Re: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
If the only Sams being used are virtual then probably less software will be produced. Why write software for a virtual Sam as hardly anyone will use it or need to use it as anything the VR Sam can do the machine they are running it on can do and faster. This would be a problem if there was any great supply of work-in-progress software out there. But there isn't. Chris' Defender came as a nice surprise to everybody, but can anybody realisiticly remember the last game that was released before that? Stratosphere is about as far back as I can think, and that was at the start of last year! And to counter that argument, if people could develop on SIM Coupe and then write the4 software back to floppy for distrubiton on standard SAM's then I think we would see more released on the SAM. What would you rather do - roam through your atic blowing the dust off your SAM and setting it up (plugging it into your telly, digging out your old disks box, crossing your fingers and hoping everything still works), or double click on the SIM Coupe icon on your desktop and crack on? Without a real Sam the Sam community will die or stay at maybe 100 users as no new users will be recruited to a virtual Sam community, because to use a virtual Sam you need a fast machine and if you have one most people will use software produced by the big software companies as most will not have heard of Sam. Firstly, dispell the myth that there are new users comig to the SAM. there are not. THe only people still here are those who mades friends in teh community and want to keep in touch. People who use the machine as a serious computer can be counted on one hand. As to saying no new users will be recruited to a virtual SAM comnuity, that is ludicrous. If the SIm Coupe source is out there, then those who heard of the SAM Coupe but never got around to buying one can now try the machie for free. Okay, maybe they'll download the software, try it once ad then bin it, but at least we are getting ourselves seen by others. Nobody is going to spend stlg200 ona new SAM just to test the water when they can run it perfectly well, and buy legitiimate games from legitimate publishers, on a PC. If the software companies such as Persona and Revelation think on ahead, they could supply the .dsk files themselves, charging for them as they would software in SAM format, and us PC owners could go about using them quite happily. Accept that SIM Coupe is here, and attempt to do something abotu it other than complain. Get one step ahead of the game by supplying your own .dsk files for sale - yes they;re easily copiable, but so has nearly all SAM software since the dawn of time (XCopy Pro on the Amiga worked fine for me). Oh, and you don't need an especially fast maching to run SIM Coupe. I've got a 486/66 that runs it rather nicely in DOS. Power supplies are easy things to replace a standard PC supply can be modified very easily as long as you use the scart for sound and picture. I use one on my Sam. Disk drives can be replaced not as easily but it can be done. Most of the problems with the slimline drives is the drive belt which can be replaced. But why should I have to pay inflated prices for disk drives - I can get one for a tenner for my PC. And the SAM power supplies are so damn unreliable (I've had about sven of them) I'm loathe to invest more dead money into them when I can run my SAM, write games, stay in touch all from my PC. I am not saying that the SimCoupe should be stopped but protection of new software must be the priority. So if you want to run software on SimCoupe then do it legally. This means that there must be protection built into SimCoupe so anyone releasing software can release a version that will work on simcoupe if the purchaser requests it. So maybe the software would need to be licensed to that person, as mentioned by Si Owen. It may come as a shock to many SAM users, but there is a whole new worl dof technology out there that we must eitehr embrace, by supporting SIM Coupe in every way we possibly can, or watch the SAM community upgrade to PC and forget all about our lovealbe little bluer footed soldier. My friends, it is time to move on. Richard. Peace, Love, Kisses... JohnnaPig Teare JPOL: http://johnnapig.webjump.com It won't get better but it might never get worse...
RE: Source of technical information
BTW - will be in touch via work tomorrow other that other matter for u ;) I've seen it al now - David Ledbury the pimp. ;-) *laugh* It's innocent, I tell you!! Jut.
RE: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
And to counter that argument, if people could develop on SIM Coupe and then write the4 software back to floppy for distrubiton on standard SAM's then I think we would see more released on the SAM. What would you rather do - roam through your atic blowing the dust off your SAM and setting it up (plugging it into your telly, digging out your old disks box, crossing your fingers and hoping everything still works), or double click on the SIM Coupe icon on your desktop and crack on? Funnily enough, that's EXACTLY what I've been wanting to do lately. I've got so many things I want to do for the SAM, but developing them on the SAM itself, as I find, is so bloody time-consuming! [cycle begin] boot up Pro-DOS. edit assembler/C program in text editer (ZDE) assemble (ZAS) / compile (Hitech C) program reset SAM boot up working development disk load up CP/M to SAM file converter (prosam) copy binary file over run program debug program (TurboMon) reset SAM [cycle end - repeat] It will be great to have a PC where I can edit the files in one window, import the files into a CP/M emulator in another window, import those files into SimCoupe to test and, if need-be, copy the files onto the disk and run them on a real SAM (or even bootstrap the files over the serial line to the kernel in my SAM - once I build my flexible comms interface, that is)... It may be the same process as before, but it should be a LOT quicker... People who use the machine as a serious computer can be counted on one hand. Upto recently, I was determined NOT to have a PC but to keep my developments on SAM... but I'm becomming too impatient and thinking I can't be bothered to do all that disk-swapping - where's the TV remote? instead of getting on and doing my stuff. It may come as a shock to many SAM users, but there is a whole new worl dof technology out there that we must eitehr embrace, by supporting SIM Coupe in every way we possibly can, or watch the SAM community upgrade to PC and forget all about our lovealbe little bluer footed soldier. Hey.. Mine's black-footed!! You unpolitically-correct person, you! :) My friends, it is time to move on. Talking of which, does SimCoupe have MIDI support yet? Jut.
