Dragon 32 emulation via AdvMESS
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After a bit more testing I found you don't need the ddos10.rom, you only need this if you are trying to load .dsk (disk) images. Leaving this out will keep you at the Dragon home screen, and not take you to a extended dos screen. This might help with cassette loading since I am experiencing the occasional "IO Error", the dreaded error Dragon owners feared back in the 80s - it was quite common when dealing with real tapes.
Like other Pi emulators, I have a real Dragon 32. Using composite video, I connected my Dragon to my Sony TV and I can honestly say that the Pi does a good job of emulating it - it actually "looks" better, due to the better composite support on the Pi.
The real Dragon still wins here because I can load tapes via a SDCard solution (TZXDuino) and I only get a few IO errors - mostly due to corrupt tape images. But, the Pi is a nicer solution because the Dragon is a huge cumbersome beast, and takes up too much space and too much time to use for everyday.
Anyone wanting to try a Dragon, then this is the next best thing to a real machine.
The games are great, albeit too "Green" everywhere. I did laugh when presented with a colour choice for a few games.
Press 1 - for Black
Press 2 - for Buff - what the heck is Buff ?
Press 3 - for Green -
@John_RM_70 I didn't have the DDOS file present anyway. But for some reason it's now recognising the CAS files, and CLOADM works without having to twat around in the menus.
Sadly I'm still having no luck getting it to recognise snapshots, which is a shame as it'd be nice to dodge all that loading.
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Have you tried loading snapshots from the File Manager ?
You can speed-up loading by using a turbo key, just assign a key to turbo and hold it down. Although, I think "Turbo" is a bit of a oxymoron since the Pi is already pretty close to running flat out while it runs the Mess emulator.
By the way, did you know you can load wav files instead of cassette images ? These seem a lot more reliable than .cas files. -
@John_RM_70 Yes, I've tried using the file manager, you can select them but it just doesn't register them as being there.
I'm assuming that F10 is already functioning as a max-speed Turbo button. It gets me about 170%.
Will see if I can track down any WAV files, though. Got a few CAS files that won't work (eg Mr Dig, Draconian), and I don't know if it's them or if the emulator just doesn't support them.
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@SpudsMcToole Ooh, early success - Draconian worked beautifully as a WAV. Now to see if I can find some other ones.
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Yeah, wav is looking far more reliable.
Downside. Just over 200 wavs = about 880Mb of space. Compared to 500+ .cas files = 12mb. -
@John_RM_70 Hey, I've got plenty space :D
(But I only need to find a handful of WAV games anyway, mainly Mr Dig.)
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@SpudsMcToole If you can't find them let me know, I have them all - obviously we would have to keep it to PM.
Here is something you might find useful, it's all the Dragon 32 artwork scans of tape inlays.
http://www.filefactory.com/file/77giidjbav97/Dragon_Artwork.zip
It's just jpg scans, and they're not named in any particular way. But they look good in ES, and it's better than nothing.
That is a big file, mind. 338Mb. -
@John_RM_70 I've got most of the tape inlays already, but cheers, will see if any of the ones I'm missing are in there.
How do I PM you? I looked on your profile page but don't see an option.
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@SpudsMcToole said in Dragon 32 emulation via AdvMESS:
How do I PM you?
Do you know what ? I honestly don't know, lol.
Mods - Can we PM ?
Or, is it ok to link to a Dragon 32 wav file ? -
@John_RM_70 said in Dragon 32 emulation via AdvMESS:
Mods - Can we PM ?
No.
Or, is it ok to link to a Dragon 32 wav file ?
And now you know why PMs are disabled. If it's a public domain/free file, then link to it, otherwise the forum rules forbid it.
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@John_RM_70 said in Dragon 32 emulation via AdvMESS:
Do you know what ? I honestly don't know, lol.
Dang!
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@SpudsMcToole Check your email, I have linked to all the Microdeal wavs, hopefully Mr Dig works ok.
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any can share the artworks, please? thanks
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