SIDE 3 preorder

[flashjazzcat]

If anyone (in addition to @KPeter) is able to test OSS cartridges (especially BASIC XE and extensions) and provide feedback, it would be greatly appreciated. Best to do this on an U1MB/SIDE3 setup at the moment, since the on-board SDX alpha build has some significant issues.

 

 @ebiguy created the patched OSS ROMs for SIDE2, and I am hearing that the same BASIC XE bugs (with circle drawing and math) which Eric fixed in his patched ROMs are showing up in the unpatched CAR file running on SIDE3. This is a trifle concerning.

 

I have attempted to load BASIC XE extensions here, and while I found them to basically work with BASIC XE 4.1 (OSS type B), BASIC XE 4.2 (034M) crashes. Although I'm a great advocate of the OSS programming carts, I don't actually USE them, so it will take me forever to encounter issues that an ardent user might run into in the space of five minutes.

 

[theloneraider]

4 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Great! I'll get onto that auto-run cart facility once some current ongoing issues are fixed up; looks like that facility will be useful to you.

Cool, yes looking forward to that, thanks.

 

Before flashing I was able to get it kind of working as it goes. I'd boot to SDX on the SIDE3, then type CAR in DOS to start the loader. I'd CTRL+Enter the MAC65 cart image and then try to exit back to SDX.

 

I'd get a black screen, but if I hit the cartridge button, then reset, it would boot back to SDX, then if I typed CAR again I could get to MAC65. Dropping to DOS would give a non fatal error about disk saving, but since updating it's all fine.

 

Nonetheless it did work and allow me to switch between the two and save/load to the APT partitions on the SD cart. I am a beginner, so still getting my head around assembly language, but it is really nice to have a very workable environment thanks to SIDE3.

 

Great work, please keep it up

[flashjazzcat]

12 hours ago, theloneraider said:

I'd get a black screen

I encountered something similar, and this is fixed in the latest version of the loader which I will release soon.

12 hours ago, theloneraider said:

Dropping to DOS would give a non fatal error about disk saving

This is an SDX matter; namely, it means the CAR.SAV environment variable does not point to a valid storage path.

12 hours ago, theloneraider said:

Great work, please keep it up

Many thanks! This all provides great motivation to keep improving things.

 

Meanwhile, regarding my earlier remarks about BASIC XE, this from @KPeter:

 

I guess, I found the source of the issue of BASIC XE 4.2 crash.

 

1. If I turn-on A8 and go to the U1MB Loader where I push L to get in SIDE3 Loader to choose BASIC XE 4.2,

    it starts to load Extension Files, moving them in certain memory location (banks?)

    In this case the BASIC XE 4.2 works without issues.

 

2. If I command DOS from BASIC to get out from it, it goes to SpartaDOS 4.49e.

    Now I call again BASIC XE with CAR. In this case it fails ... it looks like, there is a conflict with

    residuals from Extension Disk's file in banks/memory.

 

Does not matter I push R in U1MB or SIDE3 Loader, it cannot get rid of residual files and

starting BASIC XE again from SDX with CAR will fail.

 

If I repeat all things from 1. (turning OFF A8 and ON again) the BASIC XE will work properly.

With going back to SDX and calling BASIC XE with CAR ... it will freeze the system.

 

This may be of interest to @trub and @drac030, although it's entirely possible that a combination of factors (loader, SDX, cartridge emulation) is causing some kind of issue.

Edited November 11, 2020 by flashjazzcat

[KPeter]

2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

This may be of interest to @trub and @drac030, although it's entirely possible that a combination of factors (loader, SDX, cartridge emulation) is causing some kind of issue.

Yes Jon, the reason, why I posted it in this place. ?

 

But, of course, I will report it to DLT.

 

Take care,

Peter

[flashjazzcat]

4 minutes ago, KPeter said:

Yes Jon, the reason, why I posted it in this place. ?

You sent the information to me in a PM, where it is completely invisible to DLT.

 

Anyway - hopefully we will find solutions now.

