The Spam Club

» The Spam Club - Frozen Website Sections - Floppy Images - PSI/TD0/RAW/SCP/TC -> 86F - Reply

Reply

Username:
Not Authentication Code (blank):
Password:
Guest Password: NGcwi
Post:
:):(;):angry::D:o:P:embarassed:
Attachment: (max. 5000000 bytes)
Mail Notification?Yes
No

Last 20 Posts (View All)

Posted at 05:11 on September 26th, 2024 | Quote | Edit | Delete
OBattler
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14

Final decision: We are going to simply keep 86F v2.12 and I’m going to write (and submit to the HxC developer) proper support for it for HxC.

Posted at 22:44 on July 20th, 2024 | Quote | Edit | Delete
OBattler
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
I know it's been 4 years but I've been thinking since I haven't gotten around to implement 86F v2.20 yet, I was thinking of the following solution:
1. Give it a different extension such as 86R (and deprecate 86F);
2. Based it off my modified version of the HxC MFM format - the reason for that is simple, I already have code for that for both 86Box and HxC, and it's going to take me much less time to modify that than to write a full on new format implementation for HxC.

What do you all think of this?
Posted at 22:18 on November 7th, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
waltje
Member
Baby Gumby
Posts: 1
> Thanks for supporting TD0 in 86Box - however, most of my protected TD0 disks do not work there... Are you planning to improve that protection recognition per any chance?
Can you send me some of those images for testing my implementation of the
Teledisk format? Thanks!
Posted at 01:15 on November 7th, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
OBattler
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
Originally posted by Jeff_HxC2001 at 11:57 on April 6th, 2020:
Originally posted by OBattler at 14:27 on April 5th, 2020:
...then I can download the latest HxC source code and write an 86F v2.20 module for it, and then we can try to convince the HxC developer to incorporate it. That way we would then have HxC outputting directly to 86F, bypassing the need for intermediate conversions.


Sure, any patch for improvement or fix is welcome ! :)

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any issue/question with the internal HxC API / buffers.

If you're still there - would it be possible to add my modified version of the MFM format to HxC under some other extension, maybe MFMX or something? That would serve as a stopgap until eventually 86Box implements 86F version 2.2 and that is then added to HxC as well. I'm asking because the latter will likely not happen until next year, and mantaining a patched HxC on my own is not that easy (because of the difficulty of setting up the development environment for it, I can't really keep up to date with HxC's updates).
Posted at 02:57 on April 26th, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Iurius
Avatar
Member
Baby Gumby
Posts: 7
Originally posted by hampa at 11:02 on April 23rd, 2020:

<ESC> f. I just noticed that this combination is missing in the documentation. I will fix this.

Ah, thanks! Indeed, I have checked the documentation before asking :)
Still, the fullscreen mode looks rather weird: for me it turns to 720x480 with lines getting out of the screen and being uncomfortably bright. Must be some SDL.dll problem. Can PCE use ddraw or something for that?
-----
Edited by Iurius at 02:58 on April 26th, 2020
Posted at 11:02 on April 23rd, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
hampa
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
Quote:
Do you know how to switch the main PCE emulator window to fullscreen?


<ESC> f. I just noticed that this combination is missing in the documentation. I will fix this.

Quote:
And somehow I do not get the correct ratio when making screenshots: I get 640x200 PPM instead of 640x400...


If this is for a CGA screen, then this is the correct ratio. PCE always saves screenshots in the native resolution of the emulated machine.
Posted at 10:56 on April 23rd, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
hampa
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
Quote:
PCE emulates an 808x, you won't see much slowdowns there. 86Box however emulates a variety of CPU's, and when emulating a Pentium, there's a lot of slowdowns from such stuff.

Also, PCE does not support Advanced (LZHUF-compressed) TD0.


PCE loads the entire disk image into memory when it is inserted. All modifications happen in memory and when the disk is ejected (or the emulator terminated) the image is written back. That's the "writing back.." message you get when you have written to floppy disks.

There's a small utility included with PCE (tddec, in contrib) that can convert compressed td0 images to uncompressed ones.
Posted at 14:52 on April 22nd, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
OBattler
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
The problem is, there's plenty of advanced compression TD0's already around.

If anything, 86Box's floppy writeback mechanism needs rethinking, perhaps do it on finishing a read or write operation, DOR reset, etc., instead of on every sector.
Posted at 22:00 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Moebius
Avatar
Member
Zombie Gumby
Posts: 3879
Quote:
Also, PCE does not support Advanced (LZHUF-compressed) TD0.


So, how about we remove that support for the sake of writability? I mean, how useful is this compression really? Other than getting no errors on 'unknown format' I see no other benefit. I think we should simply encourage everyone to use normal compression and if any mistakes made simply re-convert the files.
-----

[i]Cheer up! Remember the less you have, the more there is to get.[/i]

-----
Edited by Moebius at 06:37 on April 22nd, 2020
Posted at 13:19 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
OBattler
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
PCE emulates an 808x, you won't see much slowdowns there. 86Box however emulates a variety of CPU's, and when emulating a Pentium, there's a lot of slowdowns from such stuff.

