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They don't all work, but parsec and most TI carts in rpk format are here. :)

 

BTW - parsec does indeed work. (Actually, the only cart that didn't work so far (and I haven't tried them all) was RXB... I'm still hoping to hear back from Rich on that one ;))

Edited by RobertLM78
  • Like 1

Thanks Robert!

 

I was testing on a friend's Acer Aspire notebook using Linux Ubuntu 13.04, and MESS ran like a dream.

 

So we thought we would install MESS in the same way on my netbook, which is an MSI Wind U180 with a bloody quad core CPU and it runs like a fucking dead dog :(

 

Investigation is ongoing, changing my distro from Xubuntu 13.04 to Ubuntu 12.04LTS to see if it that makes a difference.

My experiences with _ubuntu post 12.04 have not been good (not even Mint 14 was very impressive compared to Maya (Mint's LTS based on Ubuntu 12.04)). You'll want to install all the necessary stuff so that you can build MESS on the your netbook ;). Good luck, and don't hesitate to ask questions, especially now that we're running even more similar operating systems. (MESS has got to be a 'backronym' - because it is a mess all around :P)

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I got MESS running alright, well, that is, I got it to boot up , I got all the necessary ROMs and game RPK files (thanks to your link) ....

 

It started the TI99 not with the familiar beep .... but with more of a gargling noise that lasted easily 10 seconds .... and even when I minimized my window to a size where it ran at the right speed (2 inches no more) it still wouldn't accept any keyboard input .... whereas my friend's Acer Aspire laptop (albeit with a proper CPU ) ran the damn thing on full screen no problems .... just my look haha

BTW - parsec does indeed work. (Actually, the only cart that didn't work so far (and I haven't tried them all) was RXB... I'm still hoping to hear back from Rich on that one ;))

 

No, I guess it's my job to get that going ... :-)

 

As I reported some weeks ago I noticed that Rich uses full 8K GROM emulations instead of the standard 6K. The ugly thing was that there was a bug in the MESS emulation which allowed GROMs to read past the first 6K. After I fixed that, some cartridges, including RXB, stopped working.

 

So I had to introduce a new cartridge type called "gromemu" which allows for full 8K GROM emulations. However, I only uploaded one cartridge (rxb_2012.rpk) to Whtech, and all other ones remained broken. I just corrected all RXB cartridges, and except for two of them, all seem to be working now.

 

You need MESS 0.149 (the most recent version) for these cartridges to work.

  • Like 1

which is an MSI Wind U180 with a bloody quad core CPU and it runs like a fucking dead dog :(

 

There is most likely something else broken in that installation. Quad core CPU are fast enough in any case to run MESS at full speed; at least I had a Q6600 for the last years, and there was no problem. Have you tried to use "video: opengl" in the mess.ini file? Sometimes the software renderer slows things down. Many performance problems arise due to video issues; it seems as if video drivers are optimized for 3D only, but have a very bad performance on 2D.

I'll try the open-GL thing ..... that might help .... one thing I do know, there are no proprietry drivers for my laptop under this distro of linux, also, I changed from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Lubuntu to see if that made a difference, being a lighter OS, and it unfortunately did not.... I strongly suspect Linux does not like Cedar Trail ATOM chips one bit.

 

The only reason I suspect it's quad core is because I ran an app called "HTOP" and that shows you graphically how the CPU and RAM is coping whilst idle, and running any program .... Classic99 under WINE sent 2 of my 4 cores up to 80 percent and slightly over, but when I ran MESS with the TI99 the graph skyrocketed and was nearing 100 percent in the red.

 

Bit like my blood pressure.

 

I'll keep tinkering with it, 'cos I tell you something, my mate's Acer Aspire looked the business with Parsec on full screen ... the lucky so and so

I'll try the open-GL thing ..... that might help .... one thing I do know, there are no proprietry drivers for my laptop under this distro of linux, also, I changed from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Lubuntu to see if that made a difference, being a lighter OS, and it unfortunately did not.... I strongly suspect Linux does not like Cedar Trail ATOM chips one bit.

 

The only reason I suspect it's quad core is because I ran an app called "HTOP" and that shows you graphically how the CPU and RAM is coping whilst idle, and running any program .... Classic99 under WINE sent 2 of my 4 cores up to 80 percent and slightly over, but when I ran MESS with the TI99 the graph skyrocketed and was nearing 100 percent in the red.

 

Bit like my blood pressure.

 

I'll keep tinkering with it, 'cos I tell you something, my mate's Acer Aspire looked the business with Parsec on full screen ... the lucky so and so

 

Yea at times Classic99 can top out one of my processors and I have to shut it down and restart the program. I have no idea why?

Yea at times Classic99 can top out one of my processors and I have to shut it down and restart the program. I have no idea why?

 

The only idea I can come up with is this; It's a mixture of two elements - Classic99 being very heavy on the CPU / Graphics , and some CPU's in PC's / Laptops can actually be quite erratic, HTOP will show you what it's doing at idle before you even run Classic, and certain CPUs jump all over the place .... strange, really strange.

 

Ahh I need to point out, my MSI is not quad-core, it's dual core... the four cores showing up on HTOP had two of them at 0 constantly, that's because I have an hyperthreaded CPU my friend tells me - whatever that is ...also - I've got no OPEN-GL due to not having a 3D accelerated card .... that might screw me over for running MESS at any sort of good speed.

 

Damn you Intel.

I'm not quite sure whether it helps, but you could try to set "multithreading 1" in mess.ini. Yes, if your graphics card is not accelerated, this may have a bad impact on the system performance. As I said, these graphic cards and their drivers are optimized for 3D but not for 2D, and MESS in particular makes heavy use of 2D operations.

 

Drivers are such a pain ... when I'm watching Sat TV in HDTV on Linux I have to use AMD's proprietary driver, because the open source driver unfortunately is not fast enough, pushes up the system load to 150%. Imagine - a Raspberry Pi can cope with HTDV, but not my Core i7 with a Radeon HD 7970.

 

[Edit: Robert, by the way: full MESS build with 438 seconds :grin: ]

Edited by mizapf
  • Like 2

Core i7 with a Radeon HD 7970.

 

[Edit: Robert, by the way: full MESS build with 438 seconds :grin: ]

Very nice! I have to try that option you told me about the next time I build on a multicore machine :).

 

You're two up on me, I have an i5 and a Radeon HD 5450 - and I have CCC installed too... sadly ( :D ). Too bad the open source drivers aren't quite up to the task ;).

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