openMSX 0.12.0 released

The openMSX team just released a new version of the MSX emulator that aims for perfection.

openMSX 0.12.0—Mulligan—was going to be (mostly) a bug fix release. But at the end the team got inspired by Grauw to add a lot of MIDI devices. And, reviewing what was changed the last 10 months, the team saw that they also got loads of help from several people to add many new machine configurations and added some fun stuff like Sensor Kid and (experimental) Beer IDE emulation. On the emulator features category there's stuff like triple size video recording, some TAS enhancements and a callback for too fast VRAM access. So in effect, this is a 'various features and bug fixes' release!

Together with openMSX an updated version of Catapult, the user-friendly GUI, was released. Again it received a small amount of improvements: no need to specify the share dir anymore, automatically fetch the list of supported mappers from openMSX, fix handling of MIDI connectors and some small bug fixes.

Here's the list with all highlights and details:

MSX device support

fixed (S)RAM writing on turboR
fixed border color in screen 11/12
fixed some details of SD card emulation (found with FUZIX)
fixed clipping bug in sprite-mode-1 drawing
fixed crash in openMSX when using the AVT DPF-550 extension
fixed support of 8kB RS-232C ROMs (which is the only correct size!)
fixed emulation of joystick mode of the mouse
fixed broken MegaFlashROM SCC+ (introduced with openMSX 0.11.0)
improved trackball movement emulation so that JoyTest can also detect it like on real hardware
fixed touchpad joystick pins (fixing detection in JoyTest)
tweaked volumes of SFG-01/05 against the PSG
added Panasonic FS-A1WSX/WX variant ot the MSX-MUSIC mapper
added proper YM2148 emulation (MIDI in/out for Yamaha SFG modules)
added proper MC6850 emulation (MIDI in/out for Philips Music Module)
added emulation of FAC MIDI Interface
added emulation of Sensor Kid, ported from yayaMSX2SK, which is based on Mr. Takeda's Common Source Code Project
added emulation of BeerIDE (experimental)
added many new machines: Canon V-25 (thanks to Rudi Westerhof), Canon V-8, Fenner/Samsung SPC-800, Hitachi MB-H1, Toshiba HX-10D (thanks to Ricardo Jurcyk Pinheiro), Canon V-10, Canon V-20 (JP), Spectravideo SVI-728 (ES), Mitsubishi ML-TS2 (partly, it's still work-in-progress), Sony HB-101 (JP), Sony HB-201 (JP), Sanyo MPC-6, Mitsubishi ML-F120 and ML-F110 and Hitachi MB-H3 (thanks to Werner Kai) and Yamaha AX350IIF (thanks to Rudolf Gutlich)

New or improved emulator features

added "too_fast_vram_access_callback": you can now run a Tcl script when the running MSX software accesses VRAM too fast, e.g. break to debug
added display of 'movie length' in TAS mode. This is the length of your 'movie' if you upload it to tasvideos.org
added -triplesize to video recorder: allows creation of video files in 960x720 pixels, for which YouTube renders videos at 60 fps.
some fixes in keyboard mappings
fixed slow console when emulation speed is very low
add a snapshot 'near the end' to the OMR when saving it, allowing quicker continuation of the replay after loading it
similarly, add snapshots when fast-forwarding to the target time, so they can be used to jump back more quickly
show reverse bar in green when replaying in viewonly mode
added a converter from/to OMR to/from text, which allows you to more easily edit the OMR outside of openMSX
improved implementation of 'auto-save' feature of replays: the setting will now persist over openMSX sessions
added an OSD overlay for Metal Gear

Build system, packaging, documentation

replace mingw32 build support with MinGW-w64 build support on Windows
updated the website and other URL's to point to http://openmsx.org/ or GitHub

Relevant link: openMSX website

Comments (75)

By ren

Paragon (1947)

16-09-2015, 22:42

\o/ !

(Well, was already up to date running the development builds, but getting a release out is always a milestone of course..) Congrats and thx for your continuous efforts!

