Turgen System 8.8.x Adventures

[baktra]

With the latest commits, TURGEN converts binary files withe the same efficiency as the Trans File DB utiility for Turbo 2600.

 

So what is left? Support for the Wizard and documentation updates. Then 9.2.2 can be released.

 

The code name of the release will be "Shock", tribute to the authors of Turbo 2600 I shamelesly stolen the loader from. To redeem myself, I will make a pligrimage to Swiebodzin, the town where the company resided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[baktra]

TURGEN 9.2.2 - "Swiebodzin" has been released. The Polish Turbo 2600 is now supported by the Standard Plus plugin.

 

When using Turbo 2600, remember the following:

• With non-modified data recorder, you can achieve around 900 bps. For higher transfer speeds, you would need to have a special interface.
• The XL/XE computer with 64 KB RAM is required.
• The software resides in the RAM under ROM; binary files using the addressing range during the loading process might destroy the loader
• Binary files with INIT segments are supported. However, the motor is not stopped. Use the silence lists to mitigate the problem.
• Binary files tampering with MMU through PORTB can accidentally ruin the loading, if the tampering enables the OS ROM.

[baktra]

On 8/23/2023 at 6:06 AM, baktra said:

With the latest commits, TURGEN converts binary files withe the same efficiency as the Trans File DB utiility for Turbo 2600.

 

So what is left? Support for the Wizard and documentation updates. Then 9.2.2 can be released.

 

The code name of the release will be "Shock", tribute to the authors of Turbo 2600 I shamelesly stolen the loader from. To redeem myself, I will make a pligrimage to Swiebodzin, the town where the company resided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, I changed the codename to the name of the Polish city, where the Turbo 2600 was born. 

[baktra]

For the next adventure, I've chosen some leftovers.

• When you create a Turbo 2600 playlist item with Wizard/Batch/GENCAS, you do not get any automatically generated program title. This needs fixing.
• The LBE file format of the Standard Plugin. I've decided to streamline the file format. Instead of having the file metadata (program title, colors, soundr, crsinh and others) in the first 40 bytes of the first long block, the metadata will be in the LBE loader itself. That makes the long blocks unified and streamlined. And as a bonus, the program title is displayed right when the LBE loader is loaded, and lasts for at least 5 seconds. This is also more friendly to dual track tapes.
• The Report tab of the Tape Image Extractor tool is useless and will be removed.

[baktra]

The 9.2.3 is out.

• Bugs in the Turbo 2600 support have been fixed (lack of automatic program title generation when converting files using Wizard/Batch/CLI, too many transfer speeds offered by the Wizard)
• The LBE format provided by the Standard plugin was refined as described in the previous post
• The Report tab was removed from the Tape Image Extractor
• There is a new "International" flag. The change is purely esthetical, not driven by any politics.

Edited August 31, 2023 by baktra
Fix typos

[baktra]

Time to tickle the CAS2Audio android app. Though its architecture is dated, I am adding an option to reverse polarity of the signal, and most importantly, list of 12 recently selected tape images for better usability. This will be in 1.0.3 soon. Then a well-deserved refactoring, perhaps.

[baktra]

The CAS2Audio 1.0.3 has been released. 

• A new option to invert polarity of the pulses was introduced
• List of 12 most recent tape images allows easier re-selection
• UI has been slightly refined

It is a minor update at best. Since the app is distributed as a loose apk package, do not forget to read the installation instructions.

If you prefer simplicity, the CAS2Audio can be a viable Atari-only alternative to the TapDancer app.

 

I will have to make a decision on how to continue with this app. If it is to prosper, then I would need to review the Android app development best practices and implement them in the app.

Not sure if it is something I am interested in at the moment. 

[baktra]

I have started a long overdue refactoring of the SignalGenerator and related classes. This will take some time and inevitably bring some bugs, but it is necessary to keep some sanity of the code. Some old plugins will get an overhaul too. Same function, less code.

[baktra]

Release 9.2.4 is out.

The signal generator now uses object-oriented instructions instead of just plain integers. That is an infrastructure change. The User-facing enhancements are minuscule this time.

As specified in the release announcement, the 9.2.4 is for adventurous souls. If you prefer stability to adventures, keep using 9.2.3.

