Philips CD-i

[sly sedge]

The struggle is real!

[lime nimbus]

there's some pretty decent cdi games

I think Zenith, Plunderball, Chaos Control, and Wand of Gamelon are all pretty solid. And Voyeur for fmv stuff

[stiff flare]

lol what kind of stuff with a name like that

[mint hare]

If only CD-i was backwards compatible with the previous game system from Philips, Magnavox Odyssey2.

[lime nimbus]

you're basically watching a businessman planning to run for president pay off his family members, and inevitably he'll try to kill one and you want to either record him plotting to send to them or record the murder to send the tape to the cops. How they get you is that all the salacious stuff takes place the same time as the clues that tell you who is gonna die

[spring gate]

Just had a thought Pinya, may be worth you asking in the Help channel, or Controllers channel, about your issues mapping the home button. It may be someone can help you, or someone in the know may be able to deduce that support needs added into Linux. Would be good to get to the bottom one way or another with this controller which could become more popular as the core develops.

[deep roost]

I'm surprised nobody ever created an Odyssey2 emulator for it.

Then again, there's barely any frickin' Cdi emulators, so what am I saying?

[stiff flare]

Anyone use the LRG controller with the core yet?

[slim geode]

I'll take a look into it closer to the weekend. Considering the Home button doesn't seem to register in a controller tester on my Linux laptop, it may be a driver thing. The home button does totally work, as long as I use it on my Switch XD

[slim geode]

I have, the only issues I encountered were a bad default mapping and the home button just not being recognized.

[spring gate]

That is interesting about the home button, is there a driver that can be downloaded for this controller?

[slim geode]

Not that I'm aware of. That said, I've had other controllers not register the home button in a tester but Steam would still respond to it. I haven't tested this controller with any steam games as of yet.

[stiff flare]

Interesting, thanks for the info.

[stiff flare]

Ok using the CDi controller with this core is pretty amazing lol

[spring gate]

Do you have one as well?

[stiff flare]

Yeah the LRG one

[spring gate]

Oh nice, let us know if you manage to map the home button

I had a quick Google and no sign of a driver being out there for it

[stiff flare]

I’m not able to when mapping the controller in the main menu.

[spring gate]

Interesting, presumably home button works fine on Switch. I wonder why this is

[stiff flare]

I’ll try that out too

Yeah works just fine on the Switch

Interestingly the dpad on the controller functions as an analog stick

Which I assume is just to ensure maximum compatibility, makes sense

[bold bolt]

Hi guys, I’d love to test the core but I’m having trouble finding the correct main_cdi file, I’ve added the roms into the correct location and added the command line into the .INI file but I also get a black screen and no game boots.

I had a link on GitHub but there was no binary download.

[gray badge]

Grab this #1103404843512631357 message

Rename it to MiSTer_CDi

No extension

[bold bolt]

Thanks, I’ll try this.

Still not working, this is how I’ve got it setup

[gray badge]

Do you get to the bios at all (the run disk screen)? Or does nothing load?

[sinful hornet]

Your test mister main matches the spelling in that ini?

[bold bolt]

Nothing loads, no bios screen nor game

[terse flare]

Did you really get the correct boot roms? With the correct checksums?

No, you didn't. boot1.rom is 512kB in size on your card. It should be 8 kB

[bold bolt]

I don’t know how to check the checksums, but the original files were something like cdi220 and cdi220b

[terse flare]

This channel has some pinned messages and the github repo does mention that too. boot1.rom has to be the ROM of the slave controller

@bold bolt You have probably an archive called cdimono1.zip. Do you? This archive contains the required files but I think we are not allowed to really share them here.

[bold bolt]

I struggled to find the files I had as Internet Archive was down at the time… ahh 🤔

[modern mirage]

its one of the bios files from a Mame Set

[bold bolt]

Internet Archive is down again, meh

Not 8k, about half meg each.

[modern mirage]

yes far too big you have the wrong files

[terse flare]

The archive you want to have is 645 kB in size. Second page of google

[bold bolt]

No joy, just finding the same files

[spring gate]

If people are struggling to find the BIOS files then feel free to nod them in the direction of this channel:
#1096872957030174750 message

[sly sedge]

Do a search around the bowels of the interwebs for MAME cdibios.zip. The files required are in that.

[wide swan]

@stiff flare

[stiff flare]

omg

I bought and played Arzette with it last night and on the CDi core. It’s pretty cool. Dpad pretty trash but I assume that’s authentic to the original lol.

[sterile glade]

I'm such a sucker for Gold controllers and 'Zelda' games

Though that looks like the kind that would flake off after use

[gentle sonnet]

Archive appears to be online today 🙂

[sterile glade]

still can't login

[spring gate]

I think you should be able to download the non DVC gamepack again, and probably stuff from the CDi Redump set

Hopefully the full site will be back soon and people can start logging in and uploading again

[sly sedge]

😦

[gray badge]

I think a lot of the archive is actually down right now

update all is suddenly driving the struggle bus to download pacplus.zip

[slim geode]

I had a gravis-style controller when I had a CD-i, the DPad was pretty trash (but that's the case from most CD-i controllers in my experience.) I can still play Sonic on this one so I'm fine with it 🤣

[tacit garden]

They're pulling parts of Archive down intermittently as they upgrade / fortify the back end.

[spring gate]

This upload isn't finished yet, best wait until it is all up there before downloading

[sly sedge]

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks!

[spring gate]

The one for No DVC games is complete though

[wide swan]

@stiff flare I'm really!

[stiff flare]

Oh damn nice!

[sly sedge]

"The one for No DVC games is complete though"
I must've missed that one. I'll keep looking. Thanks!

[spring gate]

Check the info tab on the pinned testing sheet if you are struggling

[fierce shoal]

I was going through my old desktop items and this seems appropriate.

[sharp plume]

I am checking the CDI redumnp out of the IA as I type

[terse flare]

Sometimes work during the week is a little bit more exhaustive than usually. Also, the tasks of developing a core are always changing. I'm certainly not like Robert, who seemed to be able to pump out FPGA cores just by breathing. Nonetheless it is still Friday. And that means it is CD-Friday™ !

CDIC: Added support for 8 bit ADPCM

I've finished this in the middle of the week but wasn't sure whether to share that or not. It helps to fix some of the audio issues but is not a big step. During this week I contacted a person who knows much more about the CD-i than I can ever collect just by reading into documents. The CDIC implementation right now in the core is ... not accurate. It is a miracle that it is reading CD data at all. This also explains why adding the MODE2 sector filters caused such a havoc in the behavior. The next core release will probably take much longer than usual because of this.

[merry oyster]

The classic returns! Only for Slamy to follow up with an update anyway!

[errant island]

Take your time, do it your way.

[fierce shoal]

Yeah, totally just dropping it as a reference for olden days. We were animals.

[orchid sapphire]

never thought i would ever be excited about cdi but here we are lol

[young grotto]

thanks for the update love reading these

[strong cradle]

trying to get this working , I appear to have the correct files however when I launch nothing happens I get the phillips CD-I boot screen but when I try to launch game nothing happens

[stiff flare]

Did you grab the custom mister file?

It’s in the pins

[lone siren]

The whole core dev is worth it, just for Girls Club Party. Unfortunately right now it locks up before you can choose the first super-cute guy.

[stiff flare]

lol why are y’all playing that game

[sinful hornet]

Have you tried it yet?

Some say it's the cdi equivalent to Wand of Gamelon

[stiff flare]

No, it’s called “Girl’s Club Party”!

[sinful hornet]

Mr "Doom Guy" is too scared to join the party?

[spring gate]

Great work Slammy! Now that's 4bit and 8bit in, what audio formats are left?

For us less technical types, what does CDIC actually stand for and mean in practice?

[raw leaf]

CD controller afaik?

[stiff flare]

lol

[raw leaf]

Robertus is a gentleman

Of course he won't barge in to a girls party with his boots on

The correct way is to take off your hat, knock with the back of your hand and ask clearly
"Ms/Mrs?"

[gleaming echo]

I am not at home this weekend, anyone notice how much 8 bit ADPCM has changed? I know Slamy once said that the Frog game uses it but anyone found anything else or any additional audio in anything that already worked?

[terse flare]

The CDIC is the "Compact Disc Interface Controller". Together with a DSP it is handling the processing of ADPCM and general CD stuff. On a real CD-i it is also talking to the servo controller and the slave controller to perform seeking. It is even DMA capable to directly push data into system memory if the developer decides to do so.
The DSP is a black box as the program is not dumped yet but the behavior is known in the community to an extent which allowed CD-i emulators at least to be about right.
The audio formats which are left.... this is an evil question. I've actually made a mistake during the design of my interpretation of the CDIC.
Of course CDDA is missing. But that is much easier than the problem I'm facing right now. I thought that the CDIC just plays audio data whenever it reads some from the CD. But this is actually wrong. The CDIC is also used for playing sound effects. As I wanted to work on this feature next, I've noticed that my architecture is totally wrong.
In the green book of the rainbow books it is said that the CD-i players are capable of playing 16 hours of music without any pauses. This is only possible because of the audiomap feature. It allows seamless and synchronized playback of multiple ADPCM streams. That is what I'm currently trying to understand.

[terse flare]

Frog Feast, Tangram, Jeopardy and Defender of the Crown are using 8 bit audio.

[gleaming echo]

Thank you for the response Slamy 🙂

[terse flare]

Maybe some more technobabble for the interested reader. 1 Week ago when I was working on the 8 Bit ADPCM I assumed that there are multiple ADPCM decoders in the system. One for SFX and one for BGM. But this is wrong. The CD-i can only play ONE soundsource at all times. If there are SFX this is handled by a trick. And you all already are feeling this trick because the core has no music when that happens. The usual case is that the CPU is not very involved in the audio playback. There is a channel mask for audio data to be automatically placed in the audio buffers for playback. This is a good thing as it leaves the CPU free for other stuff. But when the software requires soundeffects, things get nasty. The CDIC is configured to read the audio as data instead of audio. The data is DMA copied to system memory and mixed in software with the SFX and DMA copied to the ADPCM buffer. The result is a stereo stream. On the left, there is usually the BGM. On the right is the SFX. At least Gamelon and Hotel Mario are following this rule. This is were the MAME emulator fails as it does that wrong. A real CD-i has a separate audio mixer which mixes left and right to a configurable amount into the output left and right channels. A real CD-i turns this weird total stereo signal into a mono so our ears are not bleeding from that. The audio mixer is NOT part of the CDIC but a chip not yet existing in the core.

To be honest, it gave my motivation a slight dent when I discovered all that. This is why it might take a little bit longer now.

[spring gate]

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time 🙂

Hopefully can be broken down into smaller parts so it isn't so overwhelming. Great work figuring all this out and getting to this point

[errant island]

If you're named Obelix too.

Sorry, had to.

[spring gate]

Hah, I wonder if he does that in the CDi game

[errant island]

It was taken from the CDi movie

[sinful hornet]

I volunteer robby to test out the 16 hour elevator music with the core for no crashes 🫡

[spring gate]

I wonder if those BGM discs have started to show signs of life

[lunar nexus]

I was playing titles in mame last night, and same as this, some need the digital video module. ie Dragons Lair etc. I know we're only just learning to walk here, but in the future, would that be possible? Thanks.

[terse flare]

I'm afraid I can't answer that question with 100% confidence. It is a question similar to a request made by someone in the CD-i discord. They asked whether the MiSTer core potentially could support other revisions of CD-i hardware. Like Mono-II or Mono-III. That would open up using the other boot roms as well. But knowledge about these machines is even more uncommon than Mono-I, which is the only hardware a functional open source emulator exists for. There are multiple versions of the DVC and I don't even know which one would be the easiest to replicate or if it is even worth it to replicate these at all or just use HLE for decoding MPEG. I wonder how it was done for the PSX and the Saturn. Do those have MPEG decoders? Or is it a different compression method?
Edit: Ok, the PSX uses something like Motion JPEG and the Saturn didn't have anything at all in stock.

[errant island]

For the Saturn, the MPEG cart isn't implemented.

[river sphinx]

Likely won't get implemented either, due to a mixture of limited space and the compatibility being really small.

[stiff flare]

Only worthwhile to replicate one version of the hardware and DVC, whatever are the most compatible. I wouldn't even bother entertaining anything else until you have a solid FPGA core that you're proud of.

Base CD-i and then DVC if you've got the energy, imo.

[sly sedge]

Exactly. That alone will be more than anyone else has done. 😉

[stray plank]

At least it is served with olives

[stray plank]

The Tim & Bear titles seem to be working perfectly now. No more ear-shattering audio and graphics glitches when watching the coloring book.

Lingo is playable now. It has some audio speed problems and doesn't display the previous words.

Also no more distorted sound.

Mega Popclassics mostly works now, except of course for playing the CDDA audio and the video clip.

