TheMole Posted June 7, 2015 Share Posted June 7, 2015 So, I seem to have lost or misplaced my consoles during one of my moves in the past couple of years. I just spent 3 hours digging around in old cardboard boxes in a musty basement and they are nowhere to be found (I did find my C64 and my Atari ST, which I completely forgot I had ). I found my twe PEB's, my carts and other goodies (although I can't imagine the floppies have survived the damp storage space), but no consoles or power supplies. Anyway, I just started playing around with coding for the F18A, and would need real hardware to test some things on (js99er.net is great, but my computer isn't fast enough to run the GPU emulation at full speed). Does anyone on here who's in Europe have a console and power supply that they are willing to part with for a reasonable price? I'm not looking for a collector-quality item, just something that works. I'm willing to spend extra for a beige model with working keyboard though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted June 7, 2015 Share Posted June 7, 2015 I have a working black&silver one, a bit scratched, with 220V power, what u could have for free if you dont find the wanted beige one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed in SoDak Posted June 7, 2015 Share Posted June 7, 2015 Does js99er have a speed control? Vt9t9j (written in Java, not javascript) speeds up well beyond original hardware. -Ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted June 8, 2015 Author Share Posted June 8, 2015 I have a working black&silver one, a bit scratched, with 220V power, what u could have for free if you dont find the wanted beige one. I might have to take you up on that, since a working beige console with decent keyboard is probably a pipe dream anyway . Is it a qwerty keyboard, or is it qwertz? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted June 8, 2015 Author Share Posted June 8, 2015 Does js99er have a speed control? Vt9t9j (written in Java, not javascript) speeds up well beyond original hardware. -Ed I don't think it has speed controls. But the real problem is the GPU in the F18A, which runs at 100mhz. Javascript just isn't fast enough on my config to emulate both the 100mhz GPU and the 3mhz CPU in parallel... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted June 8, 2015 Share Posted June 8, 2015 Hi, it is qwerty, as qwertz for the TI does not exist (if I am right) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted June 8, 2015 Share Posted June 8, 2015 There are a couple of Beige PAL consoles for sale in Argentina right now, although only one of them looks to be functional (and they do have the better keyboards). They are a bit pricey though. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted June 8, 2015 Share Posted June 8, 2015 I don't think it has speed controls. But the real problem is the GPU in the F18A, which runs at 100mhz. Javascript just isn't fast enough on my config to emulate both the 100mhz GPU and the 3mhz CPU in parallel... I'm not even trying to run it at full speed, in fact I don't know what full speed is. With the TMS9900 emulation I have accurate control over how many cycles each instructions take (borrowed from Classic99) and can run it for 50000 clock cycles between each video frame is drawn, but for the GPU I haven't really got a clue, so my implementation is simply using the timing of the TMS9900 but running it 10 times longer (500000 cycles). This is based on what my 3 years old laptop can manage. If your browser can't keep up the video frame rate will be lower, but even if it can keep up, the full GPU speed is really perhaps 150% faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted June 9, 2015 Author Share Posted June 9, 2015 There are a couple of Beige PAL consoles for sale in Argentina right now, although only one of them looks to be functional (and they do have the better keyboards). They are a bit pricey though. . . Do you have a link for those? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted June 9, 2015 Author Share Posted June 9, 2015 I'm not even trying to run it at full speed, in fact I don't know what full speed is. With the TMS9900 emulation I have accurate control over how many cycles each instructions take (borrowed from Classic99) and can run it for 50000 clock cycles between each video frame is drawn, but for the GPU I haven't really got a clue, so my implementation is simply using the timing of the TMS9900 but running it 10 times longer (500000 cycles). This is based on what my 3 years old laptop can manage. If your browser can't keep up the video frame rate will be lower, but even if it can keep up, the full GPU speed is really perhaps 150% faster. I'm not really doing anything complex on the GPU, so the GPU speed itself shouldn't be a problem. But I notice that when I run my code, the framerate of the overall emulation drops to about 30fps. Or alternatively, when I run some of the F18A demo programs, I get the same thing (the spinning bitmap and the plasma being two examples). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 I'm not really doing anything complex on the GPU, so the GPU speed itself shouldn't be a problem. But I notice that when I run my code, the framerate of the overall emulation drops to about 30fps. Or alternatively, when I run some of the F18A demo programs, I get the same thing (the spinning bitmap and the plasma being two examples). I get around 55 FPS with those two demos, but the music sounds awful. This has to do with another thing: when the GPU is running I reduce the number of main CPU cycles to 25000. This is just a hack I made to make the F18A demos run reasonably well. Since my own code is the only examples I'm aware of I don't take accurate emulation too seriously . Anyway, it's kind of nice that some programs still have to be tested (and run far better) on real hardware. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Here's one for about 2,500 Argentine Pesos that is fully functional, and a truly mangled one for parts, for just 350 Argentine Pesos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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