Philips CD-i

[sinful hornet]

I've always called this the Michigan J Frog https://youtu.be/iHKaOgd6We8?si=nLA5EAB1UOEqmVOc

You are plagued by a bug and the moment you show someone else it just magically isn't an issue

[tawny kestrel]

It's called "demonstration effect". LOL, experienced it often enough.

[undone nimbus]

So I'm finally getting around to trying this core, it's the first time I installed a custom core.

So far I did:

• added the .rbf to the _Console directory
• added boot0.rom and boot1.rom to the games/CD-i directory

Now if I want to add a rom, do I unzip it? Or can I just put the zip directly into the folder?

[terse flare]

With all of that done, the machine should already do something. Does MiSTer support zip files? The code is very similar to PSX so whatever PSX - concerning image files - can do, the CD-i should too. CHD and CUE/BIN are supported.

[undone nimbus]

Thanks, I'm currently still downloading stuff and putting it on my hdd but once that's finished I'll try and see if it works zipped first, if it doesn't i'll just unzip everything

I can't wait to try "Extra exam questions - Dutch traffic exam 1998"

[young grotto]

you shouldn't run cd based systems out of zips, i can't remember if mister will actually stop you or not

performance will be terrible though

[undone nimbus]

oh then i'll just unzip them all, thanks!

[young grotto]

chd if you need the compression/space, bin/cue if you don't

[undone nimbus]

hm i just tried it, the CDi shows up as an option in my cores menu but when I load it nothing really happens, I can access the core's settings menu so something is being loaded but nothing appears on screen when I try to boot a rom, i'm guessing this is an issue with my boot files?

currently updating main just in case

[undone nimbus]

that wasn't it so now trying to replace the boot files

[terse flare]

If not sure please check the md5sum

2969341396aa61e0143dc2351aaa6ef6  cdi200.rom
3d20cf7550f1b723158b42a1fd5bac62  zx405042p__cdi_slave_2.0__b43t__zzmk9213.mc68hc705c8a_withtestrom.7206

[undone nimbus]

/media/fat/games/CD-i# md5sum boot0.rom
2969341396aa61e0143dc2351aaa6ef6 boot0.rom
/media/fat/games/CD-i# md5sum boot1.rom
3d20cf7550f1b723158b42a1fd5bac62 boot1.rom
/media/fat/games/CD-i#

seems to check out

when i load the core, it's supposed to show the philips logo right away right? without even loading a rom first?

oh wait i just searched the chat and someone says they have to be in the additional storage, not the sd card

that might be it then

[terse flare]

Hmm no, everything looks correct. Starting the core should show first a cyan screen and then the "system shell" which we also sometimes call be the bios here. There are people here that put their image onto an external magnetic drive. But putting everything on the sd card is the typical case I would assume.

[undone nimbus]

hell yeah

[terse flare]

What was the problem? Also I hope you've made us lots of spaghetti!

[undone nimbus]

it worked after i moved the boot files to the ssd though

i cant believe im playing hotel mario

[terse flare]

Prepare yourself. The game is extremely hard. I've tried completing it for this core. I'm currently at bowsers hotel and it's torture.

[undone nimbus]

i got as far as the sky hotel as a kid

never further

[terse flare]

Also do read the manual of the game. Most of the controls are not explained to you ingame. For example, I didn't knew at first how to use the fire flower to throw fire balls. You have to press B1 + B2 for that. At lot games do use this button combo, so it is also the third button of the real CD-i game pad and also mapped onto one of the front buttons. For me it is the left face button.

[undone nimbus]

i'm 4 levels deep now

[undone nimbus]

this brings up memories of trying to press those stupid buttons on the paddle controller at the same time

[terse flare]

The first hotels are pretty relaxed. Starting at Wendy's you will hate yourself

[young grotto]

your bios files always need to be like, wherever your storage is btw

if you're using an ssd, on there, if you're using sdcard, on there

[undone nimbus]

oh i didn't know that actually

i think i have some of them stored on my sd card though? maybe not, i'll check later

this game is more fun than people give it credit for, anyway Slamy thanks for making this, kicks ass

[young grotto]

they can be on the sdcard too but they wont do anything from there while your ssd is connected

[mossy steppe]

When I launch the core, it sort of goes crazy and looks like a PAL/NTSC error or something. (not loading the phillips stuff either but the picture is pretty borked so hard to tell RN) I'm using a CRT. Are there recommended settings for this core to work properly with a CRT?

and i'm connected with VGA

[gleaming echo]

I am assuming you have the BIOS files named correctly and in the games/CD-i folder

[mossy steppe]

I think so, based on the previous messages I read and the above discussion

okay, i fixed the emulation not starting (file folder was named incorrectly)

[gleaming echo]

Ahh 🙂

[mossy steppe]

i'm assuming there's something weird about my video settings making it go crazy though

[gleaming echo]

Not heard of anyone having any issues like that with a CRT
@terse flare any ideas?

[mossy steppe]

this sorta repetitive flicker where it flies off the screen

only a video would truly do it justice, i've experienced it on another core, an arcade on i think, but never solved what truly caused it.

not every core, just once in a while i try one and it goes wild

[gleaming echo]

Can you try and set the TV mode to NTSC whilst it is scrolling?

[mossy steppe]

changed video mode in settings and relaunched to the same issue

oh you mean on that screen

[gleaming echo]

Yeah

[mossy steppe]

that also does not do anything

maybe it's not related to the ntsc/pal thing

[gleaming echo]

Interesting, can you plug it into a HDMI TV and see if it does the same thing? (It shouldn't)

[mossy steppe]

yeah i'd expect no problems but i will try it

works good on hdmi

definitely something weird with my CRT settings, probably just gonna call for extended troubleshooting from me

[gleaming echo]

Yeah I think someone that uses CRT needs to be here as I HDMI only

[mossy steppe]

yeah, it's not a core issue (i think) so i don't expect anyone to necessarily know, but i appreciate your help regardless 🙂

[stiff flare]

Does that mean when we’re spooning the CD-I?

[terse flare]

You are now the 4th or 5th person with this issue. I've stopped counting. The issue seems to be present only in 60 Hz centered television sets. When switching to NTSC, did you actually restart the core? The evidence for that is a Magnavox logo instead of Philips. Iirc this should have resolved these issues in the past.

[mossy steppe]

ahhh okay, i didn't restart the core

thanks for answering, it's impossible to search this channel

[terse flare]

Hmm... yes, the menu doesn't communicate this: PAL/NTSC are scanned on reset. Please try doing so in the menu.

I think quite some cores are actually not changing that until a reset is performed. I never really thought about this.

[terse flare]

I have so many wires attached to my CD-i. You can say it is even into Tentacle stuff by now.

[gray badge]

La Blue Slamy

[mossy steppe]

works perfectly, thanks for pointing that out

[terse flare]

Very good. If this core had an FAQ on this Discord, this would be one must have entry. I'm adding that on the FAQ on the Github page. This issue seems to be real.

[young grotto]

the thing vga users do thats different is generally turn on the scandoubler

is it hooked up in this core though? its often a late addition, in the meantime you can probably use vga_scaler for this core with some video_mode appropriate for your crt

[terse flare]

I can imagine what you are aiming for. This setting is still missing since I'm unable to test it. But I can add it for the next release.

[young grotto]

you can enable it on hdmi

it'll just kind of double-scale

[terse flare]

I've just noticed I have still a TFT with VGA port. This should be ok for testing. Usually I think the target audience for this is PC CRT users.

[young grotto]

forced_scandoubler=0 ; set to 1 to run scandoubler on VGA output always (depends on core).

in the ini, or i think you can enable it per-core in the cores osd

[terse flare]

It seems to require additional components to actually work. The video_mixer seems to be one of those. Now I see why this is often done very late. Or sometimes not at all. PSX and N64 both have no scandoubler support. Seeing these as some sort of flagships I would assume this feature is not that important?

The MiSTer is like C++. Many ways of implementing something, it seems

[pine stump]

I have TFT with a VGA port that accepts 480i signals
Sometimes I will find a use for it

[gray badge]

So what is next, Slamy? What would be helpful? Core feels pretty good…

[terse flare]

This question is actually a good one. At the beginning of the week I was already pondering not about compatibility to games - as it is not looking that bad right now - but instead about quality of life. The core currently has no auto play functionality which is caused by the wrong ROM of the slave controller. I've spent some time thinking about how this can be resolved. Sadly, such a work is out of my reach, so hopefully someone in the future can make a proper dump of SLAVE 3.2 so we can fix this problem.

Apart from that I think this core might now be ready to be integrated into the main distro because I'm starting to run out of ideas how to further improve it, ignoring MPEG decoding for now.

That being said I don't know how the tester team can help improving it.

[gray badge]

Yeah, I guess that’s the elephant in the room. Now that you’re this far along, how are you feeling about the chances that DVC can be integrated?

[gray badge]

Good good. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t information that we could drum up that would be helpful.

[terse flare]

Considering the issues I had with the CDIC (no datasheet), I'm not sure if I'm even capable of building the DVC (also no datasheet I think). I do realize you all want it but it is something which will take a lot of research at first.

When I started this core I had no plans to do it at all in the first weeks as I assumed everyone would be all over the Zelda and Mario games.

[spring gate]

That's a shame there is no dump of SLAVE 3.2, what would be involved in getting that dumped?

[terse flare]

The ROM is contained inside the MC68HC705 which is the microcontroller this chip is based on. There is a person who has dumped 2.0 and 4.1 for MAME in the past but they seem to show no interest in dumping this one right now. The ROM is not accessible to the main CPU which would have made the process of dumping very easy. I'm not even sure if this controller gives up the ROM voluntarily. I've asked david rysk about this but his memory seems to be foggy. It might even be required to glitch this controller out of security locks.
I'm not the right person to do that as I have no experience with that.

For now, the only compatibility issues from not having 3.2 but 2.0 is having no front panel buttons in the core.

The play button would have been the thing I wanted to have. Sadly the request made by the slave controller does not fit to the ROM of the main cpu...

There is one possible hack to just fake it. This is the path which all previous emulators have taken. I just had bad luck as I was to first to be insane enough to actually use the dumped SLAVE ROM

What this core probably would need right now is a list of issues. Something we know is still missing. The testing sheet is a little bit difficult to read when it comes to searching for bugs.
I have a list of issues but not a single one about games. There is an audio issue with "Golf Tips". And there is an issue with the media player. And of course still the open issue with the colors. I'm still unsure about that.

[valid onyx]

previously, you were saying the sound was not something you were 100% happy with, but that now is fully to your satisfaction?

[terse flare]

I've performed various measurements concerning issues I have found. Especially Zelda's Adventure was a problem. In the end, the game is just buggy. It sounds like that too on the real machine. Then there was the problem with the Help Cutscene in Wand of Gamelon. That too was resolved by having a longer seek time.

There is still one open thing which I hate. It's the Philips Logo in Burn:Cycle. But that is broken on the real machine too. >.<

[valid onyx]

k, well, nice! CD-i Matched 🙂

[gray badge]

Cycle accurate

[terse flare]

The sad thing is the CD-i 450 doesn't have the problem. It's only my 210/05. I was in discussion about that on the CD-i discord but it seems they don't care 😦

[gray badge]

I don’t want you to feel any pressure on this. You have already done incredible work, man. If you want to do DVC, then do it.

[spring gate]

Hmm, maybe @fringe marsh could help here if he has the right CDi, I know he also is interested in CDi and has successfully dumped ROMs from other systems like Super Cassette Vision

[fringe marsh]

Actually, I don’t have any CD-i hardware. And haven’t dumped any ROMs. But give me a detailed enough picture of a decapped chip from the 1980s, and I stand a good chance of reverse-engineering it.

(reads back) Ah, you’re discussing the DVC. Yeah, I can see how that would be quite difficult to crack.

[terse flare]

That's yet another big fish. We were actually discussing the SLAVE 3.2. It is a MC68HC705 which someone yet still has to dump. Right now we community only has access to 2.0 and 4.1

[fringe marsh]

Oh, my mistake. Is there a photomicrograph available?

[terse flare]

I don't know. The people on the CD-i discord also don't know. The person who has dumped the other two seemed to have used a bpmicro programmer. He has no access to a 3.2 though.

Compared to the DVC not having that is not thaaaat big of a deal. It only prohibits the core from auto playing a title. It is sad but probably not the biggest deal breaker.

[spring gate]

Have asked on the MDFourier discord on the off chance someone there can help

As an aside, I will see if I can get the CDi BIOS into the BIOS DB, would be good to get that in there before the core goes live in Main so we don't have a litany of people asking for the BIOS

Is it possibly worth looking at SNAC, USB Lightgun, keyboard support at this stage?

[terse flare]

Concerning SNAC there are some open questions:

• Which features of the CD-i should be supported? Remote controller with a Ir photo diode? Front controller? Controller for second player on the back?
  I think @bright zinc has started something some months ago. I don't know if they have made progress with this. In theory that would be possible.

USB lightgun... hmm... I have a Wiimote around. Is that good for testing?

Keyboard is a weird request. I don't know any software that uses it.

[spring gate]

@mild sky may be able to help dump the chip 🙂

[mild sky]

Which? Socketed?

[terse flare]

The chip in question is the SLAVE 3.2 controller of the CD-i 210/05 or similar Mono I hardware. Legend says there are socketed variants. I sadly only have one soldered on my only Mono I PCB. I think I don't want to pull that thing off at the moment as this is the only machine I have right now.
The controller is a MC68HC705. I don't know if it is mask programmed or EPROM. I also don't know if these chips all have the security option fused to avoid being read out.

[mild sky]

So it is a very long shot

[terse flare]

Maybe so. It is not the best situation. The original laser markings for this chip are also replaced by a custom one from Philips. Even the informartion that it is a MC68HC705 is speculative. We do know that it is a MC68HC05 but which type seems to be very unclear.

The general decision of going more in direction of HLE on the CD-i community side also seems to reduce their interest in finding a solution. I have some hope from the MAME sided developers. They were the ones that originally have dumped it for that emulator.... even so it never uses the binary....

I'm actually thinking about writing to Philips

[mild sky]

It's the dumping union generally. They (we?) dump what we find

I'll take a look and assess if I can help

Mame is a documentation project, that's what I love about it

[bright zinc]

I haven't worked on it in a while, I built the thing that should let me get some logic captures from the controller port of real hw, but never did the captures.

Did much controller code change?

Can I hook to signals directly in the core?

[spring gate]

Wii Mote is perfect for virtual lightgun, you can also use a mouse.

Keyboard is supported by system menus apparently, and a few non games, I can find a list. It isn't many though, it is a nich feature

[terse flare]

In the meantime, support for mice and analog pads was added. But the protocol has not changed. I've cherry picked the old idea again on the current head.
https://github.com/Slamy/CDi_MiSTer/compare/snac_idea2?expand=1
The basic idea is having the RTS and RXD line of the front port exposed to the outside.
Concerning logic captures, I can send you a recording of the paddle controller I have around. It is very primitive though. Just UART.
The core is still lacking support for the infrared protocol though. The 68HC05 is lacking timing capture hardware which is required for that.
Do you have CD-i controllers on your side?

[bright zinc]

I think I have the mouse and peacekeeper, need to grab one of the ir things sometime. Thanks for the idea code. I think I need my own captures so I can compare mister against real hw. That was my plan anyway.

