#Amiga CD32/CDTV

1429 messages · Page 2 of 2 (latest)

plush latch
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Hmm, come to think of it, the CD32 did not really have much CDTV compatibility did it? Lemmings was one of the few I think that worked on both.

spice coral
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I had a few CDTV compatable discs but I don't remember anything that was CDTV specific if i'm honest
I could easily belive it was a dependency on kickstart 1.3 or something similar

plush latch
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Dune f.ex., I have a Dune file that says its CDTV specific

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But quite a few A500 games needed a 1.3 kickstart and then there was the problem with the 1.3 kickstart not normally having CD support and such. I remember making a special 1.3 kickrom that had IDE support added to it, so it could boot from hard disks. The A500 hard drive came with a drive in the hardware if I remember correctly

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*driver

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I had an Amiga 600 as my first Amiga, and it often needed a Kickstart 1.3 disk to get some games to work

spice coral
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Same! Relokick was handy.
It feels odd when you see stuff with people talking about the A600/A1200 and complaining about the compatibility issues with a few games and they didn't realise how easy it was to solve

plush latch
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I had the AI go over the current Akiko implementation and what WinUAE does, and it has been focused on the MVP, getting Cannon Fodder to boot. So it might not have Chunky to Planner implemented, even though the code might still be there, no CD audio and it does not persist NVRAM. First it wants to support the audio commands, because it should be easy to implement, and it should stop some games from hanging

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And it looked over the current CDDA support and it should be able to work with it with the Akiko. I am looking forward to that one, but it does say "5-10 hours" and... AI estimates are usually pretty bad. Sometimes it does such a plan in one hour and in some cases it can end up taking days.

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There is also a MiSTer Main and Minimig core that has gotten IPF image and floppy support added to it. I hope that can work with these changes as well. Would suck running out of ressources to have all these features in one core

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The developer of those features is still working on those features being integrated into the official MiSTer and core

plush latch
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Seems some of the extra parts of Akiko that was implemented fixed Simon the Sorcerer CD32 🙂 It was possible to play with emulation, but it was more out of sync with voices than it should be. Now Simon does not freeze, I can get into the game and he speaks. But sometimes it takes a bit before he begins speaking

plush latch
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I think it got saving NVRAM to disk to work... but without any "load NVRAM from disk"... also some timing issues and its a bit difficult to know what problems it can cause to have timing issues. Seems one problem is some things take longer than they usually would, like loading missions in Cannon Fodder. So I am hoping it will fix this in the next update while it also tries to make sure saves are loaded from disk when there is one for the game.

plush latch
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Seems the NVRAM part just wont go away, same with detecting that a CD has been mounted or removed. I think CDDA is working now because Defender of the Crown runs with all its audio. Well, I think it might be called DotC 2. Also I think DotC2 is a CDTV / CD32 game, and its probably the only one I have got to run so far of those. Lemmings at least wouldnt run. But yeah, CD audio works a bit. The logic is there, but something is missing to get most CDDA games to run because they stop at the bootscreen. There one where the letters CD are spinning.

Simon the Sorcerer works quite well, much better than when I used emulation to run it from a CD image. So the voices are much more in sync, I think its as in sync as on the real CD32. But one problem is that it might still freeze at some points. So in the intro when the dog barks at the trunk in the attic, one of my tests froze there. But if you skip that before it freezes, then it seems to work and I did not have any issues in the game. But I did not do much in the game either, just looked at stuff, took some items, walked outside the house.

The problem that annoys me the most is that Cannon Fodder loading times vary an annoying amount. It might also play the full intro music before actually displaying any of the credit graphics. Sometimes it just plays music for ½-1 min before displaying the credits and such. Same with loading missions, that might also take up to 5 minutes.

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I had hoped to get the most basic things to work somewhat reliably, and... well, some of the games do load reliably. But I do not want this core to break the official Minimig core with the new MiSTer Main f.ex. Its likely that all of this wont be merged into the official core, especially not when its this experimental, but afterwards there will probably be a lot of work to figure out how to best implement all the features. It has been touching files and adding dependencies in places I do not think Sorg would be happy with f.ex.

plush latch
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Hmm, now the AI claims 60 seconds boot time for Cannon Fodder is how it runs on real hardware... I guess I have an excuse to setup my CD32 🙂

past umbra
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I enjoy the reading here. I hope you could get things sorted out.

plush latch
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Well, bunch of progress today. Cannon Fodder now loads consistently and I also tested that NVRAM does get saved to disk and the save can then be loaded in WinUAE. But loading it back from disk is failing. Hoping to get that to work and I will post it on the forums.

Its not especially compatible yet. A lot of games not loading at all and games freezing at certain points, and... a lot of this will probably have to be rewritten later to fit how things should be done for this core and MiSTer Main.

past umbra
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Perhaps the adresses for rhe saves are not right ?

plush latch
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They seem to match exactly what WinUAE does. I have tried making it a per game save. But it also seems to have a access byte, that it updates whenever the CD32 reads the NVRAM, about every 5 minutes

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So when it fails to load the saved NVRAM, it still ends up updating the access byte of the empty NVRAM causing a "dirty flag" meaning something has changed in the savegame and it gets written to disk.

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So the plan now is to not save things to disk if the only thing that changed since booting was that access byte counter

plush latch
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Because I know Sorg hates when cores write to the SD card regularly and without good reason 🙂

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And the argument is pretty valid, because it can risk corrupting the whole SD card. Which is pretty annoying if its some 128gb+ sized SD card. Well, any size makes it annoying, because you might lose nice MiSTer things stored on it.

past umbra
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How does the other cores, like ps1 handle this with the virtual memory cards?

past umbra
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Iirc the BRAM is like Sram, if you use it for the 2KB Nvram, could that help to minimize the writing to the sdcard?

plush latch
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I have used BRAM for both the Amiga and C64 SuperCPU core now and so far my only experience with developing FPGA cores is these two cores and through AI. My understanding is that BRAM is made in the core, in the FPGA logic. So it takes up space on the core, the benefit should be that it can be connected to other parts of the core and such.

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So on the C64 I tried to use it to reach the 20mhz of the SuperCPU, but I do not think that worked yet, and I have tried starting over with that whole experiment because I had added two different BRAM caches, I think its similar to what the AO486 core has, to get more speed. But it really complicated the testing and comparing the tests with f.ex. the Vice emulator that has both an open source C64 emulator and a SuperCPU emulator.

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I am not sure if the ps1 core uses BRAM... but if it does I suspect its mainly as a small cache to transfer data. You quickly run out of corespace if you make this too big. Its also why I went for the "save NVRAM per game" instead of just one global NVRAM, because people never really liked that NVRAM system of max 2kb. But this way that stops being much of a limitation since it would only be a problem if a single game would use the full storage... and I have kept it at 1kb to avoid using too much core space

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Because I do not know how much I actually have when the IPF + physical floppy drive update gets merged

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I should probably ask Rob Smith to hear what his builds say

plush latch
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Okay, Loading NVRAM from disk does not work, but at least now it does not save NVRAM to disk even if it only changed that access byte, it counts how many times NVRAM has been accessed or something like that. Even if the NVRAM is empty. So that is ignored and also its ignored if the load from disk to NVRAM fails, so for now saving might work and wont get overwritten.
I shared this version on the forums:
https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=10356

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It also has a readme about how to create the 1MB CD32 ROM

past umbra
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Nice work so far.

plush latch
# past umbra Nice work so far.

thanks 🙂 I hope some will find it useful. Apparantly AROS does have some akiko implementation in their open source ROM. So I think I might experiment with a possible open source ROM for CD32 stuff... but it seems unlikely. But it would be so nice being able to include an open source ROM that could get that to work without needing special tinkering

past umbra
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Best would be, if a normal cd32 kickstart rom would work in the final core. That should not be a license problem, as this could be solved with the license holder, iirc they are selling already products that includes all kickstart roms for a legal usage.

plush latch
# past umbra Best would be, if a normal cd32 kickstart rom would work in the final core. That...

that already works, the license problem is that we cannot include that ROM, and its two roms. A main and an extended rom. I have put instructions on how to make the 1MB ROM file that the MiSTer needs for this to run.