(ps. Isn't it time you declare openMSX stable / feature-rich enough to declare a 1.0 (or even beyond that) version?) (I mean - how long do you want to continue with calling it 0.y.z?.. ) I think it's time / long due.. (but perhaps you guys are accustomed to this 0.y.z ride... )

By fernandomanuel.garciagarcia

Master (199)

17-09-2015, 00:25

Great! it brings plenty of fixes and improvements. I cannot wait for testing this new release.
Thanks a lot to the whole team for your big effort !

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6976)

17-09-2015, 06:21

Great work! Going to test. Thanks

By KdL

Paragon (1485)

17-09-2015, 13:39

The Catapult's About writes in 2003-2014

By Parn

Paladin (854)

17-09-2015, 13:59

Great news! Time to update my favorite emulator, OpenMSX. Congratulations to all who worked on and contributed for this release!

By edoz

Prophet (2501)

17-09-2015, 18:52

Cool! i really have to try this emulator! as it have the GFX9000 support .. the only problem is that I'm so used by the simpleness of the blueMSX interface ..

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

17-09-2015, 20:06

edoz: if you need any help, just ask.

Thank you all for your nice reactions!

About the Catapult copyright year: thanks, fixed it for next time (I hope).

By ren

Paragon (1947)

17-09-2015, 22:31

@manuel: what about the version number? I was not joking about it
Though I realize some teams/devs consider their work/project never done/complete, so basically 1.0 will never come, right?
I can imagine however that staring at that 0-digit all the time can get tiresome? (At least, it does for me. Regarding openMSX, it gives me the feeling I'm working with somethings that's 'only' at v0.12, pre- forever or something.. )

(After all those years (proving itself) I feel it deserves a 1.x or something )

But, well, yeah, same goes for projects like MAME and DOSBox. But IMO this way you're just not using (thus missing out on) a digit.. The second digit is just used as a counter as it seems.. (at least you're using the/a 3rd digit..) (What if, say, MAME does a major overhaul of their codebase / way it works etc., then their current way of versioning is useless, right? (Or they have to call it something else or something..) (man a lot of somethings in this post... ))

By Grauw

Ascended (10820)

17-09-2015, 22:28

I think openMSX should skip the 1.0 and go straight to 12!

Big version numbers are all the rage nowadays!

By ren

Paragon (1947)

17-09-2015, 22:51

Grauw wrote:

I think openMSX should skip the 1.0 and go straight to 12!

Big version numbers are all the rage nowadays!

True, true! Yes, go with the rage!

Yes, that's not really semantic either... (and a bit silly IMO, in the near feature we'll have Firefox/Chrome 100 or something? (Probably they'll figure something out by then... (I suspect public version numbers (for such projects) will be something of the past, and only used internally.. - It'll just be 'Firefox' (updating all the time in the background) (of course, that's already true for iOS/Android/etc apps right?))

By AxelF

Champion (398)

17-09-2015, 22:50

Great job guys...
Now we can record video in -tripplesize

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

17-09-2015, 23:19

Last time we discussed it, we agreed to use version 1.0 if we have a built-in GUI or something in openMSX.

Happy now?

By ren

Paragon (1947)

17-09-2015, 23:45

Manuel wrote:

Happy now?

No..

Manuel wrote:

Last time we discussed it, we agreed to use version 1.0 if we have a built-in GUI or something in openMSX.

Cool, (or something )
Well, yes, that makes sense, now you mention it, it could be I've read your position on this before..
But you should really call it 1.something now, and when the GUI is done jump to 1.5 or something ;) (Goed idee hee, of niet?! ;))

By Lord_Zett

Paladin (807)

18-09-2015, 10:03

when its as easy to use as bluemsx, then i gona download it again.

By hap

Paragon (2043)

18-09-2015, 16:32

ren wrote:

...
(What if, say, MAME does a major overhaul of their codebase / way it works etc., then their current way of versioning is useless, right? (Or they have to call it something else or something..) (man a lot of somethings in this post... ))

Recently, we combined MAME and MESS into a single project, that was a major change! It's still named MAME, and the version was simply 0.version++.

