ColecoDS - Improved

[wavemotion]

Version 7.7 is released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V7.7: 05-Sept-2022 by wavemotion-dave

• MegaROMs now supported up to 1024k
• Minor cleanup across the board.

Nothing major ... I now support MegaROMs up to 1024k (1MB in size!). That's the maximum that MegaCarts can support for the Colecovision. Having said that - there are currently no games that are that big (largest right now is Wizard of Wor at a whopping 512kb). But I figured may as well have the support to future-proof the emulator.

A few other minor cleanups and memory optimizations - squeezed out another frame or so of performance... not that it needs it anymore.

 

[CrashMidnick]

Version 7.7 is released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V7.7: 05-Sept-2022 by wavemotion-dave

• MegaROMs now supported up to 1024k
• Minor cleanup across the board.

Nothing major ... I now support MegaROMs up to 1024k (1MB in size!). That's the maximum that MegaCarts can support for the Colecovision. Having said that - there are currently no games that are that big (largest right now is Wizard of Wor at a whopping 512kb). But I figured may as well have the support to future-proof the emulator.

A few other minor cleanups and memory optimizations - squeezed out another frame or so of performance... that that it needs it anymore.

Thanks Dave !

 

[Cris1997XX]

Version 7.7 is released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V7.7: 05-Sept-2022 by wavemotion-dave

• MegaROMs now supported up to 1024k
• Minor cleanup across the board.

Nothing major ... I now support MegaROMs up to 1024k (1MB in size!). That's the maximum that MegaCarts can support for the Colecovision. Having said that - there are currently no games that are that big (largest right now is Wizard of Wor at a whopping 512kb). But I figured may as well have the support to future-proof the emulator.

A few other minor cleanups and memory optimizations - squeezed out another frame or so of performance... not that it needs it anymore.

I think this emulator might as well be 100% complete now

 

[wavemotion]

I think this emulator might as well be 100% complete now

I think you're right. I sat down early this morning to see what I could add to it... there are no more Z80/TMS9918 systems left to add. I probably should have a better Adam drive configurations - dual floppies or dual DDP data drives... but that's more for convenience than anything else - since the games will all play fine as-is.

This emulator turned out rather nicely - there are a solid 1000+ games across the various systems that can be played including all the favorites from my childhood

 

[wavemotion]

So this just happened... For almost a year, Nintellivision had been my most popular Emulator (XEGS-DS was the most popular the year before). I realize 20 stars makes these emulators about as popular as Jeffery Dahmer at an all-you-can-eat buffet... but it's still cool to see roughly how popular each of these efforts has been.

 

[CrashMidnick]

Most important things to me is that they are better than any other emulators on other platforms that emulate the same devices thanks to the NDS dual screen, they are easy to use, they are accurate for most of them and, of course, the love you brought to them. Thanks.

 

[Cris1997XX]

I know it's been two months since the last update, but...I think it would be amazing to have support for the SCC sound chip. Those few Konami MSX1 games that use it really do sound weak without three audio channels, and it would make the experience more pleasing. Digging up that MSX emulator (Which I even forgot the name of) and grabbing all the necessary files is kinda bothersome. Still, I know your current focus is A7800DS

 

[wavemotion]

I've tried the SCC sound three times before and came up short... it requires 8 channels of mixed sounds - 3 from the original AY chip and 5 more (with waveforms) from the SCC chip. And, truth be told, sound emulation is the absolute least favorite thing I enjoy about this hobby.

But last night I gave it a few hours having not dug in for a few months... and I got some minor understanding of how the waveform table works and added the extra 5 channels of sound. Surprisingly, the 5 extra channels didn't kill the emulation speed completely... I think it was about a 10% loss on SCC games but the DSi has enough CPU to spare (the DS-Lite probably not). This morning with coffee I managed to get something resembling SCC sound. Which means I'm on the right track - the tune in Gradius 2 is very recognizable but is at the wrong pitch. The sounds in Kings Valley II sound better. But it means it's possible. I'll keep toying with it.

 

[Cris1997XX]

I've tried the SCC sound three times before and came up short... it requires 8 channels of mixed sounds - 3 from the original AY chip and 5 more (with waveforms) from the SCC chip. And, truth be told, sound emulation is the absolute least favorite thing I enjoy about this hobby.

