RE: SAM Scart
Martin Fitzpatrick wrote: anyways... if you want it lemme know... (same goes for anyone else, though justin did bagsy, and i cant ignorr the rules of the playground Better let him have first pick, or he'll only get some of his friends to come and beat it out of me! I may have a go at doing it myself - I can't imagine I can do that much damage if I get it wrong (or can I?!) ;-) Si
Re: SAM Scart
On Wed, Apr 07, 1999 at 10:10:53AM +0200, Frode Tenneboe wrote: No - as far as i remember, the SAM's SCART has a different pinout from standard SCART. The outward pins are the same but since the Sam does not accept incoming video it has used the pins for various other purposes - so it's not a good idea to plug a fully wired SCART lead into it. If you do then one thing that will happen is you will send 5 volts through the video out of the other device. I guess it ought to be possible to buy a fully wired SCART lead and then snip all the connections which don't have anything to do with video. There is a wiring diagram in the Sam manual which seems fairly standard except that it connects CSYNC to both CSYNC input and composite video input - that seems unnecessary since the sam has a composite video output. Or get a lead which converts SCART into three phono plugs (stereo audio and composite video) since that's pretty much guaranteed to work as long as you have phono sockets on your tv/video (these are often provided for camcorder input). imc
RE: SAM Scart
Si Owen wrote: Martin Fitzpatrick wrote: anyways... if you want it lemme know... (same goes for anyone else, though justin did bagsy, and i cant ignorr the rules of the playground Better let him have first pick, or he'll only get some of his friends to come and beat it out of me! *laughs* Yeah! Yeah! Send it to me or I'll get my big brother onto you! :) Seriously, if you can, I'd appreciate it. If not, then I'll have a go at making my own (once I've found the box of junk that holds my soldering iron) I may have a go at doing it myself - I can't imagine I can do that much damage if I get it wrong (or can I?!) ;-) Umm. Jut. (The guy being soothed by radiation from the three computers on his desk - luckily, one of them is turned off)
RE: SAM Scart
Well, I just made my own. Not exactly difficult? The pinout is in the manual... Mine might not do exactly what you want yours to do though. It just brings out the stereo sound (pins 1 and 3, ground 4) and composite video (pin 19, ground 17) onto phono plugs, which I can then connect to my Mac. Well, I have made my own one several years ago too. I have connected coomposite out to my tv's composite in. That's all. And it works perfectly. Especially when my power supply is broken and i can see nothing when using regular tv-out. (can anybody help?) but now i would like to plug sam's out to the satellite receiver, which has regular scart. and what to do now? i don't know whether it supports rgb-input. if yes, this could give a bit better image than composite video, i think. i think it would be nice to get a diagram of the real scrat connector, and compare it to the sam's one. i hope many of us are able to make their own cable if we would know what pins to connect. Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
RE: SAM Scart
Aley asked: Well, I have made my own one several years ago too. I have connected coomposite out to my tv's composite in. That's all. And it works perfectly. Especially when my power supply is broken and i can see nothing when using regular tv-out. (can anybody help?) Well, the SAM makes the composite signal on the main board. It then spurts the signal to the TV circuitry in the PSU which then converts the composite signal onto a UHF carrier which then goes down the TV arial cable to the TV. The SCART doesn't need the the UHF stuff so the compsite signal goes straight through. Well, that's my understanding of it all, anyway. Does the sound go with the composite (through the SCART) aswell? but now i would like to plug sam's out to the satellite receiver, which has regular scart. and what to do now? i don't know whether it supports rgb-input. if yes, this could give a bit better image than composite video, i think. My plan is similar, I want my SCART to go from my SAM into my video and than onto my telly. This is because (a) I don't have a SCART telly, (b) my SAM's TV picture is horrid, (c) my video has a SCART AUX socket, and (d) I can't be bothered to buy a new telly. i think it would be nice to get a diagram of the real scrat connector, and compare it to the sam's one. i hope many of us are able to make their own cable if we would know what pins to connect. Hmmm.. Cant help here, I'm afraid Justin.
