CD32Load

[Amiga1992]

https://cd32.monroeworld.com/CD32FAQ/CD32_FAQ_2000.htm

Custom controller based (not IDE or SCSI).

AKIKO controls the CD-ROM.

[spudje]

However, IDEfix can emulate CD32, does that include CDaudio? That would open up some possbilities, no?

[Amiga1992]

If it was open source it would, but it isn't.
I'm not sure, but I am guessing here that yes, it should work with CD Audio.

You still need the CD-Rom for this though.
Catching the calls for playing a CD track is not a problem I think, all the Amiga does is tell the drive to play a track and then the drive does that on its own. If you have to play an audio file, who's gonna deal with the overhead of that and how are you gonna fit that with the game's Amiga audio?

Seems impossible to fix on a CD32, possible maybe with a beefy Amiga running a 14-bit software mixer (and enough grunt to play an audio file while playing a game).

[spudje]

Too bad, good I bought some backup lasers

[jotd]

BTW I've zoned cd32load v0.34. not much happening there but a few fixes

- fixed: gb_ChipRevBits0 wrong value stored
- fixed: wrong previous state memory in joypads
- improved: properly detect joystick / joypad connected (avoids that pressing 2nd button joystick resets the game)
- improved: if HD mode, detect used filesystem & block size. Exits if blocksize isn't 512 and filesystem is exotic like PFS, SFS
(not perfect as it doesn't detect FFS mounted through uaehf.device yet)
- fixed: reload_GetFileSize/GetFileSizeDec now test D0 before returning (some games only tested CCR): Midnight Resistance works when
files are RN-packed

I'm not done with playing the audio while playing games (adapting music/sfx only games to CD32). But that'll be a tough project

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by jotd

I'm not done with playing the audio while playing games (adapting music/sfx only games to CD32). But that'll be a tough project

Do not give up please it would be worth it

[earok]

Having some problems with slam tilt - menu loads perfectly, but it crashes when I go to load a table (cd32load v33).

I'm working on an update of the previous disc and I'd be happy to run with WHDLoad for it, except WHDLoad has a lot of OS flicker. I'm assuming that the 2MB slave should always be used, even when there's Fast Ram present?

[jotd]

I'll have a look at this SlamTilt issue.

CD32load doesn't use fastmem (except for the startup), and doesn't cache files in fast either (or kickstart). If you have fastmem & want joypad redirection, use JST (well, wait, as I'm trying to fix some bugs... but you can have a try)

I've used JST on my Terrible Fire CD32 board and it worked well, with joypad redirection and all. I could run AGA games. I suspect the board is faulty as I get random crashes/gfx corruption on many games (even with whdload), but at least it's cool to test stuff.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by jotd

I suspect the board is faulty as I get random crashes/gfx corruption on many games (even with whdload), but at least it's cool to test stuff.

I messaged you before about this but you said you had no issues, I guess you did more testing since. You have the same board that I do (same revision chips and all), I wonder if it's the slightly off-spec RAM I guess we'll never know since nobody really cares.

[jotd]

Yes, I had a long test session this weekend to test JST + joypad controller remap (which work well, now that I'm using working joypads!!)

It may be the RAM, but one of the gfx corruption I encountered was in a whdload game running fully in chipmem (apart from the whdload slave & data files, but corruption occurred in a part which was working a second ago).

I'll try to do more tests, using only/mainly chipmem. That's where cd32load will come in handy, but I'm waiting for more CF cards that I've ordered to FFS-512 prep whem

[Amiga1992]

I don't think the RAM chips are bad at all, from all the testing I have done I think there's a timing issue in the firmware that makes this specific RAM batch be slightly incompatible. Yes, it represents itself as Chip RAM corruption from my experience. If you are interested in going through the same tests I did, let me know by PM and I'll let you know.

Not that it matters much though as development has stopped on this, unless someone else picks up the gauntlet as it is open source.

But in general, my card runs really good and I don't experience these issues except in a very specific scenario.

Well sorry, we went OT.

[jotd]

Off topic only slightly. My son played Silkworm jst with the TF and also project x and it worked perfect. I am interested by tests yes

[jotd]

Update on CD32Load & CD-audio:

Thanks to the routine that Toni provided to play CD-audio, I'm able to play cd-tracks while a game is running.

It needs a lot of work, and needed me to develop an "extra" CD slave (per game of course) to add to the existing whdload slave (a slave which hooks on whdload calls, ex: Patch, Diskload, ... allowing the same Patch & other commands that whdload API permits PLUS cd play/stop commands).

This is targetted to single games release, with a fixed set of audio tracks.

To be continued...

[earok]

Originally Posted by jotd

Update on CD32Load & CD-audio:

Thanks to the routine that Toni provided to play CD-audio, I'm able to play cd-tracks while a game is running.

It needs a lot of work, and needed me to develop an "extra" CD slave (per game of course) to add to the existing whdload slave (a slave which hooks on whdload calls, ex: Patch, Diskload, ... allowing the same Patch & other commands that whdload API permits PLUS cd play/stop commands).

This is targetted to single games release, with a fixed set of audio tracks.

To be continued...

That is f-ing great.

Some random ideas for games that could use CD audio, I'm sure other people will have a lot more. Just throwing them out there knowing that many of them may be impractical for one reason or another.

- Wonderdog (obviously )
- Gods! But AFAIK the only music that exists for the in-game levels is sadly for the Mega Drive version.
- Terminator 2 Arcade (the "SFX+Music" option only uses a handful of SFX, so being able to play the SFX mode with music would be great)
- Super Street Fighter 2: New Challengers (although I understand this could be next to impossible to get to run due to how memory hungry it is)
- Gloom. Memory hungriness may not be a problem since we'd be able to ditch the existing music (just for title and loading screen). Of course we'd need to find some substitute music since there's no version of Gloom with in-game music.

EDIT

Mega Typhoon would be another good candidate.

[thairacerjp]

Hi jotd and thanks for such nice work you do, I have one question, is you CD32load could be made for T-ZERO game, cause on CD32 it won't boot cause it's a AmigaCD game... , it works from workbench with whdload or lha version or hdd version but we miss the CD audio tracks, this is the last treat :
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=92202

[Amigajay]

Great news and work JOTD!

We await with baited breath the first release!

[spudje]

Awesome! That's playing the audio from a real CD right? Not playing some wavs from HDD?

[jotd]

nope, playing some wavs from HDD is virtually impossible and it's been explained a lot of times here. The only possible thing on a non-CD32 amiga would be to send commands to the CD-ROM and mix the sound externally. But it probably requires to know the CD-ROM driver, etc... so no way.

@earok thanks for suggestions. I have a lot of in-game music for Gods, so that won't be a problem. Another candidate would be Leander, and after that, all the games with the infamous SFX/music selection (maybe not Chuck Rock since the music is the same ...)

ATM I'm not into trying to fit an unrelated music track to a game.

An issue I've seen on Wonderdog is that the music is soo loud that it dwarves the sfx. I'll probably have to reduce the volume. Maybe it can be done dynamically. Toni any ideas? (I'll PM)

[Cobe]

Hi jotd. I sent you those Wonderdog wavs year ago or so. I sent you clean ones and mastered ones which are louder for sure. Maybe check which ones are you using. Or just simply reduce volume manually on each wav. Though if -volume could be set from command line it would be the best.

[jotd]

yes, I'm currently using your .wav files a VOLUME option would be good. I've PM'd Toni to see if there's a way to do that.

T-Zero could be a candidate. But one game at a time. There's already some work to make the game play (and stop) audio tracks when needed. First, Wonderdog.