 

As I've appropriated the 'Bum Box' device, I will put it to work and get another round of tests with the 'real' hardware done.

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by baktra

[baktra]

There is one known nasty bug in 9.2.4. After resuming a paused signal output, the signal generator terminates instead of continuing. This will be fixed in 9.2.5. In the meantime, you can download .jar file from the ver_9.2.5 branch.

Another peculiarity are the progress bars in the Work List. The progress indication is rather coarse. This is also addressed in the upcoming 9.2.5.

[baktra]

Version 9.2.5 has been released.

As anticipated, this version fixes bugs of the 9.2.4, caused by the refactoring of the generator instructions. The 9.2.5 just makes things right, including the granularity of the progress indication in the Worklist.

 

What is next?

• There is still the testing with the "Bum Box" device to be done.
• I've also got a rather peculiar request from Poland. The Speedy2700 binary loader provided by the "KSO Turbo 2000" plugin is a de-obfuscated and streamlined (i.e.: no title screen) version of the original. The request is to provide a version with the original title screen. I will probably honor that request and allow the users to select either "Streamlined" or "Title Screen" version of the loader. As I do not like obfuscated loaders very much (one could say I rather hate them), I will take the existing source code of the de-obfuscated loader and add a conditionally compiled title screen that will 100 % match the original one. I will print the text using the E: device and control characters, and see how it works. Let's not call it cracking, let us call it refurbishment instead.

 

[baktra]

As the list of innovations for 9.2.6 is rather short, there will be one more goodie. The "Create tape sides" tool will be enhanced to give you a choice between WAVE files and, newly, tape images.

[baktra]

Behold the 9.2.6. 

Still some dust settling after the refactoring in 9.2.4.

• KSO Turbo 2000. You can choose between two types of the Speedy2700 loader - "Streamlined" and "With title screen". The "With title screen" option emulates the behavior of the original Speedy2700 loader. Silence can be optionally generated after the Speedy2700 loader.
• The Create Tape Sides tool was enhanced to generate tape images.
• GENCAS CLI: Using the -a option to append to an existing tape image didn't work. No chunks were added to the existing tape image.

If you are wondering what the Create Tape Sides tool is, then imagine you have a TURGEN project with hundreds of items, and you want to generate one .WAV file for each 45-minute tape side. This powerful tool is exactly where you go.

[baktra]

The Create Tape Sides tool in action

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by baktra
Update video link

[baktra]

Next on the roadmap is another piece of infrastructure work. The tool for creating dual track tapes. In its current state, it works. There are two major downsides, however.

1. It requires the SOX tool to work. The SOX tool is not getting maintenance for several years.
2. The SOX tool doesn't support MP3 files (there are still too many around) out of the box, and adding support is beyond the capabilities of an ordinary user.

Therefore, I am going to make a change and switch to FFMPEG instead of SOX.

1. The FFMPEG is maintained and it is a mainstream tool.
2. MP3 files are supported out of the box, even for Windows installation.

This change is not without its price, though.

1. FFMPEG is massive.
2. FFMPEG cannot apply fade in and fade out effects and then repeat the output stream. One more processing step will be needed.

 

In terms of UI, there will be a possibility to use a file chooser to navigate to locate the ffmpeg and ASAP binaries.  Still imperfect, but better than asking an average Windows user to set the PATH variable.

But... Is a dual track tape creation a task for an average Windows user? Who knows.

Edited October 27, 2023 by baktra

[baktra]

The work is going surprisingly well. Except the last two steps (padding and up-mixing back to stereo), everything has been changed to ffmpeg. The last two steps are trivial, so these will be finished soon.

What is left?

• Adding controls that will allow locating the ffmpeg and ffmprobe binaries.
• I will change the look and feel of the report. Instead of just shooting cryptic ffmpeg commands, a high-level description of what is happening will be displayed (e.g "Downmixing the audio track to mono..." etc).
• Of course, when something goes wrong, full command lines and outputs will be displayed in the dialog for diagnostics.

As a side effect of using ffmpeg, the input file can also be a video file. The audio track will be extracted.

[+DjayBee]

59 minutes ago, baktra said:

As a side effect of using ffmpeg, the input file can also be a video file. The audio track will be extracted.