But an open source ROM would make it a lot more accessible. Already I think it stops people from using the Amiga core because you need these ROMs. I also think an AROS ROM might already be included with the Minimig core, but its not fully compatible.

past umbra
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Think most users just use update_all and don’t think any further…

gentle escarp
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I think about how running update_all could have an impact on the environment and the people around me. Does it help improve it? I must ponder.

sleek yarrow
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Formal request for Update_All to include Seti At Home scanner.

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The truth is out there

plush latch
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But I made a new release on the forums, I finally got savegames to work. The problems was that MiSTer Main actually has a "do not allow the Minimig core to write to disk" kind of setting in the code.

It might be some legacy stuff from the MiST days or something. I hope it does not cause problems.

plush latch
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Now Fire & Ice is working 🙂

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I was having the AI look into improving the loading times of Cannon Fodder and it had done several things, but for some reason it mentioned that "this should fix Fire & Ice", so I did a test... and it seems it does 🙂

image.png
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It uses CDDA music? The music stopped when I mounted another game.

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Ahh, Lemmings also seems to work now 🙂

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And...

image.png
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Oh, seems Jim Power stopped after the intro... and it seemed to be going so well.

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Robocod is working, although it does have a strange intro that looks like an intro for James Pond 1 or 3, but it runs... strange. After getting past it the game runs fine though and with CDDA

past umbra
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Nice work, congratulations

plush latch
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Thanks 🙂 Yeah, its nice seeing several more games booting and running.

past umbra
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I have to search for my dvd, 20 years ago I got a disc with 100 cd32 Games on it. 😂

plush latch
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Nice 🙂

past umbra
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Only original is a workbench cd and some aminet cds left. All other games are gone long ago with the hardware stuff.

plush latch
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I bought a CD32 a few years ago, never owned one back in the day. It was only an A600 and later an Amiga 500 with a memory expansion.

ruby portal
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Caldor, you're doing the work of gods.

grizzled lily
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gods, like the AI's in Pantheon?

past umbra
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Tbh, for me it doesn’t matter if the ai helps a bit. Important is that someone is doing it now with passion and love to the system. 💪

past umbra
# plush latch I bought a CD32 a few years ago, never owned one back in the day. It was only an...

I was a big Amiga fan, User and tinkerer that time. Had almost all Amiga systems, also some rare hardware like A2410, A2060 and A560 Arcnet Carts, or the sx32. Mid 90‘s I connected the A3000 to a Netware 3.12 server. My big love that time was to play falcon F16 with my best friend on 2 serial connected Amigas. That was a big fun and I have learned much in the early days. I will never forget the vr system based on an A3000 on an Amiga event in cologne. Today we laugh a lot about it, but in the old days it was really incredible 😁

plush latch
plush latch
# past umbra I was a big Amiga fan, User and tinkerer that time. Had almost all Amiga systems...

Have you seen that the game Polygon Nightware? It was (and is I guess) a tribute to Dactyl Nightmare, that Amiga VR game. I am currently working on getting Castle Master to run in VR. Its a bit annoying to get AI to do VR stuff... maybe I should actually go over the code more directly, at least with the VR UI. But its getting along. I finally got the "shoot to open and close drawbridge" to work it seems. Although the rendering is still off, I got it to render more than it should for debugging and now it still renders the bridge in a strange way and the moat seems to have mud instead of water. The shark fins are animated but one of them is swimming out of the moat.

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My plan is to make it a bit more than a remaster. That I can hopefully f.ex. get readable signs to have the text on them without you needing to click them... maybe do something different with the combat, at least as an option. But, to begin with I hope to just make it run as the original game for the most part. How much that would be allowed to be the case when running in VR.

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Then there is EmuVR which uses Libretro emulators that RetroArch is based on, to create a 90ies like gamer room with several different types of TVs, consoles and you can then setup your own posters, music, add your own videos. But a nice concept is that you can connect consoles to different TVs, having them show in different ways on different screens and you then grab controllers to control the VR games, and it also supports games with guns like the NES and so on, but with a VR gun.

I have been experimenting first with makiung that run on the Quest standalone. Some have already done this, one did a great job for the C64 specifically, where you have the C64, its monitor, a floppy drive and a bunch of floppies. But its difficult to get all of the emulators to work these ways. I began attempting to get this to work in WebXR instead, so it could be browser based and it would just work on any VR with WebXR support. But... that makes it even more difficult to get to work. It works a bit when I run it from my PC and its browser, but there were extra issues trying to run it natively on the Quest. But its been over a year since I tried working on that project and AI could probably help me do a lot more with it now. It was also AI I used back then a year ago, but my first attempts several years ago was without AI and working in Unity. There are some open source projects doing something with this concept. I think EmuVR is also Unity based.

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SNES is one of the systems I could get to work in Unity and natively on the Quest as a standalone VR app, where it would run on a screen in a VR environment. But yeah, each system is its own DLL that can be made in several different ways, a bit like MiSTer cores and such. Some of those would need to be rewritten or at least rebuilt to support ARM or to be able to run in a browser and... then I guess it might still end up having to support ARM to run on a VR headset, and it might also have to support the ARM specific to that headset.

past umbra
plush latch
# past umbra No I haven’t. Years ago I tried the first PS4 VR Set in a shop, but I got dizzi....

it has gotten better and you can get resitance to the motion sickness. If you use passthrough and walk around physically in VR it should be a very low chance of causing motion sickness, but it has stopped a lot of people from wanting to even try VR again. I did get motion sickness once myself, but I was lucky that I was at home and could just sleep it off. But it was one of those Google Cardboard headsets, so it only had 3DoF tracking, so it tracks the rotation of the headset, but not the position and does not track the position of the controllers either. PSVR for PS4 could track controllers but many games relied on the gamepad. I think controllers also help when it comes to motion sickness because you can see things you move around physically.

The main problem is when you move around your character in VR without moving yourself, that can cause motion sickness... maybe even for most people.

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But most people in my family stay away from VR. Even when I offered to buy them VR headsets.

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I have heard some people can end up being sick for days from VR

plush latch
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Okay, seems a lot more games are working now. Is it true that some CD32 games actually needed a mouse? Lemmings f.ex. seems I cannot even get into Lemmings without a mouse, and I guess it makes sense with the CDTV having a mouse. I guess the joypad mouse emulation was not something all games did maybe?

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I am testing Beneath a Steel Sky and it seems I cannot select language without a mouse. I am just wondering if this might be something that ought to work for CD32 that I am missing. But I guess the CD32 did have regular ports for joysticks and mouse and then just had its own controllers.

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Chuck Rock 2 is one of the few games that does not seem to work. It has the intro working but... then asks for disk 2 when you click through it. Microcosm seems to fully work now. It seems at a point where more than 50% of the games work, so I should probably set a compatibility sheet in Google Docs

plush latch
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Aww, Universe is not working. I have gotten the Amiga Vision pack and testing the different games there that are in the "not working" folder. That makes it 3 games I have found to not work. The other two are Chuck Rock 2 and James Pond 3.

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Dragon Stone also seems to be stuck at "area loading" or its just very slow

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Deep Core, that one seems a bit too buggy to be called playable. It does get into the game I think, but in game its a mess.

past umbra
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Hmm, not sure about the mouse, to long ago. But the normal lemmings was best (only?) played with mouse.