Re: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
Funnily enough, that's EXACTLY what I've been wanting to do lately. I've got so many things I want to do for the SAM, but developing them on the SAM itself, as I find, is so bloody time-consuming! [cycle begin] boot up Pro-DOS. edit assembler/C program in text editer (ZDE) assemble (ZAS) / compile (Hitech C) program reset SAM boot up working development disk load up CP/M to SAM file converter (prosam) copy binary file over run program debug program (TurboMon) reset SAM [cycle end - repeat] Ouch! I developed Defender on the PC using the following tools: Editor: Borlands' BRIEF. Which is great as it uses the hard-disk as virtual RAM, so your source can be almost any length. Assembler: AS80. A great freeware Z80 macro assembler that can produce linkable code or a simple (ROM-like) runable binary. That's it. Write code on the PC, copy binary to floppy and use the SAM MS-DOS reader to get it into the SAM for testing. It's quite painless. Defender had to be done this way for timing reasons, but I have since written a small PC program that takes the binary produced by AS80 and blits it into a Simcoupe .DSK image. A simple .BAT file runs AS80, blits the binary to the .DSK and runs Simcoupe for testing. Pressing F10 in Simcoupe drops back into the .BAT and it then kicks BRIEF back into action to continue editing where you left off. This is even more painless!! However, because of the few idiosyncrasies within Simcoupe you still need to test certain things on a real SAM. Sound being the obvious one! When Si completes his Windows port (complete with sound and accurate timing!!!) developing for SAM under Simcoupe on the PC will be a breeze... ...and forget all about our lovealbe little bluer footed soldier. Hey.. Mine's black-footed!! You unpolitically-correct person, you! :) So's mine! :-) Chris.
RE: Sam Juggler (Re: SimCoupe protected disks)
Andrew Collier wrote: MNEMOdemo1 part 2 (my bit) crashes. I never did manage to work out exactly why, but I rather suspect it has to do with interrupt timings. I've corrected the interrupt timings (as discovered Ian or yourself) so the interrupt bits aren't visible during the last 3us of the interrupt, but they stay active so interrupts can still occur. I've not tried that demo yet so I'm not sure if that's related to the problem, but it can't do any harm! Also, according to the website, SamDice crashes on startup, Fixed - turned out to be the missing 'read address' implementation in the floppy controller. 'read track' was also needed for the 'diagnostic read' to work without crashing. I extended this to add full support for protected disks, so Prince of Persia, Lemmings (tho I've broken the mouse support it seems), etc. now work when they're converted to the new type of disk image needed to describe them accurately. Existing DSK/SAD images can be formated, but only to the normal 10x512 sector format. The new images can be formatted to custom formats within the emulator, and can be viewed/edited with SamDice. I've written a BASIC program and some ASM to use on the real SAM to scan protected disks a side at a time and raw write it to another disk. I then use SBK to transfer them to the PC and (for the moment, until there's a utility to do it) use a binary editor to splice sections of them together. Of course it'll be up to people to generate their own SDF image files for any software they have as I won't distribute them, even if people claim to own the original! Si
Re: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
Are they/you working on support for generic DSP devices, or still just the SoundBlaster hardware? I was about to start writing a generic one myself actually, but if it is already being done then there's no need for me to bother... Actually, the plan is to go through the Windows Multimedia subsystem, as it's easy to set up and splat stuff through, and that way you also get accurate timers so we can sync SimCoupe to 50Hz :) But basically, it'll be stereo, 16-bit PCM output. All you'll need is a Windows driver for your sound card. Should be an easy port to the Mac too -- fingers crossed. 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: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
Chris Pile wrote: ...I developed Defender on the PC using the following tools: Editor: Borlands' BRIEF. Which is great as it uses the hard-disk as virtual RAM, so your source can be almost any length. Oh, god... How I *love* BRIEF. The most fantastic text-editor for fiddling with PostScript files I've ever used. When you need to make a 120Mb file print portrait rather than landscape, or you need to comment out the a4tray line, accept no substitute. Also good for demonstrating to idiots the difference between Adobe PostScript and Hewlett-Packard print files. Sorry, just had to say so. -- The HEXdidn't... Homepage: -- Featuring The U.K. Policenauts Homepage -- http://www.hexdidnt.clara.net
Re: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
Are they/you working on support for generic DSP devices, or still just the SoundBlaster hardware? I was about to start writing a generic one myself actually, but if it is already being done then there's no need for me to bother... Actually, the plan is to go through the Windows Multimedia subsystem, as it's easy to set up and splat stuff through, Should be an easy port to the Mac too -- fingers crossed. And Linux? I mean, however it is you decide to shove the data out of the speakers... somewhere in the middle your code will be producing a sound sample, will it? Andrew -- | Andrew Collier | email [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Talk sense to a | Part 2 NatSci | http://carou.sel.cam.ac.uk/ | fool and he ++-+ calls you foolish | Selwyn College Student Computer Support Team | -- Euripides
Re: Putting the whole boring argumet simply
And Linux? I mean, however it is you decide to shove the data out of the speakers... somewhere in the middle your code will be producing a sound sample, will it? Yup -- or rather, Dave's code will be. I'm just writing glue :) ... or sniffing it... or something... Simon (NSFMSFT)
