AVGCART

[Mclaneinc]

Yep, that's what I thought, I'll swap around the other XEX's, just incase one was wrongly named..

 

EDIT

 

Yep, the Covox pdm mono is actually, the PDM Mono..

 

Thanks again tmp..At least Xuel can fix the zip..

Edited July 17, 2021 by Mclaneinc

[Mr Robot]

Back here it was mentioned that there was a discussion about storing defaults. I'm assuming that never happened and @Mclaneinc doesn't have an errant settings file somewhere?

 

 

[eristocratic]

I hope this is an appropriate place to pass along that I've noticed the AVGCart has a problem with Ultima IV, when using the game's ATR images via the SIO functionality.

 

When you enter a location like a town, changes to the world map aren't saved. For instance, if you have a ship on the map or a chest or whatever and you enter a town, normally all that stuff would still be there when you exit the town. I'm pretty sure the game is supposed to re-load the world map from your last saved game and then update it with recent changes, but I could be wrong. With the AVGCart you get a pristine world map, devoid of recent items, each time you exit a town. Tested with the same images on Altirra, Atari800, and the Atari 800 MiSTer core, and on those the game works as it should. Also works as it should running the game from an SDDrive Max on real hardware. Put the AVGCart into my 130XE (my main machine is an 800XL), loaded the game there, and the problem is back once again. An example of the behavior would be to take a ship to an island with a town, exit your ship and enter the town. When you leave the town back to the world map, your ship will be gone and you will be stuck on the island.

 

Bonus: one weird side effect of my testing and copying these images back and forth is that one time while playing on the MiSTer, I acquired a ship and subsequently saved the game. Upon copying that image back onto the AVGCart SDCard and playing around a bit, I noticed I now have a permanent ship on the world map. I can take my ship somewhere and lose it and it will always return back to the position where I saved the game while testing on the MiSTer as soon as I enter then leave a location. I sorta chuckled over that one.

 

Anyhow, all in all, still loving the cartridge, beyond this one little sniggle that I've noticed.

Edited July 23, 2021 by eristocratic

[tmp]

i think the worst part of fixing this will be figuring out how to play the game

(i believe i've never played any ultima game on any platform however sad that may sound)

 

if you have any atr with some save state that makes it quick to reproduce the issue, please share that, thanks

 

EDIT: ok, i tried the game in emulator, if i understand it correctly, you create a character and it saves it to disk 2, does this part work and just some later saving is broken or even the character isn't saved?

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by tmp

[eristocratic]

It's not too hard of a game to pick up LOL... I've been playing it since waiting months for the original Apple release back in the mid '80s. If you need pointers, I'm your guy  I have to say, though, that U4 nerfs itself pretty well for new characters, giving you a chance to figure out what's going on without dying constantly.

 

Character creation works fine, as does 99% of the game. In fact I played it for a day or two doing all sorts of things before I noticed the world map issue. I'll attach my Britannia disk and some instructions on how to reproduce the problem. BTW the Britannia disk is the only disk that gets written to. Any other game would probably call it the save disk.

 

Start up the game by pressing "J" at the main menu and load up my Britannia disk when it asks for it. You'll be near a town, right next to a chest and a ship. Board the ship by moving on top of it and pressing "B" then use the arrows to move it somewhere else adjacent to land then press "X" to exit the ship. Move on top of the town then press "E" to enter it, then immediately move left to exit the town. The chest will disappear and the ship will have moved back to where it was when you loaded the game.

 

I purposefully saved it that way for demonstration, but probably the easiest way to reproduce it fully for yourself is to move a few spaces away then tap the spacebar to pass a few turns and soon you'll get attacked. Attack the monsters using the "A" and directional keys. When you've killed them all you'll be back at the world map and a chest will be left behind. If you keep getting attacked by subsequent monsters, just move the characters off the edge of the screen to run away. When the coast is clear, enter the town then exit again and poof the chest will be gone. It should have stayed.

 

You'll notice when you hit "E" to enter the town there is a little bit of disk activity before it asks for the next disk. My guess is that this is when the game saves the state of the world map, and then does a disk check to see if it needs to ask for the next disk. Two flashes.

 

If I can help in any way, don't hesitate to hit me up. This is my favorite old RPG and it would be awesome if it worked 100%.

 

eristocratics Britannia Disk.ATR

Edited July 23, 2021 by eristocratic

[Mclaneinc]

On 7/17/2021 at 9:31 PM, Mr Robot said:

Back here it was mentioned that there was a discussion about storing defaults. I'm assuming that never happened and @Mclaneinc doesn't have an errant settings file somewhere?