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Perhaps put a joystick in both ports. I remember some games, that needs a press on the fire button on the other controller to get further. 😁

plush latch
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I will try connecting a mouse. Hmm... I guess I can always ask the AI whether emulating mouse with a controller would be possible as a general thing for the Amiga core. Certainly is best to play Lemmings with a mouse, but it has been released for several consoles. The PS3 also had that Lemmings game. With a good pause and speed control system you can do a lot more and if you wanted to play Lemmings well, then even with a mouse you need to pause the game at the later levels.

past umbra
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The only thing I remember, that there was a software driver to use the cd32 controller as a mouse. Was included on the Workbench cd for cd32.

thorn hound
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Maybe some of these games have an odd way to detect on which hardware they are running (CD32 or A1200/4000)

plush latch
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Maybe. I could also run a test on my CD32 to see if Lemmings wont work with a controller there. But I would have to test it up and such. I have found some other issues to look into, and I am pretty sure connecting a mouse would fix it

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But it is a bit annoying when its supposed to work as a console core where you should be able to play from a sofa or something with a controller and then some games need a mouse. So I think I need to implement a fix for this, at least if one does not already exist

lean vortex
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hi there i have a strange issue that happend on amigavision cores
i tried this morning to paly at the AGS core but there're some INI errors shown up
it says :
ini error vrr min framerate unknown option
vrr max framerate unknown option

i tried to change the VRR settings on my INI file but nothing happends...the thing is that only comes up when i try to use 500HD,600 HD or AGS core.
i'm lost i dunno what to do
please if anyone knows how to solve this

thanks a lot to everyone

past umbra
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In the Amiga CD32, the functions of the 8520 CIAs are integrated into the Akiko chip. Perhaps this could be the cause for some errors?

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I know that you got real 8520 with the sx32 addon.

fiery moat
lean vortex
fiery moat
lean vortex
past umbra
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Not sure where to post, but as it’s for the Amiga core, I post it here.
I would like to do a quick joint order for the mister floppy SMD, complete assembled from PCB way. The goal is to get it faster and a bit cheaper, as from England. Rob gets also 10% from PCB way.
Germany only!
If you have interest, send me a dm.
If this isn’t wanted here, just delete it.

plush latch
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I was a beta tester for that floppy drive, its great 🙂 I hope his mister main changes and core gets merged soon. Also so I can be sure my changes can still fit with it and works with it.

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The games I know to not work as it is now is James Pond 3 and Deep Core. Deep Core runs, and can get into the game, but has graphical errors in the background. Hmm, Universe also has some graphical errors. Chuck Rock 2 I thought still had a problem, but it just needs to run without FastRAM enabled.

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Hmm, maybe Jim Power is not fully working. The intro plays but it seems I do not get into the game.

past umbra
plush latch
# past umbra Curios thing is, there seems not much interest for it. No one have contacted me...

yeah, it does rely on people having floppy disks or wanting to try getting ones, and they are not produced much anymore. Sorgelig has also never been much of a fan of physical media for the MiSTer. But I think some features have been added where other people did all the work and he just had to approve it. Some cartridge support of some kind?

But then, I am not sure how many are interested in the CD32 support either. I have gotten a lot of "thank yous" on the forums though, so I guess that suggests people are interested, or at least like to see work being done to get it added.

past umbra
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CD32 is a great thing. Just play the games as a cd based console.

plush latch
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Yeah, and some people have even made some great CD32 collections where they have ensured they would be CD32 compatible and work with the controller. Running the mouse controller thing for those games as part of their startup. I do not remember where they were from but it was dozens of CDs I think just containing a whole CD collection each with some curated CD32 collections with a menu and everything

past umbra
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Yes, I have one too. I just wanted the FDD as a big amount of disks is the only thing that is still there from my old Amiga collection. In winter is the ideal time to look through it. Stored over 20 years now in one big sea bag…

tiny fox
spice coral
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I've got a Multisystem2 so i'm waiting on that version of the floppy adapter. Hopefully getting really floppy support and it running CD32 stuff properly in oje core get's me as close to my ideal Amiga as i can sensibly get these days (CD32+SX32. SX32 Prices are crazy now)

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I already have the GB/GBA cart adaptor. Looking forward to when the GBA core get's released for that

past umbra
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Yeah, mms2 have no usb style userport build in, so the normal adapter isn’t working there. Perhaps the cd32 core could get other options as the normal minimig core. I would like to see a sx32 option, wich is mostly a 8MB ram expansion and an external fdd port. Also the fmv module would be nice as an option. Perhaps the cdi core vcd addon could be used for this… But let’s increase the compatibility first. 😁

plush latch
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Wouldn't the SX32 features just come from the options that are already part of the core? 256mb fastRam, floppy drive, faster CPU and HDD?

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Well, for the real floppy drive Rob Smith already added that, just needs to be merged.

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Hmm, I guess the CD32 ROM might not support a regular floppy drive.

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I might start on the MPEG module soon. Not that many games left to fix.

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I hope the CDi one can be used

past umbra
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68030 was only on the sx32 pro. But this addon is really rare today.

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But 68030 isn’t ready yet. Someone of the R2 Discord is working on it, but there are still some bugs left.

ruby portal
past umbra
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Cool, my intention is just to get it faster and cheaper from pcbway directly. If we can get 19 more people (Germany only)the assembled SMD PCB would be like 25€. I don’t need a case, I would like to install it in a A1500 mini case.

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But I have also the mms1 and a slice for the crtldock, perhaps it would fit there too.

past umbra
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In my eyes the SMD PCB isn’t ideal for an internal build. Would be as example better to use a normal Molex Port for the power, there is 12v and 5v possible with just one port. But I want to play with it first a bit to see, what can be optimized later. Think Rob wanted more a universal design.

plush latch
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Yeah, the main reason it was possible for me to implement Akiko and the CD32 stuff so fast is because of how well documented it was and how the Minimig core already had gotten Akiko with C2P support added and an ATAPI CD drive support with CDDA. It also already had 1MB ROM support.

But the CDTV ROM is a bit special. Its EXT ROM is 256kb in side I think. But there was a group that made a new CDTV ROM, one that fixed some issues or at least added some features. I am not sure if I ever got around to testing it.

I just worry these specific hardware things would take up a lot of logic space, while they might be easier to just hack in some way. We already have FDD support, not sure how much it matters whether its expernal or not, technically, to the core. But it would also mean that it would not be an attempt at an exact replication of the SX32. But then, if we reuse the MPEG stuff from CDi, that would also not be an exact replication and already the 68020 implementation is something that was reverse engineered and its known to not be exact.

There is still a few bugs with the CD32 I hope can get fixed. Universe, James Pond 3 and Core Deep Core are the last games I know to have issues and they are all graphical issues. Hmm. Oh wait, Jim Power also. It goes through the intro and then a black screen.

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But yeah, 68030 is probably not something I could do with AI. It has come far, but 68030 would be more... novel. There is just not to go on with existing documentation and such, which would make the AI just go trial and error and that is just really really slow. It tests one thing, then another thing... then keeps going. Its what is going on with my attempt at SuperCPU support for the C64 core, I have gotten the CPU itself to work with regular C64 stuff, so it seems to have no regressions, but it seems like a painfully slow process to get the Doom and Wolfenstein ports to run.

past umbra
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The cd32 compatibility to the cdtv wasn’t really good. There is a small menu with some settings to increase compatibility a bit. But tbh, cdtv got not many game titles compared to the cd32.

past umbra
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With the cd1200 commodore would have the same situation, as the A1200 was first delivered with kickstart 3.0, but CD32 with kickstart 3.1.

plush latch
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Yeah, at one point I thought CD32 was fully CDTV compatible... but later I realized it was quite few games from CDTV that would work on the CD32. Less than 10 maybe?

I think 3 of them were Sim City, Lemmings and Defender of the Crown. But I thought maybe they had actually put a 68000 in the CD32 that it would use for compatibility, which seemed extreme... and it probably would be. But there was a new CDTV ROM made a few years ago... a 3.5 ROM or something like that.

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Not sure how they got that to work, but apparantly it has some improvements

past umbra
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Yeah, bad thing is only the crazy version numbers. 2.7 isn’t the newest, it’s 2.35. Same with WB and kickstart roms now. Would be time, that this situation come to an end.

plush latch
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Yeah, problem is the whole fracturing of everything Commodore I think.

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Or maybe in this case its that 2.7 came first because you would not get a 2.71 and such, so 2.11. I think some versioning numbers still work like this. Its also why some people got AI to make mistakes like saying 2.2 was higher than 2.11 or something like that. Some go the way of having 2.7.1 for having subversions and would then still consider 2.71 to then be newer than 2.35 because its not 2.3.5. I suspect there are names for these different types of versioning numberings.

plush latch
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But I am hoping I can find a way to reuse several things already in the Minimig core to get all the CDTV features, but I suspect that wont work. Because its just connected too differently, that the CDTV ROMs expect the hardware to be in those exact ways. Well, at least it would expect to be able to call the hardware in the same ways.