[terse flare]

I guess Signal Tap can be your friend. Be careful about polarities. In general I would have assume that the idea just works. What I still don't get about SNAC is who is in charge of deciding what kind of features it should support. 7 pins is not much. It could be anything. A connection to the CD-i modem? Two players?

[bright zinc]

yeah I can use signaltap or do external captures like with real hw.

We are usually limited by the 7 io so I just try to do the best U can with that.

we could have different options in osd and reuse io to do different things like modem/controller but no other core really does that.

^that's not really true a few cores do have multiple options for the user io or switch pins around in certain circumstances.

[young grotto]

in general snac can do whatever the core author wants, and yeah there are some cores that do more than one thing with a switch in the osd. usually computer cores i think

the most common thing to do is just adding controller ports that act exactly like the original machine, though with CDi that could be a bit strange i suppose

[undone nimbus]

I got halfway through the second world in Hotel Mario, I remember now what's wrong with the game: it has a god damned time limit while some of the events are completely random, like you'll enter a doorway and suddenly it flips direction and you end up on a different floor than you intended

sometimes it just screws you over

without the time limit it wouldn't be good exactly, but way more doable

interesting game though, love the hand drawn backgrounds

[terse flare]

Good luck getting to stage 7-7. There is simply no time cleaning up the floors. The enemies keep coming out of the closed doors even very close to the end of the time limit. I don't understand how this works.
In the meantime a speedrunner of Hotel Mario contacted me and gave me visual instructions: https://www.speedrun.com/hotelmario/resources/ok4m7
The game seems to have warp zones. I haven't discovered them by my own and also I would like to play the game legit if possible. This guide provides insight into the hidden items you will find inside the doors.

[undone nimbus]

yeah i remember using warps somehow because i did see the later hotels and i don't think i beat all of the bosses, but i don't remember how to use them, i think they were maybe in certain doors?

also: it's messed up that morton eats mario and spits out his hat

[terse flare]

Yes, certain events can be triggered when opening doors and some events are only triggered when entering the door. Also, there are hidden spots to jump to. The game is not only very random, it is very secret in this way.

[undone nimbus]

I can kind of see what they were going for, if mechanically the game felt more like wrecking crew or donkey kong it would have been pretty great, closing doors isn't a bad idea for a mechanic but the jump margin is too tight and the jump itself too floaty, it would work better with the donkey kong hammer instead of a jump

[spring gate]

Something to potentially think about with Hotel Mario (and any game really) is someone did manage to make cheats for the CDi, but has only done the two Zelda's. If that person is still active at making cheats in theory more could be requested and then used if the core were to support cheats. However I have no idea how difficult supporting cheats would be.

https://gamehacking.org/system/cdi

So if running out of time is the issue, could likely get a cheat that extends time

A lot of "if"s in the above, but is food for thought.

[terse flare]

I'm now at Bowser. The fight is impossible.... I would never check into one of his hotels. 1/5⭐

[gleaming echo]

I believe in you Slamy, you can do it 🙂

[gray badge]

Bowser is singlehandedly going to get Slamy to add cheats to the core

[gleaming echo]

You probably not wrong buddy

[zenith lily]

Heyo. I am due to be receiving a MiSTERPi here soon (around Wednesday) and I was curious: how playable are Hotel Mario and the Zelda games on this core currently?

[golden axle]

All zelda games play well, i finished faces of evil and wand of gamelon and i think I saw that someone else did too

[gray badge]

And slamy is trying to finish hotel mario

[spring gate]

Hotel Mario and the Zelda's are going to be as close to perfect as they probably can be at this point, they have had a lot of attention, Slamy has even found bugs in the original games ironing out the kinks. Anyone coming to play these games now is going to have as good as an experience as possible. 🙂

[bright zinc]

🎉

[undone nimbus]

woop that turtle's ass

Is HM the hardest Mario game? More so than lost levels maybe?

[errant surge]

The most difficult piece of officially licensed Super Mario software is probably this burning dumpster fire https://youtu.be/txcEMPakkPg?si=BAf7ZUcWVuzs3b99

[terse flare]

Hotel Mario and the Zelda games were used as the reference against the official hardware during development. The behavior of a CDI 210/05 is compared very frequently against the cores implementation. The GitHub page also has a big list of quirks. CD-i games are so buggy that one would assume, the core is doing something wrong. Therefore I've created a list of issues which just happen to be real issues, none of the developers seem to be bothered to fix.

One example from yesterday is probably Tetris. If you mash both buttons during the loading time of the Philips intro you will see this screen.
I first thought this is an error of the core but just happens on the real machine as well.

[unreal sparrow]

no many testers before to release it !

[valid onyx]

or the testers were too well behaved an patient 🙂

[terse flare]

The last time I've cheated in a game was against "Isshin the glock saint" from Sekiro. After 2 weeks of trying this boss and failing, I gave up and cheated. I felt bad afterwards.
This feeling is not required for Hotel Mario because I've just beaten him 😄
After drawing a map of the boss room to plan an attack structure I've finally made it. Bowser does not attack randomly. There is a pattern to it.

Doing these screenshots I've noticed that the core doesn't like that. I assume that MiSTer is very busy doing the screenshooting and therefore is not capable of delivering CD data on time. I'm not yet sure how to handle this situation and how other CD based cores do it.
In my mind there are 2 ways of dealing with it:

• Halting the whole core when CD data is stalled.
• Trying to simulate a real CD reading problem on the real machine and ensuring the core does behave alike

[terse flare]

Ok, the PSX core is halting the whole machine when a screenshot is taken. Even the interlacing is stuck on one field when that happens. Huh. Interesting. Even when plugging in USB devices. The CD-i core hates that too. I wonder how this is achieved. I think for stability something similar should also be done for this machine.

[young grotto]

it's quite involved i think, the whole core pauses similar to when you take a save state

psx is the only core that does this too, other cd based cores just tolerate it somehow, though they are likely at some risk of crashing, or at least kind of unpredictable behavior

also the raw screenshot mode should be less disruptive, normal ones are resized/ar corrected on the HPS

[sinful hornet]

Do any other cd cores have save states? That's able to happen because he can freeze everything, right?

[young grotto]

pretty sure psx is the only cd core with savestates

you could implement full pausing without savestates but its more than half-way there as i understand it

[terse flare]

How is the raw screenshot mode activated? This is the first time I've heard about this. I usually use Win + Print Scr and that does the scaled output

[young grotto]

just add shift ontop

shift+win+printscr

they come out like 1:1 with square pixels so it can look quite strange

[terse flare]

Very valuable information... The MiSTer should have some sort of printed manual...

[young grotto]

https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/hotkey/

[terse flare]

Or some manual at all. The MiSTer FPGA Bible doesn't explain that there is a raw screenshot mode

[young grotto]

oh no, don't read the bible

long stupid story but that is not related to the main project at all

this is the real wiki :
https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/

we have a bit of a SEO type problem so its kind of absurdly hard to find sometimes

[terse flare]

Ok this bible guy hasn't updated that in years. Maybe someone should kindly ask that person to take that down. It is not maintained.

[young grotto]

yeeeeeah. he wont.

[terse flare]

I'm creating an issue on his github

[young grotto]

thing is they know they're out of date, they know they're clogging up the search results and they like it

[river sphinx]

I would recommend getting a good quality capturing device for screenshots, since the screenshots will be higher quality compared to using the native screenshot feature.

[spring gate]

The person who runs the "bible" is banned here which is probably all anyone needs to know on the subject

[young grotto]

if only someone were working on some kind of a gamedvr project that could run on cheap commodity hardware and take high quality screenshots and video clips with some kind of web interface

[river sphinx]

For example I use the AverMedia Live Gamer 4K for recording and screenshots from my MiSTer. Pretty useful if I need to show particular problems going on with WIP cores.

[stiff flare]

Damn, I wish we could find that smart and probably handsome individual.

[young grotto]

(i'm still waiting for the whole linux driver/kernel/ffmpeg situation to clear up)

[zenith lily]

Fascinating. I was never aware of the stability (or lack thereof) of games on the system. I've only done a small bit of research as it has fascinated me even beyond the licensed Nintendo games.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised given it's a multimedia player first and a game console second.

I appreciate the insight and responses! I'm very excited to experiment with this core (and everything else) when my MiSTerPi comes in.

[terse flare]

This pretty much sums it up. You will discover the lack of video game hardware inside this machine. There is no 2D graphics acceleration, no sprites (except the mouse cursor), no sound effects mixing in hardware. Most games are build around these limitations. The CD-i is very good at shoveling data from CD to memory. And it has hardware accelerated compressed audio playback. And it has a weird video decompression system. I think if you want to see all special features of the base hardware in action you might need to check out Burn:Cycle. The game pulls all the strings.

[stiff flare]

And it’s also super cool

[quartz crest]

https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/basics/faq/#can-you-take-screenshots-on-the-mister

yeah that mister bible thing was too high up on SEO, unofficial, and never updated so that was one of the main reasons I made the mkdocs site since it has better SEO overall

unfortunately the mkdocs still struggles to get into top 10 on average because it came along so much later and it's a niche topic

[sinful hornet]

does adding a custom domain help? Or is that not preferred since it's an open source project

[quartz crest]

it would help marginally yeah, but sorg didn't want to, which is fine

http://misterfpga.co/ - i have an easy redirect here

[undone nimbus]

damn, great job beating the game

[gray badge]

IIRC, even their name is a banned word? Must have been serious shit :/

[fringe arch]

It sucks if you want to talk about a certain Pick and Flick Adventure

[nocturne vortex]

Oh whoops read moondandy message so deleting mine

[valid cairn]

What?
What happened?
What did I miss? I NEED TO KNOW!!!

[stiff flare]

Oh whoops read gamingdoyle message so deleting mine

[valid cairn]

FOMO INTENSIFIES!!

[timid magnet]

deletes random people's messages to hide any possible chain of deduction

[gray badge]

You wanna talk fomo, I had a notification for this channel and it’s gone now!

Damnit Robby

[zenith lily]

https://i.imgur.com/9w2GiK6.png this is my first time installing a mister core manually. is this how my games folder should look like before any normal games? just the bios here

https://i.imgur.com/IqLujbK.png and i assume the core itself goes in like this?

[south urchin]

Yep looks good

That will make the core show in the 'console' menu like you'd expect. You can place them on the root or make another folder/sub folder if you want to organise things. Folders that start with a _ will show in the menu

[zenith lily]

oh!

so that's why they were labeled like that.

good to know, thank you.

[south urchin]

and the text shown vertically on the left of the OSD within a core is what you need for /games/<core name>/

[zenith lily]

if you showed younger me discovering these games on the internet for the first time years ago that i would be playing it, i'd call you crazy.

this is wild to me lol

[golden axle]

I hope she made lots of spaghetti

[undone nimbus]

why doesnt mario make his own spaghetti

he's italian, peach is not

[sinful hornet]

what is peach?

[valid cairn]

It's like a pink hairy apple

[sinful hornet]

https://tenor.com/view/ohh-oh-damn-oh-daymn-daym-damn-gif-2649905700736798302

[carmine ivy]

Does anyone have a list of the top 100 games to check out on CD-i? The library is very overwhelming

[stiff flare]

There’s a link to recommended games and multimedia in the pins

[carmine ivy]

My apologies didn't read the full preview of that pin

[stiff flare]

Nah it gets lost, maybe I’ll try to reorganize it

[carmine ivy]

I had tried the test sheet but didn't see 7th guest

[stiff flare]

Is it a DVC game?

[carmine ivy]

Yep and that's why

[stiff flare]

Ohh ok

[gray badge]

100 games? oh my sweet summer child

[carmine ivy]

Proof I have zero familiarity with this system

Outside of hotel Mario and Zelda for the memes

[gray badge]

I like Burn Cycle a lot - but I dunno if it's "good"

I played it a lot when it came out

[stiff flare]

Yeah good is subjective but I do think it’s cool as hell

So it’s good to me

[celest hollow]

Did 100 games even come out on the CD-I?

I'm not even being sarcastic. I'm genuinely curious

[sly sedge]

I'd have a hard time coming up with a list of the top 10 good games...

[trim oyster]

Top 100 interesting discs to check out would probably be a safer ask 😸

[west pagoda]

Does cd+g or vcd count?

[frosty bobcat]

im a bit confused, the list of games to check out include some that say (VCD), but the core doesnt supprt vcd. So is it just a list of games that you should check out if you had real hardware?

[gray badge]

There are some that are DVC enhanced, but none of the ones in the non-dvc pack that we use to test rely on dvc to function

[trim oyster]

I think the core was pretty early when that list of suggestions was made, whoever put it together probably didn’t know what would or wouldn’t eventually run back then.

[stiff flare]

We will get DVC

just not right now

[frosty bobcat]

sweet

[strange crater]

Rough estimate - if you remove regional variants, it’s between 110 and 150 games, depending on whether you count prototypes, children’s edutainment, and certain multimedia titles.

Excluding the DVC-required titles and multimedia/children’s content, it’s about 90 (85 if you count out archived prototypes).

[stiff flare]

There's our hero. He's the person who put together the list we have pinned.

[deep roost]

https://fxtwitter.com/NoConCritics/status/1910809999997362192

No Context Critics (@NoConCritics)

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAlCaOWWLZo))

**💬 37 🔁 889 ❤️ 5.2K 👁️ 108.8K **

▶ Play video

FxTwitter · Apr 11, 2025, 9:39 PM

[terse flare]

The last sin felt wrong. At least around here, the toast indeed pops out when the toaster is unplugged. They are usually spring loaded and the spring will force the toast out, sometimes with a little bit too much force.

Also in my playthrough I haven't seen this cutscene. It seems that this is the cutscene of the warp zone of that hotel. Or maybe a cutscene which changes the configuration of the level. A concept like this is present in Wendy's hotel as one type of enemy can be removed entirely by finding a hidden door.

[deep roost]

You learn something new everyday, 'cause I didn't know that. Then again, I don't know that much about toasters because I never fully owned one.

[strange crater]

This cutscene is hidden behind a secret door, yeah.

If memory serves, if you find it, it stops the flickering lights in the area

[terse flare]

The game is horrible in that regard. Without the piggy purse trick, Wendy's hotel is torture.

[terse flare]

Maybe some story time: This week was spent with some thoughts about SNAC and how this core could make use of it. After some discussions with the enthusiasts over the CD-i discord and with @bright zinc it will probably result into an adapter that offers one Min DIN8 port and a Ir photo diode. The ports of a CD-i do differ depending on the model. The only common denominator is that these ports are simply RS232 interfaces.
There is a certain difference in the pinout. The back port of the machine has all the signals to interface a Modem. The front port usually only has the data lines that are used by pointing devices. Some machines have a front port that can take only one device. Some on the other hand are doing something I knew only from PS/2 plugs on old laptops. It can take two controllers with a splitter...
If everything works as expected, this adapter should be capable of 2 modes. One full RS232 mode to simulate the back port and one front mode to attach either one controller or 2 via the official splitting cable. We thought that should make most users happy.

Today I've spent some time fixing timing accuracy issues on the 68HC05 core and added the required peripherals for its input capture registers. Every time the IR signal makes a pulse, an IRQ is made and the slave controller takes note of that and deciphers the RC5 protocol in software.
At least in simulation, the core was controllable with some Ir data I've recorded via a Logic Analyzer from a real machine. It will probably be not used from a USB based input device as the remote gives only updates on a 40ms basis. This is much slower than the wired controllers.
But in the end, maybe it is nice to be able to control the core with a real Thumbstick controller.