Also, PCE does not support Advanced (LZHUF-compressed) TD0.
Posted at 12:28 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Moebius
Avatar
Member
Zombie Gumby
Posts: 3879
Quote:
and you would need to reconstruct the entire TD0 image on every write back (which occurs at the write of each sector), which could slow down the emulator a lot.


Hmm... I wonder how PCE does it. I don't remember any particular slowdowns there...
-----

[i]Cheer up! Remember the less you have, the more there is to get.[/i]

Posted at 12:21 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
OBattler
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 14
With games that read the exact track layout from a huge sector, TD0 cheats by storing that huge sector with the entire track in it separately. In 86F that's not doable, so a conversion is going to be bad. You would need to do analysis of the track layout from that huge sector, and determine the exact bitcell position of every sector, the content of the gaps, etc., and reconstruct the floppy surface accordingly. Even just the huge sector's contents in the TD0 are not enough, are you're missing every second bit (MFM encodes data into pairs of data and clock bits).

Also, anything writable won't work currently with TD0 because 86Box mounts TD0 as write-protected, because of all the forms of compression TD0 supports (some kind of RLE in addition to optionally even LZHUF for advanced TD0) and you would need to reconstruct the entire TD0 image on every write back (which occurs at the write of each sector), which could slow down the emulator a lot.
Posted at 11:33 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Moebius
Avatar
Member
Zombie Gumby
Posts: 3879
Quote:
An expert from Old-Games.ru suggested converting the TD0 images to 86F and running the game that way - it launches fine, but still gives an error later.


I didn't suggest that because honestly it's not a good way to produce 86Fs. It's best done if converted directly from Kryoflux or Supercard Pro and for that we need a CONVERTER, which is the initial purpose of this thread. If we have that then you will forget about all your problems ;)
-----

[i]Cheer up! Remember the less you have, the more there is to get.[/i]

Posted at 11:15 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Iurius
Avatar
Member
Baby Gumby
Posts: 7
Originally posted by Moebius at 07:28 on April 21st, 2020:

And I never really heard about Sergey Shmakov. Perhaps you meant Sergey Erokhin? For all I know he made the TDCVT tool, not Teledisk.

Sergey Erokhin (aka ESL) from Kharkov did make several utilities, like TD0 to Spectrum FDI conversion, but in Teledisk 1.0 itself I remember seeing a logo saying 'Made by Sergey Shmakov'. I could well be mistaken, too, though, as he could be the author not of Teledisk itself, but of some its utilities or a hacked version.
But I am pretty sure Dave Dunfield is not the author of Teledisk.

Originally posted by Moebius at 07:28 on April 21st, 2020:

Finally, if you are still having issues try toggling 'turbo timings' in your VM drives settings. Sometimes this has to be used with incorrectly made dumps (different RPM, track spacing, etc). Incidentally, PCE will not help you detect that.

Ah, that should be one of the main reasons, thanks. Enabling that option does allow the disks to be mounted, although the game still does not work as it requires writing to the disks, and you say they are read-only there.
An expert from Old-Games.ru suggested converting the TD0 images to 86F and running the game that way - it launches fine, but still gives an error later.

Well, never mind then, sorry for bothering :) I do have both the original disks (that work on real old PC) and a cracked version (that works in DOSBox), so running it from protected images is just pure sporting interest.
-----
Edited by Iurius at 11:16 on April 21st, 2020
Posted at 07:28 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Moebius
Avatar
Member
Zombie Gumby
Posts: 3879
Quote:
You probably meant ImageDisk, not Teledisk? Teledisk was made by Serghey Shmakov, and Dave Dunfield created ImageDisk.


I meant Teledisk, but yes, my mistake. It was actually brought by Sydex and Charles "Chuck" Guzis also known as Chuck(G) on several boards. Matter of fact, I knew about Chuck(G) being related to Anadisk and Teledisk, but for some reason I assumed it was Dave Dunfield's alias since both Teledisk and Imagedisk can be found on his website. Oops :)

And I never really heard about Sergey Shmakov. Perhaps you meant Sergey Erokhin? For all I know he made the TDCVT tool, not Teledisk.


Quote:
Thanks for supporting TD0 in 86Box - however, most of my protected TD0 disks do not work there


First off, make sure you get the latest version of 86box because it has undergone profound change since version 2.00. You can get the full setup here with fresh roms and pre-installed DOS (make sure you run 86boxmanager to get to the profiles!).

Secondly, you have to make sure you set up the drives correctly in both BIOS and VM settings. Unlike PCE and DOSBox 86box emulates real hardware and can be very sensitive to misconfiguration. If it's a 360kb image then you should set up your drive(s) accordingly.

