WIZZARD77 Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Built 2 of these last night. One for me the other for my brother. Flashed to 8b. I can now run Lapis Philosophorum without lockups so far but I have some corruption on the title screen. Thanks Dr Venkman for the repack. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 It fails after 2 sector beeps for me. That is in Colleen mode, 48K Bone Stock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WIZZARD77 Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Ok I stand corrected. Made it to the blacksmith and side 2 wouldn't read. Inserted the .atr of side 2 and it loaded fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 M.U.L.E works. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Hefner Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Yeah I tested 2 different disk images of mule earlier and both worked fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Level42 Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) I don't want to take this topic too far off track since it is, after all, specifically about running copy-protected disk images on the SDrive Max. But, yes, I only had original software so the "retro thing" to me is non-cracked. Hate to say this but this thread now seems to be _only_ about what protected games work, this seems to be the holy grail of things now.....not my derailing here ! You must have been either very rich or had not too many games/programs Edited July 21, 2018 by Level42 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farb Posted July 21, 2018 Author Share Posted July 21, 2018 Hate to say this but this thread now seems to be _only_ about what protected games work, this seems to be the holy grail of things now.....not my derailing here ! Which protected ATX files work with SDrive is very much on topic here. I wanted to avoid going down the rabbit hole of the merits of copy-protected vs. hacked images since it's not particularly relevant to this thread. You must have been either very rich or had not too many games/programs Depends how you define "many". Probably 50 or so acquired over 7-8 years. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farb Posted July 21, 2018 Author Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) The Eidolon works. FYI, I am in the process of refactoring the timing code so things that are working now may or may not work with the new code. I just wanted to make sure people are aware so no one wastes time compatibility testing right now :-) Edited July 21, 2018 by Farb 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 FYI, I am in the process of refactoring the timing code so things that are working now may or may not work with the new code. I just wanted to make sure people are aware so no one wastes time compatibility testing right now :-) Happy to recompile/re-flash and test disk images if you like. I quite enjoy fooling around with this thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farb Posted July 21, 2018 Author Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) Happy to recompile/re-flash and test disk images if you like. I quite enjoy fooling around with this thing! Appreciate it. The new code is already checked-in to the v08 on Github so you are welcome to give it a try. The timing code has an impact to disks that use duplicate sectors for protection, so I was using a few titles such as Boulder Dash, Bruce Lee and Agent U.S.A. for testing. At this point I need access to a real 810 drive in order to measure timing behavior and refine the SDrive code further. I'm currently going by measurements I've seen posted to the forum or flat out guesses :-P I'm trying to see if someone can bring an unmodified 810 to the Fujiama next weekend here in Germany... Edited July 21, 2018 by Farb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) Appreciate it. The new code is already checked-in to the v08 on Github so you are welcome to give it a try. The timing code has an impact to disks that use duplicate sectors for protection, so I was using a few titles such as Boulder Dash, Bruce Lee and Agent U.S.A. for testing. At this point I need access to a real 810 drive in order to measure timing behavior and refine the SDrive code further. I'm currently going by measurements I've seen posted to the forum or flat out guesses :-P I'm trying to see if someone can bring an unmodified 810 to the Fujiama next weekend here in Germany... Cool. Real 810's are still relatively affordable here in the U.S. I almost bought one this week to pair with one of my 800's. Unfortunately I gather the various board revisions and presence/absence of the data separator board plus ROM revisions greatly impact performance and it might be hard to accurately characterize performance enough for a single, generic "810 Disk Drive" type performance evaluation. I presume you've got a copy of Avery's wonderful ALTIRRA HARDWARE REFERENCE MANUAL to refer to at least? He's got very extensive performance numbers of real hardware which he has recorded and detailed for emulation timing in there, including information on various disk drive models. (see Chapter 10). Apologies of course if you've already got that information - I still find it amazing how many people might know about one relatively obscure thing in our niche hobby, while others might remain \unaware of the same thing just because information doesn't always spread easily or smoothly. Edited July 21, 2018 by DrVenkman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Built 2 of these last night. One for me the other for my brother. Flashed to 8b. I can now run Lapis Philosophorum without lockups so far but I have some corruption on the title screen. Thanks Dr Venkman for the repack. This is an interesting program. It runs on my 1088XEL with OSb, extended memory turned off, SDX turned off and HSIO turned off. I do get the same title screen corruption. However, with the very same settings in the virtual U1MB I keep on my Altirra setup (3.10-test33), Altirra crashes every time, even when I enable full disk drive emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
