A7800 - the Atari 7800 Emulator

[Trebor]

2 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Seems one of the nVidia driver updates is messing with A7800 now. ugh. I've had this happen in the past but can't recall how I fixed it back then.

 

What happens is that when I load up A7800 now, it seems to hang up my computer for a bit and takes about 30sec before the first screen pops up to select the machine type. It pauses like this on each selection? When I do finally get a game loaded, I'm only able to play for a bit and then it causes my entire computer to reset itself?! 

 

I'm able to play much more demanding games on this PC without this happening so I'm not sure what about A7800 causes this. But as I remember it working fine before I updated the nVidia driver last, I'm assuming something in the driver isn't playing nice with A7800 now.

 

Under 7800.ini, try changing the video from bgfx to auto:

Let it decide what works best for your current video driver and configuration. 

Though some of the (CRT) video effects may be unavailable.

[zzip]

20 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Seems one of the nVidia driver updates is messing with A7800 now. ugh. I've had this happen in the past but can't recall how I fixed it back then.

 

What happens is that when I load up A7800 now, it seems to hang up my computer for a bit and takes about 30sec before the first screen pops up to select the machine type. It pauses like this on each selection? When I do finally get a game loaded, I'm only able to play for a bit and then it causes my entire computer to reset itself?! 

 

I'm able to play much more demanding games on this PC without this happening so I'm not sure what about A7800 causes this. But as I remember it working fine before I updated the nVidia driver last, I'm assuming something in the driver isn't playing nice with A7800 now.

 

I had trouble recently and changed my output type to bgfx from what I was using previously.   I'd say experiment with different video settings and see if makes a difference

[MrChickenz]

This is a great emulator nicely designed. Thank You! I am having an issue if anyone has an idea! Everything loads great! Seems when I load a more demanding Homebrew works fine the first time. If I switch games or leave the computer on and go back to a game it lags then speeds up even less demanding games will do this. But if I reboot the computer the first game I run works fine again.

 

Seems like something’s not clearing out of memory maybe?

 

I have no issues running all my other emulators MAME, RetroArch, Stella, ….

 

Not the best computer but it runs plenty of games, programs with no issues. It’s not a gaming machine it won’t run the latest games.

runs pleanty of Steam games.

 

I tried a few suggestions in the thread DirectX and video to auto. With no luck.

Edited April 26 by MrChickenz

[MrChickenz]

Never mind it was my PC. I installed A7800 on my other PC and it works great! Thank You!

 

I could tell as soon as selected standard console the scrolling bars were scrolling much smoother!

 

The only issue I’m having now is my gaming skills Lol! I don’t know if you can help with that😆

 

Very nice emulator! It shows a lot of effort was put it to this! Thanks again!

[MrChickenz]

Is it possible to force full screen at startup?

[Trebor]

1 hour ago, MrChickenz said:

Is it possible to force full screen at startup?

Two ways:

1. Under the a7800.ini file, change 'window 1' to 'window 0' under the "OSD VIDEO OPTIONS" section:

 

 

2. From Command Line, the "-nowindow" option (minus the quotes).

[+Karl G]

I managed to compile a7800 for my Raspberry Pi 400, and it works, but the pokey audio output sounds bad. I suspect this is a speed issue, though. Mame is pretty beefy, and maybe my poor Pi can't keep up. So, my questions are:

• Is anyone else running a7800 on a Pi? If so, any tips for performance or audio?
• Is there a way to disable pokey sound support when running something via a7800?

 

[Trebor]

10 hours ago, Karl G said:

• Is there a way to disable pokey sound support when running something via a7800?

There is - but it is not pretty.  POKEY support only engages when the header tells it so.

If the POKEY setting is stripped from the *.a78 ROM header, it will not look to leverage and enable POKEY sound.

 

  

10 hours ago, Karl G said:

If so, any tips for performance or audio?

If you have access to it, editing the 7800.ini file to enable autoframe skip may help here.  1-2 frames skipped won't be so bad.  The section is under '# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS'.  Change the '0' to '1' under 'autoframeskip'.   The emulator will skip frames until performance hits 100%. 

 

If there's too much fluctuation with it,  the option below, 'frameskip' can be modified instead.  If using 'framekskip' keep 'autoframeskip' at '0', and then hard set a number of frames to skip, like '2' next to the 'frameskip' option.   This option will always just skip two frames for every game regardless of performance.