Running a custom rom with lr-mame*

eberhab

@Folly Again thanks a lot for adding the nice artwork to the cygnus-bf theme!

Just a quick summary of what I did the past days and what I found out so far concerning automating the loading process of M20 images.

Most of the discs actually have the pcos included, so the need to launch with two floppies might not really be there. I looked closer into your example with mazedaze where you booted the virtual m20 with pcos102. It seems that mazedaze is actually on the "giochhi" image file (it's the entry just aboved the "gamesd" disk in the hash file). The giocchi disk boots up fine all by itself, with no need for a separate pcos disk. You should be able to try yourself. Then disk then boots into an italian start screen where you can make your choice. The issue with the keyboard here are mainly origination from the underlying pcos being italian.

Concerning the "gamesd" disk, the situation is a bit more complicated. I matched the checksum from the hash table with the file that circulates the internet, and this is a "broken" images, which is missing some header data in order to work in the m20. I have described how to fix this in an article about M20 emulation on z80ne.com (you can verify with sha1sum and hexdump). The image can be fixed easily by transplanting the missing header from a working image file (e.g. from pcos102). If you are not on linux, in any case I have uploaded a fixed image into the ~~[dropbox folder]~~ from my previous post. The fixed image should then also boot right away in flop1 with no need to load an additional pcos disk. The keyboard should also work better since the underlying pcos is german.

Both images booth with -bios 0 so also here luckily there is no need to make custom settings. The only issue with bios settings I see with the msdos image, which indeed needs a different bios setting. Its not a game though, so maybe it's no loss if msdos would not be available oob.

Overall I think the mamedev systems installer should work with most disks oob, as long as people use working images. One could think about a way to let people know if the image has a missing header, since it seems to be the case for most of the circulating images unfortunately.

Folly

@eberhab said in Running a custom rom with lr-mame*:

@Folly Again thanks a lot for adding the nice artwork to the cygnus-bf theme!

Just a quick summary of what I did the past days and what I found out so far concerning automating the loading process of M20 images.

Thanks for the reply.

Most of the discs actually have the pcos included, so the need to launch with two floppies might not really be there. I looked closer into your example with mazedaze where you booted the virtual m20 with pcos102. It seems that mazedaze is actually on the "giochhi" image file (it's the entry just aboved the "gamesd" disk in the hash file). The giocchi disk boots up fine all by itself, with no need for a separate pcos disk. You should be able to try yourself. Then disk then boots into an italian start screen where you can make your choice. The issue with the keyboard here are mainly origination from the underlying pcos being italian.

I have that one also.
Indeed loading directly into an Italian menu.
Didn't know what I had to enter though, but translation has been activated by my script, just pressing HOTKEY T and it will translate.
So loading worked by entering two letters of the game to be loaded.

Concerning the "gamesd" disk, the situation is a bit more complicated. I matched the checksum from the hash table with the file that circulates the internet, and this is a "broken" images, which is missing some header data in order to work in the m20. I have described how to fix this in an article about M20 emulation (you can verify with sha1sum and hexdump). The image can be fixed easily by transplanting the missing header from a working image file (e.g. from pcos102). If you are not on linux, in any case I have uploaded a fixed image into the dropbox folder from my previous post. The fixed image should then also boot right away in flop1 with no need to load an additional pcos disk. The keyboard should also work better since the underlying pcos is german.

Earlier on I had also a qwertz keyboard layout, that is a German one I think.
Will try your fix. ( LOADS PERFECTLY NOW !)
Theoretically it should be added to mame somehow.

Both images booth with -bios 0 so also here luckily there is no need to make custom settings. The only issue with bios settings I see with the msdos image, which indeed needs a different bios setting. Its not a game though, so maybe it's no loss if msdos would not be available oob.

msdos needs an other bios and another cpu board and will run when selected.
But basically I don't think it's very interesting as msdos can be executed better on other devices or in other emulators.

Overall I think the mamedev systems installer should work with most disks oob, as long as people use working images. One could think about a way to let people know if the image has a missing header, since it seems to be the case for most of the circulating images unfortunately.

Good to know that the default install will work for most !
A gamelist with video could be made explaining in the video how to run or whether a disk is bad or not.

Folly

@eberhab

Can you make a summarise in you first post of this thread ?
I think that would be a good thing, don't you think so too ?

Then I can add a link in my tread on how to run m20.

mitu

@eberhab said in Running a custom rom with lr-mame*:

If you are not on linux, in any case I have uploaded a fixed image into the [dropbox folder] from my previous post. [...]

Please don't post links with/to ROMS/BIOS/other copyrighted material.

eberhab

@mitu Good point, thanks. I'll remove the content. Anyone should be able to fix the public images with the info from the linked article.
@Folly Will think about a summary. Might make sense to get the images fixed first and try to get the hashes updated in mame.

eberhab

@Folly @mitu I am still experimenting with -autoboot_command to get some more complex disk combinations to autostart. However I am seeing some differences in the characters being typed into pcos whether I type them by hand or having them entered by autoboot. In the UI I can choose between "natural" and "emulated" keyboard. The autoboot option seems to be using the natural keyboard inputs, whereas I would them to behave like typing on the emulated keyboard.

I looked into -autoboot_script to handle the input by lua script, which seems more flexible. I am using manager.machine.natkeyboard:post_coded() which also seems to enter characters on the "natural" keyboard. Do you know if/ how I can automate input on the emulated keyboard/ in the same fashion like entering them by hand?