So the next time Saberman posts a video of a new game to YouTube, we just download the MPEG stream and have a bootable tape. 😜

 

[baktra]

All right, creating of bootable tapes from Saberman's YouTube videos is postponed for the next release.

 

In the meantime, we have 9.2.7 with the Create Dual Track tool improvements. In a nutshell, you will need to install FFMPEG instead of SOX to get your dual track tapes. FFMPEG is more mainstream and supports the MP3 decoding and encoding out-of-the-box.

Moreover, you will be able to use a file chooser to tell TURGEN where the ffmpeg.exe is. Or you can still depend on the PATH environment variable, as before.

 

[baktra]

Some tidbits about the transition from SOX to FFMPEG. Some of them can be direct results of my ignorance and lack of knowledge.

• FFMPEG is more of an encoder/decoder/multiplexer, while SOX is a tool more specialized for editing audio. Some editing is a bit harder to accomplish with FFMPEG. For example, the fade in and fade out effects. There is no convenient way of telling FFMPEG to fade out the last three seconds of the audio track.
• FFMPEG has no general setting for the quality of encoding to lossy formats, such as MP3 or OGG. Because of that, TURGEN simply detects if the output file is .OGG or .MP3 and sets options specific to the Vorbis or LAME encoders to achieve maximum bitrate. If you stick to the mainstream formats, everything is fine. If your output is .AVI (which is actually possible), then you are left with the defaults that might not be favorable.
• To work correctly, TURGEN requires FFMPEG version 6 (and there is no indication of the fact in the product documentation, a direct result of my ignorance). For sure, doesn't work with 4.x (figured that out when testing with Ubuntu). Unknown if it works with 5.x. It is possible that I have started a rat race between TURGEN and FFMPEG. I am hopeful the syntax of FFMPEG will be stable enough. 
• After transition to FFMPEG, the DualTrackCreation.java needs a bit of reorganization. Every step will deserve its own method in the future.
• The improved UI and messages feel good in general. The ability to locate the FFMPEG binary is most helpful to the Windows users, of course.

 

On the dual track in general

• The Create dual track tool is good when you want to create a dual track quickly and automatically, without too much thinking and fiddling.
• For a high quality dual track editions of Atari software with precise timing and refined signal strength, I would still recommend using a general digitized sound editor, such as Audacity, GoldWAVE, Adobe Audition etc.

 

[baktra]

Sigh. The dual track creation works also with older FFMPEG 5.1.2, which is a relief.

At the moment, there is no specific plan for the next version. When something transpires (for example a promised but forgotten enhancement 🙂, bug report, tape loading system worth supporting) the adventure will continue as needed.

[baktra]

The Turbo 6000 (and clones, such as Turbo Star) users have one small gift on its way. Ability to prepend the original Chaos Loader as a standard tape boot file. The loader is only 7 blocks long.

[baktra]

Three development efforts are forming.

 

Firstly, I have run an advanced linter against the code base. The findings are plentiful and many of them need addressing. Though bruising my ego a bit, helps me to code better in the future.

 

Secondly, I will *try* adding support for the Turbo Rapider 7500, a pwm-based turbo system from Poland (Voivodeship of the Lower Silesia, I guess). When looking at the loader from Altirra's debugger, it is a lot of WTFHIGOs. Such as why a PBI-related OS ROM code is executed.

 

Thirdly, there is a bug when interpreting the pwmc tape image chunks. If such a chunk contains more than one triplet of pulses, the 2nd and other triplets are ignored. That's what happens when you screw a simple for loop. Turgen never generates such chunk, but there are other tools that might.

[Poison]

It would be great to create USB3(or C)2SIO, connect XC12 directly to PC and create tape backups via Turgen  And create new MCs from Turgen directly to XC12

[baktra]

46 minutes ago, Poison said:

It would be great to create USB3(or C)2SIO, connect XC12 directly to PC and create tape backups via Turgen  And create new MCs from Turgen directly to XC12

I am not a hardware guy. However, I believe that Atarimax SIO2PC-USB has potential to evolve and support such function.

[Chri O.]

I love your software but I got one question is there any way to implement Play and Pause key binding for Atari 600 baud rate standard speed ?