Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

I tried the MOD plugin on Panther/2, and GUS. It plays, but for example: the mouse doesn't work properly (it runs to the left).

Nice that it plays!
The mouse thing should be solvable. I probably have another interrupt taking too long, or I'm holding interrupts disabled for too long somewhere.
That'll easily cause that single-byte acia buffer to overflow and TOS's ikbd parser will be forever confused.
I was sure I made MFP interrupt re-entrant to combat that sort of thing so I probably just have interrupts completely disabled during some point.
I will look into that.

OPL and MID not working.

I'm not sure I know what that means :)
Crashing on plugin start? Crashing on song load? Hanging forever? Not crashing but error on loading? Appears to be playing and time display is ticking but nothing is audible?

Is that on your soundblaster? With GUS not connected to your computer?

A bit of a sidetrack, you can have both installed but it would be a bit like going back in time to MS-DOS days of making sure ports are not conflicting.

This is my audio part of ISA_BIOS.INF, yours will be different if you have a different model card but the theory is the same.
You'd need to look in ISA_BIOS.LOG for accepted card+device settings, which "conf" sections they have (if any) and beneath them it will list the number of IO ports the device would use and their valid ranges you can reconfigure them as.
Some cards split all their things into subdevices which is really nice. My SB clone doesn't so it requires moving some ports as to not conflict with the GUS.

Code: Select all

# SB: use conf2 as base.
# We cannot disable the thing using port 220 so just move
# it to 280 to prevent it from conflicting with GUS
# io2 is the OPL, io3 is the MPU401
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.conf = 2
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io0 = 280
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io1 = 530
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io2 = 388
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io3 = 330
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io4 = 370

# SB: move joystick to port 202 (GUS joystick is at 201) 
dev.YMH0800.YMH0022.conf = 1

# GUS: disable OPL to prevent conflict with SB
dev.GRV0001.GRV0003.enable = 0

# GUS: disable MPU401 to prevent conflict with SB
dev.GRV0001.GRV0004.enable = 0

[agranlund]

Great that you keep the older versions as well in the github.
So results are
...
So you will probably know what this means I hope……. I hope it makes sense..

Thanks, yes that is very helpful!
Yeah I didn't want to remove that version since it is by far the most and longest tested.

So what I will do is go back to 240705 as the base, apply the recent smaller changes I did for PicoGUS, and that will become the newest version.
240805 and 240809 both has other larger bus changes mainly for being able to run at 1x properly.
I'll scrap that and keep as some kind of side project for some other time.

It's not a feature I'm interested in myself and it really takes the joy away testing everything with several different oscillators and in both 2x and 1x speeds.

But on my GUS it seems that the right channel is off a bit (plays a bit softer) but maybe that is a problem with my GUS clone. But everything is there just a bit too low in volume.

It could also just be the playback code.
Either the original code, or probably more likely if I mucked something up porting the stuff :)
The playback is based on "OpenCubicPlayer pre2.6.0 (MS-DOS)". That one has different code for AMD vs GF1. They mostly look the same but there are differences due to AMD having more features. Per-channel left/right volumes is definitely one of these cases.

I don't have a real MS-DOS machine to compare OCP-Pre260 with both cards against Raven and the mod plugin and both cards.
Or even OCP-Pre260 against a modern mod player.

Do you have a link to a mod in particular where the issue is obvious?

ultrinit.prg should be setting master left/rights to the same at least.
But neither synth master volume nor line-out are set to full output I just picked values that I felt made sense on my machine.
That application wont touch volumes on GF1 cards but those chips should boot with some non-muted volumes by default.
Some kind of mixer application would be nice of course :)

[artik-wroc]

Is that on your soundblaster? With GUS not connected to your computer?

When a GUS replica is connected, the SB is removed (Panther only has two ISA slots).
Doesn't work = hangs when trying to load a MIDI file.

[agranlund]

When a GUS replica is connected, the SB is removed (Panther only has two ISA slots).
Doesn't work = hangs when trying to load a MIDI file.

Does it work with the Soundblaster still?
I'm trying to fish for if this is some kind of general regression since it used to work on the SB I believe?

OPL certainly wont work on GUS without writing something similar to SBOS on MS-DOS.
The hardware exposes the ports but it relies on a software TSR too for its (terrible) OPL emulation to work.

I am unsure about Midi but as far as I know the GUS has it's own thing which is not register compatible with MPU401, and just like its OPL situation it relies on software TSR (Mega-Em or UltraMid) to finish off MPU401 emulation and make midi actually usable by stuff.

I think the most common setup was GUS for the GUS stuff, and a soundblaster for everything else because the GUS is terrible at emulating the other stuff.

The PicoGUS on the other hand! It has "real" MPU401 and OPL2 without need for software emulation on the host computer.
MPU401 can be active in all modes but GUS and OPL2 modes are mutually exclusive and needs to be toggled with pgusinit.prg.

[Oldskool]

It could also just be the playback code.

No it's not. It's my GUS. Just testing with a real GUS. What a nice card.. Real quality. Plays perfectly.
And yes the classic setup was GUS + SB in the day.

The legend himself:

IMG_2845.jpeg

PS
Sorry don't know how to convert pld to hex...

[agranlund]

The legend himself:

Wow! That Raven should feel honoured for hosting such a beauty :)

[Oldskool]

The legend himself:

Wow! That Raven should feel honoured for hosting such a beauty :)

Yes it looks really cool and high quality feel. It also sounds better than the PicoGus.

Concerning your latest file it is stable with both PicoGus, Real GUS and Real GUS diy (with the bad balance :)).

So:

happy ness.jpg

[agranlund]

Concerning your latest file it is stable with both PicoGus, Real GUS and Real GUS diy (with the bad balance :)).
So:happy ness.jpg

Awesome! Thanks so much for giving it a go :)
I'll scrap the other ones except for version 240705 and put the new one as latest.

I have some fixes for 16 color and 32k color modes in progress but I'll sit on those for a while.
The bus changes will be stashed for the future = 2x cpu multiplier is the only supported option for now.

[artik-wroc]

Does it work with the Soundblaster still?

Yes. And I'll stay with SB :)
GUS is hard to configure even on PC.

A (working) SB driver for GSXB would be ideal. :)

[Oldskool]

Code: Select all

# SB: use conf2 as base.
# We cannot disable the thing using port 220 so just move
# it to 280 to prevent it from conflicting with GUS
# io2 is the OPL, io3 is the MPU401
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.conf = 2
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io0 = 280
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io1 = 530
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io2 = 388
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io3 = 330
dev.YMH0800.YMH0021.io4 = 370

# SB: move joystick to port 202 (GUS joystick is at 201) 
dev.YMH0800.YMH0022.conf = 1

# GUS: disable OPL to prevent conflict with SB
dev.GRV0001.GRV0003.enable = 0

# GUS: disable MPU401 to prevent conflict with SB
dev.GRV0001.GRV0004.enable = 0

Cool thanks that also works here. All music is a go….