jag core with a USB cable plugged in to the SNAC port? Refresh my memory as to what Jaguar games offer JagLink play. Doom, Battlesphere, Battlesphere Gold... and what else? White Men Can't Jump?

[tropic rock]

Air Cars. The cable/adapters between the Misters has to swap user pin 0 and 1.

[gentle bobcat]

Someone makes those cables and sells them or those are totally a DIY thing?

That's a cool feature none the less. Thanks for adding that.

[tropic rock]

It has been there for since kcongers pr went through but there was a mistake in the code where I messed up a line during the netlist translation rewrite.

[humble bluff]

https://github.com/kconger/JagLink-SNAC This should be compatible with real JagLink

[gentle bobcat]

@tropic rock - I don't know if you noticed but the Retro Remake's Shipping Dashboard has been updated:
Classic Gray Founders / Friends SS1 - In Mass Production & Shipping
SuperDock - Trial Production QC & Shipping

I doubt that means OUR docks are shipping but probably to reviewers/testers or something?!?

[gentle bobcat]

kconger - Your SNAC picture is SOOO dark.

kconger - Cool design... but since one uses a network cable to between the two devices, why not just swap the pin using the network cable? I know... everyone second guesses and asks, "why did you do it THAT way"?

[humble bluff]

Don't build this yet. I'm changing USERIO pins. I have it working over Gameboy link cable now

I'll update the JagLink-SNAC design for this change. JagLink SNAC is useful for compatibility with real Jaguars or for longer distances between MiSTers.

[uncut atlas]

why not just make it for a standard usb-a to usb-a cable. Don't they have one crossover?

rx and tx

no level conversion needed between misters

also, don't make any substantial code changes right now or they will conflict horribly with the branch I am working on

ill get it in soon, sorry it's taking a while to fix everything

[humble bluff]

I believe that when I checked many months ago, there was no off-the-shelf USB3-A to USB3-A cable that had any pins crossed over. Grey and I thought it was best for compatibility with the Gameboy SNAC.

[uncut atlas]

I think using gameboy snac with a jaguar core is an awful idea

because it's not gameboy

nor does it need snac

[humble bluff]

This allows for using the GB cable, JagLink SNAC, and a custom cable with this slight change in pin mapping. I agree that if we could identify an off-the-shelf USB3 cable, that would be optimal.

[dreamy hinge]

there are A-to-A "debugging cables" but the problem you will find is by spec VBUS/D-/D+ aren't supposed to be connected

so you get cross over, but not enough pins

[humble bluff]

we only need two pins crossed over and a ground

[uncut atlas]

you could also probably use an ethernet cable with weird adapters

[tropic rock]

Thats almost what a jaglink is

Except it uses phone instead of ethernet

The point of using the GB pins is so the same cable can be used for both. Whether you call it a GB cable or not. It basically is a generic Mister inter-connect cable. Using the same pins for similar purposes like this seems very logical to me

There is no requirement for which pins to use so making a common choice seems best.

[uncut atlas]

or just a usb in-line adapter that crosses two wires

[tropic rock]

In retrospect maybe using the high speed pins would be better as I am seeing at least one source that specifies some cables swap them.https://www.digikey.com/en/blog/usb-3-0-type-a-to-type-a-cable-wiring-options

[dreamy hinge]

https://www.datapro.net/products/usb-3-0-super-speed-a-a-debugging-cable.html

[uncut atlas]

https://www.datapro.net/products/usb-3-0-super-speed-a-a-cable-crossover.html

[dreamy hinge]

but honestly

[uncut atlas]

damnit zakk

[dreamy hinge]

but honestly, no one is going to be able to buy them easily

[uncut atlas]

they aren't an amazon item

but gb cables aren't really that great either, and they need very specialized snac adapters

I wonder if a combo of usb-a to b cable with a usb b-to-a adapter would work

[tropic rock]

My thinking was if you cant get one easily then at least make it the same between cores. If you end up having to make your own, you only have to make one.

[uncut atlas]

there's got to be some combo of off the shelf parts that reliably works

[tropic rock]

The cable is not the goal. The goal is a common pinout. Whatever that is.

[humble bluff]

I believe Robert plans to add support for the GB USERIO adapter in the new GBA core as well.

[tropic rock]

If the GB adapter did not already exist I would go for the superspeed line pins for sure.

[uncut atlas]

the user-IO port should probably have been ethernet style instead of usb-3

I guess it's sorta big

but yeah, I think there's no off the shelf solution here

which is sad

you could add a setting I guess that just swaps one of the cores

client/host

you could even make it auto-negotiate with custom stuff if you really wanted to

[tropic rock]

You could probably even do both sets of pins and or the receive together in the core.

