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ColecoDS - Improved

  • Thread starter Thread starter wavemotion
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@Sked did you place your bios correctly?

bios must be placed in a subdirectory named "bios" placed in a directory named "ROMS"

In the end you should get this:

root (SD)/Roms/bios
 
Indy13 said:
@Sked did you place your bios correctly?

bios must be placed in a subdirectory named "bios" placed in a directory named "ROMS"

In the end you should get this:

root (SD)/Roms/bios
Click to expand...
The BIOS are working. I have them placed in a folder with the Collecods.nds.
 
Sked said:
The BIOS are working. I have them placed in a folder with the Collecods.nds.
Click to expand...
So maybe it comes from your roms, you should try to find others, personally, for me everything works correctly with the latest version of ColecoDS
 
I think this is the best emulator on the DS.
For a feature request, can you add the second cart unlock functionality for Konami games?
ttp://bifi.msxnet.org/msxnet/konami/combinations
So you can unlock the true ending of Salamander, Game Master cheats and other easter eggs.
 
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bakuDD said:
For a feature request, can you add the second cart unlock functionality for Konami games?.
Click to expand...
Actually that is on my short list of features to add a second cart port for MSX games. Just need to figure out how to best handle the sell in the UI without overly complicating things.

And thanks for the kind words :)
 
https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V10.4: 10-Mar-2025 by wavemotion-dave
  • DSi now supports cart ROMs up to 4MB (4096K). Only a few MSX tech demos / games get anywhere near this.
  • New super-simplified Colecovision CPU driver that is used for most of the well-behaved Colecovision games to render them full speed on the older DS-Lite/Phat.
  • Improved emulation speed of the 6502 core to render all Creativision games at full speed on older DS-Lite/Phat.
  • Corrected a few cycle timings and generally improved accuracy of the Z80 CPU driver.
I've decided to start more fully utilizing the extra memory in the DSi and XL/LL and above hardware (16MB vs 4MB). To that end, carts are now supported up to 4MB. This is really only of value in the MSX world where the 8K mappers allow for 2MB and the 16K mappers allow for 4MB. Very little makes use of this currently... but a few games have emerged.

For the Colecovision - the Megacart specification is still capped at 1MB. But on the CV front, a big overhaul to the Z80 CPU core allows the older DS-Lite/Phat hardware (running at 67MHz) to run virtually the entire library at full speed. Just a few holdouts (I'm looking at you, Mecha 9!!).

This should run anything you throw at it that even resembles a system with a Z80 and TMS9918 VDP. Megacarts, Supercarts, SGM and full Adam support (Disk and DDP) across the board.
 
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Thanks to this new update, it will be possible to add support for zip files, and also to turn off the bottom screen.
 
For sure I can add support to dim/shutoff the bottom screen.

ZIP support is also possible... though the entire Coleco library is pretty small already. Not sure how much that helps given that every ROM is just one file anyway (unlike TI99/4a where ROMs are split over multiple C/D/G files).

Right now I'm busy working out the last few obscure issues with the Z80 core. I got ZEXALL running but it's slow on the old DS handheld... every run takes about 4 hours.

1741783920144.png
 
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https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/ColecoDS

V10.5: 14-Mar-2025 by wavemotion-dave
  • Update to the Z80 core to improve emulation accuracy. This emulator now passes the ZEXALL test suite.
  • Added proper M1 wait states for the Colecovision, ADAM and MSX emulation for improved CPU handling.
  • A few optimized Z80 lookup-tables brings in some additional speed for both the DSi and DS-Lite/Phat.
  • Improved file loading so that it's more robust - ensuring a higher level of consistency in loading large files into memory.
  • Other minor cleanups as time permitted.
A bit more speed but more importantly, improvements to accuracy. My favorite releases are when we get a bit of speed and we improve the emulation. I spent a couple days getting the vaunted ZEXALL tests running to ensure the Z80 core is solid.

I've also grown frustrated with the file I/O on the DSi via libnds. It's definitely buggy ... and I've had to work really hard to get around some of the inconsistencies. It's still not perfect but I'm now reading the file twice and ensuring the CRCs match - if not, I do that process again. I've had about 1 in 500 reads of a ROM file be incorrect on the DSi from SD card (but never from the DS-Lite/Phat with R4 card). This new method is a little bit slower but I'd rather take an extra second to load a file and ensure that it's correct and will run flawlessly.
 
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ber71 said:
ZXDS is a very competent spectrum emulator. For Amstrad, AmeDS and CrocoDS are far behind.
Click to expand...
Yeah, ZXDS is awesome though I can't seem to get it to run easily on my DSi via SD card and I don't use my R4 very often.

I mostly did the Speccy stuff on a whim since I already had all the bits and parts already in emulation and was tired of playing 'lazy ports' of ZX Spectrum titles to the MSX.

Amstrad uses a graphics chip I know nothing about - and the resolutions don't make for a good fit for the DS/DSi screen. But maybe someone will take up the mantle to get those done properly!
 
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wavemotion said:
Yeah, ZXDS is awesome though I can't seem to get it to run easily on my DSi via SD card and I don't use my R4 very often.

I mostly did the Speccy stuff on a whim since I already had all the bits and parts already in emulation and was tired of playing 'lazy ports' of ZX Spectrum titles to the MSX.

Amstrad uses a graphics chip I know nothing about - and the resolutions don't make for a good fit for the DS/DSi screen. But maybe someone will take up the mantle to get those done properly!
Click to expand...
Out of curiosity, are you going to add support to games on cassette tapes too? Or is it already in the emulator?
 
Cris1997XX said:
Out of curiosity, are you going to add support to games on cassette tapes too? Or is it already in the emulator?
Click to expand...
For right now, it's just .Z80 memory snapshots. Mostly because it's trivial - the .Z80 just drops into the 48K of RAM on the Spectrum and you set a few CPU registers and off we go... .TAP and .TXZ files are a little more complicated (though not terribly hard I'd imagine). Not trying to turn ColecoDS into a full-blown Speccy emulator... mostly want to play a little Atic Atac or Jet Pac vs some of the ports/clones the other Coleco-like systems got.
Post automatically merged:

Okay... preliminary support for ZX Spectrum 48K machine is in.

You need the original Spectrum ROM ... it's 16K with a CRC32 of 0xddee531f

Call it 48.ROM and place into your BIOS directory. Then you can pick .z80 or .sna snapshot files.

If one .z80 file doesn't work, it might be a bad snapshot - just try an alternate one.

1742469743064.png
 
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