I had some hope that the "Play" button of the Remote is capable of performing the start of CD-i applications when a CD is inserted. After all, Auto play is still something I would like to see in this core if possible.
Sadly, the SLAVE revision 2.0 is still the issue here. The codes caused by this button are not the right ones.
There is one thing I still want to try though. cdifan, the developer of cdiemu, has created a custom module for the operating system of the CD-i. This module forces the machine to start the software. It's not very stable right now but still something I would like to try.
So, mostly polishing work on the code and checking what is possible.

[gray badge]

I love reading these updates

[terse flare]

I know, this is why I write them

[gray badge]

Just gonna put this here for no reason whatsoever. https://www.patreon.com/c/AmigaSlamy/

[bright zinc]

Nice job Slamy, you're doing a great job with the core. I think you're making alot of cdi fans very happy 🙂

[terse flare]

My inferiority complex tells me that most of them prefer software emulators🤣 At least they didn't mind the discussion about hardware ports. They were really eager to even get the barcode reader working

[bright zinc]

is mame still the only real open emulator for cdi?

[terse flare]

Sadly yes. I don't know of any other. There are certain tries of at least 2 devs I know, that try themselves with HLE. It seems they think this is the right way to go, since CD-i is a software standard and not a hardware one. The MAME team thinks otherwise and so do I.

[bright zinc]

that's why your core is so cool, people will get the ease of use. I remember loading games on mame is cumbersome, you had to write like special config files or something.

[terse flare]

Ah no. People seem to not know this but if you start MAME via terminal, you can get an actual menu to select the cd image. There is no need to manually write config files for new images.
During development I always do this ./mame cdimono1 -log -oslog -window. I do this frequently as I modify mame to test the operating system side. It's just faster than simulating a Verilog model.

[bright zinc]

ah I didn't know, good tip. Maybe this has changed since last time I tried was a few years ago.

[strange crater]

The unit play button does though, right? How does the CD-i address its front panel buttons?

[terse flare]

That's the thing. A real Mono I PCB seems to use SLAVE 3.2 while we are currently stuck with either 2.0 and 4.1. Both are not the right version. I didn't knew that when I've started all this as the MAME code also lists 2.0 as the right one. This however is used for MiniMMC, which is even older.
The slave is reading the front panel via I2C and provides a button press to the main cpu. The codes sent by it are wrong right now. The system shell expects a1 87 20 but receives 87 20.
A similar issue is also present for the Ir remote control. The reason for adding that this week was not purely for SNAC but also to investigate this as a plausible solution.

I'm not even sure yet if this is just a problem with the core or if this is really an existing difference between the 2 boards. I've started a discussion about this on the CD-i discord... quite sadly, knowledge about the slave controller is scarce. A dump of 3.2 is not available at the moment.

It is true that 3 different buttons start a CD-i application. Play on the unit, Play on the remote and a press on the normal button when the cursor was moved by inserting a CD. According to some people with sacred knowledge, this is also how the arcade CD-i Quizard does it. It just presses a button to start the game.

[spring gate]

Not sure how helpful, but when barcode scanners have come up here when mentioned for other cores it has been said they are already supported in Main as they are in essence just a keyboard that instead of typing reads and sends the letters and numbers by scanning

[bright zinc]

As a temporary hack would it be possible to press the button in code after you load the disc? maybe wait until ioctl_download is done then press the button for a few seconds or until you know it's been read.

[stiff flare]

This is way better than any software emulator dude

Like no contest

[terse flare]

Yes, that would be the last resort🫠 This is how a Quizard arcade machine does it. When I went for the front play button approach, this was the button I wanted to press when the CD is inserted. But since the tray detection is working since the last release and the mouse cursor is also moved on this core, this approach would work as well.

[still vapor]

Where can I find a fairly recent rbf?

[terse flare]

The last core is pinned

[stiff flare]

DATS RIGHT! 😤

[still vapor]

Thanks.

[bright zinc]

Hope you get it figured out. We love hearing about the developments

[bright zinc]

The Pin Master

[radiant minnow]

Out of curiosity, that would mean that it should be possible to run CD-i software with an implementation of the OS/libs on a modern OS, right? Has someone ever tried that as an experiment?

[terse flare]

Your assumption is correct. On the CD-i discord there are 2 people currently working on this. Each one of them on their own emulator. There is this project from stovent: https://github.com/Stovent/CeDImu
This project existed before I started my core.
And then there is a person who has started a similar thing recently. ... or so ... that is weird. It seems all their messages are gone from the server.

[radiant minnow]

Interesting! I'll take a look! Those reimplementations are always very interesting to experiment with

[terse flare]

I don't think that they can run commercial software yet. So far it seemed rather fresh.

[radiant minnow]

Indeed. Many parts missing. Also, it uses wxwidgets... ugh... no way. I'd use something like SDL2 instead.
But well, I'm into FPGA CD-i which is the way to enjoy it 🙂

[sterile cedar]

Sorry if this has been asked or answered before. Is dvc well documented to implement? Or does it need reverse engineering?

[celest hollow]

There's very little info on the DVC available so I'd imagine the DVC is currently in limbo

[rare cliff]

sorry if this has been answered already, but I cant find it: does the core not support saving, or am I missing something?

[karmic bramble]

It does, how it saves in game is differs from game to game. Mario Hotel for example saves when you choose no on the continue screen iirc.
Having a game in each folder makes the core create a separate emulated NVram for each game.

[terse flare]

Maybe a note on this as this was never explained explicitly in this channel. The "User" led of the MiSTer Analog board will be active when a NvRAM save is queued. If you open the OSD, the save will be performed. When back in the "system shell" you can click on MEMORY to view the savegames. So far I haven't yet heard about issues concerning the save system.

[karmic bramble]

In Mario Hotel I had to play the First Hotel twice because I didn't know how to save lol.

[terse flare]

The manual will also tell you, that you can hold down and press B2 on the level title screen for a quick save. No need to loose all lives.

[karmic bramble]

Oh, that's nice to know.

[terse flare]

The manual also tells you that you use the fire flower by pressing B1+B2. On the MiSTer this is mapped to the left face button. What the manual doesn't tell you is that ... All toasters toast toast! But you will learn that eventually.
If you want to come far in that game I recommend reading the manual once. The game is a little lacking when it comes to explain how it is played.

[rare cliff]

I tried making a folder with the game, but it did not save when opening the osd. The save appeared in the memory screen on the cdi

[valid onyx]

it's probably in the saves directory, not in the game directory

[terse flare]

As mentioned by the Rocket Knight, Hotel Mario only saves in specific menus. If you loose all your lives for example and press No on the Continue screen. Have you reached that point and it didn't save?

[rare cliff]

yeah I made a save game in hotel mario, and that worked fine. And the save appeared in the cdi console menu as well

[terse flare]

And it didn't save???

[rare cliff]

yup

[terse flare]

So there is nothing inside "/media/fat/saves/CD-i" ?

If you restart the core and select Hotel Mario and then without starting the game, you select Memory, there is still the savegame?

[rare cliff]

checking one more time...

This is my setup. When I reset the mister and reboot the core, the save is gone

[terse flare]

That is something totally new...

1. Do you have any residue inside MiSTer.ini? To pin a certain MiSTer Main? If yes, remove that.
2. Do you have a recent MiSTer Main? Freshly updated?
3. Insert CD, don't start the title. Go to settings and press ok. Open OSD. Does the save dialog occur?

The CDi keeps an invisible save file around with all those settings. They are stored whenever you leave te settings menu...

[rare cliff]

The guide I was following said I needed to type this in the main ini file

should I remove it?

[terse flare]

What guide? Please remove it. Where is this guide located?

[rare cliff]

https://youtu.be/g6cflPvk9hU?si=Hq9_aauzxSbbeaWy

[terse flare]

Yes, 5 months ago !

[gray badge]

You can always come here and ask for help @rare cliff :). It’s the best way - I promise we try to be friendly (except for Robby).

The problem with stuff like that is development moves so quickly that they are often outdated days after they are posted. The core is much further along than it was when that guide was made.

Slamy, it’s coming up on a year of you working on the core, yeah?

[terse flare]

It will happen on June 5th. On that day last year I've started writing the first line. On July 4th I've made it public.

[gray badge]

Wild.

[glacial herald]

Insane - from a system that few could figure out to work, to a robust easy to use facsimile in a year. Awsome work Slamy, thank you!

[gray badge]

I remember jeff gerstman talking about it on a podcast a couple of years ago like the CDI was this undiscovered country that no one could figure out - now I just have one connected to my tv

[rare cliff]

I got it to work. I deleted the text at the bottom of the ini file, and updated the main ini file. I saves no problem now. Thanks for the help 🙂

[terse flare]

You could also phrase that more negatively. I'm spending way too much time on my computer I guess it's a hobby so it is probably fine. I'm still leaving my cave. But it surely takes a lot time to work on a project like this.

[golden axle]

If it wasn't for the core existing i'd likely have never checked out the system

[terse flare]

For me that was NeoGeo. The real machine is simply too expensive to get in Europe. The MiSTer made it accessible. The same could be said for X68000. This is very rare around here. When I bought my first CD-i. I got it very cheap. I also only checked it out because of the AVGN episode. 😄

[gray badge]

Well if you’re looking for a new challenge after the cdi…..the 68k is right there 😄

(I’m joking - I just love the 68k and wish it got more love)

[terse flare]

The X68000 already has a core

A person on github actually asked me to do CD32 since I would be ideal for that.
Sometimes I'm joking to friends that the SuperCPU for the C64 would make the most sense. Finally Metal Dust on MiSTer.... the ONLY GAME

[gray badge]

Yeah, Lumi was telling me he wanted to recruit you for the CD32 :D. And yeah, the 68k has a core, but it is unloved

I will con someone into it

[west pagoda]

A SuperCPU would be great!

But the way eriks5 works, it might just materialize with no prior fanfare.

[terse flare]

That would be fine by me. I also enjoy sitting around with a bag of popcorn like when the N64 core came out. "It was 0 days since Robert has amazed us again"

[spring gate]

I was actually wondering if since you were a big Amiga fan you might consider doing a CCTV/CD-32 core one day, funny someone else has brought that up already

[spring gate]

I hadn't heard of SuperCPU before, for anyone else:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCPU

Is the chip in it much different from the SNES and SAI SNES special chip version? Looks like also in the Apple IIGS, which I think Alan and others were working on (no idea if they have done that chip)

[strange crater]

Forgive me if this is a silly question, but what’s actually different between a CDTV/CD32 and an Amiga?

I know most CD32 software is already running through AmigaVision’s loader - could that be implemented through a custom ROM for Minimig rather than a full-fledged core?

[celest hollow]

Isn't there already an Amiga CD32 core?

[spring gate]

My understanding is the Minimig core is a bit hacky and not a pure recreation of an original Amiga, and native CDTV and CD32 support isn't possible in the core.

The main benefit of a core would basically be a consolised Amiga, so someone could just download a pack of CDTV and CD32 games and load them from the OSD like other CD based console cores without needing to learn to use an Amiga computer. As soon as someone mentions "Amiga Vision" you have lost the majority of console gamers.

If someone were to make a core you could probably fork the Minimig core and work from there, but it isn't opening up much of anything to people who already use the Minimig core, you are really making something that will be used for people who want to just play games and are intimidated by, or don't want to get their head around, old computers.

[sly sedge]

The CDTV is essentially a 'consolized' Amiga 500, with a CD-ROM drive and remote control. With optional accessories, it could become a fully functional Amiga 500.
The CD32 is essentially a 'consolized' Amiga 1200 with a CD-ROM drive, but was specifically designed to be a game console, unlike the CDTV which was targeted for multimedia use.

[spring gate]

Would there be any benefits of having a separate 500 core over using the Minimig?

[sly sedge]

I would almost prefer Minimig get the attention it truly deserves, since it's one of the oldest cores on the platform, and is even part of the project's name. 😉

[spring gate]

I think that one may be a bit of a Frankenstein's monster these days, and running out of space

[sly sedge]

Seems like most of the hard work has already been done with that core. Just need to bring it home.

True...

I remember not too terribly long ago there seemed to be a sudden surge of interest in the ao486 core, and it saw a lot of improvements over a very short period of time. Maybe the same will happen with the Minimig core.

[spring gate]

Isn't is based on some sort of clone instead of an actual 1200 or am I confusing it with something else?

[sly sedge]

To be honest, I'm not too terribly familiar with the history of the core before the MiSTer project.

I'm not even sure if it began with MiST.

Ah, apparently the MiST core was also a port.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig

[trim oyster]

Minimig can run most of the cd32 library. The CDTV seems more like the CD-i, and is completely unsupported at the moment.

A legit cd32 core with the bios experience would still be a glorious addition to Mister though

[sly sedge]

Agreed.

[trim oyster]

I'm scared to switch mine on without getting it recapped 😂

[west pagoda]

Yeah, the cd32 has an extra chip that did custom cd access and conversions of bitplane colors to chunky.

Minimig has an implementation of the latter, but cd32 mode just uses an “emulator” to run the games via the ide implementation.

I am by no means an expert, but apparently the minimig stuff isn’t super accuracy either, compared to winuae

[celest hollow]

I played some CD32 games on AmigaVision on Mister and had a great time. Having never played an Amiga in my life though I had no frame of reference.

Loved it's interface though

[gray badge]

I want a CD32 core as much as anyone, but we should probably prep our pitches for Slamy here #1144744344088215582

[west pagoda]

Let’s be real, the perfect console after tackling this multimedia powerhouse is the pcfx 😉

Or maybe the Casio loopy!

[celest hollow]

I'm still holding out hope for the DVC to get implemented into the CD-I core eventually so I can play the best version of Lost Eden

[astral slate]

I have always been curious about the CD-i version of 7th Guest. Apparently it is superior to the DOS version

[celest hollow]

I've heard that as well. Sane with Lost Eden due to the superior looking FMV

[spring gate]

PC-FX is a complex beast. I do wonder if now Loopy has been emulated and the processor is now open source that it is now potentially doable by someone, but it won't be simple and library isn't exactly enticing to prospective developers.

[strange crater]

The 7th Guest has better music & FMV quality than the PC version on CD-i, at the cost of slower gameplay in places and some music no longer playing during cutscenes.

Lost Eden is pretty much best on CD-i, though. Best quality music, dialogue, FMV, and still plays great, too.

The only downside is that it has an unavoidable crash on NTSC hardware a few hours in, so you will need to play it on a PAL machine.

[river sphinx]

I can imagine PC-FX would be worked on once the other niche systems (CD-i, Atari Jaguar, 3DO, etc.) are "completed". But I can imagine Virtual Boy would still be a higher priority simply because of the Nintendo bias.

Really it depends on who's available and willing to develop a PC-FX core.

[stiff flare]

DVC

[spring gate]

Be great to see DVC be dug into, once Slamy has got barcode scanning working obviously 😉

[sudden socket]

How advanced is this core?

[spring gate]

Close to as good as it can be playing anything that doesn't need DVC, if you find any issues then let us know.

[sudden socket]

Does it need to be added manually or will update all grab it?

