Old Computer Appreciation Thread

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...

Folly

@testudo

You know, you can do it with my script in the "restricted browser".
You only have to insert the correct "website name".

You can search, with google/duckduckgo, for the file in mame-0.231-merged
Then you will know what to insert into the form.
Then you will see everything what is available.

When selecting something from this romset, it will automatically be pushed to the BIOS/mame.

There is also an option for BIOS(es) not found.
After you tried a system in mame or lr-mess, just go to my script and select that (picture 2) and if it works correctly then it will show you what you are missing and have to get.

Edit :
Replace the xxx'es
axxxxxx.xxg

testudo

@Folly
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction and alerting me to the browser feature.

I am apparently not in the correct frame of mind to be thinking clearly, as the web addresses I enter for the merged set are being rejected. Might be because they are split into smaller compressed files due to hosting requirements. I will re-read your instructions after a good night's rest and try again tomorrow.

testudo

@Folly

Ok, a good night's sleep did wonders. I figured out how to use the restricted browser. The script saw my currently installed BIOS as valid, so I deleted them and re-installed the two files via the script. Unfortunately, the situation remains unchanged and the pink screen was still there.

I'll keep investigating in my spare time.

testudo

@Folly
Solved the problem. For some reason regular lr-mess no longer worked and selecting the lr-run_mess aa4001 option did the trick.

Folly

@testudo

Good to hear that you got it working.

Did you use the latest lr-mess and my latest script for installation ?
What about mame, did it work ?
Is this the loader command that didn't work ?
lr-mess-aa310-bios_310-flop = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch --config /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/retroarch.cfg --appendconfig /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/retroarch.cfg.add -S /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/archimedes -s /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/archimedes -v -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so 'aa310 -bios 310 -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/archimedes/ -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/lr-mess -c -ui_active -flop %ROM%'"
(can you check inside your /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/emulators.cfg)

testudo

@Folly
Pretty sure used lr-mess .241 when re-installing Archimedes. I am not sure if it was using version .240 or .241 of your script though. The BIOS was definitely installed with v.241.01 of your script.

I had initially used this loader command, but it stopped working:

lr-mess-aa310-bios_310-flop = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch --config /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/retroarch.cfg --appendconfig /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/retroarch.cfg.add -S /home/testudo/RetroPie/roms/archimedes -s /home/testudo/RetroPie/roms/archimedes -v -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so 'aa310 -bios 310 -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/testudo/RetroPie/roms/archimedes/ -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/lr-mess -c -ui_active -flop %ROM%'"

From the start, I have really only had success using the lr-mess versions of the loader commands, regardless of the system being emulated. With few exceptions, the MAME options fail to work.

This is the loader command that is working successfully:

lr-run_mess-aa4401-bios_310-4Mb-flop-autoframeskip = "/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/archimedes/retroarch.cfg \aa4401 /home/testudo/RetroPie/BIOS/mame\;/home/testudo/RetroPie/roms/archimedes  -autoframeskip -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/archimedes/lr-mess -ui_active -bios 310 -ram 4M -flop %ROM%"