JST on CDTV

[Whitesnake]

Hey JOTD, What is the current usability/compatibility of JST 6.2? I picked up the binary from your GitHub repo to test some WHDLoad Installs on a CDTV 8MB WB1.3 SCSI HD WinUAE setup.

The reason I'm doing it this way is to see if it is worthwhile adding a SCSI HD to my CDTV for loading games or to just stick with a Gotek.

My results haven't been that successful so far as I've only been able to get
Saint Dragon to work. Most games just black screen or some show a loading screen then fail.

It's just a basic 1.3 HD install from the A590 setup disk with JST in C and the A500 kick and RTB file in DEVS/Kickstarts

I feel like I might be missing something obvious?

[jotd]

Last time I checked it worked, but only with pre-loading files in RAM (I think OS swapping doesn't work that well those days). I think a 1MB RAM machine won't cut it whatever it is.

The 1.3 capability is not the most useful stuff because you can softkick if you have enough ram.

I have to check again on basic 68000 + 1.3 machine setup on winuae (with expanded memory...)

[Whitesnake]

Originally Posted by jotd

Last time I checked it worked, but only with pre-loading files in RAM (I think OS swapping doesn't work that well those days). I think a 1MB RAM machine won't cut it whatever it is.

The 1.3 capability is not the most useful stuff because you can softkick if you have enough ram.

I have to check again on basic 68000 + 1.3 machine setup on winuae (with expanded memory...)

Yeah, I have 1MB Chip & 8MB Fast. So I don't think memory is the problem. I wonder if it is a conflict with the CDTV CD drive which is potentially stopping games from working somehow? or perhaps the Extended ROM? I'm not running anything from the CD drive but I do notice that WinUAE shows the CD drive being accessed when loading JST with a WHDLoad install.

I'm guessing that is because of the shared SCSI bus between the CD and HD. I did load JST in verbose and it does show the files being loaded.

Also I'm using WinUAE's CDTV SCSI expansion support, not UAEHD stuff.


EDIT: I quickly tested JST on a Workbench 3.1 setup I have and it seems to work fine. I tried messing around with the memory configuration
to see if I could replicate the problem but I couldn't break it.

So I'm not sure why it is not working correctly with Workbench 1.3

[Whitesnake]

I made a small video showing my experience so far.

https://gofile.io/d/rYe60g
https://srv-file16.gofile.io/downloa...2014-12-37.mp4

I first loaded Saint Dragon because it is the only game I can get running even though the audio seems a bit clicky. I used F10 to quit it.

Loaded up CarVup next but that just went to a black screen but I was able to quit with F10.

GodsNTSC gets to the loading screen then black screens and I can't quit. It does the same with the PAL version without the audio playback speed issue.

I think my configuration is mostly good for a CDTV with HD and 8MB ram.

Edit: Enabling cycle accurate fixed the audio clicks on Saint Dragon.

[jotd]

Can you check if your files are packed with XPK? JST doesn't support those. That could be the issue (for instance if gods disk 2 is packed it will fail)

[Whitesnake]

I looked at the files and they are not XPK packed. I think I've narrowed down the problem.

As mentioned earlier about the CDTV Extended ROM "CDTV Extended-ROM v1.0 (1991)(Commodore)(CDTV)[!].rom"

I removed the Extended ROM from the configuration essentially making it an A500 and the games load fine now.

Also made a video, First with Extended ROM then removed Extended ROM.

https://gofile.io/d/jQimLM

https://srv-file4.gofile.io/download...2019-52-33.mp4

[jotd]

oh well spotted. Probably something related to CD-drive interrupts then. Good find.

It also means that on an real extended CDTVwith 8MB RAM (does that even exist) JST fails. But if it's the case, so does whdload probably.

Unless some script is run before / after to disable the CD drive.

[Whitesnake]

Originally Posted by jotd

oh well spotted. Probably something related to CD-drive interrupts then. Good find.

It also means that on an real extended CDTVwith 8MB RAM (does that even exist) JST fails. But if it's the case, so does whdload probably.

Unless some script is run before / after to disable the CD drive.

Yes, There is a very commonly available 8MB RAM Expansion for the CDTV on eBay and AmiBay



[ Show youtube player ] Person on Youtube did a similar upgrade.

[jotd]

Interesting. It also means that JST is the only way to run whdload games on a CDTV since softkicking to kick 2.0 or 3.0 isn't supported because of extended ROM (or I'm mistaken)

But the failure you found also means that the CD hardware needs to be shut down when JST is running a game. And I don't know how to do that.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by jotd

But the failure you found also means that the CD hardware needs to be shut down when JST is running a game. And I don't know how to do that.

Send CMD_STOP to cdtv.device. It will disable all interrupts. CMD_START will restart the device. (I think whdload does this already)

[Wepl]

Yes, WHDLoad performs the CMD_STOP on the CDTV.

[jotd]

interesting, I'm going to implement that if I find cdtv.device on the machine.

can a CDTV soft-kick (if so, whdload is as good as / better than JST) ? or is it stuck with kick 1.3 (if so only JST does the job) ?

[Whitesnake]

Originally Posted by jotd

interesting, I'm going to implement that if I find cdtv.device on the machine.

can a CDTV soft-kick (if so, whdload is as good as / better than JST) ? or is it stuck with kick 1.3 (if so only JST does the job) ?

I'm not sure how a 3.1 softkick would react to the presence of the 1.0 Extended ROM. I'm pretty sure that I read 3.1 doesn't play well with the 1.0 Extended ROM and disables the CD Drive.

My plan was to just keep my CDTV as a 1.3 HD setup with a functional CD Drive.

[jotd]

exactly. So JST becomes interesting for CDTV machines because you cannot softkick.

Other 1.3 machines with fastmem can be softkicked and in that case you can use whdload if you can spare 512k mem (which is generally the case with 4 or 8MB expansion)

So I'm definitely doing the change in JST 6.3.

[alexh]

FYI Edu Arana is developing a new SCSI adapter card for CDTV which has integrated SCSI2SD meaning if you want an internal solution you don't have to find ultra-rare 2.5" SCSI drives or use SCSI->IDE->CF adapters anymore.

[jotd]

@whitesnake I've followed your video (very instructive) to configure a CDTV machine with hard drive (SCSI) but I cannot boot: I still see CDTV animation screen no matter what...

I've enabled cdtv SCSI and all... Maybe you could share your config so I could adapt it to my paths?

[Whitesnake]

Originally Posted by jotd

@whitesnake I've followed your video (very instructive) to configure a CDTV machine with hard drive (SCSI) but I cannot boot: I still see CDTV animation screen no matter what...

I've enabled cdtv SCSI and all... Maybe you could share your config so I could adapt it to my paths?

CDTV Config file here https://gofile.io/d/vqbUKH

[Whitesnake]

Originally Posted by alexh

FYI Edu Arana is developing a new SCSI adapter card for CDTV which has integrated SCSI2SD meaning if you want an internal solution you don't have to find ultra-rare 2.5" SCSI drives or use SCSI->IDE->CF adapters anymore.

That will be interesting to see. Will it be more competitively priced compared to the SCSI2SD adapters that currently exist for example?

[jotd]

Whitesnake I don't know what magic you pulled but adapting your config actually works (when trying to catch up with the video did not )

I could reproduce the lockup with Warzone. And now this is fixed. Version 6.3 is on github thanks.

[Whitesnake]

Originally Posted by jotd

Whitesnake I don't know what magic you pulled but adapting your config actually works (when trying to catch up with the video did not )

I could reproduce the lockup with Warzone. And now this is fixed. Version 6.3 is on github thanks.

It's working great now. Thanks.