C16/Plus4 really slow in VICE?

[SpudsMcToole]

I installed the C16/Plus4 in its own folder in much the same way I did with the VIC-20 and it appears to work straight off the bat, except it's painfully slow (maybe half the speed it should be). It seems weird that VICE would do such a bad job of running a machine in between the VIC and the C64 when it runs them both flawlessly, anyone managed to get it running smoothly?

I added this to ES_SYSTEMS.CFG:

  <system>
    <name>plus4</name>
    <fullname>Commodore 16/Plus4</fullname>
    <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/plus4</path>
    <extension>.crt .d64 .g64 .prg .tap .zip .vsf .CRT .PRG .TAP .ZIP .VSF</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ plus4 %ROM%</command>
    <platform>plus4</platform>
    <theme>plus4</theme>
    <directlaunch/>
  </system>

And fired the game ROMs into a folder called "plus4" in the usual ROMs directory and made an EMULATORS.CFG in /opt/retropie/configs/plus4 with these lines in it:

vice-x64 = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh x64 %ROM%"
default="vice-xplus4"
vice-x64sc = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh x64sc %ROM%"
vice-x128 = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh x128 %ROM%"
vice-xpet = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh xpet %ROM%"
vice-xplus4 = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh xplus4 %ROM%"
vice-xvic = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh xvic %ROM%"
vice-xvic-cart = "/opt/retropie/emulators/vice/bin/vice.sh 'xvic -cartgeneric' %ROM%"

[A Former User]

Try this.
Run a game, goto the main menu.

Speed Settings, make sure "1/1" is ticked, and 100% is ticked.
Then goto Sound settings.

Output driver - ALSA
Output Mode - System
Buffer size - This will depend on your machine, but I found 600msec, stopped sound clicking and popping.
Frequency 44100 Hz

Synchronization method - Exact.

I played with these settings for quite a while, when I first installed Vice, and these were the best I could get for a Pi 3B+.

[SpudsMcToole]

@John_RM_70 Nope, if anything that made the framerate worse and now I have no sound at all :D

[SpudsMcToole]

@SpudsMcToole I've got it running more or less acceptably now - smooth framerate and reasonable speed. (I think the games I'm testing it with may have actually been that slow in real life.) The key was setting it to NTSC, which brought about a dramatic improvement.

I'm not sure it was worth the effort tbh, but what can I say, I'm a Manic Miner completist :D

[tomi7711]

@SpudsMcToole

If you are not satisfied with the performance, try to switch the 'Synchronisation method' to 'Flexible'. With the 'Exact' method I got only 90% and choppy sound...
Under the 'Video settings' / ' Size settings' disable 'Double size/Double scan/Full screen options' and set the 'Custom resolution' to 384x272, SDL2 will do its job.

Sorry for my poor english. ;)