Altirra 2.50 Final out

[Mclaneinc]

Ah, thank you Avery, didn't know about the /type option, brilliant, should have realised you had thought of everything, yes realised you needed to turn off the casautoboot.

 

Thanks for the info re cheats as well, hopefully you read the description req (and that's my last word about it!!)

 

Another day in emulator paradise

[serj]

brilliant work !

thank you Avery for the best emulator.

 

Avery, please tell us.
Will you add support for mapper "corina" - Yie Another Kung-Fu & bomb jake games?

[flashjazzcat]

Thanks Avery.

[avanze]

Purely cosmetic, but the firmware image dialog box "Set as default" and "Clear" options remain static when box is expanded.

[Xuel]

Avery, can you recommend a way to find regions of memory that aren't accessed at all during the execution of a program? I've tried hme/hmd but that doesn't seem to report instruction fetches. The profile source view shows code fetches but not load/stores. Is my best bet to just take the union of both approaches?

[mr-atari]

Nice "level-up".

 

Some issues:

 

-Somehow I can not get my BlackBox-image to work, mounted under BB in device.

Can't read, nor write, in de debugger is gives commands, but nothing happens.

-HOT-key for BlackBox-menu-button?

Atari800win uses ALT-\

-Changing firmware now takes 2 menus, perhaps unfriendlier?

I use this a lot.

-MyIDE-I firmware (1mb cartridge) when loaded under firmware, does not boot.

-Auto reload roms on coldstart does not seem to work.

[Mclaneinc]

@Mr Atari, in Tools, Keyboard shortcuts you can assign your own hot key for the blackbox, its under Console.BlackBoxMenu, I choose SHIFT+F12 because it wasn't mapped already..

 

I used the posted BBroms and chose bbrom216.rom, added the device happily, used the hot key I'd created and it booted into it fine.

[phaeron]

Alright, didn't get around to everything, but here's another test version:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.60-test6.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.60-test6-src.zip

 

It's now possible to connect an emulated modem to the emulated BlackBox, bringing us one step closer to emulating the impressive chains of crap some of you have attached to your real hardware. This is enabled via the Devices dialog similarly to setting up a hard disk, by setting up the chain: Computer -> BlackBox -> Modem. I'm not sure if the control line input and output states are correct, but DTR and CD are hooked up as for the 850 emulation and ForemXEP seems to work.

 

Regarding getting the BlackBox hard disk to work, there are a few gotchas currently:

• It has to be attached as a child of the BlackBox device node, not next to it off of Computer. I need to fix this -- the UI shouldn't let you do that.
• Currently you can't change the settings on the hard disk device, but instead have to delete and recreate it. This is due to the way that the three types are multiplexed (raw/vhd/phys) and this'll get resolved later somehow.
• The default currently for new hard disk devices is Read Only. This will prevent you from saving any BlackBox settings, so you'll want to uncheck this.
• You'll want to go into the BlackBox controller menu and configure 0,0 as a SCSI device with 512 byte sectors.

Main things left for BB are a bunch of timer-related features on the VIA and all the printer stuff, mostly on VIA port B. Not sure of the benefits of finishing this off at the moment since I don't have parallel printer emulation and haven't seen anything yet require the VIA timers.

 

[serj]

Avery, I found a strange (bug?)

 

game mr.do!.atx - does not work properly.

if you go under the apple, then the game becomes impassable.

 

download game: http://www.atarimania.com/vapi/VAPI_Mr_Do!_Datasoft.zip

 

it is a bad image of the game or a bug in the emulation?

[Mclaneinc]

Avery, I found a strange (bug?)

 

game mr.do!.atx - does not work properly.

if you go under the apple, then the game becomes impassable.

 

download game: http://www.atarimania.com/vapi/VAPI_Mr_Do!_Datasoft.zip

 

it is a bad image of the game or a bug in the emulation?

 

Nothing wrong with Altirra on this one, its software protection, Mr Do has a speed check on how fast it loads, unless you run without the SIO patch or have accurate didsk timing it will trigger the protection. As that's an ATX its a protected version.

 

This is mentioned in the help file as well

[serj]

 

Mclaneinc,I tried to include sio patch and disable accurate didsk, but then the emulator runs in an infinite loading.

 

[Mclaneinc]

Sorry you have to have SIO patch off and Accurate sector timing on otherwise it does what you say, does infinite loop..

 

Trust me, just tried it two seconds ago..

 

Also make sure you have not set the disk drive to be a happy drive etc, its very time exact on Mr Do for the drive loading speed..

Edited August 28, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[serj]

game is loading.
but during the game hangs.

[Mclaneinc]

Odd, working here, just been playing it...

 

All I can say is check in disk drives that its set to say an 810 generic 288rpm, SIO patch off, Accurate sector timing and just in case, No Burst Transfers..

 

Oh and no funky OS roms al Blackbox etc..Just standard OS like XL

 

The quote from the help file is this (and I am using that image you pointed out to run from Atarimania)

 

 

Unmodified versions should be run with the SIO patch disabled and with accurate disk timing enabled. The game may appear to load correctly, but will malfunction in certain game elements due to the silently failed timing check. Specifically, if a particular section of the boot process runs faster than a certain amount of time, the game will deliberately break itself and sprites will fall through to the bottom of the screen.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[serj]

strange.

[serj]

Thanks for the info,Paul.

[Mclaneinc]

Did it work after that because the picture you posted is from when the protection check fails, the sprites go to the bottom of the screen and you can walk through apples etc.

 

If you followed the notes I wrote then it should be ok, it takes a while to load but you know its ok when it starts loading sectors 300 onwards..

[Wrathchild]

If you are loading the ATX then turn off SIO Patch and enable Accurate Sector Timing.

