Breakthrough for the ao486 core announced - Cache

[Coffea]

Latest AO486 with a random et4000 bios I found online (cardex.vbi CRC32:6ec56b03) renamed to boot1.rom

It's not the same bios that's been recommended but my googlefu failed me and one from VGA Museum seems to chooch ok, Probably all wrong, probably terrible.

Was able to get 16bit 800x600 with some drivers inc with windows, an old earworm back in my head, and played a little SC2000. 90Mhz runs fine .. 100Mhz gives protection errors

https://twitter.com/i/status/1287668722757500929

[IAmParadox]

Latest AO486 with a random et4000 bios I found online (cardex.vbi CRC32:6ec56b03) renamed to boot1.rom

It's not the same bios that's been recommended but my googlefu failed me and one from VGA Museum seems to chooch ok, Probably all wrong, probably terrible.

Was able to get 16bit 800x600 with some drivers inc with windows, an old earworm back in my head, and played a little SC2000. 90Mhz runs fine .. 100Mhz gives protection errors

https://twitter.com/i/status/1287668722757500929

I think you might have the same problem, or, similar, that I have, 100mhz will usually freeze ao486 for me, and 90 was causing protection and page fault errors with cache20, now, 90mhz seems ok, but, 100mhz will still freeze, but, sometimes, takes a few minutes, sometimes, immediately. I was even having some problems on the official main branch release, before the cache version was even available, as well as some other cores, I'm actually talking through email with MisterAddons, who I bought the setup from, to see if I have a faulty board, or, something.

[Solskogen]

Same here. 100mhz doesn't work. 90mzh works.

[Chris23235]

Anyone got VESA games working using the Cache24 build?

I tried the Tie Fighter CD version, but had no luck, the game crashes, the moment it should switch into actual gameplay (the bitmap screens work fine, but I think they are not Vesa). The game uses Univbe and detects a Tsang Labs ET4000.

I found a bunch of VESA stuff. I think the Collection of drivers seem interesting, because it has a TSeng ET4000 specific VESA driver. What version did you use?

https://dosdriver.de/graph.php

I tried it with a Tseng ET4000 Bios, but had no luck. Tie Fighter CD now doesn't crash anymore, but gives me garbled graphics.

With the new Bios the game doesn't ask me if I want to use Univbe, don't know if it now assumes I want high res in any case.

[IAmParadox]

Just curiously, do you have univbe 4 installed?

[Caldor]

I think you might have the same problem, or, similar, that I have, 100mhz will usually freeze ao486 for me, and 90 was causing protection and page fault errors with cache20, now, 90mhz seems ok, but, 100mhz will still freeze, but, sometimes, takes a few minutes, sometimes, immediately. I was even having some problems on the official main branch release, before the cache version was even available, as well as some other cores, I'm actually talking through email with MisterAddons, who I bought the setup from, to see if I have a faulty board, or, something.

With the Cache20 there is no VESA support, so that wont do much, you have to get the Cache24 version. That is the one that should be capable of using the VESA bios. It has been shared on the first page of this thread, and the links to all the other ones seems to have been deleted.

The MiSTer file is the same size, but I compared contents and it has been updated as well. It will give some new options in the MiSTer overlay menu as well, about... bitdepth type or something. So it will be noticeable when its working.

I was trying with this, and it tells me that I do have VESA support, but often games just run and I hear the audio, but the display just freezes at the point where it was still VGA. When I get home I guess I will try to look up bioses... hmmm... I might have some for PCem. Just figured these files had to be built specifically for this, so had not considered it might have been raw bios files.

[Beeble]

master of Orion did finally start, but I only hear Audio and the Dos Screen stays, but the font colors change from red to blue or.. rainbow colors.

Using the Tseng Vesa Driver TLIVESA , (Vesa 1.2) on AO486 Cache 24 Version, also put the Mister file that came with it in place.

Vikings: Field of Conquest is still refusing to sart and crashes the system while starting.

[Caldor]

master of Orion did finally start, but I only hear Audio and the Dos Screen stays, but the font colors change from red to blue or.. rainbow colors.

Using the Tseng Vesa Driver TLIVESA , (Vesa 1.2) on AO486 Cache 24 Version, also put the Mister file that came with it in place.

Vikings: Field of Conquest is still refusing to sart and crashes the system while starting.