80s_Atari_Guy Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) Without banging the drum, if I could replace ALL my cracked tosec disk images, across ALL platforms, with 100% original copies I would do this in a heartbeat. The Amiga had CAPs, the ST had Pasti (??), the Spectrum has TZX, The Atari 8 has ATX. I think preservation is great, and long may it continue. I have finally ordered my parts, after a few days of work getting on top of me. I will be housing mine in a plastic version of the TI99/4a tv modulator case. If you look closely, you can see that there is already a place marked to cut-out for the screen. Can't wait. Edited July 21, 2018 by 80s_Atari_Guy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farb Posted July 21, 2018 Author Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) Unfortunately I gather the various board revisions and presence/absence of the data separator board plus ROM revisions greatly impact performance and it might be hard to accurately characterize performance enough for a single, generic "810 Disk Drive" type performance evaluation. I'm not necessarily looking to create a generic 810 profile, but I would like to confirm how close we can get the SDrive timings to coincide with a real 810 even if it is not representative of ALL 810s. Then it would hopefully be a matter of tweaking various timing attributes to support different flavors of drive (e.g. 810-A, 810-B, 1050, etc.) Right now I can't even be sure why things are failing when they do because the timing of certain elements may be way off. I presume you've got a copy of Avery's wonderful ALTIRRA HARDWARE REFERENCE MANUAL to refer to at least? He's got very extensive performance numbers of real hardware which he has recorded and detailed for emulation timing in there, including information on various disk drive models. (see Chapter 10). Apologies of course if you've already got that information - I still find it amazing how many people might know about one relatively obscure thing in our niche hobby, while others might remain \unaware of the same thing just because information doesn't always spread easily or smoothly. I hadn't looked at this in a while and didn't realize it had drive information in there - thanks for suggesting it. I see Avery has specs for an idealized 810 drive so I've gone with those values for now. I just checked in some additional timing changes to Github. I've confirmed that A.E. (which we believe will only run on an 810), Agent U.S.A, Boulder Dash and Bruce Lee all seem to work. Sadly, none of the Archons or M.U.L.E. work now so something is still off Edited July 21, 2018 by Farb 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Level42 Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Guys, don't get me wrong. I fully understand why you guys want the originals to work. How can anybody be against it Brilliant work so far....this device is simply amazing .........and I kinda regret ordering from Ali.....I'm just anxious to slap this thing together in 5 minutes and get it to work......will be a refreshing difference from some of my other projects..... ;D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Without banging the drum, if I could replace ALL my cracked tosec disk images, across ALL platforms, with 100% original copies I would do this in a heartbeat. The Amiga had CAPs, the ST had Pasti (??), the Spectrum has TZX, The Atari 8 has ATX. I think preservation is great, and long may it continue. I have finally ordered my parts, after a few days of work getting on top of me. I will be housing mine in a plastic version of the TI99/4a tv modulator case. If you look closely, you can see that there is already a place marked to cut-out for the screen. Can't wait. nice, btw that pal encoder is good for ntsc to pal encoding too, yes/no? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
80s_Atari_Guy Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 nice, btw that pal encoder is good for ntsc to pal encoding too, yes/no? I don't think it is, no. The PAL TI had different video output than the NTSC version. I believe all we had (PAL) was RF and 240p component. Whereas NTSC had RF and composite. You could mod the metal version of the PAL TV Encoder for composite, but the plastic one(above) was a bit more involving - hence why it's useless to me. I'm hoping to take the plastic case to a friend, who has the right tools for the job, and will cut-out everything in a more professional manner than anything I could attempt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Hefner Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) Just retested the MULE I have in the STX pack I uploaded the other day (there are 2), and was able to play a few rounds with 3 computer players and myself, without any issues, running what's currently in the GIT as of about 10 minutes ago. I didn't go any farther, but I'd assumed that any protection in the game would have triggered by now (could be wrong on that though, lol). Precompiled current build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sc8rkhwp91x9zq3/v8b-072118-compiled.zip?dl=1 