But last night I gave it a few hours having not dug in for a few months... and I got some minor understanding of how the waveform table works and added the extra 5 channels of sound. Surprisingly, the 5 extra channels didn't kill the emulation speed completely... I think it was about a 10% loss on SCC games but the DSi has enough CPU to spare (the DS-Lite probably not). This morning with coffee I managed to get something resembling SCC sound. Which means I'm on the right track - the tune in Gradius 2 is very recognizable but is at the wrong pitch. The sounds in Kings Valley II sound better. But it means it's possible. I'll keep toying with it.

Heck yes! You can do it, we believe in you!

 

[wavemotion]

Version 7.8 released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V7.8: 13-Nov-2022 by wavemotion-dave

• Partial MSX SCC added. Music on Gradius 2/3, Parodius, King's Valley 2, F1 Spirit and Salamander!
• Better audio channel combining so that games with multiple channels of sound don't sound 'half as loud'.

Added preliminary support for the MSX SCC sound chip. This brings music to some amazing games - Gradius II and III, Salamander, Parodius and more. I've also researched how to properly combine audio channels. Previously I had been adding the channels and dividing by the number of channels. While this works, more channel combines cause the volume to be reduced. Life doesn't work this way - if two instruments are playing, they don't both get half-as-loud! So the new method is to add all channels and clip if needed (and with clever sampling, clipping should be minimal). This should normalize the sound across any game type no matter how many emulated sound chips are being combined.

 

[wavemotion]

In case you didn't know... Team Pixelboy is one of the big publishers of new homebrews for the Colecovision. Every year on Christmas he offers a small number of his games for free. Today his annual post (always a highlight for me!) is giving away Asteroids and Star Castle for the CV. Asteroids port is good... but the Star Castle port is phenomenal and really worth getting! Head on over to AtariAge and look for the Team Pixelboy bulletin for 25-Dec-2022 and, of course, both games play great on ColecoDS!

 

[Cris1997XX]

In case you didn't know... Team Pixelboy is one of the big publishers of new homebrews for the Colecovision. Every year on Christmas he offers a small number of his games for free. Today his annual post (always a highlight for me!) is giving away Asteroids and Star Castle for the CV. Asteroids port is good... but the Star Castle port is phenomenal and really worth getting! Head on over to AtariAge and look for the Team Pixelboy bulletin for 25-Dec-2022 and, of course, both games play great on ColecoDS!

Wow...! I guess I'm too late for this, but I'll give it a shot

 

[Cris1997XX]

I never really had the courage to ask, but...is this the last version involving SCC support?

 

[wavemotion]

I never really had the courage to ask, but...is this the last version involving SCC support?

Yes... the most recent release does support SCC. Don't expect audio miracles... but it mostly works given that I'm down pushing through like 9 mixed sound channels.

 

[wavemotion]

Version 7.9 released: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V7.9: 3-Mar-2023 by wavemotion-dave

• Fixed TMS9918a driver so we show sprites that cut-off near the edge of the top screen.
• Fixed TMS9918a driver so we refresh the borders on text-based games.

Some fixes to the video driver have been back-ported from my recent work on DS994a as the TI99/4a and the Colecovision/ADAM/MSX/etc. all use the same flavor of video VDP chip. This should fix the annoying 'invisible' sprites on a few games if a sprite gets right up against the top of the screen as well as fixing some garbage in the borders of text-based games.

 

[wavemotion]

Version 8.0: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

Just a minor touch-up to a few menu items. No functional changes but I did decide to remove the animated sprite from the title screen for reasons that are entirely my own.

 

[wavemotion]

https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V8.1: 22-Jul-2023 by wavemotion-dave

• Major rework of the CreatiVision driver for much improved compatibility and loading of BASIC listings.
• New CreatiVision keypad/keyboard overlay with stylings from 1981!
• Swap out bloated printf/sprintf for embedded versions.
• Added screen snapshot by holding L+R buttons while in-game.
• Other cleanups as time permitted.

Massive update to the CreatiVision driver of this emulator now supports the following:

• ROMs up to 32K loaded either Legacy A/B, Linear (up against C000h) or 32K Bankswapped (as might be used on the MegaCart) - the emulator takes its best guess which is almost always right but the user can override how the ROM is loaded.
• CSL emulation with RAM at 4000h to BFFFh and the ability to load either of the released 16K CSL bios ROMs (not provided - users can find it on their own)
• Simplified keyboard overlay which is fine for most of the commercial games and a custom keyboard in the CreatiVision style using the touch screen.
• The ability to load ASCII .BAS listings directly into VDP and run them via one of the four major released BASIC revisions.
• All games run full framerate using the PAL standard with reasonable sound sampling at 22KHz (not perfect, but fine for handheld use).