[strange crater]

Has to be added manually, at the moment

[sudden socket]

I've not touched my MiSTer for over a year, a baby got in the way

[strange crater]

You can find a link to the newest version in the pinned comment

[sudden socket]

Coming back to some very cool new cores

Jag, 3dp news and CDi

[spring gate]

If you haven't run update all in a year you will want to go put a cup of tea on when that is running

[sudden socket]

All good playing Wolf3d on the Jag

CDI is cool I've found PC emulation for it to be awful

That's what I love about Mister the stuff just works

[spring gate]

If you want to have CDi and various other WIP cores downloaded via update all them have a read here:
https://discord.com/channels/647909397477195803/1096872957030174750

[sudden socket]

Oh that's cool, thanks, it's fun to see core improvements sometimes

[undone nimbus]

same i got my mister shortly before my daughter was born, i basically shelved it for a whole year

[umbral blade]

Is that being worked on or is it out of scope?

[terse flare]

I was slightly more exhausted from work during the last few weeks than usual. Recently it is more polishing work, thinking about what to do with SNAC and fixing some smaller problems. The DVC is yet not touched by me. I think I'm not yet ready for the feeling of starting over. The DVC is nothing one does just add.

[valid cairn]

https://imgflip.com/i/9r7edo

[valid cairn]

You've done an incredible job so far. I can't believe the core is here in this condition this quickly!!!

And your updates about how development has been going have been very enjoyable to read and think about.

[fast jacinth]

buddy you are ALLOWED to take a break! we appreciate you! i've gotten busy and regressed to being a bit of a lurker but i will always take the time to remind you to be nice to yourself lol

[spring gate]

Look after yourself Slamy, don't feel obliged to do anything, and definitely don't feel bad about taking a break or parking your hobby to do something else.

The core is in a releasable state already as well, everything is polish at this stage and DVC is a massive separate project. If you do want to take on DVC one day it probably makes sense to take a break and come back with fresh eyes and a real desire to take on what is a massive challenge.

Look after yourself first and foremost and know everyone really appreciates what you have done and the manner you have done it, it has been a really fun ride we have all been along for with you. 🙂

[stiff flare]

DVC DVC DVC

[west pagoda]

Definitely very confused?

[gray badge]

Donate Voraciously, Comrades https://www.patreon.com/AmigaSlamy

[south urchin]

Any chance of getting #patreon-links message updated robby?

[umbral blade]

Always wanted to try Dragon's Lair since childhood. Too young for the arcades back then, too poor for CD-i. If slamy finishes it I guess that would be a nice reason to finally check it out 😉

Road blasters and Time Gal on the Saturn were the only FMV games that I had ever contact with.

[valid onyx]

There is also a sega cd version of it, which should be playable right now. Also, rumor has it that cd support will be added soon to the jaguar core, so you will be able to play that version too.

[valid onyx]

I played Maddog McCree on the pc 🙂

[umbral blade]

The FMV games really suffer on Sega CD due to the lack of (sufficient) colour.

[valid onyx]

and by their very nature 😛

but, I agree, there's a certain platform where it would indeed be great to play these on, possibly someday

But I'm very happy with the core as it stands!

[stiff flare]

Oh right, I looked into that. I don’t know how. That would be a @ionic island thing

[south urchin]

if we dont update it, atari will be considered the greatest gaming company of all time

[gray badge]

And I don’t even want to talk about what color the Mario sky would be

[lavish crow]

Regarding FMV games, The CD-i with the DVC and 3DO are the definitive FMV consoles so if we don't get DVC for a long time, at least 3DO is around the corner

[celest hollow]

3DO had a DVC as well but no games took advantage of it

[river sphinx]

Is there any homebrew that uses the DVC?

[lavish crow]

Really? Was this for like VCDs or something?

[spring gate]

Yep

Saturn has one too for VCD playback, but that is also utilised by a small amount of Japanese games to increase the quality of cut scenes

[celest hollow]

Yeah. That's all it was for. I own one

[strange crater]

Out of curiosity, are there any common chips between the different MPEG1 decoders for different consoles?

[lunar nexus]

Well mpeg itself is an industry standard, but I think I know what you're getting at. How do all the systems/consoles handle that part of the playing.

[dawn iris]

There was some chips for just that. C-Cube as example was one of it.

[stiff flare]

I just wanted to wish everyone here a happy DVC DVC DVC

[fast jacinth]

DVCee has risen

[terse flare]

Not yet I think, but TwBurn (developer of Nobelia) is working on something. 3 weeks ago, the demo was released:
https://youtu.be/rUFtyM0pLCE
The game should run fine on cdiemu according to the author. I don't know why the DVC capability of cdiemu is not properly advertised. Maybe it is not yet complete. I've recently tried to use it for this purpose but at least on Wine, this application is not very stable... I'm getting frequent seg faults.

[terse flare]

I get the feeling you are trying to aim for a beetlejuice here.🤣 Just say the name three times and it manifests into this world.

[young grotto]

would it help to develop a standalone mpeg1 player core first then use what you learned to do dvc?

not even something you'd ever release, just like a really simple test that plays some mpeg1 straight from ram or something

i'm thinking quicker builds, lets you focus on just that one aspect etc

[terse flare]

You are asking the right questions because it would be impossible otherwise. This is actually how I develop the MCD212 video chip to this day whenever I do changes. I simulate it alone with just some RAM and a ram dump from MAME inside. In general it is important to divide a big problem into smaller problems. With the MPEG decoder it would not be different. It would be its own project at first in trying to get something like this running.
cdifan actually didn't bother implementing his own MPEG algorithm. He just uses a known MPEG library and feeds it the data coming from the machine. This is why I'm also still not sure whether it actually makes sense to implement the MPEG decoder in the FPGA.
It's not like it doesn't exist. https://github.com/OldRepoPreservation/mpeg2fpga

[young grotto]

i'm skeptical of using the arm because a. it's kinda busy and b. all previous attempts at hybrid cores like this have either failed or been so slow as to be unusable

how full is the fpga for cd-i core already?

[terse flare]

Ah, just 32%. lol

    Logic utilization (in ALMs)  13,513 / 41,910 ( 32 % )
    Total registers              15630
    Total block memory bits      630,471 / 5,662,720 ( 11 % )
    Total DSP Blocks             66 / 112 ( 59 % )

[young grotto]

ah no pressure from there then

with saturn it's like, the core is so full you either do it with the arm somehow or with magic lol

[terse flare]

Ah just like with N64 and cheats 😦
N64DD, when

[young grotto]

someones bound to do it eventually heh

is that mpeg2fpga project insane to just throw in?

[terse flare]

It has no audio 😄

[young grotto]

well its a start heh

is there an mpeg1 audio spec? i've never really thought about the audio on vcds

[terse flare]

MPEG1 is one of the most well understood techs out there. It has no secrets anymore.

[young grotto]

thanks, the details of core development and like, how you think about it are really interesting to me

[terse flare]

Since I've heard about cdifan just using an open source MPEG library, I'm no longer in believe that one needs to understand the inner workings of the DVC to actually get a basic implementation of it. Here is a plan how to get it running. These steps can be performend in parallel.

[young grotto]

was the real DVC modular and made by many manufacturers?

[terse flare]

Exactly

[young grotto]

there's probably already quite some slop in the spec to account for different chips etc then, the dvc can be treated as a black box

i dont suppose by luck the documentation defining the dvc interface/api for manufacturers is available is it

[terse flare]

• Ask cdifan for source code. Maybe he is again willing to share source code as he already had under NDA. This should give some insight.
• Implement (either in MAME or in MiSTer) a fake DVC. Something that just takes the data and does nothing. This should already make the games playable. It's like a Sega 32X without connecting the video outputs.
• Provide a MPEG decoder which just replaces the backdrop of the CD-i with MPEG Video. This is also how the first implementation of the DVC does it in hardware.

[terse flare]

Rumor says that there are good DVCs and bad ones. At least the 7th guest seems to crash on one of them

[young grotto]

oh so you need a video compositor eventually?

did the dvc return an analog video feed like 32x?

[terse flare]

Yes, the video signal of the DVC is provided as an analog signal on the Mono I boards and later as a digital stream on the later boards. It replaces the background plane of the MCD212. On the Amiga one would call this Genlock

[spring gate]

As an aside, the N64 Summer Cart has 64DD support and is open source, so there is a 64DD in FPGA sitting there on GitHub. If someone with the right skillset were so inclined they could try forking the N64 core, rip out what is not needed for 64DD, and port over Summer Cart support and try build a sister 64DD core. Nobody has stepped up to try this yet though

[wintry dust]

I have a suspicion the 'rip out what isn't needed' turns out to be 'not much to rip out here'

[terse flare]

DROP THE TRANSFER PACK

[spring gate]

Yeah, that is one feature that could go

[young grotto]

it might just fit already

its not like 64dd is really much in terms of hardware

[wintry dust]

no one volunteering for 8 hour release builds

[young grotto]

someone has to code it first !

it could stay a branch or something and only get built on special occasions

[spring gate]

For your wedding night?

[gleaming echo]

Didn't I read recently someone added a mpeg decoder into main?

[spring gate]

I do as well, someone got videos playing on the arm chip in a low resolution and a certain format

I saw it in a news video, probably something on the forum about it

[gleaming echo]

Good to know I didnt imagine that one then 🙂

[wintry dust]

wasn't that just the tapto cinema thing?

[gleaming echo]

Idk what it was Zakk, I just remembered hearing some form of video decoder was added to main

[terse flare]

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?p=96474&hilit=mpeg#p96474
Yes, Zakk was right

[gleaming echo]

Ahhh makes sense 🙂

[gray badge]

Hey Slamy, the core supports MGLs, yeah? Trying to get it added to https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM

[south urchin]

Yeah it does

    <rbf>_Console/CDi</rbf>
    <setname same_dir="1">CDitest</setname>
    <file delay="1" type="s" index="0" path="Hotel Mario (USA)/Hotel Mario (USA).chd"/>
</mistergamedescription>```

https://github.com/Slamy/CDi_MiSTer/blob/27f145b3b5cc7a01bc2ac8b70df7411c7c102a31/CDi.sv#L216C8-L216C30

[solar mirage]

"S0,CUECHD,Load CD;",

[south urchin]

was about to add em to the mkdocs then remembered cdi and jag arent in distribution mister yet 🙂

[terse flare]

Oh, but the auto play is still missing. I don't know much about this topic. Does it just start the core and insert a disc? I actually have autoplay in the oven.

[terse flare]

Quality of life: Auto Play
  - Added auto play via playcdi kernel module (by cdifan)
    Replaces system shell when activated via OSD.
    Only takes effect on CD-i discs.
Reduced boot time by fixing bus error accuracy
  - About one second faster bootup since RAM test of OS9 has less to do
68HC05: Added Input Capture registers and adjusted clock frequency
  - Added captured RC5 test data to confirm compatibility with the
    Thumbstick remote controller in a simulated environment
  - The core is now prepared for Ir signals when a photo diode is attached via potential SNAC
MCD212: Display Active flag adapted to measured timing
  - Seems to have no effect

These changes go together with some fixes in MiSTer Main.

CD-i: Fixed buffer invalidation on image change
- Fixes games not loading after inserting audio CDs
CD-i: Disc type transfer to core
- Audio CD or CD-i sent via status flags to core

I'm not sure whether I should put the Main executable here as it was considered a bad practice before. The PR to mainline is created. The difference is rather small as this only fixes some smaller problems.

[wintry dust]

and yes, MGLs are just 'start core and insert/mount/load disc/rom/etc'

[sinful hornet]

we just have to wait for a new unstable main to release for these changes?

[stiff flare]

I’ve been using MGL files to launch CDi games from the beginning and it’s been great.

[gray badge]

Yeah, when MrChrister asked my first thought was "I thought that was a part of the framework that cores got for free....but now I'm not sure."

[terse flare]

So, how did you auto start them? Manually? Or did I muss something?

[wintry dust]

do they "auto" start if you reset the core after mounting the cd image?

[terse flare]

Before the release of today they didn't. This is why I was wondering how Robby operated his setup

[terse flare]

It's really not that big change. Most users won't see these issues.

[gray badge]

Super Attract mode does some sort of button press (not sure how). That's how PCE CD works with it

[odd trout]

Very very small thing:

Currently the CDi core functions differently than other cd based cores in the menu when selecting an image to load.

If there is only a single cd image file inside a folder, the TG16, PSX, and Saturn load menus do not go into the folder, and will just load the image within. If there is more than 1 disc image (for multidisc games) then it will enter the folder and make you choose the correct disc.

The CDi core always goes into the folder and makes you choose a file, even if there is only a single file.

[wintry dust]

it's a change that needs to happen in main. for some reason that behavior isn't generic

[young grotto]

yeah its whitelisted by corename iirc?

[terse flare]

Oh, ok? Since I use chd on the other cores I haven't noticed this yet. I will adapt the PR to act like the other cores do. Since I already have this open change I think I should add that. Thx for the feedback

[wintry dust]

yes, you can make the if statement even longer!

[spring gate]

Do you need the updated Main file in order to use the latest CDi build, or does it work OK for people without going to this unstable Main?

[terse flare]

The whole reason for not providing it in the first place was exactly that. Those are only bug fixes for edge cases. But if the audience wants it... the customer is king I guess.🤣

[terse flare]

This should fix your needs. Zakk was right. The if statement just got longer.

[spring gate]

Cool, have put the new CDi build in the WIP DB, wasn't sure if people needed the new Main to use it, good stuff if it works OK without

So does everything that isn't an audio CD autoboot on being selected now?

or, said another way, everything with a CDi loader on the disc?

[terse flare]

You got it. The behavior might not be accurate as it is. With this implementation, MiSTer Main is looking for a MODE2 header at timecode 00:02:16 (bootblock location). If one is there I assume this is a CD-i disc. Otherwise I assume it is an Audio CD.
On a real CD-i it seems to be slightly different. Especially because two different types of CD-i media are available.
There are the ones that have a data track at first and optional audio tracks later. But then there is "The Apprentice". This title is a CD Extra. The CD-i application is hidden inside a gigantic pre gap of the first audio track.
It is written in the green book that a real machine should investigate whether this really is an Audio CD at all. This step is currently skipped on the core as I don't really see what advantages that has.

[gray badge]

👀 https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/issues/248#issuecomment-2822582525

[stiff flare]

No, it just has the disc loaded. So I move my little cursor over to the play button.

It’s basically a “load core and this game” shortcut.

[terse flare]

Ah ok. I do remember that you have asked for auto play a few months ago... or weeks? So, there you go.

[stiff flare]

Hooray thank you!!

[wintry dust]

you're not supposed to give Robby stuff he wants. next he'll start asking for DVC all the time

[tawny kestrel]

Very nice. The autoplay feature is working without issues here. Thanks for adding that.

[vale portal]

probably that was already answered but can't locate...is the cd-i core support chd file format?

[wintry dust]

yes

[vale portal]

Great! Merci for the prompt answer!

[gray badge]

Now that CDI is in super attract mode, I'm spending more time in intros and I have found a couple of bugs in Zombie Dinos. It seems to only happen the regional variants of the game. but I confirmed that it's in france, germany and the Netherlands version:

1. The text in the intro credits is cut off at the bottom while it is zooming in. Once it is fully zoomed in, it's fine. Neither the US or European version demonstrate this. Can someone verify if this happens on real hardware

2. Occasionally, and not something I could easily reproduce, the (ripping) theme song will start skipping/sounding corrupted. Could very well be the cd image streaming off my nas, but I heard it a few times in testing various versions. Usually it happens sometime in the 2nd verse.