[idle trench]

So I have the correct and most recent CDi.rbf in the correct folder. I renamed the Mister file from Slamy to MiSTer_CDi and saved it in the root of the SD. The command line in Mister.ini is = [CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi (its on the bottom of the ini file = is that correct or should it be in a specific place in the ini file ? ). And I renamed the two correct BIOS files to boot0.rom and boot1.rom and put them in the Games/CDi folder. Trying to load PAL game in PAL CDi Core = light blue screen. Trying to load NTSC game in NTSC CDi Core = light blue screen. The two games I tested with = Hotel Mario and The Apprentice in the PAL and NTSC versions. I can't get either of them to work. What I do wrong ? Help please.

And just to be sure = to start a game you pick a game on "Insert Disk" and then hit the "Play CD-i" button with the big play triangle in the CD-i menu and then the game should start right ?

No fiddling around with "open" and Reset in the core menu to start a game right ?

Help @terse flare

[terse flare]

The Apprentice will not work. There is too much missing in the core for that game. But Hotel Mario should at least boot. Even so I develop this core, I haven't yet tested the ini file trick. So I don't know much about it. If you come that far, we can at least be sure that the boot roms are the correct ones. The light blue screen usually would indicate that the Main application is not the right one. I'm confused. There are also no special tricks involved. No Reset. Just insert the disc and it should work.

Just to be sure to at least have tested it: Please make a backup of the original MiSTer main and replace it with the custom one. And then reboot the MiSTer. Just to be sure.

[idle trench]

Will do 🙂 Can you tell me a CD-i game that will work for sure to test ?

[terse flare]

Tetris seems to be one of those games that are feature complete. But Hotel Mario should totally be fine as well...
There is something nasty right now with a menu setting. "Disable MODE2" filters.... hmmm.. Please set that to Yes

A lot of games are very unhappy with that right now. The filters destroy compatibility. It was a mistake to have it like that because it confuses people. That also might have been an issue. Tetris will boot regardless of that setting. But the audio is weird in the menu if the filters are not available.
Fixing this is actually my next step so we can get rid of this.

[idle trench]

So I have done that = with only the MiSTer_CDi file on the SD root the Mister just boots to the black & white background without the menu were you pick the cores = 😦 ??? Also tested Tetris = light blue screen on PAL and NTSC . Also it does not matter if I diasable or enable Mode 2 = same result 😦 . I test on a CRT in RGB by the way if that matters.

[terse flare]

Do you have removed the MiSTer Main? It is essential for the whole device to function. Of course you would also need to rename the custom one to the standard one.

[idle trench]

Oh OK I left yours as MiSTer_CDi - so I should rename that to just Mister ?

[terse flare]

Just to be sure. Also please note that this is case sensitive. I just want to rule out that something is wrong with that file. Of course you would also need to remove the entry from the ini file

[modern mirage]

Also how are you sending the mister file to the Mister. If you are using Filezilla you must set it to binary mode

[idle trench]

That did the trick - now Hotel Mario and Tetris are working 🙂 Thank you mate.

[terse flare]

If you do it like this, the next update using the standard MiSTer updater will rewrite that Main file, rendering the CD-i core again non functional. The ini file method with two MiSTer mains reduces that issue. How you will proceed depends on your use case.

[stiff flare]

@wide swan and I with our LRG CDi controllers

[stiff flare]

lmao 😂

[spring gate]

Spoons akimbo!

[sterile glade]

I feel like a peasant. My LRG CDi controller ended up shipped to a relative's house and I haven't had a chance to go pick it up.

Waiting to try the CDi core until I have the controller so I can get an 'original' experience.

Cause I'm a masochist

[wintry dust]

I apologize for being annoying here, but.... If moving the MiSTer_CDi to 'MiSTer' is what fixes issues, please at least report that. The whole ini thing was specifically put in place for this situation and it should work. so if it isn't working I'm sure Sorg would like to fix whatever the problem is

[spring gate]

It is working for everyone else, this could still be human error. I would upload your .ini file here and give us a screen shot of the file on your MiSTer in whatever FTP client you are using, so we can see how it is named, the file extension and the file size

@idle trench

[whole thicket]

Works for me also. My guess is that there is an error in the ini file.

[stiff flare]

I accept your apology

[wintry dust]

I wasn't apologizing to you. only to those deserving of one

[stiff flare]

[sly sedge]

Savage...

[stiff flare]

With the recent core name change, my names.txt entry works, hooray!

[dark kayak]

Sitting down for a testing session

[spring gate]

The weird and wonderful world of CDi titles... I already love this core, is fast becoming one of my favourites, it is like opening a time capsule from the early 90s.

Please log your findings on the compatibility sheet, be great to keep adding to that as we get new builds.

[dark kayak]

Is that in pinned messages?

I don’t know how to edit it but aids awareness disc freezes after you after the first question. And I was made only mildly aware.

[spring gate]

Just request access and you will be able to edit

[nocturne vortex]

“Are you aware of aids? Yes/No”

[dark kayak]

Next game

[nocturne vortex]

You better 100% this

[dark kayak]

It froze as soon as I picked English

[gray badge]

you weren’t ready

[dark kayak]

I’m in real trouble here

[gray badge]

and it knew

[dark kayak]

My breasts aren’t going to examine themselves

At least not without instruction

Oh I got it working

And it froze another menu option or two down

I’m aware of the digital video cartridge, but did the Cdi also have ram expansion!?

[spring gate]

It was part of the DVC

[dark kayak]

Micro machines is a game that plays pretty decent

I did a few races

[spring gate]

Slamy mentioned it should be possible to up the ram without doing full DVC implementation

[dark kayak]

Is there anything that needs ram but not the dvc?

[spring gate]

Yeah it seems some titles utilise the ram in DVC but not the video enhancements, we don't have a list though.

[dark kayak]

The first Mystic midway works decent too

[spring gate]

Lots of things to add still to get regular games working as they should before exploring extra ram though

If you are able to log these on the sheet it would be greatly appreciated, anything posted here will be lost behind a wall of posts within a day

[dark kayak]

I’m guessing sound effects don’t work in any game at this point?

Should I just log the stuff that is working halfway decent?

Pac panic is also working

[spring gate]

Is helpful if something doesn't work as well so we know, and log any findings. Sound is still being worked on so less critical

[strange crater]

Of those games you listed, Micro Machines doesn't have any sound effects on CD-i. Pac-Panic and Rest in Pieces should.

[terse flare]

I know of at least one game. "The Apprentice" detects the extra RAM and makes sound effects available. The CD-i emulation of MAME doesn't offer any DVC functionality yet, but this is enough for that game to satisfy it. That game will also probably be the No-DVC-Endboss.

[idle trench]

Here you go 🙂

[glacial sonnet]

maybe i missed it but is sound still missing?

[gleaming echo]

In game sound fx don't work yet but other sound is working

[glacial sonnet]

Was there a new core for that?

[gleaming echo]

Most recent core added 8bit audio and a core like 2 weeks ago added 4bit audio

[slim geode]

Looks like you're editing the MiSTer.ini.bak and not the actual MiSTer.ini. Might wanna un-hide the file extensions in Windows Explorer.

[glacial sonnet]

How can i get the pinned messages on mobile?

[spring gate]

It is obtuse, I keep forgetting, but if you click the channel title "Philips CDi", then Settings, then Pinned Messages

[ember mountain]

I was sad to see the message too! 🤓

Although, its awesome to see the core develop. Hats off for all the hard work.

Would absolutely LOVE to see cores for Arcade LD games.

[sinful hornet]

I was not aware the latest build fixed the wonderful song in the Inca intro

I love it

[dark kayak]

Zombie dinos from zeltoid or whatever its called has a banging song too

And the aids awareness disc…

[glacial sonnet]

WTF is this 😂

[radiant minnow]

Breast self-examination, man, it's pretty clear there 😄

I can't wait for a complete CDi core so I can self-examinate my breast! 😮

[spring gate]

Fans of obscure CD formats, a chap in the PC-FX discord has been doing research into CD+EG discs, which were like CD+G but with better graphics. These discs should play on CDi hardware.

https://extended.graphics/

[dark kayak]

I’ve tried it without the disc but I think I popped something. So I’ll just wait for the core to mature.

[lunar nexus]

I've got the cdi eg test disk, not tried it yet though.

[lunar nexus]

ACtually, according to wikipedia, it should also play the simpler format CD G, cd with graphics. Quite a few lp's were released in that format. I'll have a look about and report back.

[spring gate]

These won't work on the CDi core, as CD implementation is based on PSX core and that doesn't read the subdata on CD+G. The Mega CD core can play CD+G discs apparently.

[lunar nexus]

Just had a look at that cdi eg test disk, it's all cc3 files and sub stuff. More for cdi techs I think than general release. Although I've got the cdi production cdeg version as well, and that is in bin/cue format. See what that shows later.

[lunar nexus]

God, Defender Of The Crown is really great now with the 8bit audio!

[terse flare]

We can think about specialties like CD+G when CDDA is working. The linux parts have to be touched again for this. But they have to be anyway for CDDA. Right now, every working software so far has ignored the Table of Contents of the CD. But for CDDA it seems to be required. I find it interesting that cdiemu creates the TOC from scratch. The cue file is not required.

[spring gate]

Yeah I wouldn't worry about CD+G any time soon, it still isn't supported by Redump and doesn't seem like there is a standard way of dumping and archiving the discs in a set format

Hopefully that changes at some point, but has been a known issue for a long time it seems and they still haven't nailed now it should be done

How things going Slamy?

[terse flare]

Difficult. I was very unsure how to analyze the current state. There are many regressions now. I've pondered whether to analyze the problems I see via SignalTap in realtime or by simulating. In the end I settled for simulation as I can look at the states over a longer period of time. Simulation is slow but ... well ... I can watch an episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure while waiting. I've altered the simulation to heavily tap on the paddle controller on Button 1. On Hotel Mario and Zelda Wand of Gamelon this leads to multiple events worth analyzing. For once, they read both data and some audio and afterwards enter the state of using the audiomap of the CDIC. This is exactly want I want to analyze.
I've made a breakthrough today. The MODE2 filter issue seems to be resolved and the audiomap is at leasting starting. Both games are having sound effects. However, this isn't something I should post here as both games are unable to stop the playback. This is something I have to analyze next.

I mean, I can post that core here, but it's not easy on the ears. xD

[spring gate]

Hah, CDi-DO-NOT-PLAY-WITH-HEAFPHONES!!!!.rbf

Great to hear you are making progress 🙂

[gray badge]

you're a hero Slamy

Is there anything we could do to be helpful at this point?

[terse flare]

That is debatable. I'm neither a policeman nor a firefighter.

[gray badge]

You're our hero

[river sphinx]

You're a police fighter

[terse flare]

I'm not sure. Right now I'm in heavy discussion with the emulator guys on the CD-i discord. They have some knowledge. It's not about testing games right now. It's about getting base functionality ready and hoping the games don't crash. Afterwards, the core has a fresh new CDIC and everything might break. I guess then some testing might be required.

There is also another thing I'm pondering on. The latency between audio and video. Later I will require some ideas on how to analyze that down to a millisecond. I want that to be as accurate as possible.

[gray badge]

sounds like fun :). Whenever and whatever you need, we will do.

[wintry dust]

that's weird. the bin in cue/bin pairs doesn't contain a toc or subchannel data. I have no idea how you would construct a TOC from them

[wintry dust]

haxxxxxx

[terse flare]

The MAME code is derived from that but actually does it legit. In the end I want the core also to be able to play normal Audio CDs. I think the other MiSTer cores can do that too. I would expect the same from an FPGA implementation of our lovely boi.

Right now there does not exist a single CD-i emulator which is able to play Red Book CDs. cdiemu, MAME and also this core are faking a SERVO controller which indicates a loaded tray with an interactive CD. This needs to change in the future. But we have other problems before attacking that.

[spring gate]

That's interesting, so they can't play audio CDs, of CD+G, or enhanced music CDs?

[valid onyx]

I really enjoy reading these updates, @terse flare 🙂 Thank you for taking the time to write those, in addition to your hard work on the core!

[valid cairn]

Wow! That will be something cool.

[honest locust]

I don't know if it would be of help, Robert created test ROMs that help to verify the functionalities and helped in the development of the cores, I don't know if there is something similar for the CD-i

[spring gate]

That is a very good question, has anyone ever made tests for CDi?

Although, now I think about it, so any CD based systems have tests or does the CD part make this more difficult than loading a ROM?

[terse flare]

You seem to have missed the actual start of the core. 😄 Every CD-i unit has a built in test rom which functions even without RAM. It is a very basic ROM checksum and memory testing software but it helped to kickstart this core when it was only a M68K CPU and a ROM.
I for myself do it similar to Robert I think. For realtime tests, the core still has the "Replace Boot ROM" menu item. For simulation I do it similar and I have a small collection of test roms.
The CD reading was also tested this way: https://github.com/Slamy/CDi_MiSTer/blob/main/sim2/cdictest.asm
I haven't uploaded the newest version of this but I have now 3 CDIC tests available. For data, for CD XA and for audiomaps. But these tests are only good if you know what you are looking for. 2 days ago I didn't knew what the problem was.

