drac030 Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 (edited) The fixed one is S_VBXE.SYS, size 8432 bytes, date 17-05-2015 22:23 If the problem still occurs, let me know. Edited June 16, 2015 by drac030 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 The fixed one is S_VBXE.SYS, size 8432 bytes, date 17-05-2015 22:23 If the problem still occurs, let me know. So far so good drac030. Obviously it doesn't give 80 columns in BASIC, but I don't think it is supposed to is it? On dropping down to BASIC the screen returns to 40 columns. Otherwise it seems to work well and no crashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 When running the 'FC.COM' application to manage the installed cores of the VBXE, I get a 'VBXE IO Error' message. Is this because Altirra does not fully emulate all the features of the VBXE? For instance it would be nice to update the installed cores to the newest v1.26 FX versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 You can't update the VBXE core in the emulator using FC.COM. The core is hard-coded to FX 1.24. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 You can't update the VBXE core in the emulator using FC.COM. The core is hard-coded to FX 1.24. Yeah, that is what I thought. I guess at this point Phaeron does not want the hassle of emulating the ATMega and FPGA chips when their apparently functionality to the emulator user can be provided in other, non-precise ways. Maybe one day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 Obviously it doesn't give 80 columns in BASIC, but I don't think it is supposed to is it? On dropping down to BASIC the screen returns to 40 columns. Do you mean that it returns to 40 columns after a reset? If so, it is (for now) supposed to do so, right. Otherwise S_VBXE.SYS itself does not provide 80-column "E:" device (e.g. for BASIC). To accomplish that, you should load CON.SYS after S_VBXE.SYS. You then can enable the 80-column console from CP using this command: CON 80 or from BASIC using: XIO 24,#16,12,0,"E:" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 Otherwise S_VBXE.SYS itself does not provide 80-column "E:" device (e.g. for BASIC). To accomplish that, you should load CON.SYS after S_VBXE.SYS. You then can enable the 80-column console from CP using this command: CON 80 or from BASIC using: XIO 24,#16,12,0,"E:" Yep, in BASIC after pressing 'System Reset' you go back to 40 column display. However your 'XIO' line sorts it out nicely. Do you mean that it returns to 40 columns after a reset? If so, it is (for now) supposed to do so, right. Is there something in the works which might make it automatically re-initialize to 80 columns after a 'System Reset' in BASIC? If so I look forward to that also! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 CON.SYS does not return to 80-column mode after a reset mostly because older versions of CON.SYS were not very stable: in case of trouble, a reset was supposed to disable it and restore a safe state. The current version looks like it is stable enough, so perhaps indeed it is time to make it return to the 80-column mode after a reset... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 CON.SYS does not return to 80-column mode after a reset mostly because older versions of CON.SYS were not very stable: in case of trouble, a reset was supposed to disable it and restore a safe state. The current version looks like it is stable enough, so perhaps indeed it is time to make it return to the 80-column mode after a reset... Cool!!! That would be an extremely user-friendly feature - for BASIC and indeed other text mode cartridges like the various native ASM editors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 It would be very cool to see 80 column console survive a reset. I look forward to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 18, 2015 Author Share Posted June 18, 2015 Yeah, that is what I thought. I guess at this point Phaeron does not want the hassle of emulating the ATMega and FPGA chips when their apparently functionality to the emulator user can be provided in other, non-precise ways. Maybe one day. The internal architecture of an FPGA and the format of the bitstream is typically proprietary. It would have to be reverse engineered in order to emulate it, which is itself a very big job. Another issue is that emulating an FPGA would be incredibly slow. The Visual6502 folks have managed to emulate the Atari 2600 at gate level and the simulation runs at kilohertz speeds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 The internal architecture of an FPGA and the format of the bitstream is typically proprietary. It would have to be reverse engineered in order to emulate it, which is itself a very big job. Another issue is that emulating an FPGA would be incredibly slow. The Visual6502 folks have managed to emulate the Atari 2600 at gate level and the simulation runs at kilohertz speeds. Woah... As you say Phaeron, slow!!! The simulation works as it stands, just without the uploading of code. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serj Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 (edited) a question. new disk №415 from homesoft http://mushca.com/f/atari/index.php?idx=9 Game "Scooby-Doo!WhereAreYou" behaves very strangely. screen twitches and moves to the right.bug in the emulator? Edited June 18, 2015 by serj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Not seeing that here, its scrolling very fast from left to right but no twitching Serj, sure you are using a real rom OS and not an Altirra one by accident? Hope all is well where you are Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serj Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 yes, real os "REV02(800XL-65XE-130XE).rom". latest beta 2.7 test 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Sergey, try resetting your settings and scan the roms etc again... I've found that sometimes Altirra chooses odd roms / settings in between updates, not saying its Altirra doing it but I've reset the settings a few times and suddenly things work as they should.