The game Z looked promising to me, it detects VESA quite well

[tontonkaloun]

this bios video seems to work
I can't say if it's the right one

[redsteakraw]

So SVGA / Vesa support is being worked on and Starcraft / Broodwar have a sys requirements of a 90mhz + svga. This would open up quite a bit of games and push ao486 to run things up to the mid-late 90s. I would be interested to see how far this core can be pushed. Has anyone tried Descent yet with the new cache fixes?

[tontonkaloun]

i will try !

[Caldor]

So SVGA / Vesa support is being worked on and Starcraft / Broodwar have a sys requirements of a 90mhz + svga. This would open up quite a bit of games and push ao486 to run things up to the mid-late 90s. I would be interested to see how far this core can be pushed. Has anyone tried Descent yet with the new cache fixes?

I was trying Descent, but it was without the correct bios file, so it did not work for me... but it might also require FPU which this core does not have. So its still what would count as an 486SX, and I think FPU would make it a 486DX. Although there is more to it than that, since there are 386DX CPUs I think, without that meaning they have FPU.

Anyway, FPU would help with a lot of games as well, but unsure how many. Quake for example requires FPU, but it also claims to require Pentium. Not sure if that means it requires MMX. I suspect a fast 486 with FPU would be enough to run Quake. Question is whether Descent requires FPU.

I found a thread that debates games that uses FPU. Descent 2 is mentioned but not Descent:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 1NkNQmui9I

[softtest9]

Has anyone tried Tomb Raider? I thought it might be a good performance test for the core. It did launch for me when I tried, but I couldn't get into actual gameplay. This was with cache_14 I believe, so it might get further now.

[redsteakraw]

I was trying Descent, but it was without the correct bios file, so it did not work for me... but it might also require FPU which this core does not have. So its still what would count as an 486SX, and I think FPU would make it a 486DX. Although there is more to it than that, since there are 386DX CPUs I think, without that meaning they have FPU.

Anyway, FPU would help with a lot of games as well, but unsure how many. Quake for example requires FPU, but it also claims to require Pentium. Not sure if that means it requires MMX. I suspect a fast 486 with FPU would be enough to run Quake. Question is whether Descent requires FPU.

I found a thread that debates games that uses FPU. Descent 2 is mentioned but not Descent:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 1NkNQmui9I

Descent seems to run on a 386 at 33Mhz but recomends a 486 at 33Mhz

https://www.computerhope.com/games/games/descent.htm

[Caldor]

Has anyone tried Tomb Raider? I thought it might be a good performance test for the core. It did launch for me when I tried, but I couldn't get into actual gameplay. This was with cache_14 I believe, so it might get further now.

Tomb Raider is another FPU based 3D game. I can see there are threads on VOGONS where the question is whether its possible to run Tomb Raider without FPU, but on VOGONS lacks some certificates and I probably should not enter those forums from this machine. I seems like it will be a problem running Tomb Raider though.

[Caldor]

I was trying Descent, but it was without the correct bios file, so it did not work for me... but it might also require FPU which this core does not have. So its still what would count as an 486SX, and I think FPU would make it a 486DX. Although there is more to it than that, since there are 386DX CPUs I think, without that meaning they have FPU.

Anyway, FPU would help with a lot of games as well, but unsure how many. Quake for example requires FPU, but it also claims to require Pentium. Not sure if that means it requires MMX. I suspect a fast 486 with FPU would be enough to run Quake. Question is whether Descent requires FPU.

I found a thread that debates games that uses FPU. Descent 2 is mentioned but not Descent:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 1NkNQmui9I

Descent seems to run on a 386 at 33Mhz but recomends a 486 at 33Mhz

https://www.computerhope.com/games/games/descent.htm

Nice... then it was probably just the lack of VESA that stopped me from getting it to run.

[Chris23235]

this bios video seems to work
I can't say if it's the right one

With this BIOS Tiefighter CD runs flawless (even if it is a little bit slow).

[redsteakraw]

Just wondering the 386 had the i387 math coprocessor that was out of CPU clock speed instead of a FPU. Could the FPU instructions be run on the ARM core like a virtual i387 since timing issues are less of a problem.

[IAmParadox]

I think you might have the same problem, or, similar, that I have, 100mhz will usually freeze ao486 for me, and 90 was causing protection and page fault errors with cache20, now, 90mhz seems ok, but, 100mhz will still freeze, but, sometimes, takes a few minutes, sometimes, immediately. I was even having some problems on the official main branch release, before the cache version was even available, as well as some other cores, I'm actually talking through email with MisterAddons, who I bought the setup from, to see if I have a faulty board, or, something.