 

 

As far as I know there was never a setting file or the like and it stayed with individual players for each sound system. In the end, for me, it was simply player files wrongly named in the released versions. All fine now after I used the named Covox player which was actually the PDM mono..For once, not my fault, rare I know

[Mclaneinc]

3 hours ago, tmp said:

i think the worst part of fixing this will be figuring out how to play the game

(i believe i've never played any ultima game on any platform however sad that may sound)

Ha ha... It's not sad at all, a lot of people love games like the above, but not everyone, I can't see the fuss over them yet I know it was a massive market back then.

 

I find anything turn based a chore with the exception of one game on the PSX, Vagrant Story.. Very stylish..

[eristocratic]

5 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

Ha ha... It's not sad at all, a lot of people love games like the above, but not everyone, I can't see the fuss over them yet I know it was a massive market back then.

 

I find anything turn based a chore with the exception of one game on the PSX, Vagrant Story.. Very stylish..

 

Quite true - gotta admit I'm one of those folks. Cut my teeth on paper games like D&D and Paranoia back in the day and moved on to what we now call CRPGs shortly after, mostly Origin Systems titles. Turn based all the way, baby! hehe

 

Thankfully, there's enough gaming in all genres and mechanics to keep us all happy

 

Heck, thinking about it, I find myself fixing the old 8 and 16 bit machines more than playing them these days. But repair is sort of a game in itself, I suppose.

 

[Mclaneinc]

46 minutes ago, eristocratic said:

 

Heck, thinking about it, I find myself fixing the old 8 and 16 bit machines more than playing them these days. But repair is sort of a game in itself, I suppose.

 

Yes, indeed, I don't fix many, but the playing with the hardware is just as much fun as the gaming..

[tmp]

13 hours ago, eristocratic said:

Start up the game by pressing "J" at the main menu and load up my Britannia disk when it asks for it. You'll be near a town, right next to a chest and a ship. Board the ship by moving on top of it and pressing "B" then use the arrows to move it somewhere else adjacent to land then press "X" to exit the ship. Move on top of the town then press "E" to enter it, then immediately move left to exit the town. The chest will disappear and the ship will have moved back to where it was when you loaded the game.

can you please try this beta to see whether it fixes your issue?

[eristocratic]

2 hours ago, tmp said:

can you please try this beta to see whether it fixes your issue?

Awesome That seems to have got it. I'll do a bit of playing tonight and let you know if I find any hiccups, but I just messed around with it for 10 minutes or so, and world-mappy-things seem to be staying put now. Big thanks!

[eristocratic]

9 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

Yes, indeed, I don't fix many, but the playing with the hardware is just as much fun as the gaming..

So true.

[Mclaneinc]

5 hours ago, eristocratic said:

So true.

 

And excuse my manners, welcome to the old site, many people 'lurk' and don't post, but we love it when folks join in.. Lurking is of course also welcome, however you enjoy is most welcome..

 

Paul..

[tmp]

18 hours ago, eristocratic said:

Awesome That seems to have got it. I'll do a bit of playing tonight and let you know if I find any hiccups, but I just messed around with it for 10 minutes or so, and world-mappy-things seem to be staying put now. Big thanks!

great, thanks for reporting the issue!

[eristocratic]

18 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

 

And excuse my manners, welcome to the old site, many people 'lurk' and don't post, but we love it when folks join in.. Lurking is of course also welcome, however you enjoy is most welcome..

 

Paul..

Good to be here I typically lurk until I've got something to say then jump in there and put everyone to sleep with extreme verbosity hehe

[eristocratic]

7 hours ago, tmp said:

great, thanks for reporting the issue!

Followup: I've played the heck out of it for the past day or so and no issues to report. I did have one problem with a corrupt disk, but I'm pretty sure I did that one all by myself. Whoopsies.

 

And you're very welcome - glad to be using a product I like enough to actually get off my butt and report a problem 

[Xuel]

On 7/17/2021 at 3:07 PM, Mclaneinc said:

Yep, that's what I thought, I'll swap around the other XEX's, just incase one was wrongly named..

 

EDIT

 

Yep, the Covox pdm mono is actually, the PDM Mono..

 

Thanks again tmp..At least Xuel can fix the zip..

On 7/23/2021 at 4:39 AM, Mclaneinc said:

As far as I know there was never a setting file or the like and it stayed with individual players for each sound system. In the end, for me, it was simply player files wrongly named in the released versions. All fine now after I used the named Covox player which was actually the PDM mono..For once, not my fault, rare I know

Mclaneinc, thanks for tracking that down! Sorry for the wrong filenames and the resulting confusion! Here's a corrected zip file:

 

avgplay-1.1-correct-filenames.zip

[Mclaneinc]

@Xuel, hey no problem, easy mistake..I'm just grateful for the player..Thank you..

