Old Computer Appreciation Thread

AdamBeGood

@folly I didn't have time to properly play but I'll let you know when I get a chance to play - probably tomorrow. It seems quite hard from a quick play!

Thanks for the save state help also!

AdamBeGood

@Folly - on a totally distinct issue, a bit off-topic I'll admit; I've got a Sinden Light Gun now and thought about getting it to work with Saturn tonight (I've got NES, SNES and Dreamcast working so far).

However, I need to try it on a libretro core and for some weird reason my Saturn games are all launching straight to Yabasanshiro regardless of how I have them set up in emulators.cfg. Some games are set to other cores, but it doesn't make a difference - I get no runcommand menu and Yabasanshiro just boots straight up.

Any idea where I look to resolve this? I don't remember changing anything here...

Zering

@adambegood That's because standalone yabasanshiro doesn't use runcommand. You would have changed that in your es_systems.cfg when setting up yabasanshiro.

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood That's because standalone yabasanshiro doesn't use runcommand. You would have changed that in your es_systems.cfg when setting up yabasanshiro.

Thanks, @zering. I guess I just hadn't noticed. Can I have yabasanshiro installed and still choose other emulators? Or do I have to take a line out of config every time to do that?

I didn't expect a response from you on this one!

Edit: Take that line out and put a normal runcommand line in and that seems all good now.

testudo

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood

Nice,

Now we have to play, after all the effort involving ;-)
Let me know how it goes.

With mame we can (we can pause first with P) :

save states with : shift-left + F7

load states with : shift-right + F7

Can you defeat this one, in stage 1 ? :

Concur, brilliant detective work! I can only get it to boot using the lr-mess-fmtowns config, the other fmtowns and mame runcommand selections do not work. But, changing the Joystick port 2 to <nothing> removed the in game freezing and it plays great. I'll just manually change it back to <mouse> when done playing. No luck in my first attempt to defeat the stage 1 Boss.

DTEAM

@Folly
On FM Towns Marty, some games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge or 4D tennis require a CD ROM and a floppy disk.

Does somebody already managed that?

AdamBeGood

@dteam said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly
On FM Towns Marty, some games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge or 4D tennis require a CD ROM and a floppy disk.

Does somebody already managed that?

I'd be surprised if Folly hasn't cracked that, I think it might have been discussed at some point.

Folly

@dteam said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly
On FM Towns Marty, some games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge or 4D tennis require a CD ROM and a floppy disk.

Does somebody already managed that?

I will have a look, it should be possible.

Edit :
Tested 4d tennis adding the user floppy in the GUI but the floppy file isn't accepted.
runcommand.log gives this error :
Fatal error: Device 3.5" high density floppy drive load failed: Unable to identify the image format

I will look at it later again.

Folly

@dteam

It looks like we both use NEOKOBE files for fmtowns.
I think that the user floppy files have an image structure that cannot be read by mame somehow.
I think we need to convert the floppy files or try to find ones that work with mame.

I was able to create an empty .hdm floppy image which is accepted but it seems it's not enough for "4D Tennis".

testudo

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@dteam said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly
On FM Towns Marty, some games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge or 4D tennis require a CD ROM and a floppy disk.

Does somebody already managed that?

I will have a look, it should be possible.

Edit :
Tested 4d tennis adding the user floppy in the GUI but the floppy file isn't accepted.
runcommand.log gives this error :
Fatal error: Device 3.5" high density floppy drive load failed: Unable to identify the image format

I will look at it later again.

With FMTowns using lr-Mess, 4D Tennis will boot and be fully playable if you add a blank formatted disk in .hdm format with the GUI at the user disk prompt. The specific user disk file I had for 4D Tennis was .bin format and was not recognized.

Folly

@testudo

Is it a 1.2Mb floppy .hdm image or a 1.44Mb ?

I tried the same, as what you did, with mame with a 1.2Mb .hdm but that didn't seem to work.
So perhaps I missing something here.

