#Philips CD-i

1 messages · Page 9 of 1

unreal sparrow
valid cairn
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ABCD-iFGHEJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

south urchin
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Phillips lost a lot of potential customers with their public feud with sesame street

spring gate
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That's interesting Mame is looking at Photo CDs, how are they supporting them? Via the CDi emulator? Funny they have picked the most complex format of Photo CDs to check first

terse flare
strange crater
stiff flare
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OH SHIT I PLAYED IT

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omg I had a friend who had that and we played it as kids

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I didn’t know that was CD-I lol

valid cairn
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A big trackball!

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Cool!

sly sedge
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A literal big trackball, as opposed to just a big trackball enclosure.

Atari-5200-Trak-Ball-Controller.webp
valid cairn
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It's a cool trackball

terse flare
# valid cairn It's a cool trackball

Sometimes I wish the trackball technology has kept up with the mouse. We have optical trackballs today but the DPI is rather limited. Especially with finger trackballs while the thumb trackball in general seems to get more love. Especially by Logitech.

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Sometimes I'm chasing a white rabbit and at the end of the rabbit hole there is just some weird software doing its thing. Today it was Burn:Cycle. In front of the psychic roulette there is some animated text rotating. I'm currently busy, checking the CPU speed as our 68k is running way to fast. So I've decreased the speed and the animated text started flickering. "Well shit.... I've created a bug". Then I thought, how is it on the real thing? And It is flickering on the real machine as well! So what is this? Is it a bug on the real machine? An overclocked CPU removes the flicker. Is the flicker a result by choice? Is it caused by some random glitches but intended? Does the flicker belong to the experience of standing in front of the Psychic Roulette terminal? Is the flickering only occurring on the german version of the application? Because german words are longer than english?

valid onyx
terse flare
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The same goes for the Burn:Cycle demo. At some point it returns to the main menu. Is it returning because of an error? A CD reading error? Is it returning because of artistic choice so the main menu is shown again to have the title of the game in demo mode? I was so confused I've checked the real machine as well. And yes, it seems to be random... Is it random because of seeking time? An internal counter?elmorise

sly sedge
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Another MiSTery!

terse flare
# sly sedge Another MiSTery!

Don't get me started on Myst. Whenever you're rotating in the game, there are glitched lines at the bottom of the screen. Those are created because the Video IRQ to start the software doing something is too early. With the intended CPU speed you don't see anything. Zenith has the same issue.

young grotto
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in a way its nice to have so many strange cases already found

terse flare
young grotto
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sometimes the game library is so tolerant of hardware variation you struggle to know whats accurate

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psx is a bit like that

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re: burn cycle, i wonder if any dev ever used the cd-rom seek time as RNG

stiff flare
tulip orchid
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Thanks for all of your hard work on this core Slamy. At one point I don't think anyone even thought we'd get cd-i on MiSTer let alone one that is capable doing as much as your core does. 👏

finite portal
tulip orchid
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I actually owned that model and that controller in the picture back when this was still being sold. Of course I had to mail order any games or software I wanted ;) I always had to be different though. I think I was the only one of two kids who I knew that owned a TG-16 as well.

terse flare
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Ahhh, because it is CD-Valent-i-ne's day

finite portal
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For all my CD-i pals that need that last minute Valentine gift for that special someone.

hallow furnace
merry oyster
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CD-i can't believe it's not butter.

sly sedge
terse flare
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Since it is a special day, I've decided to make a release of the recent changes that were accumulated over the last days (or even weeks by now).

MCD212: Improved timing of ICA execution
        - Fixes hiccups in Burn:Cycle demo mode
        - Fixes flickering cutscenes in Flashback
MCD212: Limit CPU speed by reducing memory bandwidth
        - Fixes flickering Mario animation at the bottom of the screen in Hotel Mario
        - Fixes flickering lines during transition when turning around in Myst
        - Fixes screen tearing at the bottom of the screen in Zenith
        - Added debug option to make the CPU fast again (about 2x speedup)
        - Might fix speed of Plunderball (must be tested by an expert)
        - Causes sound glitch regression in Philips Logo of Burn:Cycle
CDIC: Rework of audio player state machine
        - Added abort flag for playback
          Fixes some audio map related sound glitches in Zelda's Adventure
          and also some glitches in the Help cutscene of Wand of Gamelon
        - Added mysterious bit reset
          Forces Unmute during Audio Channel playback (otherwise it would be muted)
          Function not yet understood
        - Removed artifacts caused by software emulator inspiration
AD7528: Added two instances for stereo mixing
        - Fixes audio panning in Zelda's Adventure and Zenith
        - Fixes stereo to mono mixing (SFX + BGM)
          - Hotel Mario
          - Zelda - Wand of Gamelon
          - The Apprentice
CDIC: Added seek wait time
        - Fixes sound hiccups in "Felix the Cat"

Edit: I had to remove the uploaded file. I've uploaded the wrong one. 😦 Please check here #1103404843512631357 message

modern mirage
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Its a great day. Celebrating a Massacre I like your style

terse flare
modern mirage
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The St Valentine Day Massacre

terse flare
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Oh boy, I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of that.🫠

modern mirage
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its what the day is for. Its also for Stalkers to send cards to unrequited loves and then watch them panic as they dont know who sent them

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I love the whole day !

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Massacre and stalking all in one day

gray badge
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Do we still need bespoke MiSTer main for this, @terse flare? I can’t remember

terse flare
gray badge
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🎉

stiff flare
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Pins updated

terse flare
stiff flare
modern mirage
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Did you get my Pigs Heart ? I sent it to you

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I hope it was the pigs one I sent. Its kind of hard to remember with all the body parts in the basement

spring gate
finite portal
terse flare
pine linden
terse flare
terse flare
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In my defense, 20250214 and 20250124 are really close together >.< And it was a long day...
I hope I haven't made any other stupid mistakes. There is at least one regression with this core already known to me. The Philips Logo intro in Burn:Cycle has some new audio glitches.

stiff flare
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Ehhh, it doesn’t matter. If it were publicly released, sure.

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I saw that too and just renamed it on my MiSTer lol.

strange crater
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Yep - Plunderball feels like it’s running at the correct speed now.

strange crater
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The recent changes also appear to have fixed the silenced voices in Flintstones-Jetsons Timewarp, as well. (That was a bug dating back to the 20241230 release.)

Master Labyrinth was also having issues previously with crashing, which appear to have been resolved in this new release.

stiff flare
strange crater
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No, Secret Mission still has silence during its intro.

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The issue with the background music during Wordplay occasionally not playing also appears to have been fixed, though.

stiff flare
stiff flare
# terse flare

This build fixed the audio issues with the Felix the Cat game, great job!

young grotto
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- Added mysterious bit reset
this commit message gave me a chuckle thanks

strange crater
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Jan Pienkowski - Haunted House is now Completable. Issues with that title crashing now appear to have been fixed.

errant surge
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@terse flare Do you know when the core might start getting released in #unstable-nightlies ? I have a script from Porkchop Express which downloads all unstable cores and puts them in an /Unstable folder, obviating the need to manually download cores on a pc and shuffle them over.

modern mirage
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when a core gets added to unstable nightlies it attracts more attention. Slamy is still experimenting. The extra people would not realise the core was being built and so the number of bug reports and complaints would rise

terse flare
# errant surge <@328601793565294592> Do you know when the core might start getting released in ...

I do recall something similar was done with the N64 core. There was a custom json path to allow the standard MiSTer downloader to grab the latest unstable build without causing to much commotion. Maybe that would be something to help here. However, I do not know how this was performed. It's also quite some time ago. It would indeed have certain advantages concidering that there would no longer be mistakes on my side of the upload and your side on the download. In general I don't know which would be the best time to start having this core in unstable nightly. I remember that the Saturn core was there much too early as it was still in a rather broken state. I think it was even too early in stable... but that might be caused by special situation.

wintry dust
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(that was me)

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robert published things as github releases and I had a github action that created a downloader db from the latest release

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but you are effectively publishing it in public at that point and it is unavoidable that you will get a bunch of new users/bug reports etc from that

terse flare
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I'm undecided on this topic. The core already has quite a lot attention. It even has an issue on my github repo asking for the DVC >.< The N64 core was also not complete when it appeared on those databases... hmm...

wintry dust
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my memory is slightly fuzzy here but I think one of the motivating factors for putting the 'not done' n64 core into a database was the addition of n64-database.txt that also needed to be downloaded alongside the core. I can't remember if we did that before that feature or not

stiff flare
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I got a feature request because I am a lazy son of a bitch

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Can you auto load a game if it’s the only one in a folder

solid quest
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That would be a nice QoL thing before it went to a nightly, as it'll work just like the other CD cores do

wintry dust
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it's part of main

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and because it's main, I think that functionality is gated behind some long ass is_psx() || is_pce() conditional

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I'll look later

stiff flare
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ur a _psx() || is_pce() conditional

young grotto
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you can make it so people can't open issues on your github if you want

spring gate
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My understanding is that to be in unstable nightlies the core needs to be merged into official MiSTer GitHub repo, so it generally happens after official release or far along in the dev process

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Which CDi could be, there is no blocker there

gray badge
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CDi is on the WIP download script, yeah?

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I only ask because I don’t think it’s grabbed the latest version

spring gate
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I haven't been at my computer today, I can add it in a few

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Actually, an excuse to try do this from my phone and was able to easily, so that is in there now

pine linden
spring gate
pine linden
spring gate
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Hah, well thanks, but all it is, is me chucking files on a GitHub folder structure, there is no clever wizardry my side 🙂

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Am glad some people find it useful though

spare vale
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does the CD-i core have any support for Y/C video so far?

errant surge
terse flare
# errant surge

It does? Even I didn't knew that. Is that just part of the MiSTer framework? In the past special YC builds existed. I only test on HDMI and on SCART

errant surge
terse flare
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A person on GitHub complained about the game speed of "Escape from CyberCity" without even trying it on a real machine to compare. I can agree on the speed being too fast... even on the real machine. "Escape from CyberCity is too fast" is a statement which can therefore be added to the CD-i discord bingo card. Please don't even try the game. It's just FMV like Dragon's Lair but faster and with guns.

errant surge
river sphinx
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Escape from CyberCity is just inherently plagued with all sorts of problems, so it's easy to mistake the flaws as emulation issues.

stiff flare
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@terse flare not sure you know this but Escape from CyberCity is running too fast

terse flare
slim geode
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The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe seems to have had a regression with this build. Worked just fine in the January 24th build, but the CD-i intro animation gets all choppy and then the main music plays over said unfinished animation in this Valentine's build.

spare vale
# errant surge

thank you! i got it working; it was just giving me trouble before i had selected a bios (weird vblank). everything's working great now

strange crater
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The original game was titled Freedom Fighter, and it was based on the anime Galaxy Express 999.

strange crater
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It’s a pretty abysmal port, but as of right now, it’s probably the best way to play that title without access to a real arcade cabinet.

The original arcade game is actually just as fast as the CD-i version, but transitions seamlessly with the animation, leading to this frenetic gameplay that’s actually really well-synchronized with the Laserdisc visuals. I’ve only played it once at a now-defunct arcade convention, but it’s certainly worth trying if you ever see an original cabinet.

A lot was cut back on the CD-i version to work on the non-DVC hardware, though, meaning that many of the animated sequences are replaced with stills and more limited animation. It really compromises the feel of the game, which makes it a real shame it hasn’t been implemented under emulation. (Star Rider, which shared the same hardware, is in a similar boat - it’s a racing game by Williams with some really impressive tech behind it.)

There’s a SINGE port, but it’s somehow even worse, with tons of features missing and audio being replaced throughout the game with the Laserdisc version’s intro theme. I’d avoid it, as it’s borderline unplayable.

terse flare
strange crater
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On a positive note, this release seems to have fixed a lot. The only title in the Non-DVC Games library which doesn’t get ingame now is Earth Command, and several new titles appear to be Completable.

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I’ll work on updating the testing sheet throughout today.

strange crater
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The missing audio on Shaolin’s Road has been fixed in the new release.

The speed fix on Plunderball also seems to have fixed a similar issue in Rise of the Robots, as well.

terse flare
# strange crater The missing audio on Shaolin’s Road has been fixed in the new release. The spe...

Those games seem to have a bad habit of using the CPU speed to calculate the game logic. This is like ZX Spectrum style of programming. There was a certain time at the beginning of development when even Wand of Gamelon was too fast. But that was a result from the OS time running too fast.
Right now, the CPU is even in this release slightly too fast. I just had the feeling some games had more issues so I didn't went too far. I'm actually in luck that there is no direct way of influencing the peripherals in a "racing the beam" manner. Therefore the CPU speed doesn't need to be exactly correct.

terse flare
# strange crater On a positive note, this release seems to have fixed a lot. The only title in th...