By turbor

Hero (529)

18-09-2015, 20:50

Lord_Zett wrote:

when its as easy to use as bluemsx, then i gona download it again.

Great, now define 'as easy as'.

If you expect to download openMSX and have it all working directly after installing then that will never happen, since we will only include what is legally possible and all MSX (SUB)BIOS roms are still copyrighted.
Yes, even if there is no official way anymore to obtain them from their resp copyright owners, and they do not seem to care for it we will not include them). But if you already have all those BIOS files/roms you just have to drop them all in one directory and launch catapult to have them checked, and you're ready to go.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

19-09-2015, 02:20

Great news for my weekend, I´ll try the new version.

Thanks guys for your efforts, it is amazing how powerful openMSX has become, I don't think there's any emulator out there for any platform that brings so many options to its users. openMSX takes the MSX experience to a whole new level.

By ren

Paragon (1947)

20-09-2015, 14:35

hap wrote:

Recently, we combined MAME and MESS into a single project, that was a major change! It's still named MAME, and the version was simply 0.version++.

The mighty hap! (It's an honour )
Yes, well, maybe I'm too much into this SemVer thing, which is handy/useful for (web)development, but for end-user applications it doesn't really matter I guess.. (you can do what you like / see fit ;))

ps. @hap: are you ever going to fix this? ;)

By Samor

Prophet (2220)

21-09-2015, 16:41

hap wrote:

ren wrote:

Recently, we combined MAME and MESS into a single project, that was a major change! It's still named MAME, and the version was simply 0.version++.

hey, I completely missed that...

By Sandy Brand

Champion (309)

21-09-2015, 20:57

"too_fast_vram_access_callback"?? Awesome!!

Great work guys!

By TheKid

Paragon (1238)

21-09-2015, 22:22

Super guys, all those years and still working on openmsx to keep improving it. Excellent, I will give it a go right away

By RetroTechie

Paragon (1563)

05-10-2015, 02:16

Manuel wrote:

Last time we discussed it, we agreed to use version 1.0 if we have a built-in GUI or something in openMSX.

Would be great to have a built-in GUI vs. frontends like Catapult. But you could always reserve 2.x for that, and do 1.x releases in the meantime...

Any wild guesses as to when this latest openMSX release might make it into Debian testing?

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

05-10-2015, 02:23

RetroTechie wrote:

Manuel wrote:

Last time we discussed it, we agreed to use version 1.0 if we have a built-in GUI or something in openMSX.

Would be great to have a built-in GUI vs. frontends like Catapult. But you could always reserve 2.x for that, and do 1.x releases in the meantime...

I don't understand, why is it so important that we have newer versions of openMSX to be 1.0, 2.0 and so on? Will our MSX experience with openMSX improves just because we are running 1.0 version instead of 0.12 ?

Anyway, I think openMSX is fine without a GUI. Catapult does a great job to me, and I use the console a lot. And you can always use another frontend, or code your own, if you want.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

05-10-2015, 17:16

RetroTechie: for that, contact Bas Wijnen, the Debian maintainer of the package.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

07-10-2015, 07:14

Retrotechie: new packages just hit sid...

By ren

Paragon (1947)

08-10-2015, 19:03

So are there any plans what you'll be working on for the next version? New features you want to implement, or bugs you want to squash?

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

08-10-2015, 21:15

Not really. But if there's something you really would like to have, someone might get inspired.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

09-10-2015, 23:22

Well, if you are looking for something new, there's Knightmare Gold. Up until now, no emulator is able to play this game with all its features, because you can't hear the cd rearranged music while playing the game (instead of the original psg music).

By ren

Paragon (1947)

10-10-2015, 10:56

I do think looking into CRT simulation is quite interesting/neat
Apparently you already have a geometry shader in place (display_deform 3d).
I agree with Vampier (github) on the inclination thing. It's quite cool on itself, but seen form an MSX perspective not very realistic. It would be cool already if we could change attributes like (the amount of) inclination and (the amount of) convexity.

