Old Computer Appreciation Thread

Zering

@folly Tried that just now. It's giving me the exact same log! It can't find the files that are in np2kai/np2kai even though they are most definitely there.

AdamBeGood

@folly said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@zering

my files are :
-rw-r--r-- (644)

the bmp is searched in (don't have that user ir directory):
/home/arcadia/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/font.bmp
Defenitly not used.

Here is your problem :
searches in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/np2kai/
That's why the roms aren't found.

Is it because you are pointing it at /np2kai rather than the BIOS directory? And it knows to look for a np2kai directory where it is pointed?

Zering

Well... I've got text in Popful Mail.

No idea what happened. I'll get a verbose log.

Edit : No text with .hdm files. Popful Mail.hdi seems to display correctly. It didn't before.

Edit : Never mind, .hdm is fine too. I don't understand what just happened.

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Tried that just now. It's giving me the exact same log! It can't find the files that are in np2kai/np2kai even though they are most definitely there.

Great, That was the problem.

Don't actually know now what we can change to get it the way it should.

edit :
I use the .hdi too. Perfect, so .hdm also works now !

Zering

@folly Well it's working now. I'm not sure what happened. I've tested both Popful Mail and the patched ROM for Farland Story and the text displays correctly, when just this morning I was getting blank boxes.

It seems those two things caused the change :

I moved my BIOS to home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/np2kai
I pointed lr-np2kai to home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai

So by pointing the emulator to an empty directory it somehow found my BIOS.

Don't get me wrong I'm excited as all hell but isn't this just bizarre??

Edit : I'm actually a little bit annoyed. Why couldn't the solution have been something logical????

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Well it's working now. I'm not sure what happened. I've tested both Popful Mail and the patched ROM for Farland Story and the text displays correctly, when just this morning I was getting blank boxes.

It seems those two things caused the change :

I moved my BIOS to home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/np2kai

I pointed lr-np2kai to home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai

So by pointing the emulator to an empty directory it somehow found my BIOS.

Don't get me wrong I'm excited as all hell but isn't this just bizarre??

Now I get it, I think
(something like @AdamBeGood said too)
You have to point lr-np2kai to home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS then, if you want it the way it should be. I think

Then it will search in home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/

Zering

@folly Well I'm not touching anything else now ^^

Thank you for all your help, and you too @AdamBeGood!

Edit : Is that why the emulator wasn't generating a np2kai.cfg? Because it couldn't find the directory it was supposed to generate it in?

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Well I'm not touching anything else now ^^

Thank you for all your help, and you too @AdamBeGood!

Edit : Is that why the emulator wasn't generating a np2kai.cfg? Because it couldn't find the directory it was supposed to generate it in?

Perfectly logical !!!

Well, again, we learned quite a lot, this evening. :)

Zering

@folly You gotta love RetroPie ; you probably won't play much but you'll somehow become IT literate in the process ^^

Folly

@zering

Indeed. But soon I will take some time to play a bit.

Zering

@folly So will I. I'm going to look through the MZ2500 library tomorrow, look into those controls for the FM7 and set up some more systems through MESS : FM77 and PC8001 look promising.

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Well I'm not touching anything else now ^^

Thank you for all your help, and you too @AdamBeGood!

Edit : Is that why the emulator wasn't generating a np2kai.cfg? Because it couldn't find the directory it was supposed to generate it in?

No problem, glad you got there! I am just trying to get MSX Snatcher to work, may need advice tomorrow.

Edit: Oh and the (Set 3) version of The Scheme doesn't do the graphical glitching of the standard version I had. Worth switching to.

Zering

@adambegood Yep, I meant to say earlier ; my old rom for The Scheme was broken, but the one in Neo Kobe works fine.
What's the issue with Snatcher?

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood Yep, I meant to say earlier ; my old rom for The Scheme was broken, but the one in Neo Kobe works fine.
What's the issue with Snatcher?

