Old Computer Appreciation Thread

Zering

@folly Well I'll say well done anyway, there was bound to be some sort of limitation but if you hadn't done the work you wouldn't be aware of it.
Thanks for trying to make this work!

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Well I'll say well done anyway, there was bound to be some sort of limitation but if you hadn't done the work you wouldn't be aware of it.
Thanks for trying to make this work!

Indeed, thanks for your support.

Perhaps there is a way to get around it.
Well I don't know.

Translation-shell has possible alternative engines :

bing (working, but only text output)
yandex (not working at the moment)
apertium offline translator (didn't test, but has no Japanese)

Seems to be future work.

Zering

@adambegood Just realized I completely forgot to answer your question about Final Fantasy. I don't think XIII is horrible, I just don't think it's good either. It's average in most respects. I find it aesthetically ugly for the most part, although it has moments of greatness and it was graphically impressive back on release. But the combat system, while fast-paced, is just too limited, the game is massively linear, and worst of all, the story makes no sense whatsoever and the characters are extremely unlikeable. I'd pass on it if I were you. For me the series reached its peak with VII and IX. X is also great. I never really played XII, but some people say it's incredible.

I'd recommend IV, VI, VII and IX to a new starter. VIII is probably a good place to start as well, but I can't recommend it myself as I think the game is horrible.

AdamBeGood

@folly said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

Perhaps there is a way to get around it.
Well I don't know.

Translation-shell has possible alternative engines :

bing (working, but only text output)

yandex (not working at the moment)

apertium offline translator (didn't test, but has no Japanese)

Seems to be future work.

The repository looks good, nice to have that all noted down for when the infrastructure to implement it catches up a bit. It's a great idea regardless!

AdamBeGood

@zering I just wrote a proper response to this, and the early message also, but I lost it on my phone browser. Most vexing.

I'll go with what you're saying then and continue with VII as the jump-off. I have IX and the SNES ones also. I am getting a bit panicked about how little time I have and how many games, tinkering fits around work so much better than actually getting stuck into a game.

I've got some PC games working today - Descent 1 and 2, Mechwarrior 2 and Turrican 2. Oh and Xentar as you mentioned it! Adding some odds and ends to my C64 library also, as I had basically nothing in there.

Tinkering needs to end!

Zering

@adambegood Tinkering never ends. Tinkering is fun.

As for the SNES FF games, I would actually recommend you play the GBA versions with graphics and music patches, at least for IV, which is very much compromised on the SNES (as opposed to the Super Famicom).

I tinkered a bit with the MSX myself today and finally got the saves in Metal Gear 2 to work through openmsx, by using a .dsk version of the game instead of a .rom.
I was wondering @Folly if you knew what the plus and minus of .dsk over .rom were?

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood Tinkering never ends. Tinkering is fun.

As for the SNES FF games, I would actually recommend you play the GBA versions with graphics and music patches, at least for IV, which is very much compromised on the SNES (as opposed to the Super Famicom).

I tinkered a bit with the MSX myself today and finally got the saves in Metal Gear 2 to work through openmsx, by using a .dsk version of the game instead of a .rom.
I was wondering @Folly if you knew what the plus and minus of .dsk over .rom were?

As far as I know, Metal Gear 2 was originally a rom containing also an SCC chip, and quite a big one, rom-memory wise. In those days all those cartridge-roms were dumped so you could play them without inserting a cartridge.(you know why:))It was also very difficult and expensive to buy imported games. When running from a disk all the data from the disk is uploaded to the ram-memory of the computer. We had a SONY with 256kb memory. Most dumped disk versions would work fine on that computer. Philips had only 128kb. Most games were then made smaller, some of them then had no sound, for example. Metal Gear 2 can work on the SONY, but has to load very often from the disk and perhaps we had no sound. So my brother bought a 512kb memory cartridge, so now it worked pretty good. But then again you only had "PSG" sound. So we had a "salamander" cartridge with SCC. When the computer booted up, you had to insert the salamander cartridge after the "beep", then the computer was only using the SCC.(not running salamander) (It was somewhat tricky, you could ruin your computer while doing that :( ). So we built a switch onto rom-chip of the salamander cartridge. Now we could insert the cartridge when the computer was off and decide whether we wanted to use only the SCC or salamander+SCC.

Pffff.. what a story.
When I started this, I didn't think there was so much to tell.
Hope you enjoy this story :)

AdamBeGood

@zering
Hopefully this gives you an idea of the sound issues that I've had on Cho Ren Sha. Let me know if it doesn't.

