Apple II and Flobynoid

Striderx99

Hello everyone. I just wanted to ask some questions about one particular game. I tried loading the Flobynoid (version 9.8) .dsk image using the Linapple emulator. After a few seconds it presented an error message on the screen (2024- A=A0 X=38 Y=3A P=34 S=F6) proceeded by a star and a flashing cursor on the next line.

Are there any other emulators for the Apple II I can use to make this .dsk work correctly? Are there any keystrokes that I should have used to load it properly? If anyone has any ideas on how to make this game work, please let me know. Thank you.

Striderx99

I forgot to mention that I am using a Raspberry Pi 4B+ with the following specs:

Linux retropie 5.10.52-v7l+ #1441 SMP Tue Aug 3 18:11:56 BST 2021 armv7l.

Thanks for your input.

abj

RetroPie-Extra repo have lr-applewin emulator, take a look on this, i hope it plays your game: https://github.com/Exarkuniv/RetroPie-Extra

roslof

@Striderx99 said in Apple II and Flobynoid:

Are there any other emulators for the Apple II I can use to make this .dsk work correctly?

For that specific dsk:

lr-mess will properly boot the .dsk file
linapple will crash out of emulation
lr-applewin depending on which apple you're emulating, will boot and crash in emulation or freeze on the title screen

So it works with lr-mess, which is a pain to setup -- but note that the .dsk file must be read/writable or you'll be prompted in French that the disk must not be protected. So you must not ZIP or 7z the file.

Striderx99

@roslof I think I might try lr-mess and set it to automatically load Flobynoid (if that is possible). I'll lookup some information on how to set it up and use the .dsk file. Thanks for your reply. If that doesn't work out, I'll let you know.

Striderx99

I was able to find some steps to get this working. I used caver01's tutorial (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/9470/apple2-emulation-using-advmess3?_=1711739864635) to attempt launching Flobynoid, but it returned to the game menu again. I looked up the /dev/shm folder to see if there were any messages in runcommand.log. This is what it produced:

Parameters:
Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/advmame/bin/advmess apple2ee -dev_floppydisk "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/apple2/Flobynoid.dsk"
a2e.chr NOT FOUND
a2eealt.chr NOT FOUND
a2ee.cd NOT FOUND
a2ee.ef NOT FOUND
disk2_33.rom NOT FOUND
ERROR: required files are missing, the game cannot be run.

I added the following Apple bios files to /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS:

apple2.zip, apple2c.zip, apple2e.zip, and apple2gs.zip

I clicked on the keyboard to interrupt loading. I was able to choose which emulator to run, but the first selection was blank while the others were listed a 2. advmess, 3. lineapple, and 4. lr-applewin. Is there any way to remove the first choice? Should I use another set of Apple bios roms (and which ones should I specifically look for?) Thanks for your assistance.

Striderx99

I moved my Apple II BIOS files that I placed in the /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS directory to /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/rom. I added a few more (anything that had "apple2" or "a2" and a few other letters and/or numbers attached to .zip). Seems like I'm getting close to a resolution, because now the runcommand.log only says that disk2_33.rom was not found. Does anyone have an idea which BIOS file is missing? Thank you for your input.

mitu

@Striderx99 said in Apple II and Flobynoid:

Does anyone have an idea which BIOS file is missing?

It should be in apple2.zip, corresponding to the MESS romset version advmess is using (0.106).

Striderx99

I've been looking at the 0.151 set for these. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll look for it and test it out soon.

Striderx99

I found a MESS set that had apple2.zip. Just to take a look at its contents, I unzipped the file and found a2.chr, a2.e0, a2.e8, a2.f0, a2.f8, disk2_33.rom, and progaid1.rom. Is this the one I should be using?

mitu

@Striderx99 said in Apple II and Flobynoid:

Is this the one I should be using?

You can't tell the romset collection version from an individual romset file, so unless you validate the .zip against the advmess .dat file, a filename is not enough.
Why are you not using current MESS/lr-mess ? The game might not even be supported by such an old MESS version.

Striderx99

@mitu I tried to follow caver01's tutorial from 2017. I guess I should try to download lr-mess and add apropriate configurations to emulators.cfg and create a lr-mess.rc file. If I do that, would any special commands need to be added to make sure it launches correctly? Would I use the same BIOS files as well? Thanks for your input.

mitu

@Striderx99 said in Apple II and Flobynoid:

If I do that, would any special commands need to be added to make sure it launches correctly?

I'm not familiar with apple2 emulation through MAME/MESS, but using mame from the CLI you can find out which parameters are accepted by the apple2 (or similar) drivers - https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/usingmame.html (i.e. mame apple2e -listmedia, mame apple2e -help).

Would I use the same BIOS files as well? Thanks for your input.

Probably yes.

Striderx99

I know this is an old thread, but I figured out how to get this working using the GSPLUS emulator. You'll need to create a .gsp file for Flobynoid. I used the sd71 slot and followed the path to another version of the Flobynoid rom with a .po extension. I also used an apple2gs.rom1 when I picked the ROM file. It will run Flobynoid in GS Mode when you do this.

Here is what my .gsp file looks like:

GSplus configuration file version 0.14

s5d1 =
s5d2 =

s6d1 =
s6d2 =

s7d1 = /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/APPLE2GS/Flobynoid.po

g_joystick_scale_factor_x = 281
g_joystick_scale_factor_y = 281
g_cfg_rom_path = ../../../../home/pi/RetroPie/roms/apple2gs/APPLE2GS.ROM1

bram1[00] = 00 00 00 01 00 00 0d 06 02 01 01 00 01 00 00 00
bram1[10] = 00 00 07 06 02 01 01 00 00 00 0f 06 06 00 05 06
bram1[20] = 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 03 02 02 02
bram1[30] = 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 01 02 03 04 05 06
bram1[40] = 07 0a 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d
bram1[50] = 0e 0f ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 81
bram1[60] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[70] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[80] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[90] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[a0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[b0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[c0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[d0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[e0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram1[f0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 52 04 f8 ae

bram3[00] = 00 00 00 01 00 00 0d 06 02 01 01 00 01 00 00 00
bram3[10] = 00 00 07 06 02 01 01 00 00 00 0f 06 06 00 05 06
bram3[20] = 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 05 02 02 00
bram3[30] = 00 00 2d 2d 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 02 02 06 08 00
bram3[40] = 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 0a 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07
bram3[50] = 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d 0e 0f 00 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[60] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[70] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[80] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[90] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[a0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[b0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[c0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[d0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[e0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
bram3[f0] = ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 36 2d 9c 87

As far as the BIOS roms go, I could never find the correct apple2.zip, so I copied the set of Apple II roms that were included in a build of Batocera I am currently using with my Pi5. I'm going to replace that with RetroPie once the experts here get around to creating a stable build, but I thought I'd share my solution here for those who want to try Flobynoid with GSPLUS.