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
Ian Collier wrote: Does the Amstrad DSK format not cover this? (I don't actually know anything about it, except that it is more complicated than a straight dump of all the tracks on the disk.) I've not found any official docs for it but I've flicked through the comments in some ASM code that reads them, and it does seem to cover things like unformatted tracks, but I didn't see anything for non-512 byte sectors. I'll have a more thorough look for the format sometime. I'm not really up enough on snazzy disk protection methods to understand what's needed as I never bothered with them myself, so I'll have to have a play with some real disk. Can anyone recommend any demos or games that have use fairly non-standard disk formats? I can only recommend not to do this! If soomeone made a protection, he probably wanted us not to copy these diskettes. I'm affraid about copyright laws. In addition, it is very problematic to use nonstandard formats under Win32. Also, some features of Sam's drive are not compatible with pc's drive. it simply cannot handle sectors other than 4 statndard sizes. Since Sam can physically hanle much more sector sizes, it is almost unpossible to use protected disks on pc. if we would copy these disks to an image, we would need a special software for the regular sam. this is another complication. (of course, i'm very pesimistic.) I might experiment to see if anything else can be trimmed down, but I think the video generation eats so much (especially when large portions of the screen change frequently) that it's not worth spending too much time on it! Yes, e.g. ESI's demos which use double buffering are extremely slow in emulator on 486's. but some other programs are pretty fast on the same 486. fortunbately, the eulator is fast enough on pentium 133 (or 166...) and better machines. when tested win32 vevrsion on p2/233 w/64mb ram winnt, it runs quite slow in double size window. (20 fps+-) but this is probably the problem of winnt. maybe. the dos version doesn't work on winnt (at least here), so i can't compare Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
RE: SAM Scart
Well, I have made my own one several years ago too. I have connected coomposite out to my tv's composite in. That's all. And it works perfectly. Especially when my power supply is broken and i can see nothing when using regular tv-out. (can anybody help?) Well, the SAM makes the composite signal on the main board. It then spurts the signal to the TV circuitry in the PSU which then converts the composite signal onto a UHF carrier which then goes down the TV arial cable to the TV. The SCART doesn't need the the UHF stuff so the compsite signal goes straight through. Well, that's my understanding of it all, anyway. Does the sound go with the composite (through the SCART) aswell? No, composite signal is something like sound signal for headphones ;) It contains pure video with synchro-pusles. Since I have no audio input on that tv I've used (it was made in 1989!), I used only composite video out. My plan is similar, I want my SCART to go from my SAM into my video and than onto my telly. This is because (a) I don't have a SCART telly, (b) my SAM's TV picture is horrid, (c) my video has a SCART AUX socket, and (d) I can't be bothered to buy a new telly. That's exactly! VCR should be able to make a good PAL picture from it's scart input. The satellite receiver too (I hope). Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
RE: Real Sam Users List 30th March 1999
Johnna wrote: Took me a while to realise I wasn't Johnna Teare nor Lee Willis.. :) Eh? The poster of the list, mixed with my mailer which decided to word-wrap it all around the place, made it look like my name belonged to one address and my address belong to another name... Ah! Formatted fine for me in Pegasus Mail - easily the best client Justin. Peace, Love, Kisses... JohnnaPig Teare JPOL: http://johnnapig.webjump.com It won't get better but it might never get worse...
Re: SAM Scart
I think I an was saying that most SCART input sockets don't tend to use the r,g,b signals but just use the composite video so if you wire a lead with the r, g, b, sound, and composite video signals connected, then that could be three wires wasted Andy
Re: Win32 SimCoupe (was: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!))