I've got the GBA versions of the SNES Final Fantasy games now, thanks for that!

@Folly I love it! I can imagine the stress when you put the cartridge in. Sounds like you were learning early on how to tinker with systems.

Zering

@adambegood Okay that is definitely not normal ^^
I'd guess it's either bios or settings related.
I assume you've tinkered around with any settings that might appear relevant in lr-px68k?

@Folly That's an amazing story. Sounds like you were already tinkering more than playing back then too ^^

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood Okay that is definitely not normal ^^
I'd guess it's either bios or settings related.
I assume you've tinkered around with any settings that might appear relevant in lr-px68k?

Done some tinkering but tinkering more now. Is your ROM "Chourensha 68K v1.01 (1995)(Famibe No Yosshin).dim"? Just in case that is a difference?

Zering

@adambegood Nope, that's my rom.
I'd look at your bios and settings.
Are you having sound issues on any other emulator?

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@adambegood Nope, that's my rom.
I'd look at your bios and settings.
Are you having sound issues on any other emulator?

Nah not that I've noticed.

I did see this same issue on Buster on X-68000 as well, but it is fine for most games. So annoying. I'll have a look at BIOS, can't imagine it is Settings as there isn't a lot there and I wouldn't have changed anything when I first encountered this issue.

Edit: I have all the BIOS with correct check-sum (v easy in this case):

iplrom.dat 72BDF532 7FD4CAABAC1D9169E289F0F7BBF71D8E BIOS file
cgrom.dat 9F3195F1 CB0A5CFCF7247A7EAB74BB2716260269 Font file
iplrom30.dat E8F8FDAD F373003710AB4322642F527F567E020A BIOS file
iplromco.dat 6C7EF608 CC78D4F4900F622BD6DE1AED7F52592F BIOS file
iplromxv.dat 00EEB408 0617321DAA182C3F3D6F41FD02FB3275 BIOS file

I've got a meeting now, I'll send settings afterwards to see if you differ at all.

Folly

@Zering @AdamBeGood
I was already tinkering back then. Actually ruined my computer once with a bought selfmade eprom cartridge with "logo" on it. It had no enclosure. It was a lot more tricky. OOPS "the famous black screen". I had to mis my computer for 2 weeks.

ChouRenSha looks very nice. Will try that one :)

Also have to try the Snatcher's they sound great !

Also made a nice discovery. I was curious if I made separate screenshots of a game with the same image, if the md5sum's would be always the same. Then you could make a database and add info to that particular image. For example "help" info or "cleaned translations". Did a test with 3 screenshots and all md5sums were exactly the same :) WOW. That makes me wonder, how much we could do with this knowledge.

Zering

Well it seems my 2 TB drive has had some sort of failure, so now I need to back all my roms and bios up to a new one. I may be out of action for a couple of days. @AdamBeGood could the issue have something to do with the way you're outputting sound?

@Folly What could we do with that knowledge? Obviously you must have some ideas.

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

Well it seems my 2 TB drive has had some sort of failure, so now I need to back all my roms and bios up to a new one. I may be out of action for a couple of days. @AdamBeGood could the issue have something to do with the way you're outputting sound?

A disk failure, that's bad to hear. good luck with backing up.

@Folly What could we do with that knowledge? Obviously you must have some ideas.

Not exactly, but you could play "sound help files, as an overlay", for example.

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

Well it seems my 2 TB drive has had some sort of failure, so now I need to back all my roms and bios up to a new one. I may be out of action for a couple of days.

Oh God, sorry to hear that.... Hope you get back up and running soon.

@AdamBeGood could the issue have something to do with the way you're outputting sound?

Hmm maybe but it works for everything else..

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

Hmm maybe but it works for everything else..

My sound with this game is also not optimal. It ischisss often.
You can switch silence=on in the game. but thats not really a solution.

I use the analog audio output.
I think you are using the hdmi digital.

So makes no difference.

Can't tell whats the problem here.

Zering

@folly Isn't there an option to ocerclock the CPU in px68k? Are you guys using that perhaps?
I literally have no sound issues on this game. It's the better sounding game on the system!

Folly

@zering said in Old Japanese Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Isn't there an option to ocerclock the CPU in px68k? Are you guys using that perhaps?
I literally have no sound issues on this game. It's the better sounding game on the system!

I did not change anything. I saw it was on 10mHz.

Zering

@folly What happens if you change that value?