Posts by SID-6581

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.

    Here is my report:



    Experimental setup:

    ------------------------

    The folder "1" is created with DirectoryOpus 4.16 on drive DH1. There is still 314.9 MB free space on DH1.

    From DH0: the folders "Reflections 3D", "Sculpt-Animate 4D" and "Super-Duper" are copied to DH1: 1.


    Result:

    --------

    1. If each folder is copied individually and copied one after the other, there are no problems.


    2. If all three folders are selected and then copied, DirectoryOpus 4.16 will hang as soon as the second folder

    "Sculpt-Animate 4D" is copied. DirectoryOpus' time display continues to run. Calling up the minimig menu

    with the F12 key is then no longer possible. If the TC64V1 is then switched off and on again, a checksum

    error message appears for DH1 :.


    This happens regardless of whether Turbo-Chipram is switched on or off (Turbo-Kickrom is always off).


    3. But if I activate Turbo-Chipram + Turbo-Kickrom, DirectoryOpus 4.16 will get stuck if I just copy "Refections 3.0".

    In this case I can then call up the minimig menu with F12 and perform a reboot. Then the chechsum error appears for DH1.


    4. If only the Turbo-Kickrom is activated, it is as in point 3. DirectoryOpus 4.16 gets stuck if I just copy only "Refections 3.0".

    A reboot via the minimig menu leads to a checksum error message for DH1.



    Assumption of the tester:

    ------------------------------

    Could the test result indicate that there is already a problem with the KickRom-processing of the MinimigAGACore,

    which is only amplified when the turbo is activated?


    Cheers

    SID-6581



    P.S .: Of course, I replaced the HDF files on the SD card with backup copies after every attempt.

    The KickROM turbo simply selects whether the range of memory that contains the ROM is accessed through the Minimig itself, so at chipset speeds, or through the Fast RAM interface (but without caching), so somewhat faster. Apart from that there's no difference.


    I have seen issues with hardfile corruption, which seems to affect some SD cards and not others. I've suspected that the card's speed has something to do with it - and I didn't know that the turbo kickstart has an effect, so that's useful data. I suspect there's some kind of race condition between the Gayle emulation and control CPU or SD card - though I don't yet have a clue how to track it down or fix it!


    As for speed, there's probably not a lot I can do using Gayle emulation, but since the Amiga and control CPU can share some of the RAM I might be able to create some kind of direct access mode with an associated driver. This will all take time, though.

    Thanks Alastair, that was once again a very informative answer. I would like to clarify my statement. So far I have either always activated both turbos (Kick + Chipram) or switched both off. I don't have any HDF problems (at least none that I have noticed) when Kick + Chipramturbo are switched off. If both are activated there are problems. I assumed it would be the KickRom-Turbo ... but that was just a guess.

    When I activate the Turbo for the Kickrom, I regularly get read / write errors on my HDF files. I've just tried that again, which is why I leave the Kickrom-Tturbo deactivated. What is the Kickrom-Turbo supposed to do?


    Currently the MinimigAGACore needs about twice as long to boot my AmigaOS 3.1.4.1 HDF file as my real Amiga 1200 with the AmigaOS 3.1.4.1 from CF card. Are there ways to accelerate the boot process of the MinimigAGACore?

    Thanks for confirming the Zool 2 problem - this release did include an upstream fix or two that might have changed this, but I hadn't yet had time to check.

    If I turn Turbo ON the grafic error in Zool AGA is gone. Turbo OFF brings it back. I alway have Turbo OFF, because i have otherwise grafic issues in "No Second Prize". There the sun gets a bar. But I also have this error on all other platforms with the game as soon as a turbo is activated.

    The audio state machine of Paula (which handles Amiga audio) is not 100% understood. The patent is completely bogus, the hardware reference manual is plain wrong, and therefore all implementations are "best-guesses". We've found exactly that with the audio implementation of Indivision AGA MK3: It's hardly known how registers are initialized, and when counters are (p)reset. I wouldn't be surprised if the truth is even different from all the existing implementations.

    Oh, good to know. That would be an explanation. ;-)

    The real Amiga has two levels of filtering built in - one that's active all the time, and another one that's software-selectable. The software selectable one is tied to the state of the Power LED on the Amiga, hence LED filter. The reason I say it's not accurate is that (for space reasons) I implemented the simplest IIR filter I could find. The filter on a real Amiga has much steeper rolloff - but the simple one is good enough that the tunnel effect in Lotus II is audible, which was my goal.


