MESS interface / help required, please

[admin]

Hello all,

I though I had already asked in the past, but I couldn't find track of this in the forum (might have been in the older forum, but that one does not exist any longer...), so could anyone please explain how one accesses the emulation's menu bar while running the Dragon emulation ? What's the point in running my "MESSed" Dragon32 if I'm unable to load any files in afterwards ?!

I've already searched the internet for any possible information source or documentation, but this only lead me to the settings that are available from the GUI, which contains nothing of interest regarding this very issue. I tried both the full sceen and windowed versions, and as many key combinations as I could think of, but to no avail.

Thanks in advance to you all, and have a nice day !
Lionel

[sixxie]

Do you mean the ability to get to the main menu with, say TAB? Scroll-lock usually toggles keyboard emulation between "full" and "partial" - in "partial" mode, MAME interface keys like that are available, otherwise they get passed through to the emulated machine.

[admin]

Yes, that's it ! Thanks very much, Ciaran...
Still, this new interface no longer feels as user-friendly as it used to be. I remember it being 100% mouse-driven, whereas the controls are now based on too many key-strokes for my liking. Selecting a ".vkd" file to load into the emulator has just become a real pain.

But that's an even better reason to stick to "XRoar" !...

[Edited - I take it back about the ugly keyboard interface : it DOES work with the mouse, too... but I still liked the menu bar at the top better !]

[Alastair]

Snarkhunter,
to get the menu bar back, with the MESS system selection screen open, click on Options > Default System Options > Miscellaneous, and make sure there is a tick next to "Use New UI."

Next, right-click on the computer system you are interested in, choose Properties > Miscellaneous, and again make sure there is a tick next to "Use New UI."

The aforementioned scroll-lock key will then toggle between menu and no menu when running the system emulation.

[admin]

Thanks very much, Alastair. Now it just looks the way I remembered it, which also makes it much easier to use...

[snarkhunter]

... And once again, after installing the latest "MESS" release (0.139b), I'm unable to toggle the menu bar on and off. I had noted the "ScrLck" key is supposed to do this, but it actually does nothing. I have a portable PC, with the "NumLck" and "ScrLck" functions on the same key.

I know I did manage this when I was running 0.137b. Now, I cannot any longer.
I think I've found how to toggle the "ScrLck" function on and off, but it does not seem to have any impact on the menu bar within "MESS"...

So would anyone please explain again?

[zephyr]

Also, the CP400 emulation seems to be broken with this latest release. On my system it gets as far as displaying the DOS message, but never reaches the command prompt.

[snarkhunter]

Well, it now looks like the menu bar toggling with Fn + ScrLk disappeared with r0.137b (was still working in r0.136b). Not sure whether this is a bug or an intended functional change, though. But it's quite relieving to see it wasn't anything with my memory failing.

It seems there were some major changes after r0.136: part of those was the replacement or the huge ".dll" file with executables for both the MESS engine and its GUI.

So I guess I will just switch back to r0.136 until this issue (hopefully) gets corrected in some later release...

[zephyr]

Just tried version 0.136. Same problem with CP400 emulation.

Does the CP400 emulation work OK on your system?

[zephyr]

I have discovered that CP400 emulation has been broken since version 0.130. The emulation seems to be failing during the DOS init stage. It works just fine if you replace the Prologica disk BASIC ROM with a renamed Tandy disk BASIC 1.1 ROM.