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Altirra 3.10 released


phaeron

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I'd imagine that like the C64, the Atari uses a dedicated tape device which is set in certain parameters to more optimised for successful data reliability between the cassette unit and the machine. So unlike the old ZX81 etc where you had lots of factors that could contribute to a bad load these less to tweak on the Atari.

 

Saying that I seem to remember certain cassette units were not so good :)

 

But remember theres a difference between how a program loads and how a program runs. Tweaking where it runs in the emulator is a bad idea..

 

Tweaking the randomness of the load probably would have very little effect, I imagine there's a sweet spot for the tape that truly is random..

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Hi Paul,

I do remember having a screwdriver next to CN1530 for loading dodgey original tapes. ;)

But i suppose once the WAV file is converted to CAS, all errors will be fixed and written in the code.

 

WinVICE has options for adjusting the speed of the datasette motor while reading of RAW TAP files.

But it all depends if Altirra is using similar logic to read them.

datasette.png

 

Heathcliffe CAS is loading 100% now.

fastboot=off

start=random

sio=on

 

it does't always work when sio is off.

which i thought it would have the opposite effect.

 

thanks for your help Phaeron.

Edited by .mad.
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Hi .mad,

 

Pass, I don't know if there's even such a thing as a perfect image when protections systems rely on the weakness of media sometimes (iirc)...

 

Most of us ran like hell from tapes the second we could afford to :)

 

But its nice to see people giving them the love they deserve, our home entertainment would not have been the same without them....

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If color correction is enabled (Color Match), blue is become less vivid. If color correction is disabled (Set color match to none), blue is very vivid but all other colors are less vivid.

 

However, color correction make all colors except blue vivid and allow me to set higher saturation but blue is less vivid as result. I love color correction (NTSC -> sRGB) but I do not like less vivid blue, however.

 

If I set saturation to about 35-37% with color correction disabled, Wave 11-12 in missile command, satellites, airplanes and smart missiles are very difficult to be visible.

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Adjusted command line parsing to fix issue with partial switch matching: /disk1 is no longer interpreted as /disk 1.
  • Color map utility on Additions disk now supports CTIA. (also attached to post)

Your color map utility is very useful in creating color menus.

Thank you very much!!

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WinVICE has options for adjusting the speed of the datasette motor while reading of RAW TAP files.

But it all depends if Altirra is using similar logic to read them.

Heathcliffe CAS is loading 100% now.

fastboot=off

start=random

sio=on

 

it does't always work when sio is off.

which i thought it would have the opposite effect.

 

Options to vary the speed of the tape are valid but there are not many circumstances where it is needed. Talking tapes are a case where it might matter, but the good ones use the data track for synchronization anyway.

 

When everything is properly configured, you will have a small chance of failure when SIO patch is off. This is due to a bug in the Atari OS that causes about 0.033% of blocks to fail. Since it only takes one block to ruin a load and Heathcliff has 124 blocks, the probability of a boot error is 1 - (1 - 0.00033)^124 = 0.04, or a 4% chance of failure. So basically, roll a d20, and if you roll a 1 and fumble the tape load fails. It took me about 20 tries to get such a failed load in NTSC. If you're seeing them more often, then I'm not sure what could be causing it.

 

The built-in AltirraOS or the SIO patch bypass this particular bug because they use different methods of measuring the baud rate that aren't subject to this problem.

 

If color correction is enabled (Color Match), blue is become less vivid. If color correction is disabled (Set color match to none), blue is very vivid but all other colors are less vivid.

 

However, color correction make all colors except blue vivid and allow me to set higher saturation but blue is less vivid as result. I love color correction (NTSC -> sRGB) but I do not like less vivid blue, however.

 

If I set saturation to about 35-37% with color correction disabled, Wave 11-12 in missile command, satellites, airplanes and smart missiles are very difficult to be visible.

 

This is strange, because the general effect of the color correction is to relatively reduce green, not blue. It does shift blue a bit in the hue sequence, though. You can use the blue boost setting to increase the strength of the blue primary color to suit your preferences. 35% saturation with color correction is pretty high, though -- at that level you're probably oversaturating the palette and getting a serious amount of RGB space clamping. That will distort brighter colors and reduce color contrast for some hue ranges.

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I only mentioned the Heatcliffe as it displayed a boot error or showed corrupt GFX.

The TAPE load timing is almost perfect, as all the other 820 cassette files i have tested.

Are working with one setting or another.

 

i know you can not factor in a WAVE recording from old magnetic media.

but i am very grateful you fixed real hardware bugs. :)

 

--

last request from me (promise).

 

can you tell me if this very rare basic game is corrupt or on the wrong basic/dos disk.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=37085210098567312328

 

Boom!
by Bill Kendrick
Atariserv/New Breed Software›1990/1994

This is a simple Atari BASIC version
of Activion's old 'Kaboom!' game for
Atari 2600's and XL/XE's (and other
non-Atari platforms).

This game works best in AtariBASIC
(versus TurboBASIC - then again, most
Atari BASIC GAMES are much better in
BASIC than TBXL) and with a paddle!!!
BUT! If you don't have a paddle,
don't use the [P]addle option at the
beginning of the game - use a joy-
stick in port 1.

Edited by .mad.
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I only mentioned the Heatcliffe as it displayed a boot error or showed corrupt GFX.

The TAPE load timing is almost perfect, as all the other 820 cassette files i have tested.

Are working with one setting or another.

 

i know you can not factor in a WAVE recording from old magnetic media.

but i am very grateful you fixed real hardware bugs. :)

 

--

last request from me (promise).

 

can you tell me if this very rare basic game is corrupt or on the wrong basic/dos disk.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=37085210098567312328

 

Boom!

by Bill Kendrick

Atariserv/New Breed Software›1990/1994

 

This is a simple Atari BASIC version

of Activion's old 'Kaboom!' game for

Atari 2600's and XL/XE's (and other

non-Atari platforms).