Some things can't be checked in simulation though. The latencies introduced by the Linux... I still don't know how much it affects the CD reading. After fixing the audiomap stopping I think I have to measure how long it takes until linux has provided a CD sector.

[young grotto]

in the PSX core you can enable an overlay that blinks when the core waited for CD data from the HPS

maybe you could do something similar ?

[wintry dust]

I'm not sure if robert still has numbers for it, but it should be similar to psx since main is basically doing the same thing

[terse flare]

I think the "waiting for it" is irrelevant. Better would be a signal that the system has failed to keep up. At a certain point in time the sector is required. And if timing wasn't met, the whole operation should be discarded. I think it is ok when the first sector of the reading operation took longer than expected. A real CD would do the same when seeking is involved. However, the following sectors need to be on time. The whole CD-i concept is synced to sector timing.

[dark kayak]

A wild cdi controller appears

[spring gate]

Those priced in USD?

[bronze umbra]

[dark kayak]

Canadian dollars

[grand lantern]

I dream of CD-i SNAC…

[spring gate]

Was discussed by Blue awhile back, who designed the other SNAC boards, as a possibility down the line

[dark kayak]

Does a usb adaptor exist?

[glacial sonnet]

WTF really? I thought it'd be challenging getting CD-i SNAC to work due to the way the inputs are processed

[dark kayak]

Oh nvm I just learned that that particular controller works through ir like a remote. Ew.

[glacial sonnet]

Well there's the 3-button Genesis-like controller but that ain't much better either

[dark kayak]

This might be one console where I just use the snes pad. Or that limited run controller lol

[spring gate]

@bright zinc may have some more thoughts on CDi SNAC, it was talked about awhile ago and before the core really came along

[glacial sonnet]

I remember reading from @kind hedge that the CD-i controller is quite laggy and that the digital d-pad has to be processed as analog by the CD-i

[glacial sonnet]

You could just take a Genesis controller, paint it gray, and slap a CD-i sticker in the middle

[dark kayak]

I could also just use a ps2 or a ps3 remote lol

A Wii nunchuk

[glacial sonnet]

I think buying an actual controller is a stupid investment considering you couldn't really use it with anything else. CD-i LLAPI support will likely never be a thing

[glacial sonnet]

Actually not a bad pick

[kind hedge]

yeah that CD-I interface ( now public ) is incredibly slow.

[kind hedge]

I'm not sure, the limitation for the controller, was the fact it used UART ( nearly lowest possible setting ) and the lag was waiting on the transit. But with LLAPI, you could speed that al up. However you'd be using a similar controller not a CD-i or you'd just get the lag back 😛

[bright zinc]

Maybe I should talk to Slamy about it, I think I have the stuff to rig up a mini din adapter. That would be for the wired stuff like 3 button controller, mouse, trackball, lightgun. there's also IR remotes which I think would be harder to do. I'm mostly interested in the lightgun but I think most of those games are DVC games. I haven't looked much into the code to see what it would take to make things work.

[spring gate]

Could be cool if doable. Which reminds me, be good to get a list of lightgun games and see which of these require DVC

Games
edit
Atlantis: The Last Resort
Burn:Cycle
CD Shoot
Chaos Control
Crime Patrol
Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars
The Last Bounty Hunter
The Lost Ride
Mad Dog McCree
Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold
Thunder in Paradise
Who Shot Johnny Rock?

Actually, I am sure I did this awhile back and Who Shot Johnny Rock was the only non DVC one

I wonder if any of them just use the extra 1MB ram in the DVC and not the video expansion

[spring gate]

Would Keyboard work via this way as well?

[bright zinc]

I'm going to guess yes without knowing how the KB works.

things or behavior may need added to the core, I'm far from a cdi expert.

[terse flare]

The core has a setting in the menu to overclock the UART from 1200 to something a little bit faster. It feels better that way.

[terse flare]

The module is currently called maneuvering_device. @signal jay is also tinkering with it and already renamed it on his branch as mouse and analog joystick was added on his fork. I've removed the serial UART and replaced it will a parallel virtual UART to get rid of the baud rate. It works good that way. For a SNAC adapter we just have to insert a second path to feed data from external source. Compared to everything else in the core, this should be a no brainer 😄

The IR interface would be more difficult as the hardware in the 68HC05 is lacking the timer capture mode. However, I'm confident that this can be added as well. It would be helpful though If someone could capture some IR data for me. I would provide instructions on the pin to measure if someone has a logic analyzer and a CD-i. I don't possess the IR controller in my collection right now.

[bright zinc]

Very cool, sounds like we can get the mini din working then to start. I'd start with a prototype before I make a pcb. I'll take a look at the code and see if I can understand it. Maybe I'll pm you over the weekend about it.

I don't have the IR remote either but will probably have to buy one if we try to do IR. I might have everything else to do the logic captures if no one does or can

[deep roost]

Nice

[young grotto]

what if we add snac support... but for snes pads instead of cdi ones 😄

[spring gate]

Total sidebar, but have you ever looked at SNAC for ZX Spectrum or C64/C128? Those had lightguns for them
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_Light_Phaser

[kind hedge]

That would help. 9600 would be better, at least it would fit in a frame

[terse flare]

Right now it is exactly tuned for 50 Hz to transfer 3 bytes in the period of one frame.

[bright zinc]

Speccy i don't think I looked at, but may have did a one off c64 build before. There's some other systems that used the atari pinout that might be able to get snac code added, but I just never did it because I didn't have the controllers to test.

[spring gate]

Ah, got you. If it is something you ever wanted to do maybe make a list of controllers you would need and people with spares would likely be willing to send you what you need. I do think if Devs ever need bits of hardware for their work there will be people out there happy to donate things they have kicking about the help.

[kind hedge]

Cool, I don't remember off hand what I saw on the scans when developing the bridge, but it was horrible. Being able to OC it is very nice to hear.

[fierce shoal]

Yeah, that looks like something a dude would brand Magnum...

[strange crater]

Who Shot Johnny Rock requires the DVC - CD Shoot and Burn:Cycle don't.

Granted, I don't think Burn:Cycle does anything special to support the lightgun - it's just sort of fitting for its shooter sequences. I've always played the game with a mouse, then swapped to a D-pad for the final "brain maze" puzzle.

[spring gate]

Ah yeah, my bad there. OK, well at least there are those two and I assume "CD Shoot" is lightgun heavy based on the name

So you think all the others require the full DVC, or could any of them just need the extra meg of ram?

[strange crater]

I'd assume they all require the full DVC, given that all discs have MPEG1 FMVs and most require it for gameplay.

The only potential exception might be Atlantis: The Last Resort, as it only uses the MPEG1 playback for menu backgrounds and intro cutscenes.

@terse flare Out of curiosity, does the CD-i know what peripheral is attached to the console at a given time? I know the keyboard likely has its own protocol, but everything else I've seen works like varying implementations of a mouse.

[spring gate]

That is an interesting question, also has me thinking what protocols do all need implemented to support all the peripherals. Maybe the chap who was looking at getting controllers working better is looking at these issues.

@signal jay may have some insights here

[terse flare]

As markun seems to not have answered yet, I can also give the answer. The peripherals use a UART to communicate. The first transferred byte is the device id and provides the system with the knowledge of what is attached. If the CD-i has missed that, it can always reset the controller using the RTS line to restart the handshaking.

[spring gate]

Got you. Does the core already recognise all the possible peripheral types, or is this part of what Markum is working on, or something for down the road?

[terse flare]

Right now that is not part of the main branch of the core. Markun was busy with that. He does have a github fork with the current state on it. I haven't yet integrated the changes yet as I had some concerns about special cases that might lead to a frustrated user experience. Especially with PS3 Controllers that are not exactly centered. I don't know if he is actively working on it. I would be more eager to look for an integration if there were not bigger issues to solve.

[glacial sonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPOUsW-cLjM

[terse flare]

Sometimes it's like a rabbit hole. I thought I had a certain trace to hunt a bug only to find out that this is actually how it should behave. Here is the waveform of the first ingame song of Hotel Mario. This is an actual recording from a real machine.

This is definitely a programming error. The first audio sector is loaded twice into the ADPCM buffers. This is contrary to the green book standard which clearly says that the first buffer should be silence.

[raw leaf]

Software quality issue?

Or firmware?

[terse flare]

I have tested this now on MAME, cdiemu and a real machine. It might be a software issue in Hotel Mario. I wonder if Zelda Wand of Gameleon does the same thing. Or other titles that use the Audiomap.

Of course it might also be a driver issue in the operating system. However, in that case the developers would have found it during development and made a workaround.

[glacial sonnet]

peak soundtrack

[terse flare]

If we consider that the soundtrack was never played without this bug, this would mean that the bug is now a feature and part of the composition.

[raw leaf]

Yeah

Which hurts a bit I'm sure

[glacial sonnet]

Nintendo Music ain't adding that

😂

[raw leaf]

Here at MiSTer, we take pride in reproducing the truth, bugs and all

[terse flare]

Composer: "Here, this beautiful melody."
Programmer: "Check, putting that in"
After release
Composer: "What have you done?😭 I've spent 6 weeks on that song and you destroyed it in seconds."

[raw leaf]

"It's in shops already"

[terse flare]

This is almost like the smoke sprite in Super Mario 64. It's bugged but no one knew until the intended graphics were found.

[glacial sonnet]

So the question now is will the core keep the bug or fix it?

[terse flare]

It can't be fixed. The software requests to play the same buffer twice. The real machine plays it twice.

[glacial sonnet]

Darn it, we need someone to patch Hotel Mario now.

[raw leaf]

You could patch the CD image if you like

[glacial sonnet]

I mean I'm mostly joking, I don't care about CDi enough to go through something like this XD

But cool find nonetheless

And nobody noticed until now?

[raw leaf]

I mean...

It's hotel mario

[terse flare]

I'm asking the same question on the CD-i discord right now. This is a rather curious find. If the developers got it wrong on this title, there should be others as well.

[glacial sonnet]

I can already picture the medias

[raw leaf]

You'll be famous

[terse flare]

It's as they said. Toasters toast toast.!

[glacial sonnet]

"Gamers found a bug in obscure Mario game"

or some BS title like that

[glacial sonnet]

beautiful is quite an oxymoron here

[strange crater]

I'll test it on my CD-i 220/37 unit, with the US disc.

Yep, can confirm - it's got the duplicated beginning of the sample on my unit, too.

[deep roost]

This core is so good, it can even replicate regressions!

[terse flare]

I wouldn't call that a regression. That would indicate that it was better before. The bug was probably always there but no one noticed. Or maybe someone has changed something and when they pressed the masters, it was already to late. I wonder what the developers were thinking about that today.

Please don't take this too seriously. There are many regressions but I'm happy with this result for today. After many debugging sessions the software finally doesn't crash and burn every time the audiomap is stopped. The audio playback from CD is broken after the audiomap is used however. That will the next thing to fix. There is also some crackling in the audio. I haven't noticed that before but now I can't unhear it.... weird....
With this core you can play Hotel Mario and Zelda Wand of Gamelon with sound effects.

Please don't perform regression testing with this version. I know that it is awful.

[spring gate]

Good job!

[gray badge]

Plays Zelda and hotel Mario? So the core is feature complete? Nice!

(But seriously, amazing work, Slamy)

[valid cairn]

Excellent

[whole thicket]

Just as much fun as playing blind Mario or three eyed Pikachu in the early builds of the N64 core!!! 🙌

Seriously, I love being able to be a part of the testing efforts as cores come to life

[stiff flare]

@terse flare kicking ass like usual!
💪

[gleaming echo]

Can anyone get anything to boot on this experimental audio map build? Everything just seems to give me the blue screen after play CD

[south urchin]

hotel mario booting OK here on the latest build with sfx 🙂

[gleaming echo]

Interesting.... I will try again tomorrow

But I couldn't get hotel mario to boot or anything for that matter but on the last build everything works fine

[south urchin]

I tested with the 2 MiSTer main versions from pins, both OK here

[gleaming echo]

Like I say, the other cores have all been fine, I even played some games on the 8bit audio build a couple of days ago and then I copy over this core and it just refuses to work for me this morning but I am at work till tomorrow, I didn't run an update since so main file should be fine

I can re copy main over again when I get home tomorrow

[south urchin]

yeah not too sure, happy to check any versions/settings if it helps troubleshoot

[gleaming echo]

Thanks but like I say I am on an overnight shift today so can't do anything till I am home

[spring gate]

You are best to use the .ini line addition and copy over the bespoke CDi version of Main, so that it always uses that to boot on the CDi core and you can still run update all

[shy fossil]

this feature is a neat addition to main mister

[spring gate]

Yeah it is great, I didn't even know about it until it was posted here as well

[nocturne vortex]

It’s how you use groovy_mister as well if you get a chance to play around with that

[wide swan]

I gotta do this so I stop breaking groovy_mister to use with MisterCAST

[gleaming echo]

so yeah I recopied over the mister binary, deleted and recopied over the experimental audiomap build still gets stuck on a blue screen in hotel mario, this build just doesn't seem to like me for some reason lol

[errant island]

No CD-i for you!

