XEGS with Ultimate 1Meg

[+Stephen]

That's some damn clean install work there!

 

The button layout is shit, this was a proof of concept, and it didn't pan out. But I really am a fan of clean wiring. Redoing all of this will not be fun.

[+mytek]

That's some damn clean install work there!

 

Thank you Stephen

 

Yeah I got that blue wire many years ago for wire-wrapping (does anyone even do that anymore?), and it works very well for jumper wiring. It has a real tough installation material that doesn't melt or pull back and a very small diameter, plus it has a cool blue look. Adding the blue heat shrink just makes it look even better. And the TK-II installation is easy to make look good, since most everything just plugs together.

 

Thanks again for the kudos,

 

- Michael

Edited May 20, 2016 by mytekcontrols

[+mytek]

Stephen I just noticed the image you attached to your last post. For some odd reason that didn't show up before. What is that going to be used for? I checked out the other pics in the album and it looks like a magnificently complex universal game controller. Was that for use on an Atari? Well whatever its purpose, the wiring and front panel execution is really nice.

 

- Michael

Edited May 21, 2016 by mytekcontrols

[+Stephen]

Stephen I just noticed the image you attached to your last post. For some odd reason that didn't show up before. What is that going to be used for? I checked out the other pics in the album and it looks like a magnificently complex universal game controller. Was that for use on an Atari? Well whatever its purpose, the wiring and front panel execution is really nice.

 

- Michael

Sorry - I never said what it was. It's a prototype for a MAME cabinet I plan on building. I ordered all the parts from ultimarc.com. There are 3 separate PCBs (each is USB, the keyboard interface is also PS/2) for interfacing the various buttons, joysticks, optical spinner, and trackball. The analog joystick has its own USB port. I used a small non-powered USB hub, so the controller interfaces with a single USB cable.

 

It has the following:

2 4-way / 8-way digital sticks

1 analog stick

1 optical spinner with the heavy flywheel

2 "clusters" of 8 buttons for each player

trackball with clear ball and RGB LED module underneath

 

P.S.

Sorry to hi-jack the thread.

[+mytek]

I had to look up what MAME stood for (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), and I also found this site where a guy built his own version showing step-by-step photos: LINK

 

Pretty cool stuff

 

- Michael

 

P.S.

 

I also apologize for hi-jacking this thread in so many ways, so I'll shut up for now

[Neo-Rio]

I would say so. Any ATR requiring the 800 OS is high and dry when it comes to PBI solutions. Unless you can find an XEX.

I wonder if it is remotely possible to backport the PBI code into OS-B, making some kind of hybrid OS to boot these problem case programs?

Edited May 21, 2016 by Neo-Rio

[+Stephen]

I wonder if it is remotely possible to backport the PBI code into OS-B, making some kind of hybrid OS to boot these problem case programs?

Interesting idea. Might be easier to find out why they crash on non 800-OS (pretty much always illegal jumps into location rather than using the vector which points to the correct location).

[JoSch]

I had a severe regression on the XEGS. First it didn't work long without crashing complete and not starting again.

Yesterday, at least I had a stable computer again, but some issues stayed:

1.) RESET+HELP (or START, I tested both) doesn't work. I get a black screen. Normal Reset works. I can only get to the Ultimate setup on power up. Most of the time.

2.) When in Ultimate setup I often get graphical errors, like in the video.

IMG_3544.MOV

3.) Sometimes on power up, the computer went straight to self test.

 

Anybody with idea, what's happening here?

I already the installation, especially the VBXE, I swapped the ANTIC etc.

 

[flashjazzcat]

Try doing the 100pf capacitor mod. Basically, attach a 100pf ceramic capacitor between the RST pin and GND on the U1MB. Described further in the "U1MB in a 1200XL?" thread.

[JoSch]

Thanks for the info. I just wonder, why it worked fine so long.

[flashjazzcat]

I just watched your film on the PC (phone couldn't handle it), and the corruption in the menu isn't exactly what I'd expect from a noisy reset line TBH (usually you completely lose the menu). Can't harm to do the cap mod anyway, but also check the cabling, since it looks like the PMG registers are being intermittently missed (they're constantly updated, so if there's address line trouble, you might see something like this).

[JoSch]

I just watched your film on the PC (phone couldn't handle it), and the corruption in the menu isn't exactly what I'd expect from a noisy reset line TBH (usually you completely lose the menu). Can't harm to do the cap mod anyway, but also check the cabling, since it looks like the PMG registers are being intermittently missed (they're constantly updated, so if there's address line trouble, you might see something like this).

The capacitor did the trick. Reset+Help works, and the menu corruption is gone.

Thanks.

[flashjazzcat]

Awesome!

[Neo-Rio]

Hey flashjazzcat,

 

Can I make some suggestions for more XEGS friendly updates to the SIDE loader?

 

Would it be possible to use the START, SELECT or OPTION buttons to set drive and tag volumes? I say this because an XEGS without a keyboard has no hope of using the keyboard to play multi-disk games like Gauntlet, for example.

Also, it would be nice if left/right joystick movements jumped "pages" in the game launcher. Otherwise lists of games that are 200 entries long take forever to scroll down in.

Maybe use diagonal movements to move between the icons at the top of the screen? Or maybe use the SELECT button for this?

 

UPDATE: Just discovered that trying to mount and run an ATR from the SIDE2 with no keyboard in the XEGS in XEGS mode will start Missile Command!

Edited May 27, 2016 by Neo-Rio

[flashjazzcat]

Would it be possible to use the START, SELECT or OPTION buttons to set drive and tag volumes? I say this because an XEGS without a keyboard has no hope of using the keyboard to play multi-disk games like Gauntlet, for example.