[terse flare]

2. Concerning sound corruption during music playback, there is a known problem I have on my TODO list: When the CD is stalled once because HPS was busy (e.g. screenshots taken), the double buffers for audio data get swapped around and it can get glitchy as the currently loaded buffer might get played instead. I think this issue manifested during the time I've tried to shape the core to the findings I got from observing a real CDIC. What I've never checked yet is how the real thing behaves when the CD has reading errors during one sector. In that case I would expect the real machine to not have issues like these.

This discussion also occurred 2 weeks ago on this thread when it was first documented here I guess. The PSX core resolves this by stalling the whole machine which is probably possible due to the save state system.

1. I don't have blank CDs right now 😄 Just from looking at it, it seems to be a problem with non linear scaling of bitmap data. But one needs to check the real machine to be sure.

[young grotto]

there's an overlay you can enable in the psx core that shows up whenever it waits longer than expected for cd data from hps

something similar might help figure out if that is infact the problem

[gray badge]

Ahh, I missed that conversation duder - I'm sorry. And yeah, I definitely noticed it more when I was taking screenshots (which, looking at them now are terrible, let me know if you'd like clearer ones). I noticed it before taking screenshots too - likely a similar cause (HPS being busy) but that's actually what made me go back and check (it was then I discovered the text issue).

[terse flare]

Ok, I've just bought some blank CDs. I maybe should also invest into a better video grabber. This is from the CVBS output of a 210/05. Even with this bad video quality you can see that the problem exists on the real machine as well. It's a scaling issue when the picture is continuously scaled bigger. Only after the animation is played, all pixels are there.

[wintry dust]

emulator user shocked to discover janky behavior is accurate

[gray badge]

Another win for the core.

[gray badge]

This is the CDI, we are not shocked :p

[terse flare]

The list of quirks is ever growing. The title song is also totally on fire. I love it. Even the German dubbing is quite good. I don't know about the gameplay though.

[hardy iron]

"I dont know about the gameplay though." That's like the CD-I slogan

[dark kayak]

Phil Hartman playing Cdi for the ad and he’s like “These are video games I guess”

[glacial herald]

Hi, I'm Troy McClure! You may remember me from such interactive media as "Punk Blaster - The Reagan Initiative" and "Name that Advertisement"

[bold dragon]

Say I noticed that this channel is named "Philips CD-i"... does this mean that there are meaningful differences between manufacturers, and that there will (or at least could) be multiple cores one day ?

I would suggest that the core be names CD-i_(manufacturer) in that case, rather than (manufacturer)_CD-i

Ah, OK... I see it's actually called "CDi_MiSTer", which is just fine

[whole thicket]

Is a custom modeline necessary for CDi on a CRT via composite? I'm on an NTSC TV

nevermind, had it set to PAL'

[sinful hornet]

I think there were jokes about that on April 1st and the channel had been temporarily renamed too

[west pagoda]

Panasonic CD-i?

[nocturne vortex]

I thought the clown seemed a little harsh but then I looked and saw you self clowned 😅

[vale portal]

I was playing around with a couple of CD-i Titles, 80% of the ones I've tried require a DVC....Otherwise great job on the core impressive work, thank you @terse flare !! I hope we will get support for the DVC in the future....

[terse flare]

There is actually some debate to this topic on the CD-i discord as there is not one single machine. The hardware, which the current core tries to replicate is based on the Mono I. Here is a collection of some of the models. https://www.icdia.co.uk/players/comparison.html
Looking back, I've made the decision to go for this model since MAME is also emulating that particular one so I had a software emulator to dissect for bootup analysis.
The author of cdiemu suggested to me that MiSTer should support multiple models to provide a free choice on the used ROM. During the lifetime of the Philips players a second revision of the "system shell" was available. Some prefer it due to the aesthetics. I'm not sure of how much energy I should put into that right now. For me it doesn't feel that useful. His argument was the possibility to acquire the ROMs via legal options by dumping them from the real player and you can use any player you own to do so. In my opinion we already are destroying this option by using a ROM (from the SLAVE) which can't be extracted so easily. cdiemu doesn't have this issue, since the SLAVE is emulated using HLE which makes some things easier and some more difficult.
I went with the name of "CDi" at first as I thought that would be the correct term. That's why the rbf is still named that way. Then I went with "CD-i" since that is the official marketing term. If you look at the players themselves, they are named "CDI". The service manuals also use this name.
The correct name for the core would probably be "CDI 210/00". But even that might not be correct since multiple different names exist for the same machine.
Here is also a nice collection of all the model names
https://cd-i.wiki/en/hardware/players/complete_list

There are also CD-i players from Sony. I have never looked at one of them yet. No one seems to talk about them on the CD-i discord... I think the point I wanted to make is that even the machines from Philips are all different. CD-i is a software standard, not a hardware standard. All access must be performed using system calls to the kernel.

[timid magnet]

You have no obligation to pander to anyone else’s requests. I’d agree with your note about hard to harvest roms above, yep.

[terse flare]

Yeah, without the DVC one does not simply test any game and hope that it works. Sometimes if you know the games you can actually "see" that the DVC is used. On the other hand, there are great exceptions that utilize the hardware so well, they don't need MPEG decoding to pull of some full screen full motion video. Burn:Cycle is one of those titles which just makes some clever use of run length encoding to animate. In the pins, there is a curated list mentioned with some titles to check out. There is also the pinned compatibility list which has all DVC titles filtered out.

[pine linden]

Just curious about the DVC suppor: is it in the plans? The core will have space for it or is it already full?

[gleaming echo]

The core is only using around 32% of the FPGA

Back when development started I remember reading that DVC would essentially double the amount the core will use so to answer your will it fit question - Yes it will, Slamy just needs to work out how to implement it

The Apprentice uses the additional RAM that is in the DVC to use music and sfx at the same time which is already in the core so essentially 1 part of the DVC is already done, it is just the rest of it that is gonna be very hard

[stiff flare]

The day that Thunder in Paradise plays on the core will be the greatest day of our lives.

[gleaming echo]

The day I can watch the CD-i Top Gun VCD on the core will be mind blowing

Low quality movies on MiSTer would be insane

[terse flare]

Ok, maybe story time: It is planned but will take lots of effort. Until now development was rather quick because most parts of this machine are handled by open source emulators like MAME. Not 100% accurate but everything is there for me to also look at how everyone else is doing things. When it comes to the DVC, the only emulator which has kinda sorta support for it is cdiemu. Even the author himself phrases that he is not 100% happy with the implementation.
I also asked him for the source code since the last time I got it under NDA, the DVC code was forcefully ripped out. The classes were referenced but the code was missing. He seems to be uncomfortable sharing it. However ... for WHATEVER reason ... he has access to the original source code of the kernel driver for the DVC which I also now have access to. His emulator also has a DVC tracer which might also come in handy during development.
During the life time of the CD-i there were two different modules of DVCs available depending on the CD-i player you have which are based on 3 different PCBs. The driver code for the DVC card is on the ROM which allowed Philips to always alter the hardware to save costs. These seem to be called the Gate Array, VMPEG and IMPEG boards. The IMPEG is the last generation which has nearly everything packed onto one chip. cdiemu is currently not able to emulate that. My focus will be on understanding the VMPEG card. The reason for that is because all physical DVCs in my possession are of that kind 😄

I'm also not yet sure about the nature of the implementation. The VMPEG has one chipset or video and one Motorola 56000 DSP for audio stuff. The program code for the DSP is actually available since it is uploaded every boot from the ROM. So it might be possible to make use of that. The video stuff is again like the CDIC. There is a general knowledge how it works and there is microcode uploaded but no one knows yet what this thing does except that it does MPEG decoding.

[gray badge]

I love story time. ❤️

[gleaming echo]

Very interesting Slamy and it is great that you have at least some information about the DVC now 🙂 we all wish you the best of luck with your implementation and we will happily wait for as long as it takes 🙂

[valid onyx]

And even if you don't: thank you for the current core!!!

[spring gate]

Thanks for the info Slamy, always interesting to hear about these things from someone who understands them. Are there any chips or elements that are shared without any other existing cores, or in other systems that might come to MiSTer, that would make developing DVC easier, or is it all self contained hardware?

I.e. "it uses Y microcontroller that is also used in X arcade board"

[pine linden]

Thank you for sharing this story.🙏🏻

[bright zinc]

This sounds exciting, at least you have something to go by now 👍

[young grotto]

interesting stuff

[strange crater]

As far as I’m aware, the reason the Sony ones aren’t brought up too often is because they’re uncommon and lack DVC support. (Plus, the LCDs in many of the portable CDis have died or have severe issues due to age.)

[terse flare]

That is an interesting question. I don't even know how many cores out there exist that have MPEG decoding.
From the looks of it, there are not too many chips out there. This would be the block diagram of the older types of DVC card. The FMA and FMV chips seem to be "gate arrays". Kinda a sorta like an FPGA, but programmed via a metal layer. Nothing is known about them. If you think about it, the DVC doesn't have many chips on it. Also not very many general purpose ones. The only one I can imagine is the 56001. That is a standard part which is also present on the Atari Falcon (does the Falcon have a MiSTer core?)

[wintry dust]

no falcon mister core

[spring gate]

Atari Falcon is one of those systems where nobody has made a stab at upgrading the ST core to be a full Falcon, and I don't recall if there were potential space/resource issues (anyone know how full is the ST core is?).

I did wonder if perhaps it would be worth taking a break, and down the line the missing parts might appear elsewhere and there could be a decent software emulation for the DVC to reference, but I don't think anyone is planning to look at the Falcon and you have the best gauge if a decent software DVC is on the horizon.

[wintry dust]

the falcon requires an fpu and a DSP chip

and a 68030 with a functional MMU

[spring gate]

Do we have the 68030 in Minimig?

Also in Macintosh II models but not one we have

[wintry dust]

no, minimig goes to 68020

[spring gate]

So close, yet so far...

Could the FPU used in Falcon in theory be used in the 486 core (or somewhere else)?

[sly sedge]

Is there even any more room in the ao486 core?

I thought it was already pretty full.

[west pagoda]

so, there have been stabs at the falcon, but nothing released

there is an 030 core without fpu or mmu, so not really any benefit

there is a repo somewhere, lets see if I can dig it up

It is the suska project

[spring gate]

Don't think I have heard of that before, what is it?

Ah, here we go

http://experiment-s.de/en/progress/

Sadly 0% on the DSP

Looks like this project stalled a long time ago

[west pagoda]

The source was updated mid last year. The website seems dead though.

Not sure if this is full sources, http://experiment-s.de/en/download/

[pulsar moth]

Hmm. With a 68020 could we do a Mac II? Though we'd need a fpu.

Or do we have it? I haven't looked at mac much.

[dawn iris]

We need a full 68030 for falcon, that’s the problem. If we could get 040 or 060 core, then next station would also possible I believe. With 060 we could run shapeshifter (mac 7.x) on the Amiga core. Vampire has a good CPU, but there is no MMU and it’s closed source

[buoyant vapor]

Both Falcon and NeXT were 030-based with an m56001 DSP

[west pagoda]

Falcon and tt030

[spring gate]

If that above site is to be believed we have a working 68030 sitting there, but we lack the DSP (also needed in the CDi DVC) and the FPU

Although it is never as simple as just connecting the different parts and it all works fine. There are scores of systems we don't have that we have all the chips for, some of which people have tried to build and hit problems they couldn't get past. Old computers in particular are esoteric beasts.

To bring is back round to my original thinking, I wondered if it may make sense for Slamy to either put his feet up for awhile and master mixing the perfect Martini, while other developer projects do the groundwork needed for DVC if there are shared chips, and DVC software emulation is being actively worked on.

Either that or maybe there is a stopgap project on the way to DVC that in doing so would unlock parts needed for DVC, sort of like how srg320 did 32x on the road to Saturn, and how Gumby's Super Cassette Vision core has made Game Master and Epoch Game Pocket Computer low hanging fruit as all the chips are now done.

Sadly, it doesn't appear either of these strategies are fast tracks to helping Slamy get what he needs for DVC.

If someone were working on Atari Falcon then that would provide the DSP, but nobody seems to. Even with the CPU possibly being done doing a Falcon would likely be a massive project in and of itself

[wintry dust]

---- complex instruction set (CISC) microcontroller. It's program-  ----
---- ming model is (hopefully) fully compatible with Motorola's     ----
---- MC68030. This core features a pipelined architecture. In com-  ----
---- parision to the fully featured 68K30 the core has no MMU, no   ----
---- data and instruction cache and no coprocessor interface.       ----

so no, not fully working

[spring gate]

Better than nothing, but not off the shelf, battle tested, ready to go like say our Z80s or 68000s

Anyways, we are getting sidetracked, unless Slamy really likes all this obtuse Falcon chat in the CDi channel, which I am guessing he probably doesn't 🙂

[terse flare]

I'm okay with talking about the Falcon. The Half life engine was ported to it as an experiment. This makes this thing awesome. Also, I'm not a mod of this channel 😄

[wintry dust]

every line talking about the falcon is one less line asking about DVC

[west pagoda]

Can you design an expansion for the falcon that allows it to decode and display mpeg video?

[gray badge]

I was just about to come in here and remind you that it was your turn in the DVC rotation to say something, but I see you have taken care of your obligation

[terse flare]

You mean code running on the DSP? Or a hardware expansion? If it is running on the DSP I would say that the resolution of the video might be the limiting factor. If one 56k was enough for MPEG video, Philips would have put one of them in the DVC and called it a day. Instead it does only the MP2 audio decompression.

Then there is the memory issue. Please keep in mind that even MPEG1 requires a buffer of multiple frames. There are I frames that are just like JPEG or similar to MDEC of the PSX and then there are P and B frames which are encoding an image dependend on to the next or previous images by utilizing motion vectors. The DVC provides 512kB of memory for the video part. The audio part has some interesting memory. It is 8k words of 24 bit. So much less for audio decoding than video 😄

[west pagoda]

No, I am just joking about Zakk’s comment. A veiled DVC on Falcon joke

[young grotto]

i think framebuffers tend to do quite well in the ddr3

though i'm not sure if that would apply to frames being decoded as apposed to rendered

[terse flare]

Yes, and that is why I'm still not sure whether the decoding should be done on the linux side. I've found pl_mpeg which is a single C file with a whole MPEG1 video and audio decoder. The goal of the project was a MPEG decoder as small as possible. I find this interesting and one of my ideas would be to create something that just offers the linux side some data to decode.

[wintry dust]

I guess we'll get to find out how much bandwidth we really have between the hps and fpga!

although you could just write into ddr3 directly I guess

[west pagoda]

But the technical details on the memory sizing is interesting.

I had imagined the Linux side doing decoding as well, but with the cpu constraints of driving ide already being an issue I imagine there might not be enough resources?

[young grotto]

you can access ddr3 from your core and use it for like, whatever you want

[west pagoda]

Would be cool to build a plugin that could just be worked into the different systems with an mpeg expansion via some shims, but are there enough cycles left to actually do it?

[terse flare]

Please keep one thing in mind: MPEG1 on CD-i has a limited bandwidth of 1.4112 Mbit/s

[wintry dust]

input or decoded output?

[terse flare]

Oh... input...

[wintry dust]

gets a bit bigger when you decode it 😉

although what? max 640x480 probably?

[young grotto]

do you really have to pass it to the core? couldn't you just like, have them both render to the same ddr3 region in the right order

without having to xfer between arm and fpga

[wintry dust]

that's a disaster waiting to happen

[young grotto]

it does sound hard

i'm not sure there's enough bandwidth to pass uncompressed video though

[west pagoda]

Are there latency issues though?

