MiniMig NTSC

[Darrin]

amigadave wrote:

I know that interest is shifting to the NatAmi, but the MiniMig is still a good project and should not be abandoned.

Plus the Minimig is actually here.  :-)

One thing that I'm learning is that if we can't have a hard drive emulation soon then can we have 2 floppy drives emulated please?  The Minimig has its own version of "disk swapper's wrist".   :-D

[straycat]

@ Darrin:
Cannon Fodder seems to be an interesting one. The Minimig wiki reads "Loads fine, but after a few minutes of action, mouse becomes uncontrollable dashing a round the screen. (Possibly a faulty mouse)." from one submission. My own experience has been the loading coming to a standstill around the point it prompts for the 2nd disk when the game's still loading (after the intro sequence). I've only tried downloaded ADFs from the net though, not my own copy. Darrin: are you using a ACube 1.1 Minimig?

[boing4000]

Hi @ all,

today I should receive my Minimig shipping, I am very excited

for all this modifications in the minimig core (FPGA Firmware), i also want to test and try something out.
question is, how to compile a single module into the whole minimig1.bin file??
is there a freeware compiler available? do i have to translate the whole source again to insert a single module?

i am sorry for looking stupid to you, this is my first try in doing something like that. until now i did only code some little intros in m68k assembly.

please help a bit, minimig is a fantastic project

regards
Sascha

[bloodline]

amigadave wrote:

yaqube wrote:
I'm still working on the ECS. It's almost done but there are some things to do yet (i.e. full super hires support in Denise).

I decided to try to find the reasons why some games don't work. I've already found some incompatibilities and fixed them (i.e. NZ Story scrolls fine now) but there are still some. I have an almost fully working Action Replay and some debugging stuff build into my MiniMig. I hope it will help to hunt bugs quickly. If you can report which game and in what way does not work it will be very helpful.

I'm quite busy now but expect new firmware with sourcecode in a few weeks.

@alehx: Are you working on adf write support?

Any progress on ECS?  Also, is anyone else working on NTSC for the MiniMig?  I know that interest is shifting to the NatAmi, but the MiniMig is still a good project and should not be abandoned.

I would say quite the opposite... the MiniMig is actually more interesting to me... though I would really like it be be able to replace my A1200... ie AGA and an 020 :-)

[Darrin]

straycat wrote:
@ Darrin:
Cannon Fodder seems to be an interesting one. The Minimig wiki reads "Loads fine, but after a few minutes of action, mouse becomes uncontrollable dashing a round the screen. (Possibly a faulty mouse)." from one submission. My own experience has been the loading coming to a standstill around the point it prompts for the 2nd disk when the game's still loading (after the intro sequence). I've only tried downloaded ADFs from the net though, not my own copy. Darrin: are you using a ACube 1.1 Minimig?

Sorry, I only just saw this post.

Yes, I'm using a v1.1 with a KS1.3 ROM and the NTSC core from this thread, but with the jumper set for PAL (not NTSC as in the Jpeg that comes with the core's instructions).

I'm sure that there are going to be differences between the ADF images used as some problems I report come after the crack intros.  I have a lot of original disks which I can try and make ADFs from instead of using cracked ones, but when I tried to install them using WHDload I discovered that a lot of my disks now have read errors (which was a major reason for wanting to get a Minimig).

I can send you the Cannon Fodder ADFs I used if you would like to test them.  Unfortuneately I'm in Brazil for the next 3 weeks, so I hope you don't mind waiting.  :-)

[boing4000]

@yaqube
What changes did you make for the 50/60Hz switching?
It acts like a PAL and NTSC machine, but some games and demos/intros then show different graphics effects.

e.g. an old cracktro from Blizzard works fine at 50Hz. switsching to 60Hz will "destroy" the objects and scroll text.
switsching back to 50Hz everything is back to normal.
the same is even when booting up at 60Hz and then switsching down to 50Hz. its the mode itself what causes the graphic trouble.

perhaps we can combine our research to find the general problem that also make other games and demos show that graphics problems all the time.

This video filter idea is impressive, looks like a bilinear filter, very useful für large TFT screen
how is it made? please tell us :-)

[yaqube]

boing4000 wrote:
@yaqube
What changes did you make for the 50/60Hz switching?
It acts like a PAL and NTSC machine, but some games and demos/intros then show different graphics effects.

The 50/60 Hz mode switch is very simple. The total number of lines in NTSC is limited from 312 (typical value for PAL) to 262. Every line is still 227 colour clocks long like in PAL and there is no short/long line toggling. So it isn't 100% NTSC compatible.
It was a very quick fix for people with monitors which can't sync down to 50Hz.
Many games/demos won't work correctly in NTSC mode because they've never been meant to.

This video filter idea is impressive, looks like a bilinear filter, very useful für large TFT screen
how is it made? please tell us :-)

Yes, it is actually bilinear filtering. I've always wanted my real Amiga to have interpolation of the low-res screens and I planned to build a flicker-fixer with this feature. Thanks to Dennis I could implement this on Minimig.

Now I'm working on improving compatibility with games which were reported to not run on Minimig.

[Darrin]

@yaqube

I have to tell you thanks for releasing that core because it was the only way I could use my Minimig on my widescreen LCD.

Do you have plans to do the same modification to the latest core from Dennis?  It pains me to have to go back to an old CRT again now that I have been spoilt.  :-D

I look forward to seeing more releases from you so that I can re-check the games on my list that don't work.

Cheers.

[Darrin]

Oh, and if you want a tester for any new code then feel free to use me.  I promise I wont demand the source code every time you change one line.   :-)

[TheDaddy]

>>Now I'm working on improving compatibility with games which were reported to not run on Minimig.

That is music to my ears! Brilliant!

Thank you.

[straycat]

Darrin wrote:
@yaqube

Do you have plans to do the same modification to the latest core from Dennis?  It pains me to have to go back to an old CRT again now that I have been spoilt.  :-D

Same here - a mod of the latest Dennis core would be excellent!

[straycat]

Darrin:
I can send you the Cannon Fodder ADFs I used if you would like to test them.  Unfortuneately I'm in Brazil for the next 3 weeks, so I hope you don't mind waiting.  :-)

@Darren
If it's no trouble that would be excellent - and of course I can wait a few weeks  :-)

[Darrin]

straycat wrote:

If it's no trouble that would be excellent - and of course I can wait a few weeks  :-)

OK, I get home on the 29th, so PM me your email address before then.

It's a shame that it's probably illegal to set up a database of working and tested ADFs.  It's going to be a pain if some versions of a game work and others don't due to hardware banging intros.

[freqmax]

The games proberbly don't have anyone looking for them like with RIAA, BSA etc..
And anyway what they don't know/see won't hurt them :-)
So make the database semi public.

As for 50 Hz to LCD, Use an video buffer, and 75 Hz mode on the LCD. 25 deinterlaced frames/s * 3 = 75 Hz, which most monitors can manage.

[FrenchShark]

Crazy idea :
you "overclock" PAL Natami by 1.25x (the HW should handle that easily) : the screen refresh becomes 62.5 Hz.

Regards,

Frederic

[freqmax]

It will wreck any timing within the software. Same goes with the user interaction.