I've wondered what the issue with Earth Command is. As the hangup occurs in the startup phase I've tried to investigate this problem by simulating the core again using Verilator. It's slow (3 seconds per frame) but precise. For some reason, the game actually loads in the simulation to the game screen with the world map. This is one of the worst cases in FPGA development as this seems to be a deviation between simulation and execution of the synthesized result. Or it might be a stochastic problem and the simulation by accident got the golden route through the software.
The simulation doesn't take the MiSTer main executable into account as I'm faking the HPS via custom C code. One of the things to check here is to create a checksum from CD data and read it out during loading phase to check for differences.

fierce shoal
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Is anyone else having issues with up registering? I've tried multiple controllers, remapping it to another button, keyboard...but UP seems to only read 1/3 times for me. Holding seems OK, but pressing seems to either have a super high lag or just doesn't trigger the shift register or something. Overclocking input makes no difference.

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Jumping in Flashback is nearly impossible, and that's a game I can play the first 2 levels of blindfolded (not really...don't ask).

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Down seems fine. Left and right seem fine.

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1/2 sometimes feel a little laggy, but nothing like up.

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(And I do not know if this is just CDi since I didn't have one back in the day...I've just played Flashback on about 50 different platforms, and Hotel Mario, which relies on up constantly, also barely reads it, so I can't imagine they'd have released like that, but maybe they did and this is perfectly normal)

stiff flare
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The overlocking inputs

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It’s a core option @fierce shoal

fierce shoal
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Overclocking got the other buttons more responsive, but not up.

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<RickRollResponses = "false" />

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It makes Galaxy Express 999 (or whatever the game that uses it is called) unplayable. Hotel Mario is fine because I can just hammer it. But anything that uses up to jump is a no go for me and anything that requires reticle aiming up and down is a non-start. Arcade Classics is somewhat playable, but up/down are still not responsive...it's just not as much of an issue because holding works after like 300ms, but holding doesn't work for jump, obviously. So here I am... left with all the better ways to play Flashback. :/ (it was for capture, so...)

stiff flare
fierce shoal
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Nah, my fault. It was late and I wanted to get everything noted before I passed out. It wasn't well organized.

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Then I just hit enter today to send it.

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My computer room is a disastger right now. I decided to 'clean' an am now swimming in cables and plastic.

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So...just like the Pacific.

stiff flare
fierce shoal
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That's what it feels like, exactly.

young grotto
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is there any input-test rom for cd-i?

stiff flare
young grotto
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ooh neat

stiff flare
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@terse flare is that helpful? The CPUTest I posted above?

terse flare
# stiff flare <@328601793565294592> is that helpful? The CPUTest I posted above?

I first thought yes. A test to verify the accuracy of the CPU is always helpful. I find it slightly scary though that "No CD-i hardware currently passes all tests" is written on the README. So maybe this is something to look at when I have time. This core once had an issue that the multiplication instructions didn't work. This test would have found that. I'll look into that when I have time. The repo links to the CD-i discord. I'll probably should investigate. But not now, I have to go to work in a few minutes.🫣

terse flare
young grotto
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i wonder if its related to that er, you mentioned the pad is much faster on the core than on real hardware a while back iirc

terse flare
# young grotto i wonder if its related to that er, you mentioned the pad is much faster on the ...

The refresh rate of the pad is increased with the "Overclock input device" setting. If this is disabled, the speed should be identical. The core having issues with the input is something I haven't heard before this night. This seems to be valuable information but I need to be able to reproduce that. The mentioned debugcontrol test should at least give direct insight. If there is no issue there, I probably can't do much.

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It might have been important that we had this talk. The recent core seems to have some problems. The debugcontrol application shows flicker in the input data. If the dpad is constantly pressed, the is some erratic movement going on. It does happen every few seconds.

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@fierce shoal The issues you are explaining are totally new to me. The MiSTer comes with a utility core just to test controllers. It's in the menus in Utility->InputTest. If the issues are there too, this is probably just your gamepad.

fierce shoal
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Nope, input test is perfect.

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I'll try the debugcontrol release and see what shows up.

rugged panther
fierce shoal
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@terse flare sorry it took me so long to get back. I just got my capture setup reinstalled. There's definitely an issue. You can see on the DebugCtrl that up and down throw WAY short compared to left and right. And there's TONS of bounce/jitter. On MiSTer Input Tester, same controller, you can see it works just fine. Thank you so much for including those links! That really helps visualize it.

terse flare
fierce shoal
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It also doesn't throw as long, it seems. But yeah, the controller feels responsive in the late Dec. build.

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It's super odd that I'm the only one experiencing it though. @stiff flare - how does your controller test look? Since you mentioned you did feel the controller had some issues.

stiff flare
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Oh I see

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Ok cool I can give that link Slamy shared a shot

strange crater
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I’ll test it, too. Haven’t noticed any movement issues like that, but I’ll record my findings and post them here.

strange crater
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Not seeing it on mine. This is with the D-pad on an 8BitDo Pro 2 over Bluetooth:

terse flare
# fierce shoal Late December is perfectly choked. This response feels great.

It is the NTSC mode somehow. I've noticed you are running the Magnavox version of the menu. This means others cannot see it because of PAL. I'm able to replicate your regressions now locally too. Huh. That's interesting. I usually test mostly the PAL version of the core so this flew over my head.
That is actually some very interesting finding. It can also be slightly improved by using the CPU Turbo in the Debug Options. The erratic movement is then replaced by a screen tear...
One good thing about this issue is that this input debug application happens to be open source software and I have the CD-i SDK installed. This means I can dissect it to check what this is doing. I can also check once how this application behaves if I configure my real 210/05 to a NTSC machine.

fierce shoal
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Cool, thank you for looking into it! I'll switch to PAL for captures in the meantime.

terse flare
# fierce shoal Cool, thank you for looking into it! I'll switch to PAL for captures in the mean...

I've just checked with my PAL 210/05 which I have rewired to NTSC. The issue also occurs there. For yet unknown reasons, the debug application only shows this problem when the input comes from the wired controller. If I use the RC controller, the problem doesn't happen. That's curious. The issue also doesn't depend on the port used. The front port has the same issue as the back port, even so they take different routes in the software. I don't know what this means. The test application might be to blame here. I think I'll create an issue on github so maybe the dev can take a look at that.
Do you experience problems in other applications still with PAL?

strange crater
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It looks like the test application functions as intended on my NTSC 220/37 (apologies about the flickering, my phone camera’s shutter doesn’t really agree with this TV):

terse flare
strange crater
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Wired. I have the Tecnoplus-branded variant of the 3-button controller hooked up at the moment.

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Here's a better quality capture (composite via RetroTINK-2x to Elgato HD60S, as I couldn't find a S-Video cable on short notice):

terse flare
# strange crater

In that case I'm totally lost. It might be possible that a real NTSC machine does behave different compared to a PAL machine which was rewired to 60 Hz mode. I would have thought it was nearly the same. This can also mean that the "NTSC" mode of the core is totally wrong.

rugged panther
misty adder
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Hello, where can I find the latest CDi core?

errant island
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Hello, please check the pins here at Download Core.

misty adder
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Okay, not seeing it right off on mobile app, will check on desktop. Excited to to test it out.

errant island
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#1103404843512631357 message

misty adder
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Thanks!

sinful hornet
misty adder
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Thank you

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Gonna fire up some Burn Cycle hopefully

valid cairn
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I think... that with everything that's going on in the world right now... everybody just needs to cool out a bit... and chill with some cd-i tetris on the cd-i core.

misty adder
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Does this core look for a specific folder for the games?

stiff flare
misty adder
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thank you

misty adder
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Got it going

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Already blew myself up in Burn Cycle lol

slate vale
# terse flare

Hi slamy, thanks for this core, is awesome!, some thing I notice is that I can´t load games thru a hdd (connected to usb hub). Looking to load the Apprentice, but didn´t work yet for me.

gleaming echo
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Do you have the recent unstable main?

south urchin
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make sure you have the boot0.rom and boot1.rom in /games/CD-i on the USB drive also

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folder name is case-sensitive if the drive is NTFS

terse flare
# gleaming echo Do you have the recent unstable main?

Since MiSTer 250216 it is no longer required to have the unstable Main. The CD-i Linux code is currently 100% part of the stable MiSTer.
Edit: I've edited this statement because it was wrong. MiSTer 250216 is still unstable.

terse flare
slim geode
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Yeah, I've used USB HDD exclusively and not had issues with loading.

fringe arch
south urchin
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The apprentice loaded ok for me from a USB drive. It did sit in the cyan screen for a bit longer than normal before loading

undone nimbus
# stiff flare

i strongly associate this bastard with edutainment booths in small european museums

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Roll the ball and "click" on the images to learn more about them!

gentle ember
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Ok I know this has been asked before but my searching is not getting me to an answer. I have just started to dig into the CD-i on MIster. Using the latest unstable MIster main and CHDs from the archive. cdi220 is now boot0.rom and the other one is boot1.rom. All i can see is a blue screen and nothing will load. What, I'm sure, obvious step am I missing?

terse flare
gentle ember
terse flare
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So you never see any Philips CD-i menu with buttons and some artwork?

gentle ember
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I have not did the checksum. Where can I find the checksums to use?

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I never see the CD-I menu itself.

