Altirra 2.80 released

[Mclaneinc]

Forgive this newbie question, despite all my years around Atari's I never had a non Atari drive, they were mega expensive here and my 810 and 1050's did what I needed with the mods in, so now with these Percoms etc do they work as boot drives, I loaded up Mydos with the Percom being D2: and formatted a disk which it recognised, set the density to 2D and played with Altirra to make a DD disk etc, don't know if it was right but it seemed to work but can these boot (nothing I've thrown at it so far) or were they an additional data drive only?

 

Any pointers to save vast amounts of reading

[Marek Konopka]

 

Other changes:

• Added option for keys double-mapped between the keyboard and input maps to be received by both, instead of only by the input map.

 

Sorry, yeah, this wasn't clear to me either -- please note if you're talking about VBXE specific issues. Also, ANTIC isn't involved with palettes -- that's GTIA/VBXE's job -- and color map is typically synonymous with palette. The map you're talking about in VBXE is typically called the attribute map. I did find and fix a bug where the VBXE emulation was not masking off the LSB in the attribute map colors if xcolor=0.

 

 

I will pay attention. Anyway, thank you very much for a correction. I will be doing verification shortly and update you on the outcome.

[Atari_Ace]

...

Other changes:

• Added .logopen and .logclose commands to the debugger.

...

 

Thanks!

[Marek Konopka]

 

I will be doing verification shortly and update you on the outcome.

 

The correction works fine. Thanks again.

Edited April 3, 2017 by Marek Konopka

[phaeron]

That is IF they sound any different, I personally only had Atari modified drives so apart from the step being faster they sounded all the same?

 

And IF they do have sounds would the inclusion of the sounds make the exe bigger than you want?

 

The rotation sound doesn't have or really need variants per drive, though I need to try to make a better sample. The current one doesn't loop cleanly and sounds somewhat like a washing machine. Actual drive rotation sounds have two parts, the motor and the disk; the disk sound runs at rotation speed (288 RPM) and can be fairly loud depending on how crappily made the disk is and whether it has a loud wiping sound as the media rotates. Some were so loud it sounded more like your disk was being sanded than read. The motor sound is intentionally louder in Altirra, though, so you can hear it; the 1050's motor sound is barely audible.

 

The step sound mainly comes from the mechanism, so yeah, besides step rate 810s and 1050s should sound similar. Though I have heard that even those drives sometimes shipped with more than one kind of mechanism. The stock 810 seeks so fast that the actual sound doesn't matter much except when the head is bumping against the track 0 head and effectively stepping at half speed; the 1050 and XF551 sounds matter a lot more since the step rate is a lot lower. There are several videos of an Indus GT on YouTube, and that definitely sounds more clattery than what I've got hooked up, though that could be due to the mic being so close to the front of the drive.

 

Size isn't really an issue as the samples are really short (20ms or less) and they could be stored more compactly. Besides having the sounds available, the main issue is getting a clean enough sample, which is especially difficult given that some drives almost never do a single isolated step and it's very easy to get a lot of noise into the recording. If anyone's got one of the weirder emulated drives and wants to help get representative sounds in, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

 

As a side note, disk drives can also make different step sounds depending on whether they're nearer to the inside or outside of the disk. This isn't that noticeable on the 5.25" drives, which is why I haven't bothered. However, it was really noticeable on 3.5" Amiga drives, and therefore also the lack of variation when WinUAE used a uniform step sound. I'll never forget the "uh-uh, uh-uh" sound that basically signified that your disk was not readable....

 

Forgive this newbie question, despite all my years around Atari's I never had a non Atari drive, they were mega expensive here and my 810 and 1050's did what I needed with the mods in, so now with these Percoms etc do they work as boot drives, I loaded up Mydos with the Percom being D2: and formatted a disk which it recognised, set the density to 2D and played with Altirra to make a DD disk etc, don't know if it was right but it seemed to work but can these boot (nothing I've thrown at it so far) or were they an additional data drive only?

 

Yes, the Percom can boot double density. You need it to be D1:, obviously, and also the disk to be inited with a DOS that can boot double density. Any DOS+disk combination that can use double density should also be able to boot off of it... well, exception being SpartaDOS X of course, since it doesn't actually boot off of the disk. But yeah, I know what you mean. Growing up I only had 810s, so I hadn't even experienced 1050 enhanced density until I started emulating, and even now I still don't actually have a physical double density capable drive. After emulating a few of the more oddball ones, though, I'd gladly use one of the enhanced 1050s over the others since most of them failed at either or both of density detection and high-speed operation.