With the Cache20 there is no VESA support, so that wont do much, you have to get the Cache24 version. That is the one that should be capable of using the VESA bios. It has been shared on the first page of this thread, and the links to all the other ones seems to have been deleted.

The MiSTer file is the same size, but I compared contents and it has been updated as well. It will give some new options in the MiSTer overlay menu as well, about... bitdepth type or something. So it will be noticeable when its working.

I was trying with this, and it tells me that I do have VESA support, but often games just run and I hear the audio, but the display just freezes at the point where it was still VGA. When I get home I guess I will try to look up bioses... hmmm... I might have some for PCem. Just figured these files had to be built specifically for this, so had not considered it might have been raw bios files.

let me clarify, I was using cache20, I am now using cache24. when I was using cache20, the freezing was worse than it is, currently, on cache24, but, still there, I also fail to see what my post had to do with VESA.

[IAmParadox]

I was trying Descent, but it was without the correct bios file, so it did not work for me... but it might also require FPU which this core does not have. So its still what would count as an 486SX, and I think FPU would make it a 486DX. Although there is more to it than that, since there are 386DX CPUs I think, without that meaning they have FPU.

Anyway, FPU would help with a lot of games as well, but unsure how many. Quake for example requires FPU, but it also claims to require Pentium. Not sure if that means it requires MMX. I suspect a fast 486 with FPU would be enough to run Quake. Question is whether Descent requires FPU.

I found a thread that debates games that uses FPU. Descent 2 is mentioned but not Descent:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 1NkNQmui9I

Descent seems to run on a 386 at 33Mhz but recomends a 486 at 33Mhz

https://www.computerhope.com/games/games/descent.htm

Nice... then it was probably just the lack of VESA that stopped me from getting it to run.

No, it still doesn't run, same crash message as before.

[akeley]

Personally I'd be much more interested to see this core's roadmap and dev efforts concentrate on the 386-486 era, ie DOS, 2D and very early 3D games. Win 98, Quake, Tomb Raider, etc all belong in the Pentium zone. Sure, you can run them on lower spec hardware but not with a performance level acceptable for modern times. Heck, even Doom really needs a Pentium to do this game justice.

A near-perfect DOS core would be my dream come true on the other hand.

[Beeble]

I wil give it a try and report. On another note, it is a pleasent and productive community we have here, I like to thank all of you, providing furhter informations, share beta cores and files and experiences. Good job all!

[Beeble]

Update: With the AO486 24 and the bios1.rom provided, Master of Orion 2 works!

[Caldor]

let me clarify, I was using cache20, I am now using cache24. when I was using cache20, the freezing was worse than it is, currently, on cache24, but, still there, I also fail to see what my post had to do with VESA.

Ahh. Yeah, I assumed you were trying to run VESA games.

As for the freezes, I think I had the same problem. I was installing Windows 98 SE and it took several hours and also froze and I had to reset the system to get it to continue running. That was after I began using the Cache24 core and before trying the new GPU BIOS file. But sounds like the new bios is unlikely to change much in that regard. I guess I will just stick with 90mhz now that I know 100mhz is why it ran so irratic.

[Caldor]

Personally I'd be much more interested to see this core's roadmap and dev efforts concentrate on the 386-486 era, ie DOS, 2D and very early 3D games. Win 98, Quake, Tomb Raider, etc all belong in the Pentium zone. Sure, you can run them on lower spec hardware but not with a performance level acceptable for modern times. Heck, even Doom really needs a Pentium to do this game justice.

A near-perfect DOS core would be my dream come true on the other hand.

The 386 and 486 era is already pretty much done though with level 2 cache and VESA support. It still probably needs some polish and such, but with Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Master of Orion 2, Daggerfall and System Shock all running well, it seems to me that if we do not have 386 and 486 covered, then at least its very close to being covered. Except for co-processors which both some 386 and 486 CPUs had. SX CPUs did not, but DX did it seems... not all co-processors are FPU as far as I have read, but FPU is what many games use in some ways... as you said, its mainly games near the Pentium era.

VESA I do suspect might take a few weeks to get fully working. But so far I have been very impressed with what the Cache20 core did for all the VGA games.

[Caldor]

I tried all the ET4000 drivers I could find for Windows 95 and I tried several different DOS drivers as well. Nothing seems to work for me... but in many cases it does seem to run except it just freezes the display. I suspect if I connect the MiSTer to a CRT monitor, it might switch to VESA mode... but in Windows it keeps seeing it as a display driver problem to go into any VESA mode, even 640x480 with 256 collors.