[wintry dust]

you're better off having the decoder write to some dedicated buffers and then having the core pick up those as needed. and yeah, you gotta work out latency related issues too

[terse flare]

No, MPEG1 is non interlaced only. It is 352 x 240 on NTSC with 30 Hz or 352 x 288 with 25 FPS on PAL

[wintry dust]

and the fun part, a/v sync

[young grotto]

also you've only got like, one arm core to work with really

the other one is full time busy doing controller stuff and feeding your cd-rom

[terse flare]

Would be a funny benchmark to measure how many FPS the ARM core can do. I haven't yet compiled the lib for the linux side of the MiSTer. If the little guy can do it on one butt cheek (this is an actual german saying if something is easy) this might be an approach. But I'm not there yet.

[young grotto]

someones compiled ffmpeg for mister i think if you want to test

[valid onyx]

so, maybe (well, probably :)) totally a wacky idea; if there's the worry that the ARM is too busy with linuxy things and feeding data, AND there's still room on the FPGA, AND you have found a lib that is small and does all you want: would it make ANY sense to 'just' add an ARM cpu to the FPGA, just for the decoding? As in, the GBA has one, so it is available? I know this is probably ridiculous and not powerful enough, but hey 🙂

[terse flare]

This is actually not too crazy. I've planed to try exactly that as soon as I have the streams from the DMA transport. I'm not yet sure in which format the data is coming from the driver to the DVC. Might be MPEG but might also be something weird with some additional header data. 😄
Edit: I would actually prefer to have a separate simulation environment to test the feasibility. I don't yet know about the required performance.

[valid onyx]

Hurray! What do you get when 2 people think outside the box? Weird stuff! 🙂

[terse flare]

I don't yet know if an ARM core is the right choice though. In that case any core can be used which can be efficiently synthesized into this FPGA. But I still need to think about it. I'm not there yet 😄

[valid onyx]

I'm trying to think back to the Olden Days. IIRC, my 386 dx 40mhz running (well, running is being generous) windows 95 could software decode mpeg1; I do think that using a x86 core is not the right solution for this problem 🙂

[stiff flare]

In Slamy we trust 🫡

[radiant minnow]

With a good framerate...? Hmm... I am not sure. I got like 6-12FPS MPEG1 on a 486 DX2 class machine...

[gray badge]

I have to say, not that CDi is in Super Attract Mode, it's such a nice surprise when the Phillips logo shows up and shows me a game - even if that game is the apprentice

[valid onyx]

Well I'm probably wrong then, memory - I just have vague memories of watching the intro to Happy Days which was IIRC supplied with the Win '95 install? But, as I said, I don't my mem on this, and you seem more certain on this than I am, so I'll go with your sample point 🙂

And I thought it did play other stuff, but again, I fully believe my recollection to be wrong.

[spring gate]

Is anyone able to get the hash for the BIOS file we are all using (i.e. One in WIP DB)? I need it to get it added to the BIOS DB and don't know an easy way to do this (am also on my phone which isn't ideal)

[south urchin]

boot0.rom CRC32 40C4E6B9
boot0.rom MD5 2969341396AA61E0143DC2351AAA6EF6

boot1.rom CRC32 688CDA63
boot1.rom MD5 3D20CF7550F1B723158B42A1FD5BAC62

[spring gate]

Thanks mate

https://github.com/BigDendy/BiosDB_MiSTer/issues/5

[south urchin]

NP

[spring gate]

Be good to get this live before core goes into Main if possible, save us an influx of people who can't find the files or get the core to boot

[west pagoda]

That was the Weezer - Buddy Holly music video. A real 486dx4 may be able to play it fine, but it was definitely targeted at pentiums.

But then again, 15fps was pretty acceptable back then 😄

[valid onyx]

Ahhh 🙂 Yes, ofc, that was it! Thanks 🙂

[west pagoda]

And an even more vague recollection for me- I actually think two versions were included, one low and one “high” resolution

[valid onyx]

kudos to your memory - a quick browse on some archival site reveals that win 95 came with a FUNSTUFF folder on the cd, which indeed included 2 versions - 1 was in a subfolder called highperf 🙂

although the res seems to be the same, but bitrate and audio will/might be higher

[dawn iris]

I was also thinking for an external solution like the Mt32pi for doing the video stuff. User Port or network. This could run the mpeg site and cores could use it. There are many systems wich offer an mpeg card in the old days. I saw on thread a time ago about thinking exact this also for an replacement for laser disc players

A small pi zero2 will already outperforms the armside of the fpga on de10

[buoyant vapor]

That sounds like a recipe for bandwidth, synchronization and integration headaches

[spring gate]

Is an interesting idea. Would mean you would need to unplug your MT-32 Pi in order to do this (if it were possible)

[buoyant vapor]

There’s at least one open source MPEG2 (h.262) video decoder core out there. MPEG1 (h.261) is a strict subset of that, iirc.

[spring gate]

It is definitely an interesting idea, although as a layman my assumption is this may well have come up in discussions before elsewhere and been discarded for various reasons

[celest hollow]

Could you just write to a separate SD card for the pi DVC so instead of swapping the pi used for the Mt 32, you'd just swap it's SD card with one with the info for handling the DVC

[spring gate]

That's not exactly user friendly either, swapping SD cards isn't fun. Although maybe in the off chance this was a thing there could be a way of having the functionality on the same card so it could run as a mpeg decoder or MT-32 Pi depending on the core. I have no idea though.

[celest hollow]

That'd be cool

[ionic island]

While not theoretically impossible it would be ugly, error prone and a ux nightmare. In practice the amount of work would be large and returns impractical

[teal grove]

How far along is this core? Is it better than 3do?

[nocturne vortex]

Yeah its better

CD-i has so bad they are good games whereas 3DO just has games that are bad with no amusement merit

[stiff flare]

They’re both cool for different reasons imo.

[stiff flare]

Games and multimedia that don’t require the Digital Video Cartridge (add-on hardware) all work fantastically to flawlessly.

[terse flare]

Sometimes I'm not sure if the library was tested thoroughly enough in all aspects. For me not every issue out there is solved. "Golf Tips" still has a weird audio problem and I'm not even sure if the audio hardware is involved at all. Haven't yet looked into it too deeply since it is only this one title I know so far that has this issue with a broken sound effect.

[terse flare]

It might have been a case of "Not invented here syndrome". Since MPEG2 is compatible with MPEG1 it might still be worth it checking that out. The only problem was the lack of audio decoding if we are indeed talking about the same decoder core. I assume you are referring to this one here https://github.com/OldRepoPreservation/mpeg2fpga
I still don't know enough about the DVC hardware to actually be able to know how things are working

[spring gate]

It is a good point on the testing side, we have stalled there collectively (myself included). Maybe we need to be testing more of the non games on the system which could unearth some hidden bugs, or further confirm the stability of the core.

[buoyant vapor]

Yes, that’s the one I found too, but on opencores.org. I have no idea if it’s suitable, or how the CD-i system interfaces with the DVC expansion. But if a “HLE” approach would work then picking some of the shelf cores for video and audio decoding seems like a straighter path than offloading it to software. I suppose stream demuxing is handled by the DVC too?

[young grotto]

maybe you could use the opensource mpeg2 decoder then do a softcore for the audio side

[terse flare]

According to the documentation, the muxing is aligned to sector size. The DVC is not capable of demuxing, the software does feed the data to the right sink. If this is actually true, this further would mean that the video decoder has not much to do with the audio decoder

[young grotto]

playstations CDXA audio isnt anything like mpeg1 is it

[terse flare]

You are funny you know that? CDXA of PSX is equal to Green Book audio of CD-i

It is the same algorithm

[young grotto]

ah

kinda makes sense there was a lot of like, cross polination of ideas back then

[valid cairn]

https://opencores.org/projects/mpeg2fpga

Is this the same one?

[terse flare]

Yes, but opencores is broken right now. This is why all repos are backed up at different places.

[valid cairn]

Ah I see

[terse flare]

There is one similarity. MDEC of PSX is similar to Motion JPEG which is similar to I frames of MPEG1

[buoyant vapor]

The CDXA standard was indeed developed by Sony and Philips in cooperation, like many things CD

[west pagoda]

Not sure if this one does decompression but it also may have some use? https://opencores.org/projects/video_systems/common

[terse flare]

This is a collection of verilog modules that can be used to build a video decompressor. Like the discrete cosine transformation or the zigzag pattern.

[foggy epoch]

Hey, I heard you guys are looking into MPEG decoding for this core

where did you get to?

https://github.com/OldRepoPreservation/mpeg2fpga

I can confirm this core did work with a mpeg2 file in simulation

I got lost in trying to simulate the file handling (support stuff) of Main_MiSTer, and never got it running on actual FPGA. But it did work in simulation, and I was able to display a single frame in simulation

[foggy epoch]

Yes, this would be an option if there is not enough bandwidth for audio + video. In the case of Daphne, most of the audio tracks are in Ogg Vorbis... Aplay is/was installed on the ARM side, and linux audio can be muxed with core audio.

If you get the mpeg2 decoder running on actual FPGA, Daphne core would be very straight forward from there.

[foggy epoch]

I suppose the major difference is that the CD-i mpeg data is going through the CD sector handling stuff. Daphne doesn't have that limitation - just raw-dog mpeg file. I guess this means audio would need to be handled on the FPGA too, unless the CD-i DVC just plays back CD audio?

[valid cairn]

Would this mpeg2 dvc malarkey pave the way for, dare I even mention it, the dreaded dvd player core?

[grim moat]

possibly, since DVD is mpeg2

but is CD-i mpeg1?

I suppose an mpeg2 decoder would handle mpeg1 too

[young grotto]

all roads lead to dvdplayer core, it is inevitable

[fringe stratus]

Nuon MiSTer core (with DVD-Video playback support included) coming soon!

Damm it.

[foggy epoch]

The dvd player core is entirely possible - if we can get mpeg2fpga working on the FPGA.

[terse flare]

Just out of curiosity: Is this based on https://github.com/JimmyStones/Verilator_Template ?
The UI looks similar. As I've started my Verilator setup before talking to the devs here, I've made my own environment but it seems to be not very fast. Simulating a single PAL frame of CD-i core takes about 3 seconds on my machine. This is far off from realtime.

[terse flare]

This is good to hear. I also wanted to test it but I wanted to start with this as soon as I have a data stream available in the format, the MCD251 MPEG Decoder is getting it using DMA. I'm not yet sure whether this is simply a MPEG video stream one does get from tools like ffmpeg or if additional data is involved.

[terse flare]

The CD-i is actually not capable of playing red book audio next to MPEG video since CDDA does consume the whole available bandwidth, the CD data stream provides. MPEG Audio is the way to go even so it seems that it should also be possible to provides CD XA / Green book audio at the same time...
Actually the more I think about it, MPEG Audio has one big advantage. Most CD-i games that have SFX and BGM at the same time, are mixing a stereo ADPCM stream based on a mono BGM stream coming from CD and a mono SFX stream mixed by CPU together. Both channels are mixed to Mono using some analog circuitry afterwards.
If MPEG Audio is put into the mix...... there is one additional audio source. This would mean that the SFX can be mixed with real stereo if the CPU has the power to do so.

At the same time MPEG Video also gives this advantage kinda sorta. The base machine has 2 planes of bitmap data, one crappy mouse cursor sprite and one back plane which is single color without the DVC but the video from the external card if there. This means that one additional video layer is available for development... even so it is limited to MPEG.

[foggy epoch]

Issue with mpeg2fpga is it doesn’t decode mpeg audio… maybe audio is part of the mpeg1 standard?

[terse flare]

At least according to Wikipedia, MPEG2 Audio is a superset of MPEG1 Audio. It introduces Part 3 and Part 7 and has support for more than 2 channels... so... The project is actually lacking this. Maybe the author has stopped at some point.
Part 7 is also called AAC which seems to be a common term today.

[foggy epoch]

Daphne just handles audio separately, so this mpeg2fpga is fine for it. I guess if we understand the compression on the audio, it wouldn’t be impossible to create a separate decoder

[foggy epoch]

Yes, just the verilator start stuff

[foggy epoch]

I wonder if anyone has extracted the video/audio files out of one of the games? Am I correct that none of the emulators implement the DVC?

Oh maybe one?

[fringe stratus]

My “damm it” was for the idea of a Nuon core being unlikely, not a DVD player core in general, btw.

[terse flare]

The people on the CD-i discord probably have extracted the data at some point. The standard is pretty open about the encoding is well. Since I don't know too much about the internals of MPEG, I don't know how it diverges from the ISO streams.
There is actually one emulator that has some support. MAME is probably the best open source emulator for software emulation right now but DVC is not included.
Then there is cdiemu which is a closed source emulator. That one uses HLE to implemented the DVC but the author is not happy with it.

[foggy epoch]

Again, I wish I had the mpeg2decoder working in simulation, we could at least see if it would play one of the extracts

[terse flare]

Didn't you say here that the simulation is working? #1103404843512631357 message

[foggy epoch]

It was only a very small chunk of the file IIRC. And it just mounted that file and copied it into the FIFO for the decoder to play back

Maybe it played a couple of frames

[foggy epoch]

I guess we could go back to before I started to implement all the ext bus stuff, and test the decoder with the extract

Just need that extract then

[bright zinc]

Might be able to use cdiemu and while video is playing do a coredump and then search that. No guarantees but it might work.

[stiff flare]

This is the best CDi emulator on the planet

[fringe stratus]

cdiemu or the CDi MiSTer core?

[stiff flare]

CDi on the MiSTer

[terse flare]

My plan was actually to have a video playing and then trace DMA accesses since cdiemu has an interface for that. This way I might have a chance of having all the writes and reads to the DVC for a condensed access to implement the Verilog behavior. This is also how I implemented the other hardware. A very condensed view on the hardware access for verification.

[stiff flare]

Take note that I’ve never used cdiemu

So my opinion is objective fact based on my experiences

[fringe stratus]

Oh, I was about to say “the competition is really lacking”, but never mind.

[stiff flare]

I wouldn’t know, this core is the only reason I’ve ever played CDi

[bright zinc]

oh that sounds good. Once you understand more about how it all works maybe you can ask that guy some specific questions and maybe get some more info from him.

[spring gate]

Not sure how useful this half remembered info is, but VCD (mpeg1) I am pretty sure is limited to two channel compressed audio, I forget the format, but equivalent to I think a 128 MP3.

DVD however supported a lot more. You could have:
uncompressed 16bit PCM stereo audio
Dolby Pro Logic surround
Dolby Digital up to 6.1 surround
DTS up to 6.1 surround

[young grotto]

yeah i suspect if there ever were a dvdplayer core it would have to just bitstream out most of those formats to external decoders

[sinful hornet]

I'm curious for anyone with a real cdi, when the intro for ultimate Noah's ark plays and it loads a new graphic does the screen do a minor flicker like I see on the core?

I'm back to try out some cdi and look at this brutal sliding block puzzle

[gray badge]

does the menu still render on top of itself? I saw that when I tested it back in Feb

[sinful hornet]

Everything seems pretty functional now

I even just completed a level 1 puzzle

This whole game seems so tedious

Switching to Power Hitter and that's such a weird game 😆

Like, don't even actively swing? Just guess the pitches

So it looks like the batter is only visible when you swing and doing the animation

Which you guess your pitch then press a direction, I guess, and he swings

[gray badge]

I was wondering if there was really no pitch animation/movie - seems jarring. I made a note on the sheet that it needs to be checked against real hardware

[sinful hornet]

Yeah unfortunately I can't help there. Is there much more that needs to be tested beyond just playing through whole games?

