ADFFS 2.40

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richw
Posts: 159
Joined: Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: ADFFS 2.40

Post by richw »

JonAbbott wrote:
richw wrote:ADFFS starts. I can open the Pacmania disk image and see the files. 'Boot floppy' starts the game, but... instead of one display, I see several of them arranged in a tile.
Can you confirm that !SparkFS is running, as it doesn't sound like they're being run through the latest boot scripts. If it can't access the Obey file (<ADFFS$Dir>.Obey.Fxxxx01) it will run the boot script that's embedded in the floppy image and if that doesn't exist will fall back to a SHIFT-BOOT of the floppy.

The boot scripts in the floppy images haven't been updated for the Pi yet, so its essential that the games are run via the boot scripts in !ADFFS.obey - hence the requirement for !SparkFS.

If !SparkFS is running, can you go to an F12 prompt with ADFFS loaded and see what "*ADFRemapVideoMemory 9 80" does. You should be in MODE 9 with no double image.
I see. I definitely do have SparkFS loaded - I even put it into the boot/desktop sequence alongside ADFFS itself. I can open archives as if they were directories. Note that I am using the free read-only version which comes with the HardDisk4 image from ROOL. I shall do some digging around to determine what is going on. Thanks for the pointers.

Any particular reason you compress the obey scripts? LFAU?

As a general approach, I run SparkFS and ADFFS first. Then I take the downloaded game archive from this site, and open it. Inside, I see lots of files, one of which is the ADF floppy image. I extract this to my SD card, set type to floppy, then double-click it. I can see the files in the ADFS Filer window, and just click Boot Floppy.

I found that if I try and mount the floppy image from within the downloaded archive, it doesn't work. I forget the error, but I will try and write it down.
JonAbbott
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Re: ADFFS 2.40

Post by JonAbbott »

richw wrote:Any particular reason you compress the obey scripts?
Simply to get around the directory size limit on RO3.1. ZIP seemed like a good choice at time, as a wrapper for ZLib could be added at a later date and they can be treated as directories with SparkFS. SparkFS is also bundled with the Pi, so lots of positives, the only downside is the memory footprint on RO3.1.

Once the boot scripts are finalised they're appended to the floppy images, currently all the released floppies have boot scripts suitable for RO3.1 to RO4 up to ARM710. When we get to a non-beta release of ADFFS for the StrongARM/ARM11, I'll update all the floppy images to include the new boot scripts.
richw wrote:I found that if I try and mount the floppy image from within the downloaded archive, it doesn't work. I forget the error, but I will try and write it down.
That's something I've never tested but probably should :oops:

Let me know what the *ADFRemapVideoMemory command does, I'm hoping it will work, if not we'll have to do some diagnostics.
richw
Posts: 159
Joined: Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: ADFFS 2.40

Post by richw »

I have tried the remapvideomemory command, but it made no difference to the game. When I pressed F12 and typed it, I got a mode 9 screen, but it was clearly split into two (one above the other). I checked that by typing 'rommodules' and seeing the scrolling output.

I definitely have SparkFS loaded. I can open the obey archive from the desktop, and even navigate into it and *type a file from a task window.

I have tried the cutting edge Pi firmware, and also RC11.
richw
Posts: 159
Joined: Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: ADFFS 2.40

Post by richw »

JonAbbott wrote:
richw wrote:Any particular reason you compress the obey scripts?
Simply to get around the directory size limit on RO3.1.


Ah, of course. I forgot about the 77 object nonsense! I guess another option could be to use multiple directories, so have two or three levels.
Once the boot scripts are finalised they're appended to the floppy images, currently all the released floppies have boot scripts suitable for RO3.1 to RO4 up to ARM710. When we get to a non-beta release of ADFFS for the StrongARM/ARM11, I'll update all the floppy images to include the new boot scripts.
I didn't realise the disk images had the scripts built in. What is the theory there?
richw wrote:I found that if I try and mount the floppy image from within the downloaded archive, it doesn't work. I forget the error, but I will try and write it down.
That's something I've never tested but probably should :oops:
I must be mis-remembering. I just tried it now, and the disk files appear as type 'data', so you cannot double-click to mount them anyway. There's an issue, but I forgot the detail, sorry.

A minor thing... If you double-click an image, it opens a Filer window, ADFS::Pacmania for example. But if you then click the icon bar icon, you get a second window, ADFS::Pacmania.$. Spot the difference? Should they not be the same?
JonAbbott
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Re: ADFFS 2.40

Post by JonAbbott »

richw wrote:Ah, of course. I forgot about the 77 object nonsense! I guess another option could be to use multiple directories, so have two or three levels.
I did consider that, but there's going to be hundreds of them. Have one zip to maintain and potentially distribute is a neat solution.
richw wrote:I didn't realise the disk images had the scripts built in. What is the theory there?
The embedded scripts are the official JASPP ones, !ADFFS.Obey is really meant to allow users to override the boot scripts with their own ones, should you want to enable Joysticks etc. For the time being, we're using the overrides to develop them before they're burned into the final images.
richw wrote:I must be mis-remembering. I just tried it now, and the disk files appear as type 'data', so you cannot double-click to mount them anyway. There's an issue, but I forgot the detail, sorry.
The ZIP files are PC ZIP's, there's supposed to be a front-end to ADFFS along the lines of MAMEGUI which obfuscates the ZIP from the user. I'm not sure what happened to the developer, I supplied him with an A5000 and haven't heard from him since :(
richw wrote:A minor thing... If you double-click an image, it opens a Filer window, ADFS::Pacmania for example. But if you then click the icon bar icon, you get a second window, ADFS::Pacmania.$. Spot the difference? Should they not be the same?
Well spotted, I hadn't noticed that. Its a bug as it should append the ".$" when it opens the filer window, I'll fix it for the next release.
richw
Posts: 159
Joined: Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: ADFFS 2.40

Post by richw »

Update: I am an idiot. I overlooked something silly. I could not get the screen display right, and remapvideomemory did not help. Guess why? I was using the 'generic' monitor definition file, which I barely considered, as it was giving me a lovely 1920x1080 desktop. I loaded the Acorn AKF50 file, and bingo, problem solved.

Going back to the Generic MDF, the problem returned (multiple displays). I then tried with AnyMode, and can report that it also fixes my original issue. I think I prefer that to worrying about the contents of MDFs!

So it was all my fault. Can't believe I didn't consider that!

I just had a look at the GUI forum. I had forgotten all about it. Some nice ideas. Would be good to flesh out some more ideas and implementation options. I will see if I can think of anything useful.
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