terse flare
# 
2969341396aa61e0143dc2351aaa6ef6  cdi200.rom
3d20cf7550f1b723158b42a1fd5bac62  zx405042p__cdi_slave_2.0__b43t__zzmk9213.mc68hc705c8a_withtestrom.7206
```Those are the md5sums. It is vital that these numbers match.
gentle ember
terse flare
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derpsmile Earth Command might be the first game that actually reads the time and reacts to that. You can fix the game with the current 250214 core by going to settings in the menu and set it to a valid date. As the timekeeper implementation is wrong right now, the MiSTer will store that data on the NvRAM. Afterwards the game should work.
This might be a good time to maybe actually start putting some real time in there.
Ah yes. We shouldn't forget as - at least in Germany - it is not too late: Happy CD-Friday everyone!

spring gate
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Be fun to see some of the cherry on top features like RTC coming in, will give you a bit of respite from the rabbit holes on the audio and colours sides as well.

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Might be worth checking .sys, I think there may have been a small update since you last updated although may not have any tangible change on the core.

young grotto
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saturn i think?

spring gate
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Here is a list of them all

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Although may need updating if Saturn has one. Does PSX?

sharp plume
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Does the core work with mister main?

gray badge
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yes

spring gate
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Unless something has changed that I missed them you need unstable main still

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For things to work as expected anyway

gray badge
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I thought Slamy just said that everything is in normal main? Or maybe that was unstable and you didn't need the bespoke main anymore

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Ahh yep, good catch @spring gate - still need the unstable #1103404843512631357 message

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@sharp plume You need the latest unstable, but you don't need the custom mister anymore #1103404843512631357 message

sharp plume
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Lol

sly sedge
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What part of Slamy's post linked above states that you still need unstable MiSTer main?

Since MiSTer 250216 it is no longer required to have the unstable Main. The CD-i Linux code is currently 100% part of the stable MiSTer.

pine stump
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MiSTer 250216 is out?

sly sedge
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Oooh... I see now. 😄

terse flare
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@pine stump @sharp plume @gray badge I'm terribly sorry for causing confusion. I could have sworn, that update.sh has downloaded 250216 on the last run I've executed. Maybe I was just seeing things. It is still 241227 which indeed means that unstable Main is still required. At least for the latest features. Especially for The Apprentice you need it.

gray badge
modern mirage
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I want an apology and a monkey serving me ice cream

gray badge
modern mirage
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speak for yourself I am evolved from an intelligent shade of blue

gray badge
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Don’t brag on it

modern mirage
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ok Monkey boy

gray badge
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Chimpshamer

terse flare
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This core travels through space and time. A freshly booted MiSTer seems to use the date 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 as reset time. This is actually quite correct, considering we are talking about a unix derivate here. For the CD-i this is a huge issue as it is prone to Y2K because the time keeper only has the last 2 digits of the year. The system is confident that it is the 1 JAN 2070. I need to take care of that with a hack I think. If no one else has a better idea, I will hack the year 70 to 94. It is one year after Earth Command was released so I assume for a real time game, that is ok.

young grotto
#

makes sense

valid cairn
sinful hornet
#

Windows - 1 point
Linux - 0 points
SureSure

pine stump
gray badge
#

I'm so confused. why does it think it's 2070 and not 1970?

terse flare
gray badge
#

aha

sly sedge
#

What do we do when it's 2089?!

image.png
gray badge
#

I think you mean 1989 RoboClown

spring gate
#

I saw something the other day that another, potentially worse Y2K style situation is on the horizon as 32bit machines can't go beyond some year around 2038. If so the younger generation enjoy the non event that was Y2K.

trim oyster
#

2038 is like 30 years away, nobody will be using any of that stuff by then

gray badge
#

Someone’s never worked for a hospital or government agency

sly sedge
#

...or a bank.
The number of banks I would visit on service calls still using OS/2 long after it was discontinued was shocking.

sinful hornet
#

Nobody will be using them in the sense that we'll be in a fallout style dystopia at that point

gray badge
#

That’s fair. YR24 or whatever will cleanse us all in galactic fire

trim oyster
#

The fact that it didn’t seem outlandish enough that I said 2038 was 30 years away means I’m obviously among my people.

sinful hornet
#

😆 I didn't even notice that math

stiff flare
fierce shoal
#

Not PAL buds.

#

Chum.

stiff flare
#

@terse flare Here’s my controller test with the core:

fierce shoal
#

Yep, that's exactly it.

#

Workaround is use PAL.

stiff flare
#

Oh, setting the M30 to analog mode fixes that

fierce shoal
#

Yeah, analog should be fine.

#

I'm just using a Gen/MD controller.

stiff flare
#

Like a real patriot. 🫡

fierce shoal
stiff flare
#

Oh holy shit games feel 10 times better to play LOL

#

I feel like I can actually control the ball in Zenith

fierce shoal
#

Yep. It's insane how much worse it is.

golden axle
#

Has anyone finished Link the Faces of Evil on the core yet? I managed to finish it tonight

pine stump
#

You conquered each

terse flare
#

Ok, it seems that the 250214 core has many regressions. Here the things I know so far from you all:

  • NTSC seems to have input problems
  • Flowsers of Robert Mapplethorpe is not booting
    I do know of some other regressions as well.
  • Philips Rotating Logo of Burn:Cycle is broken (audio issues)

I'm unable to reproduce the input problems on NTSC on any other software than the debugctl test cd. But at least on that I'm able to reproduce it and there is a workaround for that.
Workaround: It seems my reduction of CPU speed went to far. The core is possibly actually running slower than a real CD-i. Go to debug options and enable Turbo CPU. This reverts the change of 250214 on CPU performance.

The Flowers of Robert Dingelsgedöns is caused by a wrongly timed ICA execution. Maybe I should provide a hot fix for that. It might have hurt every title that uses the ST mode of the videochip as well.

The thing with Burn:Cycle is actually more complex. It can be fixed by enabling Turbo CPU as well. But it seems more to it which I'm not yet 100% sure.

In general maybe an update. The TG68k cpu core which is used by this project has one disadvantage compared to the fx68k that is used for the Minimig. It was never meant to be cycle accurate when it comes to instruction timing. The way I've made the CPU slower is by slowing down memory access. But that was the wrong approach as I assumed my measurements on multiplication time. Even when assuming on memory bandwidth it is still wrong.
As I can't simply use the fx68k because it lacks the features needed for a SCC68070 and is not very maintainable because of microcode I'm still aiming for the TG68k as I understand its source code better. (even when written in VHDL...)
Just to give an insight in speed. The SCC68070 required 76 clock cycles for the MULU instruction. In case of the TG68k it requires 1. Luckily it can be modified to remove the mulitplication unit. It gets much slower with that.
Still it is not right and needs some work.

terse flare
stiff flare
#

also lol “Dingelsgedöns”

#

It means silly things in German

stray plank
#

"The flowsers of Robert Dingelsgedöns" I like that title

chilly flax
#

Secret mission (Germany) doesn't have sound with current core and current unstable main. Anyone can confirm?

sinful hornet
#

THE cd-i is here in the cd-i chat pengusip

gray badge
stiff flare
spring gate
#

Might be worth doing a run through the region specific European games tab, those haven't been looked at for a few months

chilly flax
stiff flare
#

Totally random but we have a lot of Germans in this chat. I think that's cool as hell. I would love to visit your country one day. Every German person I've ever met has been such a good person.

terse flare
chilly flax
gray badge
#

that’s interesting, I didn’t know that

stiff flare
terse flare
gray badge
#

I wouldn’t say it bulldozes it. I’m happy to test games if that’s useful - I think the trouble I run into is figuring out when it’s useful to do a run through all the games

stiff flare
strange crater
#

Not quite sure when the regression occurred. The first I heard about it was about a month ago, when Robby mentioned the game was missing audio.

gray badge
#

@terse flare What would be most helpful for us to do for you at this point?

terse flare
# gray badge <@328601793565294592> What would be most helpful for us to do for you at this po...

Back in January 2020 I was confronted with the same question. I had a small inner circle of closed beta testers to test my Amiga game. I really didn't want to wear them out. Playing the same game over and over is rather tedious. I can't stop you from going through the list and testing the games. If the core was a game it would still be in very early alpha state considering the amount of bugs and its experimental nature. I don't expect anyone to complete a game right now. It's however sometimes nice to hear that there is a certain amount of stability in the core and things don't just crash or hang very often.
What would be the most helpful? More developers probably. I do realize that is a difficult request considering not even the software emulators have enough developers to handle all their problems. That said, I don't have an answer to your question.

#

There is however one thing. Please run the core in 50 Hz / PAL mode for now. I don't have enough time to always test both modes and usually I try to get the PAL mode functional as most games are usually designed around the 280 vertical lines. The CD-i is in that regard very similar to the Amiga which also had more PAL than NTSC games. It's sad when recordings for YouTube are failing just because the rarely tested video mode is used for that recording.

stiff flare
terse flare
#

A hotfix release on this sunday.

CDIC: Adapted audio control register to measurements
  - Lowest bit is now set when the audiomap has finalized the playback after processing the 0xff decoding.
  - Might make things worse. Checks needed. So far nothing went worse for me.
MCD212: Added debug option for ICA execution line
  - The new behavior (based on 210/05 measurements) added in 20250214 is hidden in the debug menu
  - Original video timing from before is restored. More measurements needed (ST and NTSC timings might be wrong)
  - Fixes boot of "The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe"
MCD212: Reduce CPU starve by ICA
  - Just an experiment. It doesn't hurt but also seems to be not very relevant
MK48T08B: Added timekeeper (time setting from MiSTer Main)
  - Add time related registers
  - Fixes/Removes NvRAM change detect on time registers
  - Fixes Earth Command bootup (needs a valid date)
SCC68070: Slightly better timing accuracy of multiplication and bit shift
  - Removed barrel shifter and multiplication unit
MCD212: Slightly lifted memory bandwidth reduction
  - Only a patch! Needs accurate overhaul.

Updated MiSTer sys to fa4c17a.
This release somehow also fixes the "Curator" audio track of Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe.
It also somehow fixes the audio track of "Secret Mission" during the Philips logo and the intro.
The ICA revert breaks the demo mode of Burn:Cycle. Use Debug Options -> ICA at VBlank -> Yes for Burn:Cycle running on PAL. (Not tested with NTSC)
The core seems to be sometimes unstable with the slowed CPU. Use Debug Options -> CPU Turbo -> Yes to be on the safe side.
  -> Disadvantages are glitched graphics at the bottom and game speed.
📎 CDi_20250223.rbf
terse flare
# stiff flare Should we turn Turbo on as well?

In general it seems to be more stable actually. I've made a mistake with the way I've implemented that apparently. I still don't feel like making that the default setting though as it fixes some graphical glitches caused by bad programming and also some game speed issues.

chilly flax
#

Wow that was a fast fix for my secret command pleasure ^^

gray badge
#

frankly, if you have loaded voyeur (because you were "just curious") your shame should compel you to support him

sinful hornet
#

Nice update slamy 👍 dvc working great with the new hot fix. Like Toasters toasting toast, mah boi

#

||trying to get bingo||

celest hollow
#

New to this core. I saw it says it accepts CHD format but when I try that I always get a blank screen

gray badge
#

when you load the core, do you get the philips bios and load disc screen?

celest hollow
#

Nope. Realizing I probably need to download a bios lol

gray badge
celest hollow
#

Been a long day lol

#

Just gets named boot.rom I'm guessing?

gray badge
#

there are a couple of em. check the pins

golden axle
#

Just finished Zelda the Wand of Gamelon so that's completable

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In today's core

#

Had one hard crash during the beginning of a cutscene while completing Link Faces of Evil, when i was buying bombs and hit store keeper by accident which triggered the cutscene.

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In wand of gamelon i had 2 hard crashes basically same reason, when a cutscene started

celest hollow
#

Very sweet to see the core progressing! Hopefully there's room for DVC support! Wanna play Lost Eden on the CDI

spring gate
#

My first contribution to Redump is out in the wild, for all you Photo CD fans, you can now experience "Cumana Photo Album - Volume 1 (UK)" 🙂

stiff flare
#

Uhhhhh

#

wat

spring gate
#

I found a Photo CD that hadn't been dumped before (on bad dump out there that doesn't work) and mailed it to a nice man in the North of Scotland who dumped it redump standard and submitted it to Redump.

stiff flare
#

Oh nice

spring gate
#

I also sent him a copy of Autosport Magazine Presents Grand Prix Special (UK) that had different cover and disc art, but turned out to be identical to the other version dumped, but that is now confirmed to be the case, so that is good to know.

hot wave
#

Last time I Cumana photo album I got kicked out

gray badge
stiff flare
#

look I’m just glad he said it

#

because we were all thinking that lmao

gray badge
#

Moondandy does like his PhotoCDs (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

wintry dust
#

you're all disgusting

gray badge
#

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

terse flare
# golden axle Had one hard crash during the beginning of a cutscene while completing Link Face...

That is sad to hear. For quite a while I haven't played very deep into the games. This means there is indeed still a stability issue. This reminds me a little bit of my work. We usually do integration tests which are running for multiple hours to ensure the machines are surviving many hours of operation. This is something I did once to test the audio map and it seems it might be required to write an automatic test as well for CD reading. Random errors are a pain to debug. I put this also on my TODO list.
Edit: I assume it is about CD reading... also was it the beginning of the cutscene? Or was it the abort of a cutscene?

terse flare
terse flare
golden axle
terse flare
golden axle
#

Was on gibdo cutscene

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It loaded and crashed assuming when i pressed a button to skip it

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That's pic of crash where it just freezes there

terse flare
#

At some point in time the problem was just gone.. But I see it now, it is very much reproducible. There is a certain chance that talking to the shopkeeper kills the game. The issue is back. NotLikeThis

golden axle
#

It's not such a big deal if make sure to save often but yea still an issue that happened to me three times between across both games. Only with the cutscenes so should be easy to reproduce by spamming the shopkeeper cutscene

#

One would assume

terse flare
# golden axle One would assume

Not only assume. It is possible. About 10% chance if your are unlucky. I had a sessions once in which I've talked multiple times to the shopkeeper to test if the issue was gone or not. It was tedious but I thought I had it...
This is not related to CD reading. I've actually made a modification to MAME to track it down. The CPU is in spurious interrupt state. The CDIC wants attention but the interrupt status flag is never reset. This also correlates with remaining sound issues as the expected state of the software seems to not represent what the hardware is doing.

