Coco 2 + Mantra Alice + Dragon 32/64

[Higgy]

Yeah tape loading works
I tried a couple of Dragon games via the CASdunio.
Sorry I might not have read everything correctly, but is it possible to have a 'Hard Reset' option in OSD menu? Reset quite often just gives grabbed screen and it is a pain having to reset whole MiSTer and reload Core.
I expect CoCo might have been the same as Dragon as Reset on the computer often reset the game and you had to 'power cycle' to clear memory.
Great work. Thanks

[kathleen]

When you say "the output signal is distorted", let me confirm that this is the scenario you are talking about:
- Using CoCo2 core
- Using Audio Spectrum Analyzer
- Listening to the MiSTer output

...if this is the case, I can understand that - I didn't implement a pass-through from ADC in to the MiSTer sound output on the CoCo core; there was already a bunch of other logic and levelling there, and the "audio pass-thru" option on the audio is not implemented.

I guess what I was hoping to understand, was whether the spectrum analyzer part of the software was functioning how you expect it to, visually.

...Of course, if I misunderstood the scenario, please help me to understand.

Hi dshadoff,
Yes this is the exact scenario that I was talking about
Thank you for your explanation !

Knowing this, could you please let me know if the basic command "AUDIO ON" uses the pass-thru as well ? In which case this command wouldn't give the expected results right ? (Sorry I did not think to try it yesterday)
Do you feel that this audio pass-thru will be implemented ? From my point of view this is a must have feature.

Thanks again !

[dshadoff]

The audio pass-thru can be implemented, but it will take a bit of effort to understand the "plumbing" that's there right now, and make it work together.
I'm pretty sure that "AUDIO ON" uses this pass-thru.

...But what about the graphical view of the audio spectrum analyzer ?
You had mentioned that this was something that required the ADC in order to work (beyond tapes).
...this should not be affected by the existence/non-existence of audio pass-thru, as the CPU only sees the 1-bit value from the tape in order to do its calculations.

[kathleen]

The graphic view, bars and kaleidoscope work as they should ! No more issue on that side.

yes absolutely the good working of the program is not affected at all by the pass-thru, the only thing that I wanted to point out is that back in the day, this cartridge was somehow used in serial between an audio source and an amplifier or ideally after a mix table and before the power amplifier which in this case it is not possible as the audio signal coming out the audio out is distorted, but you're right this does not prevent to get the cartridge working and use it. Anyway, when I was a young girl I was fascinated by this cartridge, 40 years later seeing it working on the Mister warms my heart

[braincell]

Very nice, Dragon was my 1st machine but always a cbm guy

What's compatibility like ??

[ron]

Very nice, Dragon was my 1st machine but always a cbm guy

What's compatibility like ??

A FPGA core is not like an emulator, emulation it's a sequence in which some things can run well and others simply do not work.
In a FPGA everything runs on same time. If the implementation is good and meets the right timmings, video and audio then what you will get is exactly the same as if you had a real Dragon 32 in front of you, or a CoCo2.
All that software that can be loaded will work.

Cheers

[braincell]

Thanks for the explanation Ron.

I have a little experience of fpgas so understand the differences in a linear program to concurrent fpga execution.

It would have been more accurate too ask of the current state of the core , compatibility wise.

I know the dragon had a funky clock stretching mechanism along with some really kludgy pal outputs.

I will give the core a go at the weekend , just wondering how complete it is.

Thanks

[danielb]

Hi, I just loaded a Dragon game from a wav file using VLC player on my laptop. Loaded first time.

Thanks very much for implementing this feature.

D.

[dshadoff]

Support for ADC tape input has now been added to the AliceMC10 core.

I also submitted a pull request for audio pass-thru from the cassette port on the CoCo2 core, so it should appear at some point soon.

[braincell]

Tried the coco2 core today ( dragon32 ). Mostly works very well. Whatbi did struggle with was resetting the core, sometimes it would hang with garbage on the screen , other times it had inverted "@" all over the screen whilst other it reset normally.

This also happened when switching between machines ( coco2/d32/d64 )

Would guess there's a minor error in the initialisation of memory / rom during reset

[dshadoff]

Alan is aware of that, and will eventually come back to look at it. It is a known issue.

Something you may not know, is that real hardware also has this issue with resets (I have seen it on my original hardware while working on this core)... although it's about 10 times less frequent on real hardware.

[braincell]

Tape (cas) support works very well with my cas files, some refused to work but I will have to try them on real hardware. Once or twice though I had to "stop / rewind" to get a cas to load though....... ( seemed to clip the leader ????? )

[dshadoff]

Which core ?
I assume when you say "CAS", you are talking about internal "load from file" support, and not CASduino ?

[braincell]

Yes exactly, again whilst loading into the dragon32, selected the file then did a cloadm, only happened twice in over a couple of hours.

Familiar tone-noise "found filename" tone-noise "loading data" didn't happen, after cloadm I just heard noise briefly ( no tone ) then error.

[dshadoff]

If you are getting your CAS files from TOSEC - especially for Dragon - those are actually not all following specifications; we have found that some of the files have been super-abbreviated to the point that the original tape protocol is not being followed, and has sections removed

I think this is some weird 'short form' that some emulator developer thought was a good idea 20 years ago for his own personal use; I have seen other mentions of it being non-standard elsewhere on the internet.

In the event that this is unrelated to the above, I'm checking with Pierco on some subtleties of the implementation.

[braincell]

I know exactly what you mean , when I got my casduino I found lots of games wouldn't work , I ran into 1 of those earlier with "pedro" which seems to not have a leader at all ( gonna have to try that on my real dragon)

I ended up getting a new set from a site and they are the ones I use on the casduino which have worked quite well with the ones I tried and thats the set I put on my mister sd

I only mention it as I the stop rewind and cloafm again got it too load , was only twice so maybor may not be an issue.