    Thanks for the test drive II report. I doubt it's related directly to the filter - there were some upstream chipset changes in this release too - but I'll see what I can find out. Does disabling turbo chip RAM make any difference?

    Thanks for the explanation. Turbo Chipram was already switched off during the test. The error is gone with TurboChipram ON.


    Addendum:

    So that's strange. After I activated the TurboChipram once, the error has now also disappeared when TurboChipram is deactivated again. This also applies if the TurboChamelon64 is switched off and restarted. I can't explain it to myself, the sound problem was present in my tests yesterday. I hadn't done anything with the TurboChipram either.

    You can choose any - we'll introduce a "install no driver" option with the next update, so 3rd-party drivers can be installed manually afterwards (which is what you need to do here).

    For the use of the P96 drivers under WinUAE and Amiberry it would, in my opinion, also make sense to support uaegfx.

    Hello Alastair, I found a bug in the new core. After you inserted "LED Audio filter", I can no longer hear the lady saying "Test Drive TWO" in the opening credits to Test Drive II. The sounds of the cars have also disappeared in the opening credits. You can only hear the music there. So no longer the sampled language / engine noises. In the game itself, the engine noises are back.


    If you then simply wait and the game starts demo mode and then brings up the opening credits again, the language and the engine noises are there again. But why not at the start of the game???


    The "LED Audio filter" themselves actually sound good. Can you please explain to us what "LED Audio filter" are and what they do?


    Cheers

    SID-6581


    P.S.: I like the new drivesounds. :-)

    I do just have a simple up-counter at the moment - though it is added to a base address so there is already an adder in the mix. For the initial version I did my utmost to keep the logic footprint as low as possible, so I'm actually re-using the AGA chipset's existing CRTC to create video framing, then simply filling a FIFO from SDRAM any time it's not full, and emptying the FIFO onto the screen any time the blanking signals are both inactive. It's arguably an overly simplistic solution, but it made very little difference to the core size, which was my main goal.


    If I still have spare logic elements after adding a couple of other features I'll look again at adding modulo support, but since the core already contains a scandoubler, routing the RTG through that is probably going to be the easiest solution, and will probably be smaller than dealing with resyncing the FIFO every scanline.


    Thanks Alastair for releasing a new core from 09/21/2020. I installed it and it works very well. The graphics problem described above still exists, but if one read your release notes, it's no wonder either. ;-)


    But I assume that the problem will have been solved as soon as you have implemented "modulo support".


    Since you have implemented a CPU bugfix for Graftgold games in your current core, I would also like to draw your attention to a graphics error in a game. It's about ZoolAGA. On a real Amiga and under amiberry, the game runs flawlessly. There are graphics errors under the MinimigCore. Mostly around the token. As far as I know, the Unamigacore also has this problem. I therefore believe that there is a bug in the MinimigCore. What do you mean?


    Cheers

    SID-6581

    If you have unzipped the zip file with the Minimig Core, you will find the file "MinimigUtils.adf". Inside is a folder called RTG. There you will find a readme file that describes everything.

    I just tested the new Core 2020-08-23. The behavior is the same as with the predecessor, since you have not made any changes to the screen modes. But I noticed that the error does not occur because 640x400x8 has the same values as 640x480x16 at the same time.


    I recreated the screenmode 640x400 today. Initially only 640x400x8 with the values of 640x400x16. The test image was OK, while an image in PPaint 7.3c again had the known error (image shift). If I took the above value of 640x400x8 everything was OK. Mind you, the resolution 640x400x16 was not yet defined!


    So why does 640x400x8 with the values of 640x400x16 produce a first-class test image, but a shifted image in PPaint 7.3c?


    Cheers

    SID-6581

    I was approached with the suggestion to port a TI99/4A core. I wonder if there is a vivid scene around that computer? I mean, it's an interesting architecture, a 16-bit processor@3MHz from the early 80s. I even found a demo, but are there notable games?

    Yes, I find that very interesting. Last year I happened upon the TI-99/4A and bought two of them and restored them. If you like, you can have a look at the elko change I carried out here: TI-99/4A EU PAL 1981 V2 - New electrolytic capacitors


    The TI community offers games under this link: FlashROM 99 & FinalGROM 99 - Repository

    This Link could be interesting too: https://ftp.whtech.com/


    Cheers

    SID-6581

    Herr Schönfeld, that was only a "Flüchtigkeitsfehler". But we all get old. I myself had completely forgotten the workaround for the intuition.library 45.13 (see above) and had to read it again first, even though I had implemented it on all my platforms when AmigaOS 3.1.4 was published. ;-)