RunIT Floppy Emulator

The topic W76 mentioned in which Bifi writes it started with a disassembly of start.com is correct.

At this time the only thing you can compare Runit v2.0 to Start.com is that it uses the same format as getdisk to read disks on your HDD

It runs any game you could run with Start.com but probably more games this time as it has a complete DOS1 environment in DOS2 now. No extra memory is used anymore.

I am sure games will never use FAT and DIR buffers so that is where I put the code that I need. Sector buffer is still available as games might use it. Maybe not but to be sure I kept 512 bytes free for a sector buffer.

The DOS2 segments will never be altered by the game, (A minor patch is done by runit to disable some routines that make some games go FUBAR though )

The MicroCabin games that I think are fully working now are: Fray, Xak2, Illusion City, Tower of Cabin, XAK Tower of Gazzel, Big Strategy and Princess Maker. (the last 3 need a patch if you are the happy owner of a TurboR) I cannot finish the games to test for 100% and that is where I need your input so I can debug if it is going wrong somewhere (if it does please save just before the bug and send the saving to "smd at xs4all dot nl").

I'm so happy that I can finally release a working version after sooooo much debuggin and coding

NEARDARK is alive and providing real good stuff

Details omitted from the newspost, due size (and because newsposts aren't really to be complete development logs )

The known bugs are:
- XAK 1 (the MSX hangs entering some buildings in the first village you enter);
- Illusion City (the english version won't work due to some recoding by the translator);
- Fray turbo R (Japanese version);
- Herzog (the MSX hangs after the opening screen);
- Fantasm Soldier 2 (the MSX hangs when you get killed);
- Dragon Slayer 5 (has corrupted graphics, but does start);
- Konami Collection disks (won't start and causes the MSX to hang);
- Laydock (won't start and causes the MSX to hang);
- Pacmania (the MSX hangs right in the beginning of the game);
- Seed of Dragon (won't start and causes the MSX to hang);
- Testament (won't start and causes the MSX to hang).

The computers we tested RunIt with:
- Panasonic FS-A1GT;
- Panasonic FS-A1WX (with this one we use the 6Mhz option to decrease loading times, while not loading the MSX is switched back to 3,5Mhz else the music won't play correctly).

About the known problems: are you still investigating how to improve the program to make them work?

Yeah, as the MicroCabin and sector based games are working for as far as I have been able to test I assume that the runit diskrom is working correctly.

Therefore I am now debugging games to check where it is going wrong if they hang and making IPS patches for it.

For example I know Fray for TurboR is not working because it uses all higher memory segments for buffering. All I have to do is find the buffering code and disable it (which was also the problem with Gazzel, Big strategy and Princess Maker)

Unfortunately I dont think i can fix the english version of Illusion City. The translator has added so much crap to make it work on MSX2/2+ and made it require 512kb memory that makes it pretty hard to find out where its going wrong (I will give it a try though). The original japanese version is working fine.

Use the IPS4MSX tool that Bifi has created to apply the patches after you have concatted the images You can download it at ips.tni.nl in the tools section.

PS: W76, dragon slayer 6 should run perfectly, I found out that my diskimage is corrupted =/

I love the crap that let me play Illusion City in english

Keep up the good work! I'll give a try soon and report here.