spring gate
#

How did you get on with the RTC? That proving to be another rabbit hole?

terse flare
spring gate
#

Oh nice, need to check the latest core (added to WIP DB for people who use that). Cool you got that one added in. 🙂

terse flare
spring gate
#

If you ever need another break and side quest, if you figure out how to get Photo CD player to save when you set High Res on that would make my Photo CD testing adventures a lot more enjoyable 🙂

celest hollow
#

Silly question. Apologies. I downloaded the CDI bios. Does it need to be renamed or just dropped in the CDI folder as is?

terse flare
terse flare
spring gate
#

Certainly some of the discs explicitly state that the once turned on the option should remain

#

I think I posted an example before but can look again and find one that has that message

modern mirage
#

How would that work is there a Battery Backed Ram isnide the CDI where details like that could be stored

spring gate
#

I don't think you get what I am asking. Currently:
Load Photo CD image in Low Res
Open OSD in Photo CD player
Select High Res tick box option
Image reloads in high Res
Progress to next image
Image loaded in low resolution (High Res tick box has defaulted back to being unticked)

modern mirage
#

well you need proof it did that on the real CDI

spring gate
#

Curiously though, for images that have been loaded before in high Res, when you come back to those images they load again in high Res, so it has saved that info

#

And yes, I am trying to get this confirmed. If someone with an actual CDi can check that would be great. It does explicitly state on the help text within some Photo CDs that the option should be saved once turned on

modern mirage
#

still dont get looking at low rez photos when better stock photos are available

modern mirage
spring gate
#

It sounds like you haven't explored the format. Many discs are more than just images on a screen, they have music or voiceover and are interactive.

modern mirage
spring gate
#

Cool, then please go find another chat to post in.

modern mirage
#

no

#

this is the CDI chat not the I love Photo CD chat. Please create a I only want to hear nice things about Photo CD channel

#

Channels are not meant to be worship channels.

valid cairn
spring gate
#

I would advise you to go read the server rules.

modern mirage
#

explain which rule

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These channels are to discuss the Consoles/ Computers. I am stating my view Just because it doesnt agree with yours has no bearing. I am not attacking you in any way.

#

The channels are not meant to be a worship channel where nothing bad can ever be said about the channel's topic

#

All consoles have good and bad and in my view photo CDs are one of the worst "features" of the CDI

spring gate
#

I like you Tim, and you have said your piece, now take the negativity elsewhere.

modern mirage
#

No I will continue to discuss the CDI at any time. It not negative to say photo CDs were a bad idea then and still are now. If you want an empty echo chamber start a new channel

quartz crest
#

Don't derail this thread into petty arguments. Thanks.

valid cairn
#

Photo cds whether good or bad are fascinating to look back on and explore though right?

modern mirage
#

not in my view

#

They were only invented to justify the CD storage

valid cairn
#

I mean photos are fascinating

quartz crest
#

It's all kind of moot to discuss if we don't even know if the original CD-i did what was mentioned above anyways.

modern mirage
#

Its a look what we can do with at the time was "infinite" storage

modern mirage
#

but yes we need a real CDI

quartz crest
#

each photo cd software might have a different software-based method of turning that flag on, so it might not be as simple as just an OSD option.

modern mirage
#

it would need some sort of storage though

#

and the CDI was a read only medium

#

and as far as I know there was no battery backed user setup

#

maybe you could do it with a small ram disk

wintry dust
#

it has nvram

modern mirage
#

ah

terse flare
modern mirage
#

so each CD id could be stored with a flag

terse flare
# modern mirage so each CD id could be stored with a flag

If the software does so, yes. An entry like that can be found on the system menu when selecting memory. Keep in mind that the disc must be inserted before as this core, like many others, is reloading the NvRAM based on the inserted image.

modern mirage
#

That makes sense

#

but you could read it strictly as saying that its per photo

#

but without a real CDI it will remain a mystery

quartz crest
modern mirage
#

no worse than the Genius at Commodore who put the battery backed clock on the Amiga 2000 right besides the 68000. Great in the 90's not so good when they leak and corrode all the CPu traces

quartz crest
#

Please stay on topic folks, I don't want to have to keep removing random gifs and meme comments.

spring gate
#

Here we go, this was the message I was talking about:

#

#1103404843512631357 message

#

On "God Streams"

#

That certainly implies that once turned on it should stay turned on to high res for the rest of the disc and not default back to low res

#

So if anyone has OG hardware and would be willing to check, God Streams (Japan) is the disc to try (it is also a really fun disc with early 90s ambient score)

valid cairn
#

Like this?

stiff flare
#

pins updated

sly sedge
#

You should pin that comment.

little latch
golden axle
# little latch Sorry to hear that.

Now who's gonna be brave enough to finish Zelda Adventure because that game is just plain bad. The other two zelda games are least entertaining to play with the weird art style and meme worthy cutscenes

#

Truthfully I expected Zelda Wand of Gamelon and Link Faces of Evil to be much worse, they actually were not the worst games i've played. They're jank af and terrible compared to any other zelda game but on their own, not a bad way to spend 4 hours to finish

#

compared to the rest of the catalogue of games on CDI from what i've looked at, that don't require the dvc, these are Mozart

#

probably the only two games I'll finish on the core 😛

#

Badly recorded footage of end of link faces of evil on the mister

nocturne vortex
#

Congratulations?

golden axle
#

"I won"

little latch
golden axle
#

Oh neat, I didn't even know that existed

spring gate
#

Is that a recent fan remake/demake?

golden axle
#

2020 it seems

#

last updated in 2023

golden axle
#

How far has anyone got on hotel mario? I'm on level 32 out of 85 💀

gray badge
#

I think you and Elphive are our champions

golden axle
nocturne vortex
terse flare
# golden axle Now who's gonna be brave enough to finish Zelda Adventure because that game is j...

For a game like that I should really add an option to remove seek time💿 as the screen transitions are killing the fun. Right now it is based on measurements from a real machine I've made once. Maybe 180ms is too long for a track change. Games like Flashback are also suffering from frequently changing track. If not done already, the transitions can be shorted by overclocking the CPU in the debug menu.

golden axle
celest hollow
fringe arch
#

Cores like the CD-i make me have insane thoughts like "Somebody should make cool homebrew for this" or "Why hasn't anyone made a hack to fix this game"

sinful hornet
#

Do the tools exist to do either of those?

fringe arch
#

From what I've seen the 90s era authoring tools for making CD-i games are out there, but I haven't looked into if any of them are still usable.

#

Every year I like to put a retro-style yule log on my MiSTer and the CD-i core might be the best option yet. There's already a Christmas sing-along disk from back then, and authoring your own CD-i disk is a lot easier than making a FMV disk for the Saturn or PlayStation.

stiff flare
karmic bramble
ember mountain
terse flare
# fringe arch From what I've seen the 90s era authoring tools for making CD-i games are out th...

The tools from back then are still usable today. I know this, as I'm writing my own CD-i software to test my core. Some people on the CD-i discord server are very open minded and publish their source code online for others to learn from. The homebrew title Nobelia is on github: https://github.com/TwBurn/Nobelia The same goes for Frog Feast, which exists somewhere as a zip file.
Keep in mind that the tools are old and while the compiler and linker are 32 bit windows applications, the mastering software is a MS DOS tool.
As I'm a linux user, I'm running the compiler with wine. This works without much issues so far.
It's also nice to know that every CD-i made by Philips has a serial stub loader. This means you plug a RS232 cable into the port on the back and with cdilink you can download an application for execution without burning a disc. Neat.

GitHub
GitHub - TwBurn/Nobelia: Nobelia

Nobelia. Contribute to TwBurn/Nobelia development by creating an account on GitHub.

#

The C compiler of the official CD-i SDK can only be described as archaic. You can't even make // comments, so old is that thing. For my small projects that is ok, but for larger applications there might be better solutions. Something like m68k-elfos9-gcc should exist according to a branch on Nobelia. Haven't tried that yet but I assume that the GCC will deliver a more optimized result and a more modern type of C. For more reading, the guys at https://discord.com/channels/675054061665386544/797170589604511754 will help you out

strange crater
#

The game was originally designed to be released during the system’s lifespan, but got shelved due to poor sales of the hardware. He licensed it from the original creators and released it.

stiff flare
stiff flare
#

Does any CDi emulator support DVC? I tried the one Batocera uses and it doesn’t.

#

Also the CDi MiSTer core is a nicer experience, for me

strange crater
#

Mostly no. Several have the expansion RAM, and I've heard it's possible to get DVC working in the closed-source CD-i Emulator, but I haven't been able to get it to work myself.

stiff flare
#

There’s a closed source CDi emulator? Is that available to the public?

rough sable
#

I dream for a DVC emu

strange crater
stiff flare
sinful hornet
fringe arch
#

That's allegedly pretty nice

pale ivy
golden axle
#

Just little off center on the landing and mario dies 💀

stiff flare
#

Our favorite file type elmorise

lament spade
#

As one of the few kids in the USA that grew up with a CD-i I can't wait to get this working on my MiSTer. Still have my CD-i but finding working controllers has been rough.

ember mountain
karmic bramble
terse flare
lament spade
terse flare
# spring gate

I've not yet checked on a real CD-i player but I think there might be a misunderstanding. The Photo CD is indeed storing some configuration data on the NvRAM. The high res setting is stored for every single photo and not for the whole CD. I've performed a quick test on MAME to check for that. So ... it might be working but maybe not the way you wanted it.

terse flare
#

Also some bad news. The recent core has a regression. 😦 The score screen of Hotel Mario has glitches again in the audio. I assume this resulted from my recent changes. It might be possible that this game is indeed capable of crashing during the Score screen, although I haven't seen that yet. That was one of the issues in MAME i've somehow resolved without fully understanding it.
This glitch was actually something I've build a test tool for. Investigation is needed. You have been warned.NotLikeThis

strange crater
spring gate
unreal sparrow
terse flare
#

This Vincent person is currently very active in the CD-i code of MAME. I've already told him, he should join the CD-i discord server to get in touch with the other emulation authors. It's nice to have another one join the CD-i forces.

unreal sparrow
sly sedge
#

Same here. MAME is about the only software emulation I use now (thanks to MiSTer), and I've been using it consistently the longest out of all of them (since approximately '99).

hardy iron
#

I've played Hotel Mario until the 6th hotel so far and god I hate this game but I refuse to give up..

terse flare
hardy iron
languid mica
#

Hmm, so when I try to load a game and hit the play button in the BIOS I get a full turquoise screen and then it blanks out and goes back to the BIOS.

spring gate
#

Are you on unstable Main?

#

Also, are you checking games confirmed to work and not ones needing a DVC?

languid mica
#

Yeah, I'm using the pinned version of the core and games on the recommended list that don't say (DVC).

#

And my bios files seem to work on cdiemu.

#

I've gotten 3rd Degree and Burn Cycle working on cdiemu so I think they're functional dumps.

spring gate
#

Are you definitely using unstable version of Main? That is likely the issue there. If you can double check on the MiSTer menu OSD what version it lists you are on we can confirm or rule that out as an issue

languid mica
#

The filename is CDi_20250223.rbf

#

Oh, I understand what you're saying now.

#

No, I'm not.

#

Thank you!

languid mica
#

Yep, works.

stuck bane
#

Hi where can i change or find the main file for play cdi?

valid onyx
#

in the pinned comments

south urchin
#

Unstable MiSTer main doesn't look too be pinned, the latest one is here #unstable-nightlies message

#

Rename the current MiSTer file on the root of the SD to MiSTer.old or something, copy new one over and rename to MiSTer, then reboot

stuck bane
#

ty so much

south urchin
#

NP

gray badge
#

I assume the new main that just went out has the CDi stuff

south urchin
#

Ahh nice, 20 mins ago

gray badge
#

I can confirm in just a sec. Pulled apart this monitor to get pics of the controller board. I’ll put it back together and test CDI

south urchin
#

Yeah I'm sure it will, hadn't seen the patreon email 🙂

#

distribution_mister just updated

#

The apprentice seems ok with the new stable main 👍

gray badge
#

nice

south urchin
#

@stuck bane no need for the unstable main any more, run an update and the new stable version that just came out has the CD-i fixes

stiff flare
#

@south urchin Thanks for catching I didn’t have the latest unstable pinned, just fixed it

south urchin
#

Haha, a new stable was released a few mins before I posted :p

stiff flare
#

Oh lol the latest main has the CDi stuff

#

RIP

#

Ok edited it to say to update to the latest Main

south urchin
#

Cheers to Jesus for the heads up, n you for keeping current info pinned 🙂

hardy iron
#

Is save states an option you're working on @terse flare or is that something that would either be difficult to implement or something you'll save until you have a better grasp on how "full" the core will be in the end? The games i've tried so far has fairly robust save systems so it isnt exactly the end of the world without it

terse flare
#

We had a similar question about cheats around here. That would be easier, though I don't know whether a cheat collection exists for this machine, considering the lack of popularity.

#

I can imagine that games like Dragon's Lair would make slightly more fun with a working save state system as it is quite unforgiving. As you have already noticed, most CD-i games seem to be designed around short playing sessions with their save system. A save state mechanism would not help that much.

#

Since I'm already here, I think I can give some updates. Some of the accuracy issues this core still has, are coming from missing understandings of the inner workings of the CDIC. Back when I started this, I just took the implementation of MAME which was based on cdiemu and turned that into Verilog. This implementation only used reverse engineering of the CDIC driver in the boot ROM as base and has issues with certain edge cases.
Therefore a new project is born:
https://github.com/Slamy/CDIC_BlackBoxAnalyzer

GitHub
GitHub - Slamy/CDIC_BlackBoxAnalyzer: An application running on the...

An application running on the Philips CD-i to analyze the responses of the IMS66490 CDIC - Slamy/CDIC_BlackBoxAnalyzer

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This is an application written in very archaic C, running on real Mono I hardware. It stimulates the CDIC and documents the responses. My idea here is, having an automated application to first analyze how the chip really behaves and then make this tool usable as a verification mechanism for emulators to check the accuracy. So far this is very new and I don't know if this gets me anywhere. But evidence shows that this approach was not yet performed.
Vincent-Halver, wo has recently joined MAME development, is more focused on graphics and maybe DVC. I'm curiously observing. He also doesn't have a physical CD-i right now.

radiant minnow
rough sable
#

Excited to give the new update a try

valid cairn
#

I can't let this thread go 2 days without a comment, so desperate measures are called for

#

Im going to post a joke that occurred to me and was deemed to lame to post:

#

What is a birds favourite console?

#

A SEEDY-i

#

😞

terse flare
karmic bramble
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You should not feel guilty, at all.

spring gate
#

Its your hobby Slamy, we are just along for the free ride 🙂

#

How you getting on with the CDIC stuff? Feeling positive about your new approach?

terse flare
# spring gate How you getting on with the CDIC stuff? Feeling positive about your new approac...

I'm most of the time pretty negative but I think it is ok. I've started writing a register map and also started writing a manual. The repository mentioned above has now a collection of tests and some logging of the registers going with them. My goal was to replace the "what we assume" with "what really is going on". It seems most CDIC emulator code was written around how to satisfy the software and just don't touch it too hard and close ones eyes and hope that everything will be alright. The real thing behaves sometimes differently and has additional bits, I've not yet found in any emulated implementation. I don't know in how much detail I can go here without causing mental damage to you all.