Z flag but left the other part of the expression alone. It's a great C Z80 emulator, and I can't see there being much else to squeeze out of it without going to ASM Actually I think I just typed in what came into my head - I'm sure some of the flag calculations must be horribly inefficient. Then again, there is no easy way to generate them unless you want to rely on the host cpu having similar flags which you can just copy. imc Well, I have used another Z80 CPU emulator in my SAA1099 player. It is not 100%, but it uses very efficient algo's for computing flags. And it is platform independent. This may help. (it uses some really large tables and read flag values from these tables. it uses tables of at least 256 entries for each one state of the result, and the tables give fast solution for sign/zero/carry/overflow flags. i think nothing could be better than this.) Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
RE: SAM Scart
i think it would be nice to get a diagram of the real scrat connector, and compare it to the sam's one. i hope many of us are able to make their own cable if we would know what pins to connect. The Pin-outs are in the back of the normal manual, and the tech manual but here are the pins. Sam's SCART is as follows: 1 Audio Right 2 SPEN Input 3 Audio Left 4 Audio Ground 5 Blue Earth 6 Blue TTL Out 7 Blue Lin Out 8 Red TTL Out 9 Green Earth 10 Green TTL Out 11 Green Lin Out 12 +5v Power In 13 Red Earth 14 CSYNC Earth 15 Red Lin Out 16 CSYNC 17 Cmp Vid Earth 18 +12v Power In 19 Cmp Vid Out 20 Bright TTL Out 21 GND Standard SCART is: 1 AUDIO Output Right 2 AUDIO Input Right 3 AUDIO Output Left 4 AUDIO Ground 5 BLUE Ground 6 AUDIO Input Left 7 BLUE 8 Function Switching 9 GREEN Ground 10 Comm Data 2 11 GREEN 12 Comm Data 1 13 RED/Chroma Ground 14 Comm Data Ground 15 RED/Chroma 16 Blanking 17 VIDEO/Sync/Luminance Ground 18 Blanking Ground 19 VIDEO/Sync/Luminance Output 20 VIDEO/Sync/Luminance Input 21 Common Ground Piccy of pins at http://www.btinternet.com/~krazy.keith/electronics/scart.html Dan. Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Shirk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] VVeb: http://www.podboy.demon.co.uk/
Re: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!)
btw. I've tested the current Win32 version of SimCoupe (that one I've get from Si Owen) and the fullscreen mode wasn't fullscreen, but just maximized window. At some point I added a '-fullscreen 1' flag to the command-line options, but I can't remember whether the last version on the site actually has it (it'll be in the next one of course!). That flag does maximized window, not fullscreen!!! Of course, the current SAAemu version 0.50 is also possible to be run in Windows 95, it depends only on Si Owen's skillness in including it in his SimCoupe for Win32. I'll give it a go, but I've not had to interface any Windows stuff with TSRs before (I've done some 16-bit DLL to VxD through DPMI which might help). It'll probably need flat thunking back to 16-bit before it'll be accesible, so it might not be too bad. It'd probably be worth waiting and doing a 32-bit version to minimise the hacking and improve the efficiency! TSR? What? SAAemu is not a TSR!!! Dear boy, wake up! TSR have gone some months ago. You need a 32bit DLL which will call 16bit DLL which will load the SAAemu to its DOS memory (1MB) and call it in real mode. This should be possible under DPMI (Win16), since it is used in SimCoupe. Please look to SAAemu sources (in the SimCoupe 0.782a), and there you can see how does it work in DJGPP. In Win16 it would be the same. And Win32 must call this 16bit DLL. Aley Keprt
Re: SAM Scart
I think I an was saying that most SCART input sockets don't tend to use the r,g,b signals but just use the composite video so if you wire a lead with the r, g, b, sound, and composite video signals connected, then that could be three wires wasted there would be more than three wires wasted, because RGB uses at least 6 or 9 wires ;-)
RE: SAM Scart
From: Dan Doore [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] i think it would be nice to get a diagram of the real scrat connector, and compare it to the sam's one. i hope many of us are able to make their own cable if we would know what pins to connect. The Pin-outs are in the back of the normal manual, and the tech manual but here are the pins. [snip] And which pins should be connected to which pins to get the basic connection (comp vid + sound) Justin
Connecting Sam to PC (was: Re: The State of things)
Hi, If any SAM user is looking for small hard disks then I have these: 250 mb scsi 15 quid inc p+p 80 mb ide - 10 quid inc p+p 40 mb ide - small notebook drive - same Well, I would like to solve this problem by using my PC's hard drive on Sam. Is it possible to connect Sam to PC and use it's hard drive. It would be nice to have a parallel cable (as used in Norton Commander, or MS-DOS) and make a SamDOS which could cooperate with PC using this cable. Then we can make some 'server' on PC side. Is this already done or can anyone do it? Or any other idea?
Re: The State of things
True... And so nice and easy to pop to when you live in the Netherlands, hey Robert? but 1) could find out if they do mail order 2) had no idea you was in Netherlands 3) It just across the water 4) everyone need a holiday Chris Ps. Im not being helpfull am i That holiday may cost more than that hard drive :))) And what if I am not in Netherlands, but in Czechland? Should I take one of those B-52's flying home to Fairford from Yugoslavia over our country? ;)
RE: Win32 SimCoupe (was: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!))
