Hi!

After all the emulator tests and reactions, maybe it would be a good idea to start a challenge to create accurate tests (not done in BASIC!) and graphically appealing. This will be an interesting filter for all the emulators... Even interactive with the user, something like "have you seen 4, 8 or none sprites?".

They could be used to test state-of-the-art MSX techniques in emulators. If the emulators are currently so perfect, why the tests are so crappy? No more BASIC to test such things as OpenMSX or BlueMSX. The developers deserve a bit more of respect ;-)

What's wrong with BASIC? I doubt there are MSX coders who didn't start programming in BASIC before they started coding stuff in assembly... Apart from big software houses that is, since they already had experience with assembly development before MSX was even developed/released. I don't see any disrespect for the emulator developers when benchmarks or something are written in BASIC.

I do agree assembly can be used for more speedy or complicated tests.

Actually there was a project called MSX-BITS, that was meant to be a complete emulator / MSX hardware test. The idea was, that anyone can make test modules in BASIC, assembler or other languages and they can be added to test library if they are done according to defined standard. Then user can select, what tests he/she wants to run: All tests, selected tests, all VDP tests, all interactive tests etc.

However the standard specification was such a complex, that actually no one of current developpers was interested to start doing tests. The standard defined for example that MSX2 video screen tests should run on MSX1 BIOS and tests should have routines to recover from reboot. However I actually made working test engine code although without complete test selection menu.

Actually as I consider this as abandoned project, I'll dig the details out and mail them here. Maybe someone wants to continue from were we left it...

I think it would be great to continue the MSX-BITS project. We had quite some interesting ideas back then, just not the time (and, admittely, not the attention span ^_^) to implement them all.

Still, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing some simple text in BASIC. Any decent emulator should be able to decently emulate BASIC at accurate speed as well, don't you think?