ADFFS 2.83

[djp]

Yes, unfortunately.

[JonAbbott]

I'll grab the KinoAmp source and see what I need to change in ADFFS to resolve it.

[djp]

Cheers, Jon. It's still possible to use KinoAmp, by the way, even when ADFFS is running, but only by opening a video file directly. KinoAmp starts and plays the video without issue, however, no KinoAmp icon appears in the icon bar.

[JonAbbott]

Cheers, Jon. It's still possible to use KinoAmp, by the way, even when ADFFS is running, but only by opening a video file directly. KinoAmp starts and plays the video without issue, however, no KinoAmp icon appears in the icon bar.

I have now investigated and reported the issue to the KinoAmp author. It's an unaligned Page Zero memory access that's gone unnoticed in KinoAmp which is only triggered when a second graphics driver is installed.

The workaround is to load KinoAmp before ADFFS so KinoAmp fails safe.

EDIT: KinoAmp v0.59 fixes the issue.

[djp]

Great stuff. Thank you, Jon.

[Qjimbo]

it would be cool if there was more general purpose information about using ADFFS - like the whole "GOARM3JIT" and "ADFRemapVideoMemory" commands which basically can get any old game running, I don't think this is known about enough.

Are you after information on how they work at a low level? I gave a talk about that about ten years ago, but have never produced a low-level document beyond the slides on here from that talk - mainly because...well...who is the audience?

I guess maybe I am thinking more like just a web page or wiki or something that explains how these commands can be used. Fair point about the audience though. Thats going to be an issue regardless. I guess I am thinking along the lines of helping more people to use these tools to get software working, instead of yourself having to be the one to do it.

it would be neat if there was a way to drag a !program onto the ADFFS icon and it would preconfigure it for specific JITs, maybe with a wizard or something? Then after that you can just run it. I understand we have the boot floppy scripts but being able to double click an icon is much more user friendly.

ADFFS is not really a turn-key solution like Aemulor which can be turned on and games just work. Games are a particular challenge to get running due to the way they generally access the system low-level and use all sorts of dodgy hacks for speed.

As a consequence ADFFS is essentially a collection of utilities that combined can get games running. If you take a look at a selection of scripts, you'll see quite a lot of them aren't straightforward as they're doing things like decoding game files and patching the code.

In many cases, specific OS versions, chipsets etc have to be emulator and I spent a lot of time figuring all that out to create the scripts.

So...although I could add the ability to drag/drop an app on the icon bar and it turns the JIT on for that process - its likely to result in a ton of support issues/questions from people that expect it to just work, that don't realise its not that simple.

True. Another idea I thought of is if there is some way to change the filer menu (no idea if this is even feasible) so you can middle click on an !Application and have a list of various ADFFS compatibility options, JITs, video memory, etc, and these could be stored in a config file somewhere inside the application directory.

It would be cool if more people could access these features and share configs that work.

[JonAbbott]

I wrote a really long response going into a lot of detail of the issues and how ADFFS doesn't currently let itself to what you're asking...which was subsequently lost because I'd taken two hours to write it and my login session had timed out! I stupidly didn't copy it to the clipboard before submitting.

Suffice to say, have you read the *command documentation in the !ADFFS app help? There should be enough detail there on every command to be able to write scripts.

Until ADFFS supports CPU paravirtualization and can sand-box a full VM running the full legacy OS, I can't offer a turn-key solution. There's also a problem with the OS corrupting L2PT entries when it task-switches that needs resolving and the OS devs need to document/open up task-switching so ADFFS can switch in the VM when required.

[Qjimbo]

I wrote a really long response going into a lot of detail of the issues and how ADFFS doesn't currently let itself to what you're asking...which was subsequently lost because I'd taken two hours to write it and my login session had timed out! I stupidly didn't copy it to the clipboard before submitting.

Suffice to say, have you read the *command documentation in the !ADFFS app help? There should be enough detail there on every command to be able to write scripts.

Until ADFFS supports CPU paravirtualization and can sand-box a full VM running the full legacy OS, I can't offer a turn-key solution. There's also a problem with the OS corrupting L2PT entries when it task-switches that needs resolving and the OS devs need to document/open up task-switching so ADFFS can switch in the VM when required.

Oh no! I appreciate you taking so much time to address my thoughts, I kind of feel bad making you spend so long while I’m just here spitballing my random ideas!

I will look in the help file. I guess because I couldn’t find much looking on google I assumed it wasn’t documented, when it was in the help file.

Thanks again!

[JonAbbott]

I kind of feel bad making you spend so long while I’m just here spitballing my random ideas!

I wouldn't fret, it was my own fault for not copying the message to the clipboard, which is something I always do in case of a submission error.

[Vanfanel]

Hello again, John

I installed Risc OS 5.30 on my Pi4 via !PackMan using WiFi for the first time today!

However, I had difficulties: When adding

Code: Select all

https://www.jaspp.org.uk/packages/release

to !PackMan sources, it would be unable to update the package lists.
I added

Code: Select all

http://www.jaspp.org.uk/packages/release

instead (ie: http instead of https) and everything went fine.
Just so you may change that on the first page on the thread, in the installation instructions.
Note the other sources on the list are all plain http, which is fine I guess.