[gleaming echo]

lol, will just have to wait for sfx in games until the bugs are all fixed 🙂

games work on 8bit audio core but the experimental audiomap core just refuses to boot anything

[strange crater]

It's probably just something no one caught. Considering the game got multiple international revisions, I think it would have been fixed if someone noticed it.

[terse flare]

Until all bugs are fixed? There are still so many out there. 🫠
Can you really confirm that the provided core has issues in booting games but older versions on the same Main have no problem? I can't really believe that. There is a common joke in my craft called "works on my machine" but this is surely not how I want it. It is true, that the MiSTer Main application has continued it's path. This also would result into the update script overwriting it. But it seems you have overwritten the original again... confusing...

[gleaming echo]

I just meant the bugs you mentioned about the audiomap and yeah I have confirmed it, games boot with the 8bit ADPCM core but with the experimental audiomap core they just refuse, the orange light on the IO board flashes for .5 of a.second then nothing

[spring gate]

Fuzz, have you set up with the extra line in your .ini and having the second CDi Main, that way seems to be working fine for everyone and is a more elegant solution

[terse flare]

I've fixed the wrong playback of CD sectors afterwards and the crackling seems to be gone. There are some new regressions coming from all these changes but in general it would be a better core and I think I would like this state to be the new main state. This is why I'm asking about the issues on your side because I would like to understand. The next core will have the same issue as the last one on your MiSTer.

[gleaming echo]

I have not tried that yet as there has not been any unstable main changes that affect me and I already had the CDi one as my main unstable before I knew about the uni, but still weird that every other version of the core has worked without issue then this one has issues, I can try changing them and putting the latest unstable on my MiSTer and renaming the CDi one and adding the ini file and if that fixes it will be mind blowing

@spring gate same result, 8bit audio version works, experimental audiomap fails to boot games

[gleaming echo]

yeah it is very odd

[spring gate]

That's interesting

[gleaming echo]

ikr

[spring gate]

Out of interest so you know what model ram you have?

[gleaming echo]

official v2.9 128MB

[modern mirage]

I added a user name detection when Slamy wasnt looking. For just 50K I can remove it

[gleaming echo]

lol

so out of curiosity I just tried the first version of the mister binary that slamy posted rather than the rebased one and still same

[fierce shoal]

Oh yeah...Mapplethorpe time.

Oh...FLOWERS... I thought it was about a journey through milled cereal products.

1/10

[quartz shadow]

Maybe check and remove any core config files.

[gleaming echo]

I never saved one so there is no CD-i config in the config folder but thanks for the advice 🙂

[glacial sonnet]

@terse flare I don't know if it's been asked but are there plans to port the core over to the Analogue Pocket in the distant future once the core reaches maturity?

[lunar nexus]

We used to say that 40 years ago on the Spectrum, "well it loads on my machine" 🙂

[spring gate]

I didn't realise The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe was "playable" now, has that happened recently?

[fierce shoal]

I used the test build above.

[terse flare]

The question is new. I haven't heard it yet. Right now I'm not in possession of this device and therefore my interest in porting the core to it is not really that great. However if someone would make that port I would at least provide advise.

[terse flare]

This means that this version is not that bad. I originally had plans to release that with a few fixes as the new core. But there are still too many regressions. The Intro of Zelda's Adventure is somehow broken and Tetris has suddenly still cracks in the audio. And even worse, I catched a cold.🤧

[young grotto]

fwiw analogue will send you a pocket if you're a developer - you can apply on their site

[spring gate]

Honestly I wouldn't bother getting bogged down with worrying about The Pocket. Once the core is done one of those guys will probably port it over if it is possible.

I am struggling to think of Devs who have made large cores for MiSTer who also did the Pocket port

[young grotto]

yeah true

cd based stuff is pretty awkward to do on there too, PCE-CD took forever

[gray badge]

yeah, and it's the only one

No sega cd

[gleaming echo]

Get well soon Slamy

[gray badge]

We are losing devs left and right. CIRCLE OF PROTECTION AROUND THE DEVS

[glacial sonnet]

We could raise funds to buy you one regardless of whether the core will get ported or not

I think it'd be a great thing for the community to do, I'd donate

[glacial sonnet]

And get well ofc

[terse flare]

@gleaming echo and I have now discovered that the core is unstable when it comes to latencies coming from the mass storage device. In their case, the magnetic USB drive was the catalyst. The recent experimental release seems to be more prone to that. This might also correlate with the audio crackling I have with Tetris as that game actually has a CD data underflow during the intro cutscene. This would mean that problems will be piling up if this is not fixed.

[gleaming echo]

Karaoke Discs play complete songs now 🙂

[modern mirage]

How quaint spinning rust still being used for storage

[spring gate]

Wait, so core issues could be because people have their disc images on an external HDD and not the SD card?

[gleaming echo]

Yeah seems so

[spring gate]

Interesting, not heard of that being an issue before

[gleaming echo]

For me I have all my games on an external HDD for every core but with the experimental audiomap build they don't boot but I copied Frog Feast initially over to SD Card and issue disappeared

[modern mirage]

but that was an ancient Mech HD wasnt it >?

A SSD should be fine

[gleaming echo]

I wouldn't call it ancient I got it same year as I got my MiSTer

But yeah it is still a mech HDD

[modern mirage]

I stopped uisng Mech HD about 4 years ago apart from in the NAS

no cheap 16TB SSD !

Did you have it perma spun up ? or did you let it sleep ?

[gleaming echo]

It does sleep when not in use

[modern mirage]

you could try setting it to be perma spun up

[spring gate]

Do you have issues on other CD cores?

[gleaming echo]

None at all

[modern mirage]

well Slamy CD code was a clone of the PSX wasnt it ?

[gleaming echo]

See it is not the CD code as it works prior to the audiomap core, something to do with that change has caused an issue with the image reading from external storage

Maybe SSD will be fine and the mech is missing a sector read in time

[gray badge]

Just catching up, is this something only fuzz has seen? Or are all non-sd/ssd folks seeing it? For instance, I’m using cifs connected to my nas. Is that affected?

[gleaming echo]

At the moment I am the only person that has noticed it

Or at least only person reported it

[gray badge]

ahh ok, and the games straight up aren't loading?

[gleaming echo]

Yeah, core boots to BIOS, you pick a game, select Play CD-i and it just sits on a blue screen

But I can just copy them back to PC and then over to SD Card for now until this bug is found and fixed

[gray badge]

ahh ok. and this has been every version of the core? or just the latest?

[gleaming echo]

Just the latest experimental audiomap core

[gray badge]

ok, I'll check it out today

[gleaming echo]

Cool, be nice to find out if I am the only one

Or not hehehe

[gray badge]

Should I use #1103404843512631357 message or #1103404843512631357 message @gleaming echo ?

[gleaming echo]

Yeah that is the build 🙂

[gray badge]

which one? One is the pinned build, the other is the hotel mario/gamalon build

[gleaming echo]

Mario/gamelon it is named experimental audiomap, sorry I am out at the moment so I will be responding slowly

[gray badge]

no worries at all

Yup, sits at a blue screen for me too (loading games from my nas via cifs)

[gleaming echo]

So yeah you in same boat as me, you will have to just copy the games to a SD Card for that build but the BIOS can be on your NAS

[spring gate]

That's interesting, which one(s) did you check? Do you see any graphics? I didn't appreciate Karaoke CDs are lower quality audio than regular CDs, but guess it makes sense if they need more space for graphics

[gleaming echo]

Karaoke Klassics Vol 1 and 2 I tried, music plays, images display, lyrics display too

[spring gate]

Oh wow, any issues seen or do they seem to play perfectly?

[gleaming echo]

They play perfectly as far as I tested

[spring gate]

Nice one, did you log them on the sheet?

Sounds like next stable build it may be worth mobilising testing of the Karaoke discs

[gleaming echo]

I didn't have time before I had to head out bro

[spring gate]

Something as a group we should keep an eye on is new Redump updates. No new CDi discs recently, although does seem to be a couple of Photos CDs that have been added in the last few days. I assume when they are added to the site they are also on Archive, but haven't checked yet.

http://redump.org/

Edit: looks like recent photo CDs aren't in the redump pack yet

[steep ginkgo]

This just needs the 2 bios files as noted on the pinned messages, right? Just getting a blue screen after inserting a disc and selecting play. Used a usa game and changed it to ntsc if that matters, still nothing.

[spring gate]

Have you got the bespoke version of Main needed?

[steep ginkgo]

Probably not, where is that located or how do i get that version?

[spring gate]

Check the pins, and follow the steps to add a line in your .ini and you should be good to go

Also, people are reporting issues with having games on an external drive rather than SD card, so advise having games on your SD

[steep ginkgo]

Found it, thanks. Got a couple games to boot but only playable for a min or so before freezing, oh well. Will have to check in on this core from time to time!

[rugged panther]

So how's the core coming along?

[spring gate]

Progress being made every few days. A long way to go, but Slamy is making incredible, rapid advancement. 🙂

[rugged panther]

I drop in here most days but haven't checked for a couple so figured he might make some progress 🙂

[terse flare]

Progress is much slower than before. Posting the last experimental core here was a good hint that something went wrong. Without a datasheet it is difficult to get the CDIC right. Most of my work on that chip is based on source code from both existing emulators and my own observation of the expectations from the software. This is troublesome as the emulator can't be used for everything. It can shift data around in zero time, while real hardware can't. I need to build some hardware with actual physical constraints. The current main state (the one with dates in name) of the core delivers CD sectors whenever these are fully transferred from the Linux side. But transmission only starts on the start of a sector.
This is not how CDs work and I needed to get rid of that. My expectation would be that there is a data stream with constant data rate. The experimental core and also my current working state take that into account now. But somewhere on the road I've made a wrong turn, which now causes problems. I've made multiple attempts to fix that but almost all of them resulted into a side step. I will find a solution eventually, but that will take time as it seems more and more obvious that I'm not good at reverse engineering. If you don't know how things should be exactly, you can't write a test. I can only observe and maybe check for regressions.

One thing that always bothered me is that both emulators are playing audio from the ADPCM buffers in zero time. This is just not possible in hardware. It takes time to play the audio data and until then, the audio buffer should not be overwritten by other means. This is one of those things that have bothered me, just to make you understand how difficult this is. The authors of the emulators are not very supportive right now concerning issues like this. From a hardware standpoint it could be bank switching. But is it really? In the end, the interfacing between the software and the hardware needs to be accurate. The behavior of the CDIC should be externally the same. The internal workings are allowed to vary. This is at least my point of view as no deeper analysis of that thing was ever performed.

[dark kayak]

@terse flare Do you have Patreon or anything? I’d like to throw you a couple bones for what you do.

[terse flare]

I'm a little bit ambivalent about this. But many people are asking this question now. So... here you go. https://patreon.com/AmigaSlamy?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

[gleaming echo]

Woooo Slamy has a patreon now 🙂

[gray badge]

Subscribed!

[nocturne vortex]

Same, may Slamy use the vast riches to buy nearly all of a cappuchino at starbucks

[gray badge]

Buried in avacado toast

[terse flare]

The culprit for some of the problems is probably found (and also measurement of that is the current temporary cover of the Patreon). Linux is sometimes just not answering on requested sectors for 30ms until data finally arrives. There is a certain randomness and I need to harden the core against those problems. If a sector is not there in time then.... well the servo is seeking to the track right? This is "free seeking time emulation". Hopefully this is not something that occurs on the following sectors. But then, the PSX core would also have problems with droppings in the audio and I don't recall that occurs. I need to test when my cold gets better. The mainline core doesn't have this issue because it doesn't care for sector timing. xD But this was also a time before I've noticed that the CD-i has mechanisms to synchronize video and audio data. Adding that started all these problems.

[sterile glade]

Also subscribed, with NO expectations and pressure. Thank's for all the progress you've already made. You're doing fantastic. We appreciate you.

[nocturne vortex]

yeah seriously, this stuff always seems like such a slog, take lots of breaks from the project and don't get burned out worrying about providing updates or whatever

[lunar nexus]

Correct, you're doing a great job with this, take a bit of a rest mate. Try it again later, helps you see thing differently. Cheers.

[gleaming echo]

Yeah what everyone else is saying I will say as well just take your time, take as many breaks as you need, your health is more important than a core, I will sub to your patreon when I am home from work tomorrow night

[glacial sonnet]

Woohoo

See? Starting a Patreon was key to debugging the core 😛
Just kidding
Would love to contribute! Maybe that'll get you an Analogue Pocket, wink wink or...it'll turn into something more 😉

I say use your Patreon as a unified tip jar for the time being

This way you won't feel pressured to release new updates

[spring gate]

May be worth pinging Robert and see if he has any ideas if this is still causing issues

Is the CDIC chip something that could be decapped and traced in theory?

