Old Computer Appreciation Thread

AdamBeGood

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

Any news in old computer land ?

Hi Folly,

I am on holiday at the moment and don't have my Pi! I'll get back on it though. What are you up to?

I'm at Wembley now for the England v Croatia Euro game. Break from the family for one day.

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

Any news in old computer land ?

Hi Folly,

I am on holiday at the moment and don't have my Pi! I'll get back on it though. What are you up to?

I'm at Wembley now for the England v Croatia Euro game. Break from the family for one day.

Aha nice, Enjoy !

Busy with the front-end script.

And .....

Well, you saw that animated gif in my post.
I saw that in an other thread, was curious how the did it, as this would be handy.

If I know how this exactly works then you could make some short tutorials.
That would be nice, not explaining it all in text but just :

make some pictures
create an animated gif
place it in the post

Btw :
I made this animated gif yesterday with some manual commands.
I will try to automate that.

Zering

@folly I'm still working silly hours so I haven't had any time to tinker, but I saw that you managed to crack the Acorn Electron!
I wanted to look at how to play Metal gear 1 and 2 on lr-bluemsx to use Retroachievements. The games run fine through rom files but the saving function doesn't work as you need a separate cassette which the emulator doesn't seem to emulate.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly I'm still working silly hours so I haven't had any time to tinker, but I saw that you managed to crack the Acorn Electron!
I wanted to look at how to play Metal gear 1 and 2 on lr-bluemsx to use Retroachievements. The games run fine through rom files but the saving function doesn't work as you need a separate cassette which the emulator doesn't seem to emulate.

I hope you enjoy the work and earn a lot of money with these many hours of work.

Indeed that Acorn stuff works really great, you should try it out.
I also added the same disc autoboot in the xbeeb and xmaster now (bbcmicro).

I think .cas files should work on lr-bluemsx.
I can have a look at that, perhaps I can figure it out.

Not knowing much about Retroachievements have a look at that too.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly I'm still working silly hours so I haven't had any time to tinker, but I saw that you managed to crack the Acorn Electron!
I wanted to look at how to play Metal gear 1 and 2 on lr-bluemsx to use Retroachievements. The games run fine through rom files but the saving function doesn't work as you need a separate cassette which the emulator doesn't seem to emulate.

Separately, cas files and roms work on lr-bluemsx, for sure.
But how to load combinations ?
I tried some stuff : .cmd, .m3u and extra options in the emulators.cfg line.
Too bad, noting seems to work.

Btw, I think Metal Gear 2 saves on disk.
But than again you have the same problem.
Or you have to find a disk version.

I tried Metal Gear 1 and 2 on lr-mess.
They both run quite good on there.
And you can use the RetroArch save/load option.
Probably the best way to do it.

EDIT:
I tried saving and loading states with lr-bluemsx.
This works now.
Seems that it's updated.
I can remember that this didn't work with lr-bluemsx.
Well, nice update then ;-)

Zering

@folly Save and load states have always worked,but using hard-core mode with Retroachievements disables load states. This means that without disk saves on lr-bluemsx we're having to rely on passwords. This is what I wanted to look into.

Folly

@zering

Ok, I didn't know that.
Too bad, this isn't a solution after-all.

Well, I keep it in mind.
Perhaps there is somehow a solution.

Btw.
Isn't there something to find on the Retroachievements webside ?

testudo

So glad I found this thread and the reference to using valerino's script to get both FM Towns and Apple 2gs Mame/Mess emulations working.

I have been using both .chd and .cue/.bin files for the FM Towns and have come across a few games that do not fully load. Best I can tell is that those game require 3MB of RAM - Mahou Daisakusen (Hash file specifically states it needs 3MB) & Super Street Fighter II are some examples. Is there any config file or lr-Mess setting that lets you adjust the RAM on the FM Towns emulation?

Folly

@testudo

If you used Valerino's module-script then the extra ram should already be there as it has the option "-ram 96M"
You can check in /opt/retropie/configs/fmtowns/emulators.cfg if extra ram is added.

Can you let me know if it's there ?

testudo

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@testudo

I you used Valerino's module-script then the extra ram should already be there as it has the option "-ram 96M"
You can check in /opt/retropie/configs/fmtowns/emulators.cfg if extra ram is added.

Can you let me know if it's there ?

It appears to be:
@Folly
lr-mess-fmtowns = "/home/testudo/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/run_mess.sh /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so /opt/retropie/configs/fmtowns/retroarch.cfg fmtowns /home/testudo/RetroPie/BIOS -ram 96M -cdrm %ROM%"
default = "lr-mess-fmtowns"

Here is the boot screen showing the RAM:
Screenshot from 2021-08-13 17-12-23.png

Folly

@testudo

I just found the solution, by accident, running mame with "-ram 96M" .
It seems 96M is a typo !
Output was :
Cannot recognize the RAM option 96M (valid options are 2M,1M,3M,4M,5M,6M).
Setting value to default 2M

Running mame with an added 6M worked, with :
/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame fmtowns -ram 6M

Can you edit your line and test it.
It would be great if now more games would work now with this edit.