 

This game works best in AtariBASIC

(versus TurboBASIC - then again, most

Atari BASIC GAMES are much better in

BASIC than TBXL) and with a paddle!!!

BUT! If you don't have a paddle,

don't use the [P]addle option at the

beginning of the game - use a joy-

stick in port 1.

 

The game has problem loading its font file:

 

The code in the B file on the disk

 

15 POKE 712,64+B:NEXT B:NEXT A:SOUND 0
,0,0,0:POKE 712,14:CH=(PEEK(106)-16)*2
56:OPEN #1,4,0,"D:BOOM.FNT"

20 H #1,CH,1024:RUN "D:BOOM"

 

The H on line 20 is not a valid ATARI BASIC command. I believe it is supposed to load 1024 bytes from the D:BOOM.FNT to address CH.

 

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As we all know, duff images are one of the hassles of collecting, there's so many about as there are items which have no instructions to play a modded / tinkered with game etc...

 

Even if its just a note to yourself if tinker with stuff to remind you what to do but sadly most weird images are just left for us lot to try and work out..

 

The joys of collecting!

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I believe in this case, someone modified the game pre-loader for use with Turbo Basic and its extended GET statement. Loading the B file to TBXL would provide an answer.

Thank you very much Baktra,

i believe that someone was the programmer after changing the control from Paddle to Joystick.

But that was the only version out there in the wild.

no doubt your fixed version will appear on Atarimania soon. ;)

And it will be in the next GameBase update. 7745 games and counting...

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Ah, have you taken over from Mark now, I think we talked about you doing updates a while back?

Not heard from Mark in quite a while...

But he did give permission for me to update it, when we last spoke.

it only started out as a simple script and GEMUS update for Altirra, so we could drop all the other emulators, and get everything automated.

 

Then Dax wanted to add homebrew stuff from a Polish website, so i got the GB fever once again. :)

This will be the last HUGE update of Marks Atari GameBase from me.

Any future updates should be small and easy to configure now.

Edited by .mad.
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Great to hear, thank you for taking the time to update it and the same to Dax..

 

It will be nice to see one of the two GB's get a real decent update, Starwindz and mine is and has been redundant for a while....I'm sort of losing the edge for it all these days....

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http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test14.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test14-src.zip

  • Some minor optimizations to CPU microcode.
  • Flash chip for Maxflash 8Mb is now selectable in Options. The four options are the chips recognized by the 2012 Maxflash ATR flashing software. Of those, only two are recognized by the 2009 flasher.
  • Fixed the Adjust Colors not switching to Custom profile when some options were adjusted.
  • Ultimate1MB can now enable/disable stereo POKEY and Covox when those hardware devices are also present.
  • Configure System > Overview lists current OS firmware and mounted images along with file CRC32s when available.
  • Like 16
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Sheesh... finally figured out what's going on. Still way too much crap in your setup, I got lost on the four drives until I figured out what was really going on.

 

First, the MIO compatibility option does nothing for 512 byte sectors. The 1.34 firmware ignores the option for that sector size. That's why the drives still read when you flipped the setting live.

 

What was really going on was that the Black Box PIA wasn't getting initialized properly if the saved setting for the DIP switches was the same as the default state ($0F). The broken switch state then caused the PBI firmware to disable itself for disk I/O operations.

 

 

Ok, I missed that post back then. I was going to say I got some new roms (new to me) from Bob, BB216 and BB141 and using Altirra 3.10 the MIO compat works now. At least the floppy drives work and I can format a BB disk partition. So it must have partly been a crap rom because I'm using the older 3.10 version on that system.

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Altirra's SCSI emulation supports 21-bit LBA with the READ (6) command and 32-bit LBA with READ (10), so you can read/write up to 2TB.

 

There is no actual CHS addressing in the BlackBox. It's SCSI-based, so it's LBA all the way through.

 

I was playing with this tonight and it turns out the black box only supports sectors up to 196,608, not 262,141 like the config page will let you set. Good enough for now though. Pretty slick that this all works in Altirra, hopefully I can figure what's wrong with the Task master, the keys work in every other BB menu but not that program. Bob says he's not aware of any bugs in it. My real BB's don't have 2.16 in them, so I can't check it there.

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I was playing with this tonight and it turns out the black box only supports sectors up to 196,608, not 262,141 like the config page will let you set. Good enough for now though. Pretty slick that this all works in Altirra, hopefully I can figure what's wrong with the Task master, the keys work in every other BB menu but not that program. Bob says he's not aware of any bugs in it. My real BB's don't have 2.16 in them, so I can't check it there.

 

Task master hardcodes the address of the keyboard table in the Atari XL/XE OS and plugs it into KEYDEF ($79). This causes it to fail on AltirraOS, which supports KEYDEF but has its keyboard table at a different address. AFAIK all Atari OSes that support the PBI have it at the same address, but not sure about third party OSes.

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Hi Avery,

 

I'm playing with the 32 in 1 emulation and the Warp OS, it seems to deactivate the Altirra holding the Option key change and you then need to either hold the option key or set enable basic in the menu (XL mode obviously)...Seems odd..

 

is this how you wanted it to be?

 

Just asking...I noticed it when trying to load a multi boot...Seems to boot like a real machine with that OS...

 

ED: Even more odd, some times the F3 acts as the F4 (my binds are untouched) so you can hold F3 in to disable basic????

 

I presume its this weird Warp OS

 

ED2: Its weird, sometimes the Option key does as normal, sometimes the Select takes over its function and then the next boot its back to the normal option key but as it stands it enables basic and stops the Altirra auto hold option...

Edited by Mclaneinc
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