Aley Keprt wrote: Well, I have used another Z80 CPU emulator in my SAA1099 player. It is not 100%, but it uses very efficient algo's for computing flags. And it is platform independent. This may help. Sounds good - I'd come across the look-up tables in another Z80 emulator and wondered about using the same thing - it'd be faster than the current comparing, ORing and shifting. Might be worth giving it a try, but making sure the table includes the weird undocumented flags that the current version does. Si
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
Aley Keprt wrote: If soomeone made a protection, he probably wanted us not to copy these diskettes. I just want to aim for fairly complete emulation, which would include being able to (ideally) handle everything the real floppy controller can to cope with non-standard disks. I'm certainly not doing it to allow disks to be distributed, but to extend the life of the software by allowing it to be run on the emulator. If someone distributed copy-protected disks, he knowed that the life of that software is limited. :( Don't some demos also use strange formats to allow more data to be packed onto disks, rather than to protect them. Anyone have any samples? e.g. Some of my own disks do. So I have designed SAD format to support disks larger than usual 800KB. I don't know whether it works in SimCoupe, since I don't have any disks dependingon this feature. But if you put 840KB disk into PC drive and start SamBackup, it will automatically detect it and make 840KB SAD image. If it will work in SimCoupe I Don't know, I just use it for backuping purposes. You must try, and you will see. I'm affraid about copyright laws. I'm no legal expert, but isn't it just considered a backup copy as long as you still own the original version? Possibly. But if the author really copy-protects the disk, he really don't want you to make ANY copies of it. Since Sam can physically hanle much more sector sizes, it is almost unpossible to use protected disks on pc. This only goes to reinforce why I want to do it - it'd be a shame if owners of copy protected disks can't play them on the emulator. if we would copy these disks to an image, we would need a special software for the regular sam. this is another complication. True, but once each protected disk had been run through the conversion you're done. It could probably be written as a BASIC program with some ASM to drive the floppy controller to work out what it is - doesn't really matter if it's slow (and it probably will be). Basic? Forgot! You need to detect the format and then read the data. If you make the code which will detect the format, then you can simply do the code that will read one track. One change since the last demo version is to have the DirectDraw surface in video memory if possible, since it then allows the use of various hardware features including the blitting and stretching done for the display. A lot of cheap video cards still don't support them, but more and more are doing now (the S3 Trio64V2 in work doesn't, but my Riva TNT at home does). Trio hasn't stretching ability. I have Voodoo Banshee(!), and it doesn't stretching. So you can speed up 2x2 screen, but you cannot use that nice interleaving. Didn't you write colour-interleaving is your goal? but this is probably the problem of winnt. maybe. If the NT display drivers support the features (and they should if it's available under Win9x) then it'll run just as well in NT. It's screamingly fast on my PC at home! WinNT doesn't have accelerated DirectDraw. You cannot use any hardware capabilities in WinNT! (this applies to 2D,3D,audio,etc.) the dos version doesn't work on winnt (at least here), so i can't compare 0.78 runs on my NT but hangs the system when I quit it. Our NT stations hang when a program wants to switch to 640x480. This is common to all DJGPP programs, and possibly all DOS programs (I have only DJGPP ones.) I really don't understand why so perfect WinNT so stupidly hangs. Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
RE: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!)
Aley Keprt wrote: That flag does maximized window, not fullscreen!!! It's actually more or less the same thing - the video mode is changed and I am drawing to the entire DirectX surface. That version doesn't disable the caption so it's still visible - if it doesn't actually maximise you can still click on windows underneath and move them around while the emulator is running (not anymore tho - I might have to release another test version to get you up to date!). TSR? What? SAAemu is not a TSR!!! Dear boy, wake up! TSR have gone some months ago. Oop! I still remembered it from being a TSR under DOS. ;-) Please look to SAAemu sources (in the SimCoupe 0.782a), and there you can see how does it work in DJGPP. In Win16 it would be the same. And Win32 must call this 16bit DLL. Ok, I'll take a look - I'd be interested in seeing it working, even though it'll be replaced by a 32-bit version. Si
RT Clock (was: Re: Sam tech info?)