Currently the focus is on the few games that are still not working. I think the solution for one of the 3 games, Jim Power maybe, was to disable that CPU cache the 68020 has implemented.

spice coral
spice coral
plush latch
# spice coral Yeah it did. It had a standard A1200 3.1 kickstart on it but then just all the C...

yeah, and... I think that might be possible. I think it was actually possible to get floppy drives to work with the AO486 core by making an image file that essentially was a symlink to the floppy drive. I do not think I ever tried it though. But it would be a lot better with regular hardware support. I think I will try to see if I can get Perplexity to research what the options would be for connecting a CD drive. Should be possible for the AO486 core, but for the Amiga core I think it would be problematic because of having to translate from Akiko to that CD drive. So I suspect it would need a special extra layer in the core and MiSTer Main maybe.

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But... another problem is I am not sure all CD drives can read CD32 and CDTV discs properly. At least copying them often needs a drive that can write at 4x speed or even 1x speed.

spice coral
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I found USB CD drives were honestly never great quality and had many such issues but since USB DVD drives became more of a think i've not had any issues. I wasn't sure if there would be bandwidth or latency issues getting the data over the linux-fpga bridge fast enough or it would be an issue just getting low level enough disk access for CD audio or anything

plush latch
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Yeah, I had one that seemed good because it was essentially a drive that was a 5.25" container with a full CD drive, with a CD burner and such... but now I lack a special cable for it. So if I have to burn CDs at a slow speed I try to get one of my old PCs up and running. I suspect none of them can boot anymore though

sinful hearth
#

I can't wait for the day someone proudly proclaims "I have my MiSTer floppy drive adapter on order. I can't wait to use my Gotek with it".

ruby portal
#

Already done mate. It was my comment on Rob's YouTube channel 😂

sinful hearth
#

It's like BitD when someone would get virtual memory for the first time on their Mac and brag on Usenet newsgroups "Now I can have a really huge RAM disk".

plush latch
#

I had not even considered that being possible 😄 I have a few Gotek drives, sometimes I just had trouble getting them to work.

ruby portal
#

The only use case I can see is if all your floppies are in HFEv3, but then you're still only a single conversion process away from not needing it... Then there's For Science! I guess.

plush latch
#

Oh right, it has that strange format. It is nice that Gotek supports flux images, but it is pretty annoying that they have to be that specific format.

past umbra
# ruby portal The only use case I can see is if all your floppies are in HFEv3, but then you'r...

Iirc those formats was choosen to be able to handle the tricks of the copy protection. Not sure, if Adf have catched up. But I have an Adf software on my mister, that could generate virtual FDD too. I have Test it with xcopy. They just work like real floppy drives. In combination with the mister floppy drive I would be able to copy in both ways. That is what I wanted to do with my big stock of disks wich I have saved over the last decades 😁

ruby portal
#

Rob mentioned with his MiSTer floppy that he updated the core to support IPF and SCP too. I've not done much with SCP but I imagine those two cover everything Amiga!

plush latch
#

I think the support for SCP is that he also made software that can convert IPF to SCP.

#

I am pretty sure the core itself only accepts IPF, but I have not tried it yet. But I have an extended weekend this weekend and maybe I will get around to it there. I have converted a bunch of my floppies to SCP and then some of those into IPF.

#

I also bought several Amiga games that I had plans to begin dumping to SCP or some other FLUX format to preserve them. Although I suspect they already have been dumped by others, its not especially rare games I think.

#

Rob Smith responded, he has his core and such on his git, so I should be able to make a build where his stuff and my stuff is all combined... since I suspect it will be a while before stuff is merged. Mainly based on the fact that it has not happened yet, not sure what might be stopping it.

Main problem with me doing that, is that I would be assuming that what he has on his git would be the same thing as what would end up on official repos, and I guess there is a chance it would be adjusted to requirements or something. But its better than nothing to go by.

past umbra
#

Cool. I wait for my order till to the end of this weekend. Seems that I order only for my personal usage 😂

plush latch
#

I was on his Patreon and helped beta test a bit. I thought the beta thing I got would not work for the release, but apparantly it should

spice coral
#

I haven't had chance to try you realise yet but I did spot that it involved an updated main MiSTer file.
Is that going to cause problems with any sort of merge?
I don't think i've seen any cores changing that before. What was needed in there?

past umbra
spice coral
#

Ah. So it shouldn't actually be needed?

past umbra
#

I have done this with any beta cores i wanted to test

past umbra
# spice coral Ah. So it shouldn't actually be needed?

No, that doesn't mean that. But instead of switching to a unstable main, just tell mister to use this unstable main only for that core. Anything else will use the normal stable main. This way make it possible to assing different mains to different cores, without any typing or changing later.

spice coral
#

Oh, i see what you mean

past umbra
#

Can look for the syntax, if you want

spice coral
#

That would be good if you can

past umbra
#

One Moment please

#

you can specify a core to use an alternate MiSTer main file. the following example would cause the CD-i core to use MiSTer_CDi instead of MiSTer as its main file:
[CD-i]
main=MiSTer_CDi

#

You have to rename the the mistermain file like above the example.

#

Iirc, the ini was case sensetive, watch out for this

plush latch
#

Really? That would be awesome, I need to try that later

past umbra
spice coral
#

So

[Minimig]
main=MiSTerCD32
If i've called the main file MiSTerCD32?

spice coral
#

Tried it and worked! (for a degree of worked)

#

I didn't have my iso's handy.
Looks like Liberation doesn't boot and get stuck at the CD32 screen
More suprisingly the Assassin's CDs all just get stuck at a black screen like they're stuck trying to load
But I did manage to boot a Workbench CD and also confirmed you can boot a Workbench floppy image and see the CD on the desktop which is a good sign
Not a problem with these changes but the core in general: It's annoying there is no option to just eject the CD, only change it to another CD!
It didn't seam to like me changing discs on the Workbench screen and just seamed to keep showing the old CD. Not sure if it needs a reboot to spot the CD change right now or it's just something missing triggering Workbench to realise it's changed#

past umbra
#

Yes, and the core is still called Minimig

plush latch
#

It is the newest one

past umbra
#

I will try it over the weekend too

plush latch
#

It should work with mounting CDs, I have a NOCD mgl that boots to just have the CD32 boot screen and then I can mount a CD and it loads the game. The Assassins CD should work, it does for me at least.

#

There does seem to be some issues where maybe it helps to reset the MiSTer and reload everything and sometimes after loading an MGL with Minimig settings and such it might help to reset and load it again to avoid long loading times. But it comes and goes, I find it difficult to replicate the problems consistently and mostly it seems to work quite well.

spice coral
#

I did not have that version, the last one I saw was CD32-native-compat.zip
I have copied the new version to my memory card and will try it later

spice coral
#

Tested and still the same issues.
I did get it to boot from floppy with the Assassins2 CD in and tried to run that from the icon and it it looked like it was trying but just didn't load so I'm thinking that is one of those things where it's just being super slow to load or something is blocking it

plush latch
#

Whjy boot from floppy?

#

Just to test?

spice coral
#

Just because it wasn't managing to get further with CD so I was interseting if the CD would show correctly if booted from floppy and a lot of CDs were made so you could launch them from Workbench for the non-CD32 users
I did actually do this on my CD32 back in the day occasionally

#

I mean, they CD appears on the desktop so that's still a very good sign VS the offical core

plush latch
#

I am pretty sure the Assassins CD worked for me with that core and MiSTer Main.

plush latch
#

I will try to make a video today about using the CD32 core. Settings I use, show how games are loading, maybe some attempts at causing the issues the core can have.