(or and them...not sure if they float high or low)

[uncut atlas]

im pretty sure a working heuristic could be found

to auto negotiate what is what

alternatively you could go the real SNAC route and make a proper adapter that is compatible with real jaglink to a real system

[tropic rock]

It is already compatible with real jaglink. The choice of pins is strictly to make mister to mister easier. We want to decide on the pins before people start making more jaglink adapters.

[humble bluff]

My adapter should work with a real Jaguar; I've only tested between two MiSTers over a 6m cable, though.

[wary lance]

Is the Jag controller snac possible then? Or only the link cable atm?

[gentle bobcat]

I believe the Jaguar controller has too many pins. There was some discussion of possibly repurposing some pins from the second microSD cardslot but that was discouraged for one or more reasons. The Reflex Adapt has an adapter and firmware for the Jaguar controller and it works very well.

The Reflex Adapt has been sold out for a while and supposedly, they are replacing (or supplementing it) with a Reflex Adapt 2 that will be able handle two Jaguar controllers.

@fickle folio - I believe they (MiSTerAddons) have the new RA2 hardware and just need to write the firmware.

[fallow salmon]

could you crossover some pins like, at the FPGA level? have an option on the OSD to pick JagLink (A) and JagLink (B) ?

[uncut atlas]

Yes, that's what we were talking about

[ashen spoke]

Jaguar SNAC for Jaglink but not controller, right?

[humble bluff]

No controllers

[ashen spoke]

Why do you not let us use controllers 🥺

[tall musk]

To protect you from yourself. You're not ready to dial a phone while playing a game.

[mental briar]

They are in the pocket of big porkchop and want to force you to buy an adapt

https://tenor.com/bLLEy.gif

[dreamy hinge]

I want me some big porkchop

[gentle bobcat]

Shinto ordered a different adapter because the RA wasn't and still isn't in stock. I don't know if he received it or tried it yet. I can find a link to a video about it. It is a general purpose multi combiner thingie. The video is more about hooking up anyything you want to the Jaguar but it should work with MiSTer as well.

Bliss Box Adapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzIbDupkIQQ

https://bliss-box.com/collections/bliss-box-products

[wintry lynx]

I do wonder if it would be possible to do a Jaguar SNAC, but using less pins. A lot of games don’t actually use the number pad…

All I want is to be able to use my T2K Rotary controller with the Mister 😬

It would be kind of a jank solution, but the tens of us out there who are T2K die hards would be super happy.

[dreamy hinge]

well it should work with a reflex adapter

[wintry lynx]

I should definitely just get a Reflex Adapt at some point. It’s on the list.

[tropic rock]

#1055574003810578503 message To get all of A B C and Option requires 4 pins (j0-j3). To get those plus the d-pad requires 5 more pins (6 if you want pause) unless you add some control logic. Once you start adding control logic you really might as well go for a usb adapter.

[wicked thorn]

The Bliss-Box adapter came in yesterday, and I was able put it through its paces on a MiSTer tonight playing Trevor McFur. It feels pretty solid, actually. The adapter, not the game.

I'll try my rotary controller via Bliss-Box on Tempest 2000 tomorrow.

Specifically, it is the Gamer Pro Advanced I'm testing.

[wary lance]

Thanks. I have been waiting a while to order one, slept on it ages ago because it's a big chunk of money with that, shipping and all the different adapters.

[uncut atlas]

I'd really like having a modern controller with a num pad for testing. It doesn't have to even be good

[ashen spoke]

That Atari poop pad

GameStation pro or whatever it’s called

[uncut atlas]

It works really poorly and inconsistently

It seems to show up as a keyboard or something

[mental briar]

It’s not “modern” but a super famicon ntt pad and pork’s adapt work really well

Not sure if that defeats the purpose or or not

[tall musk]

Someone send their Jag controller and Adapt to Kit. I literally cannot wait to get her reation 😄

[uncut atlas]

I just wanted it to be easy and not have clunky adapters

[fallow salmon]

could you make the core like, map keyboard keys to those buttons? even if just for dev

if you did anyone could kinda grab one of those mini numpad-only keyboards i guess

[slender valley]

I thought USB-A to A was against USB wiring standards and not allowed? And that if you just plugged that between two standard USB devices it would cause a short?

[slender valley]

I still think it could be a viable solution to do that or at least have it as an option

[gentle bobcat]

I'm not aware of any USB-based controllers that have a numpad... so SNAC and everything else is going to be multiple adapters.