Thirdly, make sure you are running the correct architecture. If the games are really old (CGA & booters) then it's best to go XT mode. In fact, you should always start in XT mode by default. What makes PCE so incredibly flexible is the fact it's limited to 8086/80186 instruction sets. Ironically.

Finally, if you are still having issues try toggling 'turbo timings' in your VM drives settings. Sometimes this has to be used with incorrectly made dumps (different RPM, track spacing, etc). Incidentally, PCE will not help you detect that.

The only problem still existing with Teledisk support in 86box is inability to write to TD0 files. Yes, some games with write-hungry protection will fail to run, but those are considerably fewer and I doubt it's your exact situation.
-----

[i]Cheer up! Remember the less you have, the more there is to get.[/i]

-----
Edited by Moebius at 08:24 on April 21st, 2020
Posted at 07:08 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Iurius
Avatar
Member
Baby Gumby
Posts: 7
Originally posted by Moebius at 03:36 on April 5th, 2020:

Anyway, I reckon up till now Teledisk has been regarded as a universal format for running physically protected games across different emulators, only it was never meant to do that. Its algorithm was aimed to work with so-called "oddball" formats, where copy protection is more of a side-effect. I believe I got this information directly from its creator (Dave Dunfield) on VOGONS.

You probably meant ImageDisk, not Teledisk? Teledisk was made by Serghey Shmakov, and Dave Dunfield created ImageDisk.

Originally posted by OBattler at 05:46 on April 5th, 2020:

- Both TD0 and PCE's PSI I believe don't store the data rate or encoding anywhere which makes it impossible to determine that stuff other than by guessing based on the floppy type field, and even that's per disk while each side of each track should have its own;

Thanks for supporting TD0 in 86Box - however, most of my protected TD0 disks do not work there... Are you planning to improve that protection recognition per any chance?
-----
Edited by Iurius at 07:11 on April 21st, 2020
Posted at 02:36 on April 21st, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete | Delete Attachment
Iurius
Avatar
Member
Baby Gumby
Posts: 7
Originally posted by Formulator at 23:46 on April 20th, 2020:

While the game is running the command CTRL+` will fall user back to the monitor.

Thanks! Did not know that :) That 'monitor' / second window thing looks rather complex and unusual for me, after DOSBox.

Do you know how to switch the main PCE emulator window to fullscreen?
And somehow I do not get the correct ratio when making screenshots: I get 640x200 PPM instead of 640x400...

Originally posted by Formulator at 23:46 on April 20th, 2020:

It is also important to note that PCE can modify the disk image upon ejection much like when installing some copy protected titles to the hard drive, high scores, etc. In this case the message "disk 0: writing back fdc image" may appear. I recommend assigning read-only property to disk images before using eject command.

Sure, but the game I currently try to test in PCE with TD0/TC ('Forteresse') needs writing to the disk and won't run on read-only disks.
Attachment: *****
-----
Edited by Iurius at 02:37 on April 21st, 2020
Posted at 23:46 on April 20th, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Formulator
Avatar
Member
Pupil Gumby
Posts: 12
Quote:
How to change the disk, when a game is already running?


While the game is running the command CTRL+` will fall user back to the monitor. You will know this as the blinking cursor will now have a hyphen prompt before it. Then you will be able to type commands.

For example, I used PCE to test my copy of Space Quest II (v2.0a).

I prefer to mount images through the monitor so the monitor commands would look like this:

-m insert c:\pce\disk01.psi
-g

(-g returns user to emulator)

Once the game prompts for disk 2 I fall back to monitor and type:

-m eject 0
-m insert c:\pce\disk02.ima
-g

Once returned to emulator it will recognize disk 2.

I like this command to quit the emulator from the monitor:

-q

It is also important to note that PCE can modify the disk image upon ejection much like when installing some copy protected titles to the hard drive, high scores, etc. In this case the message "disk 0: writing back fdc image" may appear. I recommend assigning read-only property to disk images before using eject command.
Posted at 08:31 on April 20th, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Iurius
Avatar
Member
Baby Gumby
Posts: 7
Quote:

The first command sets the drive number. This is remembered, so often this command is not necessary. The second command inserts the disk.

Ah, that works, thanks a lot!
However, only from DOS prompt. How to change the disk, when a game is already running?

Quote:

I don't see the problem. If you fall back to the monitor prompt, you can change as many disk images as you like before continuing.

Well, it seems that I never saw that 'Monitor' :) Probably because I launch PCE via pce-ibmpc.bat. I only get a black window that launches alongside the PCE window and is named as 'C:\Windows\system\cmd.exe'. I see the cursor blinking there, but I can't type anything at the prompt.
A GUI would be much better indeed :D
-----
Edited by Iurius at 08:33 on April 20th, 2020
Posted at 19:49 on April 18th, 2020 | Quote | Edit | Delete
Moebius
Avatar
Member
Zombie Gumby
Posts: 3879
Ok, thank you.
-----

[i]Cheer up! Remember the less you have, the more there is to get.[/i]

Powered by Spam Board 5.2.4 © 2007 - 2021