Lacks support for cassette/disk images

[alarixnia]

Many European games (Feud, Chuckie Egg, etc) weren't released on ROM cartridge, so they're currently not playable.

[gingerbeardman]

@ensrha a temporary workaround is to use dsk2rom windows utility: https://www.msx.org/news/software/en/dsk2rom-080

I used this to convert a custom .dsk to .rom and it boots OK

[gingerbeardman]

I've added (untested) support for .dsk and .cas file extensions in pull #15

Will close when merged

[alarixnia]

@gingerbeardman Thanks for the recommendation of dsk2rom. I found the source code at Vincent's MSX software and built it for unix. Converted Feud, and it works perfectly. Chuckie Egg loads but isn't really playable since it doesn't support a joystick.

Currently this repository doesn't build, but if I roll back to ae3d93a and try to load a disk image, it doesn't work. It's still trying to load it as a ROM:

Found Chuckie Egg (1984)(A & F Software).dsk:
Not a valid cartridge ROM

Supporting autoboot also seems necessary since it's very difficult to get anything done with the keyboard in RetroArch.

[gingerbeardman]

OK I have reverted the dsk & cas changes in #17

...for now!

[gingerbeardman]

@ensrha I've taken a look at the code and I'm actually confident I can do this as soon as my cores are building.

As well as adding the file extension support, I need to branch the filename loading to ROM or DSK depending on the file type

[gingerbeardman]

I've made a first pass these changes, see gingerbeardman@a81fd69

[gingerbeardman]

@ensrha there are many ways an MSX disc might boot.

the one i am using has an AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

other methods are listed here: http://www.msxblue.com/manual/dskfaq_c.htm

but really the only way to solve the issue of loading every game is to add a keyboard.

[gingerbeardman]

Success with DSK!

Partial success with CAS, more work required.

[gingerbeardman]

This has been completed in: #20

[gingerbeardman]

@ensrha disk support has been merged, it's the latest nightly. would appreciate your feedback!

[alarixnia]

Great!

OK, I've tested this using the two example games from my initial post. The Chuckie Egg disk image loads successfully, but the Feud image hangs on a blue screen. For the sake of experiment, I tried to load another two games, 180 and Manic Miner. 180 shows a "Loading, please wait" screen with a small bit of text corruption and hangs. Manic Miner loads successfully. The standalone fmsx displays identical problems using all of these images.

For now, converting the disk images to ROM seems to be the most reliable way of playing them in fmsx.

Update: OpenMSX also seems to struggle with those particular disk images, but differently to fmsx (it gets stuck in a reset loop). Odd.

[alarixnia]

I'm closing this because the problems that remain seem more likely to be related to the emulation code than the libretro wrapper. Thanks for your help.

[gingerbeardman]

Great. I'll do some further investigation anyway.

…

On Thursday, 29 June 2017, ensrha ***@***.***> wrote: I'm closing this because the problems that remain seem more likely to be related to the emulation code than the libretro frontend. Thanks for your help. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#13 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AADBzNJT0Bq4qRYE97SHOcTzTbuAt-OYks5sIuxigaJpZM4OEndq> .

[gingerbeardman]

@ensrha As with all of these old computers there are many different versions of these old games. The first disk images I tried for your 4 games had the same symptoms as you.

I had better luck with the disks from the MSX MANIA collection: https://www.msx.org/node/44843
All your 4 chosen (MSX1) games work in fMSX with those well packaged/tested disks.

Also, for future reference here's a list of game compatibility for MSX1/2/2+: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MSX_games