MiSTer FPGA Forum

Bunker wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 7:49 am What is the current status of the Dragon 64 core?

alanswx wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:56 am

Bunker wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 7:49 am What is the current status of the Dragon 64 core?

I think I fixed the 64. I got a tip on what was wrong.

Shuffle7 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 26, 2022 11:16 pm

I think I have to get a different rom set as most of the tapes I load will not work but yet some do. I always try to use dragon 32 with the earlier games. The reset and reboot is hit and miss but the original hardware didn’t reset fully unless powered off ? I haven’t been successful in getting a cuthbert game to load as yet ..
Any tips to use cload , cloadm run commands to load tapes?

Same question please! It certainly seems possible to load CAS images judging from other posts in this thread, but I can never get anything other than an IO ERROR. I boot in Dragon mode, then attach a CAS image from the OSD menu, then type CLOADM (or CLOAD). What am I doing wrong please?

Did you try tapes from a source different than TOSEC?

I did yes.

Out of 6 random games from Dragon Archive I've just tried 2 work fine, 2 load some segments then hang , and 2 just throw IO/FM errors right away. So yeah, it is pretty hit and miss, but at least some games should work.

There are a lot of improper cassette images out there - in particular, on TOSEC, and also a lot of the Dragon images.
I've mentioned this before, but it bears mentioning again...

The cassette format includes a lead-in, synchronization and name block, then another lead-in and the payload.
The second lead-in is what is missing from - or dramatically abbreviated in - these images.

If memory serves, it is supposed to be something like 256 bytes in length (all zeroes), taking a little over one second. Somebody has created these images with less than 5 bytes of second lead-in. Perhaps some emulator author somewhere thought these were useless bytes, or that they could save some space... but on real hardware, such images would not be capable of being read, because the BASIC ROM is coded in a way that requires most or all of this second lead-in.

I suppose it might be possible to make a special version of the BASIC ROM which can deal with the shorter second lead-in, but a better idea would be to replace all of these improper images with proper images.

We have seen this sort of thing before with certain hacks and patches for console videogames - where something is made to run on a specific emulator, but won't run on original hardware (or most other emulators). It's very short-sighted of the original developer who made such a thing. And in this case, it appears to have facilitated a whole regime of corrupted images, as I'm sure the cassette images were innocently provided by users who were unaware of the deficiencies introduced by that emulator.

Whatever the original cause, it does weaken the usability of the core for the more "average" user. The chances of somebody creating "correct" images of everything now seem rather low, so a core-side solution would certainly be appreciated.

Most of the entries on World Of Dragon have both wav and cas files. It'd be interesting to try to load the wavs via ADC and compare with cas versions, seeing as wav files are usually proper dumps. You can even play them right from this archive, but I don't have a right cable atm to check it out.

I think I got my .cas files from World of Dragon when I was using a CASDuino with my (now gone) Dragon.
I basically download .cas of all the physical tapes I had.
I've not played about with this Core much.

I am trying to use the Dragon 32v core on mister. Even though I can find the CoCo2 rbf file on the SD card the CoCo2/Dragon does not show up in the menue of cores. Any ideas?

Where on the SD card is it stored? Usually it's under the _Computer folder, so in the Menu check there (Computer menu) and if names.txt is used, it may be found under something like TRS-80 Coco 2 or possibly Tandy Color 2

To load the Dragon 32, you actually load the Coco2 core and then sure the core options to select which machine you'd like

Edit - Sorry, I re-read your post and realised that my answer is useless.
I would probably try removing the core and then running the update script to see if it appears

Hello,
I wanted to play the CoCo2 game DanPan, but neither with the RealCOCO core nor with the COCO2, this game works as it should. Actually, the game starts but it is impossible to control the player, only the fire button works.
Left, right, up and down are not responding. Can someone try it and let me know if the same issue is seen ? I'd like to know if I do something wrong or if it is really a bug in the core, what I fell strange as the same issue happens on both cores, but who knows.
I played this game (I mean the same disk, on the XROAR emulator and it works w/o any issue)
Thanks in advance.

kathleen wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 7:51 pm

Hello,
I wanted to play the CoCo2 game DanPan, but neither with the RealCOCO core nor with the COCO2, this game works as it should. Actually, the game starts but it is impossible to control the player, only the fire button works.
Left, right, up and down are not responding. Can someone try it and let me know if the same issue is seen ? I'd like to know if I do something wrong or if it is really a bug in the core, what I fell strange as the same issue happens on both cores, but who knows.
I played this game (I mean the same disk, on the XROAR emulator and it works w/o any issue)
Thanks in advance.