 

I'm porting Mr Do! to the 5200 and to do this had to make a working A8 version first, which I'm almost there with having got the last (I hope) of the copy protections out of the way. Try the attached executable instead... a remaining issue is to fix the graphics for the creature falling down by an apple, both otherwise works fine.

 

Mark

MrDoA8Sfx.xex

[bfollett]

I have a few versions of Mr. Do and none of them exhibit the problem you are showing with or without accurate timing etc... I've attached a xex and atr.

 

Bib

Mr. Do! (v1).xex

Mr. Do!.atr

[snicklin]

Something I've wondered about is whether there is a way to script Altirra to run certain commands in a certain order?

 

Perhaps there is a way to do it already, but maybe there isn't.

 

The reason that I ask about this is so that I can create a toolchain ran from a PC.

 

So for example:

1) Create a disk with an external tool.

2) Add source file to disk.

3) Load Altirra.

4) Automatically insert compiler disk.

5) Automatically insert source file disk.

6) Load compiler disk.

7) Run compiler

Simulate key presses / joystick presses.

9) Compile source (which saves compiled source code to the source code disk)

10) Stop Altirra.

11) Extract compiled program.

 

It would need a PC based scripting tool/language also, such as Perl.

 

Is something like this possible? This way we could have PC based Atari compilers or other programs.

[phaeron]

Altirra has no direct support for this right now. It'd be hacky, but you could cobble together such a mechanism by using the H: device as a file-based IPC mechanism to communicate with an external program.

 

I suppose this might have some use if you have an existing compiler that runs on the Atari. For any new compilers, I'd be surprised if they didn't have a far easier to use native version. It's far, far easier to write a compiler in portable ANSI C/C++ on a native platform than to do it in 6502.

 

An interesting project would be to statically recompile executables to native code, which has been done with success with some 6502-based BASIC interpreters. However, the Atari seems to have a lot fewer useful command-line tools than some other contemporary platforms, particularly the Apple II.

[greblus]

Something I've wondered about is whether there is a way to script Altirra to run certain commands in a certain order?

[...]

It would need a PC based scripting tool/language also, such as Perl.

Is something like this possible? This way we could have PC based Atari compilers or other programs.

 

I'll hijack Altirra thread for a moment but maybe phaeron won't notice and I won't be killed for that

 

It could be done in atari800. Kuba Husak came with an idea of using action cart image for compilation of files on a PC. In combination with a simple bash script this could be also added to your $EDITOR of choice and mapped to some keys in VIM or Emacs to make it even more useful.

 

First you have to record your "events" (opening a file, compilation, writing it out to a file, all on H: device accessible from a PC as well):

 

atari800 -cart Action\!.rom -cart-type 15 -record tmp

 

and then playback it (in turbo mode to make it as quick as possible):

 

atari800 -cart Action\!.rom -cart-type 15 -playback tmp -turbo

 

Some simple scripting would be needed if a distinctive file name is necessary, but it's fairly simple (filename you enter in recorded playback will always be the same so the script could create it from currently edited file and then rename compiler output in H: directory after compilation is finished).

 

Hope this helps

[Wolfspirit123]

Thanks for the tip! i had 2.40 , regards, Wolf

[mr-atari]

Now on 2.60-test_6.

 

Still cant get the blackbox to work...... Sorry mates.

 

I have bb141 (16k) and bb216 (64k) rom-dumps.

with bb216 I get a dip-switch#2 warning on boot-up, system does not boot further.

But no matter how I set them, my (working) BB.DSK image from atari800 does nothing.

Cant read, cant save, I do see commands in the debugger.

device: computer->blackbox->harddisk (attached to each other)

 

Also I tried to map keyboard-F12 to the black-box-menu, I have no clue how.

I did read the help-page and tried to map something, but no success.

 

Is it me?

 

Any help is welcome.

[phaeron]

Figured it out. I was testing with a VHD image, but raw image mode was broken.

 

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.60-test7.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.60-test7-src.zip

 

The device UI in general should also be a bit more stable and it also now filters by devices you can actually attach.

 

I also added a configuration option on the BlackBox device entry for switching between 256 and 512 byte block sizes. You will need this to share hard disk images with Atari800, which AFAICT only supports 256 byte blocks. Sadly, the Black Box firmware doesn't seem to issue READ CAPACITY or MODE SELECT commands, so it will malfunction if you don't have the BB configured for the block size used by the disk. Some other gotchas:

• As just noted, yes, you need to disable DIP switch #2 to use 32K firmware. This is the same as on real hardware. I'm considering doing this automatically, though, as this particular behavior is probably not a valuable experience.
• If you have any devices that require emulator hooks, the VBXE "Use $D7xx for VBXE registers" option should be unchecked. This is true even if you are not using VBXE. The reason for this is that if this option is enabled, it will cause the emulator to attempt to use $D6xx for a hook page, which will conflict with the BB. I need to put in code to arbitrate this. (Of course, if you have both a BB and a VBXE, then it starts getting pretty hard to find a place to put one...)
• Remember that with the BB, as with any of the other PBI devices that Altirra emulates, the disk SIO options need to be modified so that the emulator doesn't bypass the PBI device. Disk Drive > SIO Override Detection will generally allow hard disk devices to work, as long as you don't remap them on the fly. If you do so through the menu, then a warm reset will be necessary to reset the detection flags. The disk SIO patch must be disabled entirely if the BB firmware needs to handle floppy disk accesses, particularly when reordering the drives.

The BB printer port is also hooked up now -- I hacked in a quick and dirty mapping from it to the existing Printer view. Highly recommend disabling the I/O beep.

 

To bind F12 to the BB menu, bring up Tools > Keyboard Shortcuts, type "black" in the quick search field, select the Console.BlackBoxMenu command, type F12 in the shortcut field, then click Add.