BBC Micro / Acorn Electron Emu

Folly

You should try this part from @Lister-of-Smeg :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29402/bbc-micro-acorn-electron-emu/152

retrofan

@folly

I know the emulator is working properly on the raspbian desktop environment, I checked that yesterday.
I use latest Retropie version you mention, which I installed eight weeks ago for the b-em Pico version.
Tested this b-em allegro4 version on it (no updates / upgrade at all), the emulator worked, but no sound.
I allready have HDMI set in alsamixer, but it doesnt help in retropie.
@Lister-of-Smeg tested with fresh image and and confirmed in his message everything that happened to me yesterday.
Today I don't have much time for testing and honestly I don't know what to do next.
The Pico version under the same retropie image has sound.

Folly

@retrofan

Fair enough.

Perhaps @Lister-of-Smeg can walk you through the solution.
Well we keep this problem in mind, perhaps we can find a nice automated solution.

You could also make an image with desktop and install retropie on top of that so you can use both worlds.
If you want this and you have time we can do this in an other thread.

Lister of Smeg

@retrofan
no worries
when I was testing this morning I had assumed that you may not have the pixel desktop installed (retropie setup / configuration / tools / raspbian tools / Install pixel desktop) as the pulse audio folder only appeared after I had done this
Anyhoo
I suspect the issue is only temporary until retropie is updated, as it seems to be a bit of a mix of alsa/pulse at the moment
Perhaps it's not worth jumping through hoops today for something that may be fixed tomorrow? - I just do it for fun
but if you want to try again sometime i'm happy to help :D

retrofan

No pressure, really.
Actually, this issue could be easily solved, since @Lister-of-Smeg has a retropie image with fully working b-em allegro4 version and could share it with rest of us for testing, without roms and without violating any rules.
However, this is not possible, because forum forbids private messages, which I have never experienced in more than 20 years on Internet.
Fortunately, this is not a big problem, at the end of the day I will install this emulator on the desktop raspbian, put it in the startup sequence and that is it.

Lister of Smeg

@retrofan
longshot
are you known as RetroFanZ or retrofan2018 on another site which must remain nameless?

retrofan

@lister-of-smeg

No, that's not me, but I know there are other people under the same or similar nick names, on Retro forums.
btw, I use this nick in the Spanish forum related to ZX-UNO FPGA device.
But, tell me you're just kidding, when you say it's forbidden to mention some other forum name, here ?

Lister of Smeg

@retrofan
it's a rom torrent site so i'm sure it's against the rules to mention it here
shame really - a lot of stuff we use was developed/tested there
I remember eXo asking if members could test his initial scripts for eXoDos many years ago (nice guy)

KrinaSam

Hello everyone.
I have installed the bbc micro and electron emulator, but when I try to start it, I get a message on my TV that the image format is not supported. All other emulators work fine. What is going on? Allegro-4 starts in a small window when trying to set to fullscreen - video format not supported. (TV philips pus7101)

Folly

@krinasam said in BBC Micro / Acorn Electron Emu:

Hello everyone.
I have installed the bbc micro and electron emulator, but when I try to start it, I get a message on my TV that the image format is not supported. All other emulators work fine. What is going on? Allegro-4 starts in a small window when trying to set to fullscreen - video format not supported. (TV philips pus7101)

I had a look at your issue.

Looks like both emulators will force the resolution 800x600x75hz in full-screen mode.
I don't think we can change the full-screen display resolution of the emulators.

If you can, you should try to connect your pi to a monitor and see if the emulators work.
If they work, you know that there isn't a problem with the emulators !

Then the other causes could be that :

- the way you connected your pi to the TV is not good
  or
- your TV simply doesn't support that resolution (no solution I can think of, yet)

If it's the first one you can try to fiddle with the /boot/config.txt, forcing the connection into vga mode or something like that.
For this solution you should check the forum or the internet as I don't have much experience with these settings.

You can check your current supported resolutions when you press a key when the launching screen comes up when you run a game.
Select the video-modes and you can see what modus your TV will currently support.