[Mclaneinc]

Thanks Avery for more explanation than I deserved as it was a pretty silly set of questions.

[Rybags]

OK, I virutally never use tape emulation and this is with version 2.70.

 

I boot a tape from Cas file using the pulldown option. The Cas file has 3 games but subsequent boot to try and get the next item on the tape just forces it to rewind before loading.

Even moving the pointer by hand to the last file, I reboot by Shift F5, holding F2 to get the tape boot and it still rewinds the tape without me wanting it to.

[phaeron]

Update:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.90-test31.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.90-test31-src.zip

 

Tying up some loose ends on the Percom and ATR8000:

• Finished out the 6809 implementation -- all instructions are now implemented (and, with luck, will actually work).
• ATR8000 printer port and RS-232 serial port implemented. The printer port is P: compatible, but you will need a R: driver for the serial port.

[tschak909]

Which basically means either MyDOS 3.18, or SpartaDOS with the right rs232 driver (I forget exactly what it was called).

 

-Thom

[Triads]

Guess this is nitpicking, but what about the Percom printer port?

[+DrVenkman]

Guess this is nitpicking, but what about the Percom printer port?

 

And speaking of nits, any plans to emulate the P:R: Connection - I happen to have one of those rather than an 850, and it's nice to keep my Altirra emulation setup as close to identical to my regular everyday hardware as possible.

[fujidude]

 

And speaking of nits, any plans to emulate the P:R: Connection - I happen to have one of those rather than an 850, and it's nice to keep my Altirra emulation setup as close to identical to my regular everyday hardware as possible.

 

Okay but... is it somewhat safe to assume you have a PR: Connection because the 850 was too expensive or hard to find? Isn't it cool to be able to have the "hardware" you always wanted anyway on your Altirra setup?

[+DrVenkman]

 

Okay but... is it somewhat safe to assume you have a PR: Connection because the 850 was too expensive or hard to find? Isn't it cool to be able to have the "hardware" you always wanted anyway on your Altirra setup?

 

Nope, not a safe assumption at all, lol!

 

I never had an 850 as a kid - I had a 1027 as a kid, and then a Star SG-10, which I *think* used its own interface cable. The P:R: Connection I have now is one I got in a large eBay lot about 15 years ago - never even occurred to me it might be useful until I ran across the threads recently about connecting our machines to retro BBS systems via Telnet connections and Lantronix devices. So now I have a Lantronix MSS100 connected to a P:R: Connection, hooked up to my daily-driver U1MB-equipped 800XL. I just managed to get it all connected and working in the last couple of days - it's been fantastic to relive some of my BBS days of yore.

[Keatah]

Q: The 6809 stuff in Altirra, is that for the disk drives? Or is that like a co-processor?

[fujidude]

 

Nope, not a safe assumption at all, lol!

 

I never had an 850 as a kid - I had a 1027 as a kid, and then a Star SG-10, which I *think* used its own interface cable. The P:R: Connection I have now is one I got in a large eBay lot about 15 years ago - never even occurred to me it might be useful until I ran across the threads recently about connecting our machines to retro BBS systems via Telnet connections and Lantronix devices. So now I have a Lantronix MSS100 connected to a P:R: Connection, hooked up to my daily-driver U1MB-equipped 800XL. I just managed to get it all connected and working in the last couple of days - it's been fantastic to relive some of my BBS days of yore.

 

Fair enough. But isn't it wonderful that there exist RS232 serial solutions for Altirra, even if none are technically provided via a virtual PR: Connection? I know, I know, in full disclosure you did categorized it as a "nit."

[+DrVenkman]

 

Fair enough. But isn't it wonderful that there exist RS232 serial solutions for Altirra, even if none are technically provided via a virtual PR: Connection? I know, I know, in full disclosure you did categorized it as a "nit."

 

That's very true. The depth, breadth and accuracy of Altirra - and the rate at which Avery finds, fixes and updates even the most obscure features and behavior - is nothing short of amazing.

​And in fairness, the P:R:C is functionally identical to the 850 most of the time but it turns out if using the ICE-T at least, the PRC.SYS file needs to be loaded first before ICE-T. By contrast, BobTerm works just fine without PRC.SYS. When I testing out my batch files and use case, it's nice to be able to replicate small steps like this so I don't get confused moving from one to the other.

 

Anyway, it *is* a nit indeed and doesn't affect most people, nor my enjoyment and satisfaction with Altirra in the grand scheme of things.

