Issues with saving settings for Minimig
Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2021 9:27 am
I have been experimenting with the Minimig core on the MiSTer and I like the new features it has gotten like support for several settings setups and support for RTG. Also a lot of new visual settings.
But I tested a few things that I think could be improved:
1. Save floppy settings as well. I have some special boot floppies I use, but when you load settings for Minimig its always without floppies.
2. Ability to load settings without also resetting and running with the settings. Maybe some key combination to allow for it, leaving the default to load the settings and reset with them.
3. More scrolling text... a lot of settings refer to files on your storage, and my storage is USB0:Games/Amiga/*files*. So I can rarely see the actual filenames in full. So either more scrolling text to help show this, or maybe make it so that when you click a floppy or ROM setting it will hover over the file it was set to, rather than the latest file you clicked. ROM names for the Amiga are often very long and very identical. So its with all of these settings it could help.
4. Making it easier to see what settings you are loading. Maybe some way to give each of them a custom name. Minor issue though, but sure would be a quality of life improvement.
Bugs found:
I also ran into some other issues. I had moved everything to a new disk and this would cause loading the old saved settings to fail and act strangely. Its like it had secret settings. I had to change a lot of settings and keep resetting until it eventually worked. This could be an issue in general when moving files around in the Amiga folder I think, so could be nice if it would check whether the file still exists when loading and then maybe leave the setting empty if there is no file, or if its a critical file then give an error that loading the setting failed.
And also I ran into some bugs that I had a difficult time figuring out why they happened, but testing some things and switching between roms and such it might suddenly get a strange bug where it would no longer be able to boot and I had to leave the core and reload it to get it working again. I suspect one of the settings bugged out, but since its hard to tell what HDF, ISO, ADF and ROM files that the interface is pointing at, and them not being verified, its hard to tell what the problem has been, but I suspect it will be solved with some more verification of the current settings when resetting the core.
More advanced feature requests:
Having worked on supporting CDTV and CD32 games via software emulation on the Minimig core for the MiSTer it would also be nice to see CD support. I am happy that we can load ISO files but right now they are loaded as HDF disks using scsi.device instead of cd.device, which makes it more difficult to run CDTV and CD32 games as they seem to depend on it being CD devices for some games. I have figured out some ways to get a lot of the CD32 games working using SimCD32 though. I also found a way to get some CDTV games working. I hope to maybe mix the two solutions more than I already have to support CDTV games better.
Support for extended roms like CD32 and CDTV? I am pretty sure this could be possible without having to add support for CDs and other deep changes to the core. Extended ROMs are Amiga 1200 ROMs that are split in two. This also goes for the AROS rom it seems. Or maybe I just did not yet find an AROS rom for 68000. The Amiga 1200 chipset uses two physical ROM chips, I think this might be part of why they are split into two. So I cannot say if it might actually end up being rather complicated to support this in the FPGA. But I am pretty sure it could help me add better CD32 and CDTV support. For now I am trying to make custom Amiga ROMs, but I tried making a 1MB CD32 ROM using an Amiga program called Remus, but it does not boot with the Amiga core.
I might try again to see if I can help code the core. Some of these suggestions I have might be stuff I could help code myself. I am a software developer, but much of the FPGA stuff is just outside of my field of experience. But making some changes to the UI I might be able to do.
But I tested a few things that I think could be improved:
1. Save floppy settings as well. I have some special boot floppies I use, but when you load settings for Minimig its always without floppies.
2. Ability to load settings without also resetting and running with the settings. Maybe some key combination to allow for it, leaving the default to load the settings and reset with them.
3. More scrolling text... a lot of settings refer to files on your storage, and my storage is USB0:Games/Amiga/*files*. So I can rarely see the actual filenames in full. So either more scrolling text to help show this, or maybe make it so that when you click a floppy or ROM setting it will hover over the file it was set to, rather than the latest file you clicked. ROM names for the Amiga are often very long and very identical. So its with all of these settings it could help.
4. Making it easier to see what settings you are loading. Maybe some way to give each of them a custom name. Minor issue though, but sure would be a quality of life improvement.
Bugs found:
I also ran into some other issues. I had moved everything to a new disk and this would cause loading the old saved settings to fail and act strangely. Its like it had secret settings. I had to change a lot of settings and keep resetting until it eventually worked. This could be an issue in general when moving files around in the Amiga folder I think, so could be nice if it would check whether the file still exists when loading and then maybe leave the setting empty if there is no file, or if its a critical file then give an error that loading the setting failed.
And also I ran into some bugs that I had a difficult time figuring out why they happened, but testing some things and switching between roms and such it might suddenly get a strange bug where it would no longer be able to boot and I had to leave the core and reload it to get it working again. I suspect one of the settings bugged out, but since its hard to tell what HDF, ISO, ADF and ROM files that the interface is pointing at, and them not being verified, its hard to tell what the problem has been, but I suspect it will be solved with some more verification of the current settings when resetting the core.
More advanced feature requests:
Having worked on supporting CDTV and CD32 games via software emulation on the Minimig core for the MiSTer it would also be nice to see CD support. I am happy that we can load ISO files but right now they are loaded as HDF disks using scsi.device instead of cd.device, which makes it more difficult to run CDTV and CD32 games as they seem to depend on it being CD devices for some games. I have figured out some ways to get a lot of the CD32 games working using SimCD32 though. I also found a way to get some CDTV games working. I hope to maybe mix the two solutions more than I already have to support CDTV games better.
Support for extended roms like CD32 and CDTV? I am pretty sure this could be possible without having to add support for CDs and other deep changes to the core. Extended ROMs are Amiga 1200 ROMs that are split in two. This also goes for the AROS rom it seems. Or maybe I just did not yet find an AROS rom for 68000. The Amiga 1200 chipset uses two physical ROM chips, I think this might be part of why they are split into two. So I cannot say if it might actually end up being rather complicated to support this in the FPGA. But I am pretty sure it could help me add better CD32 and CDTV support. For now I am trying to make custom Amiga ROMs, but I tried making a 1MB CD32 ROM using an Amiga program called Remus, but it does not boot with the Amiga core.
I might try again to see if I can help code the core. Some of these suggestions I have might be stuff I could help code myself. I am a software developer, but much of the FPGA stuff is just outside of my field of experience. But making some changes to the UI I might be able to do.