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Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 4:16 pm
by robcfg
I know what you mean, but previously you could just take out the disk rom and it would boot without the disk controller.

The Dragon, as the CoCo, should start without the disk system, as they don’t have any out of the box, and add one of the disk controllers and several drives if needed.

I’d understand that many people use always disks, but if you want to show the system in its original configuration, it should not need the disk rom by default.

That’s my two cents.

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 4:24 pm
by .mad.
robcfg wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:13 pm Yes, but now the ddos rom is mandatory and the system will not boot without it.
I was under the impression Dragon Disk DOS was a EXTERNAL cartridge that connected the disk drives with a ribbon cable.
The Dragon32 doesn't need that cart to load Cassettes.
Pernod70 wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 1:28 pm The dragon32 driver has specified dragon_fdc as the default ext device for at least 4 years. I tried mame dragon32 in the 0.209 release and DDOS loaded, which version is it not the default? To start without DDOS you could mame dragon32 -ext pak, which is essentially an empty cartridge.
I have been using MAME 202 (dragon only build).

when i run a Dragon32 CAS file from the the command-line and frontend it boots directly from Dragon BASIC (no DDOS).
and with Dragon64 VDK files it boots into DDOS.

looking at the 202 source code it does show the ddos attached as default. :?
But i only noticed the problem after i updated, when you fixed the 32k/64k rom bank for Dunjunz.
maybe that did something in the config??. i don't know really.

But surly the correct default behaviour, should be no external carts attached?
unless the cart came in the box with every Dragon and it won't switch on without it.

The cart could then be attached and configured with the command-line if needed.

i edited the 209 code to this...
// cartridge
cococart_slot_device &cartslot(COCOCART_SLOT(config, CARTRIDGE_TAG, DERIVED_CLOCK(1, 1), dragon_cart, nullptr));

and it works for me. :D

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 5:09 pm
by Pernod70
robcfg wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 4:16 pm I know what you mean, but previously you could just take out the disk rom and it would boot without the disk controller.
Sounds like a bug that was inadvertently fixed.
robcfg wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 4:16 pm The Dragon, as the CoCo, should start without the disk system, as they don’t have any out of the box, and add one of the disk controllers and several drives if needed.
I tend to agree, so will remove the default. Should any of the Dragon machines default to having anything inserted? I'm thinking d64plus would be useless without default floppy support. The Tano currently defaults to sdtandy_fdc, remove too?

We tend to define expansion defaults based upon how they were more commonly used, to save users from having to know too much about the machine. They are not necessarily configured as straight from the box as new. ie. most machines will have joysticks attached by default, the zx81 will have the 16K RAM pack installed, spectrum has Kempston interface, electron has Plus3 floppy interface, etc.

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 6:29 pm
by .mad.
Hi Perno70,

Can i pick your brains for a moment. ;)

At the moment SENDKEYS only works when MAME is in NATURAL keyboard mode.
is there a way to enable it while in EMULATED keyboard mode?.

i can startup MAME in -NAT mode send the command keys to load a tape.
but i then must change to EMULATED mode manually to have any use of the dragon/other system keyboard without any serious lag.

if the sendkeys can not be made to work in emulated mode, could there be a HOT key shortcut to switch the mode.
then that hotkey could be the last key sent in the command to automate it.
example
sendkeys=cloadm:exec{enter}[ScrLk]

thanks for you time! :)

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 6:45 pm
by Pernod70
.mad. wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 6:29 pm if the sendkeys can not be made to work in emulated mode, could there be a HOT key shortcut to switch the mode.
then that hotkey could be the last key sent in the command to automate it.
example
sendkeys=cloadm:exec{enter}[ScrLk]

thanks for you time! :)
I think what you're looking for is the -autoboot_command option, see https://docs.mamedev.org/commandline/co ... ng-options

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 9:45 am
by .mad.
Pernod70 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 6:45 pm I think what you're looking for is the -autoboot_command option, see https://docs.mamedev.org/commandline/co ... ng-options
geeze, do i feel stupid! :oops:

i was reading the command literally.
i thought it would only work in NATURAL mode. :roll:

The autoboot command is a life saver when booting Texas Instuments 994a tapes.

Thanks very much! 8-)

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 12:47 pm
by .mad.
I *think* there is still a small bug in the Dragon64 config.

while using the converted AGD games by pser1.
in MAME202 they only worked with this machine... TANODR64H.
After you fixed the problem with the Dunjunz rom bank, some started to work with Dragon64. :)
i think this is the correct behaviour for all of them. But i don't know for sure???.

Good Night Kanga (and many others).
RUN"SETAGD"
game boots the loadinging screen.
press SPACE to continue the loading....
the game crashes when it's about to run. (flashing gfx).

the games still work in Tanodr64h HD6309e.
so the correct settings are there to make it work.

i can confirm ALL the games do load in Xroar with a normal Dragon64 config.
which doesn't really help you.
maybe someone with more knowledge than me, can confim the correct behaviour.

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Fri May 24, 2019 4:11 pm
by .mad.
There's a similar Dragon64 problem with most of the Infocom CoCo Conversions.
attached two for you to test.

Seastalker - only boots in Tanodr64

Cutthroats - crashes on both machines when you type any command e.g. "GET UP"

both seem to work in Xroar with a Dragon64.

Re: MAME Emulation - 80 track and double sided

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:10 pm
by bluearcus
It appears that Mame Dragon disk drive emulation is broken for some non-standard disk formats as well.

Soren's 80 track OS9 system disk image (.VDK) works great on Xroar.

https://www.roug.org/retrocomputing/os/os9

But it fails to get past loading the boot track on Mame. Most likely because double sided disk geometries are not being recognised or addressed properly.

Re: MAME Emulation

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:32 pm
by robcfg
I think it maybe simpler than that.

Upon trying to load the image with my own code, I realised that I was misinterpreting the name field in the header, to be actually after the header instead of being part of the header. So a basic size check fails.

I'll check MAME's code and see if that is what is actually happening.