guus.assmann Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Thanks for considering it. I will try to find another way to get it done. The "old fashioned" way with an Eprom emulator will also work just fine. It's just some more work to build some target hardware and include enough debugging aids. BR/ Guus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Feature request, don't know if it's been asked for before. Can we have the option to allow keys mapped to controllers to also be passed thru as keystrokes, it's annoying as hell to continually turn mappings off because I also want the cursor keys for the joystick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 (edited) Disk Explorer: Dragging files into SDFS sub-folders does not work (they end up in the root). Not sure if it's supposed to work yet or not. ATR content also gets out of sync if mounted and opened in Disk Explorer (and changed there) both at the same time, although this might be entirely reasonably down to practical limitations. Edited February 19, 2014 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 Latest S_VBXE.SYS driver (from SDX Toolkit Rev. C) appears incompatible with the emulated v.1.24 VBXE core. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 "Use $D7xx for VBXE registers" is also greyed out. For some reason I can no longer get any version of S_VBXE.SYS to recognize the hardware in any version of Altirra. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I dunno... it used to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 Sorry - yet another query. I started with a 360KB DD ATR and mounted it as an SIO disk image. I then booted MyDOS, configured the new ATR as DD, 1440 sectors, and formatted it. The ATR promptly shrunk to 180KB in size. I then wrote DOS, and proceeded to full the disk, but I get NAK errors once there's 180KB of data on it. How do I prevent the ATR from shrinking to half the expected size when formatting it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 (edited) I have encountered EXACTLY this problem myself flashjazzcat. I have suggested - a good long while ago, so as not to pester - that Altirra should let us explicitly specify track numbers ALONG with sector counts and sector sizes. It is not just MyDOS, but SDX itself that has a number of disk formatting options which we cannot set precisely from the 'New Disk' wizard and some times cause compatibility problems when initializing a virtual 'blank' disk. In the real world, these things like 'track number' were specified by the compliance of the floppy (flippy unless we had an XF551!) disks we bought. Therefore it would be very handy to be able to 'choose the disk' we are using via the disk wizard. Perhaps Avery might have another look at the nitty-gritties of disk drive emulation? Even without going in to the apparent hard slog of emulating the Happy/US Doubler/Indus custom processors (which I still hope he might have a bash at one day) I think there might be little tweaks here and there that would go a long way to perfecting the Altirra experience. Just running through the MyDOS and SDX formatting options and using them as a wish list would be amazing. At one point I was quite obsessed with learning to use disk IO properly and experimenting with hardware and densities that I never had chance to play with in my physical Atari. In fact, interestingly it was problems with 'true double-density' disk images that first pushed me away from Atari800Win PLus and in to Altirra's waiting arms! I wrote the attachment as a crib sheet to help me remember the various sector size/track number/sector count combinations available through SDX/MyDOS. I think it is fairly accurate and might be useful to others and also help to illustrate the properties I mean like the exotic 'double 512' and 'high'. I think the latter may only be available if you had hacked/modded your XF551 to house a physical standard PC 3.5 HD drive with appropriate firmware. Apparently some chaps back in 1986 used to do exactly that! Atari 8 Bit - Disk Image Sector Counts and Density.txt Edited February 21, 2014 by morelenmir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylev Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 FJC, Been a while since I used MyDos,but shouldn't that 360K image be DD DS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenjennings Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 FJC, Been a while since I used MyDos,but shouldn't that 360K image be DD DS? My happy calculator did not agree with what I had posted here earlier. Yes, DSDD on a XF551 is 360K. 256 byte sectors, so 180K per side, 360K for both sides. There are multiple permutations of different drives that I'm not familiar with on that list, so there are several ways to reach 360K, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Disk Explorer: Dragging files into SDFS sub-folders does not work (they end up in the root). Not sure if it's supposed to work yet or not. ATR content also gets out of sync if mounted and opened in Disk Explorer (and changed there) both at the same time, although this might be entirely reasonably down to practical limitations. Disk