MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi.
Is there any plans for Amiga CD32 in usage with CD-Images? I just used some ports in WHDload without CD-Audio.
thanks for all the super cores !!

I would really like this too

Oh yeah, I never had the chance to play AB3D with its superb soundtrack, or T-Zero... Granted, there aren't a ton of improved games with the CD tracks.

The Kickstarts "1Mb" of the CD32 works on the MISTer, but the recognition of CD images poses a problem.

@mahen The T-zero soundtrack works very well on the MISTer or an A1200.

Could the work that is used to read CD images for other cores like Sega CD and PC Engine CD be used to make the CD32 core or is it bespoke work needed for the core? I think this would be a really nice core to have.

Seems the Commadore CDTV is also in a similar boat, with the chips mostly done but needing to be able to read CD images.

@ Tempus01 : Hi ! I'm not sure to understand, are you referring to the music which are CDDA tracks ? (in the full version at least, maybe not in the demo). Thanks !

@mahen : Yes, I'm talking about the full version.
On the MISTer or on an A1200, you must install T-zero in full version and to enjoy the music, the ISO image of the game "which contains the tracks" must be mounted before launching T-ZERO.

Tempus01 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2020 3:21 pm @mahen : Yes, I'm talking about the full version.
On the MISTer or on an A1200, you must install T-zero in full version and to enjoy the music, the ISO image of the game "which contains the tracks" must be mounted before launching T-ZERO.

What do you mean with mounting the ISO image?

@Chris23235 : The ISO image can be mounted with IDEFIX or Isomount .

I'm really surprised, I didn't know it was possible. So the CDDA tracks are played on the Amiga side, downsampled and then through Paula ? It doesn't slow the game down ?

Tempus01 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:56 pm @Chris23235 : The ISO image can be mounted with IDEFIX or Isomount .

Didn't knew this was possible, interesting, I always found T-Zero only half as good without the soundtrack.

Did you also give AB3D a try with the audio tracks ?

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 7:19 pm

Tempus01 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:56 pm @Chris23235 : The ISO image can be mounted with IDEFIX or Isomount .

Didn't knew this was possible, interesting, I always found T-Zero only half as good without the soundtrack.

I don't think ISO files (in general) contain any CD Audio...

Yep indeed... I'm not sure to understand how those CDDA tracks are played in T-Zero !

Tempus01 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:56 pm @Chris23235 : The ISO image can be mounted with IDEFIX or Isomount .

How to using IDEFIX?

@Tempus01 : are you sure you are referring to the *ingame* soundtrack ?

Lisko wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 8:28 am

Tempus01 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:56 pm @Chris23235 : The ISO image can be mounted with IDEFIX or Isomount .

How to using IDEFIX?

Isomount requires that you have the ISO copied into an HDF file. That is not really ideal...

You don't need IDEFix to mount an ISO file. You most likely already have a CD filesystem.

Using the OSD, Select the ISO file to "Primary Slave" just as you would select select a HDF.

Reboot...

In SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers you should have a "CD0" icon.

From the "Icon" drop-down menu select "Information"

In the "Tool types" memo change "UNIT=2" to "Unit=1"

Double Click on "CD0" and you should see an icon appear on the desktop --> https://youtu.be/vszBSVehRoc

Be aware that CD Audio tracks will not be audible...

Hope that helps

bbond007 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 13, 2020 3:25 pm

Lisko wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 8:28 am

Tempus01 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:56 pm @Chris23235 : The ISO image can be mounted with IDEFIX or Isomount .

How to using IDEFIX?

Isomount requires that you have the ISO copied into an HDF file. That is not really ideal...

You don't need IDEFix to mount an ISO file. You most likely already have a CD filesystem.

Using the OSD, Select the ISO file to "Primary Slave" just as you would select select a HDF.

Reboot...

In SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers you should have a "CD0" icon.

From the "Icon" drop-down menu select "Information"

In the "Tool types" memo change "UNIT=2" to "Unit=1"

Double Click on "CD0" and you should see an icon appear on the desktop --> https://youtu.be/vszBSVehRoc

Be aware that CD Audio tracks will not be audible...

Hope that helps

Thanks for the info. I have already installed idefix just for its optimizations to the ide controller and nostalgia. I'll try your trick as it doesn't even require copying to hdf. I hope that sooner or later even a standard atapi cdrom will be implemented. That with idefix's cd32 emulation will be a nice present.

I have been experimenting with this. There is something called SquirrelSCSI that somewhat supports CDTV and CD32. Not sure how the CD32 did support CDTV? I think I read somewhere that it used some kind of emulation, but it seems like the problem with running CDTV games is the CPU.