[Guest]

On 11/3/2020 at 1:44 PM, flashjazzcat said:

Same here. Just sorry I never got to attend any of them.

 

Check out 'The Dangerous Brothers' and 'Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door' as well. I met Rik once at a book signing and the man was an absolute human dynamo of fun.

older I get, the more of my comedy heroes disappear before their time: Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Graham Chapman (best eulogy ever - thanks to John Cleese), Terry Jones (so sad), Caroline Aherne, Eric Morecambe, but Rik Mayall and Robin Williams were taken decades too early.

 

Mr Jolly Lives Next Door is one of the Comic Strips' finest efforts. Throw in A Fistful Of Travellers' Cheques, Bad News & More Bad News - for a great evening's worth of laughs.

 

"what's Mr Jolly Got that we haven't?"

"our bloody Fairy Liquid"

 

"you'd have thought he'd have shown us his chopper last night"

 

we saw them on the Weapons grade Y-Fronts Tour. We took our son - he was 14 at the time, but (like myself and my wife) he loves almost everything Rik does. anyhow, little story:

we're three rows from front (centre stage). the finale is a musical number with the succinct title "f**k off home" - them both wearing XXXL-sized Y-fronts (over their jeans). to finish they throw these into the audience.

there's a fella sat next to my son, and Rik's Y-fronts are hurtling through the air toward this guy...last split-second, my son sticks out his left arm, grabs y-fronts in mid air and secures them under his T-shirt. fella looked livid.

My son is now 31 with his own house and in his den/aka computer room - those Y-fronts are pinned to the wall - 17 years later!

 

Rik Mayall is from Droitwich (8 miles away from me) and even did an hilarious mockumentary : Behind The Green Door - which was shot in my local town in 1982.

Rik = a true local legend. 

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Guest

[flashjazzcat]

Mr Jolly is a particular favourite. 'Massive gins,' etc.  Also the source of my Facebook motto: 'Never ever bloody anything ever'. I have lived my life by those immortal words.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Mr Jolly is a particular favourite. 'Massive gins,' etc.  Also the source of my Facebook motto: 'Never ever bloody anything ever'. I have lived my life by those immortal words.

"exploding Tonic Water? - that's going to be a whacky Off Licence when it opens"

 

just managed to find the really old image of my son Daniel - in said Y-fronts and gig t-shirt

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Guest

[xxl]

 

 

Qmeg problem? what about Gauntlet?

[flashjazzcat]

2 minutes ago, xxl said:

Qmeg problem? what about Gauntlet?

Gauntlet on what medium? I'm not Polish and don't have time to sit through two hours of foreign language features.

Edited November 17, 2020 by flashjazzcat

[+Stephen]

17 minutes ago, xxl said:

Qmeg problem? what about Gauntlet?

Says the master of software incompatibility.  I'll tell you one thing, whatever the issue is, it's NOT been put there on purpose like some other notable examples.

[flashjazzcat]

6 minutes ago, Stephen said:

whatever the issue is

Well, we may never know. I can't see from some topical investigation what the QMEG issue is supposed to be (or whether it is related to loader, SDX, or what) since it appears to work, and given there are about a dozen different ATR, XEX and ROM versions of Gauntlet, I will wait until more detail is forthcoming

9 minutes ago, Stephen said:

it's NOT been put there on purpose like some other notable examples

Well, there is one highly relevant thing which WAS put there on purpose, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

 

[xxl]

click video starts from 24:00 there you will watch the problem you don't need language knowledge.

you can try to reverse the problem, but when you deal with it, show how to run SynFile + on such equipment - I will be grateful if it succeeds.

[flashjazzcat]

7 minutes ago, xxl said:

click video starts from 24:00 there you will watch the problem you don't need language knowledge.

Thanks; we're getting warm but I haven't managed to land on the Gauntlet part yet. If someone just posts the CAR/XEX here, I'll happily take a look at it. The guy is presumably using a loader which is a couple of revisions out of date, so I would prefer to cut to the chase and just test it here.