[slender valley]

What about a SNES controller with a numberpad and a usb adapter for it? 😛

[gentle bobcat]

I don't have that controller and I'm not aware of a simple USB adapter for SNES... but I haven't looked.

I wonder how many potential customers would have to poke Songbird Productions to get them to either do a new production run of the reproduction Jaguar Pro controller... or, if it is possible, a Jaguar controller with a USB connector?

[wintry lynx]

https://x.com/songbirdpro/status/2021713117193871679?s=46

Songbird Productions (@SongbirdPro)

@zcichy I did not see that message, sorry.

I've inquired about making more Jag controllers but nothing firm yet. I do have a small pile (maybe 20 or 30) controllers from the original run which I need to test to see if they are working properly. Hoping to do that this summer.

X · Feb 11, 2026, 10:29 PM

[mental briar]

👀

[gentle bobcat]

I just emailed Songbird Productions to see how many orders they'd need for a new run of reproduction Jaguar controllers and if a USB-based Jaguar controller was possible... as well as them opening up their physical releases to digital sales. In a recent interview with "The Atari Network" on YouTube, they were asked about the MiSTer FPGA and said they really didn't know much about it. BTW, I sent that email before seeing zcichy's post above.

[dreamy hinge]

not legal for usb 2.0, but exists due to people making silly things. allowed in usb 3.0 as a 'debug cable' with VBUS and D+/- not connected

[slender valley]

Yeah, I know they existed, just like there were idiots who made AC to AC cables. But I meant that they were not supposed to exist like you saud, at least for 2.0

[tall musk]

hides usb-a to usb-a cable for mt32-pi

[marble holly]

what about this beauty

[tall musk]

the "help me burn down my house" plug

[cold idol]

yeah

[marble holly]

could just be a good way to electrocute yourself too

[cold idol]

Yeah I'm sure the insurance company would love to hear that you bought one of these

[urban totem]

Hello, I need an rbf file for Jaguar. Anyone? Anything? 🙂

[marble holly]

#1055574003810578503 message

everything you need for Jaguar is in the pins above

[supple finch]

And I believe now UPDATE_ALL will automatically grab the Jaguar Bioses that you need.

[mental briar]

if you have the bios database emabled, yes

[marble holly]

what if I have it enabled

[mental briar]

the biose will flow

[supple finch]

Blessed be the maker

[gentle bobcat]

Anyone have a physical copy of "The Official Atari Jaguar Gamers Guide"?

[slender valley]

I just mentioned AC to AC cables 😛

[marble holly]

completely missed that

[gentle bobcat]

Weird. Last time I looked, Amazon didn't have a copy of the book. Heck, it came out in 1995. Today one seller had "last one left" so I ordered it.

[marble holly]

you got played, there are two left now

[gentle bobcat]

Hey, that's fine. I didn't particularly want "the last one". I just happy there was one in the first place.

I wish someone would play me. 🙂 ( me thinks of Prince's song "Don't Play Me" )

[wintry lynx]

It’s okay. I keep almost buying a Jaguar CD on Ebay with my tax return. 😅

[marble holly]

don't do it

[wintry lynx]

I wouldn’t. Not unless I could find a “for parts” one under $500 or so.

That said, I really want a solid, permanent way of using the Jag CD VLM. Been tempted to build a mini-PC that just opens straight to BigPEmu. Performance is pretty darn good on there. Would prefer the Mister, but I don’t love the idea of needing to load CDI files. Really want to be able to run physical media through the VLM

[uncut atlas]

why not just build it for the pc

pretty sure we have the source

[mild karma]

I'm sure this is low priority at the moment, but it'd be cool if eventually Jaguar CD games could get their own games/JaguarCD folder to keep them separate...like how the TG16 core does it

[ashen spoke]

What is this

[uncut atlas]

the source code for the VLM that everyone seems obsessed with

[gentle bobcat]

@mild karma - Just make the desired directories on there, put your media files where you want it. Nothing needs to be done with the core for that.

Oh, you want a separate top-level games folder... not sure why we would want more top level directories. I have games/Jaguar/Cartridges, CD Games, VLM

( me is among the VLM obsessed )

[slender valley]

Isn't it easier to have a subfolder in the Jaguar folder for the CD games? It's not like the JagCD is a seperate core

[dim sundial]

I have an MGL specifically for Jag CD just to keep them in a separate folder, it's at least 1 less button press to get to any games because of this. The TG16 core also references two separate folders as a core function to separate the card games vs cd games, no MGL or subdirectory required.

