Albert Posted February 10, 2004 Share Posted February 10, 2004 A new version of the work-in-progress Atari 7800 emulator EMU7800 has been released. Version 0.50 of EMU7800 includes the following changes: "The Truth in Advertising" release... now, most 7800 titles are playable 7800 BIOS startup can be skipped Both .a78 and .bin 7800 ROMs are supported Added gamestate save/restore Added mouse-based lightgun support Added GUI options for varying emulation speed, etc. You can download and learn more about EMU7800 here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted February 10, 2004 Share Posted February 10, 2004 Cool! Now I don't have to use MESS any more! I hope joystick support is in the next release! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artlover Posted February 10, 2004 Share Posted February 10, 2004 sourceforge is down. Thankfully, www.zophar.net stays up to date. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted February 10, 2004 Share Posted February 10, 2004 ah... cool.... must try this out, not a big emu fan but I've wanted to tinker with 7800 code for a while, so... Curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 I haven't had time yet to give this emu a full run through but so far it's looking pretty good. The only issue that I noticed so far is that the documentation is a bit sparse and I can't figure out what it wants the 7800 BIOS to be named. So, all of my testing has been done with the built-in alternate BIOS. Also, the TIA sound is pretty bad and the Pokey sound is not implemented yet. I may post a follow up after I do some more testing. Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 This one's pretty unigue in that it can use BOTH the 2600 and 7800 games. So far - As near as I can tell, 7800 NTSC Compatibility is 100% the same as Mess .78, with regaurds to playability. The only 7800 PAL game that seems to load is Impossible Mission - Nice. Sound is a bit different and it requires a pretty fast PC to run full bore. It's seamless on my AMD Athlon XP 2400+ but my P3 866 gets some latency issues. 2600 Compatibility seems pretty high too, at least with most of the common/uncommon stuff. A few of the rare roms don't even register though. It must have a .NET database of known games that it validtes from. I haven't looked at the source yet. Here's an idea. Add the 5200 to it as well. Or at least Mitch if you could solve the 5200 "second fire button" issue on the 5200 (H.E.R.O. and Moon Patrol are impossible) for the next MESS release, then I'd be happy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 Well, I finally got the 7800 BIOS to work, it's just 7800.rom. I don't know why it didn't work the first time. There's actually a fair amount of small bugs, which hopefully will get ironed out before too long. One of the things that I don't like is that it will refuse to recognize any ROM which isn't in it's database. Also, you can't just double-click on a game to start it, you have to select the game and then choose start. Danno, I'm not responsible for 5200 MESS fixes, try posting your request at the MESS forum. Though, I thought the second 5200 button was working the last time I tried it. But it's been a while. Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 Mitch, the 5200 bug in MESS has been posted on the MESS site, numerous times. The Thing is NONE of the 5200 emu's out there do it right. Some get it to work using a key on the keyboard, but not directly to a joystick. Anywho, I was just comparing Pole Position 2 on EMU7800 to MESS .78, and to me it seems that the video runs smoother on EMU7800. But the sound is definitely buggy on all games. lots of pops and cracks, even on my beefy machine. So who does 2600 and 5200 implemntation in MESS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimurphy Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. Sorry the documention is a bit sparse, but I may be able to give some useful tips: - The 7800 BIOS (NTSC and PAL) simply needs to be in the current roms/ directory. As long as it has the extension ".rom", it will recognize at game launch time - The 7800 BIOS startup can be skipped, avoiding the need to have the bios files at all. Simply check the "Skip 7800 BIOS" checkbox on the Settings page. - The SDL host (selectable on the Settings page) performs better than the GDI host. The GDI host tends to be more useful for development/debugging. I have a P4 1.7 Celeron, and performance appears to be more than sufficient for me. To avoid the sound popping if your machine isn't fast enough, use the Settings page to slow the emulator down by a certain number of frames. The sound pitch will also lower, but the popping will go away - If you consider your machine to be considerably "beefy," perhaps increasing the sound queue length may help (Settings page) Anyway, keep the feedback coming! Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 Can't get it to work, even with the mscoree.dll and Microsoft .NET Framework application installed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocko Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 This is the only 7800 emu that works on my pc. Why wont it read any Froggo titles, or Rampage? I want to try them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 It reads my rampage raw dump just fine...i just played a game..and the speed and sound is awesome on my rig here. I have: P4 Northwood 1.6ghz (Running at 2.1ghz) 384mb Ram SB Live! (1st release retail model) nVidia GF4 TI4200 8x agp with 128mb ram (Mem runs at 570mhz Core at 270mhz) DX 9.0b installed WinXP build 2600 without SP1 installed... I didn't get any of the .DLL errors and I do have the actual 7800.rom bios file being used. So far...I haven't touched anything and it runs all of my raw dumps I made over a year ago for the AA site and to have compared with other dumps during the Mess development. Let me try Xenophobe next... I am actually digging this EMU..a Gui I understand...simpler to setup than Mess...and so far...it looks and runs really well... Excellent!!..Keep it up!