A very cool example comes from the Micro64 emulator.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

11-10-2015, 11:08

iamweasel2: so we would have to emulate an audio cd player?
ren: there's of course lots of stuff that could be added regarding all kinds of video effects. But there's also already a lot implemented (gamma, glow (a.k.a. latency), noise, scanlines, color transformations (e.g. for green monitors)). But sure, it could always be expanded.

By Parn

Paladin (854)

11-10-2015, 15:30

Are Knightmare CD and Knightmare Gold the only MSX games that support CD Audio? Perhaps it's not really worth the effort. It wouldn't even be much help for current software making, since most current IDE interfaces don't even support CD anymore. I still have an older IDE interface with CD support, but I can't be bothered to use it since it's so much work and it makes my desk looks like a bunch of wires exploded on top of it.

By syn

Prophet (2133)

11-10-2015, 18:06

Yeah I have thought about cd audio for msx games, but I suppose not much new software for this setup will be created unless someone makes this widely available (eg some mega-cd-like expansion (because like what you say regarding bunch of wires), which may not be that needed since the MSX has so many sound options already ;)

By RetroTechie

Paragon (1563)

12-10-2015, 18:24

Manuel wrote:

Retrotechie: new packages just hit sid...

And now Debian testing:

# apt-get -s upgrade
   .
   .
Inst openmsx-catapult [0.11.0-2+b1] (0.12.0-1 Debian:testing [amd64]) []
Inst openmsx [0.11.0-1] (0.12.0-1 Debian:testing [amd64]) []
Inst openmsx-data [0.11.0-1] (0.12.0-1 Debian:testing [all])
   .
   .

Within a month after upstream release... not bad!
(and now another year or more before it hits Debian stable Oh well)

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6091)

13-10-2015, 00:19

Manuel wrote:

ren: there's of course lots of stuff that could be added regarding all kinds of video effects. But there's also already a lot implemented (gamma, glow (a.k.a. latency), noise, scanlines, color transformations (e.g. for green monitors)). But sure, it could always be expanded.

True... Here is also pretty interesting blog post about CRT emulation.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

13-10-2015, 00:45

Manuel: Since openMSX already supports cd-rom images through IDE, maybe there's not much left to do to have cd audio support. I believe it should be a matter of identifying the cd audio commands in game code and decoding the audio data from the cd image and sending to the sound card. Or am I missing something here and it is much more difficult to get this working?

Parn: There's Dungeon and Dragons as a CD game as well. AFAIK, it is just these 3 games.

IIRC, the only IDE bios that doesn't support CDROMS up until now is Nextor bios. Sunrise BIOS supports it.

About new games, maybe we can have new CD games once there's an emulator that supports it. Considering user base (I think everyone that still uses MSX has an IDE interface, right?) and z80 load when playing audio data, I believe audio CD is the best option for games that want to have the best music, just with Moonsound.

But even if we don't have any new game ever, I still believe there should be support, in the same way as LD games are supported.

Anyway, it is just a suggestion of something new that is not emulated yet by any emulator out there.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6556)

13-10-2015, 01:13

Note that CD-ROM and CD-AUDIO are supported by blueMSX, but only with SCSI controllers :

http://msxblue.com/manual/cdrom.htm

I think that the 2 or 3 mentioned games have support only for IDE controllers.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

13-10-2015, 09:06

Do I read correctly that you need a physical CD-ROM (like) device for it, and thus a physical CD?

By Grauw

Ascended (10820)

13-10-2015, 09:52

iamweasel2 wrote:

Yes I still do have a dusty IDE interface but I don’t have a stand-alone CD drive anymore, also it’s way too much hassle to set it up. I reckon a lot of people do not have an IDE interface anymore, or never had one, the hardware lost most of its usefulness 10 years ago when the CF-IDE cartridge became available. Once you go flash storage you never look back.

I’ve got a million super awesome sound chips, PSG, SCC, OPLL, MSX-AUDIO, OPL4, OPM, DCSG and SID, I’d rather they be used .

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6556)

13-10-2015, 10:12

Manuel wrote:

Do I read correctly that you need a physical CD-ROM (like) device for it, and thus a physical CD?

