serj Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 (edited) thanks for the reply Avery. if you will decide to do the more best emulation of cassette player or will add emulation of "turbo 2000" - I will undertake verification of these devices. Edited September 12, 2015 by serj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 thanks for the reply Avery. if you will decide to do the more best emulation of cassette player or will add emulation of "turbo 2000" - I will undertake verification of these devices. although no turbo currently At least the 'currently' gives you some hope Sergey.......You never know with Phaeron.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suppawer Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 Tape: Writing is not supported. It's difficult to get excited about emulating something that takes 10 minutes to test, generates megabytes of diagnostic data per run, and sounds like nails on a chalkboard. I am sad to hear you say that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 I am sad to hear you say that. But to be fair its not you doing all that hard work in your spare time... I'd rather see that time put in to other emulation related items... I know tapes were big in Eastern Europe for many reasons but pretty much every where else dumped their tape machines as soon as they could afford a disk drive.. I have no idea what Avery will do as regarding tapes but I'd as said rather see him spend what time he allows for Altirra on other items. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 Tape: OK. Reading is reasonably accurate, although no turbo currently. Writing is not supported. It's difficult to get excited about emulating something that takes 10 minutes to test, generates megabytes of diagnostic data per run, and sounds like nails on a chalkboard. LOL. Indeed. Sure, in a perfect world it might be nice to have full tape capability, just for the sake of completeness if nothing else. And I for one can say that for my part, it would just only be for the sake of completeness. I certainly remember back when I had a 600XL and only a 410 to hook up to it. Compared to when I only had the 600XL and no external storage, it was heaven. But... I also remember when I got my 1st 1050. It took almost no time for me to drop using that 410 like it was a bad habit. And now, in the emulation world with my U1MB, SIDE2, etc., I could say I have even less (if that's possible) interest in tape use. I don't know how many users of Altirra are more like me, or how many are quite excited about actually using emulated tape technology, or who's in between... but I suspect that the number of folks who are absolutely lusting after tape use in emulation is not all that many. And as Phaeron said, developing for better tape emulation is rather unpleasant for him. It sounds like it might not be too much better than watching paint dry for him. Can't say I don't understand where he's coming from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted September 12, 2015 Share Posted September 12, 2015 (edited) Capture.PNG SDX44X FIND command causes a recoverable crash. It looks like the crash occurs either when FIND is about to access a next disk after G:, or when it is about to display "2 matches found". Seriously, as others wrote, more information is needed to reproduce the problem. Edited September 12, 2015 by drac030 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 (edited) I don't know what I had as a bad setting but I did a /resetall and a /portable after getting the screen and Ultimate+Side2 set up again. FIND is now working across all the partitions. FIND C:*.COM always worked it was only the FIND command by it's self that caused the problem.. Edited September 13, 2015 by rdea6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+rdemming Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 I'm sorry if this is straying too far off-topic but I just dumped an original Jewels of Darkness disk recently and didn't see any LensLok protection. It's in the preservation torrent if you want to check it out. The version I pointed to on AtariMania has the LensLok protection in place. Did you try to type "RESTORE"? It won't ask for the LensLok when starting the game but it will when you try to load a saved game. I will try the version in the preservation torrent later this weekend. Robert I've downloaded and tried the "Jewels of Darkness" disk from the preservation torrent and this version does indeed not ask for the LensLok when restoring the game. The contents of the disk is also different than that of the AtariMania version. Seems that only the EU release (RainBird) did have the protection and the US release (FireBird) did not. A school friend of mine at the time had the EU tape version of Jewels of Darkness and that one did also have the LensLok device. Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 It's difficult to get excited about emulating something that takes 10 minutes to test, generates megabytes of diagnostic data per run, and sounds like nails on a chalkboard. At least tschak909 will strongly disagreed here I think - but I really consider him to be the exception in this case http://atariage.com/forums/topic/237822-disassembling-the-educational-system-master-cartridge/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 (edited) I've downloaded and tried the "Jewels of Darkness" disk from the preservation torrent and this version does indeed not ask for the LensLok when restoring the game. The contents of the disk is also different than that of the AtariMania version. Seems that only the EU release (RainBird) did have the protection and the US release (FireBird) did not. A school friend of mine at the time had the EU tape version of Jewels of Darkness and that one did also have the LensLok device. Robert Afaik, the european versions of Leaderboard were only available with a dongle, whereas the US versions of Leaderboard were available with and without dongle - at least there is a dongle-free combo of Leaderboard and Leaderboard Tournement on one disk (named Leaderboard Dual Pack, Leaderboard on side A, Tournement on side B) available, but that version was only sold in the US. Luckily I have that dongle-free version in my collection (bought/imported it from Bravo Sierra Computers)... http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-comp-leader-board-dual-pack_6761.html Edited September 13, 2015 by CharlieChaplin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted September 15, 2015 Share Posted September 15, 2015 Hi, I somehow cannot find the descriptions of the command line options in the Altirra help (anymore?). I'm fairly sure they once where there.... JAC! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted September 15, 2015 Share Posted September 15, 2015 Command prompt ---- Altirra /? will open a list of options.