Old Computer Appreciation Thread

Zering

@AdamBeGood The scripts modify emulators.cfg when you install. That's the whole beauty of it.

Edit : Tried Planescape on GemRB and I would not recommend it. Two hours in I'd encountered several bad graphical and gameplay glitches, and an impassable game crash. According to the devs it's completable but not polished, unlike Baldur's gate 1 and 2 and Icewind Dale. As the Enhanced editions of those games run on just about every computer with OpenGL (not mine sadly) I'd say go that route. I'll still try BG on GemRB. I've never actually beat the originals and I'm curious how polished they actually are.

But damn is Planescape awesome. It's so enjoyable playing through with high wisdom and intelligence. So many dialogue options and ways of solving quests peacefully. It's utter brilliance. Easily one of my ten favourite RPGs.

Edit 2 : Also, I know we've talked about this a while ago @ecto, but I set up patched DOS versions of Ultima using Ultima Patcher to improve the graphics and add music. They work a treat. The GOG versions run well and come with their own conf files too. Sadly I've seen a little stuttering on Ultima 4 in dosbox, a little less on dosbox-svn. 8000 cycles seems to be the sweet spot for those games. Speaking of if anybody struggles actually running a DOS game because of a nebulous install, the GOG versions are wrapped in DOSbox and work a treat, except for most CD games it seems.

Anyway that's the extent of my tinkering this week.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood The scripts modify emulators.cfg when you install. That's the whole beauty of it.

Indeed, @Zering is right, just install and it works.
Just like you install a valerino script.
Only focus on the BIOS and the Games and media/compatible extension.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood The scripts modify emulators.cfg when you install. That's the whole beauty of it.

Edit : Tried Planescape on GemRB and I would not recommend it. Two hours in I'd encountered several bad graphical and gameplay glitches, and an impassable game crash. According to the devs it's completable but not polished, unlike Baldur's gate 1 and 2 and Icewind Dale. As the Enhanced editions of those games run on just about every computer with OpenGL (not mine sadly) I'd say go that route. I'll still try BG on GemRB. I've never actually beat the originals and I'm curious how polished they actually are.

But damn is Planescape awesome. It's so enjoyable playing through with high wisdom and intelligence. So many dialogue options and ways of solving quests peacefully. It's utter brilliance. Easily one of my ten favourite RPGs.

Edit 2 : Also, I know we've talked about this a while ago @ecto, but I set up patched DOS versions of Ultima using Ultima Patcher to improve the graphics and add music. They work a treat. The GOG versions run well and come with their own conf files too. Sadly I've seen a little stuttering on Ultima 4 in dosbox, a little less on dosbox-svn. 8000 cycles seems to be the sweet spot for those games. Speaking of if anybody struggles actually running a DOS game because of a nebulous install, the GOG versions are wrapped in DOSbox and work a treat, except for most CD games it seems.

Anyway that's the extent of my tinkering this week.

You are again very busy. I am getting behind I see.
I hope I have some time to look it that dosbox again.
How does these GOG versions work ? And what does GOG mean ?

That gemRB looks also interesting.

Zering

@folly GOG is essentially CD Project RED's (The witcher series) online game store. It stands Good Old Games. Among other things it's one website you can download Ultima 4 on for free legally. They sell tons of old games.

As the older DOS games come wrapped in DOSbox, if you own the games you can just transfer your installation to your Pi.

AdamBeGood

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood The scripts modify emulators.cfg when you install. That's the whole beauty of it.

Indeed, @Zering is right, just install and it works.
Just like you install a valerino script.
Only focus on the BIOS and the Games and media/compatible extension.

Yeah, I think I am having a BIOS problem now. That seems to be where I am judging from the verbose log. I've tried a few now though.

When I add games in jaguar they don't show in Emulation Station, I guess es_systems or whatever that file is called isn't updated, so I just took the emulators.cfg lines from jaguar to atarijaguar and the process is definitely getting further now. I get a blurry box that says "initialising" (maybe) when I load the game now, the same screen that you get if things go wrong on the MAME emulators.

I'll try some more BIOSes tomorrow.

Edit: Oh, and Planescape sounds good!

Zering

@adambegood For what it's worth when I tried to run Jaguar through MESS with no Bios I couldn't even get as far as you did.