#

I got the C64 SuperCPU project I have been working on for... over a month now I think, to finally boot Doom. It was ported to the SuperCPU. But this project has been competing a bit with the CD32 project about having access to test on the MiSTer. I do have two MiSTers but the other one is a... some kind of arcade one, so it does not have the exact same settings. But the MiSTer has 4x speed options for the C64 core and the SuperCPU was originally 20mhz, so it would need a 20x boost. I am thinking of beginning to test on the C64 Ultimate instead because it has a 50x turbo mode I think it is and then I can do all the SuperCPU tests on it and it would free up the MiSTer for CD32 tests

#

But these last few issues have been difficult to do much about. I will have to figure out how much might have changed in my version since the last release, the one I shared above, but I do not think much changed since that one. It had some major compatibility and loading speed fixes.

plush latch
#

Ahh, the C64 Ultimate is not fully open source, so I cannot just port the SuperCPU stuff to it.

plush latch
#

I found that the Assassins CD is one of the CDs where fastRAM needs to be disabled to run, otherwise it just stays on a black screen.

plush latch
#

I also uploaded a video of me running some CD32 games on the MiSTer to show what works and... sometimes how to get around the issues it still has

#

For some reason I could not get Chuck Rock 2 to run properly. I have had it working, not sure why it can give such issues still

#

I shared the video in the mister forum thread

plush latch
#

The AI is looking into why Chuck Rock 2 is so unstable and it has found some CD commands that WinUAE uses that have not been implemented the same way. I hope this makes more games more stable.

plush latch
#

AI found the problem it seems. It ran 5 tests where Chuck Rock 2 ran every time. I will run some tests later and see if I can cause it to run into black screens or long loading times still. I am pretty sure it did not solve all the issues, but it might begin to be difficult to figure out ways of reproducing the problems consistently.

spice coral
#

Okay, here is an interesting one for you.
Boot from the Workbench floppy and a CD in the drive and 0 fast ram and it will boot and the CD will be there and be accessible (at least most of the time, sometimes it seams to get stuck opening it)
Boot from the Workbench floppy and a CD in the drive and 2M/4M/8M/256M fast ram and it will still boot but the CD will never show up
Boot from the Workbench floppy and a CD in the drive and 284M fast ram and it will still boot, the CD will show up and work (i don't know if still occasionally get's stuck)

spice coral
#

ooooo

#

Liberation boots!

#

It did take a while at the CD32 screen but got there eventually

#

Still just getting black screen on the Assassin CDs but i've at least got the 2nd one working by booting from floppy

plush latch
#

2, 4 and 8MB of FastRAM is Z2 FastRAM and it is not supported by the CD32 or something. Not exactly sure why, but it causes issues with booting CDs. I do not think any CD32 game will boot with one of those RAM settings enabled.

plush latch
#

https://dionysus.dk/files/mister/CD32-native-cmdparity.zip
Newest release - Seems to fix Chuck Rock 2 so that it now loads consistently, it makes Sim City load a lot faster and... well, probably a lot of other things load more consistently and / or faster as well. One of the commands that works better now was a CD pause command that apparantly sometimes did not get released or unchecked at some points where it ought to have been.

spice coral
#

Reading the readme and the Turbo option is a great addition that really should have already been there

spice coral
#

I really should add some more stuff to test with but also I didn't have much time right now
Oddly I have found it will not boot from floppy without 384MB of fastram being enabled and even then it seams less reliable now
When I did manage to load workbench menu for Assassins CD2 seamed to get stuck so not sure what could have changed here.

#

If I can make 1 request, please add version number so it's easier to keep track of which version is earlier/later

plush latch
#

The turbo option is not great... it might even just be the regular 68000 speed, at least its slower than 020 should be, so less than 14mhz. It tries to make it 28mhz if fastRAM is enabled, but according to SysInfo 4.4 it seems to just be the full turbo speed of the MiSTer Minimig 020. So its 10x the A1200 speed... according to SysInfo and others have argued that its not a good benchmark.

#

I can try to add a version number, but its a bit problematic since its new MiSTer Main and RBF.

spice coral
#

Even if it's just a number in the file name to keep track of which version is earlier or later then the others

spice coral
#

I like the MiSTer as a platform because it's very fast to go from power off to playing a game and the simplicy of the UI is great and if you look at the Minimig core is great for those things too but it is the one core where it really does need more work in a bunch of area like the ones we've touched on in here with CPU speed control, just being able to eject CDs, separate Z2 and Z3 memory controls
It sounds like the CPU is the full fat 68020 if it's got Z3 memory support but that's a bit of a choice to not have a 68EC202 or just a 24bit addressing option for compatibility.

plush latch
#

I have been looking into the "stock A1200 speed" and it seems to be somewhat possible, at least to get pretty close. It needs I-Cache and D-Cache to be turned off and then no fast RAM enabled. That should make it run pretty much at the original 14mhz A1200 speed. According to SysInfo at least. Not sure how to otherwise test it.

#

I found that I could reach stock A1200 speed with D-Cache enabled, No FastRAM, the original Minimig settings ( so my no turbo disabled) and then disabling I-Cache option in SysInfo. So I have tried making an option for I-Cache in the OSD. Its still running the build

#

This might help with compatibility in some games. I tried the Bubble Bobble Trilogy and it seems to be affected by having turbo mode or not. At least in the Bubble Bobble game, I did not test in Rainbow Islands.

plush latch
#

Apparantly that Bubble Bobble Trilogy is some fan made collection and not the actual Bubble Bobble Trilogy that was released for PC and such and that Bubble Bobble game just has strange timing issues. But... I think I managed to add a "stock A1200 speed" setting. At least two benchmark tools measured to have A1200 speed.

#

But not sure what to test it with then. For now I guess I have to trust the benchmark tools

plush latch
#

Dune CDTV seems to run, playable and everything. Pretty sure the controls are not yet working though and I do not think you can actually select a CD, since its not using IDE. I am not sure how to best get around this. I think the CDTV would need a SCSI CD option and having the one where you select IDE ON/OFF to maybe be an option that supports OFF/IDE/SCSI. I also added an option for ext.ROM so people wont need to combine two ROM files with console commands and such. But notice that CDTV: ON option. Seems you can select other chipsets and still enable CDTV, like ECS. Was the CDTV really OCS? I thought it was ECS but never looked into it. It might also just be that CDTV: ON really acts as its own chipset, seems I can even pick the A1000 OCS and it still boots Dune. But difficult to test with the UI not supporting CDTV CD options yet, so I think currently an MGL would have to be made for each game. But I do not think that is difficult to fix.

image.png image.png
spice coral
#

I was like 95% sure the CDTV was OCS because it's basically an upgraded A500 but..........
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDTV
The wiki page claims there was a ECS version as well as the OCS version

plush latch
#

Now that the core has IDE ATAPI CD drive support I guess it would be problematic to remove that and replace it with CD32 Akiko only, but I am not sure how to support both. Might need to be an option somewhere. Would also be nice if the full Amiga Vision CD32 pack would still work with its emulator options as it is now. I am having to AI look into whether ATAPI is actually still supported or if it got replaced.

#

and I am thinking it should not be replaced. I guess I could just see how my version runs if I try to set it to use the Amiga Vision CD32 pack. If they still work I guess there might not be much reason to worry about the ATAPI CD stuff.

spice coral
#

My thought was, how does WinUAE/Amiberry ect deal with it
Just looking at Amiberry there is a seperate CD32 CD and CDTV CD option (but only one) so i'm thinking you might need to do similar

#

Amiberry goes with ECS but with OCS Denise, which I think was mentioned in the wiki page too

#

Depending how far you want to go with it, it might actually be worth having a chipset menu with all these diferent options in it but then just having a Quickstart model select as a starting point to keep it as easy to get started as possible

plush latch
#

The AI figured it would be enough to just have this one set of options, so there is OFF, IDE and CDTV where IDE should cover both ATAPI and CD32. Needs to be tested though but I am making a new release now. I tried... 3 or 4 CDTV games, they all seem to run without any problems I could see. Defender of the Crown, Lemmings, Dune CDTV and an AmigaJay CDTV collection. I tried testing the CD32 a bit with dual ROM setup and it seems to work as intended as well making people not have to merge ROM files.

