Dragon Quicks

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prime
Posts: 266
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:40 am

Dragon Quicks

Post by prime »

Hi all,

Is there a version of the Dragon quickstart archive that contains the same content as the Android phone / wav archive but in *CAS* format. This would be idela for DragonMMC as it can fastload CAS files.

Failing that is there an automated way to convert WAV->CAS?

Cheers.

Phill.
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by pser1 »

Hello Phill,
I am using this little bat file to do that

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xroar -machine dragon64 -extbas d64_1.rom -altbas d64_2.rom -nodos -force-crc-match -tape-rewrite -tape-write %1.cas -load %1.wav -kbd-translate -lp-file ..\XRoar\sortida.txt 
So, most probably, if you put all of the WAV files in a folder inside XRoar root folder, you could do that too

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for %%A in (foldername\*.WAV) do (
   xroar -machine dragon64 -extbas d64_1.rom -altbas d64_2.rom -nodos -force-crc-match -tape-rewrite -tape-write %%~nA.CAS -load %%A -kbd-translate -lp-file ..\XRoar\lpoutput.txt 
)

Hope it helps.

cheers!
pere
sixxie
Posts: 1346
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:36 am
Location: Hertfordshire
Contact:

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by sixxie »

It's a really tough problem to make that fully automated. XRoar can do a lot with commands like this though:

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xroar -tape-rewrite -tape-write output-file.cas -timeout-motoroff 5 input-file.wav
(The "-timeout-motoroff 5" will quit the emulator automatically 5s after the last time the motor is turned off - this is usually enough for the program to have started having finished loading).

And I'd recommend the snapshot builds in http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/xroar/ as they contain the recent tape hysteresis changes which makes WAV input a bit more reliable.

If you don't want windows popping up, add "-ui null -ao null" - sadly you then have no option to accelerate time... Should add an option for that too...
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by pser1 »

Hi Sixxie,
you are right, I was trying it (what I wrote) and it doesn't work, First it needs to quit Xroar and I had not done that
because my original bat file conevrted only one WAV to CAS
Anyway, I will test your suggested way using %%A in a for loop. If¡t shoulc work ...
cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by pser1 »

alright,
tested it and works well!

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cd d:\XRoar-v036.3\
copy ..\XRoar\ROMs\d64rom1V31.rom d64_1.rom
copy ..\XRoar\ROMs\d64rom2V31.rom d64_2.rom
for %%A in (%1\*.WAV) do (
   call xroar -machine dragon64 -extbas d64_1.rom -altbas d64_2.rom -nodos -force-crc-match -tape-rewrite -tape-write %%~nA.CAS -timeout-motoroff 5 %%A
)
The three statements at the beginning ensure I work from my current XRoar folder and use the last D64 ROMs I have
The for loop works flawlessly and has converted without issues three WAV files to CAS
cheers!
pere

Ps Forgot to say that param %1 must be the folder name where the WAV files are put (inside xroar root folder)
WAV2CAS.bat WAVFolder ; this could be an example of use
Last edited by pser1 on Tue Jun 08, 2021 9:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by pser1 »

hello,
when converting a lot of WAV files, it would be better to add the -tape-fast in the command, it works much faster ...

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   call xroar -machine dragon64 -extbas d64_1.rom -altbas d64_2.rom -nodos -force-crc-match -tape-fast -tape-rewrite -tape-write %%~nA.CAS -timeout-motoroff 5 %%A
pere
prime
Posts: 266
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:40 am

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by prime »

Cheers all that seems to be helpfull.

I have found that adding -timeout 30 is handy for games like "Screaming Abdabs" that don't turn off the tape once they finish loading!

Cheers.

Phill.
prime
Posts: 266
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:40 am

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by prime »

Right just to give some feedback on what worked for me....

I have cygwin installed on my Windows machine so in the root of the extracted archive containing all the WAV files :

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find . -iname "*.wav" -execdir bash /cygdrive/r/temp/DRAGON-WAV-ARC-v100-291116/xr  {} \;
Then the xr script contained :

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#!/bin/bash

XR=/cygdrive/g/Emulate/xroar/xroar-snap-0.36.6448-w64/xroar.exe

IN="$1"
OUT=`basename "$IN" .wav `.cas

echo "input:  $IN"
echo "output: $OUT"

$XR -tape-fast -tape-rewrite -tape-write "$OUT" -timeout-motoroff 5 -timeout 30 -ui null -ao null "$IN"
That took in excess of 250 minutes :)

When done, after checking a couple of the cas files looked ok, I removed the wav files with :

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find . -iname "*.wav" -exec rm -fv {} \;
I would expect that the above would also work in WSL, or any Linux/Unix like OS.

Cheers.

Phill.
sixxie
Posts: 1346
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:36 am
Location: Hertfordshire
Contact:

Re: Dragon Quicks

Post by sixxie »

Glad you found a way :)

There'll be a lot of duff ones in there, I'm sure - custom loaders, multipart stuff. But I'm sure it's a great start :)
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