A blurry initializing freeze definitely sounds like a bad bios.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly GOG is essentially CD Project RED's (The witcher series) online game store. It stands Good Old Games. Among other things it's one website you can download Ultima 4 on for free legally. They sell tons of old games.

As the older DOS games come wrapped in DOSbox, if you own the games you can just transfer your installation to your Pi.

Good explanation !

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@AdamBeGood The scripts modify emulators.cfg when you install. That's the whole beauty of it.

Indeed, @Zering is right, just install and it works.
Just like you install a valerino script.
Only focus on the BIOS and the Games and media/compatible extension.

Yeah, I think I am having a BIOS problem now. That seems to be where I am judging from the verbose log. I've tried a few now though.

When I add games in jaguar they don't show in Emulation Station, I guess es_systems or whatever that file is called isn't updated, so I just took the emulators.cfg lines from jaguar to atarijaguar and the process is definitely getting further now. I get a blurry box that says "initialising" (maybe) when I load the game now, the same screen that you get if things go wrong on the MAME emulators.

I'll try some more BIOSes tomorrow.

Edit: Oh, and Planescape sounds good!

It should work, use the 151 mess bios and software list.
(altough the emulation is not always perfect with this system, but that has nothing to do with setting up the system)

My generated script adds this in ( /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg) :

  <name>jaguar</name>
  <fullname>Jaguar (NTSC) with cartridge support</fullname>
  <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/jaguar</path>
  <extension>.zip .abs .bin .cof .j64 .jag .prg .rom .ZIP .ABS .BIN .COF .J64 .JAG .PRG .ROM</extension>

If containing this text, games with .zip and .j64 etc are found in emulationstation. (if game-roms are in "jaguar", for this system without es-theme)

If supported by the lr-mess-<system>-<media>.sh last installed or choosen at game boot they will run. 3x flikker will occur with this system, so be patience.

(EDIT: There is a better solution, advise : skip this part, read next part)
If above works and you want to run your game from the official Retropie named "atarijaguar" rom directory (to see your artwork), this has to be added/changed in /opt/retropie/configs/atarijaguar/emulators.cfg ( !!! move your games to the atarijaguar directory, otherwise you will not see them in emulationstation !!! ):

lr-virtualjaguar = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-virtualjaguar/virtualjaguar_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/atarijaguar/retroarch.cfg %ROM%"
lr-mess-jaguar-cart = "/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/run_mess.sh /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mess/mess_libretro.so /opt/retropie/configs/jaguar/retroarch.cfg jaguar /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS -cart %ROM%"
default = "lr-mess-jaguar-cart"

Above method is kinda hackish and not recommended, because configs are stored in the old named directory structure, so you loose your "helicopter view" of where specific the files are.

A better solution is to copy the atarijaguar theme directory as a jaguar theme directory in, for example /etc/emulationstation/themes/carbon. (use sudo rights)
This way you don't have to edit things and all the files are in the place they should be. And it gives you the same result.

Then it will appear like this :

Empty your old rom directory /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/jaguar then this entry will not be shown in emulationstation.

Mmmmm.... Looks good, doesn't it.

AdamBeGood

I've got it working! It was a BIOS issue, I used the MAME .224 BIOS and now all good.

I already had loads of games working on virtualjaguar, but it's good to have the ones that didn't work so well on that working with MESS. Thanks so much, @Folly !

My next job is BBC Micro but when I try to generate that, I get a message saying no system of that name. I am trying with "bbcmicro".

Edit: oh, and .j64 files don't need to be zipped.

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

I've got it working! It was a BIOS issue, I used the MAME .224 BIOS and now all good.

I already had loads of games working on virtualjaguar, but it's good to have the ones that didn't work so well on that working with MESS. Thanks so much, @Folly !

My next job is BBC Micro but when I try to generate that, I get a message saying no system of that name. I am trying with "bbcmicro".

Good job.
Could be an issue in the script. I filtered non usable media out. but if the are on the first line you can't generate for that system. Will have a look at that.
(edit: no issue)(edit1:can't install rom1 for bbc micro , will add it to my script)

Advise, read my post again. I added a better solution for the themes.
For the future I hope that I can match the names to RetroPie ones.
So a solution like that is not needed anymore.
In my test script I have worked out some of these issues, but it's not perfect yet.