[Triads]

One piece of h/w id like to see added is a MPP 1000 C or E modem. Everything else I've owned or would like to see emulated, has been done..

[phaeron]

Guess this is nitpicking, but what about the Percom printer port?

 

The model emulated is the RFD-40S1, which has no printer port. I don't have info on the AT88-S1PD that does have one.

 

 

And speaking of nits, any plans to emulate the P:R: Connection - I happen to have one of those rather than an 850, and it's nice to keep my Altirra emulation setup as close to identical to my regular everyday hardware as possible.

 

Hadn't planned on it due to the similarity to the 850, but it does seem like there might be enough info to do so (surprisingly, the P:R:C's SIO commands are fully documented).

 

Q: The 6809 stuff in Altirra, is that for the disk drives? Or is that like a co-processor?

 

Only for the disk drive. The Percom drive only has 1K of memory, so you can't run an OS on it either.

[drac030]

Altirra 2.90-test31. Tools->Options->Media->Default write mode: read/write.

 

Nevertheless, ATR images mounted on File->Disk drives keep switching from R/W to VR/W on every "format" command issued (or at least this looks so), which is quite annoying, when unwanted (i.e. when the formatting was intended and one has to do it more often than once a day). And I cannot see any method of preventing it or reverting to the R/W mode except clicking on "Save as..." and overwriting the mounted image with itself using this option.

 

Could this be fixed?

Edited April 19, 2017 by drac030

[phaeron]

Altirra 2.90-test31. Tools->Options->Media->Default write mode: read/write.

 

Nevertheless, ATR images mounted on File->Disk drives keep switching from R/W to VR/W on every "format" command issued (or at least this looks so), which is quite annoying, when unwanted (i.e. when the formatting was intended and one has to do it more often than once a day). And I cannot see any method of preventing it or reverting to the R/W mode except clicking on "Save as..." and overwriting the mounted image with itself using this option.

 

This is a bug. It switches to VRW mode because format creates a new disk image internally, but in this case it should be associating it with the same file on disk and using R/W mode instead. I'll look at fixing it.

[jeffpiep]

I would like to use Altirra to telnet to BBS's. I have searched around and cannot figure it out.

 

I added an 850 with emulated R: handler from the Devices menu. I run Bobterm and enter the terminal mode. I type "AT" and there's no echo back. Shouldn't I expect an "OK" in return?

 

Thanks in advance - there must be something simple I'm missing.

[phaeron]

I added an 850 with emulated R: handler from the Devices menu. I run Bobterm and enter the terminal mode. I type "AT" and there's no echo back. Shouldn't I expect an "OK" in return?

 

Make sure you have changed the translation mode in Bobterm from Atari to ASCII. Modems expect conventional line endings and won't work with ATASCII EOLs.

[HiassofT]

I had a quick look at the disk drive emulation feature and have to say it's awesome, it'll surely serve me well when debugging speedy SIO issues. Thanks a lot!

 

One minor issue: in the debugger it looks like the CPU of the Speedy is a 65C816 instead of a 65C02 - register and disassembly output don't quite look like a 65C02 (tested with 2.90-test31):

Altirra:0> ~1s
Target now set to 1:Disk Drive CPU.
Altirra:1> r
(200:311,113) C=0000 X=00 Y=00 S=FF P=30 (      )  00:E000: D8        CLD
              B=00 D=0000
Altirra:1> u fff0
00:FFF0: FFFFFFFF  SBC $FFFFFF,X
00:FFF4: FFFFFFFF  SBC $FFFFFF,X
00:FFF8: FFFFFF17  SBC $17FFFF,X

so long,

 

Hias

Edited April 22, 2017 by HiassofT

[Mclaneinc]

Was just about to ask if the volume of the head step could be variable which I'd mentioned I thought it was too loud and before typing I just was looking through the options about another item and there in Audio was drive volume, thank you kindly Avery, don't know when this was added but its great.

 

Thank you..

[phaeron]

One minor issue: in the debugger it looks like the CPU of the Speedy is a 65C816 instead of a 65C02 - register and disassembly output don't quite look like a 65C02 (tested with 2.90-test31):

 

Yes, it currently emulates a 65C802, not a 6502 or 65C02. This is because I bootstrapped the full drive emulators off of the core I already had for Veronica, and I need to strip it down to a proper 6502/65C02 core before ship. The main thing to watch out for is that RMW abs,X will take 6 cycles instead of 7 and single-cycle NOPs aren't available. abs,X wrapping is fine since the bank address is discarded.