Simon Cooke wrote: Oh, it's Y2K compliant; but MasterDOS isn't. Try and set a date in the year 2000 - the source code indicates that you're screwed :-) I was thinking that because it only stored 2 digits for the date that it wasn't, but I suppose it's more of a case of any software that doesn't handle it properly is not compliant. Anyone thought of correcting and rebuilding MasterDOS for next year? MasterDOS 2000? :))) I finally figured out your code writes values from 15 to 1 into the year tens value and then read them back to make sure they were all set before you take the clock as installed. I was supplying the current date/time but ignoring any writes which failed your check. I've just implemented writes to update the ticking clock it's happy :-) (it doesn't update the PC clock btw!). This seems to be clever. Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
Re: The State of things
That holiday may cost more than that hard drive :))) And what if I am not in Netherlands, but in Czechland? Same as before no mater what country your in Should I take one of those B-52's flying home to Fairford from Yugoslavia over our country? ;) But then you would be a missile :) Chris Ps. please note the light hearted humour type thing
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
I can only recommend not to do this! If soomeone made a protection, he probably wanted us not to copy these diskettes. I'm affraid about copyright laws. From my OLD point of view is this , Win/Sim Coupe should be able to read these disk in REAL time , i.e not create images on harddisk or copy to another disk Some softyware of mine Simons ECopy , which does copy ALL disks and could be used as a test etc But i must stress that you must not create Images , etc of Copyrighted Software as thats is ILLEGAL but emulation Original products is not And when can we see this?? Was getting simcoupe into VC studio and Compiling at 1 point but work and that Chris White
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
I'm affraid about copyright laws. I'm no legal expert, but isn't it just considered a backup copy as long as you still own the original version? your are not aloud to create a copy of anything , without the copyright owners permission. Having a backup of a disk thats not used for illegal purposes , is like have a gun and NEVER thinks of firing it (Pointless) Since Sam can physically hanle much more sector sizes, it is almost unpossible to use protected disks on pc. This only goes to reinforce why I want to do it - it'd be a shame if owners of copy protected disks can't play them on the emulator. Please let it read them in REAL time , but not create IMAGES when tested win32 vevrsion on p2/233 w/64mb ram winnt, it runs quite slow in double size window. (20 fps+-) Send me , I what to play? Chris
Changes in SimCoupe
-Original Message- From: Si Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Date: 7. dubna 1999 17:22 Subject: RE: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!) Ian Collier wrote: There are a couple of other things I have fixed since the code was incorporated in SimCoupe. snip Thanks for those, I've made the changes here! Si Si, It is time to publish changed sources, to let we have an updated DOS Unix versions. Please, send me the fixed sources, and I will publish new DOS version. (When Allan is out of time, I would do it myself.) Also, did anyone tested the new SimCoupe for DOS? Does the new SAA emulation work better in your Windows? I've got many mails when I published the previous versions, almost anyone said that it didn't work in his Windows. Now I've made a new version, and nobody sent me a mail. Oh, does it mean, that everything's running well? And what about soundradrs? Does anyone use my new Ultrasound driver? Aley [eili] Keprt - student, programmer (multimedia soft. etc.) phone: +420-68-538 70 35 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://get.to/aley
RE: Connecting Sam to PC (was: Re: The State of things)
Well, I would like to solve this problem by using my PC's hard drive on Sam. Is it possible to connect Sam to PC and use it's hard drive. It would be nice to have a parallel cable (as used in Norton Commander, or MS-DOS) and make a SamDOS which could cooperate with PC using this cable. Then we can make some 'server' on PC side. Is this already done or can anyone do it? Or any other idea? I had a similar project on the go a while back. The idea was to have two shell programs, one on the PC and the other on the SAM. Actually, it was intended on being similar to FTP with file transfer and being able to run compatible programs on the PC from the control of the SAM. All this was to be over an RS232 link. The goal was to make a full remote control that would effectively make the SAM a DOS terminal. Why? Coz it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then, when I got a decent PC with UNIX, I'd write one that allowed my SAM to operate as a (text) XTerm - full UNIX access from the SAM! :) Then again, there's probably an easier way to do it in UNIX: I guess there's a way of piping all TTY stuff through a comms port and just using any old terminal emulator on the SAM. There was, however, a couple of minor set-backs: (a) I didn't (still don't) have an RS232 i/face on my SAM (b) I moved out of my parents house and no longer have a PC to continue the PC side of it all. in fact, I still haven't bothered to buy a new one. (c) Lack of time However, a MasterDos style front end to HDD access from the PC (via a server program) seems like a cool idea Jut.