[signal bramble]

My grandmother house had one of these. I don't freaking know why existed though

[mild karma]

@gentle bobcat @slender valley Yeah, I can certainly do that, but what I'm saying is it'd be nice to select the Load Disc option in the core and have it distinctly pointed to only the folder that has CD games like how the TG-16 core does it. Admittedly, it's partially because I have a unique streaming setup that requires me to make extra copies of cores renamed to the console I'm playing in order to have my script automagically load proper console artwork (and unfortunately that script is not compatible with MGL loading).

But yeah, I could certainly just use MGLs for practical, non-streaming use

[gentle bobcat]

@mild karma - While the microSD card filesystem is what... XFAT? I think you can still make symlinks so you could totally make those top level dirs as symlinks wherever you want... although I'm not familiar with the Windows tool to make symlinks, I believe it is possible.

[mild karma]

oh yeah I use symlinks all over

I'm basically just being lazy and saying I don't want to have to select the option, click another folder, and then see the list of games....I just want to click "Load Disc" and be right in my list of discs 😅

[gentle bobcat]

I feel you... but so many of the complex collections have a ton of organization with country sub-dirs, alphabet separations for the cores that have several hundreds of games, etc. I guess I'm just used to having to navigate some.

Obviously that isn't the case with the JagCD and its tiny library.

[mild karma]

yeah my stuff is all self-organized like that too

and I'm being difficult because I can just make an MGL

[wintry lynx]

On a scale between 1-10, how difficult would this be for someone who has never done anything like this before, but is 100% down to learn? 😅

[mild karma]

wonder if I can vibe code the GameEventHub script and make it work with MGLs properly...unfortunately the original author who made it lost interest and hasn't been willing to make updates

technically, I think I could make MGLs that point to my core copies and that would work with my script actually...as long as I only load cores with MGL and not the games themselves

[uncut atlas]

it's the kinda thing that makes you reddit famous

[gentle bobcat]

What is the GameEventHub script, besides being abandoned? I haven't heard of that previously... and my websearch-foo isn't finding it.

[mild karma]

It's a script I use on my stream to automatically pull game titles, box art, and meta data into the stream based on what I load on MiSTer or Retroarch - https://github.com/christopher-roelofs/GameEventHub

It also helps me automatically adjust other settings in OBS depending on what core I've loaded (although I do use another script in conjunction to do most of that heavy lifting)

[gentle bobcat]

Wow, I don't know what kind of files those VLM source files are. Even the .TXT one isn't.

[tropic rock]

You probably want this with it. It shows the code for performing the fft on the audio data. All the different visualizers start with this processed data which varies based on the frequency content of the audio being played. The visualizers change how they interpret this data but they start with the same data.

[humble bluff]

There is this as well: https://github.com/mwenge/vlm

[wintry lynx]

I guess I’m still wondering if it would be possible to pipe audio through a Mister FPGA, and into the Jag VLM via something like this:

https://misteraddons.com/products/audio-tape-input-board-adc-in?srsltid=AfmBOooPhuNKQqMWP3g2QCMpDNiymBGO8Ooi5fyxbfQfHRx9SgFYz5L2

This would be by far the coolest solution.

[humble bluff]

You can, I have this working. The sound is not so hot. Try to run some audio through the ADCTest core to get an idea.

[wintry lynx]

That’s too bad that the sound isn’t so hot. Always something in the way…haha. But that’s awesome that it can work.

[tropic rock]

MisterMain is already streaming the audio to the core. It would be possible to have it source the audio from somewhere else.

[ashen spoke]

What about the games, what do you guys think about the games

Forget the VLM, tell us how accurate the games are

[uncut atlas]

ADC cant really handle stereo high fidelity well

it's not made for that

you'd also have to modify the program to not use cd's

or take the input audio and build an entire fake cd stream with subcode and everything around it on the fly

[tropic rock]

I think you could just take a 99 minute single track audio cd image and swap out the audio data for something else. No control of the audio, but a simple replacement. The audio does not affect the subcode so it would not care

If you stopped or paused and then resumed it would act as a mute instead. When you hit play it would just play wherever the current data is.

I seem to recall main can already play mp3 files. I would think you could directly connect it (skip the caching) and it should work.

If that works you could swap to some other source

I think midi-pi would work for example.

[uncut atlas]

seems kinda pointless

just use that guy's pc one

[tropic rock]

I bet I could even grab some nes core code and pump the nsf player audio into it. No argument on the pointfullness though.