I have to try it again.

testudo

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@testudo

Is it a 1.2Mb floppy .hdm image or a 1.44Mb ?

I tried the same, as what you did, with mame with a 1.2Mb .hdm but that didn't seem to work.
So perhaps I missing something here.

I have to try it again.

I'm not sure how to check the file size in the FMTowns OS, but the "ROM" file size is 1,261,568 bytes, so I would guess it is a 1.2Mb. It is MS-DOS formatted if that is a clue: I used Repacked Neo Kobe [OS] Blank disk/

Folly

@testudo @DTEAM

It's an 1.2Mb floppy image.

I used the same now for mame.
But basically I had the same problem as the last time.

Inserting the floppy image and select : read and write.
After some time it will say : check user disk !

I decided to select : read from image and save to another image.
Then it asks what kind of image format, I selected : fmtowns unformatted and changed the name so it will create a new floppy.

After that it was accepted and I could go playing.
But the game seems stuck after selecting some play options.

Did you manage to play ?

Btw.
Using the game specific load option has it's advantage.
When selecting the floppy image next time it will show up the correct directory for selecting the image.

testudo

@folly

I only played the Practice session option for a few minutes and that worked fine. I will try the proper game/tournament option and report back.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to get the MAME emulator options or MESS game specific emulator selection options to work. I have even tried making them the default in the emulator.config file and still no success.

I created a User Disk folder in the Rom directory where I store all the different user disks and lr-mess seems to default to it when I use the GUI to add a floppy image. So adding the user disk image file is a fairly quick exercise.

Folly

@testudo said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly

I only played the Practice session option for a few minutes and that worked fine. I will try the proper game/tournament option and report back.

Curious if it will works, on your side.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to get the MAME emulator options or MESS game specific emulator selection options to work. I have even tried making them the default in the emulator.config file and still no success.

I don't know what problem you have then.

I created a User Disk folder in the Rom directory where I store all the different user disks and lr-mess seems to default to it when I use the GUI to add a floppy image. So adding the user disk image file is a fairly quick exercise.

Nice solution.

Folly

@testudo

Progress, indeed I got it, it's working.
Only the carreer option doesn't work, I think.

testudo

@folly

Fantastic! I was going to post that I played 5 sets in <Exhibition> and it worked fine.

testudo

@Folly
Does the Acorn Archimedes emulation still work for you? I have updated RP a few times and recently went back to revisit my Archimedes game library, only to find I am unable to launch any games. I usually get the screen below (remember seeing this previously, but forget the fix) when using lr-mess. The RISC OS never boots.
Screenshot from 2022-03-22 17-33-01.png

Folly

@testudo

Yes, it works.

You should check your /dev/shm/runcommand.log .

I used my latest mamedev-script 241.00 .
Installed "aa310 + booting Risc OS 310 + floppy" from the EXTRAS section .
Placed the these bioses in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame :
aa310.7z
archimedes_keyboard.7z

extracted the mame software archimedes.zip in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/archimedes .

Loaded lemming.zip correctly with :
lr-mess-aa310-bios_310-flop
lr-run_mess-aa310-flop-autoframeskip
mame-aa310-bios_310-flop

testudo

@Folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

the mame software archimedes.zip

Looks like my BIOS files are not working for some reason.

[libretro ERROR] 0296,041-01.rom NOT FOUND (tried in aa310)
0296,042-01.rom NOT FOUND (tried in aa310)
0296,043-01.rom NOT FOUND (tried in aa310)
0296,044-01.rom NOT FOUND (tried in aa310)
cmos_riscos3.bin NOT FOUND (tried in aa310)
acorn_0280,022-01_philips_8051ah-2.bin NOT FOUND (tried in archimedes_keyboard aa310)

But, it appears those roms are in my aa310.zip and archimedes_keyboard.zip (I have .7Z versions in the BIOS folder as well).

Screenshot from 2022-03-23 18-02-54.png

Screenshot from 2022-03-23 18-04-21.png

More investigating to do...