[Faicuai]

Alrighty!

 

Completed a more extended test-drive of my AVG-cart copy, now with AVG-to-SIO cable built. All tests conducted on 800/Axlon (512KB), 800/Mosaic (48+4x4KB=64KB) and 800/Incognito hosts.

 

Here's the summary: @tmp

1. As for the bus-overrun issue during power-up, it seems confirmed with 800/Mosaic configuration: systems boots to [blue-screen + Memo-Pad] with AVG plugged (because E: got opened on $CCxx-$CFFF area, which AVG can't overlap when coming later on-bus). This problem also prevents other carts' functionality (like a boot-preset) to work as intended. 
2. Flight-Simulator II fails to boot consistently through AVG-to-SIO interface. It boots perfectly on my NUXX SDrive, though. This is also confirmed with 800/Incognito, as well.
3. Have not been able to assign .ATRs from multiple directories to any arbitrary #1-#4 "virtual" drive. As soon as moving to another directory, any existing assignment is lost.
4. Have not been able to boot a ROM AND an .ATR (via AVG-to-SIO interface), together. Like ACTION cart along with a DOS-XL .ATR, for instance. The selections are not kept or tracked by the selector-menu. Have not found a way to get it done, so far.
5. When disabling SDX on 800/Incognito, and booting AVG in SIDE-emulation mode (with proper .APT dirve-IDs assignments), I can perfectly see Incognito's internal HD *and* AVG HD, from SDX, without a problem. However, when performing sector-copies from Incognito's HD to AVG's HD via SDX HDSC utility, and then performing an integrity check on AVG HD with CLX, I find files broken / corrupted. This DOES NOT happen when doing the exact same transfers with actual SIDE2 cart (as target). I can't yet tell if the SD-card is (or not) at fault, or the actual SIDE2-emulation on AVG is responsible for it, or there is some timing-issue derived from running the E: session at full speed (DMA=off). This may be much harder to troubleshoot, but it is there, for sure.
6. I still don't know what the 6-bytes header is for testing RIGHT-cart images with AVG (on left port). For now, I will assume this is not functional.
7. I fail to see why AVG could not be plugged on the right-port and NOT bring the whole system down (or even boot right-images from there, and keep IDE-interface registers active). As an example, you can plug Ultimate/SD cart on right-port (800/Incognito), and it will NOT lock-up the system as soon as powered-up.

 

Overall, the ability to work and boot on 800, the easy-as-pie upgradeable firmware, and built-in SIO-server for .ATRs, .ATX and .CAS on AVG is definitely are god-sends with AVG (puts SIDE2 on retirement, indeed). It simplifies a lot the use and test of the systems. I wonder if I am missing something here, so I can use such server facilities with built-in ROM emulation, at the same time.

 

That's all for now.

[tmp]

 

On 7/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Faicuai said:

1. Flight-Simulator II fails to boot consistently through AVG-to-SIO interface. It boots perfectly on my NUXX SDrive, though. This is also confirmed with 800/Incognito, as well.

atr or atx?

On 7/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Faicuai said:

1. Have not been able to assign .ATRs from multiple directories to any arbitrary #1-#4 "virtual" drive. As soon as moving to another directory, any existing assignment is lost.

clearing atr/atx/cas selection on dir change could be removed, a long time ago it had to be done due to how things was implemented, i think it's not needed anymore but it was kept to prevent potential confusion

On 7/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Faicuai said:

1. Have not been able to boot a ROM AND an .ATR (via AVG-to-SIO interface), together. Like ACTION cart along with a DOS-XL .ATR, for instance. The selections are not kept or tracked by the selector-menu. Have not found a way to get it done, so far.

this should work if both are in the same dir, if not, it should work when starting cart image via shortcut (shortcut is dir independent)

On 7/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Faicuai said:

1. When disabling SDX on 800/Incognito, and booting AVG in SIDE-emulation mode (with proper .APT dirve-IDs assignments), I can perfectly see Incognito's internal HD *and* AVG HD, from SDX, without a problem. However, when performing sector-copies from Incognito's HD to AVG's HD via SDX HDSC utility, and then performing an integrity check on AVG HD with CLX, I find files broken / corrupted. This DOES NOT happen when doing the exact same transfers with actual SIDE2 cart (as target). I can't yet tell if the SD-card is (or not) at fault, or the actual SIDE2-emulation on AVG is responsible for it, or there is some timing-issue derived from running the E: session at full speed (DMA=off). This may be much harder to troubleshoot, but it is there, for sure.

