MSX1EMU 1.0

We have just added MSX1EMU to our downloads database. This new emulator is NYYRIKKI's latest output for his favorite MSX model, the turbo-R. This program will try to emulate an original 64KB MSX1 computer accurately on such an MSX turbo-R. It includes motor relay sounds, diskdrives that keep spinning etc. DSK and CAS are supported, as well as some monitor emulations. A unique feature is advanced I/O sound emulation. To use this program you need an MSX turbo-R and a dump of the MSX1 ROM.

Relevant link: MSX1EMU

Comments (28)

By Metalion

Guardian (479)

19-03-2009, 09:47

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see the point of that emulator ...

What is it for ?

By ARTRAG

Prophet (3033)

19-03-2009, 09:49

well, you can play .cas files in TR

By wilsonpilon

Supporter (0)

19-03-2009, 12:05

Just tested, great job NYYRIKKI! Work very well, with 2 dificult .CAS files. This tool is great to run software that don't run very well in Turbo-R machines. Other great tool by NYYRIKKI!

By konamiman

Champion (397)

19-03-2009, 12:43

Sorry for the bad language but this is FUCKING AWESOME. Finally, cassette games are available on our real Turbo-Rs!!!

I have tested it on a blueMSX-emulated Turbo-R (yeah, double emulation!) and it works fine, except that _EXIT throws the message "Wrong disk for drive A:, insert disk with COMMAND2.COM" (I have to test it more, anyway). The green/gray monitor option has completely puzzled me, anyway you have forgot amber monitors!

Just as a suggestion, it would be perfect if it admitted a command line option to directly run a .CAS file, optionally disabling the emulated disk system (without having to press SHIFT).

I can't wait to use it on my real Turbo-R!

By hap

Paragon (1101)

19-03-2009, 13:13

Without trying it yet, I've got some ideas already:
- use "yes"/"no" keys, or the numpad for emulator commands, such as:
* save/loadstate!
* emulator exit to msxdos
* etc ;p
- support for virtual non-megarom cartridges, possible?

Lots of potential

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

19-03-2009, 15:20

I've also found few bugs:
- Track seek sound does not play correctly on single sided disks
- MSX-DOS2 does not always detect that the disk has been changed.
please tell me, if you find more problems...

the one mentioned by konamiman is a bit weird... Does this happen also if you type:
SET SHELL=A:\COMMAND2.COM
... before starting the emulator?

@konamiman Actually I had a question to select if you need disk drive or not, but I removed it from final version. I thought pressing SHIFT is better than anoying question at start....

If you send me amber palette, I'm more than happy to add it. Back on MSX1 times amber monitors were quite rare on this corner of the world.

Ps. Thank you for rewriting MSX2 technical handbook. It helped me a lot while implementing CALL commands.

@hap I've thought about adding SCREEN 7 based On Screen Display (a bit like in OpenMSX) that could be activated by pressing "yes" key, but implementing it takes quite a lot of time and if I'll go to MSX2 emulation it will become a problem... Let's see...

Some kind of ROM-file emulation will be available on next version...

By konamiman

Champion (397)

19-03-2009, 22:13

Ok, tested in my real Turbo-R (A1ST expanded internally to 512K, with a Sunrise CF interface), and a few curious things to note:

- The "insert COMMAND2.COM" error is gone.
- The emulated MSX1 always boots diskless, even if I don't press SHIFT.
- MSX1EMU.COM just shows a black screen and freezes if InterNestor Lite is installed. Uh, em... let's make a deal: I haven't seen anything if you haven't seen anything.

By the way, I am using one of the MSX1 ROM files that ship with blueMSX, and now I have noticed that its size is 32K, does that matter?

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

20-03-2009, 01:31

> - The emulated MSX1 always boots diskless, even if I don't press SHIFT.

This sounds like pain to debug... Works just fine on BlueMSX with similar config... What DEVICE says? = ?PEEK (&HFD99)
Anyone else having similar problem?

> - MSX1EMU.COM just shows a black screen and freezes if InterNestor Lite is installed.

Yes, this application does not currently obey the MSX-DOS2 rules I know... I think it might get fixed later... but not because of InterNestor Lite

> By the way, I am using one of the MSX1 ROM files that ship with blueMSX, and now I have noticed that its size is 32K, does that matter?

Sounds correct. 32KB is needed.

By konamiman

Champion (397)

20-03-2009, 08:58

DEVICE reads zero.

I have tried to remove the CF adapter and boot from a floppy (thus having the same configuration as in blueMSX), and the MSX1 stills booting diskless. It is indeed quite bizarre.

By MagicKnight

Rookie (21)

20-03-2009, 09:35

I've only been using my Turbo R since last weekend when I got a new drive belt and I've mostly been playing games such as Batman, Knight Tyme etc., and of course I've had to fiddle with the loaders etc. to get them to load, and some don't load at all, so this is great news for me...

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to use the program properly, or if it's even possible to do what I want:

Basically I can start the program by booting from a floppy with MSX-DOS 2 on it etc. After it starts I want to insert a game disk that I've copied from PC and then load that up. So I put the disk in, change the drive to B: using _CHDIR( "b:" ) and then when I enter _FILES I can see the files on the disk. When I try to load the autoexec.bas file I get a "Device I/O error" and then file doesn't load.

From reading the manual I take it that I could load .cas and .dsk files from a memory card or something similar, but is there a way to do what I want:- load games from floppy disk?

Any input would be greatly appreciated. I'm only new to the MSX, having grown up with the Spectrum.

