Feature request: MSX Gamereader support in OpenMSX (psxdev GNU driver)

Par DrWh0

Paladin (839)

03-10-2019, 19:14

Well, the sram usually is note very fast on legacy hardware and only a little amount of it is present in games.

But hey is enough to play with physical cartridges in OpenMSX under linux

Par mth

Champion (507)

04-10-2019, 04:44

DrWh0 wrote:

* Also not supporting original booter disk games in OpenMSX is something I miss from original fmsx-dos and a lot of Windows emulators

If you're using Linux, you should be able to insert /dev/fda instead of a disk image.

I think being able to use real floppies on Windows would be a nice feature, but someone would have to provide the code and test it.

Par DrWh0

Paladin (839)

04-10-2019, 14:04

I already knew that but it does not work with "booter games" (sector based games), mounting the drive only works for conventional FAT12 disks (MSX-DOS), the same with non standard formats, those are not supported.

Regarding Windows you would need a driver in the emulator in order to support direct floppy access

Par turbor

Hero (519)

04-10-2019, 14:17

No need to mount it...
Launch openmsx like 'openmsx -machine turbor -diska /dev/fd0'
Just use the device name as parameter for the -diska option.
That way the emulated msx will read the sectors like it would from a dsk image.
Only downside, some copy protection schemes will not work due to differences in timing and possible hardware difference in looking for sector numbers etc. This all depends on the used scheme of course. But regular 720KB disks should work just fine.

Par DrWh0

Paladin (839)

04-10-2019, 14:25

I tried it the first time I used openmsx under linux (without luck apart from cracked/conventional FAT games) while other emulators under Windows worked flawlessly before the coming of Windows Vista

The lack of physical access to floppies and real interaction MSX-PC is one of the things I miss more in modern emulators

Par Manuel

Ascended (19298)

04-10-2019, 18:32

Technically, if there is no copy protection, a sector based game should be no different than a FAT game. openMSX accesses the fd0 device as if it's a 720kB file (exactly like a disk image), so there is no reason a sector based game wouldn't work.