RE: SimCoupe protected disks
Chris White wrote: your are not aloud to create a copy of anything , without the copyright owners permission. Having a backup of a disk thats not used for illegal purposes , is like have a gun and NEVER thinks of firing it (Pointless) Are you 100% sure about this? The +D interface on the Spectrum was fairly well geared towards transferring tape based software to disk, and that seemed to be acceptable. Is that any different from what is being done when creating disk images? It's always been quite a grey area in emulation... Please let it read them in REAL time , but not create IMAGES That'll be possible under Win9x, but I haven't found a way to do it under NT without modifying the kernel-mode floppy driver (the source is available so that may be possible). Now I've got the hard disk emulation working I was even playing with the (dangerous!) idea of having raw hard disk access! It would allow the same physical hard disk to be shared by the emulator and and a real SAM with the ATOM interface. Si
RE: SimCoupe protected disks
Aley Keprt wrote: WinNT doesn't have accelerated DirectDraw. You cannot use any hardware capabilities in WinNT! (this applies to 2D,3D,audio,etc.) It DOES still make use of features in the video driver that are done in hardware, even if it's not full hardware acceleration that's available on Win9x. I get a nice antialiased version of the image if I stretch 1x1 to 2x2 at home under NT, but get a chunky image and lower frame rate if I tell it to use the Hardware Emulation Layer instead. It may not apply to more complication 2D operations, but the same blitting and stretching are probably used by the standard GDI functions too. It wouldn't run my PacMan at over 200fps if it was all being done in software! Si
RE: Changes in SimCoupe
Aley Keprt wrote: Si, It is time to publish changed sources, to let we have an updated DOS Unix versions. Please, send me the fixed sources, and I will publish new DOS version. Things are still changing so frequently that it'd be pointless doing a release now, so I'm keeping it under wraps until things have settled down more. A lot of things have been shuffled around, changed and even broken! Additional features like the clock and hard disk stuff shouldn't be too difficult to move over, but I'm not sure if the sources will ever end up completely unified again. Si
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
Some softyware of mine Simons ECopy , which does copy ALL disks and could be used as a test etc Before Malcolm's untimely death he informed me that E-Copy (version 3 I think) failed to copy the protection I created for Defender... I tried *all* the PC copiers I could find and they failed too. Perhaps reading 'real' SAM disks in emulation might be more trouble than it's worth??? I would certainly put quality sound emulation at the top of my wish list. Chris.
RE: SimCoupe protected disks
I would certainly put quality sound emulation at the top of my wish Aley - is your SAA emulator in a fit state (so to speak) to be included with Si's port - or does it need work to get it run native under Win32? Dan. Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Shirk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] VVeb: http://www.podboy.demon.co.uk/
Re: Win32 SimCoupe (was: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!))
From: Si Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aley Keprt wrote: Well, I have used another Z80 CPU emulator in my SAA1099 player. It is not 100%, but it uses very efficient algo's for computing flags. And it is platform independent. This may help. Sounds good - I'd come across the look-up tables in another Z80 emulator and wondered about using the same thing - it'd be faster than the current comparing, ORing and shifting. Might be worth giving it a try, but making sure the table includes the weird undocumented flags that the current version does. Si Don't forget -- the cache comes into play here a lot, so tables aren't necessarily as efficient as you might think. PROFILE YOUR RESULTS!!! Simon (NSFMSFT)
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
From: Si Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please let it read them in REAL time , but not create IMAGES That'll be possible under Win9x, but I haven't found a way to do it under NT without modifying the kernel-mode floppy driver (the source is available so that may be possible). Now I've got the hard disk emulation working I was even playing with the (dangerous!) idea of having raw hard disk access! It would allow the same physical hard disk to be shared by the emulator and and a real SAM with the ATOM interface. I checked out... you can't do it without writing your own kernel-mode driver :) Not at the moment anyway. I was asking the kernel team some questions... seems it *MIGHT* be in NT5, but don't hold my breath. Not that many people want to read/write at that low a level, it would seem... Simon Cooke (The views of this poster are his and his alone, and may or may not reflect the views of the Microsoft Corporation)
RE: Win32 SimCoupe (was: Z80 flags for INI(R) and OTI(R)? #2 (oops!))