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

21-03-2009, 10:43

Yeah... You can forget the DSK & disk support for a while...

I don't know where the BlueMSX & OpenMSX MSX-DOS1 ROM's of MSX tR configuration are dumped from, but one thing is sure... they are not from MSX tR...

Back to drawing board...

Damn, why oh why did I trust those emulators...

Shame on me... I even had a feeling that something is not quite right and I still continued... How stupid can you be...

Can someone send me a VALID copy of A1ST DOS1 disk ROM?

By MagicKnight

Rookie (21)

21-03-2009, 12:03

Hi, thanks for that info. In the meantime I have managed to get .cas files working, simply by copying files onto a floppy, booting from that into Dos 2, and then running the emulator. After that I simply load up the .cas file. I've found a few that don't load, is that due to the loading schemes used?

All in all though, it's a great program, lots of games I couldn't get to run are running great!

Many many thanks! Keep up the great work.

By hap

Paragon (1101)

21-03-2009, 12:59

How about adding C-BIOS as MSX.ROM by default in a next version that supports cartridges?

(right now C-BIOS boots, but doesn't do much else)

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

21-03-2009, 13:59

Some good news... I've found the problems... It seems that MSX tR emulation on OpenMSX and BlueMSX does about everything wrong when it comes to disks... They use wrong memory mapper, wrong version of MSX-DOS2 and wrong version of MSX-DOS1 ROM...

Bad news is, that I need to rewrite few routines completely...

By Konamito

Champion (484)

21-03-2009, 14:42

I've tried on blueMSX but the DSK always boots and I can't see any MSX1 emulation...

1.- I made a DSK with the MSX-DOS2 files adding the MSX.ROM and the MSX1EMU.ROM.

2.- I type MSX1EMU and then the emulator boots.

3.- Nothing happened.

Am I doing something wrong?

By mth

Champion (276)

21-03-2009, 14:51

Since openMSX does not ship turbo R BIOS ROMs, could you please specify which ROM you are using? For example by telling us the SHA1 sum.

About the mapper problem: if you tell us what is wrong, we can fix it in the next release.

Regarding C-BIOS: Currently C-BIOS accesses the VDP (and maybe other hardware too) faster than the real VDP can cope with. I'm not sure if the turbo R engine will send a wait signal the CPU when that happens or not (it does in R800 mode, I'm unsure about Z80 mode).

By dvik

Paragon (1517)

21-03-2009, 15:20

I'm not sure what roms blueMSX use for the 'generic' Turbo-R machine. Probably the openMSX roms at former funet. Not sure who dumped those. For the ST and GT machines I'm almost sure we have recently made dumps made by a trustworthy MSXer who knows what he's doing.

As mth said, it would be nice to know what you think is wrong with the mapper. Note that blueMSX has an 'old' mapper for the generic Turbo-R machine and a new one with different I/O mapping for the ST and GT machines (think it was changed in 2.7 or 2.8)

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

21-03-2009, 17:01

Sorry, I jumped to conclusions too fast...

Currently the problem seems to be solved just by changeing DOS2 page select to #7FF0 instead of #6000

I think I was checking out wrong page first time... I anyway found some other minor problems as well using a real hardware... I'll release working version soon...

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

21-03-2009, 20:19

I just send updated version to MRC downloads database... I hope this will correct the major problems.

By wolf_

Ambassador (5677)

21-03-2009, 22:43

done

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

21-03-2009, 22:55

... so please download again... This should also fix the track seek sounds more close to original on 360KB 3.5" disk images as well as in 8/9 sector / track 5.25" images.

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

23-03-2009, 11:18

Is this silence a good thing?

Everything ok?

By konamiman

Champion (397)

23-03-2009, 12:10

I tested it yesterday and it seemed to work fine: the disk system is available, as well as the mounted DSKs. Anyway I could not find any .DSK game that runs in MSX1 (I found a cracked version of Commando Tracer that hangs in mid load, but I think that it would not work on a real MSX1 anyway), so I wanted to find one to do more testing.

Anyway I will keep the previous version as well, it is quite convenient to have the disk system disabled by default.

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

23-03-2009, 13:22

Well... here is at least one MSX1 disk you can try:
http://msx.fi/party/old/miu2006.htm

By dvik

Paragon (1517)

23-03-2009, 17:38

I tried one of the mania disks and it worked well. (think I tested mania 001). They are nice since they are only 360kB.

By konamiman

Champion (397)

24-03-2009, 12:47

The MIU disk did not work on my tR. The MSX1 freezes as soon as the DSK is acessed.

By NYYRIKKI

Prophet (2220)

24-03-2009, 22:42

That is really weird, as I used this image to test the emulator in a first place... also on real MSX tR (A1GT)

Does it work without the MSX1 emu?

By MagicKnight

Rookie (21)

24-03-2009, 23:50

I got the demo disk to boot on my Turbo R, and also I found one game that works, if anyone wants to try it: Match Day II, though it also boots on a Turbo R without the emulator.

This is the procedure I follow:
Boot into MSX-DOS 2.2 from floppy disk. On this same disk I have the MSX1EMU file and the MSX.ROM
I load MSX1EMU from the command line.
When finished loading, I swap disks.
I then enter _RESET.
The game loads normally.

For .cas files I just do the same but hold down Shift when loading, I've found that both Head over Heels and Batman definitely need this. I keep the .cas files on the same disk as the emulator to make it easier for myself.

There are still quite a number of games that won't load though: BMX Simulator, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Tai-Pan, Highway Encounter etc. Tai-Pan is a real problem from disk as I can't get it to load the data when needed.

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