i'm unable to test this, if you can send me the corrupted files together with the original ones, i could take a look if there's any interesting pattern (whole hd images would be better but that's probably too complicated)

On 7/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Faicuai said:

1. I still don't know what the 6-bytes header is for testing RIGHT-cart images with AVG (on left port). For now, I will assume this is not functional.

not sure what you mean, standard right cart images should work with standard right cart type, if we're talking about some special ones that have logic to e.g. allow disabling them, such types are currently not implemented (i believe there's no such cart type in cart.txt type description file)

On 7/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Faicuai said:

1. I fail to see why AVG could not be plugged on the right-port and NOT bring the whole system down (or even boot right-images from there, and keep IDE-interface registers active). As an example, you can plug Ultimate/SD cart on right-port (800/Incognito), and it will NOT lock-up the system as soon as powered-up.

i don't know why avgcart locks 800 when in the right port, could be startup delay issue or something else, in any case, it should be in the left slot

btw, does ultimate work correctly in the right port?

 

[Mclaneinc]

I had an Atx of Flight Sim 2 bring up a message about system failure at 7390 (or similar), the Atr worked fine tho..

 

Edit: exact error is "SYSTEM ERROR 22 AT 77E5"

 

If you leave basic on you get a similar message but the error number is 26 rather than 22...

 

Atx attached

Flight Simulator II v1.05 (1984)(subLOGIC)(US)(Disk 1 of 2)[!].atx

Edited July 29, 2021 by Mclaneinc

[tmp]

i've looked into that, for some reason game's sio read requests contain framing error here and there (usually one bit is ~50% longer than it should be) and avgcart was sending back error instead of pretending that it never saw anything and letting the game retry the read

should be fixed in some next build

[Faicuai]

12 minutes ago, tmp said:

should be fixed in some next build

Been a hit busy here, also re-testing per your reply above.

 

There are more SIO errors / issues to report. I will do so as soon as I can summarize them in one single response.

 

(FYI, simultaneous Cart-shortcut + ATR image are working fine! NICE !!!)

[_The Doctor__]

9 minutes ago, tmp said:

i've looked into that, for some reason game's sio read requests contain framing error here and there (usually one bit is ~50% longer than it should be) and avgcart was sending back error instead of pretending that it never saw anything and letting the game retry the read

should be fixed in some next build

long sector read protection error? makes the grey matter search as if it should remember something... could be just a mistake as recalling some game loaders were made that worked on real hardware at normal speed but failed during faster speeds and not due to the common timed protection scenarios... they broke under sio timing and framing errors

[Faicuai]

21 hours ago, tmp said:

clearing atr/atx/cas selection on dir change could be removed

That would be GREAT because having cart-emulation and SIO-server running concurrently is precisely a cornerstone of AVR's strength and versatility.

 

21 hours ago, tmp said:

i'm unable to test this,

I can't test a dual hard-drive config on my 800XLs. In fact, it looks to me it is only possible on the 800 (assuming we are looking into actual Atari products). You will need Incognito installed (your primary, internal HD), then AVG on the left-port in SIDE2 emulation, and the the exact same low-level HD-image and size on both HDs, with the exception of APT drive-descriptor (eg. Dn: for Icognito's HD and Dm: for AVG/Side2, which is done in FDISK, very easily). I may need to first test with different SD cards, to make sure there's not a "roach" hiding somewhere...

 

21 hours ago, tmp said:

i don't know why avgcart locks 800 when in the right port,

21 hours ago, tmp said:

btw, does ultimate work correctly in the right port?

 

I don't know either. Ultimate/SD can be plugged on the right-port, and upon powering up the 800/Incognito, you retain full control of the system via BIOS. With AVG, all I get is an instantaneous black-screen and a total system lockup, which should NOT happen.

 

 

21 hours ago, tmp said:

not sure what you mean, standard right cart images should work with standard right cart type,

How? I can't boot Monkey Wrench II with AVG. What is the correct .CAR encapsulation I need to generate? What is the descriptor-header for such .CAR type?

 

 

NOTE: additional problems with SIO-emulation level:

1. NOT passing Acid800 v1.2 Beta, POKEY test "Direct Serial Input", giving "Unable to find NAKed command on D1:".
2. Will refuse to reliably operate at pre-set divisors higher than 7, when booting AVG´s own [SIO + SDX/Side2] mode, and attempting to access D1: DD .ATr image on AVG. Tested on 800/Incognito with PBI-based HSIO disabled on D1: (eg. stock OS I/O)
3. FORGOT to add: above two scenarios are handled flawlessly with external NUXX SDrive via SIO.

 

That´s all for now.