Fairchild Channel F

edmaul69

@mediamogul found out i had a typo in my emulators.cfg. Just took forever setting up controls in 3.3. I absolutely hate how the newer advmess.rc are read. I cant edit the rc file because it names the keyboards and controllers by weird code names as apposed to keyboard 0 or 1 or joystick 0 or 1 like advmess 1.4. And since i have 2 controllers, 2 keyboards, and an ipac 2 (keyboard 3) it takes a lot to program them all. Ugh that sucked.

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Fairchild Channel F:

I cant edit the rc file because it names the keyboards and controllers by weird code names as apposed to keyboard 0 or 1 or joystick 0 or 1

The human readable keyboard designations (I.E. keyboard[0,a]) still work when device_keyboard is set to raw, but it is indeed frustrating that they are coded when set to event or auto. I take it that with your many devices that raw is not an option?

edmaul69

@mediamogul not sure how to change to raw? Yes it worked with my previous settings but it change most of them. However i tried to set up keyboard 1 and i couldnt even boot it. I just added the ipac the other day and only had 1 keyboard set up. I would love to keep it simple but i dont know how to set it to.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

@caver01 clued me into setting device_keyboard to raw in the advmess.rc file. It might not be ideal for your particular arrangement, but once set, all detected keyboards are read as being one and any keyboard settings persist between sessions without MESS constantly shuffling and coding the entries.

edmaul69

@mediamogul it probably wouldnt work for me because of my addition to the ipac 2. Since i added db15 connectors to the ipac i have my genesis, snes, 3 button and 6 button pc engine and neo geo controllers wired up to work on it. Original base was neo geo. Then added extra buttons on extra pins. Then i have a db15 to db9 adapter so all my other controls like nes, atari, channelf master system... work on it. The start button for all the controllers however are wired to escape and select to ctrl. On controllers like the channel f controllers twist left and right are wired to those as it is the only way i could have a universal db9 controller setup. It wasnt an issue when using joysticks but using the ipac now for this throws a monkey wrench in that design and now needing to keep my 2 keyboards and ipac seperate. Although, now that i know the keyboards and ipac code names i could use that to hand work on the advmess file....

caver01

@edmaul69 The real gain for me (using IPAC4) in setting device_keyboard raw in advmame and advmess was that my external keyboard was always just temporary while I was configuring. However, as soon as I pulled the keyboard, they would renumber! That meant all of the keyboard indices saved to the .rc file while I was mapping inputs would be wrong. This was forcing me to manually re-write my mapping to duplicate each one and and the other keyboard indexes to cover all possible keyboards. This was a nightmare. RAW saved the day because it meant that a "J" was a "J" no matter what physical keyboard it came from. And there are plenty of letters to go around, so I never saw the value in keeping the devices separate.

edmaul69

@caver01 for me i have an apple iie that is modified with the pi3. It has the apple iie's keyboard, the ipac 2 and the device that allows me to use a mac m0110/A keyboard all built internally so for me they will never change. I dont want to have to change my icade settings as i want ctrl and esc to be my select and start buttons. And the channel f controllers are the one issue with it.

Hubz

Thanks to this thread got Fairchild Channel F emulated like a champ! Decided to try to add Super Cassette Vision but when I did advmame seems to think it isn't a supported system? Seems strange. What systems have others successfully added? Should I just try to emulate it through lr-mess instead?

edmaul69

@Hubz lr-mess supports less systems. I also had no luck ever getting it to work on any system. I believe it also requires advmame zip files where standalone advmess does not care what roms, rom names and zip/unzipped.

OneSwitch

@mediamogul Many thanks again. Do I need to copy the entire Carbon folder, or just the channelf folder. I had to tweak things a bit to get them working, but you set me on the right path again.

I updated most of the .xml file to reflect the Atari 2600 .xml theme, as it was bright white still. Looks great now. :)

One problem remains, in that the game aspect ratio is 16:9. I can't work out for this emulator how to force 4:3. I'll have a hunt around. I've tried the TAB settings (no luck), and also the launch menu (didn't seem to get one for the way this starts up).

mediamogul

@OneSwitch

Do I need to copy the entire Carbon folder

Yes, you'll need to copy the whole folder.

the game aspect ratio is 16:9

A few display settings to consider in the advmess.rc are:

display_expand 1.0
display_resize integer
display_resizeeffect none

OneSwitch

@edmaul69 Stirring up this old post again, as I'm struggling to get the Channel F working on the latest build of RetroPie (4.4) on a Pi 3 Model B+. My old build that worked thanks to you, no longer runs (in anyway) on the B+.

I can't see anywhere to install advmess. I'm currently waiting on lr-mess to complile (been going for about 12 hours).... Just wondering if there's anything new that needs to be done to get this working again.

mitu

@oneswitch said in Fairchild Channel F:

I can't see anywhere to install advmess.

Advmess is part of the advmame package, which is optional and not installed by default - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/#advancemame-3.

OneSwitch

@mitu Thanks, I'll look into that. After 24hr trying to compile lr-mess, I think I'm going to pull the plug on that approach.

edmaul69

@oneswitch pulling the plug can leave you with a bunch of excess files.try to keep your old advmess.rc config file if you can. the new configs are a much bigger pain in the butt with the changes they made with the controller settings, but if you use your old config it will auto convert it to the new settings.

OneSwitch

Thanks. I've managed to get it working again. Very pleased. My only slight issue is that I can't get 4:3 ratio on a 16:9 monitor. The AdvanceMESS 3.8 Video settings don't seem to allow me to achieve this. Strange as I managed before. No RetroArch settings to play with either.

mediamogul

@oneswitch said in Fairchild Channel F:

The AdvanceMESS 3.8 Video settings don't seem to allow me to achieve this.

If you haven't already, try setting display_expand 1.25 to display_expand 1.0 in your advmess.rc config file. At some point the lead developer decided to expand the screen abnormally wide by default to "better fit widescreen displays".

edmaul69

@mediamogul i hate a lot of the changes made. Most annoying was that they separated multiple keyboards and controllers by some code they get. So i had to configure all 3 keybards. And i prefer setting up my controllers by joystick 0, 1, 2.... not by some code number it generates for each controller.

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Fairchild Channel F:

So i had to configure all 3 keybards.

That one almost had me running for the hills, but @caver01 showed me that by setting device_keyboard raw, any attached keyboards will read as being one and only require one entry per setting.

And i prefer setting up my controllers by joystick 0, 1, 2.... not by some code number it generates for each controller.

I'm not familiar with the newer code number scheme, but that may have been introduced to counteract the js numbers shifting at the system level between sessions. To avoid that myself a while back, I ended up key-mapping my controllers and using the raw keyboard setting above. Sometimes MAME and AdvanceMAME almost seem too smart for their own good. In trying to be all things to all people, some settings are arguably a bit convoluted and can even get in the way of others.

OneSwitch

@mediamogul said in Fairchild Channel F:

display_expand 1.25

Champion. That did the trick. Many thanks.