Jump to content
IGNORED

Altirra 3.00 released


phaeron

Recommended Posts

Something I found during coding.

 

Not a big thing, but it's a incompatibility issue.

Standard (unmodified) 810 and 1050 drives can't read DD disks, right?

Well, emulation in Altirra does.

 

Perhaps something for the to-do list.

 

I have a question also, perhaps Phaeron knows the answer ;-)

The first 3 sectors of a "DD disk" are always read as SD, so the OS can boot from it.

(I noticed the ATR-format has no room for 256 byte boot-sectors too).

 

Now this is what questioning me

-These 3 sectors are they physically SD formatted on the disk?

-Or does the drive-logic pretend it's SD and sends out 128 byte + checksum when SIO reads these 3 sectors?

In other words, is the disk physically formatted DD completely and these 3 SD sectors are emulated?

 

Later!

Sijmen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now this is what questioning me

-These 3 sectors are they physically SD formatted on the disk?

-Or does the drive-logic pretend it's SD and sends out 128 byte + checksum when SIO reads these 3 sectors?

In other words, is the disk physically formatted DD completely and these 3 SD sectors are emulated?

1050 upgrades and XF551 (plus probably also indus, ...) format all sectors in DD. "SD" on the first three sectors is "emulated" by the drive firmware.

 

so long,

 

Hias

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The standard disk drive emulation modes are a little ambiguous at this point as they cover a lot of things, but yeah, letting you read DD disks in 810/1050 mode is a bug. I blocked the PERCOM commands but I guess not the status bits or actual reads.

 

Isn't it only 1050 Duplicator bug? These true DD first 3 sectors?

 

Other way around. Most drives including US Doubler and XF551 format boot sectors on double density disks as 256 byte MFM and then transfer only the first 128 bytes to the computer. The extra 128 bytes are discarded on read and padded on write. 1050 Duplicator uses actual 128 byte MFM sectors. You can see this in Altirra if you enable the FDCWTDATA logging channel and then format disks with the full drive emulators. For all drives, though, the SIO transaction for those sectors is identical to SD (the point of the funky boot sectors in the first place). None that I'm aware of use FM for the boot sectors, as this would be difficult/impossible to format.

 

There are actually ATR images that have full 256 byte boot sectors, which Altirra will handle as part of its code for accommodating the DD boot sector encoding mess. They're detected by whether the paragraph count works out to a whole number or extra half sector. The extra data makes no difference with the standard disk protocol as you can't get to it anyway. It does, however, matter with full drive emulation since the firmware can see that data, and in fact this is required to boot Indus CP/M. XFD is a more reliable disk image format for this as it always has full-sized boot sectors.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the replies.

 

 

No need to de-bug Altirra directly, it was just something I discovered.

 

When you put a DD disk in a 1050, you can not read the first 3 sectors either.

The ATR-file throw me on a sidetrack reading 3 sectors in SD

 

Back to coding :-)

Writing a TinyDOS from scratch for fun.....

 

post-6668-0-44045700-1521099393.png

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test14.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test14-src.zip

 

  • Added workaround for MultiBASIC not being able to do DIR correctly on the H: device (unterminated strings passed to CIO).
  • Widened hit area of splitters into adjacent panes slightly to make them easier to hit.
  • Fixed .vectors command reporting bogus native IRQ and emulation COP vectors.
  • Fixed instructions with [dp] and [dp],Y addressing modes showing bogus effective addresses in disassemblies.
  • Fixed D register not being shown properly in history when special registers are enabled.
  • Turned off symbol decoding for direct page addressing modes when D register is non-zero so references to a local direct page don't show up as bogus OS variables.
  • Added a variant of AltirraOS for 65C816 CPUs that supports switching into native mode. The interrupt conventions for doing this are the same as the 65C816 XL OS, but the interrupts aren't optimized and the kmalloc/kfree calls are stubbed. This OS is mainly so it is possible to run some 65C816 code out of the box.
  • The window caption is now customizable using a mini-language -- this means you can select and reorder all of the stuff that shows up on the window's title bar. One thing I'm considering changing in the standard setup is showing the profile name at the beginning if you're using a custom profile, i.e. "850 test - Altirra...." Had too many times when I accidentally changed some special profile.
  • Like 10
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes please for the profile name, I have done the same thing as well.

 

Small question, on Koronis Rift, when you are playing a rift there's pinky purple bars at the left and right of the screen, the left is bigger than the right so looks odd and if I set the screen view to OS you still get them, is this as per the game or something else?

 

I've searched but can't find an answer to this on here..

Edited by Mclaneinc
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been having a problem toggling key CAPS. I don't know if it's a bug or if something is going wrong between knoppix/wine/Altirra.

 

When I press CAPS (CapsLk on the laptop) the state doesn't always toggle. Instead I now get a double click sound for each key I press. Generally, the double click sounds don't go away regardless of the state of key CAPS. [correction] The double clicks do go away but they don't seem to correspond to each toggling of CAPS.

 

I'm enclosing this video.

Edited by a8isa1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you tried the variations of how the keyboard is scanned in the Configure System / keyboard setting...(That's if you are using the latest or the beta before that...Its somewhere else on Altirra before that..

 

Edit: just tried to recreate on my PC and its all working as it should even when raw or uncooked is chosen so maybe its a by product of the running it under Wine as you thought?

 

I'm sure someone will know the real answer..

Edited by Mclaneinc
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

One thing I'm considering changing in the standard setup is showing the profile name at the beginning if you're using a custom profile, i.e. "850 test - Altirra...." Had too many times when I accidentally changed some special profile.

This sounds like a really good idea. Thanks for the numerous 65C816 fixes as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you tried the variations of how the keyboard is scanned in the Configure System / keyboard setting...(That's if you are using the latest or the beta before that...Its somewhere else on Altirra before that..