[tall musk]

Would it be helpful to remind folks that Jeff Minter created the VLM 3.0 that is in every Xbox 360? Easier to find those if you really want a CD visualizer.

[dreamy hinge]

main plays mp3 files through external players and a dummy alsa driver. the dummy driver just plops audio into ddr3 and the framework picks it up and mixes it into the audio output stream directly. you'd have to modify sys to get at that audio I think

[gentle bobcat]

All of existence is pointless (prove me wrong) so pointing out something is pointless is pointless. 🙂

But seriously, Mr. Minter did get it working for Prince for at least that one appearance I mentioned. Side note, Prince was doing a VLM like thing in the last series of concerts he did where it was just him, a microphone and a piano.

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

[mental briar]

how dare you insult my CRT collection like that

[wintry lynx]

Pointlessness of Jag VLM seems debatable when we’re talking about the home of Trevor McFur and trying to make that play accurately. 😝

I dunno. Jag CD VLM was always my favorite of the three Jeff Minter VLMs. Has a certain charm to its pixelated visuals, and it’s a really fun part of the Jags history.

[uncut atlas]

• It has a real cost in complexity, timing, and space in a project that already suffers from all those things
• It has an extremely niche purpose that can be better fulfilled in other ways

I think audio cd playing should be accurate for the sake of preserving the real behavior of the drive, but doing weird hacks to pipe external audio into it not so much

[gentle bobcat]

If you tour Paisly Park today, they have the sound stage where they filmed many of Prince's music videos open to the public with a lot of accessible exhibits including a raised stage with a typical band / concert setup. Behind that is a screen where they show short documentary-like clips... but when those aren't showing, they have the VLM-like thing running:

I took that picture myself. 🙂 Enough about that. Sorry for being off topic.

[wintry lynx]

Definitely all good points and fair enough! Was just trying to think of a way since it seems like getting an external audio cd drive working with Mister outside of Taki’s implementation isn’t really in the cards from what I can tell.

[gentle bobcat]

External audio streaming definitely shouldn't be a stable release criteria... but it certainly can be added by whoever wants to with an update... like my opinion matters.

@mental briar - Thems some mighty fine CRTs you got there. What are their names? I assume you have given them female names.

[mental briar]

Please, I'm not a degenerate. I haven't anthropomorphized a tv since college.

[gentle bobcat]

( disappointedddddd )

[tropic rock]

I wasn't suggesting to make it part of the core. Just noting if someone really wanted it they could modify the core to make it happen.

[uncut atlas]

if you ask me, probably the way to do this is make an HPS loader that does a cd mastering out of an mp3 file or folder and just mounts that

makes it nice and clean and proper

no hacks in HDL needed

all hacks stay in the realm of linux

[gentle bobcat]

I won't claim to understand what Kitrinx just wrote... but I believe that's how the SuperStation One does the optical media stuff.

( with the Dock )

[uncut atlas]

dumps it to the disk and loads it?

[gentle bobcat]

I just remember him saying that no core changes were needed and that it was a Linux hack.

[uncut atlas]

for most systems, a lot of the cd processing happens on the linux side to make disc images look like hardware discs

in reality, it's extremely unlikely a usb modern external cd drive would behave with the specs and timing that an ancient system expects, which is why i've always been quite skeptical of the validity of doing it this way. You can either stream the data from a cd drive since it's likely quite fast (same as you'd stream from a network drive) and just feed it to the HPS interface to the core, or you can dump the whole image from the cd drive and simply mount that, but either way the solution is crass and unauthentic in my eyes

either way you're just playing make believe in your head that it's really using the cd drive as a cd drive

[wintry lynx]

That’s a very helpful explanation. So maybe the best case scenario might be loading audio CDs via NFC? Would be kind of rad to be make NFC cards for specific music albums that load into the Jag CD core.

[gentle bobcat]

One falsehood launched by another falsehood. Makes sense. 🙂

[wintry lynx]

At least with NFC it’s make believe, but with no illusion as to what’s really happening (except to normies who come over and ooo and ahhh over the magic of it, haha) I agree that since no real streaming is happening from the disc, it is pretty pointless to have a CD drive for the Mister.

[gentle bobcat]

Luckily it also has a m.2 slot and more USB ports.

[wintry lynx]

Also thanks to whoever mentioned the 360 VLM (Neon I think it was called). Nearly forgot it existed. Now have it up and running on one of my CRTs. IMO, not nearly as cool as the Jag VLM (just way too much going on), but still fun. Need to also pick up a NUON one of these days…

Now the NUON. There’s an impossible core. I don’t think anyone has even made a stable emulator.