Which is easy to test with the MiSTer and it does seem to make the difference to switch between 68000 and 68020. CDTV games often wont run when using 020 and then does run when using 68000. I need to test with some more of them though.

There is also SimCD32 which helps emulate a CD drive. I am trying to figure out a way to make a boot disk that might make it possible to select an iso file from the shared folder and then run it using SimCD32. But... f.ex. with Simon the Sorcerer on my Amiga 1200 I had to make a pretty custom version of it to make it work. I think I have to dig through my different boot setups, as I had one based on a menu that would boot different ISO files as CD32. But based on SimCD32 and some different startup files depending on what game to run.

I had hoped I could make a really general boot disk that would support CDTV and CD32. I do think its possible, but... hmm... need to experiment some more.

Another idea I have had is to try to customize a kick rom or two. Have it expect the CD to be in primary slave like the solution bbond007 suggested in some way. I have customized SimCD32 and SquirrelSCSI a bit and it seems to work pretty well, but I am running into different issues. SimCD32 wants to be based on CD images rather than... well, what seems to be real CDs.

One of the games I use to test with is Microcosm... not that I really find it to be a good game, but it is a CD32 game and whether it runs depends on these things being setup correctly. I converted a Cue Bin image to ISO and now I am wondering if maybe I did that wrong and that might be why its not fully working. As I think I had an issue in WinUAE as well.

Sure seems to be a lot of factors in play. I do think custom roms might be the best way to get some more general support working, but.. depends on how that works. Seems it might be a problem for these emulators when it cannot use CD.Device as part of it. I can probably test that in WinUAE.

I did a livestream video where I was messing around with different things. Setting up MiSTer stuff, setting up some boot disks and such on the MiSTer. Its over 3 hours long and a bit messy. Would help if I added some timestamps I guess, but I plan on making a video that shows how I got it to work, if I get it to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dmdwgM3DPE

I think I have 4 or 5 different CD32 emulation solutions. SimCD32, IDEFix 97, SquirrelSCSI and... oh yeah there is one called InstallKit as well. I think SquirrelSCSI is the only one with CDTV support.

Progress is good. Squirrel SCSI seems to support CDTV games very well, and SimCD32 I have customized so that it now uses the shared folder for MiSTer and looks in an ISO folder on it asking you to select an ISO file during boot. It now works with Microcosm, Simon the Sorcerer, Bubble Bobble Trilogy Collection and Beneath a Steel Sky. Which is all the ones I have tested this way so far.

I used a few tricks from the Squirrel SCSI boot disk. It had a few nice ways of supporting CDTV and CD32, but expects a real CD drive. Oh, and another thing that helped was to use the CD32 kickrom. I did not think it would make any difference but apparently it does.

Savegames do not work yet, but I got that to work on my A1200 and it should be fixable. It should be possible to make it save to the floppy disk using a assign the right way.

I used a really nice command called QueryFile.

Here is a video I made about how to get CD32 and CDTV running on the MiSTer core using SimCD32 and SquirrelSCSI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVj6dRChpfU

That is great news. Looking forward to this.

killersquirel wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 5:05 am That is great news. Looking forward to this.

It already works, although not for everything. There are links in the description of the video, but some files you will have to find yourself. It should be easy to Google them though.

I found a fix that helped with AO486, as it used to only take up the center of the screen. So if it should have been 800x600, it seemed to only be 400x300. I could then click full screen, but it would only become full screen horizontally but not vertically. Then I found a setting that allows scaling vertically and it fixed it. I have not tested it with the Amiga Minimig core though, that might now have issues because of that setting, I will test that next. But so far this seems to work for everything on my CRT.

Why not natively support the CHD format as an alternative to ISO? CHD supports audio tracks.

RWE wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 8:43 pm Why not natively support the CHD format as an alternative to ISO? CHD supports audio tracks.

Its not just as simple as supporting a audio format, the AO486 core already supports cue / bin files and several other image formats that has the audio, but the core itself does not seem to support playing that audio.

Haven't tried it yet but there's native CD support added to the core now? Still no redbook audio though.

With the adition of the Akiko chip, shouldn't it be possible to boot CD32 iso files now?

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 6:19 pm With the adition of the Akiko chip, shouldn't it be possible to boot CD32 iso files now?

No, because it doesn't yet cover the whole of Akiko - just the Chunky2Planar register.

Most CD32 games does not use Akiko though, but I think maybe the CD32 does use Akiko for the CD drive somehow, even when the game itself does not use the chip. But support for data CDs, support for Chunky2Planner Akiko, support for more than 64kb NVRAM... it does seem like we might see CD32 support eventually.