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocko Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 It reads my rampage raw dump just fine...i just played a game..and the speed and sound is awesome on my rig here. I have: P4 Northwood 1.6ghz (Running at 2.1ghz) 384mb Ram SB Live! (1st release retail model) nVidia GF4 TI4200 8x agp with 128mb ram (Mem runs at 570mhz Core at 270mhz) DX 9.0b installed WinXP build 2600 without SP1 installed... I didn't get any of the .DLL errors and I do have the actual 7800.rom bios file being used. So far...I haven't touched anything and it runs all of my raw dumps I made over a year ago for the AA site and to have compared with other dumps during the Mess development. Let me try Xenophobe next... I am actually digging this EMU..a Gui I understand...simpler to setup than Mess...and so far...it looks and runs really well... Excellent!!..Keep it up!!! What about froggo dumps? Can you Pm me a copy of the rampage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 First..I don't own any of the Froggo game to dump myself to compare. Second...I am not in the business of distributing roms. I own Rampage and all the others I made dumps of and can therefore legally run them in the emu. As the dump is my backup I am allowed to have. It is possible that the rom image here doesn't work because of the header info placed on it...and so if that were removed it might work. I will check them out in more detail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 Okay..after working with it a bit more...I do have some issues. Xenophobe doesn't work simple as that. What happens is that it starts up...and then on the screen with the little ship leaving to transport you to the infested ship..it will lock up hard in the emu there... Double Dragon worked well enough...almost too fast..it is like the enemies have gotten harder to take down. But the sound is goofy. As long as there isn't any background music...the games sound okay...but in double dragon they sound a bit scratchy...still consistent though. I do get some pops...but they only occure before the rom loads up. Afterwards...i don't hear them if they are present... Ikari Warriors slows down a bit when too much is on screen at once..but otherwise it seems okay. Tower Toppler...is acting like the difficulty switches are selected already for the level select. I can't get it to start a game..because it keeps advancing to the next level automatically...so that needs to be worked on. also I didn't know if there are keys to switch the difficulty switches? If so..then these should be in the B position by default in the emu. and if they aren't implemented yet...that means that F-18, F14 are unplayable since you can't switch on the components you need to. Still this is a very very nice looking emu. I do agree that double clicking on the rom should start the emu instead of clicking on it and then selecting Start. but that is a minor nit pick. I am still impressed over all... :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 I remember hitting the difficulty switches by mistake once, so they are in there. I think it might have been "1" and "2" on the keyboard. Most of the other issues are the same ones as I was experiencing. You can download the ROMs off of my web site. Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 A couple more notes to add - SDL doesn't work on my PIII with a Voodoo 3000 PCI card in my "slow" box. I get scrambles and loud groaning noises. GDI works but with pops and burps and farts and flickers and slowdowns. the AMD Athlon 2400+ with a Gig of ram and a GeForce 2 32mb card runs great. The only PAL game that works is Impossible Mission, which isn't a bad thing. But it's considerably slower than the NTSC version. Should I bump it up 10 hz to match the NTSC rate perhaps? Definite popping noises are present when booting roms. Also whenever a slowdown occurs. Game controllers do work, but 2 button support in 7800 games does not work. Overall 2600 sound is just a bit off. Pitfall II sound is deafeningly atrocious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimurphy Posted February 11, 2004 Share Posted February 11, 2004 The PAL BIOS does not appear to be working in EMU7800 to my surprise. This will be fixed in the next release. An easy workaround is to check the "Skip BIOS Startup" checkbox on the Settings Tab page. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted February 12, 2004 Author Share Posted February 12, 2004 I added EMU7800 to our 7800 Emulation page, and also fixed several broken links. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocko Posted February 12, 2004 Share Posted February 12, 2004 ALien Brigade slows down when there is to much on screen as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted February 12, 2004 Share Posted February 12, 2004 Never mind...my copy of EMU7800 is working now. Thanks anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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