No need indeed to emulate this device, blueMSX uses the PC device as MSX device. And of course, you insert a physical CD.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

13-10-2015, 13:20

Grauw wrote:

I’ve got a million super awesome sound chips, PSG, SCC, OPLL, MSX-AUDIO, OPL4, OPM, DCSG and SID, I’d rather they be used .

Yes, when you consider how easy it is to use a CF card, using a CD-ROM seems to be something bad. After all a CD-ROM takes much more space than a CF card and requires a power supply. You can of course use an old compact (and beautiful) cd case with power supply as those USB CD-Roms you can get almost for free these days, but still it is something big compared to the CF.

But if you consider cpu time and development time, I'm under the impression that CD is better than a Moonsound. How much CPU time it takes to tell a song to start playing / stop, seek for a track? To a retro machine, every cpu cycle is precious. To play music using Moonsound you will have to store the musics in your game and feed those bytes to the sound card. I don't know if you spend too much CPU time doing that, but it should be more than when you play cd musics.

But the biggest advantage to me is development. You can use any PC tools you like to write music and record it to a CD and play in your game. That means you can get a musician that doesn't even know what a MSX is to create songs for your game using his PC tools (or his music equipment). You can even use music that is already written and available in the net, you just need to get permission from the authors. And if you are talking about improving old classics, there are lots of remade songs from classic games, both made by the companies themselves for their modern remakes or by people around the world. This is a great thing when you consider that MSX musicians are not easy to find when you have a new project, since they have their own projects or they may busy with real life and work.

One of these days we were talking about the MSX2 version of Outrun and its flaws compared to the arcade. Although it would take (much) work to improve it to play and look like the arcade, you could easily get his songs to be better than the arcade by just using the remade classic songs that were rearranged to the PS2 version of Outrun 2 and making a CD version of this game. The new remade songs are really beautiful, and it would bring a huge improvement to the game with something that is already done (the songs). Of course, the problem now would be that the songs are too good, but the game would not be in the same level as its music, but that is another problem.

Anyway, just imagine a CD version of any of your favourite MSX games playing rearranged music that you heard someday and that is already available in the internet...

By Samor

Prophet (2220)

13-10-2015, 14:12

I like the idea, I'm no expert on the technical details but I would think that controlling playback of a CD isn't that taxing for the CPU, or memory.
As for emulation, sounds like it would be minimal because it could be handled by a pc's cd-rom drive.... although it would be handy if you could use a cd image (or perhaps OGG or something) in that case (several emulators of cd-based systems handle it that way in addition to the actual drive).

By Parn

Paladin (854)

13-10-2015, 14:33

iamweasel2 wrote:

There's Dungeon and Dragons as a CD game as well. AFAIK, it is just these 3 games.

IRC, the only IDE bios that doesn't support CDROMS up until now is Nextor bios. Sunrise BIOS supports it.

Forgot about it, I'm sorry! Does it use CD Audio or is it used only to load videos? About Nextor, I think it's so much more useful with its native FAT16 support that it's difficult to justify going back to Sunrise.

Manuel wrote:

Do I read correctly that you need a physical CD-ROM (like) device for it, and thus a physical CD?

It sure seems that way. No luck if you don't have an optical drive.

Grauw wrote:

Once you go flash storage you never look back.

I agree completely. Even though it means never playing KMG again.

iamweasel2 wrote:

I think iamweasel2 made a good case for CD support. I'd just like to add my two cents: it seems you can't safely control a CD drive asynchronously (as seen in KMCD and KMG), so you must wait for the drive's (or the interface's) response when sending commands. The downside is that there is an unpredictable delay (usually less than a second, but very noticeable) when you play, stop or change tracks. This is particularly annoying when you need to restart a track after playing it, during a stage for example. Looks like the game freezed for a moment. The solution for that in KMG was making each of the tracks as long as possible to minimize the need for looping.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

13-10-2015, 14:44

Samor wrote:

In the case of emulation, you can use iso images and mount it using software like Daemon Tools, it will behave like a real CD / DVD drive. I don't use CDs or DVDs anymore with my PCs (one of them doesn't even have a DVDROM drive anymore) and my media player, just iso images stored in HD.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