[gray badge]

I haven't touched it since the march core, so you can take a look at the spreadsheet here and see if the noted graphical bugs are still present

[spring gate]

If you check the sheet, there are quite a lot of tabs where nothing has been tested but they are non games. The demos and Proto games hadn't been looked at last I checked though

There is a game on the Asian tab that is still listed as just "boots" that could use a retest, and yeah, nobody has checked the betas and Protos etc. tab

Maybe collectively we could look at Edutain, those are quasi games and there aren't that many of them.

@strange crater are you still working on uploading non DVC packs?

[strange crater]

I’ve been mainly working on other projects - haven’t gotten a chance to update them with the new Redump stuff

[spring gate]

Ah yeah you have been pretty busy with 0mhz stuff

Is there an Edutain pack up?

I need to check and see if there have been any new photo CDs thinking about it, and put some time aside to recheck and see if the various bugs are now fixed (I suspect they may well be)

[strange crater]

No, not yet - I think I did Games, R,E&M, Enhanced Music CDs, and CD-BGM.

Part of me wants to rebuild in CHD before I continue, though. Not only does that save a lot of space, it also saves me a lot of UL time.

[spring gate]

That makes sense, since there seems to be no issues on the core with CHD (that I am aware of anyway) and the non CHD files are in Redump that could be downloaded individually as a reference if need be

Has upload speed to archive for any better?

I know it was painful when you were doing these before

[strange crater]

No, it’s still pretty rough. It wouldn’t be as bad if it didn’t also have a habit of dropping connection sporadically, meaning I kind of have to babysit it and watch the upload process to resume it if it stops.

Granted, it’s been better with 0MHz, as they’re smaller files overall, but I think large multi-file packs have a habit of being generally unstable when going up. I think their recommended maximum is like 50 GB, and Sorted’s category sets push well beyond that.

[spring gate]

That's not ideal, maybe have to do them as one subfolder at a time, but makes uploading a pack a lot more laborious

As an aside, organised CHD 3DO and Jag CD packs would be great to have in anticipation of those cores supporting them

[strange crater]

I started working on 3DO, but I haven’t completed it yet. I’ll make sure to finish that one up once we have a core drop.

I think what I’m eventually going to look into doing for these systems with highly complete Redump packs for its archived titles is creating a sort of Sorted Set Utility, which can take in files from the Redump set and reorganize them by title into directories according to a .json or .csv file.

As for the Jaguar CD, I’m pretty sure the 13 titles released for it were all games, as were the various homebrew titles. It doesn’t look like they’re all collected in one place, though, so I’ll put together a more complete pack for them.

Offhand, do you know what file formats the core supports for CD games? I admittedly haven’t tested much of the Jaguar core yet.

[celest hollow]

Right now Jag is individual bin files for cds

I believe grey rogue said CHD support will be there eventually

[terse flare]

This is an interesting finding. At first I didn't knew what you could have meant. Then it struck me, the flicker only occurs in 60 Hz / NTSC mode. It is the UK version of the title. Don't know which you have tried.

[sinful hornet]

Ntsc and usa version. Sorry for the lack of detail

[terse flare]

Hmm... Ok, I will burn it and see what happens... for some reason, I have the feeling that the amount of actual CD-i player owners is limited in this thread.🤣

[sinful hornet]

Little extra explanation, the intro loads different parts of the image, first slightly grayed out then full color. It seemed like the whole screen may have gone black for a frame or something when first loading a grayed out section

If nobody else can reproduce that's OK or I can try recording my screen as an example

I checked a youtube video, that I can't confirm is real hardware, and didn't see anything like that so I figured I'd mention it

[terse flare]

I can confirm this problem. The issue is not reproducible on a real machine, only on the core. For some reason, activating CPU Turbo does fix it. It seems the way I performed the slowdown is indeed broken...
I put this on my TODO list

[gray badge]

I can't remember if it's been brought up, but there is something up with the crop when running in PAL Mode+ Direct Video. I dunno if that's something correctable. Folks like Zakk may be able to help

(if that's something you want to address, it certainly doesn't affect the playablility)

I take that back - I'm seeing the same cropping in the PSX core

when running a PAL game

[terse flare]

Please elaborate. You haven't mentioned at which side the picture is cropped. Is the crop only with Direct Video and not with the Analog IO board? I do recall during my experiments that a Commodore 1084 is dropping some lines at the top. The CD-i has lots of overscan...

[gray badge]

Sorry, I didn't go deeper because I figured it was just a "nothing burger". I'll get some footage today to show you just in case.

In NTSC mode, the DV auto crop only leaves black borders on the right and left (scaling the image to fit the screen vertically). In PAL mode, there are black borders on the left, right, and top. I found that odd because I would assume that if it was an issue with getting a clean scale, the image would be centered with black bars all around it.

But, as I said, the PSX core has the exact same behavior when booting a PAL game.

[sinful hornet]

@terse flare Question about how the core is supposed to work. I played through a game of effacer and then opened the osd and chose Video Speedway and funky guitar started playing. I didn't reset the core or anything. It just immediately started playing the music. I fully reset and ran video speedway and selected Effacer in the same way and Effacer audio started playing. Should audio from the new selection be playing before even resetting the system and pressing play?

[gray badge]

You need to have autoplay turned on - otherwise it is like you opened the drive and swapped cds

[sinful hornet]

So with a real machine if you swapped cds the game would continue but audio change?

[gray badge]

I think if it was playing a track on the cd, yeah

[sinful hornet]

Or would this just be an in development thing where it isn't set to auto reset when using the load option like other cores do?

[gray badge]

thats how the PSX swap trick worked

you put a legit game in, let it get past the boot, then open the drive and swap to a burned cd

[young grotto]

isn't that what happens if all your games are in the same folder

it only resets if the new image is in a different folder to the old one

[foggy epoch]

I think mpeg2 decoding is possible on the FPGA.

[terse flare]

I think you have Debug Options -> No reset on NvRAM change set right now. With the new auto play feature implemented, the core can finally behave like the PSX core. Most users might just want to select the image and call it a day. If you open the tray on a real CD-i, this is noticed and the system is reset, which is currently not emulated by this core.
With the said debug option, you are swapping the disc without the software noticing and that has interesting effects as playback just continues at that position.
All of this is slightly related to the decision of having one NvRAM image per disc. This is why we probably should reset the core after each image change. In practice there seems to be no issue as the NvRAM driver of the OS seems to have no state. But that is not 100% sure so resetting it is the safe option.

[spring gate]

Having a check of some Photo CDs, looks like the issue of the repeading part of the previous audio track before starting the next is fixed. :-). Have checked on Autosport Presents Grandprix and it is working really well now

Should games auto start now when they are selected from OSD? I am still being taken back to BIOS screen to manually load discs, maybe something wrong with my set up but I should be on the unstable CDI main

[terse flare]

Just to be sure, if you are taken back and you press play again, does it work? There is some issue I thought I've solved but it seems sometimes, the core is not loading a disc. I'm still unsure whether it is on the Linux side or on the FPGA side. When it doesn't work, pressing play a second time seems to resolve the issue. I'm not happy with this but right now, I'm unable to reproduce it systematically.

[spring gate]

Yeah, discs I tried seem to be loading

It did seem to take a lot longer than I remember to load the Autosports Photo CD, but the other discs I tried after seemed to load quickly

[terse flare]

Just to be sure. I don't know which unstable release you are using. Is it at least this one or newer? #unstable-nightlies message The fix I've mentioned is part of this release.

[spring gate]

It was this one here:

#1103404843512631357 message

I'm using the line at the bottom of my mister.ini file to use it on launch instead of Main

[terse flare]

You don't need to do that anymore. All recent changes are part of the mainline unstable main

This ini file is sometimes really dangerous as users might forget that they have made that entry. This leads to weird debugging sessions.

[spring gate]

If there is a Saturn unstable Main will that not exclude your changes?

[terse flare]

One of the unstable MiSTer Main prime ministers would need to have a saying here. But my interpretation is that these are all linear in time.

[spring gate]

i.e. does this more recent version have your updates in it?

#unstable-nightlies message

[terse flare]

I've just checked, yes

[spring gate]

Ah nice one

[terse flare]

Yes, Sorg has merged the PR rather quickly.

[spring gate]

Now, where can I acquire this script that I can run to move over to unstable Main? As on a Mac with Filezilla there isn't a way for me to do this without removing the SD card

[terse flare]

Uhm... I just use scp on the shell or sftp:/ via a standard file browser... Also sftp is not to be confused ftp. I'm hightly confident even this Apple machine is capable of SSH

I do wonder if there is even a update script around which loads the lates unstable release

[spring gate]

The issue I have (and others) is you can't overwrite your mister main file on a Mac using filezilla without bricking your MiSTer, meaning you have to remove your SD card and manually overwrite the file and put it back in to fix. I keep meaning to bookmark the script that lets you jump over to unstable Main when it is posted and then forget and can never find it again. This is very much a me problem though, so don't worry, I'll get it sorted

There is definitely a script that I think Porkchop made

Actually maybe it doesn't and only does the unstable nightlies...

as in all the cores

[terse flare]

Even on Linux I need to kill the process first via SSH to get it copied. I'm highly confident that works out of the box on a Apple machine as well since it is very similar to BSD. This is not really about CD-i stuff but here you go.

$ scp bin/MiSTer root@mister:/media/fat/
(root@mister) Password: 
scp: dest open "/media/fat/MiSTer": Failure
scp: failed to upload file bin/MiSTer to /media/fat/

$ ssh root@mister killall MiSTer

$ scp bin/MiSTer root@mister:/media/fat/
(root@mister) Password: 
MiSTer                              

[stiff flare]

You can delete the MiSTer main, then move the new one over and restart. Should work fine.

[spring gate]

Nah, it bricks MiSTer for me, is some weird issue with Macs and FileZilla that others have mentioned as well

[stiff flare]

Oh weird. If I copy over the file on my Pi 5, it bricks it until I copy it from windows. But for me I’ve learned that deleting Mister main first then copying it over solved it. Kind of a weird work around lol.

[west pagoda]

Don’t copy it onto the pi, that is your problem. Copy it to your mister.

[stiff flare]

Oh, that’s what I’m doing wrong. Thank you

[sick badge]

You just have to go into Filezilla options and switch transfers from auto to binary mode.

[spring gate]

Already switched from ASII to Binary if that is what you mean

[gray badge]

@terse flare here is what I was talking about. It could very well just be a quirk of the tink (I should check the morph), or something in my setup, so I cannot stress enough how unimportant it is. 🙂

First image is Mega Maze (Europe) in NTSC mode. Second is the same game in PAL mode.

The weird crop only seems to be in the logo on this game. I swear I’ve seen it in games too, but I’d have to do a more thorough sweep.

Again, psx core does something similar, and it is a total non-issue, but it’s there if you want to poke at it.

[wintry dust]

hightly suspect this isn't a core issue

[gray badge]

Agreed. I suspect a tink issue

[terse flare]

Something is wrong. I can see it now too. At first I thought this was my old nemesis, the NTSC/PAL configuration that somehow creeps its way into the NvRAM. It seems to prohibit correctly aligned video signal when switching the region/tv standard with the same NvRAM. I've seen it on other titles but I'm not yet sure when it triggers. The picture that you show is also like that on the HDMI. The video is also cropped at the bottom and the Philips Logo animation is missing some bits. I have to assume that I need to check this disc on a real machine too.

[terse flare]

Ok, I've burned the image to disc and the issue is a combination of 2 things. First, the game is to blame. What you see is actually correct as it can be reproduced with real hardware. For some reason, they really have cropped the Philips Logo animation when played in PAL resolution. The last few pixels are missing when the CD rotates. It is barely noticeable though as it probably is only 1 or 2 frames. But the reason for actually seeing the crop is full RGB vs limited RGB. For me this is still sliiightly unclear. A real CD-i does map the video levels by a rule of thumb from 16 - 235 to 0 - 255. The first screenshot is generated with Debug Options -> RGB Scale Limited to Full: 0 while the right uses 1 resulting in a picture that you can actually see on a Commodore 1084 connected to a 210/05. The crop is not that visible.

At some point in time I wanted to change the default to 1 but I was never really confident enough to do this. Games like Hotel Mario become even harder if you are playing the ... 3rd Hotel? ...The one with the ice. Simply too dark.

[gray badge]

Once again, the core is too accurate :p

[pale ivy]

That looks unkind

[mossy steppe]

was there a compatibility document here? if i remember correctly

[young grotto]

its in the pins

[mossy steppe]

i've been running some non-game stuff and i wanted to see if it was mentioned

ooh theres pins

i always get tricked by threads

[young grotto]

"Testing Sheet"

yeah the ux for them is terrible esp on mobile

[mossy steppe]

yeah on mobile you can't access most features in a thread, it is terrible

i'm going through Foods of France. i'm just watching all the videos and clicking every button. seems to work fine so far. Lol

[merry oyster]

I always just rename the main file to something like MiSTer_OLD. And then move the new main file over. Always works for me anyway!

[spring gate]

Ah nice, if you are able to update the sheet with your findings that would be great, we haven't had too much coverage of non game stuff

[mossy steppe]

will do once i've covered most or all of the content in it

[strange crater]

The things I remember used to have issues with Foods of France were clicking on the small characters sometimes was silent & that certain voices wouldn’t play. I haven’t checked it in a long time, though.

[deep roost]

https://youtu.be/3ViKPQ2KsDk

[hybrid eagle]

This 90s music is so good to hear 35 years later, with its soothing tone. It brings back sweet memories of that time when the future looked bright!

[deep roost]

Whenever I hear this song, it gives me a bit of nostalgia, and a generalization of 90s music as a whole.

Especially the big number of power ballads that came from this decade.

[terse flare]

Oh, I haven't noticed that there is a 3.5% speed difference between the Soundcloud original master and the ingame version.

[prime blaze]

@Slamy - I am forever grateful to you for your work on the CDI core. I have personally not heard any updates in a while on YT like from VGE and PCN so I thought to ask all here reading this- what is the latest with the core say since January?

[south urchin]

That's the latest core release (from the pins)

[prime blaze]

Forever in your debt CountDuckula! Thank you!!

[south urchin]

NP. Robby does a really good job keeping the pinned posts up to date with the latest downloads

in the thread for each work in progress core

[terse flare]

Glad that you like my work. I've first tried to compile a small list of changes since January but the list would have been very long. Lots of graphical and audio issues were fixed and as of today not many remaining problems on the base machine are known to me. During that time, changes were frequent and every few weeks there was a new core revision with some fixes. Right now, the core has reached a small state of "diminishing returns". This is why updates are becoming less frequent... at least for the base machine.

The reason for VGE and PCN not covering this topic is probably because the changes are maybe lacking "punch" and both are not very deep into the CD-i. I imagine the next change to actually have a public impact would be the inclusion of DVC hardware.
For the last weeks I've tried to wrap my head around it. I don't know exactly why I don't make that much progress but the topic is rather difficult ||(and I'm having a small Factorio addiction for a week now||). It is like the CDIC but worse as the number of registers have increased.