9 minutes ago, xxl said:

show how to run SynFile + on such equipment

I assume this is a reference to:

You need to address such complaints elsewhere, I'm afraid. PIA registers are wholly unconnected with discussions of SIDE3.

[xxl]

after update same problem:

 

 

[xxl]

if you run it under AVG it works fine.

[+Stephen]

Must be more fun to argue than be helpful and post an invalid XEX.  Posting the file in question would take 30 seconds tops.  But let's just keep being obtuse on purpose for an hour.  Great way to help debug issues.

 

At my job, when someone tells me my code has a bug, if they don't provide detailed instructions on how to reproduce it as well as what code version, they get a nice F-U and I move on.

[xxl]

I am thinking about buying, I see in the promotional video that the device is not working properly - I report it and you suggest to me that only after the purchase I will be entitled to report bugs? what kind of world do you live in: D

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, xxl said:

I am thinking about buying, I see in the promotional video that the device is not working properly - I report it and you suggest to me that only after the purchase I will be entitled to report bugs? what kind of world do you live in: D

In that case I will offer a sincere apology.  But there is no way that fjc can be expected to identify the bug, determine the cause, nor fix it, without an example of the offending code.

 

Especially, because of the awful nature of these A8 machines to exhibit "timing instability".  Could be a particular file works on his machines but not others, etc.

 

To beat another dead horse - testing, testing, testing.  Lack of testing will get you every time.  I'm not just bagging on this project.  We (my employer) are guilty of it as well.  It's why I had to work until 2AM this past Saturday.  Did a big software deployment that was already a week late and man o man did things go south.  Sometimes I wish I could just work landscaping or in a book store, maybe work with puppies.  Something less stressful.  Perhaps I'd be less of an asshole all the time.

[candle]

 

[flashjazzcat]

12 hours ago, xxl said:

I see in the promotional video that the device is not working properly

It's not a promotional video. I gather it's some kind of 'first impressions' review.

12 hours ago, xxl said:

I report it and you suggest to me that only after the purchase I will be entitled to report bugs?

You can report bugs any time you like, but - as Stephen says - I would ask anyone reporting an issue to provide specific details and preferably upload an XEX/ATR/CAR file rather than linking me to a two hour Polish language video. It's taken about a dozen forum posts in two separate threads and an hour or so of fucking around so far just to establish that the problem (apparently) concerned the XEGS switchable cartridge fix for the FPGA which Candle has just alluded to in the video above. I don't know why it is I can ask someone to ZIP up a complete image of their SD card on the Discord channel, have the file a day later, and fix the reported issue in five minutes, but here the gift of divination is required just in order to extract basic information about the issue at hand. I guess muh language barrier and such...

[xxl]

1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

It's taken about a dozen forum posts in two separate threads and an hour or so of fucking around so far just to establish that the problem

it was enough to click the video is set to the right fragment and without knowing the language a normal guy would do it in 3 minutes and not cry for an hour on the forum how unhappy he is.

[Dinadan67]

the polish video was uploaded on 18. october, it seems the problem with gauntlet is already fixed (see post #470).

Edited November 18, 2020 by Dinadan67

[+DrVenkman]

26 minutes ago, Dinadan67 said:

the polish video was uploaded on 18. october, it seems the problem with gauntlet is already fixed (see post #470).

Well, it’s fixed in Candle’s FPGA code. Has that fix made it to production cartridges? That’s the question. If the guy who raised this concern would simply post whatever cartridge image he claims is a problem, then we’d all know the answer to that question. 

[flashjazzcat]

36 minutes ago, xxl said:

it was enough to click the video is set to the right fragment and without knowing the language a normal guy would do it in 3 minutes and not cry for an hour on the forum how unhappy he is.

How long does it take to write 'SW-XEGS Gauntlet CAR file doesn't work?' I would then have replied: 'Problem already fixed by FPGA update'. Two posts, situation resolved, and then I'd be spared the unhappiness caused by dealing with people who can't explain themselves using simple English words.

 

Anyway: you're back on ignore now, so hopefully someone else has time to distil pertinent information from your posts going forward.