[glacial sonnet]

I wonder if the folks over at Team Europe could take care of this

[modern mirage]

They stopped decapping years ago

[spring gate]

Best way could be getting a chip from a dead unit to Furrtek may be the best option, and then trace it out like Rev Gumby has been doing for the Super Cassette Vision sound chip

[glacial sonnet]

I'm out of the loop I guess

[modern mirage]

I may be confusing them with another mame decapping group

[sinful hornet]

@stiff flare or any mod, can slamy's patreon be added to #patreon-links ? I imagine that list can be updated a bunch at this point

[stiff flare]

I don’t know how to update that, I’m sorry.

[valid onyx]

You conclude you are not good at reverse engineering - I would beg to differ. Look at where you already are. Please don't forget you have a cold, too, and still are making great progress. Stuff is hard. That it is not all immediately clear doesn't make you bad at it. You're already, by your own words, ahead of those who came before you in areas. You found bugs others haven't. Again, don't be hard on yourself, be proud instead! You've already more than earned it 🙂 Keep taking good care of yourself :)!

[wintry dust]

30ms is a long time. what is going on there

[young grotto]

seem to remember rob saying the psx core needed consistent <6ms response rates to work right

and most sd-cards were achieving that even before he added the pause-on-slow-cd stuff

[wintry dust]

it's even less than that for the 6x/8x modes

[opal mural]

Subscribed!

[stiff flare]

** 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 **

Core By - @terse flare

Patreon - [LINK]

(please consider joining the MiSTer FPGA's Patreon to help support development)

** 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 **

WIP Core Downloader - [LINK]
-# ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎↳ follow instructions in link to automate downloading all work-in-progress cores

Manual Install:

• Latest core - [LINK]
• Latest MiSTer main (CDi fixes) - [LINK]

(Last Updated - May 27th, 2026)

** 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨 **

Redump is the only verified disc image set that works; DO NOT ask about it, DO NOT ask for it, and DO NOT ask where to get it.

Follow these instructions for adding the bios - [LINK]

If your bios is not working, then verify it matches these MD5 checksums - [LINK]

The core's DVC implementation is still WIP, so please refer to this list of games that may exhibit issues - [LINK]

Check out this awesome demo to see the full capabilities of the CD-i - [LINK]

If your controller feels sluggish; try either setting the console to PAL, using the analog stick instead of a d-pad, or access the Debug Options in the core menu and enable Turbo CPU.

To test your controllers, load this program as a bin/cue on the core - [LINK]

Here's a tool to create your own Video CDs that can be played on the CD-i core - [LINK]

Here's a great list of games and multimedia to check out - [LINK]

(thanks to @fervent urchin for creating the CD-i video authoring tool and @strange crater for the recommendations)

[modern mirage]

Cut and paste much Hi Saturn for the CDI !!!

[stiff flare]

yeah I know, I'm going to edit it soon lol

ok I'm done! Please let me know if there's anything I forgot to add

@terse flare + @spring gate not to bug you two but could you let me know if there's any important info I left off from the pinned messages?

[gleaming echo]

@stiff flare I know you didn't ask me but the only info I can think of is use SD card for now as external storage/NAS results in a blue screen

[stiff flare]

Sorry, should've asked you!

That's a great note, adding it now!

[gleaming echo]

If they are using the experimental audiomap build

🙂

[modern mirage]

well the external thing hasnt been proven for a SSD has it ?

[gleaming echo]

Not for an SSD but it has for a NAS

[modern mirage]

yep but writing all external stoarge is thus misleading until SSD is confirmed not working

[gleaming echo]

If you have an external SSD feel free to try

[quartz shadow]

I have no issues using my SSD with the current build.

[stiff flare]

Is the Redump thing correct? That's honestly been my copy and paste go-to.

[gleaming echo]

We are all using redump so I would say yes

[stiff flare]

Maybe it's just NAS?

[modern mirage]

No its spining rust external too

[stiff flare]

what

oh lol

[modern mirage]

Oldstyle HD

[gleaming echo]

Nah my external HDD doesn't work but it does for every other core

[stiff flare]

is it SSD or mechanical?

[modern mirage]

His is mechanical

[gleaming echo]

And only the experimental audiomap core was when this started to happen

[stiff flare]

I revised it to:

"If you run into issues using external storage or NAS, then please use your SD card for now to load your games."

Thanks for the shout-out, great thinking

[gray badge]

buuuuuuuuuuuut i don't wanna

[gleaming echo]

And anytime Robby

[terse flare]

In general, I would expect that every CUE/BIN or CHD file which can be burned onto disc to play in a real player should also work on the core. If this is not the case, something went wrong.

[terse flare]

I really hope that this doesn't backfire. xD

[stiff flare]

How or why would it backfire?

You’re doing amazing shit dude, everyone here loves you.

[terse flare]

People that are supporting with !MONEY! (said with the voice of Mr. Krabs) might have bigger expectancy on the quality of my "work"

[stiff flare]

They can learn some patience. You’re always going to have entitled people, but yeah for some spending money somehow excuses their entitlement.

I can’t do anything outside of here but if you see that happen on this Discord, let me or any other mods know and we’ll nip it in the bud post haste. 💪

[modern mirage]

Only thing I would do is remove your real name from the Patreon

[stiff flare]

That’s a good idea

[modern mirage]

Some People are strange and Doxing yourself isnt a great move

[terse flare]

I've removed that but It can't be helped. People have the connection now for a long time now. It's in my Amiga game, it's somewhere on YouTube. It can't be removed from the Internet anymore.

[modern mirage]

Limiting it is good, and yes the Ship has sailed, but if it makes it harder for the wierdo's to find you its good

[gray badge]

This 1000% percent. I'm patreon....ing(?) because I want to thank you for the work you've done. I have no expectations for work you may or may not do in the future. I have no idea what the standard Engineering pay rate is where you're at, but at 5 dollars a month, I have some catching up to do

[nocturne vortex]

Give me the core I paid for, I’m paying you a huge salary for your hundreds of hours of effort with specialist skills. Also a large fry and a diet coke 😉

[stiff flare]

lol seeing my post quoted reminded me to take a softer approach to my comments

Still riding the post workout energy

[modern mirage]

you describe making 3 stickies as a workout !

if you want to support more you can always buy

https://www.indieretronews.com/2020/03/tiny-little-slug-charming-platformer.html

[terse flare]

Ahhh nooo. I'm embarrassed by my own game. It is much too difficult for the average person. It also has not enough collectibles according to children of Amiga daddies.

[gleaming echo]

I loved my Amiga so much back in my childhood days

[modern mirage]

Thats because the Amiga is King

pity the fools who only had a ST boo hiss

[gleaming echo]

Lol

[nocturne vortex]

Onleeee Amigaaaa makes it possible, onleeee Amigaaa makes it happen

[gleaming echo]

And the Amiga sound chip was sooo good

Cannon Fodder on the SNES: 'music is playing'

Cannon Fodder on Amiga:
"War has never been so much fun!!!"

[terse flare]

One of the key differences is the amount of memory storage. The Amiga only has 4 channels but the whole chip mem can be used for sample data. Inside the SNES, the sound program, samples and music data all needs to fit into the tiny 64kB. This all is still better though than the CD-i when it comes to sfx mixing. That poor thing has to do everything in software.

I think the PSX had a good mix actually. It had Amiga style MIDI music for games like FF7 to 9 which really needed to stream data from CD and audio tracks for games like Mega Man which didn't really need to stream anything.

[gleaming echo]

Yeah PSX was console king of its day

[tulip orchid]

Is there an official place to go yet to find the latest version of the core?

looks like the pin is the best spot from what I can tell /shrug

[gray badge]

Depends on if you want to test of if you want to play hotel mario and zelda

if it's the latter, this is techincally the latest core #1103404843512631357 message

But I'm pretty sure Slamy didn't want folks testing on it because they know there are a bunch of regressions

[tulip orchid]

ah i see, in that case I'll just let it all bake a bit longer

ty

[gray badge]

[deep roost]

Hey @stiff flare. I don't know if it's still late for this, but do you think you can pin the list of games for people who want to try this core out? #1103404843512631357 message

Something for them to get their hands on.

[stiff flare]

Not a fan of pinning my own recommendations since it’s all so subjective. Feels self servicing.

[deep roost]

Okay. Understood.

[stiff flare]

Sorry : (

I appreciate you though, thank you.

[valid cairn]

https://tenor.com/view/sad-walk-away-tiger-gif-113868115022690677

[lime nimbus]

just play Zenith

[strange crater]

Here’s my tweaked version of Robby’s list, with a few added titles recommended by both myself and other members here:

EUROPE

• 7th Guest, The (DVC)
• Alice in Wonderland
• Apprentice, The
• Atlantis - The Last Resort (DVC)
• Berenstain Bears, The - On Their Own
• Burn-Cycle
• Caesars World of Boxing (DVC)
• Chaos Control (DVC)
• Christmas Crisis (DVC)
• Crayon Factory, The
• De Zaak Van Sam (DVC)
• Defender of the Crown
• Dimo's Quest
• Earth Command
• Escape from CyberCity
• Felix the Cat's Giant Electronic Comic Book
• Flintstones-Jetsons Timewarp
• Hotel Mario
• Inca
• International Tennis Open
• Jan Pienkowski - Haunted House
• Kether
• Kingdom - The Far Reaches (DVC)
• Kingdom 2 - Shadoan (DVC)
• L’affiare Morlov
• L’ange et le demon
• Laser Lords
• Lemmings
• Link - The Faces of Evil
• Litil Divil (DVC)
• Lost Eden (DVC)
• Lucky Luke - The Video Game (DVC)
• Merlin's Apprentice
• Micro Machines
• Mutant Rampage - Bodyslam (DVC)
• Mystic Midway - Phantom Express
• P.A.W.S. - Personal Automated Wagging System
• Pac-Panic
• Richard Scarry's Best Neighborhood Disc Ever!
• Richard Scarry's Busiest Neighborhood Disc Ever!
• Riddle of the Maze (Proto)
• Secret Mission
• Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds! (Proto)
• Surf City
• Tetris
• Thunder in Paradise (DVC)
• Voyeur
• Voyeur II (Proto)
• Wacky World of Miniature Golf with Eugene Levy, The
• Zelda's Adventure
• Zelda - The Wand of Gamelon
• Zenith
• Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid

MULTIMEDIA

• Gnomes
• HEX - Head Crash / Escape / Antistatic
• Imagination in Motion - A New Era in 3D Chill Out Video (DVC)
• Live Without Monty Python (DVC)
• Rand McNally's America - United States Atlas
• Solar System
• Time-Life Astrology
• Titanic - An Interactive Exploration

USA

• 3rd Degree
• Clue (DVC)
• Clue - The Mysteries Continue (DVC)
• Jeopardy
• Joker’s Wild, The
• Joker’s Wild Jr, The
• Nobelia (Unl)
• Plunderball (Unl)

[nocturne vortex]

Not seeing the breast exam one

[stiff flare]

@deep roost I pinned that list above!

[deep roost]

Nice one, Rob!

[stiff flare]

And honestly it’s a better list than mine, haha

[valid cairn]

https://tenor.com/view/tiger-dancing-happy-gif-15857023

[terse flare]

@strange crater There is a small nitpick with the list. "The Apprentice" requires not the video decoder but still it should be noted, that Sound effects only work with the extra RAM of the DVCs

I have a certain ambivalence today. Fuzz was able to confirm that their magnetic external drive is no longer a problem. In the spirit of "CD-Friday" this would usually mean that a new core could be made from that. Due to my lack of time (caused by illness) in the last days, there are still some problems with it but in general it seems to be an improvement over the last official release. There is one big regression which seemed to be absent before. Every game which uses the audiomap will eventually just hang and give up. Prone to that is "Frog Feast" and "Zelda's Adventure". Does the general mass here want that core anyway as the next major release?

[modern mirage]

Here is a broad Church, You have the people who know its a very beta core and then you will have people who will report Game A is broken

even when you stated Game A is broken

[terse flare]

CDIC: Add audiomap and related features (partial rewrite)
- Added state management for audiomap usage
- Added coding dependent sector playback delay
- Basic seeking time simulation and constant data rate
- Removed debugging option to disable MODE2 filters (no longer required)
- Added DC bias filter to reduce pops between playbacks
- Fixed wrong sample during underflow of FIFO
- Added two sample delay for ADPCM
  Fixes frequent clicks and pops due to latency of ADPCM calculation
- Buffer management now equal to CDIC emulation of MAME
  Uses internal bank switching to avoid ADPCM overwrite (dirty hack? who knows...)
  Stabilizes intro of "Zelda's Adventure" and "Hotel Mario"

SCC68070: DMA support for transfer to CDIC memory
  required by audiomap driver to shovel in sample data

MCD212: fixed zero weight transparency
  Noticable during some versions of the Philips rotating disc logo intro
  The 3D image is prepared on the second plane and was permanently visible before

Known issues:
- Hotel Mario hangs randomly during score screen
- Frog Feast hangs randomly ingame

[terse flare]

This is very similar to the already existing "CDi_experimental_audiomap.rbf" with small fixes to the timing and some hardening to allow some slack on the linux side during seeks. It should no longer cause issues to have the image on external magnetic drives, assuming that linux is smart enough to precache the following sectors. If this is not done, the PSX core also would have issues.