[gentle bobcat]

Also, the SSO Dock has a PC mode for those who might use it outside of the MiSTer.

[tall musk]

Zaparoo can certainly do this. Just map what you're loading to the core.

[uncut atlas]

It's starting to sound a lot like my barbie tea set where I poured fake plastic tea into fake plastic teacups

[gentle bobcat]

I have a Nuon but it is the make/model (which I don't recall at the moment) that has a tiny subset of the effects so I don't get the full experience of the VLM2. For whatever reason, the Nuon is just so blurry. Supposedly Minter made it blurry on purpose but I have no idea why?

[tall musk]

None for bear though. They don't deserve it.

[gentle bobcat]

I'm scared to ask if Kitrinx liked the tea set or not.

[wintry lynx]

Oh yeah. I used to have a NUON. It was definitely a very blurry mess. No idea what they were thinking. Tempest 3000 was still pretty great though. Still have a copy for if I ever manage to find another NUON player.

[uncut atlas]

well here I am on a server full of middle aged men

[gentle bobcat]

I would love to be middle aged.

[dreamy hinge]

retromatch.com

[uncut atlas]

oh are you getting up there in years? that would explain why you think jaguar is great

[tall musk]

Kit's pure bitterness for all things Atari makes her efforts on this core hilarious.

[uncut atlas]

sorry i've been watching episodes of House. I have a tendency to absorb some of his energy.

[dreamy hinge]

she's #1 atari fan. look at all her efforts to preserve classic atari consoles

[tall musk]

The work on the 7800 belongs in a museum

[gentle bobcat]

I am approaching 62... and if if that is middle age, I'm not sure I want to live until 124. I wouldn't say I think the Jaguar is great... but I lived through it and loved it at the time... so it is whatever that word is that I can't remember because I'm old.

[wintry lynx]

Speaking of obscure Atari things… https://ebay.us/m/Zk8Y4d

This just got listed a bit ago. Cheapest one I’ve seen.

[tall musk]

I used to have one of those. Neat to tinker with.

[gentle bobcat]

That was discussed a bit here a couple of weeks back... and A.I. made up a chip name.

[wintry lynx]

Dunno if it’s cheap enough to buy and rip apart for the sake of making a core. $20 would be better 😜

I got my working one for around $350 on Marketplace.

[tall musk]

Depends on what's inside. If it's a bunch of ladder resistors and analog trickery, that's a tough sell.

I say that, but then Kit will take it on as her next core.

[uncut atlas]

I think we looked at that a while back, the limiting factor is it's ASIC which has no real documentation or decap

it's just a big black box

kind of an analog in analog out situation so captures dont even help much

[gentle bobcat]

And Prince was addicted to the drug House loves... except one of his underlings got him a street prescription that was laced with fentanyl.

[wintry lynx]

Come for the Jag FPGA talk. Stay for the random facts about Prince

[mental briar]

its never lupus

[uncut atlas]

except when it is

[mental briar]

god I love that stupid show

[gentle bobcat]

They aren't random. I do tie them in.

[mild karma]

aw man, I used to be obsessed with House. I remember Tuesdays in my freshman year of college getting a huge $5 platter of Chinese food and watching new episodes (so yeah, I guess I have to admit I’m middle aged now 😖). Never finished the show, but I really should finally go back and do that.

[uncut atlas]

the writers must have has giant stacks of medical case studies on their conferance room table

a lot of the episodes I recognise as being based on real case studies

like the autistic child with raccoon worms in his eyes

[gentle bobcat]

We had Kal Penn give a talk on campus the day after the episode aired where his character committed suicide. Kinda distracted from his talk. 🙂

[mild karma]

oh man spoilers lol

that was season 5 and I think I fell off after like season 4

[mental briar]

Oh you missed some of the best episodes. I think the 2nd group of house kids was better than the first

and the bus accident 2 parter

[mild karma]

that said I remember Kal on House so maybe I watched a bit longer than I remember

oh he started in season 4 so that makes sense

[ashen spoke]

👀

[warm oasis]

I was informed today that we may not properly support the Atari XEGS console, with the games not being playable without serious issues on the 800 core... Needs further investigation.