You can find everything you ever wanted to know about this obscure little gem of a system at: http://www.madrigaldesign.it/creativemu

 

[anotherthing]

I never had a ColecoVision when I was a kid, but a friend of ours had one. It was pretty great on a rainy day when we weren't out committing minor misdemeanors and riding our bikes, his house was one of the places we'd go. Good times. Anyway, this is a heck of a great emulator. Nice interface, easy to use, and works like a champion. Keep up the good work!

 

[wavemotion]

Version 8.2 is up at: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS


V8.2: 04-Aug-2023 by wavemotion-dave

• Complete rewrite of the keyboard handler for improved visuals, better emulation and universal handling across all emulated machines.
• New keyboard graphics for ADAM, MSX (International and Japanese layouts), MTX and a simplified Alpha-Numeric keyboard useful for text adventures.
• New global configuration handling - you can disable the showing of the BIOS screen at startup, set your default MSX BIOS, hide emulator text, among other features.
• Brighter main font for improved contrast.
• New MSX BIOS roms can be optionally installed: Panasonic cf-2700, Yamaha cx5m.rom, Toshiba hx-10.rom, Sony Hit-Bit hb-10.rom, National fs-1300.rom, Casio pv-7.rom
• Other tweaks, fixes and improvements as time permitted.

This one took a while. Huge thanks to my friend Darryl for his work on the keyboards - these new properly themed keyboards for the ADAM, MSX, MTX along with the recently designed CreatiVision are just outstanding given that I only allowed him 178 vertical pixels to work with (reserving 14 pixels at the top).

The keyboard handling in all machines has been vastly improved. You can now generate all keys - map keys universally to any NDS button (and it works in all emulators) and the emulator is even smart enough to know what kind of MSX keyboard layout the BIOS is expecting (International vs Japanese).

It's a joy to play these systems with such nice astethics. If you haven't seen some of the incredible MSX machines, they are dead-sexy in a very technical sort of way.

The new stylings really bring the look and feel for each system. Also included is a new simplified Alpha-Numeric keyboard that tries to utilize as much screen as possible so that you can play text-based games with your thumbs. The other keyboards really need a stylus to be effective.

In addition to the new layouts, there is much improved MSX support for multiple flavors of machines. See the readme.md for details but you can now emulate the following machines:

• cf-2700.rom - Panasonic CF-2700 UK Machine with 64K of RAM in slot 3 (normally slot 1)
• cx5m.rom - Yamaha's UK/EU Machine with 32K of RAM
• hx-10.rom - Toshiba's UK/EU Machine with 64K of RAM
• hb-10.rom - Sony HitBit JP Machine with 16K of RAM (uses the Japanese matrix)
• fs-1300.rom - National JP Machine with 64K of RAM (uses the Japanese matrix)
• pv-7.rom - Casio PV-7 with just 8K of RAM! If you can't find this BIOS, use pv-16.rom or hb-10.rom

Enjoy and happy gaming!

 

[wavemotion]

This weekend I finally came to grips with the Z80 CTC (Counter-Timer Chip).

This is used heavily by the Memotech MTX and, to a lesser degree, by the Tatung Einstein and the Sord M5 (sound generation only).

The chip has 4 channels - and acts as both a general purpose timer but can also be used in counter mode. For the Memotech MTX machine, the VDP interrupt is tied into channel 0 and a program can use it as a VDP interrupt or as a general purpose timer.

My poor-man implementation of the CTC up until now was really not sufficient. To be honest, I don't even know how some of the Memotech games even ran without proper CTC control.

Anyway, I read through all the technical datasheets and looked at the wonderful MEMU MTX emulator and got a new CTC handler in place.

This now renders virtually the entire Memotech MTX library playable (previously it was maybe 70% with lots of sound glitches - all that's cleaned up now). The Einstein and Sord M5 will get a slight improvement mostly in the sound department on some games that used the CTC for tone generation/timing.

Daily build 8.2d includes this... but 8.3 is not far behind.