[modern mirage]

Taking bets how long it is till someone reports Hotel Mario Hangs

[river sphinx]

"Hey guys, I would like to report that Mario got hanged"

[valid onyx]

Thanks for this new version! Will try!

[gleaming echo]

Now this core is released I can finally confirm that the Superman 64 of the CD-i is now playable... so testing team... go play Dark Castle on CD-I

[radiant minnow]

Released? Isn't it in beta stage?

[gleaming echo]

I got to test the latest version yesterday as Slamy mentioned but had to keep my mouth shut about it, I just mean now the latest beta is public 🙂

[stiff flare]

pins updated

[gleaming echo]

Cheers Robby

You can remove the external storage part as well

[stiff flare]

done!

[gleaming echo]

Awesome now like I say go play Dark Castle

[rugged panther]

Hotel Mario Hangs

[stiff flare]

Yeah it’s pretty good

[rugged panther]

Shit did I just invent new slang

Yeah that new Chapelle Roan album really hangs!

[stiff flare]

You did

[rugged panther]

Sweet

[stiff flare]

That’s so hanging

[rugged panther]

This TV show hangs so hard

[merry oyster]

At least I have my beloved CD-i core to test while I wait for my extra ram! Praise be!

[strange crater]

That was how it was on the original list. I’ll probably tweak it to follow the CD-i collection sorting categories I put together, then create a “Top Software” pack based on it in DVC and Non-DVC formats.

[merry oyster]

Did Secret Mission not work before? It's working now, and I don't remember it working previously. Seems pretty good so far!

[gleaming echo]

Secret Mission is a new addition to the running game library of the core

[merry oyster]

I have a Secret Mission for you @viral pine . New CD-i core video covering Secret Mission!

[fair obsidian]

Do we use bin cue or is chd also working guys?

[terse flare]

The cd drive parts are a copy of the PSX core. Use CHD if you like

[fair obsidian]

also,games go in what dir?

[terse flare]

/media/fat/games/CD-i

[fair obsidian]

ok,thx

i have 2 real cdi's,nice we have it now on MISTer

[terse flare]

lol. Please don't expect too much compatibility 😄

[fair obsidian]

yeah,its a begin

[terse flare]

Please consider reading the pinned message in this thread. You have to manually alter some files on your MiSTer to make it work.

[fair obsidian]

its amazing,75% of my gaming room i can play now on MISTer,that is awesome

ok,thx for the info

[viral pine]

Haha next week. I’m off the clock

[valid cairn]

CD...

[radiant minnow]

Alt-Tabbing between Discord and the command console, huh? 😄

[valid cairn]

https://tenor.com/view/lord-of-the-rings-aye-gimli-gif-15778685

[valid cairn]

cd /i

[radiant minnow]

Good try... it was C:\pr0n> CD..for sure 😄

[terse flare]

Oh what is in that folder? Hot pictures of interactive media players from the local region?

[radiant minnow]

He ain't tellin. We caught him going out of the dir already... 😄

[gleaming echo]

It was clearly boards and decapped chips from all the tech forums he was on saying Send Nudes 🙂

[terse flare]

Compared to other homebrew development platforms, the CD-i is not a nice one. The SDK used today is still the original one, it seems. Especially on Linux it's really bad. I need to use wine to execute the compiler and linker, then switch over to dosbox to execute a MS-DOS application to master a disc which is not CUE/BIN but instead a weird CDI/TOC thing which then needs to be converted again using a win32 application that requires to use the mouse and has totally no batch mode for shell scripts to convert that to CUE/BIN to finally get that into MAME or the MiSTer.

I need to get my toes now wet in writing applications for the CD-i operating system. As Frog Feast is open source and one of the hanging applications, I thought this is the best approach to create something that is failing without any input that I can run for hours to ensure that the bug is gone.

[spring gate]

How development been going on general Slamy? Feeling good about things?

[terse flare]

It is rather scary and overwhelming. Some time I don't even fully understand what I'm working on.

I had hopes high to be able to reconstruct the rather unknown hardware components based on reverse engineering efforts resulting into software emulation. The scary part is that emulation can get away with processing kilobytes of data in zero time. This is performed in MAME and the source code of cdiemu - which I now have access too - is very similar.

Due to illness and Factorio progress was not great this week.... the factory MUST GROW

[sinful hornet]

Factorio

When someone has the option between crack and making a cdi core, the choice is understandable

[terse flare]

I also have to admit that both CD-i players in my possession are not suitable for this task. I wasn't aware that Mono-I and Mono-II variants exist of the model 210. I actually got the wrong one. This also means that right now I don't have access to a physical CDIC to measure something. Maybe getting rid of the operating system and directly interface with it to check the registers for their actual behavior. At first I thought it might not be required as there is a very limited amount of registers and the operating system always does the same. It's actually more like a digital shovel for data streams with a DSP attached for some ADPCM calculations.

[terse flare]

Actually FPGA development is like cocaine. Factorio is called Cracktorio for a reason. But sometimes I think the game is more like anesthetics as it puts you into a zen like state. You forget to drink, eat and sleep. And you dream of belts of iron and copper.

@spring gate To answer your question conclusive, the current development efforts are going into diagnosis of the audiomap hangup problem.

[spring gate]

Got you. 🙂

What model(s) of CDi player don't you have that could help with your development? Maybe there is someone here who could donate you one.

[terse flare]

These would be CDI 210/00 or CDI 220/20. There should be a label on the back. If the label doesn't exist, the PCB has it etched on the side. The CDI210 in general is available with all sorts of PCBs. Philips really wanted to change the hardware. It might have been a mistake to go with Mono I. I was inspired to do that back then as MAME uses this hardware as well. Changing that right now would be a headache I like to avoid.

[spring gate]

Cool, those two models seem pretty common and on the cheaper side as well. Hopefully someone has one going spare or is being sold cheap

[dawn iris]

The hardware revisions don’t brake compatibility iirc. So it seems just to get the other hardware to get better findings easier?

[spring gate]

@terse flare , something to be aware of, it has been spotted in other CD cores that certain games don't work properly in CHD format due to an issue with indexing. It is being discussed here, and Zak flagged a couple of CDi titles that likely will have issues in CHD format, although they aren't games

#1046941029296779344 message

[terse flare]

This might be a case of two Germans talking each other using English which probably is the best random number generator around. The hardware revisions are not compatible with each other. cdifan had created a collection of some chipsets here https://github.com/cdifan/cdichips. The only thing all models have in common seems to be the SCC68070.

[terse flare]

I do not fully understand the issue. Is this a problem with CHD in general? Or the way CHD is parsed in MiSTer Main? Either way I think that this is something that has to be considered later on as this is not related to the core. The FPGA parts don't know anything about CHD. If CHD is the problem I assume that this particular image is not equal when converted back to CUE/BIN

[lunar nexus]

Ah, so that's why when I updated my mister yesterday, I'm getting stuttering with chds? Never have before. It's as if it can't pull the data out of it quick enough.

[spring gate]

It seems to be only specific titles that have issues when converted to CHD

[lunar nexus]

Ah, best check the other channels.

[dawn iris]

I mean that the cdi disks would run on any hardware revision, the player revisions don’t brake the compatibility. I am not sure if there are small errors, that the compatibility is not 100% ?

[terse flare]

Yes, CD-i software should run on any model. It is even part of the standard that all PAL and NTSC models must support the other region as well. This is unheard-of on other platforms. I've maybe had a misunderstanding. "get the other hardware" could mean two opposite things. 1) Change the core to support other hardware or 2) Get another physical hardware for diagnosis.
This is what I hate about language. It can have multiple meanings.

Today might be a good day for MAME and MiSTer. I think I've resolved one bug in MAME and one in the core. I'm not 100% sure but maybe I should put that in the core. Hotel Mario and my custom RibbitRibbit application does no longer hang.

Everyone should have access to unlimited amount of frogs. This is a butchered version of the Nobelia source code with the sound engine of Frog Feast. It is my Frankensteins monster to torture the CDIC driver.

The current core will hang randomly when executing this. The screen just stays black but the "ribbit" sound effect of frog feast is repeated permanently. The frequency of the sfx playing is constantly changing to simulate someone playing frog feast.

[dawn iris]

Yes, there was a misunderstanding. The tenor was wich other players you need to do better diagnostic. As Long all appliances and games run, I would do the research on hardware that could be tweaked easy. @terse flare

[terse flare]

SLAVE: add support for software reset
   - When quitting games like Tetris, a system
     reset is performed as expected.
CDIC: Add "inactive audiomap" flag
   - Toggle audiomap flag with every read when
     the audiomap is not active
This should fix random hangups after the audiomap
was stopped with 0xff decoding.

Known issues:
- Zelda's Adventure still has sound hiccups

[spring gate]

Great work Slamy, even fixing Mame bugs now!

CDIC working better now?

[terse flare]

I first got into contact with the maintainer to discuss the change. If they respond on that I'll look into how I can integrate that change in mainline. It should fix Hotel Mario hanging on MAME as I had the same issues as well.

[terse flare]

Yes. This is why it's helpful to have one software emulator by my side that I can alter. I've simulated the core behavior in MAME and was able to replicate core issues in it. This is when I knew what was still missing.
The problem might be gone now or it might be very rare. In German we say that this core is "knitted with a hot needle". I'm not sure if things improve in the long run but at least during my local plays of Hotel Mario I was unable to hang it.

[spring gate]

Great work! That's a big dragon slayed!

What is next on the hit list now CDIC is behaving? CD audio?

[terse flare]

You are surely insatiable.🤣 There might be still issues with the CDIC as Zelda's Adventure is stuck on the wrong ADPCM buffer. Or at least this is what it sounds like. I was thinking about CD audio at first but there are other things that might be more interesting in the whole project scope.
Right now the story driven games are probably not yet completed. And that is difficult because the games could not be saved. It might make sense to invest some time in getting the NvRAM onto the sd card.

[merry oyster]

Awesome work again Slamy!

[stiff flare]

Welcome to the CD- jam-y, brought to you by Slamy!

[valid cairn]

Hell yeah!! Exciting!!

[copper ridge]

What are the steps to properly load a CHD image on the core? I was able to load one Zelda game but nothing else afterwards

[stiff flare]

I restarted the core every time I loaded a new game and that worked for me.

[copper ridge]

Thanks @stiff flare ! Very helpful, as usual!

[terse flare]

Restarting the core should not be necessary any more... hmm... this means that there are still reset issues somewhere...

[copper ridge]

Or maybe I’m doing something wrong! Just experimenting the core (great job so far!!!)

The pinned core is the latest version, right?

[stiff flare]

I just load games via MGL which relaunches the core. Didn’t do it out of any need from bugs.

[stiff flare]

I’ll double check

Nope, good call, thank you. Updating now.

@copper ridge fixed, thanks again

[copper ridge]

Will update the core here and I will report back! Thanks!

[gleaming echo]

Thank you for new core Slamy will test it now

[valid onyx]

I love seeing this core getting better so fast. With this newest version, I could now play battleship for a bit! First time I could get ingame, was not the case on the build from the 15th. ! I did notice that after a while, the sound stopped and shortly after, the game hang, but: progress! Another one playable!

[gleaming echo]

Frog Feast no longer hangs but when the timer hits 0 it reset the core

Other than the aforementioned red bars ok the startup Hotel Mario appears to be flawless on stage 9 and continued a few times and no crashes/hangs

[wintry dust]

it won't work with bin/cue or CHD now. it requires changes to the cue parser and a way to send that data to the core. psx never bothered with that data at all. the only core that does is saturn.

and it is literally 2 cds out of the entire library

I also think it would be much more annoying to support, the way the cdrom stuff works in this core (and psx) is way different than saturn. Main is more like a cdrom controller for saturn, it gets raw commands like 'seek to track' etc. for PSX/cdi I think you'd have to start sending over subchannel data

[gleaming echo]

Zelda's Adventure no longer hangs so all hangs I noticed are fixed

[spring gate]

Is this the same data that CD+G utilises? Mega CD core fine if Saturn is?

[wintry dust]

subchannel data yes

only core that supports it in both the actual core and main is megacd

while the index is actually part of subchannel data, saturn doesn't use it that way

[gray badge]

running through some tests for poops and smiles. it's wild that stuff just...works...now

[wintry dust]

although I think the data headers main sends back to the core are more or less the Q channel

[spring gate]

Nice one, are you still updating the sheet? Be good to see how things are looking now with retesting. Has been awhile since there was a big testing push

[spring gate]

Would it be feasible to add this in to PSX and here so it is supported?

[gray badge]

🫡

[wintry dust]

no idea, the core has to know what to do with it

[spring gate]

I wonder if Robert ever looked at supporting it in PSX

[wintry dust]

main doesn't even generate Q-subcode data for psx, so it is dealing with that internally

[spring gate]

Wait a sec, so if Saturn supports this then why are certain CHDs not working on that core if that is the reason, or am I getting confused?

