Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[Cowcat]

someone smart like Cowcat

grelbfarlk: You're doing good.

SDL,SDL......Not the best for Amiga classic: Some authors here substitute the SDL calls for their own stuff. But it's awesome to see progress in this area.
I've got minigl and some demos working with gcc-old warpos. Meanwhile a Q2 beta 3 vbcc is close to be uploaded (with mods and stuff).

[spudje]

Great, hopefully I get to meet Hedeon as well in Neuss then and see if I may still need his help on getting my setup stable. I hope to resume my efforts in a week or two.

[jack-3d]

Originally Posted by Cowcat

Meanwhile a Q2 beta 3 vbcc is close to be uploaded (with mods and stuff).

[amigoun]

Yes, speed is an issue (would be nice if can be optimized), but anyway we can not expect hi-performance of DOSBox on 400Mhz G3. For example 12 Mhz 286 needs 2750 cycles in DBox, 386/33 is 7800 cycles.
Can confirm mouse cursor is limited (to a small box on the screen) in emulation and needs to be fixed.
Anyway its amazing to finaly have DOSBox (WOS). Will do some more tests during today.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by amigoun

Yes, speed is an issue (would be nice if can be optimized), but anyway we can not expect hi-performance of DOSBox on 400Mhz G3. For example 12 Mhz 286 needs 2750 cycles in DBox, 386/33 is 7800 cycles.
Can confirm mouse cursor is limited (to a small box on the screen) in emulation and needs to be fixed.
Anyway its amazing to finaly have DOSBox (WOS). Will do some more tests during today.

The mouse pointer issue seems less of a problem if you run a scaler like 2x.

Some dos benchmarks here: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-benchmark-pack.html

Setting the CPU at max says it's roughly 3x the speed of a 486-66MHz but the video is too slow to be usable.
Setting CPU at auto where the video is ok, says it's 1/2 the speed of a 386-33MHz.

Just realized I was testing while sound rate was set to 44100khz.

It is using 32-bit color modes when scalers are used, that looks easy enough to fix.

[grelbfarlk]

Since it's going to be a while before I fix anything, I'll just post this here for people to witness the ugliness for themselves. If anyone has anything to contribute I'll happily send the source or try any source you want to provide (for Dosbox or SDL libs).

I just realized I didn't specify any -mcpu= option when I compiled it, another thing to try. All the old WarpOS apps I've seen always specify -mcpu=604e, of course we have -mcpu=750 also to try, anyone know if this really matters? Also -mtune= is another option I've seen.

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/R...C-Options.html

[grelbfarlk]

Here's some more garbage to test, probably new bugs, but I noticed the 68k isn't taking so much time just sitting at a dos prompt. Has the compiler options I mentioned above.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Here's some more garbage to test, probably new bugs, but I noticed the 68k isn't taking so much time just sitting at a dos prompt. Has the compiler options I mentioned above.

That the only thing you changed?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

That the only thing you changed?

No, the 32-bit issue I tried telling it to default to 16-bit in scaled modes-this backfired as scalled modes look like ass now.

[Wrangler]

Great work grelbfarlk!

I had to install Warcraft 2 under Windows and copy across the game folder. After that it works! But suspect you need a 1 GHz+ chip for it to be truly playable. Looks like Shapeshifter is the way to go for this game at least.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

Great work grelbfarlk!

I had to install Warcraft 2 under Windows and copy across the game folder. After that it works! But suspect you need a 1 GHz+ chip for it to be truly playable. Looks like Shapeshifter is the way to go for this game at least.

As others have alluded to, I don't think a 1 GHz chip is really necessary, it needs some WarpOS programming voodoo that I don't know how to do. When the emulated system isn't waiting on Video and Sound the CPU can run at least Pentium-60 speeds at least thats what benchmarks are telling me.

From that dos benchmark pack above, run LM60 or Norton Sysinfo with the CPU cranked at about 60,000 cycles, of course the video and input will be severely lagged, but that's just my failings.

Also maybe I should mention the dynamic recompilation (lets call it JIT) is disabled in this build as well as prefetch JIT or dynrec hasn't ever been completed for PPC. And a lot of other things. I'm trying to recompile right now with SDL_Asyncblit turned on, one of about 1000 things to try.