In time I will add fmtowns with added ram in my project in the special systems list.
Have a look in the next link and you will be amazed :-)
It supports both lr-mess and mame :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone

You can use this project as a replacement of Valerino's lr-mess module-scripts.

testudo

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@testudo

I just found the solution, by accident, running mame with "-ram 96M" .
It seems 96M is a typo !
Output was :
Cannot recognize the RAM option 96M (valid options are 2M,1M,3M,4M,5M,6M).
Setting value to default 2M

Running mame with an added 6M worked, with :
/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame fmtowns -ram 6M

Can you edit your line and test it.
It would be great if now more games would work now with this edit.

In time I will add fmtowns with added ram in my project in the special systems list.
Have a look in the next link and you will be amazed :-)
It supports both lr-mess and mame :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/29682/development-of-module-script-generator-for-lr-mess-and-mame-standalone

You can use this project as a replacement of Valerino's lr-mess module-scripts.

@Folly

Sweet! Modified the emulator config file to 6M and now I can load and play Super Street Fighter II and Mahou Daisakusen. Thank you so much for that find.

I will take a look at the new project. I have been using Retropie/Emulation Station for so long now, that I'm afraid I have forgotten how to use standalone MAME...

Now, is there anyway to add a hard drive as the default setup? I am trying to play Cyberia and from the set-up YouTube videos I found, it looks like I need to add/create a user disk to a hard drive or something.

Folly

@testudo

I have a look if a harddrive setup is possible.

Mame support in my script works about the same as lr-mess.

Folly

@testudo

I had a deeper look into the fmtowns drivers.
These drivers do not support a hard-drive as media directly :

Driver fmtowns (FM-Towns (Model 1 / 2)):
Driver fmtownsv03 (FM-Towns (unknown, V03 L01 00 91/07/09)):

(so you can't add a hard-drive to the fmtowns system you are using now !, but perhaps there is an option to add a hard-drive as slotdevice)

These drivers do support a hard-drive as media :

Driver fmtownsftv (FM-Towns II FreshTV):
Driver fmtownshr (FM-Towns II HR):
Driver fmtownsmx (FM-Towns II MX):
Driver fmtownssj (FM-Towns II SJ):
Driver fmtownsux (FM-Towns II UX):

So if you want to use a harddrive we have to choose and test 1 or more FM-Towns II models.
(I tested the sj version but it's too slow!)

Folly

@AdamBeGood

Reply on your old posts about Alltynex and Mad Stalker.

With the added "-ram 6M" for fmtowns (works good with mame):

Alltynex is working now
Mad Stalker can be loaded now, but it freezes when you want to play
(Can you test your version again of Mad Stalker ?)

Pictures of Alltynex (works also in lr-mess, but has some slowdowns on start):

Pictures of Mad Stalker (it freezes on the second picture) :

Folly

@testudo

I did a test, and indeed, we can add a harddrive as slotdevice.
For adding 1 harddrive the mame command looks like this :

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame fmtowns -ram 6M -scsislot fmt121 -hard1 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fmtowns/HDD.hd

I checked what extensions are supported on the fmtownssj,
because we don't get an output with fmtowns, as it has not haddrive option in -listmedia.

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listmedia fmtownssj

So next extensions of fmtownssj will probably work on fmtowns too :
.chd .hd .hdv .2mg .hdi

So you can test with making a new line in emulators.cfg for lr-mess adding this part :
-ram 6M -scsislot fmt121 -hard1 %ROM%
(running a harddrive from emulationstation directly)
(if you want to use this, don't forget to add the extensions to the es_systems.cfg)
And if you want to add a cdrom as-swell you should make it like :
-ram 6M -scsislot fmt121 -hard1 <your_harddrive_file> -cdrm %ROM%
(running a fixed harddrive_file and running a cdrom from emulationstation)

I tried 1 hd img, I could see that it was inserted but, on my end, it did not load yet.
Let me know if you have some luck with this.

Folly

@hallieb

Nice ;-)

Seems this thread is beginning to revive again.

With which computers did you grow up ?

AdamBeGood

@folly Hello! I'm sorry I haven't been around. I'll have to read up again on how to update my Pi to test the new extension for Mad Stalker. How is it going anyway? I'm sorry for not being around. Work has been very busy and I haven't played a lot.

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Hello! I'm sorry I haven't been around. I'll have to read up again on how to update my Pi to test the new extension for Mad Stalker. How is it going anyway? I'm sorry for not being around. Work has been very busy and I haven't played a lot.

No problem, I understand that people are busy.
I don't have that much time either at the moment.
But I take a peek every once in a while over here.

Forums are quite silent at the moment.
Perhaps the forums will begin to flourish again in autumn or in winter, who knows.

For me, my script is now "finished" and considered stable.
Perhaps I will add things in the future, but I don't have ideas right now.

If you install the front-end you will be able to install fmtowns with the extra 6mb ram from the "special systems" selection.
Or you can just add it manually if you want.

Good luck, if you are planning to try it out again ;-)

testudo

@folly

Rocking FM Towns thanks to your help. Have you tested the Acorn Archimedes yet? I added via the script, but so far only get a an "initializing" screen that is frozen.