DS99/4a - Emulator for the DS/DSi

[+llabnip]

1 minute ago, Ksarul said:

The original files from TI hang if they don't detect a speech synthesizer on startup. . .you don't necessarily need to add the speech samples for it, but you definitely have to trick it into believing that a speech synthesizer is present.

Yeah, DS994a runs Lasso fine. Early on, I added just enough support to report an “idle” speech status that Lasso and one other game I can’t remember will play fine (just no actual speech yet). 
 

The more recent emulation now responds to basic read commands - at least enough to make some MBX games think a TI speech module is present (I suppose, as opposed to, an MBX). 

[+llabnip]

With coffee this morning, I spent some time cleaning up the User Interface. Gone are the black letters on light grey background which was a holdover from the ColecoDS emulator work.

 

Everything is now a nice silver/white on black to match the styling of a (non-beige) TI99 console. Menus are now white/silver and the old grey-grid keyboard layout is gone. In its place, there is a new TI99 style keyboard which has a more 3D 'raised-keys' look. Or you can stick with the original TI99 keyboard 'flat' look.

 

Here is the new 3D 'raised key' keyboard courtesy of @dphirschler

 

[+Retrospect]

That's pretty nice.  A nice feature I suppose could be a wav that plays when you hit a key, that sounds like the "clicky-clack" of the original keyboard ... asides from being fancy it would be functional as then people would know that the key has been pressed properly if they hear it.   

[+llabnip]

33 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

That's pretty nice.  A nice feature I suppose could be a wav that plays when you hit a key, that sounds like the "clicky-clack" of the original keyboard ... asides from being fancy it would be functional as then people would know that the key has been pressed properly if they hear it.   

A mechanical key click is included with the last few builds. Though I may find something a bit more TI-like even if I have to record it myself. 

[+llabnip]

Ok hive-mind question. We've come across another game that won't run properly under DS99/4a.

 

This time it's Funware's Ambulance.

 

Things look fine when it starts... ambulance moves around fine with Joystick control and sounds seem okay...

 

But as soon as we press a button (either keyboard or the joystick button... or if we just spend enough time driving around), things go whack-a-doodle:

 

 

I can still drive around in this graphically bizarro world and there seems to be the same city-block imposed restrictions on movement despite the crap output.

 

This game worked with beta 0.5 and failed on beta 0.6. The main difference between those versions?  Oh... just a complete overhaul of the CPU core 😕

 

So it's something to do with the TMS9900 or the TMS9901 (and not the VDP ... at least not directly).

 

No other Funware game seems to be affected (e.g. Lobster Bay and Henhouse, etc. look and play fine).  Perhaps this game uses some seldom employed instruction or some other unusual way of doing something that works on real iron (and more accurate emulators).

 

Thoughts of any kind?  Some kind folks on the TI99 Pandemic Zoom Call yesterday had some theories but nothing that has panned out so far.  Even a small clue can go a long way when looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

 

 

 

[tmop69]

18 minutes ago, llabnip said:

Ok hive-mind question. We've come across another game that won't run properly under DS99/4a.

 

This time it's Funware's Ambulance.

 

Things look fine when it starts... ambulance moves around fine with Joystick control and sounds seem okay...

 

But as soon as we press a button (either keyboard or the joystick button... or if we just spend enough time driving around), things go whack-a-doodle:

 

 

I can still drive around in this graphically bizarro world and there seems to be the same city-block imposed restrictions on movement despite the crap output.

 

This game worked with beta 0.5 and failed on beta 0.6. The main difference between those versions?  Oh... just a complete overhaul of the CPU core 😕

 

So it's something to do with the TMS9900 or the TMS9901 (and not the VDP ... at least not directly).

 

No other Funware game seems to be affected (e.g. Lobster Bay and Henhouse, etc. look and play fine).  Perhaps this game uses some seldom employed instruction or some other unusual way of doing something that works on real iron (and more accurate emulators).

 

Thoughts of any kind?  Some kind folks on the TI99 Pandemic Zoom Call yesterday had some theories but nothing that has panned out so far.  Even a small clue can go a long way when looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

 

 

 

The issue with Ambulance was also present in MAME (after version 0.161, then fixed from 0.219+), so @mizapf should help surely here to find the root cause.

Edited February 27 by tmop69

[+mizapf]

Was this here:

 

See also https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/5ef3d3a3b59fe47934582f6c816fb92aa24c8459

 

[+llabnip]

Woah! That sure looks like a smoking gun... let me go back through my code.

 

Edit: Confirmed. I don't block access to writes of >8802 (nor >8800).  Sigh... thank goodness for you trailblazers!!

 

Without you guys, my emulator would look more like:

[+llabnip]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/DS994a

V1.4: 01-Mar-2023 by wavemotion-dave

• Added new 3D TI virtual keyboard. Removed old grey grid-style keyboard.
• New dark menu theme throughout to more closely mimic the black/silver stylings of an old-school TI99/4a.
• Improved memory usage and refactored code to allow for better future expansion.
• Fixed VDP writes so Funware's Ambulance now plays correctly.
• Adding missing XOP cpu instruction - it now passes mbtest.bin but not sure if anything really uses it.

 

Finally a spit-and-polish release! Mostly UI improvements and a bit more consistency in menu handling. A few bugs squished. This is much closer to what I wanted the 1.0 release to be... but hobby development doesn't follow a strict schedule.

[+llabnip]

And mainly for posterity, I've put up a 1.4a nightly build at https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/DS994a

 

This corrects two small problems reported from the field.

• Long filenames were not scrolling in the correct position on screen - fixed.
• A typo in the code for 1K (I had typed 1014 instead of 1024) caused the emulator to come up just short of the promised 512K max ROM support. This would only affect a few very large games - fixed.