One of the more obscure Atari consoles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_XEGS

[mental briar]

kit rn

https://tenor.com/bg8zm.gif

[uncut atlas]

we were just chatting and I mentioned the guy was dead so we should probably make forks of the repo as a backup

[uncut atlas]

this doesn't sound like it related to atari jaguar to me

look at that thing

it's beige

disgusting

[warm oasis]

I did go off topic post that, but I know how much you love broken Atari console cores

[timid snow]

Yeah XEGS is a weird console. It's just a consolized Atari XE without the keyboard. It has 32 games for it, and uses a grey version of the classic Atari 2600 controller. It also has a light gun that afaik isn't implemented in the Atari 800 core

It's sort of like Atari's version of the Amstrad GX4000

[uncut atlas]

I don't know what the amstrad is and I don't want it near me

[timid snow]

Yeah this discussion about the XEGS is probably best moved to: https://discord.com/channels/647909397477195803/1046942006942900304

[mental briar]

no no, kit will never see it there

[uncut atlas]

@gentle bobcat I need you

if I load your VLM audio disc, is this what I should see by default in the vlm?

like is this the proper behavior of the vlm?

[gentle bobcat]

That is what the VLM looks like generally... yes. So far as the specific numbers, matters what specific disk image you are referring to. I think I've posted about 28 .cdi files to the archive.

I did happen to bring a mister to work today but I haven't hooked it up yet.

[uncut atlas]

what I mean is the details

[gentle bobcat]

The red arrows means there are more tracks than 20.

What is the name of the image file?

[uncut atlas]

1. the initial number shown, should it be 23, or 1, or something else? When I press stop, should there still be colors swirling, or should it go blank? Is the time and space between tracks generally correct?

[gentle bobcat]

From my poor memory, the track # should be 1 upon initial load.

The only disk images that had that many tracks on them were from "The VLM Collection" which is just all of the music taken from all of the Jaguar games... and many of the musical things from games are very short.

So far as should it go black immediately, I don't think so.. but I'd have to double check.

( me decides it is time to setup the mister at work )

DUH, I see the filename if I play the video. Sorry.

[uncut atlas]

I'm just trying to determine if it's a bug or not basically

because the real behavior isnt obvious. pressing play starts it from track 1

stopping it makes it go back to the maximum track

this ancient video seems to show the max track being the correct behavior https://youtu.be/CfSGSA9ZgYY?t=395

also what should the volume slider default to?

[urban mango]

Cd inserted shows num tracks

[uncut atlas]

I think the behavior is right, except for the colors

I think they should go to black when stopped

[urban mango]

Yes. If you stop playback with VLM active on the default effect (1-1) it shows black

This is a cd with lots of tracks

Reason I say default effect is that some effects like 3-8 have graphics when playback is stopped

[uncut atlas]

okay there's a bug in the stop command then, and probably also in goto

[gentle bobcat]

Oh, just to clarify, if you are asking me how the real hardware (JagCD) acts... I don't know because I haven't had one since about 1995. Shinto has a functional one. Anyone else in here?

[uncut atlas]

@wicked thorn

does vlm work right on bigpemu?

[wintry lynx]

I keep almost buying one. 😅

[gentle bobcat]

I haven't used the VLM in bigpemu in a while but I think so... but again, not knowing the original hardware that well, why did I answer?!?

[wintry lynx]

Can confirm VLM fully functions in BigPEmu. Even works with real CDs.

Couldn’t get it to work under Linux, but on Windows it runs great.

[uncut atlas]

jeeze who is that guy

I wonder how he researched that

[gentle bobcat]

He was paid to make it for "The Atari 50 Collection"... and then he expanded it afterwards.

I'm guessing Atari hooked him up with any hardware he needed.

[mental briar]

isn't he the "open source is a problem so this is closed source" guy?

[gentle bobcat]

Not that I'm aware of but I'm not sure.

[wintry lynx]

Yeah BigPEmu is closed source unfortunately. I believe

Which sucks, because it works almost perfect.

[gentle bobcat]

Given that he was paid to write it originally... maybe he has some other people's code mixed in there that he doesn't have permission to share it.

I don't think BigPEmu has any notion of trying to be "cycle accurate"... does it?

[dreamy hinge]

and yes, he's the 'open source is a problem' guy

[mental briar]

However, Open Source as an ideology within this culture of capitalist exploitation is also a big problem. We're effectively devaluing our own labor, and in failing to recognize so many of our critical weaknesses, we've created an extremely toxic culture which is fueled in large part by egotism and narcissism. In taking such an aggressive stance against free software authors who choose not to release their source code, you're part of the problem.

[dreamy hinge]

although the emu is closed source for other reasons

[mental briar]

yeah

it's owned by atari

[dreamy hinge]

so just like other things like this, when it inevitably stops being supported (for a vareity of reasons) it will slowly bitrot and require increasingly annoying measures to run

[gentle bobcat]

Who is that quote from? I have to admit, I've read it like three times now... and I still don't know what it is saying.