#

I will probably write the deep technical stuff mostly on the CD-i discord in hope to spark some curiosity. Vincent seems to be pretty motivated at the moment as well in improving the situation on the software emulator side. I hope that this is yet another tool which helps all emulators.

spring gate
#

Just seen your post on CDi Discord, looks like some great discovers and documentation you have done there

terse flare
spring gate
#

Do you think CDi Fan will try add to his emulator?

terse flare
spring gate
#

Ah well, maybe trying out in Mame is a good option then

valid cairn
#

So never feel any pressure to post

#

I got your back

tulip orchid
#

I just found one for less than $100

young grotto
#

just wanted to say i love reading the detailed updates in here. fascinating stuff everytime. thanks!

terse flare
# tulip orchid Has anyone donated a DVC yet? Just curious.

Oh don't worry. When I bought my 210/05 it came together with a DVC. The device you have there. It might not be compatible with Mono I. There are actually multiple DVCs with a different pinout.
Edit: Just as I thought. That one is for Mono IV and Roboco. It is the 9956

celest hollow
#

It'd be pretty wild to be able to load vcd images onto the mister and use this core to play them back!

#

Which also begs a goofy question...

#

I wonder if anyone ever dumped laser disc images

#

A core for a Pioneer laserdisc player would be wild lol

strange crater
#

There are LaserDisc images out there - I believe one's already been done for Pyramid Patrol that's circulating in private hands.

#

I tried to archive a few LaserActive discs, myself, but I ran into an issue where the off-the-shelf player I have refused to read the LD-ROM discs and forced a disc stop. (That, and one of the rarer titles I ordered - an English copy of Manhattan Requiem - cracked in transit, discouraging me from looking any more into it until I figured out a way to play them.)

strange crater
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I think the key issues with LaserActive are going to be a mixture of decoding and bandwidth.

Unlike the LaserDisc arcade games (which just used standard discs controlled by an external program, meaning you could read all you needed to get off the discs by capturing the video & audio alone), LD-ROM discs use a subcode format to store the data internally on the disc, essentially hiding Genesis and PC Engine game code within the disc's signal - you can overcapture, and recreate that decoding in realtime, but that creates a file so unbelievably massive that many devices (including the MiSTer) can't currently handle it in realtime. (And, when you're talking about 100+ GB files for standard definition, no one would want to store that much data for a single game to begin with).

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I think the eventual solution needs to be decoding the game data out of a direct RF capture (with something like ld_decode), then multiplexing the decoded file back into the compressed video & audio in a method similar to the Matroska container format.

But, given the rarity of the games and the complex & infamously delicate hardware, I'm not that surprised people haven't put an emulator for the platform together yet. There's a lot of details that need to be hammered out just on archiving it, let alone getting the software in a playable state.

celest hollow
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I mean laserdisc movies too. The untouched original Star wars trilogy is still best on laserdisc

strange crater
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'95 is a bit better than the GOUT, but I think that the fan 4K77/D+77 restorations blow most of them out of the water.

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Granted, the existing quality of the archival work done with those discs is insane - not every Laserdisc gets that kind of care & attention with digitization work by fans.

celest hollow
#

I have watched the 4K77 yet. I need. I bet those are fantastic

nocturne vortex
# strange crater I think the eventual solution needs to be decoding the game data out of a direct...

Heh just repaired a couple of these, and did a full recap on one (it’s intense) and a partial on the other but they both work at least. I’m sure there are lots of failure modes but mostly it’s stuff you’d expect (belts, mechanical issues, lubricant) and then some less expected stuff (ICP transistors meant to protect actually causing a power imbalance that fries the laser pickup when only one fails of the +/- voltage rails). Then output quality issues that were down to donor compatible laser assemblies being themselves quite tired. Good times. That and the pacs all self destruct if you don’t recap them so I’m sure some of the fragility is just people being neglectful

golden axle
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Wow, I never ever even want to try to repair one of those after reading that

nocturne vortex
#

Eh, between the console5 wiki and consolemods wiki it’s all well documented, just time consuming

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And zaxour is a nice dude who will answer questions

golden axle
#

I never seen one in my life so I'd be extremely unlikely to come across one anyways, couple people I've mentioned the CDI to IRL had no idea it even existed and they're 10 years older than me, well within the age to have been there when it was relevant

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I mean i wasn't even alive when the CDI was released

nocturne vortex
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I knew about CDI but somehow we already knew it wasn’t good for gaming, I didn’t know anyone who owned one. I vaguely remember a store display, possibly in the now defunct Service Merchandise

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Guess gaming mags must’ve been mostly how we knew

golden axle
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First time I heard of the CDI was from AVGN back in like 2007, never seen one ever IRL

nocturne vortex
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Not like we had much other news than talking to other gaming nerds and magazines

golden axle
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I had a Nintendo power Subscription back in 2003 that came with a Conker's Bad Fur Day walkthrough as a sign up bonus, That's as close as I got to the classic magazine scene

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Wasn't long after that magazine culture was dead so

nocturne vortex
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Didn’t even know it ran that long

golden axle
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last publication was in 2012 so thats a few more years than you would think

nocturne vortex
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I still have my nintendo power magazines from the first volume through a number of years of subscriptions and the strat guides etc you would get

golden axle
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I bought an xbox magazine magazine once that talked about saints row pre release and i only bought it because it came with a demo disc

nocturne vortex
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Somewhere the pins too

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With the weird blue bowser

golden axle
#

I still got a bunch of my 2003 Nintendo power magazines but they're destroyed ish because it was a 7 year at the time handling them along with other 7 year old friends

nocturne vortex
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Yeah mine are a mix of good shape to fairly ratty

weary torrent
#

Greetings! I tried out a few CD-i games and the wacky worlds mario prototype today and everything seemed to work fine. Can I or someone update the spreadsheet?

golden axle
#

That depends on what you tried and if it's any different from the previous reports

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I only ever add anything to the spreadsheets in the past if I completed something so i'm super bias to what I report on them

weary torrent
#

Oh lol, I would say it's "playable", I mean, the protype booted and I was able to load up a couple of different levels. Controls were a little strange, but I think that might also be a problem with the prototype itself as well

stiff flare
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I’ve got more tips in the pins - #1103404843512631357 message

weary torrent
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Before we realized about holding up and right, we were able to go forward for a bit, then backwards then forward and repeat

stiff flare
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Yeah that prototype is wacky

weary torrent
#

That's what I thought also, but I did want to report it since I tried it and it wasn't on the list.

#

ANd it was Mar10 day 🙂

golden axle
tulip orchid
# nocturne vortex Guess gaming mags must’ve been mostly how we knew

I knew about it from watching the infomercials that constantly played at night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW8PVEe4qTw

YouTube
Destroy All Children
CD-i infomercial (full)

Stitched together from a few videos found on Youtube. Can Phil survive The Wall's deadly game? Or will he spend an eternity of suffering digitized in the CD-i?

Audio is quite low due to some issues with the source videos. Just a heads up.

▶ Play video
#

I bought it a few years later in a mall but had to buy the software and controller through mail order.

nocturne vortex
tulip orchid
#

I always had to be different. I was also only 1 of 2 people in my area I think that owned a TG-16.

nocturne vortex
#

Damn

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TG16 & CD-i

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That is a different way to go

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I knew one kid with a TG16

tulip orchid
#

Of course I picked up a Genesis and SNES later..but then I went different again and had to have a Virtual Boy. Though to be fair those things were only $50 brand new.

nocturne vortex
#

Even SMS & Genesis were less common in my area. CD-i & 3DO were mags and kiosks and nowhere else in my world

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Zero people with NeoGeo as well, though I knew someone who rented one and even that was expensive

tulip orchid
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Yeah I didn't know anyone with expensive systems at all, those thing were vapor hardware as far as I as concerned ;)

nocturne vortex
#

CD-i was pretty spendy

tulip orchid
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CD-I was expensive, but that was like the one expensive thing I think I got my whole young adult life save for like a go-cart. I also think it was on sale or something maybe as it was on it's way out I'm sure.

#

I think I was hoping it was going to be better than my friends Sega CD. 🙄

nocturne vortex
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Turned out neither was good

tulip orchid
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Yeah..quite terrible for sure. I spent months teaching myself how to use that POS wireless remote until I finally got a controller in the mail. Probably the only saving grace was the sexy scenes in Voyeur.

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I only ever had Keith Courage for tg-16. Which wow...it was so bad. Of course everyone knows that now with emulation.

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Why they didn't include Bonk is fucking beyond me.

pulsar moth
#

They eventually included Bonk.

bold dragon
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Pretty sure Bonk wasn't available yet at release... but yeah, poor choice of pack-in

tulip orchid
bold dragon
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It was probably still sitting on the shelf. 😉

tulip orchid
#

likely I'm sure >.< it was also a rural area which tends to get everything last heh

gray badge
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But that keith courage title screen music…

strange crater
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@gray badge With the latest update, it seems like the full Europe set of Games is at least Playable or higher. Probably a good point to go back through testing the other sections, if you’re up to it.

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spring gate
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Godspeed. You do a great service to the community with all your testing, it is much appreciated.

gray badge
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I'll run through the regional exclusives. Excited to see how things look since I last tested in november

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I won't know if things are completable though because I was educated in the US and therefore only barely speak english

gray badge
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Not sure if this is present on real hardware but, whenever there is a cursor (mouse or whatever), the horizontal movement speed seems 2-3x the vertical movement speed

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Halfway through the EU regional exlcusives and it's incredible to see how far this core has come in the 5 months since I last did this list.

Every game is playable so far, and the only graphical bug I found was that there is a line of corrupted pixels on the edge of the screen in alice in wonderland - but I'd bet that's in the overscan.

Really excellent work, Slamy

terse flare
terse flare
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spring gate
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If you are on a roll, be worth checking the stragglers on the Asian and Homebrew tabs, probably only a handful to test there that didn't work previously

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terse flare
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To make matters even worse, Earth command just hanged up during a cutscene. >.<

terse flare
# gray badge

This is interesting. It is actually slightly different compared to the glitched line in Laser Lords.

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I saw you guys playing with a controller test, but I'll admit I wasn't paying too close attention

terse flare
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Is this phenomenon reproducible with the MiSTer input test when viewing the analog signals?

gray badge
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walk me through how to test that and I will

terse flare
gray badge
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ok, got it open. what should I be looking for? it's a digital pad so it just jumps to +/-127 on all axis

terse flare
gray badge
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yep

terse flare
gray badge
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yup, up and down don't go as far on this test

young grotto
#

i'm glad we have all these testsuites to narrow these things down

gray badge
#

also, left and right are one step, the start in the middle and then end up on the left or right. up and down are two step. first a little up or down, and then as far as you see in the screenshot

terse flare
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young grotto
#

is that true on real hardware?

terse flare
#

Ok, let me explain. You might have noticed that the CD-i has multiple different controllers and also a mouse as official peripherals. The way the core behaves right now is this order Analog > Mouse > Digital. For some reason the decision gets confused. With a PS3 controller I use, the dpad is digital and the analog stick is analog.
There is something you might want to try.... it's erasing the button mapping. The MiSTer is really bad when it comes to artifacts on the drive.
Please log into your MiSTer via SSH or other means and look for CD-i files inside /media/fat/config/inputs. Delete them or move them away

#

For some very weird reason, the real analog joystick has a wider range than the digital ones. This ... might be a problem, considering that your DPad is rather aggressive. Seeing this, I would assume that a "Disable Analog" option might be required to avoid issues like these.

terse flare
#

@gray badge This is an experimental build for you. It adds a debug option to disable analog input to experiment around with. I would assume that this fixes your issue. I'm not sure how a final solution might look like.
In this regard, the CD-i is more like the Vectrex. It is Analog first and digital second because there is no digital movement in the operating system. The digital is only an interpretation by the program running in digital style peripherals. This is why there are two speeds. The paddle controller is the one in charge for that.
Maybe... if problems like these keep ramping up, the Analog should be disabled per default and only enabled for people who are knowing what they are doing.
Edit: Please don't use this core for anything other than joystick tests. The CDIC is broken in this build. flushedshy

📎 CDi_experimental_debug_no_analog.rbf
gray badge
gray badge
#

Back to testing: i noticed in Kether (Germany), the bottom....8th? of the screen will get messed up if you pause during stage(?) select. Might be true on all version.

Also Kether (germany) (v3.08) just boots back to the bios. Not sure what the story is with that one as there wasnt a netherlands version of 3.08

