Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

Some quick and easy low-hanging optimisations and Gnuboy runs decent enough on Raven.
It still clearly suffers on some Gameboy Color titles but it could easily turn into a big project and I'm not interested enough to spend any more time on it.

If anyone wants it it can be downloaded from here:
https://github.com/agranlund/gnuboy/releases/tag/latest

It does run the colorised Super Mario Land DX rom-hack quite well and that's enough to keep me happy as I never got around to try that one before

[Oldskool]

I love the gameboy although I never owned the color one. Just the b/w and tetris.

How is the sound done in this implementation?

[agranlund]

I love the gameboy although I never owned the color one. Just the b/w and tetris.
How is the sound done in this implementation?

Me too!
So many good games for that little handheld.
I especially like the Gameboy Pocket b&w model. The Color too of course but I think the smaller form factor of the Pocket is perfect.

Sound is blasted out by the Soundblaster

[agranlund]

Whaaat :-O You are full of surprises.

Here's something even earlier and slightly quirkier
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2018/01/ ... o-348693/


The built-in game he shows is indeed a Gameboy game that I made for Datel back in the day.
Or, more precisely, adapted for Datel since it's just a quick conversion of a freeware game I had made before.
I get embarrassed and proud at the same time seeing those screenshots.

I didn't have anything to do with the hardware or the emulator software. My only contribution was that simple game and for that I was paid an N64 + Turok and was quite happy for that. Oh to be young and naive again

gamebooster_ps1.jpg (19.8 KiB) Viewed 720 times

[Oldskool]

Yes! Big benefit is that I don’t need to charge my NiCd batteries..

IMG_1816.jpeg (82.7 KiB) Viewed 643 times

Also like the opl midi driver. Sounds of the past…

[agranlund]

Yes! Big benefit is that I don’t need to charge my NiCd batteries..

Cool!!

I decided to clean up the code and made a new release binary.
https://github.com/agranlund/gnuboy/releases/tag/latest

The only practical changes are these:

* Soundblaster sound no longer crackles if the emulator cannot keep up with proper framerate.
(Intro sequence in Zelda DX, and perhaps some other GBC titles)

* It'll try different sound drivers in this order so perhaps it may work on other 68060 compatible machines such as CT60 or Vampire.
1) Soundblaster card on ISA bus
2) SDL Audio
3) No-sound

[agranlund]

Also like the opl midi driver. Sounds of the past…

Yeah I love it, so much nostalgia!

[peters]

I couldn't resist trying gnuboy on the Milan.

It started and I selected the Tetris (world) game GB file.

The game opened and looks like it's prompting for 1 or 2 players but then the Milan locks up.

[agranlund]

I could resist trying gnuboy on the Milan.

It started and I selected the Tetris (world) game GB file.

The game opened and looks like it's prompting for 1 or 2 players but then the Milan locks up.

Cool! Would be cool if it did work.

I have three wild guesses and this latest build should be able to verify if it's any of those:
https://github.com/agranlund/gnuboy/releases/tag/latest

Try starting with all sound code disabled.
This'll have a side effect of not being able to frame-limit the game in case emulation runs too fast so it's only useful for this specific debugging really.

Code: Select all

gnuboy.prg --no-sound --no-nullsound

If that works then let's see if it works with the null sound driver. You wont get audio but it will limit games from running too fast.

Code: Select all

gnuboy.prg --no-sound

And if that works then it's either the Soundblaster stuff being confused on Milan, or it's the SDL audio.
I don't have an Atari that can make use of the SDL audio driver so it's untested code mostly the same as the Linux version.

Either way, we can verify by disabling the Soundblaster auto detection so that it'll prefer SDL instead.

Code: Select all

gnuboy.prg --no-sbsound

I also built the binary for 020-060 instead of just 060 but I believe you have a 060 in your Milan so it's probably not that

[peters]

It works with all of those options.