Hi @kathleen, I have tried the game and it behaves as you describe it. I also tried Galactic Attack but that didn't seem to respond either.

Thank you @EeDee for having tested it and confirmed the issue. I've reported the issue on the CoCo3 github, also at the RealCoCo dev, still need to do @Alanswx .

On the CoCo3 core there is even another issue with color swaping . EDIT : Issue solved by entering RGB before starting the game; now the colors are OK also with the CoCo3 core.

Will try on my side Galactik Attack, don't remember if I alrady tested it or not
EDIT 2 : I tried Galactik Attack and I've no issue with this game. The space ship responds as it should.

kathleen wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 12:05 pm

Thank you @EeDee for having tested it and confirmed the issue. I've reported the issue on the CoCo3 github, also at the RealCoCo dev, still need to do @Alanswx .

On the CoCo3 core there is even another issue with color swaping . EDIT : Issue solved by entering RGB before starting the game; now the colors are OK also with the CoCo3 core.

Will try on my side Galactik Attack, don't remember if I alrady tested it or not
EDIT 2 : I tried Galactik Attack and I've no issue with this game. The space ship responds as it should.

Hi again @kathleen
It does? How do you move it? Is it not via the game controller?
Excuse my ignorance I'm not really a games player. Slightly to old to have caught the bug

Hi @EeDee,

Yes I play the game with a normal game controller (joypad actually).
I do nothing special

• Core CoCo3 20240205
• D-Pad Joystick emu : No
• Swap Joysticks: off

Cheers
Kathleen.

Thanks. Could be my controller I suppose

Hi everyone,

There is a while that I haven"t played with the Alice MC-10 core.
Yesterday, I wanted to play a .C10 game on this core to check something and it was not possible to load it. Neither CLOAD nor CLOADM worked. I then tried others .C10 files where I was sure that they worked last time I loaded them and it was unsuccessful.

Here is how I did:

• OSD -> Load .C10 file
• CLOAD (CLOADM) depending of the game
• OSD -> Rewind tape (to be sure)
• OSD -> Play tape
• I can hear the tape sound (as I asked for in at the OSD)
• The [ S ] starts to blink two-three times
  Sometimes I've the name of the game, sometimes not
• Then after 1-2 seconds, I get Error at the screen.

I do not believe that I did something wrong but who knows.

May I kindly ask to one of you to give a try on your side ?
I'm using the latest Alice MC-10 core and the latest Main Mister from the Discord.

Thanks in advance.

Hi @Kathleen
I have tried a few .C10s and they load okay. Do you need 16K ram expansion set for the programs you are trying?

Hi @EeDee,
Thank you for your answer and for having checked.
I do for some programs and I activated it, weird. If they load OK on your side, this does mean that I did something wrong.
Will dig more on what could happen between the last time where I had no issue to load my .C10 and now.

Missed that you are using latest Mister Main from the Discord so my results may not be useful to you after all

EeDee wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 5:02 pm

Missed that you are using latest Mister Main from the Discord so my results may not be useful to you after all

Oh thank you to have clarified this.
Yesterday I had not time to try to figure out what happens on my side.
Today after my work I'll try with the latest released Main, maybe it is the issue.
I'll also re transfer my .C10 games to my SD. Maybe they got corrupted for some reasons.
If none of this work, I'll reinstall everything from scratch. Let's see.

Please post how you get on with that

For some reasons most of my .C10 files were not working anymore.
I spend some time to re convert the .K7 to .C10 thanks to the Python script and now everything works as it should even with the latest Main.

In case someone is interested to know. I have Python 3.12.3 installed and the script seems to do not work with this version.
To get it working I used the below command.

Py -3.12 K72c10.py (path + name of the file to convert)
Example : Py -3.12 K72c10.py d:al.K7
Then the al.c10 is generated.