KrinaSam

@folly No matter what resolution I choose in the launch menu- My tv don't support video format. I connected rpi4 to monitor and everything works fine. Another question:
What to do, to make allegro4 run in full screen? Evertime i set fulscreen manually from menu.

Thanks for your help.

Folly

@krinasam said in BBC Micro / Acorn Electron Emu:

@folly No matter what resolution I choose in the launch menu- My tv don't support video format.

Choosing a different video resolution in the launch menu will not change the resolution because the emulator will always use it's default resolution in fullscreen, which is 800x600@75hz !

I connected rpi4 to monitor and everything works fine.

That's nice to know.

Another question:
What to do, to make allegro4 run in full screen? Evertime i set fulscreen manually from menu.

Well allegro4 has nothing to do with it, that is just the audio/video dependency for the emulator.

I have to look into it deeper.
But I think you can't store the fullscreen option in b-em.
I have to look into the history.

Edit :
I had a deeper look ,because all this is a while back for me.

With both elkulator and b-em(allegro4 version) it's not possible to set the fullscreen option in the config file.
Both emulators are from the same source I think and both are quite old. Btw. : For b-em there is a newer version but this version doesn't work properly on the pi.
The function fullscreen has been implemented but never added in the config options so it can't boot in fullscreen at default.

That is why I forked elkulator and changed the source code so it would start in fullscreen and exit with the escape key.

With b-em we never came that far.
So basically, that is why it's not possible.

If I am corect, my b-em-pico-pi module-script works better as it starts directly into fullscreen using sdl.

KrinaSam

@folly @folly Xmaster and xbeeb works wery well, but no joystick support. I tried to install rl-mess-bbcmicro, electron and I have another problem. Bbc-micro works ok, but when trying to start electron I have error message " Required files are missing": os_basic.ic2.
I've looked everywhere and can't find this file.
Dou you have this file?

Ps. Sorry for my english, but i use translator😁

Folly

@krinasam

Search and find the file electron.z7 (or .zip) in mame-0.231-merged.
There are more electron files !

But , beware electron doesn't work perfectly.
I remember there are issues with this system using lr-mess or mame.
(can you let me know how goes ?)

KrinaSam

@folly I found this file. It works. How to load uef file?
CHAIN"" shift+f12 - not loading.

Lister of Smeg

@krinasam
not 100% sure (i'm not using MAME for the Electron) but typically you would use
*TAPE
CHAIN""

shift+f12 (or *E.!BOOT) is for loading disks

Folly

@krinasam

@Lister-of-Smeg is correct, you want to load a cassette file.
Sometimes you also have to look for tape and play in the GUI.

You can use mame to extract much data using terminal commands, if you know how.
This is an example (now you know what the files are) :

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ /opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listmedia electron
SYSTEM           MEDIA NAME       (brief)    IMAGE FILE EXTENSIONS SUPPORTED
---------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------
electron         cassette         (cass)     .wav  .csw  .uef  
electron         floppydisk       (flop)     .mfi  .dfi  .hfe  .mfm  .td0  .imd  .d77  .d88  .1dd  .cqm  .cqi  .dsk  .ssd  .bbc  .img  .dsd  .adf  .ads  .adm  .adl  
electron         printout         (prin)     .prn  
electron         cartridge1       (cart1)    .rom  .bin  
electron         cartridge2       (cart2)    .rom  .bin

And, make sure you select the -cass line with booting the cassette-file, otherwise it's probably not loaded as a cassette file.

KrinaSam

@folly It works! but it loads very slowly from the cassette. Is it possible to speed it up? And how can i run rl-mess in bbc master mode?

Folly

@krinasam

You can use a hotkey to speed it up.
For retroarch(lr-mess core) this is the "space" key
For mame you have to use the "page down" key.

For BBC Master you have to install for one of these drivers :

Driver bbcm (BBC Master 128): *computer*non-arcade
Driver bbcm512 (BBC Master 512): *computer*non-arcade
Driver bbcmaiv (BBC Master AIV): *computer*non-arcade
Driver bbcmarm (BBC Master (ARM Evaluation)): *computer*non-arcade

You can use our project to install one of these :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone

KrinaSam

@folly Thank You @folly. You are the best!