I'm not necessarily looking to create a generic 810 profile, but I would like to confirm how close we can get the SDrive timings to coincide with a real 810 even if it is not representative of ALL 810s. Then it would hopefully be a matter of tweaking various timing attributes to support different flavors of drive (e.g. 810-A, 810-B, 1050, etc.) Right now I can't even be sure why things are failing when they do because the timing of certain elements may be way off. I hadn't looked at this in a while and didn't realize it had drive information in there - thanks for suggesting it. I see Avery has specs for an idealized 810 drive so I've gone with those values for now. I just checked in some additional timing changes to Github. I've confirmed that A.E. (which we believe will only run on an 810), Agent U.S.A, Boulder Dash and Bruce Lee all seem to work. Sadly, none of the Archons or M.U.L.E. work now so something is still off Edited July 21, 2018 by David Hefner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farb Posted July 21, 2018 Author Share Posted July 21, 2018 (edited) Just retested the MULE I have in the STX pack I uploaded the other day (there are 2), and was able to play a few rounds with 3 computer players and myself, without any issues, running what's currently in the GIT as of about 10 minutes ago. I didn't go any farther, but I'd assumed that any protection in the game would have triggered by now (could be wrong on that though, lol). Interesting, I went back and re-tested based on this. I have been testing everything with OS-B and was running into the "remove custom o.s." errors on the EA titles I mentioned. I switched over to the XL O.S. and Archon, Archon II and M.U.L.E. all seem to work just fine. Strange. EDIT: I got hopeful on the troublesome Databyte titles like Boulder Dash II and Spy vs. Spy II. No luck there. Edited July 21, 2018 by Farb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Hefner Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 I couldn't get Omnitrend Universe or Temple of Apshai, but AE, Hardhat Max & Mule did. Bluemax hasn't worked with any release. All my testing is on a stock (aside from the mod to get svideo out) 800XL NTSC box. Interesting, I went back and re-tested based on this. I have been testing everything with OS-B and was running into the "remove custom o.s." errors on the EA titles I mentioned. I switched over to the XL O.S. and Archon, Archon II and M.U.L.E. all seem to work just fine. Strange. EDIT: I got hopeful on the troublesome Databyte titles like Boulder Dash II and Spy vs. Spy II. No luck there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted July 22, 2018 Share Posted July 22, 2018 Interesting, I went back and re-tested based on this. I have been testing everything with OS-B and was running into the "remove custom o.s." errors on the EA titles I mentioned. I switched over to the XL O.S. and Archon, Archon II and M.U.L.E. all seem to work just fine. Strange. Dan, that message means exactly what it says. It is not that the disk copy protection is failing. I assume you were using some "patched OS-B" or some kind of firmware based translator, on an XL/XE machine. That won't work. If you want to test with OS-B you would need to use a real 800. Some of the oldest EA releases do require OS-B. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted July 22, 2018 Share Posted July 22, 2018 The remove ROM at $C000 message is to prevent the user from using OmniMon or similar debugger to hack the game. It also means it won't run on XL/XE because they have ROM at that address. The stock 800 has nothing there 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 22, 2018 Share Posted July 22, 2018 Dan, that message means exactly what it says. It is not that the disk copy protection is failing. I assume you were using some "patched OS-B" or some kind of firmware based translator, on an XL/XE machine. That won't work. If you want to test with OS-B you would need to use a real 800. Some of the oldest EA releases do require OS-B. I just tested Murder on the Zinderneuf with my 1088XEL (equipped with a U1MB). With anything other than OS-B the game hangs with a black screen on loading after the EA logo fades out. With OS-B but padded out to 16K to fit into the U1MB OS slot, loading gets further but gives a message to remove ROM at the padded-out address space. I can try it on one of my 800's tomorrow if anyone likes (they're all put away right now). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted July 22, 2018 Share Posted July 22, 2018 Just tried Zinderneuf with the latest v08 branch code - loaded and started the game on the 800 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ijor Posted July 22, 2018 Share Posted July 22, 2018 The remove ROM at $C000 message is to prevent the user from using OmniMon or similar debugger to hack the game. It also means it won't run on XL/XE because they have ROM at that address. The stock 800 has nothing there I don't remember the exact code that the protection performs. Djaybee probably remembers better. But only the first version of the protection is not compatible with the XL/XE. That version of the protection is present only on the earliest EA titles. Later releases, and that includes almost every EA title, have a protection code that is XL aware. But it still won't accept just any XL OS. So a stock XL will run MULE just fine. An XL running Omnimon or a patched OS-B will not. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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