Yeah - sounds like a good idea. I don't have an XEGS with U1MB, so definitely rely on others for usability testing there. I'll see what I can cook up, space permitting.

 

Also, it would be nice if left/right joystick movements jumped "pages" in the game launcher. Otherwise lists of games that are 200 entries long take forever to scroll down in.

Maybe use diagonal movements to move between the icons at the top of the screen? Or maybe use the SELECT button for this?

I just had another look at the loader and there are a couple of joystick "gestures" already set up which are relevant here. Button down/stick left jumps into the drive selection box, and button down/stick right assigns the next logical drive number to the highlighted ATR. Once you're into the drive selection spinner, up/down changes the drive number and the button selects one and mounts the ATR.

 

In spite of this, the joystick control (in Altirra, at least) seems a little unforgiving so I'll set aside some time over the weekend to test again on real hardware. I take the point about list navigation without the keyboard, although there are stick gestures for that too: button down/stick down advances one screen, while button down/stick up regresses one screen. However, this appears not to work in 100 per cent of circumstances, so I'll take another look at that too.

 

Anyway: there's no reason we can't double up on a few functions using the console keys if that's useful, although I'm a little reluctant to abandon cursor left/right for moving between the menus at this stage, since this functionality is pretty ingrained now (with this user, at least, who now never fails to hit Enter when using Candle's original BIOS, expecting the highlighted option to change as it does in the new one).

 

UPDATE: Just discovered that trying to mount and run an ATR from the SIDE2 with no keyboard in the XEGS in XEGS mode will start Missile Command!

This is tricky to test here for the aforementioned reasons, although I can't reproduce it in Altirra for some reason. Fact is, if any cart allows a disk boot and the OS gets as far as polling parallel devices, the ATR will boot. I guess the XEGS OS has the PBI code intact (can't remember: I assume so), so it's puzzling.

[+mytek]

Anyway: there's no reason we can't double up on a few functions using the console keys if that's useful, although I'm a little reluctant to abandon cursor left/right for moving between the menus at this stage, since this functionality is pretty ingrained now (with this user, at least, who now never fails to hit Enter when using Candle's original BIOS, expecting the highlighted option to change as it does in the new one).

 

Please leave the existing cursor left/right and enter functions the way they are. It works great when on a keyboard, especially TK-II.

 

- Michael

[flashjazzcat]

Page up/down (button pressed with joystick up/down) does work as designed: I'd simply forgotten you have to release the trigger on each repetition.

[Neo-Rio]

Page up/down (button pressed with joystick up/down) does work as designed: I'd simply forgotten you have to release the trigger on each repetition.

 

I see that this does work, but it's..... awkward... primarily because in trying to do the movement I often accidently mount a disk I didn't intend to when hitting the firebutton. Usability gets a thumbs down - even though it works.... it's just that it works as well as trying to pull combos in Street Fighter II

 

I'm thinking that a diagonal move would work better - just to keep the left/right keyboard/joystick users happy. Perhaps keyboard users can have a special keys for page changing?

 

...and the XEGS doesn't have PBI. Not sure about what would happen if I flipped the OS back to the XE/XL ROM, and tried mounting disks on the XEGS. Will try it out.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Neo-Rio

[flashjazzcat]

Thumbs down... oh dear. Keyboard users already have shortcuts for page up/down, mind you. Diagonal joystick movement has potential. I added proper debounce and faster joystick auto-repeat last night (feels a lot better) and I'll see if there's room to add diagonal functionality too.

[flashjazzcat]

Tried attaching keyboard shortcuts to diagonal movement and it was wildly uncontrollable. I'm using a stock XEGS joystick here (which I figure is a reasonable if humble base model) and while it's capable of accurate button down/move/button up actions without inadvertently mounting ATRs, etc, trying to hit a diagonal axis without first momentarily bumping into straight up/down or left/right is nigh on impossible. So - I took that right back out.

 

There was a small bug in the trigger action code and fixing that (along with the nicer debounce and faster repeat) should improve usability somewhat. I'll try to squeeze some console key functionality in before uploading it later. There's a PBI BIOS update on the cards (to handle SIO2BT) and a couple of BIOS fixes, so ideally I want to upload the whole lot together.

[flashjazzcat]

Console keys also have debounce and auto-repeat, so here's the loader paging through a list of 171 names with the Select key held down:

 

 

Struggling for bytes but will upload over the weekend.

[+Stephen]

Console keys also have debounce and auto-repeat, so here's the loader paging through a list of 171 names with the Select key held down:

 

 

Struggling for bytes but will upload over the weekend.

That's awesome.

[Neo-Rio]

Thanks so much for your hard work on this!

The U1MB BIOS is really really nice

Will be happy to test once you have something.

Edited May 30, 2016 by Neo-Rio

[flashjazzcat]

Will be happy to test once you have something.

 

Please try this one:

 

uload104.zip

 

If all is good, I'll upload this with the rest of the firmware update in the main BIOS thread.

 

(See changelog for details of changes).

Edited May 31, 2016 by flashjazzcat

[Neo-Rio]

 

Please try this one:

Seems to work. ... and I've got the hang of the page swapping with the joystick now (down first, then button)

 

I guess there's only two things on my XEGS+1UMB+SIDE2 wishlist now, and not sure if ever possible.

 

- Being able to mount disk(s) on the XEGS without the keyboard (currently with XEGS mode on, booting an ATR from side loader drops out to the XEGS game ROM)

- Some way to play 400/800 games on ATR that require the older OS ROMs via U1MB and SIDE2 (OSB has no PBI, hence ATR mounting is impossible)