[dreamy hinge]

from the bigpemu author

[mental briar]

https://www.richwhitehouse.com/jaguar/index.php?content=faq from here

honestly, not a day goes by where I'm not part of the problem

[gentle bobcat]

Q: Where's the source code?
A: Due to private contractual obligations, I can't release BigPEmu's source code at this time. It's only by the legal miracle working of the fine people at Digital Eclipse that I'm able to release this emulator publicly, and to continue working on it in my own time.

[mental briar]

yeah, owned by atari. but also, open source is a problem

more like open sores amiriteuguys

[gentle bobcat]

I do agree with his assessment that people who are being obnoxious about it not being open source yet free... aren't on the correct side. People who write software get to decide how they want it released and under what licensing, etc. Linus Torvalds even says that.

TheJesusFish: haha... no.

[mental briar]

He isn't wrong - like that's the thing. But the problem isn't open source

https://tenor.com/c5BsUSWkKCF.gif

[dreamy hinge]

his longer old twitter thread on it is more like a 'if you give source code away you are devaluing your/our labor and corporations (but really programmers shittier than you) are stealing your code for profit' mumble mumble communism

[gentle bobcat]

( me notes that Bob Metcalfe popularized the term "Open Sores" and I have his autograph on an old magazine article he wrote that in... and his comment with his signature was "Thanks for reminding me NOT to piss off Open Source people." )

[dreamy hinge]

little does he know when I saw a startup labeled as 'started by apple engineers' steal my gpl code -- that I know for a fact I had zero clue what I was doing --. I found that incredibly hilarious. worth it 100%

[uncut atlas]

I don't' generally disagree with his stance, on most things

but I think it's nuanced, like so much is in life

[gentle bobcat]

The whole free and open thing is a big mind bender. A big disagreement in said community is that the BSD license is more free than the Free Software Foundation's license (the GPL vX) because the GPL doesn't give you the freedom to close source your fork.

[dreamy hinge]

it's why we should bsd license everything so the software theft is legal

[uncut atlas]

emulators generally exist because of cumulative knowledge and are sort of a necessary tool for the preservation of art. I think few people really can claim to have written an emulator from a totally clean room environment, and even if they ahve the ecosystem of users, roms, and etc is a community effort

I just see it as selfish to not share back

[gentle bobcat]

To me the freedom to close is restricting freedom rather than adding to it... but feel free to disagree.

[dreamy hinge]

also we're in a golden age where AI can produce source code for you, and you can't attest either way how that code may or may not be derived from open source/licensed code. but now you just get to push the burden off to the AI companies while you use the code to implement stuff

[uncut atlas]

this kinda makes open source even worse for coders

in a way though it makes these cores even better if your goal is so that people can do that

[dreamy hinge]

well now it just automates the theft of your original open source code

[uncut atlas]

if youc an feed AI a verilog module and say "use the accurate logic here to write an emulator" that's great

it's like a domesday image is to a video file

[dreamy hinge]

I still like that I fed some prompt to claude and it generated a program for me and then helpfully MIT licensed it without me asking

and I'm like whyyyyyyyy'd you do that, hmmmm

[gentle bobcat]

( me holds up a crucifix to A.I. )

[uncut atlas]

AI found the problem with your VLM

by doing 6 months worth of of hunting through 68k assembly in 2 minutes

[gentle bobcat]

Hey, patches from Satan are good as long as they work, right?

I'd ask what the problem was that it found, but I'm fairly certain I'd not understand the answer.

[uncut atlas]

subcode index cycling

it follows a very specific range and pattern that is entirely undocumented

it had to be derived by looking at it's usage in compiled binaries

[gentle bobcat]

What Kitrinx said!

I'm not sure where to find the "This" with an arrow pointing up emoji.

[uncut atlas]

[gentle bobcat]

The problem with A.I. is twofold... it will be widely deployed decades before any needed political, economic and societal changes are made to address the harms it likely will cause... and secondly, there is some small yet significant chance it will kill us all. Other than that, it's just great.

[uncut atlas]

c'est la vie

telephones ruined the world

[gentle bobcat]

We will be the ultimate ruiners of the world (beyond us).

[dreamy hinge]

look at least you're not the bcacheFS developer that created an AI bot 'friend' and then co-authored a 25 page white paper with them proving they are a sentient entity

also the bot now posts a blog and is allowed unfettered commit access to the bcachefs tree