Explorer issue fixed: http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.50-test27.zip http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.50-test27-src.zip Also adds partial The!Cart emulation support (flashing and most cart types, but no EEPROM) and 8KB sector disk image support. The sync issue is basically a don't do that... Altirra doesn't hold a lock on disk images, so yeah, changing it from Tools > Disk Explorer will mess things up. It will work if you do it from the Disk Drives dialog, in which case the changes are done through the disk image view that's actually used by the disk emulator. Latest S_VBXE.SYS driver (from SDX Toolkit Rev. C) appears incompatible with the emulated v.1.24 VBXE core. "Use $D7xx for VBXE registers" is also greyed out. For some reason I can no longer get any version of S_VBXE.SYS to recognize the hardware in any version of Altirra. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I dunno... it used to work. You probably have U1MB enabled -- check your U1MB settings. When both VBXE and U1MB are enabled, VBXE addressing is under software control, which is why the addressing option is grayed out. That means VBXE won't work unless you have it enabled in the U1MB BIOS. Sorry - yet another query. I started with a 360KB DD ATR and mounted it as an SIO disk image. I then booted MyDOS, configured the new ATR as DD, 1440 sectors, and formatted it. The ATR promptly shrunk to 180KB in size. I then wrote DOS, and proceeded to full the disk, but I get NAK errors once there's 180KB of data on it. How do I prevent the ATR from shrinking to half the expected size when formatting it? This is due to both strange behavior on the part of MyDOS and a bug in Altirra's XF551 emulation. The XF551 has weird interpretation of PERCOM blocks, which Altirra tries to emulate. However, there was an off by one bug that caused the density flag to be checked instead of the high sector size byte. For some strange reason, when configured manually, MyDOS sends a PERCOM block for 18 sectors/track, 256 bytes/sector, two sides... and single density. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 MANY thanks Phaeron!!! It is always good to have some bug squashing on the disk system! I will enjoy testing this out on a few 'blank disks' in SDX and MyDOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Disk Explorer issue fixed: Awesome: thanks! The sync issue is basically a don't do that... Altirra doesn't hold a lock on disk images, so yeah, changing it from Tools > Disk Explorer will mess things up. It will work if you do it from the Disk Drives dialog, in which case the changes are done through the disk image view that's actually used by the disk emulator. I thought as much, and this is entirely reasonable. I just wanted to be sure. You probably have U1MB enabled -- check your U1MB settings. When both VBXE and U1MB are enabled, VBXE addressing is under software control, which is why the addressing option is grayed out. That means VBXE won't work unless you have it enabled in the U1MB BIOS. Yep - that was it. Thank you. This is one of those daft things I would have struggled on with for ages. The reason I never thought of it is that I'm used to the VBXE base hardware setting not working on real hardware (at least not on the Rev. 1 Ultimates I wired it up with), but it's entirely proper that the emulator behaves the way Ultimate does on paper. This reminds me to see if the hardware base setting works on the newer boards... This is due to both strange behavior on the part of MyDOS and a bug in Altirra's XF551 emulation. The XF551 has weird interpretation of PERCOM blocks, which Altirra tries to emulate. However, there was an off by one bug that caused the density flag to be checked instead of the high sector size byte. For some strange reason, when configured manually, MyDOS sends a PERCOM block for 18 sectors/track, 256 bytes/sector, two sides... and single density. OK - thanks for the fix, as ever. The emulated display is freezing for me quite a lot in 2.50 test 26, usually when Altirra loses the focus when I use some other application (notably the HxD Hex Editor). I used to only lose the display after locking the computer, but the issue has worsened in the last couple of builds (for me, at least). Interestingly, enabling (or disabling) the debugger brings the display out of its "frozen" state. Anyway - not a big deal, but just wanted to inform you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 (edited) Avery, have you been tinkering with the audio at all? Just seems a little crackly / popping at times even if I adjust the latency? It could be me as I have tinnitus, just wondering... Edited February 21, 2014 by Mclaneinc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 There is always the 'DOS XE whistle' paul! Like the 'Bristol Hum', only more annoying. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serj Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 (edited) Avery, thanks for the update of the emulator, you're the best. a few comments on the emulator: 1) incorrectly displays the hard drives for the PC in full screen mode. example: http://imageshack.com/a/img89/7201/nmkm.png 2) emulator stops when calling additional windows.whether it is possible to fix it?sense from waveform menu "tape control" if it is not active at boot time - no. 3) and last.What happens if I try to save any program on the tape? for example, I will write in a BASIC, any program, and I want to keep it on the tape.I type in the emulator:SAVE "C:"orCSAVEbut the record does not occur. can add to the emulator creating pure (empty) of the image of "cas" and can record to the file cas? Edited February 22, 2014 by serj 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 There is always the 'DOS XE whistle' paul! Like the 'Bristol Hum', only more annoying. Lol...I hear Bristol rumbles more than hums after that earthquake during the week.. As for Altirra, its most likely me although my hearing is normally very good apart from the hell that is tinnitus, just wondered if Avery had been playing as Pokey is the one true unknown bar sitting there with a scope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 22, 2014 Author Share Posted February 22, 2014 Phearon, Using the new Altirra Basic that's built in I notice that anything that uses BAS2BOOT by Jindroush crashes, it seems a great many items do use this. Any idea's, I realise its not meant to be an exact replacement for basic. Example provided.. Thunder -basic.atr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Using the new Altirra Basic that's built in I notice that anything that uses BAS2BOOT by Jindroush crashes, it seems a great many items do use this. Any idea's, I realise its not meant to be an exact replacement for basic. Example provided.. Bad loader -- contains hardcoded addresses in both XL/XE OS and Atari BASIC ROM. Won't work with anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 Phaeron, thanks for checking it out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 23, 2014 Author Share Posted February 23, 2014 (edited) Quick question Avery, don't think I've asked before, on occasions I find a bit of software that refuses to load properly using accurate loading speed? For the life of me I can't remember the titles but if you untick accurate then they load fine, just seemed weird that a setting which I presume makes the virtual drive behave as close to a new unmodified factory drive would cause load issues? Flawed atr's? Odd...Sorry I can't remember the titles but I'm trying to database my digital stock and been loading all sorts of stuff, meant to make a note at the time but forgot. Edited February 23, 2014 by Mclaneinc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted February 23, 2014 Share Posted February 23, 2014 There are a couple of reasons this can happen, but all are rare occurrences. The first is if the game has copy protection in it that does sector read timing checks. These are sometimes left in because they happen to work with ATR files without accurate timing, but once sector skew or seek times are introduced, the timing check fails. The second is that the loader may have a bug in it that causes a load failure under certain timing conditions that the change in mode happens to trigger, such as overwriting an active display list and having DLIs fire at a bad time. I would only expect this to happen on disk loads that can't be accelerated through the SIO patch; it would be very odd for this to matter on parts of the load that used SIOV and would turbo load either way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serj Posted February 24, 2014 Share Posted February 24, 2014 new beta: http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.50-test29.zip http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.50-test29-src.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted February 25, 2014 Share Posted February 25, 2014 Just adds The!Cart EEPROM support and some math pack changes in the internal OS (rounding on cancellation and faster multiply/divide), so I didn't bother posting it here. But hey, have at it.... I was looking at doing a 65C816 version of AltirraOS, but it looks not worthwhile at this point. The 65C816 has an absurd amount of interrupt overhead in native mode, and REP/SEP instructions make it hard to leverage native mode without bloating code. On top of that, it seems hard to optimize the math pack for '816 as the mantissa order of decimal floats is backwards from what would be needed for 16-bit arithmetic. Sigh. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted February 25, 2014 Share Posted February 25, 2014 I use the following sequence to test for the presence of a 65816. It works correctly with the T816 from DataQue but fails in Altirra with a 65C816 cpu selected: sed lda #r99 clc adc #1 bmi r311d ; not an 816 sei lda #r0 sta rd40e clc xce bcc r311d ; really not an 816 xce lda #$40 ; mark 816 as present .byte $2cr311d lda #0 ; not an 816 sta $f0r3121 cli lda #40 sta rd40e cld Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avanze Posted February 25, 2014 Share Posted February 25, 2014 I like to see every beta posted of this amazing Atari emulator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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