 

Edit: just tried to recreate on my PC and its all working as it should even when raw or uncooked is chosen so maybe its a by product of the running it under Wine as you thought?

 

I'm sure someone will know the real answer..

McIaneinc, thanks for the tip.

 

The problem exists for 'Cooked keys' and for 'Raw keys' but completely goes away for 'Full raw keyboard scan'. That is to say, the double click sound is gone and CAPS state toggles on each and every press of CapsLk.

 

There's probably some timing feature nested deep in the inards of wine, somewhere.

Edited by a8isa1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

To put the profile name in the title bar, enable the custom window caption in Configure System and add this line:

 

 

isTempProfile ? "*"
profileName " - "
mainTitle

 

As for the Caps Lock shenanigans, I'm not too surprised. It's a weird key to handle because of the way that PC keyboard auto-toggle it; to defeat that Altirra has to feed another Caps Lock back into the input stream to handle it and not respond to its own injected Caps Lock. I'm guessing something about that isn't supported in the unusual Linux+Wine environment. Full keyboard scan is probably "fixing" it by emulating the actual scan rate, which causes one of the two keypresses to be dropped. Which works, but if you're a fast typist you can get some of your regular keys dropped too like on the real hardware.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Under View / Adjust colours....I reckon it should be with Video but He's the boss :)

 

Artifacting Phase I use 176

 

Artifacting saturation, I use 331, it matches the A.E. advert pretty closely..

Edited by Mclaneinc
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, I have a potentially invalid question/suggestion. icon_smile.gif

 

After creating a number of wide playfield Antic Mode 4 binaries in G2F, I'm wondering about the overscan and vertical override of Altirra because it just doesn't end up as being as good for viewing pictures as my own real-world CRT. This Hulk image is one of my favorite simple creations when viewed on an authentic CRT, and I think it is a good example:

 

SCREENSHOT OF AN ALTIRRA DISPLAY WINDOW, OVERSCAN EXTENDED:

post-18231-0-81743700-1521675893.png

ATARI 8-BIT BINARY:

hulk3a1.xex

 

I've got my CRT displaying as wide and as tall of an image as it can, and it could be the limitations of that particular TV set (I haven't tried others) but I'm not getting the dynamic garbage bands on the right from when the ANTIC is pulling unrelated data off of the bus, and I'm not getting the blank area on the left. (I'll admit, I'm not sure if it actually makes it into the NTSC signal or not, but I really don't want to view it so much. I should probably be glad it isn't being rendered onto phosphors.)

 

But this leads me to wonder about Altirra. For my own enjoyment, I was hoping for an option that would just display the wide playfield and not the left border or right garbage? "OS Screen Only" is too narrow. "Normal" is still too narrow but better. "Extended" finally displays the full image, but includes unwanted material on both sides.

 

"Full" is crazy too-wide and I'd love to know if that's something a nominal Atari config could take advantage of?

 

But back to the main topic...

 

THE RAPID-FIRE ROUND OF QUESTIONS: Might there be a goldilocks overscan setting that works for me as well as others? Or am I doing something that generates oddball output that is not worth targeting? Or am I missing a feature which gracefully handles this?

 

PS: On the plus side, I'm plenty happy with the Vertical Override of "Extended".

 

Thanks (for your time in considering this, for Altirra, and for continuing to put up with me in a graceful manner),

jmccorm

 

EDIT: I guess I'm just looking for a "usable/useful horizontal crop" setting that fits my use case, might be useful in other cases too?

Edited by jmccorm
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, I have a potentially invalid question/suggestion. icon_smile.gif

 

After creating a number of wide playfield Antic Mode 4 binaries in G2F, I'm wondering about the overscan and vertical override of Altirra because it just doesn't end up as being as good for viewing pictures as my own real-world CRT. This Hulk image is one of my favorite simple creations when viewed on an authentic CRT, and I think it is a good example:

 

SCREENSHOT OF AN ALTIRRA DISPLAY WINDOW, OVERSCAN EXTENDED:

attachicon.gifhulk3a1.png

ATARI 8-BIT BINARY:

attachicon.gifhulk3a1.xex

 

I've got my CRT displaying as wide and as tall of an image as it can, and it could be the limitations of that particular TV set (I haven't tried others) but I'm not getting the dynamic garbage bands on the right from when the ANTIC is pulling unrelated data off of the bus, and I'm not getting the blank area on the left. (I'll admit, I'm not sure if it actually makes it into the NTSC signal or not, but I really don't want to view it so much. I should probably be glad it isn't being rendered onto phosphors.)

 

But this leads me to wonder about Altirra. For my own enjoyment, I was hoping for an option that would just display the wide playfield and not the left border or right garbage? "OS Screen Only" is too narrow. "Normal" is still too narrow but better. "Extended" finally displays the full image, but includes unwanted material on both sides.

 

"Full" is crazy too-wide and I'd love to know if that's something a nominal Atari config could take advantage of?

 

But back to the main topic...

 

THE RAPID-FIRE ROUND OF QUESTIONS: Might there be a goldilocks overscan setting that works for me as well as others? Or am I doing something that generates oddball output that is not worth targeting? Or am I missing a feature which gracefully handles this?

 

PS: On the plus side, I'm plenty happy with the Vertical Override of "Extended".

 

Thanks (for your time in considering this, for Altirra, and for continuing to put up with me in a graceful manner),

jmccorm

 

EDIT: I guess I'm just looking for a "usable/useful horizontal crop" setting that fits my use case, might be useful in other cases too?

jmccorm, overscan normal with vertical override extended seems to work well with your picture.

Edited by a8isa1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...