EDIT : you have to know the system name you want to install, "bbcmicro" does not exist. Use "bbca" or "bbcb" etc. that should work !

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ /opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listdevices | grep Driver | grep "BBC Micro"
Driver bbca (BBC Micro Model A):
Driver bbcb (BBC Micro Model B):
Driver bbcb_de (BBC Micro Model B (German)):
Driver bbcb_us (BBC Micro Model B (US)):
Driver bbcbp (BBC Micro Model B+ 64K):
Driver bbcbp128 (BBC Micro Model B+ 128K):

You can also look here, click all systems ( tip from @Zering ) :
http://www.progettoemma.net/mess/

I am going to install :
~~bbcbp128~~ I have no good bios
bbcb boots ( possible : see next post )
bbcb boots ( added rom1 to my script, now also installable, up til now can't boot rom files )

AdamBeGood

@folly I think all my games so far are .ssd floppies. I can get BBC Basic to load but I can't get a game to load yet. I'm using -flop1

Edit: I've found some talk around using

CHAIN "floppy.type"

Where floppy.type is the disk image you are trying to run. But I can't even get full stop to work on my keyboard yet!

Further Edit: Got it working. I have Repton and Geordie Racer.

I renamed Repton to repton.ssd and then

CHAIN "repton"

works!

Further Further Edit: Geordie Racer is Acorn BBC Micro so that is another system I guess.... I used to play that in Primary School as it was slightly educational so would be fun to see it.

Folly

@adambegood

I booted cas files !
Found this on a website :

The vast majority of images within the archive contain a BASIC loader file, so the following should suffice:

*TAPE
PAGE=&E00
CHAIN ""
However, if the first file in an image is machine code (indicated by a _RUN in the long filename e.g. Islandia_RUN_B.uef) then you will need to enter this instead:

*TAPE
*RUN
There may be one or two exceptions to the above, for example, some very early software required you to issue a *LOAD followed by OLD:RUN or a CALL statement. However, I don't think this applies to any images in the archive at present.

Now controls ? cursors worked, but the rest ?

AdamBeGood

@folly Mine was just keyboard controls. Weird ones, Z and X for left and right. Well done on cassettes!

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Mine was just keyboard controls. Weird ones, Z and X for left and right. Well done on cassettes!

I will try.

Well, we are up and running a bit :-)
Edit: runs really good !

Edit :
Discovered a really fast way of booting a disk the shift+break way (bbc micro (bbcb)) :
In the emulator use :
shift + F12
(booting automatically starts)

Already playable (bbc micro (bbcb)) (Blagger an Guardian (Alligata)):

AdamBeGood

@folly Nice! I was trying to think Shift + Break! Thought I tried most keys.

Folly

@adambegood said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Nice! I was trying to think Shift + Break! Thought I tried most keys.

Was there also a similar way for cassettes ?
Do you know that ?

Zering

@folly Very impressive! Are you also aware that the pi is capable of running BBC Micro games through beebem? Although from what I hear and know performance is less than ideal.

Also I can confirm that Planescape on the Pi is a big no. I'm playing the original Windows game on my PC and realising just how badly glitched Planescape is on gemRB. It's missing animations, equipping weapons stops your character from fighting properly, the main PC levels up whenever somebody else is levelling up... it's a shame, but maybe in the future Box86 + Wine might enable us to play the Enhanced Editioms on the pi.

Box86 compiles easily on my pi 4 but the instructions I found don't cover how to actually use the damn thing. Silly.

AdamBeGood

@zering I might buy Planescape on Steam, sounds very good.

Zering

@adambegood You might get it cheaper on GOG. Their enhanced edition comes packaged with the original game too.
It's the Infinity engine game that benefitted the least from the Enhanced Edition treatment but it's still staggeringly beautiful in HD.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly Very impressive! Are you also aware that the pi is capable of running BBC Micro games through beebem? Although from what I hear and know performance is less than ideal.

Yes I know. Never tried it though. Have to do that some time.
I must say video and sound are really good with bbc micro in lr-mess.

Box86 compiles easily on my pi 4 but the instructions I found don't cover how to actually use the damn thing. Silly.

Someone seems to be busy running wine over box86.
Up till now there is nothing shared
Probably we have to wait.

Last year I tried box86. Only thing I could install steam installer.

Seems that you can install a wine (windows binary version) on it. So it could be easy.