[wintry dust]

ok, this is semi-confusing

cdrom sub-indexes are NOT part of the TOC, they are embedded in the Q-channel timing data

all the redump style images extract the index from the Q-channel and make it part of the CUE

chd doesn't use these parts of the CUE, so the data isn't in a CHD in any form

now if you end up with a bin/cue/sub, the Q-channel is also in the .sub, since it is subchannel data

if you make a chd from that, it WILL be in the chd, but as subchannel data.

but having it as raw sub data means you have to handle it differently, I'd have to see how saturn deals with seeks to indices, but it would be annoying either way

in a perfect world chdman would just use the CUE index data to put metadata tags in the chd, but mamedev won't do it

[spring gate]

Ah, so it is to do with redump format not supporting sub data, which is why they can't do CD+G

[gray badge]

Core feels a bit more finicky. Having to hard restart it via the core menu more than i remember

[wintry dust]

annoyingly you can't add metadata to a compressed chd. if you could I could just write something that embeded mister specific metatags in an existing chd and get index support that way.

[viral pine]

The CD-i thumbnail shenanigans continue

[gray badge]

i suck at betting on horses

[stiff flare]

lol what’s that goblin thing in the middle

[river sphinx]

That's Luigi! Show some respect!

[viral pine]

It’s a lady. I know you’ve never seen one

[stiff flare]

lolol

[hoary cliff]

Is dual ram required for this core? (Its in transit) but i put the most recent core and thr proper boot0 and boot1 roms in the game folder, but when i try to load a game (redump), it just kicks back to the cdi bios screen. Any ideas?

[spring gate]

Dual ram not needed for CDi. Although as an aside, what is the ram requirement? 32MB stick fine, right?

You need a bespoke Main to run the core, check the pins for how to add a line to your .ini file and a link to download it

[merry oyster]

I thought the modification to the ini file was all that was needed now?

[south urchin]

yeah, custom main and the ini update to use it just for the CD-i core

[radiant minnow]

In spanish we say: "cogido con pinzas" o "pinchado con alfileres", which are very similar concepts 😄

[valid onyx]

@terse flare with your recent improvements to the core, are you still looking for the specific revisions of the hardware? I can check next wednesday if my dad's old CD-i player is of the type you're looking for

[crimson helm]

@terse flare Thank you so much for your work, you are a legend, as a novice I wonder if it is possible to make the CD-i core support the Digital Video Card, DVC!! thank you so much for everything !!

[spring gate]

This has been asked many times before and the short answer is: maybe, wait until the core is fully complete and it may be possible. However it is a complex bit of kit that isn't well documented, and good way to consider asking about it is like asking if 32x is possible when someone is part way through making a Mega Drive core.

[stiff flare]

Complex bit of kitrinx?

Oh wait this isn’t the Jaguar chat

Sorry

[spring gate]

I am sure she is giddy at the mere possibility of working on CDi DVC after Jaguar

[strange zephyr]

I don't know if there is enough hate for that

Maybe the server should gaslight her into thinking that it is "atari 3do"... could that work?

[spring gate]

I think Casio Loopy is the system she hates the most, so I fully expect her to take that on one day

[ionic island]

The Barbie doll of consoles

[spring gate]

So primed for a billion dollar comeback?

[terse flare]

This small statement caught my eye. Does it always happen? Or was this a random event?

[terse flare]

It might still be relevant. The interaction for Audio CDs is not yet known. There is not a single emulator out there which has reconstructed the correct behavior of that. They all support audio tracks for interactive discs though but that is actually handled differently in the ROM. There is no haste involved right now. Next question would also be, where you live. Shipping this thing around might not be cheap.

[terse flare]

When I started this, I assumed people were giggling for the Zelda games and Hotel Mario. But no, they want Thunder in Paradise and the joy of sex.

[stiff flare]

why not both dot gif

Also to be crystal clear, I am still giggling for Zelda and Hotel Mario

[gleaming echo]

I only tried it once as I was going through the list of games I had that I knew were hanging

[valid onyx]

Netherlands, so not too far away 🙂 I'll have a look next Wednesday, first need to figure out if it's the correct model. I just know mine isn't, as that's a toploader and both models you were looking for, werent.

[valid cairn]

I want to do Japanese karaoke 🎤 😫

[tired beacon]

One of the first games my friends and I talked about playing was Thunder in Paradise.

[gleaming echo]

@viral pine is your latest captures for the CD-i core done because if not you should add Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid xD

[viral pine]

lol its in there

[gleaming echo]

Awesome 🙂

[viral pine]

and its fucking WEIRD

[gleaming echo]

Tell me about it, I tried it about an hour ago

[crimson helm]

@terse flare Thanks for the reply.

[stiff flare]

Pins updated. Please let me know if I need to add something. Thank you.

[sly sedge]

I've got something you can add...

[stiff flare]

YEAH WHAT

[noble talon]

finally got the core working tonight on my MiSTer, played a bunch of zelda and tetris. Also loaded up Dark Castle, that was truly infuriating but I got a good laugh from it. Amazing work on the core so far, can't wait to see how development goes

[gleaming echo]

Welcome to the CD-i testing party

[amber trench]

I downloaded the latest core, CDi_20241117.rbf, the experinebtal MiSTer file, the 2 bios files and renamed everything. The 2 bios went into the games CD-i folder, Mister on the root and the core into consoles folder. Added the 2 lines to every ini file.

But still cant get it to wirk. The core boots, I select a cue file and hit the play button. short black screen and back to the core screen.

Any hinds what I did wrong?

[spring gate]

Sounds like you aren't loading the bespoke Main, I would double check the line in your .ini file is pointing to the right file and the naming is exactly right. Also a bit confused you said "every ini file"

[amber trench]

I will check right away.
You maybe right, cause when I load the core I get a small pop up in the upper left "main: unknown option",

I got a multisync CRT hooked up to the mister. So my main ini is for 15khz. I got one for 640x480, one for direct video as well and one for 1080p.

[shy fossil]

did you try to reset the core after choosing your iso ?

[amber trench]

I get a turquoise screen doing this

[spring gate]

It sounds like if you are getting that pop up then whatever main you are on doesn't have the extra lines pointing to the right file, so it isn't finding it

[amber trench]

[CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi

added this line to every ini and the MiSTer_CDi file is right under my normal Mister file

[olive kiln]

#1103404843512631357 message you have this file named MiSTer_CDi ?

[amber trench]

yes

[amber trench]

is that wrong?

[olive kiln]

no , just looking for a reason why it doesn't work for you

[spring gate]

Double check the file extension maybe

Also be sure you are checking with a game that is known to run

[shy fossil]

one guy on my discord had this problem but resetting the core solve the issue

[gleaming echo]

You got the main from the pins in this channel I assume

[amber trench]

yes

[gleaming echo]

Ran update_all recently or using a recent unstable main?

[amber trench]

just 2h ago, yes.#

[gleaming echo]

As there was something added to a recent main that allows multiple instances of the main binary to be added to the ini files

What game are you trying to run out of curiosity

[amber trench]

hotel mario, zelda, thunder in paradise, playboy massage, some korean one hoping for adult contet.

So just the good stuff ^^

[young grotto]

i'd verify your main version by looking in the OSD

[amber trench]

Yes I will do this.

[spring gate]

Yeah, if you are getting that main not found message then your ini isn't pointing to the right file. I would open up your ftp client and double check the exact name of the file on your card incase it has a wrong file extension, and confirm it is in the same folder as your regular Main

[young grotto]

either that or your current mister main doesn't even support alternate mains in the ini

[amber trench]

You gyus were cooking. My main mister file was old as f.... this was the problem. Thank you all

[gleaming echo]

Glad we could help you 🙂

[shy fossil]

[CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi

Must be added at the bottom of the ini file.
whatever the latest main Mister you have installed/upated
the entry in block [CD-i] should override it and load the dedicated Main for Cd-i core
of course MiSTer_CDi needs to be present in root directory

[amber trench]

Games with video cards are not supported yet?

[valid onyx]

indeed

[shy fossil]

mpeg decoder ? nope
you'll have a "hardware not supported error"

[gleaming echo]

Not supported yet, maybe in the future or maybe not at all

It all depends on how much space is left in the FPGA by the time the core is fully feature complete

[hoary cliff]

Alright im lost, So ive added the "[CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi to the mister.ini file, The .rbf file is named "MiSTer_CDi" in the console folder, Im using re-dump images (they are un-zipped) in the games/CD-i folder, Put both boot.roms in the games folder, but all i can get the CDi core is boot to the bios screen. When i load a game file, and hit the start in bios, it just goes teal, and then boots back to bios. Any ideas?

[gray badge]

This is what you want to name MiSTer_CDI (and it should live in media/fat/ )#1103404843512631357 message

[hoary cliff]

Oh you put the core in the root of the drive?

[gray badge]

that's an updated version of the Mister OS that will allow CDI games to boot. Adding that bit to your mister ini means that it will only load that custom OS when the CDI core is loaded. Otherwise it will just load the normal mister main

No no, that's not the core

You need two files. This file goes in your _Consoles folder (you don't need to rename it) #1103404843512631357 message

This file goes in your media/fat directory and gets renamed to MiSter_CDi (there is no file extension - just MiSTer_CDi) #1103404843512631357 message

[hoary cliff]

Got it. Just added it to my /fat and give it a test

[gray badge]

yup. it's a little confusing but thats kind of the nature of beta cores ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[hoary cliff]

Works fine now. Thanks! Any procedure to do when it gets released to update_all? Do i just remove that MiSTer_CDi file and remove it from the mister.ini?

[gray badge]

nope, update all won't touch that file

and it only gets loaded when you load the CDI core

otherwise it's using whatever the most recent main os file is

[hoary cliff]

Got it!

[spring gate]

When the core eventually gets released and the changes needed for CDi are merged into the official MiSTer Main, we will all want to delete the two lines from the .ini files and delete the bespoke CDi Main file, but we are awhile away from that yet.

[hoary cliff]

Thanks @spring gate

[sinful hornet]

Ok I'll admit it. I only just now learned The Apprentice is not a cdi version of the show The Apprentice 😆

[spring gate]

Alas, Donald Trump doesn't appear to have a CDi "game"

Although if he did I wouldn't be surprised

[strange crater]

It does look like there was a Video CD release of Home Alone 2, if you really want to go down that route lol

[spring gate]

Hah, I didn't think about that, so yeah - Trump will indeed be possible on the CDi core if one day it gets DVC support

[strange crater]

I wonder how many presidents have been depicted on CD-i? There's an interesting thought experiment for you.

I believe there's footage of Kennedy in Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, right?

[spring gate]

I imagine a lot are in these encyclopedia discs

[strange crater]

You know, it's funny. I've owned a copy of Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia since I first got my CD-i - never had a good reason to boot it up until now.

[spring gate]

To see if Trump has an entry?

[strange crater]

Any president. I'd be curious to see what's included.

If I was to ask the question, "How many presidents appeared on the CD-i", what would the answer be?

Some of the late-release industrial software could even theoretically depict Bush or Obama, though I don't think I have anything later than his term as president.

[spring gate]

As an aside, the UK version of The Apprentice was hosted by Sir Alan Sugar, who was the founder of Amstrad and also behind the Spectrum. So we have a lot of cores for his computers on MiSTer

[strange crater]

But yeah - every release of Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia comes with a number of the same video clips. I knew this one of JFK was included from the Sega CD release:

[stray otter]

Greetings, all. First post on this Discord! Anyway, I'm a bit perplexed as I seem to be doing everything right, yet having no luck. I have: 1. MiSTer_CDi (file dated 10 Oct 24) in media/fat; 2. CDi_20241117.rbf in _Console; 3. The text "[CD-i] main=MiSTer_CDi" in my MiSTer.ini file; 4. The two boot files specified on Github in media/fat/games/CD-i and under the specified names (boot0.rom, boot1.rom). Yet attempting to start the core under these conditions just hangs me on a black (no signal) screen with the green "user" lamp on my unit pulsing. Any ideas?

Correction: The MiSTer_CDi I'm using is the one Slamy posted here on 8 Oct 24, not 10 Oct 24.

[gray badge]

can you post a screenshot of your mister.ini? just the section with the [CD-i] part

[stray otter]

Certainly.

[gray badge]

and that's the name of the file exactly (case included)?

[stray otter]

Believe so.

Also, current state of other relevant directories:

And if it helps, I can boot the core to the CD-i menu successfully under my main MiSTer file. I just can't load games at that point, obviously.

[merry oyster]

Are you moving the cursor within the bios to the play button, and then selecting it? Unlike other cores, CD-i does not auto boot a game once you load it.

You also need to press the correct button on the controller for it to work as well, otherwise it'll boot into something like a blue screen.

[stray otter]

Well, I can do that, but the game itself still won't load without MiSTer_CDi and the issue I'm having is booting the core with it.

[merry oyster]

Ah, I didn't rename mine. Never tried it that way myself.

[glacial herald]

What's the date on your MiSTer file in /media/fat (e.g. MiSTer main)?