#

On the forums I was told that audio CDs would not play in the CD32 and that it did not see the drive as CD0, so those things I will have to look into. I will make a public git with the git stuff on them. Then I will try to figure out if its ready to become pull request on the official mister main and Minimig gits. I have not yet looked into what changes have actually been made in MiSTer Main and how the code looks. Still not even sure how to figure out whether the FPGA code is a mess or not. Hopefully someone with some experience can give it a lookover to check if it has major issues or not and if it does, I suspect it wont be that big a problem to get the AI to refactor it a bit.

frigid ember
plush latch
#

I gave the core a different name so that it can be loaded with a custom MiSTer Main, there is a file structure for it in the zip file

#

So you can test this without having to replace your MiSTer Main

#

It has the option for both main and ext ROMs, which has worked so far. The two ROMs are handled by MiSTer Main, so to the core it ends up looking like a combined ROM.

#

On the forums someone mentioned there was something strange about how the core uses CD0, I have not looked into it. I suspect you would have to load workbench with the CD32 ROMs and then see what drives are seen

frigid ember
plush latch
#

NP 🙂 I am hoping for more people to test that it works. There might still be bugs hiding. I have not really done especially extensive testing yet.

frigid ember
#

Finally i can see CD32 in FPGA working!!! My actual configuration is following:
Your exp core 24 may 2026
2 512KB CD32 rom files (base + ext)
core configuration:
I/O controller: IDE (not tested yet CDTV programs and games ATM)
Pri. Master: Removable/CD
all drives: disabled:
Floppy drives: 1 (but i would like to put 0 like original CD32 console)
System:
Cpu 68020
D-Cache: OFF (for an original CD32 configuration)
CPU Speed : 14Mhz (same reason, i love this function)
Chipset: AGA
ChipRAM: 2MB
FastRAM: none
SlotRAM: none
Joystick: CD32
ROM: 512 KB CD32 kickstart base rom file
Ext.ROM: : 512 KB CD32 kickstart ext rom file
TV: PAL (live in Italy and use a CRT TV on main Mister)
Video Area: Blank
Pixel Clock: Adaptive
Stereo Mix: 0%
Model: A1200
Paula Output: PWM
Saved as default configuration

If needed for newest games you can add Fastram 384MB (necessary for some very recent Black sheep games like Tale of Evil)

plush latch
#

Yeah, it does not support disabling all floppy drives. I am considering making a console core where its really the same core but with most options stripped away and then maybe some default CDTV and CD32 layouts that you can switch between. So no floppy, only one CD drive, I guess the DCACHE option is needed and some fastRAM options

frigid ember
#

Banshee a 1994 game (ISO) don't work if FastRAM is 8MB or less but it works if 256Mb or 384MB...
I feel that it's weird

plush latch
#

Yeah, I might have fixed that

#

But Z2 RAM does not work in the latest release on the forums

frigid ember
#

I won't try CDTV games ATM, i dreamed of CD32 for 10+ yeats

plush latch
#

So it has to be 0, 256 or the 384MB option

frigid ember
#

years*

#

I think that ATM i will keep 384MB for all games

plush latch
#

I did not know there were CD32 games that needed fastRAM, at least not that they needed 384MB fastRAM

#

There is at least one or two games where you need to disable fastRAM

frigid ember
#

Like default configuration but i would like to can use a Vanilla CD32 core (only 2 mb ChipRAM) for oldest games

plush latch
#

I do not remember which ones though

#

and I think its only a single game I have come across that needs DCACHE to be disabled

frigid ember
#

When you will release another updated WIP core, please tell me that i will try it ASAP!

frigid ember
#

Liquid Kids

#

Liquid Kids has broken graphics with D-Cache ON and CPU Speed on full too

plush latch
#

I think DCACHE is supposed to be something you can disable in software, which might be a flaw in the core. I noticed that in SysInfo you can control ICACHE and it can make a huge difference in the tests... but DCACHE cannot be controlled in SysInfo even though there is a button for it. Maybe its a 030 thing because I now have a build that makes it think the CPU is an 030 one and then SysInfo allows the D-Cache to be enabled or disabled, but it still makes no difference

frigid ember
#

I will keep D-Cache on OFF and CPU Speed on 14(,28) Mhz as default settings

#

Is possible on core to write 14,28 Mhz instead of 14?

#

On OSD i mean

plush latch
#

Its not that exact anyway though. Its a bit too fast even. It might be more like 14,5

frigid ember
#

Is possible to take 7,14 exact clock of 68000 and double it simply?

plush latch
#

And DCache being off makes the CPU pretty slow.

#

No, it does not seem to be that simple. I got the AI to look into it, problem is its not a cycle exact 020, and with WinUAE it does the speed limits on an instruction level it seems

#

The thing I set into it is a bit different, but similar. Making some of the instructions slower to even out timings... or something. But the benchmarks in two different benchmark apps seem to work pretty well

frigid ember
#

However pls take me as beta tester, i will love it to do for you (and for me!!)

plush latch
#

Sure 🙂

#

But currently I only have builds with known problems, none that are clean enough to need testing. That is why I am making releases

plush latch
#

I hope to have something ready for later today maybe. I thought I had a fix for the Z2 RAM options so they could work, but... that is proving to be troublesome

frigid ember
#

It's very strange this thing... Why it can't work with only 2 MB ChipRam? Floppy drive eat a little amount of RAM, maybe too much for this thing?

plush latch
spice coral
spice coral
#

Still hoping all this work end up getting merged into the main core too. It really needs it

plush latch
#

Oh yeah, there are CD32 games and maybe CDTV as well that wants to save to floppy

spice coral
#

Liberation is the one i keep thinking of, probebly because the's what I spent most time on

plush latch
#

I guess a floppy drive could just be added below the CD drive, since they are mainly CD devices

#

On the console version of the Amiga core

spice coral
#

Yeah, that would be ideal

spice coral
#

Oddly this newest version seams to have issues where it doesn't respond in the menu once the core has booted

plush latch
#

You mean it wont open the menu?

#

I have had some builds where the menu wont open before the boot ROM has booted or something

spice coral
#

It's not responding the fastest at that either but generally navigating in the menu is worse

plush latch
#

Strange. I am not sure I have noticed that, but I am using the MiSTer through a USB dongle streaming thing and I might have also just not noticed. I expect things to be slow and respond slowly. But the menu is usually quite responsive

#

That Z2 bug is pretty annoying. Seems the problem is at least not that the Z2 fastRAM is in a memory space on the DDR3 RAM that is used by CD32 or Akiko stuff. So it seems it must be either a problem in the CPU or the CPU cache with how Akiko and Z2 RAM is used. It should be narrowed down to two possible causes now, that the AI can see as probably, and I am trying to get it to test both at once.

spice coral
#

A few reboots later and the menu seams fine now

plush latch
#

The AI is narrowing in no the Z2 problem it seems. Pretty annoying how long it has taken to fix... and its not even fixed yet. But it seems the writes to the Z2 RAM does not reach the DDR3 RAM that acts as the fastRAM,

plush latch
#

Finally 🙂 AI said:
"Decisive: the peek's dma_cs/dma_we are wired to dma_ddr_cs_w/dma_ddr_we_w — which is chipdma_arb's registered output (ddr_out_cs/ddr_out_we), the same net that feeds ddram_ctrl. So the peek snoops upstream of ddram_ctrl. If it captured only 19 of 20 write transactions, then chipdma_arb only
issued 19 — the dropped byte happened in the arbiter, not in ddram_ctrl's re-arm logic. That rules out the handoff's leading suspect and confirms Codex's atomicity finding.

The mechanism is now coherent: the stale akiko_dma_req_q (delayed one cycle) can fire arm_now on the falling edge of akiko_dma_req while live_baddr reflects an idle/wrong bus → that byte gets mis-routed (decoded to chip instead of Z2) or dropped → peek misses it → BIOS reads back stale Z2 →
checksum fail. This explains why chip RAM (0x03) boots but Z2 (0x33) drops exactly one byte."

So it should have verified the specific cause of the problem.

#

Somehow the SuperCPU implementation was working without the original bios. I think it reverse engineered the parts needed for Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. That was probably a lot of time wasted when it should be possible to just use the original bios instead. Might also explain part of why SuperCPU has taken so long to implement despite having an open source emulator to test against and learn from.