rugged panther
celest hollow
#

That sucks. I'd love one just for laserdisc image movie playback

rugged panther
#

Daphne that's the name

celest hollow
#

Yeah! I have Daphne on my PC

gray badge
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Ok, Europe Regional titles all tested. Only one didn't boot (kether 3.08). I put a couple of notes for things I noticed, but it's come a very long way in 5 months.

I'll leave US and Asia for others to test

errant island
#

For the 7th Guest, the game requires a DVC (Digital Video Cartridge).
I saw the question on the 3DO channel.

karmic bramble
gray badge
stiff flare
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Doesn’t change mode, changes dpad to work as a dpad

#

Holding minus and left for 5 seconds changes it to left analog mode

#

Minus and right is right analog stick

south urchin
gray badge
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I’ll check this later today

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I have seen that image 4 or 5 times now, and each time I’m like “I should save that”

#

I should save that

timid magnet
#

8bitdo really need it as a sticker on the back. Too obscure.

errant surge
#

Yeah I have one of those and all I know is that I occasionally accidentally turn on autofire and have to flail around for a while trying to figure out how tot turn it off.

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strange crater
#

I was able to complete a game of 3rd Degree with friends on the core last night - as such, I upgraded it to Completable.

spring gate
#

Wow, looking at the sheet looks like nearly every game is confirmed at least playable now

gray badge
#

yeah, absolutely great stuff

#

It was fun to remember how stuff was when I tested it in november (october?) versus how it is now

#

I would be surprised if the majority of titles weren't completeable

terse flare
gray badge
#

its in amazing shape, Slamy. really impressed with what you have accomplished thus far. we are lucky to have someone as passionate as you are about the CDI writing this core 🙂

spring gate
#

Yeah definitely. Might be a good time to start digging into the non games and see how the software is looking. Not sure if we have packs for any of those yet

terse flare
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celest hollow
pure wadi
#

Is there a beta/alpha of the CD-i core available for people to test out? And if so is there a place to support the programmers creating it?

gray badge
#

Check the pins, Shane

pure wadi
#

Haha, thanks again. 😄

timid magnet
#

The pins hold all of human knowledge

stiff flare
#

They now have fancy title fonts and the external links are now just called LINKS

quartz crest
#

Robby is the kingpin

terse flare
# gray badge Back to testing: i noticed in Kether (Germany), the bottom....8th? of the screen...

Thank you for this bug report of those graphical issues. I'll put them on my list. This is a curious issue, haven't seen something similar in other games.
About the boot back to BIOS... that might have been an actual true crash. The operating system of the CD-i will reset the whole machine when something unexpected happens. That is actually not that good. If the crash is reproducible I would like to know the method to reproduce it. Random errors are the worst.

gray badge
#

the crash with Kether 3.08 is consistant - it doesn't boot (but I also don't know if the disc image is good - germany is the only region with the 3.08 variant of the game)

terse flare
terse flare
stiff flare
#

@gray badge? More like theGOATfish! elmorise

gray badge
gray badge
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boots on cdi emu

image.png
#

but hangs here?

#

ahh no, it boots

#

yeah, works fine in cdiemu

gray badge
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Interestingly, I don't get that 1px width column of corrupted pixels when playing alice in wonderland in DV

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Ok, US list done.

  • Name that tune freezes when you try to start a game.
  • Wacky mini golf freezes after a couple of strokes.
  • Couple of games with minor graphical issues.

Made notes on the spreadsheet 🙂

rugged panther
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rugged panther
gray badge
#

That’s a relief

terse flare
young grotto
#

DV = DirectVideo in this context

#

usually using cheap hdmi to vga adapters to get analog output without an IO board or for direct connection to external scalers

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terse flare
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undone nimbus
#

do they still put ™ behind every other name like that nowadays? it was/is such a strange practice, like anyone's going to care

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stray wadi
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We were robbed of a CDI Donkey Kong game.

lavish crow
#

Yes! Would have been great to have a bizarro DK game in the arcade game style from Philips. I’d love to have some weird Hotel Mario like DK game

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I celebrate obscure and weird stuff and don’t shun it. I think we’re way better off with the CD-I Nintendo games than w/out. It’s like a view into an alternate dimension seeing 3rd party devs make Nintendo games w/out Nintendo’s oversight

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The Nintendo games are definitely the killer apps of the CD-I and the main reason behind the allure of the system imo

terse flare
merry oyster
gray badge
#

fukkin goatfish

strange crater
sinful hornet
#

Man, they don't even have goat style eyes

stiff flare
#

this is why AI can never replace the human spirit

#

We know about goat eyes

gray badge
#

I am going to have a T-Shirt made that just says “We know about goat eyes”

radiant minnow
#

There are MANY goats around where I live, and I can say the eyes and the horns are totally wrong there

sinful hornet
radiant minnow
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It's full of wild goats, gotta be careful when driving at dawn because they come out of nowhere, and in great number

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stiff flare
neon fulcrum
undone nimbus
#

bellhop and elvis goombas are cool and nintendo is cowardly for not embracing them as part of mario's history

terse flare
# gray badge

After starting Alice for the first time, I had the impression that the voice actor of the narrator is the same as Robot from Invincible. It sounds similar. They are different people it seems though.

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terse flare
terse flare
# gray badge Oh isn't that Zachary Quinto (spock from the new star trek movies)? That would h...

I've looked into the graphical issue of this game. It is caused by a misalignment of the region flags by one high resolution pixel. The borders contains garbage data which usually is not shown as this area is hidden using the regions. Maybe some insights in the graphical layers: The first layer contains the ingame footage. It is a CLUT8 frame which means it has 256 colors from a palette. The second layer is DYUV which is fine tuned for photographs. After the game is started, this person is hidden in the background.
Now, why even talk about this? It turns out, the game is slightly glitched on the right border.

alice0.png alice0.png
#

If you look closely, the man in the back is shining through at the right edge. I first thought this has to be a bug in the core. But it seems that is not the case. This very small glitch is also visible on a 210/05

alice0.png image.png
gray badge
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oh wow

spring gate
#

Hmm, maybe a similar issue here:
Space Ranger (USA) (Unl) (DVC Enhanced)
Menu seems to look fine, but game is unplayable. The lower half of the gameplay area is not visible.

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Hasn't been checked for a couple of months that one, maybe it is OK now

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On the Homebrew tab

terse flare
#

Space Ranger... Laser Lords... With all those names I would assume quite some action. I was surprised how slow a game with such a powerful name could be. Speaking of Laser Lords, it has the same issue as Alice. I think, the engine is pretty much the same. The developers recycled that.

gray badge
#

it looks the same

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(and boy howdy, there are not enough lasers in that game)

terse flare
# 
MCD212: OFF coding is considered black instead of transparent
  - Fixes red bars and single blue line at the top in Hotel Mario
CDIC: Rewritten audio state machine
  - Changes based on findings of the CDIC_BlackBoxAnalyzer project
    - Removed audio coding sidechannel and audio/cd synchronization
    - Fixed behavior of Audio Control Register
  - Fixes audio regression during "Hotel Mario" score screen
  - Fixed spurious IRQ caused by sector data interrupt after reading stopped
    - Should fix hang on shopkeeper cutscene in "Zelda - Wand of Gamelon"
      (Cannot be reproduced after some tries or is very unlikely now)
CDIC: Seek time now 19 sectors (14 before)
  - Fixes audio glitch in "Help cutscene" in "Zelda - Wand of Gamelon"
    "Remember, tools can only be used..."
MCD212: Continue fetching framebuffer data with OFF coding
  - Fixes graphical glitches on pause screen of Kether
  - Fixes graphical glitches during intro of Zenith
MCD212: Fixed region flag misalignment on the left edge
  - Fixes glitched vertical line in "Laser Lords" and "Alice in Wonderland"
MCD212: Fixed Image Control Area timing
  - ICA starts immediately at vblank
  - Fixes hiccups during Demo mode of Burn:Cycle
  - Also reduced CPU starvation caused by ICA memory access.
    (Might not have an effect, only more compliant to datasheet)
📎 CDi_20250320.rbf
#

The last release was nearly one month ago. As some fixes have been accumulated during the last days, I've thought to make a release again. So far I'm not aware of any regressions caused by this. With this release the core might have entered beta phase since quite some issues might be now gone.

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uh oh. are we headed to mister_devel and unstable nightlies?

terse flare
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if I understand correctly, it's totally up to the dev. it's whether or not you want it to have wider exposure. If you'd rather keep it "in house" for now that's totally fine.

wintry dust
#

Saturn being added to the mister devel repos may have been driven by external factors

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(well the timing of it being added)

spring gate
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Great stuff Slamy! Might these audio fixes impact red book bugs or just green book (i.e. should I recheck photo CD audio issues?)

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Once something goes into MiSTer devel it is opening it up to many more eyes on it and issues being raised in GitHub, so your call when you want to move to there Slamy

terse flare
spring gate
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That's great to know!

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I wonder if it may also fix that weird issue with repeating the last part of the previous audio track you hear on some discs

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New build added to WIP DB

terse flare
spring gate
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Ah, got you, can recheck the discs I noted that on

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Is there more to be done on the CDIC side Slamy, or do you think that is nailed down now?

terse flare
# spring gate Is there more to be done on the CDIC side Slamy, or do you think that is nailed ...

Good question. There is at least one title remaining with audio issues. That would be "Golf Tips". The menu has some broken audio. (Headphone users have been warned.)
Then there is still an issue with the media player when playing Audio CDs. Sometimes, the software just hangs. I haven't yet seen this behavior with games that use red book audio. As the CDIC commands for CDDA are different to Green Book, there might still be something wrong.

spring gate
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I did see some weird issues when I looked at the enhanced music CDs, things seemed broken in some of the menus, but was hard to tell without having a reference

terse flare
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The wrongly played audio in both Zelda's Adventure and Zelda - Wand of Gamelon was one of the last issues I knew of. Zelda's Adventure is just broken by design. I was able to prove that as the issue can be replicated on the real machine. And Wand of Gamelon just needed some seek time.

spring gate
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I ultimately parked digging in anymore on the previous build

terse flare
spring gate
#

No, enhanced music CDs are different, they are like multimedia discs where you can play albums through them. So they have their own menus and can have bonus videos in there. I guess like a DVD menu with content in there

#

There is a pack of them on archive from the same hero who brought us the non DVC games pack

#

If you check the relevant tab on the sheet way to the right you can see what discs there are, it isn't many that were released in the format and some require DVC so don't work

terse flare
#

We need "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up" as a CD-i disc. It is nearly April Fools. xD That would be the perfect enhanced music CD.

spring gate
#

The Cranberries one is quite involved, there is a house you can go and explore point and click style and unlock music to play by clicking on things

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Others are just an inbuilt music player pretty much

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The Ennio Morricone one lets you play the album but also has bonus content like a DVD, with an interview video with him

terse flare
gray badge
spring gate
#

Only one way to find out!

sinful hornet
#

Sorry I haven't checked in some time but the core saves and loads just fine, right?

terse flare
sinful hornet
#

Feeling in a pretty good place at the moment?

gray badge
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It felt really great last release

spring gate
#

That to-do list must be getting smaller, the core is in a really great place now. 🙂

terse flare
#

Alright, bed time. It is near midnight around here.flushedshy

stiff flare
#

Pin, pin, pin, all day long. Pin, pin, pin, while I sing this song. Gonna update links, gonna make it shine. Gonna download the core, while I’m online.

glacial sonnet
#

Funny timing, I woke up wanting to have another go at the Zelda games and a new core update was up!

Finished Faces of Evil, no audio glitches, no crashes, no issues at all beyond saves not staying between changing cores but I knew that ahead of time.

Amazing work on the core! I never would have dreamed of playing CDi on the MiSTer ages ago.

20250321_133731.jpg
gleaming echo
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The saves should stay between core changes from a few builds back

stiff flare
#

Rank the Nintendo CDi games

gleaming echo
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Hotel Mario
Faces of Evil
Wand of Gamelon
Zeldas Adventure

Probably

gray badge
#

how can you rank your favorite children?

nocturne vortex
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Which has the worst animation?

gray badge
#

I repeat myself

undone flint
#

The 7th Guest and Mystic Midway: Rest in Pieces is the sole reason i want a cdi core

stiff flare
gray badge
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even has mt32pi support

undone flint
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yeah the pc version sucks compared to cdi though

stiff flare
#

you don’t get to decide that

undone flint
#

goes back to @Robbys Mom

lavish crow
gleaming echo
stiff flare
#

@terse flare wow, your last update fixed all the visualizers and audio for the European multimedia discs Antistatic and Head Crash!

eScape is much improved but it still has this weird row of pixels on the right-hand side.

fair linden
#

very happy to see escape from cybercity seeming to not crash beyond the second sequence of the game now lol

strange crater
# undone flint yeah the pc version sucks compared to cdi though

As someone who’s played through both - the CD-i version is very slow, and some places lack music present in the PC version. It has better picture quality due to the MPEG card, however, and the added silence definitely changes the tension and atmosphere of certain scenes.

glacial sonnet
#

Zelda's Adventure is mostly playable
Crashed in the intro cutscene but that's skippable

More sadly, it crashed in the cutscene where Zelda falls into Ganon's Trial at the end.
Should have saved at some point. Almost had the game beat

glacial sonnet
gleaming echo
glacial sonnet
#

Not in awhile - that's probably it.

terse flare
terse flare
# glacial sonnet That's strange, I'm using the latest one posted here. I haven't tested a lot of ...

In general, the save games are persistent between core changes. You find them at /media/fat/saves/CD-i and there is no connection between core versions. This is also the first time I've heard of a problem like this. It would be interesting to know where the save files went. Did it create another save file for the same game? The code for NvRAM handling wasn't touched in a while now as it pretty much does what needs to be done.

gleaming echo
#

They work for me but when I get home from work I can try faces of evil and see if it works for me