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 19, 2015 Author Share Posted June 19, 2015 Looks like it was actually made that way -- it's fast on NTSC and very fast on PAL. Seeing the same thing in NTSC on real hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 To go back to the question of the VBXE emulation. Having thought a bit more I ask; would it be necessary to actually fully emulate the FPGA? Might it be possible to simulate the code-uploading and therefore make it possible to re-flash the VBXE without going the whole hog? It would be nice to have this flexibility. Doing the flash on the real hardware, quite apart from turning me in to a Manchurian Candidate is slow slow slow, but I would like to play with the different modes and even different versions. Still, I guess definitely not a very high-importance feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Out of interest, which cores are you flashing to get these "different modes"? AFAIK, the only major difference in functionality which exists is between the "a" and "r" cores, the latter emulating a 320K RAMBO memory upgrade which you can toggle using Altirra's "Use VBXE memory for expansion" switch. The other cores include a (deprecated) VGA core which is useless in emulation, and the GTIA-only cores, which simply provide superior video quality with no core features whatsoever, and these are roughly equivalent to using the emulator with VBXE disabled and the legacy video settings tuned to produce the utmost clarity. I suppose I'm just trying to understand why this would even be a low-importance feature request. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I think you've covered the areas of my interest in a nutshell there FJC!!! The Rambo version is unimportant though between the "Ultimate1MB" and as you say the fact there is a menu item to implement the VBXE's memory expansion capabilities without flashing the core. In practical terms, I especially would have liked to give the VGA thing a try - but if you say that wouldn't have done anything on the emulator then fair enough. I was also interested in the 5200-only core and testing the versions incrementally to properly appreciate the differences. Also, we are up to version 1.26 currently but Altirra is hard-coded to v1.21, so requires extra work from Phaeron to implement the newest one whereas if we could update it ourselves we wouldn't need to harass him to implement the newest core each time. To sum up I guess it is just extra utility for Altirra, but is of... lets say 'moderate' importance overall. At the end of the day I can always just reflash the hardware itself, but that is a really slow process whereas Altirra is fast and won't get worn-out from the re-flashing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 (edited) Altirra emulates FX 1.24 here, but in any case I'm not sure the changes between 1.24 and 1.26 were too critical. I rather doubt there will be a deluge of new cores in the future either, since the FPGA is full and in more than five years I think there were two core updates. Edited June 22, 2015 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 23, 2015 Author Share Posted June 23, 2015 There were some breaking changes to the FX core between 1.24 and 1.26, particularly in the overlay handling, which Altirra doesn't support yet. It's documented at the end of the programmer manual. However, there's not a lot of software out there that uses much of VBXE, so it's mostly gone unnoticed. Pretty much the only reason Altirra currently supports 1.24 core level is that there were drivers released that checked the core version and failed if it wasn't at that level, and all I did to fix it was to change the version number. I'm working on a rev of the emulation, though. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 29, 2015 Share Posted June 29, 2015 Oops... fixed. Now you know the kinds of things I had to do to make room.... http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.70-test15.zip http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.70-test15-src.zip 1.42... think I just incremented past that one. Have you removed the startup banner for Altirra BASIC? When I enter 'BASIC' from the SDX command line it drops straight to the 'Ready' prompt without any label. If so I guess it was a space-saving measure, which is of course understandable but I did find the banner quite useful to keep track of version numbers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted June 29, 2015 Author Share Posted June 29, 2015 No, that's definitely not normal for a cold start and is what happens when BASIC is warmstarted. I don't suppose you might have either a ramdisk or persistent storage hooked up such that SDX is saving the BASIC state? I'm not seeing this behavior with SDX 4.47 myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 29, 2015 Share Posted June 29, 2015 No, that's definitely not normal for a cold start and is what happens when BASIC is warmstarted. I don't suppose you might have either a ramdisk or persistent storage hooked up such that SDX is saving the BASIC state? I'm not seeing this behavior with SDX 4.47 myself. I am not sure Phaeron. I totally exited the emulator and then went back in. However, I reflashed the simulated firmware and now it is working properly with the banner and all - v1.44. So... Who knows! Probably a combination of various things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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