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 15, 2015 Share Posted September 15, 2015 That should be moved into the standard help file. For you need to know the help command to get to the help on commands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted September 16, 2015 Author Share Posted September 16, 2015 /? is a convention on Windows for getting command-line help. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 yep it's the same with many command line processor and dos flavors /? /help etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 /? is a convention on Windows for getting command-line help. Yes, but not for GUI based Windows programs. The convention for GUI based ones is usually a help menu item or a question mark menu item. F1 is a typical shortcut. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 We're not talking about the GUI. We're talking about command line switches, and /? has been the universal convention for command line help for the past twenty-five years that I know of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 I most certainly am talking about GUI. Altirra is a GUI program, designed to run on a GUI OS. I myself did not learn about the command line switches but through being informed about in here at AtariAge. Like JAC, I looked all through the included help and came up empty. While I have a long history of using /? or /h with DOS/Windows programs that are designed as CLI programs, and am well informed of the practice, it did not occur to me that a GUI based program, that does have a pretty nice and otherwise comprehensive help file, would leave that out and instead require one to break out the CLI to get the information. Even though it can be, under normal use patterns, Altirra is not ever launched from an interactive CLI. So, I throw in my support to Keetah's suggestion that the information be made part of the help file where the rest of the program information is at. I'm not at all opposed to it being in both places. But if it is only going to be one place, I think it's better to be in the help. Even if there were a brief topic in the help, that stated to launch the program from the CLI with the /? to get help with command line options that would do the trick. I personally will not be affected because I know the trick already. I just think it would be a benefit to newcomers to the program or those who have not yet come across this information. Obviously this is just my opinion, but I offer it in case Avery finds value in it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 (edited) To be honest a lot of the command line options were added for frontend usage like gamebase and our on hold Gamepack, it sort of renders them as specialised for that purpose only ie the only people who would use 99% of them would already have known about them or like myself asked Avery to kindly add them. Pretty much most others can be done within the Altirra GUI. Edited September 16, 2015 by Mclaneinc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Doubtless it will be a surprise to many, the number of "GUI applications" which nevertheless accept a "/?" or "/help" switch when launched from the command line. It never occurred to me that the presence of a GUI would automatically invalidate this general CLI convention. I wonder if the entire syntax of every command in the debugger should also be included in the GUI help, or at least the method of obtaining same, if it is not already there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Well, the help not even indicates there are command line options or a help and that is what confused me. And when not even Google finds that or a command I'm looking for on the Altirra site, I'm even more confused. Sure, typically I'd open my hex editor on Altirra.exe, but.... Avery you surely have a build process and can easily integrate the content in both places, which is what I'd love to see. And the console coud maybe actually output to console instead of a popup from where again you cannot copy/paste.The amount of information almost exceeds my screen height :-) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 (edited) when launched from the command line. But that's just it. GUI programs are rarely launched from the command line. If they need to be launched with switches, I dare say most people just create a shortcut and put them in there. Also, it's a straw man to imply that anyone is trying to say GUI status "invalidates" the idea of switches (help or otherwise). I wonder if the entire syntax of every command in the debugger should also be included in the GUI help, or at least the method of obtaining same, if it is not already there. I interpret that language to be sarcastic. I hope I'm wrong about that. Am I? If you're serious, I agree. I think anything about the program that is worth documenting should be in the help file or a manual (like a PDF). Since the debugger commands are documented, they must be considered to be worth documenting. So yes I agree, they do have a place in the help or manual. If you are pouring on sarcasm, then all I have to say is it brings back memories of the bad old days of Linux forums, and how folks, their questions & ideas were responded to. Edited September 16, 2015 by fujidude 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 (edited) To be honest a lot of the command line options were added for frontend usage like gamebase and our on hold Gamepack, it sort of renders them as specialised for that purpose only ie the only people who would use 99% of them would already have known about them or like myself asked Avery to kindly add them. Pretty much most others can be done within the Altirra GUI. I do understand what you're saying regarding the evolution of this so to speak. But I still think it is better to document than not to. And if it is worth documenting, it is worth it to be in the main manual or help. Just acceptable as that, for more specialized information, would be to have a brief mention in the help or manual about separate and supplementary documentation and how to find it. Myself, I would just make it an appendix or something in the main dox. But that's a minor point. The main thing is to have one place to look to at least be able to follow the bread crumbs needed. Again, this is my own, personal, opinion. I am not trying to say that differing views are any less correct or valid. I have read many GUI program help files which fully document command line switches. Edited September 16, 2015 by fujidude 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 /? showed up in MS-DOS in 1991. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 /? showed up in MS-DOS in 1991. I have used /? /h -? -h --h --help and the like with CP/M programs way before 1991. The last two, --h and --help are more commonly seen in the UNIX/XENIX/LINUX world, which was in use even earlier than CP/M. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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