#

But.. that is for the C64 core 🙂

frigid ember
spice coral
#

It did need an add on but there was a few of them. For people who got a CD32 at the time it was a fairly common upgrade.............just that not many people did get a CD32 at the time🤣

frigid ember
spice coral
#

Like Amiga had bigger long term failings so there was no magic fix but if their had been a floppy port on the CD32 itself it would have been a far more enticing prospect for what was basically a A1200 with a CDRom built in

plush latch
#

True... the CD32 having had easier access to floppy games would have helped a lot

frigid ember
#

@plush latch Which IA are you using? I would like to try Claude for helping me to add little functions like Snac joystick support con little 8 bit C= computers for example

#

Even now, I wonder why there was no SNAC support for DB9 joysticks on Commodore cores...

spice coral
past umbra
#

I would like to see a purely CD32 core with the basic specs. There wasn’t any other expansions for the cd32 released, only the mpeg1 module. There was a prototype 030 card, but never released. As a stand-alone console core, we won’t need any more as a basic cd32 game system. For anything else the minimig core is fine. That’s my thinking about it.

frigid ember
past umbra
#

In the old days I had a CD32 with an sx32, my few games on cds worked, but I had not much of them.

past umbra
frigid ember
past umbra
#

I still remember the discussions in 1993 why there wasn’t a bit of fastram, the system would be much faster with its 020 cpu. But it wasn’t, and all CD32 games are tested against this basic specs.

frigid ember
past umbra
frigid ember
past umbra
#

The A3000 was delivered with 1MB Chip and 1MB Fastram from factory. The speed was better as with 2 MB chip ram alone.

frigid ember
spice coral
frigid ember
#

Never used a CD on Amiga 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

past umbra
#

I played only a few titles like banshee, pinball, etc.

past umbra
#

Still here 😂

IMG_1906.png
#

This unit is double speed, there was a quad speed variant, but double not only the speed, the price too.

spice coral
plush latch
# frigid ember <@273689092049338368> Which IA are you using? I would like to try Claude for hel...

I am mainly using Claude, but I have been using subscriptions for several. I had Github Copilot but they are changing it to be API costs next month and I already have Abacus AI which is cheaper and has access to a lot more models, tools and so on. Then I have Perplexity, ChatGPT Plus and Claude I have begun to use at Max, I used to be on the regular Pro one. Which is enough for most things. Claude also has Cowork now, which is... on top of Claude Code I think or got some Claude Code features. Claude Code is a CLI tool which some people find intimidating.

But its much easier to automate, just ask it to do things and it will do them, run it in a folder and have it f.ex. do git clone on some repos and you can ask it to find relevant tools to f.ex. build cores, and it can do a lot more than coding stuff. I have had it help do Linux stuff like change settings and such, or optimize games on Windows, to make them run better in VR because I had some stuttering, something I would usually try to fix myself but I had not had much luck and it actually worked.

plush latch
spice coral
#

You could plug a standard Amiga keyboard into it but yeah it would have been abit limited without that too
And you did need to supply your own mouse too

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Yeah, Amiga liked to do stuff to cut costs but still end up not doing a very good job with it

frigid ember
plush latch
plush latch
spice coral
plush latch
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I do not remember if my CD32 has a floppy expansion, I do not think so, because its still only the SX32 that adds floppy support is it not?

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I got one of those... 030 expansions I think it was

spice coral
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I remember at the time the CD32+SX32+keyboard basically ended up at the same price as an A1200 and an external CD drive but just that the A1200 way made having a hard drive mandatory too and I never really felt like i needed a hard drive with stuff on CD anyway
For what i used anyway

spice coral
plush latch
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Back then I only had the A600 and then an A500 because the A600 died. So it was only... hmm, within the last 10 years I guess that I got an A1200 and then later a CD32 and a CDTV. Got several expansion cards for that A1200 as well. But... the MiSTer is just so much more accessible

spice coral
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WinUAE was my main Amiga for years and I can't even complain because it's been pretty much spot on for decades now

plush latch
# spice coral Yeah, it was on the SX32 but it really should have been on the base machine. The...

its hard to say when it comes to hardware production. It might have made the process more expensive and it could also become a bottleneck for the supply chain. I remember Meta designed that Quest 1 VR headset and they were pretty new when it came to making hardware... and so was Oculus of course with their first Oculus headset, and both those devices ended up having serious supply chain problems. Hmm... it might have mainly been the Quest 1, there were parts that just could not be delivered after just a year or two.

plush latch
spice coral
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I love the MiSTer. My MultiSystem2 is my main way to run stuff out of PCs and I love how easy it is to run most systems stuff on there
The Amiga core has is a bit of a let down to me but I think a good part of that is just how great WinUAE (and now Amiberry too) the MinimigAGA core has too many of these gaps like what we've been talking about in here that i've just not had to deal with in so long

plush latch
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And its so clunky with the real hardware, even with Vampire cards and the PiStorm to use HDDs on them because they do not use HDFs, you have to actually create a full partition to boot from and then only one is active in it at a time.

We could create a MiSTer based motherboard for the Amiga as it is now, with floppy support and everything 🙂 Might even work with an external CD drive as well. Then a... I do not remember the name. IComp made a USB adapter that makes it possible to connet an A1200 keyboard and db9 joysticks or mice, although that one is mainly designed for a C64 case I guess. Still, it could get pretty close.

frigid ember
plush latch
spice coral
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I like the idea of something FPGA based but in an A600 case but lack of floppy support on all of these things means I know there isn't a point cos i'm never going to be happy
I'm more accepting of the actual MiSTer/Multisystem2 because it's doing other things too but it didn't hurt knowing that floppy support was comming later

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Also GB(C)/GBA cart support doesn't hurt😄

plush latch
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But there is floppy supprt 🙂

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But yeah, without that it would not make much sense

spice coral
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I mean on other projects like the Vampire

plush latch
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Ahh, right. Yeah. That was my problem with those as well

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I do like their work on the Vampire expansion cards, they work quite well... but I do wish they would just make it open source.

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New release is getting ready 🙂

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Unfortunately the D-Cache change did not fix games like Universe so they would run with D-Cache turned on. But I have not tested whether it can be toggled on in software like SysInfo

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So... I guess this release might not really add much, other than Z2 now working

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But would still be nice to have it tested. I have tried to make a better release structure. So it has some folders for the MGLs, but they expect the games to be in specific folders as well. Not sure if that is explained in the readme

left birch
plush latch
left birch
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Testing first time MinimigCD, Darkseed show the title screen and go black screen with music ongoing using bin/cue

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Fire & Ice also works on this compilation but not banshee

20260528_205052-screen.png
past umbra
plush latch
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But also the first Replay was not designed to even be put into an Amiga casing. Do they have plans to do so with the Replay 2?

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So my Claude Code asked Codex and came up with this about the D-Cache issues:
"Codex landed a sharper, different mechanism than my dropped-pulse theory — and it actually reconciles with your "long-standing core bug, not Akiko" framing better than codex itself realized. Two distinct findings:

  1. Generic core bug (codex point b) — inside the shared cpu_cache_new.v, the snoop FSM latches only the index bits (sdr_sm_adr <= snoop_adr[10:1] at :498) but then does the tag comparison and byte-enables using the live snoop_adr/snoop_bs two cycles later in the SNOOP state. So it only works if the writer holds every snoop
    signal perfectly stable for 3 cycles. This is in the shared cache module → affects the chip path too → matches "the core has had this for a long time."
  2. DDR-path race (codex point e) — ddram_ctrl.v fires the snoop when the bridge request is latched (:228-240), but the DDR write doesn't commit until later (:300-305); a CPU fill in flight can grab old DDR data and write it into the cache after the snoop is spent → line stale forever. This one is fork/fast-RAM specific.

Let me verify codex's core claim by reading the actual snoop tag-match/write addressing before committing to a fix."

past umbra
plush latch
past umbra
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Iirc Mike is waiting for a second offer to build the boards. One of the 2 companies will get the order. With a bit luck tomorrow 🍀

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There is also a 68030 with fpu in the pipeline

PXL_20260524_034127590.jpg
plush latch
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A PCIE that an FPGA could use? Someone has been working on getting PCI to work on the MiSTer, but I do not remember what it ended with.