But also, it shows it to only have 256kb RAM when I run Univbe in DOS, but then I try the one that comes with the game Z, it sees the GPU as a Tseng ET6000 with 2MB RAM.

So I think I will just wait and see what gets released, and play around with non-VESA stuff until then.

Ahh... the problem seems to be a new BIOS has to be compiled, the new BIOS for this has not been released yet.

But it seems it might be possible to compile one.
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/tree/dev

This explains how to compile a VGA bios... but, guess its not simple to compile a SVGA bios with this guide only explaining how to compile the VGA one. Ahh well.

The actual bios file is in there, in releases directory, but, to get it completely working, a different bios may be required, and, that one hasn't been implemented, at all, afaik, although, there is apparently, a closed source bios, floating around, that works, I might have actually seen a system using this bios that seems to be doing pretty good, with it, but, since it is closed source, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to share it, here. it is et4000 and has a crc of 713CB637 from what I hear.

Checksum treasure hunt over the Internet

I have found... maybe 10 different Tseng 4000ET bioses and have been doing CRC32 checks on them all. I have found one with this checksum here:
http://www.elpod.org/pcem_roms/

The one named: et4000w32.bin

[NML32]

Checksum treasure hunt over the Internet

I have found... maybe 10 different Tseng 4000ET bioses and have been doing CRC32 checks on them all. I have found one with this checksum here:
http://www.elpod.org/pcem_roms/

The one named: et4000w32.bin

Thank you!!!

[IAmParadox]

I tried all the ET4000 drivers I could find for Windows 95 and I tried several different DOS drivers as well. Nothing seems to work for me... but in many cases it does seem to run except it just freezes the display. I suspect if I connect the MiSTer to a CRT monitor, it might switch to VESA mode... but in Windows it keeps seeing it as a display driver problem to go into any VESA mode, even 640x480 with 256 collors.

But also, it shows it to only have 256kb RAM when I run Univbe in DOS, but then I try the one that comes with the game Z, it sees the GPU as a Tseng ET6000 with 2MB RAM.

So I think I will just wait and see what gets released, and play around with non-VESA stuff until then.

Ahh... the problem seems to be a new BIOS has to be compiled, the new BIOS for this has not been released yet.

But it seems it might be possible to compile one.
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer/tree/dev

This explains how to compile a VGA bios... but, guess its not simple to compile a SVGA bios with this guide only explaining how to compile the VGA one. Ahh well.

The actual bios file is in there, in releases directory, but, to get it completely working, a different bios may be required, and, that one hasn't been implemented, at all, afaik, although, there is apparently, a closed source bios, floating around, that works, I might have actually seen a system using this bios that seems to be doing pretty good, with it, but, since it is closed source, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to share it, here. it is et4000 and has a crc of 713CB637 from what I hear.

Checksum treasure hunt over the Internet

I have found... maybe 10 different Tseng 4000ET bioses and have been doing CRC32 checks on them all. I have found one with this checksum here:
http://www.elpod.org/pcem_roms/

The one named: et4000w32.bin

I can confirm, this is the bios that is "working" as I mentioned, but, it might not actually be the correct one, or, is named wrong, I switched from the et4000 drivers, in windows, to the et4000w32 drivers, and, it doesn't work, although, it does work with the et4000 drivers.

[IAmParadox]

By the way, I can confirm that this bios fixes sierra games like spacequest 1 that have garbled text

[Caldor]

By the way, I can confirm that this bios fixes sierra games like spacequest 1 that have garbled text.

So far it looks good to me... but it is also the only one I have tried. But I have gotten Settlers 2 running into the game itself and Syndicate Wars. Both would not run before at all.

I tried Death Rally and it keeps crashing, I do get into the game now, the menu and such, but not the game itself... I suspect the problem with 100mhz might also be... less of a problem. Both when it comes to detecting the sound devices and the freezing issues. Just seems strange that the bios affects that... or maybe not, but... should the bios problems with the GPU depend on the speed of the CPU? Guess it might.

I was at first running Univbe, and I could see that it would see my current bios was now a VESA 1.2 one... so I decided to just not use Univbe for now, to first see if the games would run on their own.

I suspect Z works, but my cracked version probably does not. I do own this game as well and made an image of the CD, so I will try to see if I can install it in Windows using a CD emulator there, so there would not be a need for the cracked version. Or.. maybe I just need more files from that CD.

I have not tried any other bios yet. Right now I am trying Windows 95.