terse flare
# glacial sonnet Zelda's Adventure is mostly playable Crashed in the intro cutscene but that's s...

Carefully documented crashes, hangs and hiccups are valuable for the development. Please provide more info. Does it consistently crash? Or is it random? What does crash mean? Cyan screen and back to system shell? The core is still a little bit experimental. Please save often. If you have a save file which is able to reproduce a problem, please provide it to me for analysis.
Discord might not be the best place to track problems though... GitHub Issues would be another place to document problems.

terse flare
stiff flare
olive kiln
#

maybe these lines should be objects ?

image.png
#

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

YouTube
Coldcut
Hex - eScape a/v CD-Rom for CD-ROM for platform, Philips' CD-i system.

Here’s a throwback to 1993, Hex’s interactive rave AV Art piece for the Philips' CD-i platform.

The sounds of UK techno pioneers B12, Eon, Coldcut and Irresistible Force x computer visuals that the user can intact with using the CD-i remote controller. Check out the 45 minute mash up. Respect to Evan Grant of seeper for excavating this, he tol...

▶ Play video
stiff flare
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That’s what I think too. Those lines appeared in the other multimedia discs I mentioned above but with the latest core they turned into recognizable shapes.

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Not that I particularly care about eScape working perfectly but it seemed to be an easy issue to reproduce and from my ignorant perspective a similar issue that was fixed in other multimedia music discs.

undone flint
strange crater
#

No, the CD-i version actually had two less than the PC version by removing the soup can puzzle & heart maze puzzle.

gray badge
#

SHY GYPSY SLYLY SPRYLY TRYST BY MY CRYPT

strange crater
#

Apparently, the designers of the CD-i version cut it intentionally because none of the playtesters had any idea that “tryst” was even a word

astral slate
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The PC version is impossible to 100% now because the one of the puzzle logic is tied to CPU speed. I have always wanted to try the CDI version.

stiff flare
astral slate
stiff flare
astral slate
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I was fascinated in games like 7th Guest in the 90s. Exploring creepy old mansions. More so when virtual reality became available.

stiff flare
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Ah my trolling failed!!

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Yeah 7th Guest appealed to me way more than Myst

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It had a legitimate mystery I could follow and the introduction was fascinating

astral slate
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Myst is playable on the core

celest hollow
undone nimbus
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i liked riven but myst always looked a bit too static to me

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7th guest soup can puzzle i skipped somehow, because i remember the maze that came afterwards and how much i got freaked out every time by "FEELING..... ... LONELY??"

#

there is no way my 8 year old non native speaking ass would have figured out that mf

glacial sonnet
# terse flare Carefully documented crashes, hangs and hiccups are valuable for the development...

Sorry for the late response, went to bed shortly after that. The cutscene crash is consistent, using the last core posted here. If you watch the intro without skipping it the Wizard reads this letter and it just hangs with the cutscene is no longer being skippable so I'm presuming that's a crash. If you press button 1 at any point prior the cutscene skips.

While cutscenes after collecting the signs started/ended just fine the crash at the end was a similar situation to the intro crash when Zelda falls into to Gannon's trial and it just hangs, no longer being able to be skipped.

ROM-wise I'm just using a standard EU .bin / .cue and I don't believe the game was released in the US.

I'll check out the save stuff in a moment. Did you want me to open this as an issue on the Github?

78656-4.png
gray badge
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Trying it real quick (I was testing the other reported bugs) this is wand of gamewhatever, yeah?

glacial sonnet
#

Zelda's Adventure, the top-down one.

gray badge
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aha, gotcha. I have never been in the europe folder because elph usually tests that. Loading it now

glacial sonnet
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I don't think I've updated my Mister main in ages either way - does the CDi core still need the alternate main? I've still got the
[CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi
in my .ini

gray badge
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nah, it's all baked into stable main now

glacial sonnet
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Probably why saves aren't working lmfao

gray badge
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lol

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Yeah, it doesn't freeze for me

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update main and try again

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(and pull that out of your ini)

glacial sonnet
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Yeah, gonna test now.

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Strange, it's still crashing on my end. Wonder if it's a bad ROM dump..

Saves are working fine though which I'm more happy about thanks for your help!

terse flare
# glacial sonnet Sorry for the late response, went to bed shortly after that. The cutscene crash ...

Why are you sorry for the late response? Don't be, it's totally fine.
Concerning the issue, I'm slightly confused. I'm also unable to reproduce the problem on my side. In the past we had some issues around here with USB hard drives as they come with some latency. I wonder if this is really a bad dump... Hmm... Do you have access to other emulators as well? Maybe MAME? If the issue also exists there with your image, then something is probably wrong with the dump.

gray badge
#

I sent them a DM for absolutely no reason whatsoever but hopefully it fixes the issue for them

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by the power of DMing alone

glacial sonnet
#

Oh, it's working!
I didn't change anything but it's working.
The screen transition felt a little longer than it should have been so I'm not sure if that's the game's issue or a me issue. I'm just using a standard sandisk micro SD. It's working and saves are working too now so I'm going to try to power through the game again.

Thanks to both of you for the help!

terse flare
# glacial sonnet Oh, it's working! I didn't change anything but it's working. The screen transiti...

If you say the screen transition takes longer, do you mean the transitions during gameplay when it scrolls? Or during the cutscene? In general, this game is a "heavy track seeker" when it comes to CD access. During development of this core, the seeking times got slower and slower to fix some issues with some titles. I haven't yet added an option to remove seeking times. It might make sense to add that though. Especially for a game like this.
I find it fascinating that you can replay this game again even so most consider it the worst Zelda game on the CD-i 🙂 I personally still have to try the full experience. So far I've only completed the sidescrolling Zelda games on a real CD-i.

sinful hornet
gray badge
#

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

glacial sonnet
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Just that one cutscene, it just felt longer between the shot change from the letter to the wizard compared to other cutscenes.

To be honest so am I lmfao
But I've been a huge Zelda fan all my life and being able to say I've beaten them all - even the CDi feels strangely nice?
It's an interesting game if nothing else. I'm not going to pretend it's good but I get what they were going for. Giving up when I was close to the end seems a shame, too.

terse flare
# glacial sonnet Just that one cutscene, it just felt longer between the shot change from the let...

Of course it does. You see the word "Gannon" (with 2 Ns) and seconds turn into minutes as you wonder what went wrong during development. Jokes aside, please provide some video footage showing the delay if you think that the behavior is not accurate. I've just made an experiment and made a CDI 210/05 race against the core during the intro cutscene and it is pretty much spot on. (Works on my machinederpsmile )

glacial sonnet
# terse flare Of course it does. You see the word "Gannon" (with 2 Ns) and seconds turn into m...

Oh yeah, the script is all over the place too SumirekoLaugh

there's a few areas that NPCs aren't consistent on naming, plus the game's not even set in Hyrule and one woman talks about being in Hyrule too.

It's done, though - played through it to completion with no bugs or crashes and saw the ending this time!

I'll check on emu later if that pause isn't accurate, to be honest I've never even seen a CDi in real life so I'm not sure if it's accurate to real hardware or not. Given there was text on screen maybe it's a little longer to let the player read? It's the only odd delay in the game.

errant surge
#

It’s the usual stuff: no time or money, mandates from the cd-i execs who didn’t know what a video game was

terse flare
# glacial sonnet Oh yeah, the script is all over the place too <a:SumirekoLaugh:58990380107549901...

Ah, I see now. This timestamp shows the scene: https://youtu.be/IqFZ1iVmhIo?t=89 You thought that during the reading of the letter, there would be actual footage of the wizard. This is not the case. It actually shows a still image during the reading of it. Maybe they wanted to save some space on the disc or reduce efforts by not recording another scene with actors.
Now that you have finished the game (thx for your efforts) you might want to put that entry in the pinned testing sheet to document it.

bold dragon
#

It's sad, but there were a bunch of people invovled in making consoles back then who didn't play games or know what made games interesting at all. Not limited to CDi, it was also the American side of NEC, and others. Just botching every opportunity,

#

Even publishers and some developers.

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Not names that you'd recognize today though (obviously)

terse flare
#

Somehow I always have to think about Project X which is a euroshmup for the Amiga. It has a very awesome title music but is probably the most boring shmup I've ever played on a 16 bit machine. The waves of enemies are boring and there is no epic music during the levels.

#

Back to CD-i. Today I've decided to continue my savegame of Hotel Mario. Not only do I think that the level designer is an "Avengers Level" threat to society but the core actually has some problems in the audio department of volume. As you already might know, the BGM is on one audio channel and the SFX is on the other. Afterwards these get mixed together. Hotel Mario is far louder than both Zelda games I've tried. This is causing some audible clipping. I need to think how to solve this. One way would be to divide the volume of both channels by 2 but this feels wrong. In case of CDDA we would loose 1 bit of resolution. I'm not yet sure. It might also be possible to dynamically detect the loudness and reduce the volume if clipping occurs. Hmm.

bold dragon
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Any two signals added together has the possibility of exceeding the maximum, or partially cancelling each other out. In the case of clipping, then both sounds are already simultaneously near the limit (peaking at over -3dB), and clipping would not be surprising. You can either sense for it and deliberately clip, or deliberately divide by some factor, but division is not really easy in digital logic (except by exponents of 2).

terse flare
# bold dragon Any two signals added together has the possibility of exceeding the maximum, or ...

Fine tuned this problem for the CD-i, it's not simply adding two signals together as there is a matrix applied here.

left_out = a * left_in + b * right_in
right_out = c * left_in + d * right_in

The typical Audio CD would max out a and d leaving the others at 0. This would mean I don't need to do anything at all and things are fine. But some games are having every channel fully amped up to mix stereo to mono with maximum volume.
In software I could think about summing both factors up and dividing down to ensure that the sum is never exceeding the maximum.

bold dragon
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That's interesting, but in order to determine those actual factors (and factors for mixing any other sources), you'd need to examine the ampilifer/mixer stages of the original devices, and perhaps try running some tests like MDFourier to determine frequency response and relative strenghts of those sounds

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I'd be very surprised if CDs in the 90s were mixed to maximum levels - the extra headroom was intended to be reserved for things like drum kicks. Actual regular volume levels should be something like 0.25 of the maximum range. It also wasn't until after 2000 that audio mix engineers were given the instruction to mix things "loud" - as in dynamic range compression and trying to maximize the dynamic range on the CD

spring gate
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Do you need 3db clearance for modern DACs?

#

Sorry, that should have been in the dev channel really

river sphinx
celest hollow
#

I hate how these videos are playing inside of a tiny ass window

grim moat
terse flare
# grim moat woah the sprites sure are tiny...

This is only a theory but these might actually be the sprites of the SNES version of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
I can see that by the number of toes on Kens feet. The SNES has non square pixels which are wider than usual. The CD-i has nearly square pixels.
Here the sprite sheet https://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/5572/

The Spriters Resource - Full Sheet View - Street Fighter II: The Wo...

Full view of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior / Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting - Ken.

undone nimbus
#

but its certainly true for most games

celest hollow
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Living in America, and never really playing any European games till recently, hell I just played my first Amiga game in the Mister last month, I do think European games have a unique style all their own

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And I really enjoy it. Gives me something new to experience all these years later

terse flare
#

Apidya is also one cool case for euroshmup. It is like Gradius but with a bee in the main role. You even fight underwater against a Pike with snails attached to it shooting plasma. These are typical things happening in German ponds. The music is also by Chris Hülsbeck. I like his style.

undone nimbus
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i can never decide whether jazz jackrabbit was a good game

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it has good music but the movement and level design was definitely off

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Earthworm Jim i'd always assumed to be a europlatformer, but it turns out that was an american game, it just feels so euro though

ember mountain
undone nimbus
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i had it for snes as a kid, loved it honestly just because i was easily sold on any game that lets you jump into toilets

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the hit detection was the biggest problem though

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growing up with that sort of game you eventually got used to it, like for me Lion King for snes is a fairly easy game, maybe because i was used to not trusting hitboxes and weird ledge jumping. The cd i zelda and mario games are also just sort of playable to me. Not "good", but interesting and worth putting up with

gray badge
#

oh man, Name That Tune boots!

grim moat
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arcade sprites for SF2 are 64px wide, SNES ones 32 pixels

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to be fair all 16-bit versions of SF2 seem to use 32px wide sprites. maybe the issue is they're using a bigger screen resolution

gray badge
#

Went through and retested anything that I had a note on. Lots of fixes! Only a couple problematic games remain

frosty bobcat
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So is the list in the pin updated? Alot of them say "playable" but only a few say "completable"

sinful hornet
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Playable usually means they can be player controlled and completable means someone has taken the time to beat the game

frosty bobcat
#

gotcha

gray badge
#

yeah

#

I would suspect everything is completeable

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but unless we play through it, we don't mark it

terse flare
# gray badge but unless we play through it, we don't mark it

Some games are also a little bit too painful to complete. I'm trying my luck with Hotel Mario every now and then and the Hotel of Wendy is much more difficult compared to the ones before. Every level in this hotel consists not of a single screen but two. This means if you fail at the second screen, it is back to the first. >.<