13-10-2015, 15:07

Parn wrote:

Indeed this is the best solution (recording the same song many times) in order to avoid the game having to loop the song. There are games that have fixed stage time (like Nemesis, since the scrolls push the ship forward to the end of the stage). To those that don't (the player controls the time) making a bigger track with the song recorded many times should solve or at least minimize the problem. And if you use a DVD instead of CD you have plenty of time (you can make a track with one hour, is that good enough? ). Most MSX games are 16 /32 kb and have just 1 or 2 songs. Just the Megaroms have more songs, but they wouldn't be a problem because you have much space in a CD (or DVD) for audio tracks...

There's another advantage of CD-rom games: you can have all 3 PSG channels just for Sound effects.

By Samor

Prophet (2220)

13-10-2015, 16:40

iamweasel2 wrote:

Yeah, true... so emulators don't really have to support images themselves, only the ide+cd audio support?

also, do DVDs even work? I was assuming we're using Redbook audio here, I don't think that's gonna work with DVDs. I think CD should be sufficient anyway, in most cases.

You could always prompt the user to insert Audio CD2 at some point, although that's... well, unique.

By Samor

Prophet (2220)

13-10-2015, 16:55

come to think of it, one could even do voice acting in game cutscenes and demos this way.... do we have any talented voice actors around here?

By Parn

Paladin (854)

13-10-2015, 17:50

iamweasel2 wrote:

And if you use a DVD instead of CD you have plenty of time (you can make a track with one hour, is that good enough? ).

That's actually not possible, since there isn't the equivalent of a mixed mode CD in DVD land. In a DVD, everything is data, while in a CD you can have data and audio tracks, and the latter are decoded by the CD player. Since this requires an extra audio cable connection, as soon as CD drives started to be able to read audio as data reliably, many CD player programs for PC started giving this option instead, simplifying setup and adding the possibility of software effects in the audio output. This is effectively impossible on MSX, for many reasons.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

13-10-2015, 19:31

Parn wrote:

iamweasel2 wrote:

And if you use a DVD instead of CD you have plenty of time (you can make a track with one hour, is that good enough? ).

I Didn't know that, thanks for the info. Still, a CD has a lot of space to audio tracks.

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

13-10-2015, 19:34

Samor wrote:

iamweasel2 wrote:

Yeah, true... so emulators don't really have to support images themselves, only the ide+cd audio support?

also, do DVDs even work? I was assuming we're using Redbook audio here, I don't think that's gonna work with DVDs. I think CD should be sufficient anyway, in most cases.

You could always prompt the user to insert Audio CD2 at some point, although that's... well, unique.

It seems that DVD doesn't work, so it was my mistake.

About multi-CD games, why it would be unique? Multi-CD games are not uncommon, my PSX Metal Gear Solid is telling me this right now.

By Parn

Paladin (854)

13-10-2015, 19:51

It would be unique having multiple CDs just for the soundtrack's sake. Ys Book 1 & 2 from PC Engine comes to mind: many tracks are actually produced by the internal sound chip since one CD isn't enough for the whole soundtrack. Why didn't they put Ys I in one CD and Ys II in another? Beats me.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

13-10-2015, 21:11

If ever supported, openMSX will support it via CD images (just like now, but unfortunately the ISO format isn't enough, as it doesn't support CD-AUDIO) and not via actual CD-ROM players. The latter is really impractical... optical disc players are less and less common and they won't work well with important features like reverse and save states.

Anyway, this would then either require the audio to be in OGG files with specific file names (in order to know which are on which track) or use a more elaborated CD-ROM image format like bin/cue.

Anyway, if people want to help implementing stuff like that, please talk to us. No matter how small your contribution, it often makes things happen. We will help you where we can. Together, new feature requests like this become a reality

By Parn

Paladin (854)

13-10-2015, 21:32

ISO images have a small disadvantage: they can't represent CDs with multiple tracks. You can use cue sheets to work around this limitation. With cue sheets, ISO and BIN files can represent data tracks, while WAV, MP3 or even OGG or FLAC files represent audio tracks. I know some emulators support cue sheets, like Gens for the Mega Drive, but I'm not sure which ones.