To achieve my goal I'm applying several methods:

• I've tried to utilize my CDIC_BlackBoxAnalyzer project to operate a real VMPEG card to perform some MPEG decoding without using the actual drivers. With the CDIC that has worked since it has like... 6 registers? It would help to understand the inner workings but became more and more complex.
• I've written a small Rust application to distillate register transactions during an execution of cdiemu. I don't know how accurate this emulator is when it comes to the DVC but it is still able to run SkyWays which is an early access homebrew using the DVC. To be able to run this game on the core would be a good achievement. Using this method I was also able to find out how the data stream to the DVC is structured.
• Adding a fake DVC to the core. This is something which would help a lot. I have a work in progress core which has the ROM of the VMPEG added and also some basic MPEG decoding to fake a working hardware. Sadly, the games crashes after 1 second so I assume there is still something wrong.

I have not started work on an actual MPEG decoder as I would like to see the game working first. Getting the register level view from the CPU right, is the actual difficult task for me right now...

I don't know how many MPEG enthusiasts are around here but I guess in case there are some, I can give some insight into how the VMPEG hardware works on an architectural level: It consists of 2 independent decoders getting their own stream. MPEG demuxing on byte level is not existing on CD-i hardware. Every CD sector either contains an "MPEG elementary stream" with audio or video data actually conform to the ISO norm. This means just by extracting these streams, you can throw them into VLC and it will play that. So there is no magic involved here. This is something I've found out my distilling the DMA streams from cdiemu.

[plucky brook]

stupid question: if that MPEG stuff is acc to ISO, doesn't it make sense to implement this in the ARM using ffmpeg instead?

not nearly as experienced in fpga dev as you are but I can imagine implementing it in digital logic will take up huge resources

[terse flare]

Your question is not stupid. As soon as SkyWays is running and I have a fluent MPEG stream, my plans are to add the DDR memory to the core to act as the MPEG buffer RAM. A real VMPEG has 512kB of this. Afterwards there are 2 options. Either decode it in software on the Linux side or adding a RISC V cpu core to the whole machine to execute this library. https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg?tab=readme-ov-file
This is a single C file implementation of an MPEG1 (only 1) decoder. I've tested it against the stream from SkyWays and it is working just fine.

Using ffmpeg is actually overkill since it has so much features I don't need.

During the last weeks there was also mpeg2fpga mentioned. This project is also overkill. It only has video support and has so many features that are not required for some basic MPEG1 decoding.

For the really curious of you. These are the DMA streams the Verilator model of the core currently produces.

[bright zinc]

You could extract the cd image if you wanted to look at more mpeg files. I think isobuster and another specialized program (I forget the name) could extract the files.

[rugged panther]

Is there plenty of space to add it to the core? You wouldn't have to sacrifice anything later?

[terse flare]

We are at 32% utilization

[terse flare]

At least SkyWays seems to crash IsoBuster into this. Maybe wine is an issue. I don't know. For the curious, the Preview is free and can be downloaded here https://twburn.itch.io/skyways

[rugged panther]

As a layman onlooker it seems the core is pretty far along in development isn't it? So that should be ample space in the utilization?

[terse flare]

I would say yes?

[rugged panther]

I assume ffmpeg is the least amount of work right? Or is there already an fpga RISC V implementation you can use

[terse flare]

https://github.com/YosysHQ/picorv32 There is a still open topic to benchmark this RISC V core with a library like pl_mpeg. I don't know how fast it is to decode MPEG in software. I don't even have an idea yet. So maybe it indeed makes more sense to do that on Linux. We have a second core there available after all.

[rugged panther]

Oh nice! I think I like the idea of having it all be on the fpga it seems "cleaner" or more pure somehow. Maybe that's dumb lol

[plucky brook]

I guess it boils down to utilization vs requirements - what it has to do. but with 32% utilization, no reason to resort to the ARM core either. I was expecting the utilization to be much higher for some reason

[rugged panther]

Right same

[terse flare]

Is there a list of all utilizations available somewhere? I just wonder. I only know of the N64 being really full. I'm not aware of any other cores.

[plucky brook]

SNES is also really full. not aware of a list somewhere

[stiff flare]

“layman” is right hawwwwwww haw

Cause you’re laym, man

[bright zinc]

it's probably wine, this is what I get

Saturn is high 90's usage

[terse flare]

Cool VIDEO01.RTF is actually the MPEG video 😄

[bright zinc]

yep seems to play in vlc

kind of jerky for me though

[rugged panther]

Saturn, N64, PS1, Saturn, SNES, and maybe Megadrive are all pretty high I think

Megadrive I don't know the exact number just that it's a lot more than the old core

[terse flare]

Oh, you are right. Vlc seems to have issues. mplayer works fine though. ffplay from the the ffmpeg package also works. The video data shows how awful MPEG1 in general was. I was still a toddler when MPEG1 was commercialy relevant but I assume VHS was better. The bitrate is too low. When you play it, you can actually see the sine waves from the IDCT.

[plucky brook]

then again, we wouldn't be using a cdi if we were expecting greatness 😄

[terse flare]

Just for shits and giggles I had 2 instances of Quartus running during this discussion. Minimig AGA comes out at exactly 50% with the latest release. PSX is at 93%. It also took 27 minutes to build PSX and 19 minutes for Minimig. Oh boy, the 10 minutes of CD-i core are still a breeze. (The times probably should be taken with a grain of salt since both cores were build at the same time)

[rugged panther]

It's alsu interesting that Robert likes to stay close to 90% not much more for stability but SRG fills it up to the brim lol

making it harder to compile as I understand

[terse flare]

I'm not an expert but placing and routing an FPGA core is based on algorithms that are NP-complete. I think in english its called the "knapsack problem". The heuristics to help with the computation are becoming less effective the less free space is available for the task. But what do I know. I haven't build a FPGA place tool.

[rugged panther]

I've heard it as the traveling salesman problem, is that it?

[bright zinc]

It gets painful if every time you hit compile it takes a 1/2 an hour or more. You try to make sure everything is right 🙂

[young grotto]

saturn being filled to the brim isn't really a choice as much as a necessity with the complexity of saturn

[dawn iris]

Iirc Robert said that anything under 90% filling the fpga will make less trouble. His goal was ever max. 85%.

[spring gate]

Was this of any use, Slamy?

https://cdibits.blogspot.com/2025/05/preparing-for-cd-i-audiovideo-decoder.html

[terse flare]

No, I don't understand the hype actually :-D. I have the source code already under NDA. So this is nothing new to me.

[spring gate]

Hah, it means nothing to me, but a shame hype was made around this and it isn't actually useful to your work

[jolly folio]

I try and cover all updates in the weekly news video. I just missed this.

Is there a new core?

I'll add it in notes for next Saturday's video.

Also I've been distracted with Capcom Fighting Collection 2. CvS2 anyone?

[terse flare]

Ah don't worry. I think there is a misunderstanding. I assume the author of the question was referring to the first quarter of the year. There is no update to the core at the moment^^

[jolly folio]

Thanks Slamy,

And to all my peeps, it's hard keeping up with stuff, so friends, please ping me if you come across updates. It's super appreciated, and makes me feel special.

Btw, @terse flare , I'd love to have you on the channel for a chat.

I understand not everyone likes speaking in public, but if you're up for it, you're welcome anytime. It'll be interesting to get your take on the CD-i as well as other things that interest you.

No pressure, just an offer, at your discretion.

[gray badge]

@terse flare Just found a weird bug that I think only happens in direct video (that's the only difference between the two systems that I tested this on). Quizmania (Italy)'s video is messed up (again, only on my direct video stack)

[gray badge]

i can confirm that I don't see it over normal HDMI

oddly enough, the screenshot (grabbed via the remote app) is weirdly stretched here

it doesn't appear like that on screen

actually, let me check something

ha, it's not direct video. it's NTSC mode

you probably already knew this

[terse flare]

Ah, please don't assume that I know everything. I'm not the prime minister of CD-i software. I still rely on others to test the lesser known titles since I'm focusing my tests on the ones that probably more people would play and also the ones that really challenge the hardware.

I've tested the game in hope to find some interesting bug to fix. It turns out not only is this game broken like that on a real 210/05 too, but you've already missed a bug before this one occurs. Italian 🤌
The intro sequence on NTSC mode shows only a blue mouse cursor while music is playing. In PAL, there is an actual animation going with it. The behavior matches the real machine here as well. So... this is not a bug in the core but instead another entry to the list of known quirks.. 🙄
Since this is probably a small application for the local italian market, proper testing for NTSC was maybe not performed... This is sad as this violates the green book standard. Every disc has to run properly on all machines. I guess this is one reason why companys like Sony and Nintendo only published licensed games.

The game also has an easter egg. 😄 If you leave the menu alone, the tele pirates occur. 😄 Sadly I don't speak italian.

[terse flare]

I'm a rather socially awkward person but it would not be the first time to talk in public about my projects. So I guess in general this is something possible. Please keep in mind that my English vocabulary is limited and in spoken word you will not hear elaborated phrases from my mouth. Also prepare for lots of "ze" instead of "the"... lol

[jolly folio]

I get that. The live streams/recordings are just relaxing conversations between like minded nerds. I like both formats, but streams are cooler for live viewer participation. Recordings work well too, as anything that is disliked can be removed.

I'm easy with either option, no issues about English not being a first language, we can just roll with it. I'll definitely make it as comfortable and as enjoyable as I possibly can.

Let me know, if you prefer live or recorded, and we can work out a date, if you feel good with it.

No pressure, no rush. Anytime you like.

[nocturne vortex]

Understood, your Excellency 😉

[rugged panther]

I would like to start a petition to change @terse flare's title to Minister of CD-i Software

[fringe stratus]

I swear the story of this core is “not a bug, the game itself is just broken”.

Seriously, this keeps happening, doesn’t it?

[gray badge]

I know, but you also were just talking about NTSC vs PAL so I wasn't sure if this was something related to what you found. With that said, I need to learn my lesson with this core - assume that the CDi is broken, not the core :p

[rugged panther]

Probably one reason why CD-i development has been slow

[fringe stratus]

Can’t fix bugs if you can’t locate them.

[opal mural]

I speak italian, do you need any help?

[terse flare]

Ah, that was actually meant as a joke. But thanks. It might be possible though that "QuizMania" might have a certain humor that you like since all the audio is in italian. It feels very trashy though 😄

[sudden ivy]

for CD-i ... does it matter on the version of bios used?.. e.g. 200, 220a, 220b, etc..

noticed some games do use 220b even though 200 is the main bios ..
so maybe a boot2.rom and boot3.rom files are needed? .. to accommodate for the 220 and 220b bios files

220 F2 / cdi220 revision i believe managed the audio tasks

[odd trout]

Currently only boot0 and boot1 are used #1103404843512631357 message
They must be these specific files with the correct MD5 #1103404843512631357 message

The core author Slamy would be able to elucidate on the rest of your question about other bios versions.

[sudden ivy]

am looking at the wiki he/she posted... just need to crab the cores

just pulled the bios to the drive

haha .. just saw that typo

[stiff flare]

lol sorry, had to

[sudden ivy]

no worries.. i found it funny after i caught it

is there anything else i need to grab besides the bios roms?

[stiff flare]

Ummmm, I think that’s it

[sudden ivy]

am also looking at the Cd-i listing for mame .. cdi220b.rom is listed

[stiff flare]

#1103404843512631357 message

[sudden ivy]

already did that.. just saying what i am reading during research

[sudden ivy]

what about the *.qpf files?

[odd trout]

Did you download the core source files? qpf are quartus project files, not something you'd typically download.
The latest core itself can be found here #1103404843512631357 message

[sudden ivy]

already done

just fixing other things at the moment

just sorted all cd-i games

[sudden ivy]

Doesn't show up in the games directory

[terse flare]

Your way of thinking is interesting and unexpected. This is the first time I've read statements like "some games do use bios X". Please don't bring too much MAME thinking into this. I don't know why there are so many ROMs in the cdimono1.zip file. I assume it's for the arcade cabinet variant of the CD-i which is something this core doesn't yet support. One of the mame contributors - MooglyGuy - seemed to have a certain affinity for the Quizard machines.... Please don't try to use Quizard CD images on this core. In the MAME source code, those are the only listed games it seems. It won't work because the copy protection dongle is missing in the core.

[terse flare]

What exactly doesn't show up?

[sudden ivy]

CDi200 is Magnavox.. 220 F2 is Phillips

I have the boot0 and boot1 is the CD-i game directory on the drive

But nothing .. must not have caught it during the update

[terse flare]

The core actually supports different bios files. I've tried to kept this as a secret to reduce irritating problems though. Please only have the listed ROM files there. These are all you need for now. ||Later, boot2.rom will be the ROM of the DVC but that is another story.||

[sudden ivy]

there is also VCD

[terse flare]

What is not showing up? Games? Roms? The CD-i core?

[terse flare]

Please keep in mind that MPEG functionality is not yet supported. Only "base machine" titles will run. One exception is The Apprentice, which makes only use of the extra 1 MB of RAM

[terse flare]

Do you have downloaded the core file? The .rbf one?

[sudden ivy]

agreed

i don't see any *.rbf on the wiki itself.. unless i gone blind

[terse flare]

Which wiki?

[sudden ivy]

yours

[terse flare]

I don't have a wiki

[sudden ivy]

Cdi_MiSTer

[terse flare]

That is a text file on github. That is not a Wiki :-D.
Since this is a work in progress core, only the source code is just there on github. I've never uploaded the synthesized version there. This is why this Discord shall be used for this purpose. Others here already have pointed you to the right direction. The github page contains the source code which can be synthesized using Quartus. Usually, MiSTer cores are part of the update process. Here, this is not yet the case.

Please download the rbf file from #1103404843512631357 message and put that onto your card.

[odd trout]

If only someone linked to that in an earlier message, like 5 hours ago

[terse flare]

It is true - just by reading - that my readme file is not very obvious. It seems I also have made a mistake there. I'm sorry for that.

[sudden ivy]

you did .. but that was about the bios previously

[terse flare]

Some communication issues might have occurred in the past. Let us just look into the future. If you put the rbf onto your card, you can select it on the MiSTer as a core. When you select it and both ROM files are fine, the machine should boot up.

[gray badge]

The wisdom you seek is ||almost ||always in the pins

[terse flare]

Like with MAME, the images can be cue/bin or chd.

[sudden ivy]

went through my cd-i games folder.. all sorted by country and only kept the games.. all .bin/.cue files

[terse flare]

The rbf file is usually not inside the games folder. To be safe just put that to /media/fat/ or /media/fat/_Console

[sudden ivy]

okay ... it's funny because CDi not considered a PC or Console

[terse flare]

Did you just assume its gender? A good thing it has no mic to hear that.

[sudden ivy]

haha

wish i still had my system

[terse flare]

What happened? Did it grow some legs?

[sudden ivy]

got stolen by movers when I was a kid.. along with my gems... 37 game and watch handhelds and majority of my games

[terse flare]

Oh noes. That is sad 😦

[sudden ivy]

all the game and watch system were complete in box

had 40 games with the CDi including all the zelda games

even had all 6 zelda gamers wristwatch colours in their boxes

[terse flare]

I sadly have to go to work now. Or I will be late.🫠 If you still need support, the others here will help you.

[sudden ivy]

appreciate the help... you do awesome work.. and sorry for the BS I caused

@gray badge .. sorry for the confusion and misunderstanding

[sudden ivy]

Got it working

[rugged panther]

Huzzah!

[rough sable]

0

[radiant minnow]

wow, this community is fantastic. Seeing people help each other around the MiSTer and the CDi is nice 🙂

[long osprey]

Zeldor

[strange spoke]

I hadn’t realized that The Apprentice works on the core now. Awesome progress!