My last problem - the TRS80

JimmyFromTheBay

I now have 101 systems installed on my Pi 4, of which 100 are working at their best. (Well, I could do with optimising the Saturn a bit but that's a nicety.)

The one remaining fly in the ointment is the TRS80. I've always thought it looked a really interesting system but I've never been able to get a flicker out of it - sdltrs crashes straight back to EmulationStation with no clues and lr-mess-trs80-cass does the same but gives me this:

https://pastebin.com/7JPhH4X5

All my ROMs are unzipped .CAS files taken straight from the MAME softlist. I've got the level2.rom, level3.rom, level4.rom and level4p.rom files in home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS (and trs80.zip just for fun). What am I missing?

mitu

sdltrs is configured with floppy only, if you're using .cas files, that's probably why it's not working. You can add a 'cas' variant to the options available in Runcommand by modifying the emulators.cfg file from /opt/retropie/configs/trs-80:

sdltrs-model4p-cas = "/opt/retropie/emulators/sdltrs/sdl2trs -fullscreen -nomousepointer -showled -m4p -romfile4p /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/level4p.rom -cass %ROM%"

BuZz

@mitu maybe we should add an additional emulators.cfg option for cassettes? If there's no way of handling it from one command line - what do you think?

I've not used this emulator much beyond some testing some time ago.

BuZz

Although would that mean 4 more launching options for each system we have? As that makes me think upstream needs an automatic mode, which could be requested maybe

mitu

@buzz Didn't test any .cas options when the module was redone (based on @JenGun's fork), but I can take a look to see if it has any automatic media detection and maybe update the launch options or find a option to accommodate more media types.

BuZz

@mitu Sounds good. Feel free to pass anything my way also. Cheers.

JenGun

@mitu said in My last problem - the TRS80:

sdltrs-model4p-cas = "/opt/retropie/emulators/sdltrs/sdl2trs -fullscreen -nomousepointer -showled -m4p -romfile4p /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/level4p.rom -cas %ROM%"

The option for loading cassette images is -cassette or -cass ...

JenGun

@buzz said in My last problem - the TRS80:

As that makes me think upstream needs an automatic mode, which could be requested maybe

Automatic media detection for a few use cases? Probably not ... :-)

JimmyFromTheBay

Swapping -flop1 in EMULATORS.CFG for -cass has got me to the OS, many thanks to all. Now when I type CLOAD the tape counter appears and runs, but nothing happens when it reaches the end :(

JenGun

@jimmyfromthebay said in My last problem - the TRS80:

Now when I type CLOAD the tape counter appears and runs, but nothing happens when it reaches the end :(

Loading programs from cassette was always a pain in the "old days" because it depended on various factors: volume of the recording and quality of the tape ... and mostly only succeeded by chance ... ;-)
You can only load BASIC-programs with CLOAD, for programs in "machine-language" use SYSTEM ...
Not all CAS-files of the internet will work in the emulator ... so please provide more details ...

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay said in My last problem - the TRS80:

Swapping -flop1 in EMULATORS.CFG for -cass has got me to the OS, many thanks to all. Now when I type CLOAD the tape counter appears and runs, but nothing happens when it reaches the end :(

Don't know if it will work on TRS80 but with MSX you had to do :
cload
run

You can try that.

JimmyFromTheBay

@folly I don't get the command prompt back after the load.

JimmyFromTheBay

@jengun @jengun Okay, so I'm trying to load SeaDragon, as seen here:

That video shows the game is loaded with SYSTEM followed by S, and if I do that then the tape spins up and loads for about four minutes. But after that nothing happens and I'm just left looking at this:

I'm still getting nowhere with SDLTRS, so I'm using LR-MESS:

lr-mess-trs-80-cass = "/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/run_mess.sh /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so /opt/retropie/configs/trs-80/retroarch.cfg trs80m3 /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS -cass %ROM%"

I'm just hitting Enter when the "Cass?" and "Memory Size?" prompts come up. And as I said it's the CAS file from the most recent MAME softlist so hopefully it's not the file that's the problem.

JenGun

@jimmyfromthebay said in My last problem - the TRS80:

And as I said it's the CAS file from the most recent MAME softlist so hopefully it's not the file that's the problem.

No idea which CAS-file MAME is using, but this works with SDLTRS in Model I-mode ... in Model III-mode you have to type L after Cass? to select 500 Baud to load and save tapes for the Model I ...

Folly

@jengun

You can only use .wav (cas files) with TRS-80 (trs80) on mame/lr-mess.

This is the output from mame :

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ /opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listmedia trs80
SYSTEM           MEDIA NAME       (brief)    IMAGE FILE EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED
---------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------
trs80            cassette         (cass)     .wav

JenGun

@folly said in My last problem - the TRS80:

You can only use .wav (cas files) with TRS-80 (trs80) on mame/lr-mess.

SDLTRS also supports WAV-files (mono) as cassette images, so that should work too ...

JimmyFromTheBay

@jengun said in My last problem - the TRS80:

No idea which CAS-file MAME is using, but this works with SDLTRS in Model I-mode ... in Model III-mode you have to type L after Cass? to select 500 Baud to load and save tapes for the Model I ...

Job done! That generated a flickering asterisk readout at top right, and got the command prompt back when the tape was finished, then I watched the video to find out you need to (bizarrely) type / to start the game.

Many thanks! Now I just need to get sound working...

Folly

@jimmyfromthebay

On the internet I see info of people using (binary files) :
CLOADM

You could try that.

JimmyFromTheBay

I see / doesn't work for EVERY game, so time to do some Googling. But other than sound that's the emulator figured out now, which is the hardest bit :D

JimmyFromTheBay

@folly said in My last problem - the TRS80:

@jimmyfromthebay

On the internet I see info of people using (binary files) :
CLOADM

You could try that.

Yeah, I'm quite experienced with the Dragon/Coco so CLOADM was the first thing I tried, but I'll keep it in mind for other filetypes :)