gray badge
#

Fear not, Slamy. We will find someone foolish brave enough to finish these games

terse flare
gray badge
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yeah...I also don't have plans for them all. But I may try to tackle one of the awful ones. Depends on how much time I have

terse flare
#

I think it would be optimal if someone plays them who also has experienced them on the original hardware. To actually be able to see the fine differences.

gray badge
#

Also I am not sure how many of them are "games". LIke, is Earth Command a game?

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yeah that's a good callout

hardy iron
#

Havent completed the last hotel though

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However I have no experience of original hardware, i've only compared to youtube videos that i've scrolled through to compare

terse flare
# hardy iron This is where I stopped when I posted earlier aswell.. I mean I already wanted t...

Next level hell is certainly the right description for this. I fail to see which target audience it was aiming for. Children? Never! Korean eSport Masters? Maybe? Casual Players? Never! Mario Fans? No...
Starting at Wendy's this game becomes a drinking game. The one loosing a life takes a shot and the next one can play. I've played frustrating games before. Even "Getting over it with Bennet Foddy" is easier than Wendy's Hotel.

hardy iron
#

The funniest thing is that a few small tweaks and the game wouldnt necessarily be "good" but it would atleast be a mid game. But I wholeheartedly agree that I have no idea who the difficulty is tuned for.

I sincerely believe that they just thought "You have infinite continues and a save function so its probably fine"

terse flare
# hardy iron The funniest thing is that a few small tweaks and the game wouldnt necessarily b...

I'm not sure if this game was tuned at all. It feels almost like they ran out of testing time. I also consider it a rather bad idea to have a one-hit-death platformer like this to stretch over more than one screen. If you get the fire flower, things become a little bit easier. But assuming one has that right now, is like Gradius syndrome. I'm not sure if I'm able to finish this. I tried to play it as it might have been relaxing. This core might need cheats so this game becomes playable. I'm not even sure if cheat codes for this game exist.

hardy iron
#

Ye fully agreed, honestly I think i've gotten a single fire flower on all the maps i've done so far, I have no idea what even triggers those items to appear at all.

I'd be shocked if the game has any cheat codes tbh

#

The biggest issue I had with wendys is the timer, cause as far as I can tell it doesnt really matter how fast you run through it, cause goombas keep respawning on the platforms that you just left as soon as you go into the elevator.

So you go back down - kill them - run back to elevator.. oh wait the elevator changed direction - waste a bunch of time - go upstairs again - another wave is scripted to spawn - rinse and repeat a somewhat random amount of times.

Oh we also added unkillable things that can literally block doors and there is zero you can do about it if you arent there in time.

There is zero words that can describe just how frustrating the game actually is cause if only do the first 2 hotels the game seems fine difficulty wise, you just keep descending into hell the further you play this is my final warning to anyone that is gonna play this god forsaken game.

karmic bramble
hardy iron
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Oh I didnt know that

karmic bramble
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It is random I guess. I suffered through some stages until I started entering doors to avoid getting hit.

terse flare
#

This page is full of tips. I don't even know how one is supposed to know this.

terse flare
# 
MCD212: Added Mosaic display file type
        - Fixes visualizations of eScape
MCD212: Added RGB555 coding
        - Fixes "DYUV decoder" test on the "Validation Disc (Europe)"
AD7528: Reduces volume of input to 56%
        - Approximates the clipping behavior of a CDI 210/05
        - Required to fit the theoretical 17 bit output
          into the 16 bit PCM signal of the MiSTer
        - Fixes sound distortion in Hotel Mario
SERVO: Simulate tray operation
        - Can be opened and closed with the system shell now
        - Avoids reading of an empty tray
📎 CDi_20250329.rbf
#

I don't have 100% confidence with the audio change but I assume it can't be avoided. A real CD-i 210/05 can mix the 16 bit output of both audio channels to one signal with an analog circuit. This means in theory a 17 bit DAC would be required to be 100% accurate. The MiSTer is slightly to blame here since everything is based on 16 bit audio.
I've measured the clipping behavior with a custom application to execute on a real machine. I've used the old authoring tools (thx to the CD-i discord team❤️ ) to generate a sine wave signal with maximum volume to play on the real deal. I've recorded that and checked how much the sine wave was altered.

image.png
#

It turned out that Hotel Mario is also clipping on the real machine but it is barely noticable. In general it is the loudest game I've experienced so far. To fix the non-linearity during mixing, the core has now a slightly larger headroom for mixing compared to the real machine. It will still clip during Hotel Mario but is barely noticeable.

#

The tray operation may not be fully experienceable on the standard settings of the core since it currently resets the machine whenever a CD image is loaded. I myself use the core with Debug Options -> No reset on NvRAM change but I'm still not sure if this is 100% safe in every regard. The CD-i is like a Saturn with the cell battery enclosed. The Saturn core currently performs a reset with every disc change. My experience so far is that this is not necessary as it seems that the OS of the CD-i is reading the file system on the NvRAM with every operation. Maybe, in future releases the core will not perform a reset when the first disc is inserted.

sinful hornet
#

Great work slamy!

stiff flare
#

Really exciting stuff, dude!

terse flare
#

It was the first title I've yet found which uses the Mosaic video format. The pictures are actually half resolution compared to the generated backgrounds.

#

Maybe some simulations of the video signal to show the differences.

image.png image.png
stiff flare
terse flare
# stiff flare Oh damn awesome!

I have an automatic integration test for the video side of the core. As the videochip reads its own configuration from RAM, it is just like the soundchip of the SNES. You have a dump of the RAM and nearly everything is there. So I keep some RAM dumps from MAME around. It's also very good to check for regressions.

tribal axle
young grotto
#

or the hdmi?

#

i'm not sure what it would "cost" to do

#

quite a few cores have this sort of mixing/clipping issue and could potentially benefit

errant island
#

I had the chance to discuss a little bit with Frogbull earlier today.
About the a recent port of SF II on the CD-i system.

  • From our discussions, he could reveal the sprites were imported from the Asia MD version of the Championship Edition & the backgrounds are from the SNES version.
#
  • The choice of the MD version was done because of the directly integrated debug mode from it.
#
  • He is working under CLUT7 colour format instead of CLUT4 as 'it is easier to work like that' for him.
#

And I have a quick question on the CD-i system from him.
"Does the CD-i allows us to play around with the MPEG-1 layer without the MPEG module ?"

#

His idea was to create a parallax effect for the backgrounds if it was possible.

stray plank
#

A human being will not be able to hear the difference between 16 and 17-bit audio.

young grotto
#

no but it gives you headroom so you can mix lots of audio and still produce a reasonably normal/loud output

strange crater
#

They had a variety of different releases on just about all of the multimedia systems around that time, though - they also had a 3DO game called Digital Dreamware, and a CDTV title called Global Chaos.

#

It was an early multimedia project by Ninja Tune Records, who are still active today. The label’s founder, Coldcut, did most of the project’s music.

#

They also made Top Banana, one of the most wildly cursed-looking platformers I’ve ever seen:

https://youtu.be/o4G6x2M7MVw

YouTube
The Rarest Gamer
Top Banana (Acorn Archimedes game 1991)

Top Banana is an environmentally-themed platform game produced by Hex and Psycore for the Acorn Archimedes in 1991 and ported to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST in 1992.

Its graphics makes my eyes giddy because of background colors.

additional information : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Banana_(video_game)

▶ Play video
stray plank
terse flare
errant island
#

Thanks for the explanation.

#

I relay it to Frogbull.

terse flare
# errant island I relay it to Frogbull.

He should discuss it with the actual software developing experts on the CD-i discord. Right now TwBurn is working on another game and this time he also involves the MPEG decoder. It seems you are not even able to manipulate the shown picture when the MPEG stream is stopped. But maybe he is only using the official software interfaces for that...

errant island
#

Yes, he explained and showed me that video earlier today.

#

I will ask him to see the others on the CD-i Discord.

#

Thanks.

terse flare
#

The CD-i is lacking in the sprites department 😦

errant island
#

Anyway, thanks again for the CD-i core.

My family lost everything in a fire last summer.
And they used the CD-i 205 (910 in the US) a lot, even recently.
Their CD-i player and record collection were destroyed.

I showed them the core a few weeks ago, and it brought back so many memories.

terse flare
fast jacinth
#

one delightfully strange and specific regression i can point out: the apprentic makes my composite out signal black and white on my NTSC crt now with this new core. the previous core didn't do that!

#

no complaints just adding it to the pile of notes in case it ends up being helpful!

young grotto
#

interesting

#

is the game pal and your tv doesn't support pal?

terse flare
# fast jacinth one delightfully strange and specific regression i can point out: the apprentic...

Howdy. I sadly don't have a YC adapter to test this so I can only make educated guesses. In the menu you have the TV Mode selection. I assume you have set it to PAL which puts the machine into 50 Hz mode. For NTSC it is 60 Hz. I was already called out for that naming on the CD-i discord as it is a lie. There is no PAL and NTSC for a MiSTer core. From what I've learned, the PAL/NTSC Encoder switches the standard based on the refresh rate. Maybe you have set it to PAL and forgot about that.
Or does going back to the old core really fix this? What was the version of that specific core?

terse flare
young grotto
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it is possible somethings slightly shifted timings wise somewhere and broken the composite colorburst, its really sensitive

terse flare
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Story time: In the last days I was trying to wrap my head around a possibility to auto start the application. On a real CD-i 210/05 you can press the Play button on the front panel. Even so, a CD was not yet read the system remembers this and starts the application or the audio CD playback as soon as the medium is detected. Technically, the SLAVE is polling the front panel controller U3090MG via I2C to read the button states. When the play button is pressed, the word provided by the front panel controller is not 87 00 but instead 07 20. This in turn causes the SLAVE to give the main CPU an IRQ and gives A1 87 20 on one of the channels back to the OS. In case of the current state of this core, only 87 20 is returned. This is wrong. I wondered why it is like that and it turns out that SLAVE 2.0 is the wrong version for this core. A real machine uses SLAVE 3.2. There is one issue though. I only have access to 4.1 from cdimono2.zip and 2.0 from cdimono1.zip from the MAME dumps. Its interesting to note that 4.1 from Mono II doesn't have this problem. But this revision doesn't help us as the audio mixing circuit is never controlled by it.

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I don't know why someone had put the revision 2.0 into the rom dump for Mono I. I was told that this revision is only used in the even older hardware revisions.
Sadly the SLAVE ROM cannot be dumped that easily. There is a person here https://seanriddle.com/mc6805p2.html which explains a way but it requires removal of the SLAVE from the PCB and some trickery to dump the content. As my machine has it soldered to the board and I have two left hands with the soldering iron I need to think how I can progress with this topic. I know some soldering experts who actually can pull that off. I still have hopes high this can be avoided and a dump somewhere exists.

ember granite
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It might be worth looking into test clip dumping. Some people managed to read ROMs incircuit using Pomona clips or similar, depending on the chip’s design. Could avoid the need to desolder entirely.

terse flare
errant surge
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oh crap I missed it was game specific one sec

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update: The Apprentice working fine for me

IMG_3306.jpg
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feel free to dm anyone who wants me to check composite support with this specific setup (latest analog out board)

terse flare
# gray badge the crash with Kether 3.08 is consistant - it doesn't boot (but I also don't kno...

Please take a look at the CUE file. It might point to a non-existing BIN file. I wanted to investigate why this one version of Kether was not working and there is not really a feedback from MiSTer when something like this happens.

CATALOG 8712581301002
FILE "Kether (Germany) (v3.08).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

The real filename is probably Kether (Germany) (En,De) (v3.08).bin

stiff flare
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CHDMan is good feedback for when something like that happens, haha

gray badge
spring gate
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I don't know if it would help here, but the MSX1 core is able to load MSX computer ROMs direct from the OSD, rather than needing to then do a command line load like other computer cores. Not sure how it achieved this, but may be interesting to check.

gray badge
terse flare
gray badge
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I'll update the sheet

valid cairn
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C

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D

frosty bobcat
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Can i just say, the Tetris music goes hard on CD-i

spring gate
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I'll permit it.

terse flare
frosty bobcat
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sweet

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just what i needed while waiting for UE to do its thing

terse flare
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A weird note from today. I wanted to look a little bit into the NTSC mode. Then I've noticed about 6 missing lines at the top. It turns out, my Commodore 1084 is to blame. It's just not awesome enough to handle the extreme overscan the CD-i does produce with 240 active lines and 262 lines total. You have to keep that in mind when also operating the machine with NTSC. I just wanted to share this finding. (Of course, this issue is not present when using HDMI)

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Quite some titles are broken. Tetris for example is missing a number of lines at the bottom.NotLikeThis

sly sedge
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1084 not awesome enough?!

how-dare-you-james-franco.gif
terse flare
# sly sedge 1084 not awesome enough?!

flushedshy Oh but don't get me wrong. It is still my favorite CRT for retro stuff. I have 3 of them around in case one breaks. Compared to PC CRTs I've found, there are very bright despite their age. I was just very confused yesterday as I've never expected that it cuts off image data. I have to assume that 20 lines are just not enough to move the raster to the top.

radiant minnow
terse flare
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I'm curious. I'm unable to recall whether someone of the testers have discovered any wrongly positioned video when using the NTSC mode of the core. For some reason, the behavior differs between simulation and how the MiSTer displays it. This is especially noticeable with Tetris. The buttons are cut off at the bottom.

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To give some reference picture. This is how it looks like on my machine.

20250404_205729-screen.png
gray badge
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I don’t see it in my notes

terse flare
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Holy moly! It was not a difference between synthesis and simulation. If CPU Turbo is active, the problem doesn't exist.derpweow To speedup the simulation (1 frame every 3 seconds on my machine) I usually have the CPU faster in that case. Curious ...

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This seems to be some sort of Heisenbug. For some reason, the issue is no longer reproducible. I don't get it. There seems to be no correlation with the CPU Turbo at all.🧐