[stray otter]

12 Sep 24.

[odd trout]

are you 100% sure you have the correct BIOS files according to https://github.com/Slamy/CDi_MiSTer?tab=readme-ov-file#expected-checksums-of-roms

[stray otter]

Well, I had assumed the ones I downloaded were correct/good because the core will boot to the CD-i menu using my regular MiSTer main. But I can try resourcing and replacing them.

[odd trout]

Double check your files against the MD5 file hashes for each as provided in that link

[stray otter]

Will do. Thanks.

[glacial herald]

Just did a first time setup myself and working great

[gray badge]

file size is also a tell. someone had a bios that was way too big

also, sorry for disappearing. got pulled into something

[stray otter]

No problem. Redownloaded both the driver files specified on Github, renamed them as specified, verified the checksums of both, and replaced them in /games/CD-i. No change, alas.

[gray badge]

hrm, are you using direct video or anything?

[glacial herald]

Do you need all of that Amiga stuff at the bottom of the .ini? It might be old if it came like that.
here is the default .ini in case if you want to try that - just need to add the [CD-i] main=MiSTer_CDi to the bottom again
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/blob/master/MiSTer.ini

you can make a backup of your current one if it doesn't help

[stray otter]

Well, it's needed to run the Amiga game loader/frontend I use, but I'll remove it for testing purposes real quick.

[glacial herald]

you can just duplicate and rename it MiSTer_AMG.ini

[gray badge]

Thats the amiga vision stuff. I have it in mine

[glacial herald]

you can have 4 .ini files to switch between

also you can try deleting your /config/CD-i.cfg file and the MiSTer when gen a new one. I've had to do that with other cores

[stray otter]

Tried it without the Amiga Vision instruction block. No change.

[glacial herald]

definitely give the default .ini a try

[stray otter]

That's the only custom text other than the CD-i stuff my .ini. It's otherwise quite stock and mainly managed through the OSD utility.

[gray badge]

Let's try this: rename MiSTer to MiSTer_old and Mister_CDI to just MiSTer, reboot and then try to load the core again

oh, delete the line from the ini as well

this cuts out the main swap and just uses the proper main

[stray otter]

Definitely willing to try that just experimentally, although I'm a little learing of using a non-standard file for all my cores generally.

[gray badge]

oh totally

I just want to see if it loads at all

becaus that setup should 100% work

and then we can work backward from there

[stray otter]

Hmm. Device won't boot at all now.

Very odd.

[gray badge]

I wonder if the main is corrupt. just delete it, rename MiSTer_Old back to MiSTer, and redownload the cdi main

rename it to MiSTer_CDi

add the stuff back to the ini

the fact it wouldn't boot with the custom main leads me to believe something gunked up the works there

[wintry dust]

wait, how did you transfer that file to the mister?

did someone get filezilla'd again?

or did you download it directly from github

[stray otter]

Hmm? Yes, I did indeed use Filezilla. Downloaded it directly from here in the first place.

[gray badge]

(don't tell Zakk that I use Filezilla)

[stray otter]

From Slamy's post on 8 Oct.

[wintry dust]

I bet it transfered it as ascii

someone who knows where that setting is can tell you what to change. have to change it from 'AUTO' to 'BINARY'

[olive kiln]

How to change FileZilla ftp program to binary transfer

Step 1: Open your Filezilla ftp program.

Step 2: Select “Edit” and click “Settings“ from the drop Box.

Step 3: In the “Select page:” box, under “Transfers“, click “File Types“.

Step 4: In the “Default transfer type” section, select the “Binary” radio button.

Step 5: Click OK.

Step 6: Now when you connect to your server with ftp, files will be treated as Binary files. This should prevent the files from becoming corrupted.

by the way, I recommend WinSCP

[wintry dust]

the 70s continue to haunt us

[stray otter]

Well I'll be damned. Gee, it sure was boring around here!

Thanks, all.

[gray badge]

by god, filezilla-ing is real

https://tenor.com/u2TK.gif

[sinful hornet]

I will Filezilla until the mister cops arrest me

I just like using good software

[merry oyster]

FileZilla for life for this Mac user!

[glacial herald]

Much like a firearm, it's recommended to take a basic training course with Filezilla, or you will shoot yourself in the foot

[copper ridge]

Someone please kill FileZilla with fire

[merry oyster]

It cannot be defeated. One could call it...GodZilla.

[gray badge]

You would cheat on Transmit?

Hand in your badge and gun. You’re done here

[south urchin]

can use sftp with filezilla, its only an issue for plain FTP
I'd still go with winscp tho, edit inis directly 🙂

[glacial herald]

putting the core through it's paces and it works so well already - amazing work Slamy
never thought I would have a legit feeling CD-i experience at my fingertips
such a fun and weird library to explore

[stiff flare]

[sly sedge]

It's definitely weird...

[stray plank]

I've been using FileZilla with my MiSTer for almost five years without any problems

[wintry dust]

it just has a really stupid default setting

[stray plank]

True

[wintry dust]

it's also unfortunate that the issue happens 100% of the time when someone transfers Main, which is like the one catastrophic thing you can do

[spring gate]

If you switch it to binary then it works fine, I have used it in my Mac for years with no problem. Except I can't do the swapping of Main by renaming the current one and copying a new one over. That bricks the MiSTer until I remove the SD card and do it again manually

[wintry dust]

I cannot count the number of times I've waded in to some debugging session here that has been going on for a long time and ask 'did you use filezilla' and it turning out to be the problem

tons of people get caught by it because you have to know it is an issue to even think to change that setting

[gray badge]

It's the "what is your power adapter rated for" catch all. When you're on the side having trouble, you cannot imagine that being part of the equation, but it is a lot of the time. I wouldn't have guessed that filezilla was the issue because Ive used it so much...but it can be

[river sphinx]

This is why I just manually download and move the files; it cuts out any middle man shenanigans.

[gray badge]

I transpose the code by hand

[lunar nexus]

Bloody filezilla, that would explain how many times I've had to do a reinstall...thanks for that tip!! 🙂

[stray plank]

That is odd, I never had trouble with that, maybe it is a difference of the Mac version

[tacit garden]

Yeah, never had an issue with filezilla personally, but I guess EMMV.

[hardy hedge]

I have a friend who hates this, too, but I use it all the time. lol

'cos I'm almost always compiling something from within WSL2 already, and it's just quick for me to do something like this...

sshpass -p '1' scp area51t.rom root@192.168.0.129:/media/fat/games/Jaguar

Oh no! Now everyone will know my MiSTer password. Whatever will I do?

And no, CoJag games don't work yet, and probably never will. lol

Unless somebody can help debug TG68K or another core with decent 020 support.

@terse flare How similar is your 070 implementation to 020? Like, do you think it would run most 020 instructions?

[terse flare]

The 68070 is just a 68000 with 68010 exception frames and internal peripherals and MMU and DMA and some missing transistors which makes the whole thing slower because they need to be replaced with microcode.

[hardy hedge]

Oww. lol

Does it still use a 16-bit data bus?

[terse flare]

Yes, it is trash

[hardy hedge]

lol

Ok, thanks though.

I know TG68K supposedly had quite a lot of 020 stuff added, but I don't know exactly what is missing.

I tried to get it to run some Area51 (CoJag) code on MiSTer.

[terse flare]

I think everything should be there. How would the AGA Amiga run on the MiSTer if something is missing?

[hardy hedge]

Also tried with fx68k, but it of course crashed when it got to the first 020-specific stuff.

Like anything with the weird offset in the instruction.

Yes, that's what I thought, too.

Even though it has the 16-bit bus, it's probably best if I stick with TG68K for these tests, as it probably supports almost all 020 instructions?

But...

It's in VHDL.

Which means I can't just test it on the sim, and it currently takes 17-19 minutes for me to recompile the Jag core on Quartus. 😦

[terse flare]

That was a bummer at first. I've converted it over to Verilog using ghdl, so I can still use my Verilator.

[hardy hedge]

('cos Verilator no supporty VHDL.)

Sorry, what?

TG68K?

Somebody did link to your github for that the other day.

[terse flare]

Yes, it works like a charm

[hardy hedge]

But I didn't realize you'd translated to Verilog. 😮

Dayum.

Is that on your git repo already?

[terse flare]

Since June, yes

[hardy hedge]

Man, I didn't know. lol

This is awesome.

I only saw this one...

https://github.com/Slamy/TG68K.C

[terse flare]

I also didn't knew that at first and tried some tools like vhdl2sv. They try to keep the code intact but they failed.
The repo you have linked now is just the fork of the official repo

https://github.com/Slamy/CDi_MiSTer/blob/main/scripts/convert_tg68k.sh

[hardy hedge]

Ohhh, that's why I didn't see it.

[terse flare]

The resulting code produces some Warnings. Therefore at the beginning, I kill the linter a bit. But the end result is working for me since I started this core.

[hardy hedge]

I have X-HDL, which does an OK-ish job of translation, but often requires a fair bit of editing.

Could you possibly share a precompiled version of the TG68K Verilog?

[terse flare]

It's actually also on the repo.

[hardy hedge]

Ahh.

It's just, if I tried to run the script etc. under WSL2, I just know I'd have problems for days. lol

[terse flare]

This is the export. I've moved it over to the sim2 folder which is my Verilator workbench.
https://github.com/Slamy/CDi_MiSTer/blob/main/sim2/tg68kdotc_verilog_wrapper.v
I always try to keep it usable for the Main branch of this project. It should always work.

[hardy hedge]

Nice.

Can it still be forced to 020 mode easily?

[terse flare]

You can simulate a CD-i with a virtual SCART monitor and audio recording.

[hardy hedge]

oic

input [1:0] cpu,

[terse flare]

Oh... oh.... no

[hardy hedge]

Oww. lol

[terse flare]

Aah.. Wait...
There is one file, which is the wrapper. The CPU type is fixed there. Do you want me to export it with type "11"?
Hmm... it also says that only parts of 68020 are supported

[hardy hedge]

entity TG68K is
   generic(
      CPU           : std_logic_vector(1 downto 0):="01"  -- 00->68000  01->68010  11->68020

This does look like the "latest" version used by Minimig, so supposedly supports quite a lot of the 020 stuff.

[terse flare]

I can build it for you, but I think I should revert all my CD-i hacks first so it is indeed a 68020.

[hardy hedge]

And you have the "cpu" input there, so in theory it would still have the logic for that after translation, no?

That would be amazing, thank you.

I have (or had) the Jag core under Verilator / ImGui sim a while back.

But can't remember for the life of me, whether it actually booted.

I tried it a few days ago, and it didn't boot, but I'll get it working again.

This was with fx68k.

The 020 thing would only be for the attempt to get CoJag games running on the Jag core, but it's worth a try.

[terse flare]

I've created a branch on my tg68k fork with the state I'm now building for you

Please keep in mind that ghdl is performing synthesis. The result is no longer human readable. But it works still fine in gtkwave. I don't know which tools you are using together with Verilator.

[indigo tartan]

Sorry for my noob question but ... tg68k doesn't have mmu ... and 68070 have one. Do you think to write one ?

[hardy hedge]

Thanks. 😉

I'm just using pretty much Verilator with a basic C template, to display stuff in ImGui.

[terse flare]

Originally, when I started all that I assumed I have to. But it turns out that the MMU is not used by OS9. In general most of the features of the 68070 are not touched. The CD-i only uses the first timer as system clock, the DMA for CDIC blast processing and the UART to communicate with the serial port on the back side.

[hardy hedge]

A bit like that, but I need to get the Jag version running again.

I will give ghdl a try later. I didn't realize it was that good at doing a "direct" translation to synopsis stuffs.

[terse flare]

Whoah. You are more graphic oriented than I am. I just export some PNGs from the video image.

[hardy hedge]

I only started using Verilator, after reading that Torlus (Greg) used it, to help debug his initial Jag core.

And he did have BMP support in that, IIRC.

But it was painful, having to wait a long time to see any output at all.

I always wanted to have more of a debugger look, as it could then display the values in the same places on the screen.

And have "realtime" video output.

Verilator is apparently very fast, even when compared to commercial sims.

Having said that, when I was trying to help debug an old (incomplete) PS1 core, it was taking about 38 minutes to reach the PS1 logo. lol

The Imgui thing has been invaluable in getting the PVR2 stuff this far. As you know, the turnaround time for running Verilator itself is often super fast.

vs 17-19 minutes it currently takes Quartus to compile the Jag core + SignalTap for me.

[terse flare]

Yeah, you can slow down and make it faster by only tracing certain signals. It takes also minutes for the CD-i core to reach the system menu. And it took 40 minutes until mario left the first elevator in hotel mario. But well, we can keep the computer simulating while doing other things.

[hardy hedge]

On a newer version of the 3DO sim code, I managed to get Opera (RetroArch version) running alongside the Verilog model.

So I could then watch for a mismatch between the emulated CPU (Zap) and the core, etc.

But the author of the Zap CPU core got busy with other stuff, so we didn't get it too much further.

The furthest 3DO got, is booting up the title screen of certain small demos.

[terse flare]

I didn't realize there is a 3DO core in the making.