Rendered moot by the last Manuel's comment.

By Samor

Prophet (2220)

14-10-2015, 11:21

iamweasel2 wrote:

About multi-CD games, why it would be unique? Multi-CD games are not uncommon, my PSX Metal Gear Solid is telling me this right now.

for some reason I was thinking of audio-only CD's, e.g. a disk or ROM-based game with a CD (or multiple cds) purely for audio.

By Parn

Paladin (854)

14-10-2015, 13:17

That would have been kind of awesome. =)

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

20-10-2015, 22:26

ren: can you please contact me in private?

By giuseve

Paladin (813)

31-10-2015, 16:28

Hi manuel
I'd like to use OPENMSX for testing my real MSX Hardware and the files I usually save on the SD of my MFRSCCSD512K.
Wonderfule to manage all of this with Catapult !
I red this in the manual
"It is not emulated accurately enough to rely on it for development. Usage is again identical to using the Sunrise hard disk interface: you can use the hda/hdb commands and the matching command line parameters -hda and -hdb to control which image will be used for the first and second SD card. Currently, by default, the first SD card is 8MB and the 2nd SD card is 100MB size"
But I don't understand if is possible to
1) use a folder instead of an image (and it's size automatically recognised)
2) openmsx emulates the ram of the cart

The hardware I wish to emulate as best as possible (is't real that OpenMSX aims for perfection :-) ) is:
PHILIPS NMS 8245
MEGAFLASHROM SCC + SD 512k ONE SLOT ON slot1
A SLOT EXPANDER ON SLOT 2 WITH a FM-PAC and a MUSIC-MODULE
V9358 VDP
BASIC 3 ROM
no MSX 2+ logo at boot, neither F4 at boot, I think.

How would be the .xml file for my machine?

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

31-10-2015, 19:57

1. No, that is not supported (yet). Folders can only be used as normal disk images right now.
2. Yes, the full device is supported.

You could do the following:
1. Copy the existing Philips NMS 8245 xml file to a new file, say My_Philips_NMS8245xml
2. Open the XML file and edit it for the hardware modifications (similar to your real machine):
a. Change the VDP to V9938
b. Change the ROM images to the ROMs you want to use (you need to fill in the sha1sums of these ROM images in the right location and copy these modified ROMs to the share/systemroms folder so openMSX can find them)
3. As with your real system, you can use the MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD extension, the slot expander extension, the fmpac and Music Module extensions.

Good luck, let us know if you run into problems.

See also: http://openmsx.org/manual/setup.html#hardwareedit for some more examples of what to do if you want to emulate hardware modifications (which are supported in openMSX) in your emulated MSX, similar to your real MSX. But what I wrote above should be just enough for you to get what you want.

By rolandve

Champion (372)

05-03-2016, 22:46

Hi,
I have run in to what might be bugs with openmsx 0.12 running on windows 10:
- When using mifview to view images in a boosted MSX2 with IDE, a part of the last image keeps sticking to the left, like a bar that won't go away.
- when "my documents" is redirected to a network disk OpenMsx tries to write to "My Documents" but fails with
"Couldn't save SRAM Boosted_MSX2_EN.cmos (Error creating dir //Win)"
- After this bug, using "width 80" completely garbles the screen
- ALT-ENTER switches to full-screen but it looks like the keyboard is broken after that. Keys are displaced, so \ becomes ]

I have a screenshot of the image staying on screen, but have nowhere to post it.

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

05-03-2016, 23:29

@ rolandve
http://postimage.org/ :)

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

05-03-2016, 23:55

Rolandve, please try the latest development build from http://openmsx.fixato.net and tell us if that improved any of these issues.