FPU is also turned on which in LM60 says it's 5x the Integer speed-for all the good that does us.

Also someone is working on a compiler which should make compiling the later dosboxes (0.73+) much easier or possible.

Image mounting of an ISO seems to work, imgmount D dh0:isos/mygame.iso -t iso

[grelbfarlk]

And now for something completely different, I just got this compiled and launched. No sound yet since I apparently have it set to .ogg audio and haven't copied those files yet. Running at 640x480 and it's pretty snappy (maybe because sound isn't playing-maybe). Sound FX are working, have to figure out the music. *Update, OGG Music works and still plays fine*. Bad news I found out that the keyboard isn't working to enter savegames for instance, but in-game functions like keyboard arrows and hotkeys work. Still haven't figured out the keyboard issue completely, unicode seems to be the problem. It works fine with 800x480 mode and sound. Fixed a couple of the keyboard issues but still can't figure out the problem with entering save game names. It's playable but you can't save other than quicksave which somebody will call me Steve Hausenpheffer if I upload it like this. Though I could just create 10 save names and you save on top of those without changing the name-which would be a travesty to bring great shame on the Amiga prefecture.

[Cowcat]

The audio issues (ahi) could be re-worked just like the ones used by Q2 or Hexen2.

If the sdl.library is based on 1.2.6 (?) -latest from aminet- a lot of stuff could be slowed due to context switches. In case of ahi I see that no dma is envolved in the code and maybe could be the direction to follow.

Major problem (or not): Part of the tricks that involve relieve warpos-68k context switch need a mix of 68k and PPC objects in the final exec. VBCC does it with no problem at all. Storm4C happens to use some kind of double compile/debug to do the final mix. Don't know if gcc warpos can do this.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Cowcat

The audio issues (ahi) could be re-worked just like the ones used by Q2 or Hexen2.

If the sdl.library is based on 1.2.6 (?) -latest from aminet- a lot of stuff could be slowed due to context switches. In case of ahi I see that no dma is envolved in the code and maybe could be the direction to follow.

Major problem (or not): Part of the tricks that involve relieve warpos-68k context switch need a mix of 68k and PPC objects in the final exec. VBCC does it with no problem at all. Storm4C happens to use some kind of double compile/debug to do the final mix. Don't know if gcc warpos can do this.

Do you mean adding the Q2/Hex2 audio code to SDL_Wos/SDL_Mixer or rewriting the Dosbox audio stack? Where it is currently Dosbox Hardware Emu->SDL->SDL_Mixer->AHI? I can see where Dosbox->AHI would be preferable. Of course if fixing SDL is a viable option then it would make other ports easier with less dickery. SDL_wos is based on 1.2.6 and SDL_Mixer is 1.2.4 (with some 1.2.7) parts Hedeon stapled in.

[Cowcat]

Do you mean adding the Q2/Hex2 audio code to SDL_Wos/SDL_Mixer?

Or Blitzquake ahi code. Those are examples for better implementations. I point to SDL source as a possibility but don't know what DosBox does (the source is???).

[grelbfarlk]

Dosbox 0.72 source is here if you are wondering:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dos...s/dosbox/0.72/

I used 0.72 as that seemed to be the last version that compiled with GCC 2.95.3.

[grelbfarlk]

"Fixed" the keyboard issues with Exult, ready for testing. Or I might just upload it to Aminet after I get a package together.
Still have to lha that up... in the meantime, looks like I just got Bermuda Syndrome running now too:



Should be showing up on Aminet any minute.

[grelbfarlk]

If anyone would like to test Exult for me to make sure I didn't forget something important before I upload to Aminet let me know and I'll email. It's somewhat large and would help me writing the readme so I know how hard it was for someone to put all the media in the right dirs. Or just write the readme for me.

[xboxown]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

"Fixed" the keyboard issues with Exult, ready for testing. Or I might just upload it to Aminet after I get a package together.
Still have to lha that up... in the meantime, looks like I just got Bermuda Syndrome running now too:



Should be showing up on Aminet any minute.

I cannot find dosbox, exult and this sweet game in aminet.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by xboxown

I cannot find dosbox, exult and this sweet game in aminet.

Yeah weird, I put it up there over 12 hours ago, it should have showed up by now, maybe I forgot something in the readme.