Don't worry, I think it'll be sorted when I get back to it in the morning! :)

Zering

@adambegood Do let us know what the issue is or was though! I'll try and set up the game up next time I'm on the Pi and if I run into issues it'd be great to know what they were and what you did to correct it :)

Edit : I couldn't resist. I went and set it up pretty much immediately ^^
This one threw me for a loop. Something to note is that the actual title of the MSX2 game is Cyber Punk Adventure Snatcher.
Initially I found a single english-patched HDD which openMSX simply rejected, but english patched .DSK files (there are four disks) work a treat.
I took the opportunity to see how MSX emulation fared with .m3u files and I'm sorry to report that they do not function on openMSX :( They do work on lr-bluemsx though. The game runs fine on openMSX however, albeit the loading games are pretty long and I have a feeling the game might run smoother and faster in lr-bluemsx. Seems like this one is keyboard only as well - sad :(
I'll test tomorrow (or maybe later tonight ^^) how the performance is on lr-bluemsx but I expect we'll have similar problems to SD Snatcher in regards to the SCC as Snatcher utilizes SCC+.

Edit 2 : As expected loading games are considerably shorter on lr-bluemsx but as the core is currently incapable of emulating SCC, the music is also a considerable downgrade. The PSG music is pretty bad, and as the music is about half the fun in Snatcher, I'd say lr-bluemsx is not worth it at this point.

AdamBeGood

@zering I didn't know you could get a patched version so I downloaded a version which was three disks.

There were three patches for disks 1-3 so I applied those. Put disk 1 in and it asked for disk 0. I never had a disk 0.

So then I went hunting for a disk 0 and couldn't find one, I found one zip with system disk and then 4 data disks. But then I happened upon the 4 disk pre-patched version, and that was that.

Thanks for all the info. Does your version allow you to install the game? I didn't want to get into it, but if loading really bothers you, might be worth a fiddle!

Zering

@adambegood It does, but I got stuck quickly when I tried fiddling with it.

Edit : I sorted the controls for the FM7... and they're the weirdest controls I ever came across.
It seems the FM7 was only capable of registering button presses, and not button releases. So when you press right, your character goes right, and does not stop going right until you press the key that's there to stop him. It's very strange and I get cold sweats just thinking about how achingly difficult the FM7 port of Ys must be.
The tapes take 8 minutes to load overall but I think there are some floppy games which mess has a driver for.

Luckily loading tapes works the same way for the FM7 than it does for the MZ series so I've been able to play some MZ800 yesterday, but that method did not seem to work with the MZ2000, which appears to require a slightly different method.

AdamBeGood

@zering So is there a stop button? Or do you have to press right again to stop? Sounds mad!

Zering

@adambegood There is a stop button, but the movement is so twitchy and erratic it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
I don't think I'll get too much playtime out of that system.
So now I'm trying to play DOOM on the PC98 ^^

@Folly Do you know how well MESS handles disk-swapping? I'm thinking it might be a viable option for those multi-disk X1 games.

Edit : Tested some FM7 disk games, they load instantly. Ys controls a lot better than I would have dared to imagine.

Edit 2 : And the FM77AV seems to respond to button releases, which makes Ys a joy to control on the system. Had some trouble with the BIOS, but other than that, easy setup.

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood There is a stop button, but the movement is so twitchy and erratic it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
I don't think I'll get too much playtime out of that system.
So now I'm trying to play DOOM on the PC98 ^^

@Folly Do you know how well MESS handles disk-swapping? I'm thinking it might be a viable option for those multi-disk X1 games.

Edit : Tested some FM7 disk games, they load instantly. Ys controls a lot better than I would have dared to imagine.

Edit 2 : And the FM77AV seems to respond to button releases, which makes Ys a joy to control on the system. Had some trouble with the BIOS, but other than that, easy setup.

I am just playing some PC-88 games. What is Doom like on 98? Is it much different to DOS?