Simon Cooke wrote: Don't forget -- the cache comes into play here a lot, so tables aren't necessarily as efficient as you might think. PROFILE YOUR RESULTS!!! I completely agree - my Celeron only has 128K of cache but it's running at full clock speed (464MHz for my setup) giving it a nice boost. I did some tweaks that gave me an extra 20fps or so on the Celeron but that didn't make any difference on the PII. I'm relying on the copyright screen for benchmarks at the moment and watching how things affect that. Si
RE: SimCoupe protected disks
Simon Cooke wrote: I don't believe that's the main problem; the VL1772-02 can only handle 4 sector sizes -- 128,256,512 and 1024 bytes. However, it can mix match sector sizes on one track, and also can spoof address blocks; so that is more problematic. I'd agree with it being a problem to read raw disks on the SAM, but it should be fine for special format disk images. As long as you store information to the resolution the floppy driver can read you should be able to mimic any disk format. Si
Sam Coupe Scrapbook - whats missing?
All, (before anyone else says it... Quite a lot) I've just got a PC at home, and plan to try and update my Sam web pages to the state they used to be (ie upto date). If anyone has any obvious information that's missing that I can add, would like to do a review, or anything else it'd be muchly appreciated. I'll even accept hard copy blurb if anyone has any up to date product lists I could use as reference (Since I only ever subscribed to FRED, and there haven't been many stalls at the last few Glos shows, most of my junk is out of date.) Cheers muchly, Tim @/
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
your are not aloud to create a copy of anything , without the copyright owners permission. Having a backup of a disk thats not used for illegal purposes , is like have a gun and NEVER thinks of firing it (Pointless) Are you 100% sure about this? The +D interface on the Spectrum was fairly well geared towards transferring tape based software to disk, and that seemed to be acceptable. Is that any different from what is being done when creating disk images? Building/Selling of a Interface that COPIES something is not a offence , if its main purpose is NOT to COPY copyrighted material , Here +D/Disciples where primarly , gives an alternaitive types of storage meduim that could 'PIRATE' software if the user wished. Back to the Gun thing as a cross reference , you can have a gun a Deternent but you are not aloud to shot it unless in self defence , but if the user wished they could kill as many peeps as they wish? All so called backup device are ILLEGAL , as they are promoted as a BACKUP device, read the back of most software today (Manly CARTS) , they state you can only us in the form they have been sold in. The grey area here is that the Sam's Doc's are supposidly Copyrighted , but the Roms have been givin freely from Dr Andy Wright, to be used in SimCoupe. And who knows who owns the Asic (MGT creditors I think?) Also there has been a court case for EVERY so called backup device , that has ever been released due to the copyright owner not giving there consent to having there property 'PIRATED' , and all have failed due to them being sold for personal use , so know they target importers and are succeeding There are LOADS of links to Web pages in the EMU SCENE , about copyright etc .. It's always been quite a grey area in emulation... The grey area of Emu , is that to be totaly legal (Unless with Copyrighted owners consent) , on emulate something that you have not had direct contact will , i.e Never seen and found EVERYTHING you know about it by trial and error That'll be possible under Win9x, but I haven't found a way to do it under NT without modifying the kernel-mode floppy driver (the source is available so that may be possible). Then worry about NT later , ( think Simon Cooke may object here :)) Now I've got the hard disk emulation working I was even playing with the (dangerous!) idea of having raw hard disk access! It would allow the same physical hard disk to be shared by the emulator and and a real SAM with the ATOM interface. Dangerous Chris
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
Some softyware of mine Simons ECopy , which does copy ALL disks and could be used as a test etc Before Malcolm's untimely death he informed me that E-Copy (version 3 I think) failed to copy the protection I created for Defender... I tried *all* the PC copiers Interesting ?? Private Email me the Disk layout (What tracks are what) , just for my curiousity Perhaps reading 'real' SAM disks in emulation might be more trouble than it's worth??? I would certainly put quality sound emulation at the top of my wish list. True , but unless you can read the disk sound is usless Chris :)
Re: SimCoupe protected disks
On Thu, 8 Apr 1999 18:13:08 +0100 Thu, 8 Apr 99 18:59:51 BST, Chris Pile [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Before Malcolm's untimely death he informed me that E-Copy (version 3 I think) failed to copy the protection I created for Defender... I tried *all* the PC copiers I could find and they failed too. Have you tried Cyclone (using the cart) on an Amiga then? :-) Dave
