Old Computer Appreciation Thread

AdamBeGood

I've got a load of games to run tonight, with quite a bit of disk swapping. So the bios I have is good for something.

Do you think I should raise a post for my .hdi issue?

I could do without all the drive swapping, and I have to use Google Translate on my phone to find out what the game wants me to do!

Games I've got to run -

Dragon Slayer 2
Puyo Puyo
Popful Mail
Rusty
Warau Salesman (not recommended, this was when I was picking any game to try)

Only one I've had no joy with is Night Slave but that has Disks A to J so maybe needs to be installed? I think that might have to be run on .hdi (it looks quite fun so wonder if you guys want to try it?).

Zering

@AdamBeGood So there's only one game you can't get to run?

ecto

@Folly said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly That's excellent news!

Makes me wonder if CD and HD images can also be added together with FD images. All together in 1 file.

You can mount different types of images together using one cmd file (a little like a m3u file. Read here.

Zering

@AdamBeGood Night Slave.hdi boots fine on my end.
This one requires a low CPU Clock Multiplier. 10 seems fine.
As usual the text boxes are vacant.
The game looks utterly gorgeous (and I'm not talking about the scantily clad anime ladies).
The controls are messed up though, I can't select power ups with my joypad.

@ecto Thanks for sharing that post, I'm sure that will come in very handy as we get deeper in the PC98's catalogue!

AdamBeGood

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood So there's only one game you can't get to run?

From Floppy Disk, yep. But I can't get various games that I want on floppy disk, quite a few of them I can only find .hdi.

On the text issue, have you got a font.bmp in your BIOS folder? That is where my config file says to look for that.

I really want to play Night Slave, it is is annoying. I don't mind if I have to use the keyboard a bit. It was nice to get some games working today anyway.

.hdi would really open the catalogue up.

AdamBeGood

@ecto As you're a bit of a PC98 pro, I don't suppose you have ever encountered the issue I'm facing.

If I open any .hdi file, I get a "How many files (0-15)?" message and then whatever I put, I get dumped to a Basic prompt. I've found floppy disk images to be fine (.hdm and .d88). It would be good to know if you have any thoughts on this - but no worries if you're busy, etc.

Zering

@AdamBeGood .d88? That's a PC88 file extension isn't it?

I'll have to check for the font.bmp. I'm hoping you're right. I really want to play the six Farland Story games.

SuperFromND

Oh hey, I just now realized this thread existed!

I've always had a fascination with Japanese home computers, mostly because they seldom get mentioned in retrogaming circles compared to the usual home computers.

Admittedly I haven't actually spent a whole lot of time actually playing anything released on them, but I'll still try to answer whatever I can.

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

d88? That's a PC88 file extension isn't it?

It was originally intended for the PC88, but .d88 isn't exclusive to it.

Zering

@SuperFromND Well this thread has only existed for about three days so you're not too late to the party!
I'm not much of an expert myself, outside of the X68000 and the MSX my knowledge is limited. But at the very least those systems are intriguing.
Now that I've got the X68K and the NEC PCs pretty much sorted I think I'm going to look into more obscure machines, like the FM7 or the Sharp MZ700. The fun never stops ^^

AdamBeGood

I've been tinkering on the PC98 again this morning.

It turns out if I remove all BIOS from the folder, then the floppy games I had running previously still work! The difference is that if I put the BIOS back in, then I begin receiving "How Many Files?" messages for .hdi rather than blank screen, which is what I get without any BIOS at all.

Here's the screen:

https://flic.kr/p/2k3C9kD

I still think it likely that I have the wrong BIOS, but I also find it surprising that none of the ones I've tried have worked. I have tried a lot now. Here's me going through BIOS checksums yesterday:

https://flic.kr/p/2k3yjch

Here are runcommand entries if that is at all useful.

runcommand.info

pc98
lr-np2kai
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc98/fzkotsujin.hdi
/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-np2kai/np2kai_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/pc98/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc98/fzkotsujin.hdi"

runcommand.log

Parameters: 
Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-np2kai/np2kai_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/pc98/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc98/fzkotsujin.hdi" --appendconfig /dev/shm/retroarch.cfg
Loading np2kai.cfg from /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/np2kai.cfgSaving np2kai.cfg to /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/np2kai.cfgSaving np2kai.cfg to /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/np2kai/np2kai.cfgarg_0:np2kai
argl_0:6
arg_1:/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc98/fzkotsujin.hdi
argl_1:42
Samples:782
INIT done

Folly

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly When you say 'changed a few', do you mean that you've replaced the file entirely or that you've somehow edited the md5?

Edit : Got it! My N88.ROM was way off.
As a note, n88jisho.rom is still wrong on my end. But Final Crisis plays fine. That file seems to be optional.

Thanks again @Folly !

Good job!
Yes, I meant replaced a rom or two.

Folly

@ecto said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Folly That's excellent news!

Makes me wonder if CD and HD images can also be added together with FD images. All together in 1 file.

You can mount different types of images together using one cmd file (a little like a m3u file. Read here.

Thanks for sharing !
Will look into it later on.

Folly

@AdamBeGood said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

about your logs.

If you want a good log, then you have to start a game and directly press a button when the load screen from retropie is on. Then choose "launch with verbose mode". then afterwards you will have a good log file.

Will catch up, with you all, later on. Duty is calling.

Zering

@AdamBeGood Would my checksums help?

AdamBeGood

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood Would my checksums help?

I was checking against your sums yesterday - from higher up in the thread. I can't find them, I am not sure what I'm doing wrong. I haven't tried today. Irritatingly, I have to produce a spreadsheet for work so I can't trawl through BIOS right now.

Zering

@AdamBeGood I completely forgot I'd already put them up.
Well I'm sure we'll figure out the problem eventually. To be honest I'm starting to think I spend more time tinkering on my pi than actually playing it ^^

AdamBeGood

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood I completely forgot I'd already put them up.
Well I'm sure we'll figure out the problem eventually. To be honest I'm starting to think I spend more time tinkering on my pi than actually playing it ^^

I was looking through the RetroPie/RetroArch BIOS packs, and tried all of those I think. I really don't get it.

@Folly Hope duty goes well. Here is a verbose log: https://pastebin.com/kJz5Grum

Zering

@AdamBeGood juste wondering, have you tried installing lr-np2kai from source?

Folly

@AdamBeGood said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood Would my checksums help?

I was checking against your sums yesterday - from higher up in the thread. I can't find them, I am not sure what I'm doing wrong. I haven't tried today. Irritatingly, I have to produce a spreadsheet for work so I can't trawl through BIOS right now.

Beware, there are different checksum :
sha1sum
md5sum
crc32
etc

AdamBeGood

@Zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood juste wondering, have you tried installing lr-np2kai from source?

Yep, initially installed from binary and then when it was going belly up I tried to install from Source.