Core generally works very well and it's one I'm sure to spend some time using.

[dshadoff]

New release of CoCo2 is out, many small updates including the AUDIO ON referenced earlier.
See the note in "Updates and Changelog" for more details.

[danielb]

Hi,
The latest version of the Alice core doesn't seem to work with my monitor over HDMI. The previous version worked fine. No other core does this, as far as I am aware.

Tks,

D

[Shuffle7]

As my first computer I’m trying to get coco to work tonight . Combination of run, cload , stop and rewind of tape and choosing which machine to use (dragon32 in this case ) first game to load is leggit from imagine 1983

Thanks so much

[TomGun7]

Is there any way to save to (virtual) tape on the Dragon/CoCo core? And are there any plans for (virtual) disk support (DragonDOS)? I would like to put my real Dragons away, and use the MiSTer as my main Dragon (that’s how well it works, and it’s so easy to bring with me), but that means I must have a way to save to either disk or tape. Anyone who knows?

[alanswx]

Is there any way to save to (virtual) tape on the Dragon/CoCo core? And are there any plans for (virtual) disk support (DragonDOS)? I would like to put my real Dragons away, and use the MiSTer as my main Dragon (that’s how well it works, and it’s so easy to bring with me), but that means I must have a way to save to either disk or tape. Anyone who knows?

We were hoping to have a disk cartridge for this system - at least for the CoCo2 side. But we haven't tackled it yet. I am not sure what it would take to make tape read / write. It would be nice to have working disks. We might be able to adapt the disk from the TRS-80 core.

[teller]

On the latest Coco2 core: When I switch to Dragon32 I only get a green screen. Do I need a specific boot.rom to switch to Dragon 32?

[teller]

In Disk mode, I'm getting IO ERROR when typing DIR. A .DSK file is inserted. I also tried after a reset, same issue.

[akeley]

On the latest Coco2 core: When I switch to Dragon32 I only get a green screen. Do I need a specific boot.rom to switch to Dragon 32?

This seems to happen only when changing the Cartridge>Disk first, and choosing the Machine later. The other way around it's okay.

But, yes, I also get the I/O error when trying the disks. Hopefully @alansxw or some other dev can have a look at this at some point soon. These cores are maturing slowly, but steadily (Coco3 has just gottten a big update thanks to @shodge).

[alanswx]

On the latest Coco2 core: When I switch to Dragon32 I only get a green screen. Do I need a specific boot.rom to switch to Dragon 32?

This seems to happen only when changing the Cartridge>Disk first, and choosing the Machine later. The other way around it's okay.

But, yes, I also get the I/O error when trying the disks. Hopefully @alansxw or some other dev can have a look at this at some point soon. These cores are maturing slowly, but steadily (Coco3 has just gottten a big update thanks to @shodge).

Which disks are you trying? I was able to get some of them working in dragon. This is a weird dragon rom for a coco disk controller. I don't have a dragon native disk controller working yet - so a bunch of disks don't work.

[akeley]

Which disks are you trying? I was able to get some of them working in dragon. This is a weird dragon rom for a coco disk controller. I don't have a dragon native disk controller working yet - so a bunch of disks don't work.

I couldn't find Dragon .dsk files during my quick browse (only .vdk or some such) so I didn't try the floppy on this side of the core. I was referring to Coco2 itself. I tried some .dsk files from TOSEC and colorcomputerarchive and none have worked (but they do on Coco3 core).

[teller]

Disks for the Dragon are called .VDK but somehow they can be loaded when choosing from disk menu in this core.
You can find them here: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/brows ... D/DRAGON32
The thing is I only get a green screen when switching from CoCo2 to Dragon 32 or 64, which means maybe that it's because it needs the bios (boot.rom)
for Dragon 32/64 maybe?

[akeley]

Disks for the Dragon are called .VDK but somehow they can be loaded when choosing from disk menu in this core.
You can find them here: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/brows ... D/DRAGON32

I've tried some of these (changing .vdk to .dsk), but always get the ?IV ERROR. I start the core - change Machine to Dragon 32 - change Cart Slot to Disk (DOS Plus appears) - mount disk - type DIR = IV ERROR

Can you name one disk which works for you from that archive? I'll try it just to make sure. Couple I've tried already: Handicap, Hunchback.

The thing is I only get a green screen when switching from CoCo2 to Dragon 32 or 64, which means maybe that it's because it needs the bios (boot.rom)
for Dragon 32/64 maybe?

On my machine the green screen only happens when I change the Cart Slot. Before that I can flip between Coco2 / Dragon 32 /Dragon 64 freely. I suppose if we needed boot.rom for this core nothing would start at all (also the old version didn't require it). This seems more like a bug...but I don't know really, the devs can clear that one up.

@alanswx: on Coco2 I've tried 3D Brick Away, 3D Space War, Bagitman, Arkanoid, Bedlam and some other ones.

[teller]

@akeley:

You can't just rename VDK to DSK, because Dragon disks are differently coded.

I have never been able to run any Dragon 32 disk game because I always only get a green screen without text when switching from CoCo2 to Dragon 32.
I was just wondering how you guys do that but find out that disk support doesn't work yet for Dragon.

[akeley]

You can't just rename VDK to DSK, because Dragon disks are differently coded.

I have never been able to run any Dragon 32 disk game because I always only get a green screen without text when switching from CoCo2 to Dragon 32.

Ok, but didn't you just say that "Disks for the Dragon are called .VDK but somehow they can be loaded when choosing from disk menu in this core"?
That's why I tried to rename the extension, because otherwise they don't show up.

Also, what happens when you start the core, and go to Machine in OSD, and choose Dragon? Green screen?