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But that would seem useful 🙂

past umbra
# plush latch But that would seem useful 🙂

Yes, the r2 design is a beast. Pcie lans from fpga chip to the daughterboards (CM Module), to the pcie slot, not sure for the 060 Daughterboard, it’s a much simpler design as the r1 was. No Nic, no usb. But with a bit of extra sdram on board for better speed with the real 060.

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The pci slot for mister was from Ash, iirc. Problem was the needed pins for it. He wanted it for a voodoo card I assume. The pcie on r2 could be used in some cool ways. A real PC Card with a x86 soc (Vortex86) would be cool.

plush latch
# past umbra There is also a 68030 with fpu in the pipeline

yes, I tried merging it into a branch with my changes and the floppy branch changes as well. Might be stuff there that could help with D-Cache, but currently I am having the AI dive into the D-Cache on the main branch that does not have changes to the 020 and such... unless it was relevant for the CD32/CDTV changes and it did have to do something to fix the Z2 problem it had, but that was probably more of an Akiko problem than a problem with the 020 or the Z2 implementation

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Anyone know of a list of MiSTer games that needs D-Cache to be disabled? I remember seeing a list made for the Amiga Vision CD32 pack that had some nice notes about what games needed fastRAM and other things like that. Currently its Universe that is the game used for testing, but I am thinking there might be more than one issue to deal with.

tame flume
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@plush latch Have you got a link to the latest CD32 test core? I have a homebrew game I'd like to test

plush latch
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And if you then add the snippet to your ini it should load the custom MiSTer Main with the core. I called it MinimigCD instead of Minimig to avoid conflicts with the official releases

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You can check the "about" in the mister menu once the core is loaded to see if it changes the MiSTer Main correctly based on the release date. I made this release yesterday

tame flume
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Awesome, will check it later. I did test an earlier release and found that ATR loaded but only if Fast RAM was set to 256MB or higher, and when it loaded the graphics on the menus were slightly odd but it worked perfectly during gameplay itself.

plush latch
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The graphics issue might be related to D-Cache, try loading it without D-Cache

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And... yeah, some games seem to need fastRAM and some needs to not have fastRAM. I do not think I can get around needing a RAM option in an Amiga console like core

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But there is a chance that I might be able to not need a D-Cache option

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But it is very possible that d-cache will remain a problem, because the 68020 does not have data cache normally, like the A1200 and CD32, or so my AI claimed. And if the games then use it in certain ways it might not be possible to fix in hardware

plush latch
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I think a solution was found to the D-Cache, but f.ex. now D-Cache works with Universe, but very consistently if you load the MGL file, which also loads the core and everything, it works and then if you reset it will take over a minute to reach the "Universe" title screen and its then with very garbled graphics. More garbled than before. So now that is being researched.

There were similar issues with the Akiko stuff for a long while where resetting the core would leave it in strange states causing load times to become strange or games not loading at all, but those should be solved now. Mostly anyway, so I am pretty sure it will be solved for the D-Cache as well.

spice coral
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Liberation is reliably booting but gets stuck at the intro video now

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I'm guessing CD audio is involved

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Still having issues with the Assassins CDs but they do sometimes at least start booting sometimes now.
It would be intersting to know why they have issues specifically because they shouldn't use any CD32 hardware beyond the basic cd drive

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Also intersting that booting from floopy and trying to open the CDs can sometimes just hang while still loading the icons so maybe something going wrong in the drive part itself?

plush latch
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Did you disable D-Cache when testing it?

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I have a release being built now, I think it solves the D-Cache problems... or at least the one that was for the Universe CD32 game.

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Now I can reset the core several times and Universe boots correctly and fast every time 🙂

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I thought I had made the Assassins CD stable, but... I think it is the v2 one I have been testing with and the v1 release I should have found somewhere, but havent tested yet

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I have not tried Liberation before. Seems to run quite well in the intro so far. Cyberpunky 🙂

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I am running with with D-Cache and fastRAM this time

spice coral
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The 2nd one is my goto TBH. Never got that to boot fully on it's own

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D-Cache disabled

plush latch
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I am waiting for the intro to complete on its own. A lot of times I have seen problems happen when you let it run... and other times the problems come when you try to skip something

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Now its at credits text

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I am running the CD that is in the Amiga Vision CD32 pack

spice coral
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It is a pretty great intro, especially with the CD audio.

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I need to look at them

plush latch
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Yeah, that intro makes me want to try that game

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I hope the gameplay doesnt suck after such a great intro

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I am having it rebuild the release, it had overwritten a previous run, but this seems quite promising so far

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I need to test some other problematic games after this

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I guess with this working I can make an Amiga Console core... seems a few people really wants to see that.

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Hmm... not sure the music is working in game in Liberation...

spice coral
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I would describe it as the best CD32 game
So yes, there was a A1200 version but the CD release get's CD audio including NPC speech.
It's basically a voice acted, open world RPG years before anybody else even attempted it
The world is great. You can litterally go into any building in the entire city. The scope of the thing is huge
The downside that there is a lot of procedurally generated stuff and it shows. The worst offender is that basically every mission in the game is the same and there is an unlimited amount of them with no really progress from 1 to the next.

plush latch
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interesting

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and you can configure your droids quite a bit. Reminds me a bit of Syndicate, except... this is more like a dungeon crawler?

spice coral
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It's one of those games where the current copyright owneship is a bit iffy, otherwise lots of people would be shouting for a modern version. I'd love to see someone attempt an all-but-name modern remake. Still stick to the blobber movement and honestly the graphics have a charm to them but just be able to modernise the game with modern NPCs, more missions, side quests ect

plush latch
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Yeah... so many of those. Such things just often gets messy after companies gets bought or partnerships dissolve

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GOG has gone on detective investigations and been intermediaries for so many releases of games that went that way

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I have a few games several times because they let you keep the original releases in your account even though its not on their store anymore

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Like... I think one of them is Cannon Fodder

spice coral
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I did already have AmigaVision on my SD card, i was just looking in the wrong folder🤣

plush latch
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There are a few AmigaVision releases, is it the CD32 one?

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They made packs for almost everything. WinUAE, MiSTer, Pocket, Pi, Amiga Mini and probably more

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Yeah, I watched a video of the game now. The CD music in game is pretty broken.

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Liberation

spice coral
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Yeah, I've got both on here

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Both MiSTer ones

plush latch
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Music in game was broken before as well, right?

spice coral
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It's CD audio

plush latch
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Yes, but... it just loops a few seconds, stops and starts again I think

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Sounds strange

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Might be a chance that its the CD, that a better version might fix it. But I suspect its the core

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Hmm... I think I will try it with Amiga Vision, see how it plays with the emulator they use

spice coral
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Wow

plush latch
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Plays great in game with the Amiga Vision CD32 MGL

spice coral
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Liberation booting and playing the intro with sound!

plush latch
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Yeah... but the in game music is pretty broken 🙁

spice coral
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I didn't think CD audio was working yet

plush latch
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Should be pretty much fully working

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But... well, the in game music in Liberation though, that is not working currently. But it is working with the MGL from Amiga Vision, it uses a special HDF setup to make the game run correctly

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And it seems to have everything working

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But that game is in their working folder as well, so it should

spice coral
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FYI, the voice of Trill is Neil Morrissey
Formally most well known for Men Behaving Badly, but now far far more famous as the voice of Bob The Builder

plush latch
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😄

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Nice 🙂

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Ahh, each CD32 gamepad button fires the gun of one of the 4 androids. Nice touch 🙂

spice coral
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They actually do a very good job with the joypad control to the point where i'd probebly recomend it over the mouse most of the time. It's good can you use both and swap to mouse for inventry management though

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I see what you mean about the in game music

plush latch
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I already found that Cannon Fodder and DotC has issues now. Pretty long wait times at points that did not use to have such wait times. James Pond 3 seems to get a lot further than it used to, but ends up with a "load error".

plush latch
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I think I fixed the in game music for Liberation, well it sounds like it works at least. But then I played it a bit, walked around and went into a building and it crashed going into the building 🙁

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But what is worse... the d-cache fixes that were implemented might make the games that used to need d-cache to be turned off, run with d-cache on, but it broke the d-cache off option. So it would break... maybe all games, if you turn off the d-cache in that build.