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5684)

06-03-2016, 03:13

Or try this to upload pics:
https://www.msx.org/news/msx-related/en/msx-image-hosting

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

06-03-2016, 09:07

In detail:
1) I'd like to try that myself, can you get me the files you are using? Does it also occur with just floppy disks images?
2) I think this was fixed post openMSX 0.12, so please try the development build for that.
3) I'm surprised about that, it should have no relation. Are you sure this only happens after 2? If so, having 2 solved will make this one obsolete I guess... (but not understood)
4) This is an SDL issue. When using ALT-ENTER, the Alt key gets stuck causing different effects of key presses, see https://github.com/openMSX/openMSX/issues/485 There are other ways to go full screen, try that: http://openmsx.org/manual/user.html#keymapping (F12).

By rolandve

Champion (372)

06-03-2016, 11:02

Hi All,
Image causing the problems:

couldn't upload mifversion so convert to mif (settings: screen 12 and fill)

About #1
bug using the march 1 build (most recent):

Bug #3 is related to 1: when this bar is on the screen and you type Width 80, you get this result

Issue #2, sram error
I do no longer get this warning, however sram doesn't seem to work. I think I remember that the system would store "width 80" in screen ram, but in this build. Start in 40. Switch to 80. Reboot. Back at 40 characters wide.
I think some applications if MSX-DOS2 also switch. MSX-DOS2 can run in 80 character mode (start in 40, basic,width 80, _system), but after looking at a picture, MSX is back at 40 character mode

By rolandve

Champion (372)

06-03-2016, 11:17

One additional observation: when I use the "Boosted MSXTurboR with Ide" profile, this bug #1 does not occur. This might help pinpoint this issue somewhat more.

I get an illegal function call when I invoke "width 80" on the turboR, but that might be because the syntax for width has changed.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

06-03-2016, 12:22

1 and 3. I'll try to view a screen 12 MIF file to reproduce the issue.
2. no, it won't save that in the CMOS, unless you go to basic and type "SET SCREEN", which saves the current screen settings into the CMOS (SRAM).
5. (your last post) About the illegal function call: that's because by default a turboR boots in screen 1, which doesn't have the width 80 mode. First type "SCREEN 0" in basic and then you can do "WIDTH 80".

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

06-03-2016, 12:44

1 and 3: I can reproduce it and created a ticket for it: https://github.com/openMSX/openMSX/issues/1006 Thanks for reporting!

By rolandve

Champion (372)

06-03-2016, 13:05

Glad to support the MSX community. And I have learned something

By iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

06-03-2016, 15:50

@Manuel: btw, when using development builds from Fixato's site, how do we know what has changed in this intermediary versions, so we can try the new features / bugs fixed?

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

06-03-2016, 16:05

iamweasel2: just look at the commit log: https://github.com/openMSX/openMSX/commits/master

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

07-03-2016, 23:31

rolandve: 1 and 3: the bug with the strange bar is solved. But it's not actually completely solved. Apart from this openMSX bug, there is also a bug in MIFVIEW on MSX2 machines with V9958. After showing the screen 12 image, it doesn't turn of the YJK but in VDP register 25. This means you get a bogus screen mode: TEXT40 with YJK mode mixed.
I've tested this on a real MSX2 with V9958 and the effect we saw is not understood yet (so not emulated yet). Screenshots can be seen in the ticket I mentioned, as well as the details of the analysis.

By rolandve

Champion (372)

08-03-2016, 08:01

Thanks! Sounds like the way forward is: patch OpenMSX to make it behave like the real machines, so it generates the same effect. Leave the Mifview bug to the maintainer of Mifview, MS Windows used to be filled with runtime checks for bugs in other MS products like word. Seems to me like you don't want to maintain code to patch erratic behaviour in applications.

By Manuel

Ascended (19677)

08-03-2016, 10:43

Of course, that's the whole idea. But we can't emulate the exact effect if we don't know how it works on the real hardware. So we need to find that out first. The goal of openMSX is to emulate the machines as accurately as possible.

By rolandve

Champion (372)

08-03-2016, 11:42

On that note, and perhaps its a known bug: running TED (editor) on the boosted TurboR works nice until you exit TED. At that point the screen becomes a mess. It works on a boosted MSX2 profile.