Folly

@eberhab

Indeed I have seen lua scripts that can do that.
I have also experimented once with them.
However I find it too complicated and it's probably also very hard to implement in my script.

For some systems I think I might have changed the characters in the autoboot command so the good characters are typed.
Also not an ideal situation.
For the m20 it could be different between disks also.

I have experimented with the m20floppy tool adding single INIT.CMD or INIT.BAS files to pcos102 or pcos13.
To some degree I find that that is the best solution to boot a single program directly without autoboot/menu trouble.

However there are problems with some/many programmes.
othello.bas gives an error "line buffer overflow in 0" first, typing run afterwards will run the game but it's not displayed properly in pcos102 and no idea how to enter coordinates.
In pcons13 it does the same "line buffer.... ", when running it builds up the page breaks in some line.
bd.cmd does run but has bad graphics.

Folly

@eberhab

Do you have an account here ? :https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1

mitu

@eberhab said in Running a custom rom with lr-mame*:

I am still experimenting with -autoboot_command to get some more complex disk combinations to autostart [...]

I'm not that familiar with MAME's LUA scripts, my only attempt of using it is a simple plugin to stop the game when the menu comes up. As @folly suggested, you may ask in their forums (or on Reddit's /r/mame).

eberhab

Thanks for both your feedback. Ok, let's keep it simple. I have added a summary to the top post as suggested. Let me know if something should be changed. If you like the summary, happy if you link it! Also, the M20 could be added to the "RetroPie: Retroarch - MESS" spreadsheet.

Concerning the autoboot of games/ pcos: If people boot the right images in -flop1, they should be able to select the games from the disk's own games menu (e.g. giocchi and gamesd). Moving files between discs with m20floppy could be problematic since some of the software needs a specfic pcos version to run. Duplicating the image and renaming with fm <game> init.cmd under pcos should be the safest way, but might not be necessary since the game disks should boot up their proper pcos and games menu.

One remark concerning add-mamedev-systems: It might make sense to remove the "-flop 2" emulators from the script, since they only offer to put a rom into floppy drive 2, while drive 1 remains empty. This is I believe an invalid configuration. If the flop 2 emulators could be removed, the users also had a shorter list of possible emulators to choose from.

Concerning mame autoboot options: I am still experimenting with this for a personal project. Since the wrong characters are typed by the -autoboot_command, I also though about identifying the right corresponding characters and compensating accordingly in the command line argument. It is however impossible to find any characters on the entire keyboard producing a "0" or a "1" which are absolutely essential to identify files on the two disk drives. I'll see if I can find out more in the forums you suggested.

Folly

@eberhab

I will have a look at your summary.
Looking good up til now ;-)
Will make a link.

I did a commit filtering out -flop2, I think an improvement indeed.

If you want to test it then you have to a de-install from the experimental packages(or remove the loaders manually from the emulators.cfg).
Then you should also remove the generated module-script (which you did the de-install on) :
install-m20-from-mamedev-system-m20-flop2.sh
Then re-install m20 again in the new updated add-mamedev-systems to see if only flop1 is generated and installed.

Folly

@dmmarti

Can you add the system m20 to your "RetroPie: Retroarch - MESS" spreadsheet ?

eberhab

@Folly
Great! That was an easy fix! I just tried the new version and it works well. Thanks for the uninstall directions.

People still have a lot of emulators to choose from. I just looked again at the "basename" emulators, which seem to be the softlist emulators? I can't get them to work with softlisted images though. Did you manage? Launching e.g. the zipped giochi rom with the lr-mess-m20-basename leads to

[libretro WARN] Driver mame not found -1
[libretro WARN] Game not found: giochi
[libretro ERROR]

Can we get those to work, or would it be an option to remove the baseline emulators also?

@dmmarti
Concerning the spreadsheet, if you add the M20, for the Notes section I'd suggest:

Backspace is <ctrl> + h
Show Floppy/ rom content vl <enter> (if rom supports it)
<game-name>.cmd files can be launched by just typing game-name <enter>
Two OS operating modes are supported: System mode (> prompt) and basic language mode (# prompt). Switch between the two with system and ba commands respectively

For the Advanced tweaks section I suggest to mention the options:

-flop1 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/m20/pcos102.img -flop2 %ROM%
-bios1 -flop1 %ROM% (for msdos2_0)

Thanks!

Folly

@eberhab said in Running a custom rom with lr-mame*:

Did you manage? Launching e.g. the zipped giochi rom with the lr-mess-m20-basename leads to

giochi isn't in the softlist, it's called gamesi (gamesi.zip contains giochi.img).

I have othello and some other programmes booting now.
I can move the cursor but can't place a piece in othello, do you have any luck ?

eberhab

@Folly I got it! Also now I understood how the softlists work, I adapted the summary in the top post accordingly. It now works for me as well.

Will look into othello and a few other roms in the next days. I am still working on my autoboot with lua problem :)

EDIT: Othello works for me by moving the cursor with the keypad arrows (8, 4, 6, 2) and placing the stone with <space>

eberhab

@Folly Thanks to your suggestions I received some helpful info on Reddit regarding the messed up characters in the autoboot_command. If you switch your PCOS to Italian, then the autoboot woks perfectly. One can make a floppy autoboot into Italian by prepending a line e.g. 5 EXCEC "sl 0" to INIT.BAS. Its also seems that pcos102 already boots into italian environment.

In order to play Othello on the other hand, change the pcos language setting to match your keyboard, by setting it to e.g. english or german. Then the space bar to place the stone should work.

Folly

@eberhab

Ok,
Good find !