Draco-DS - A Dragon / Tandy CoCo Emulator

[wavemotion]

Good call, Crash. I’ll update the readme.

I also just discovered that you can issue joint commands like

CLOADM : EXEC

Not sure if that will work on DracoDS but it would make things more automatic.

 

[Cris1997XX]

If you're tired of making emulators for computers that have higher resolution modes, can I suggest the Commodore VIC-20? It apparently runs in 176×184, which is even less than the Nintendo DS' screen, so you'd be able to add things like status LEDs on the top screen

 

[nitrozz]

cant get it to work. All other homebrew work perfectly. bios crc correct

 

[CrashMidnick]

@wavemotion

Same here for 3D lunattack : IO error.

 

[wavemotion]

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

V0.6: 06-July-2025 by wavemotion-dave

• Disk sizes supported now includes 160K (35 track) and 180K (40 track).
• Improved disk read/write handling (still not backed to SD)
• Proper disk icon when a .dsk is loaded and floppy loading sounds added.
• Improved PIA handling to eliminate small sound glitches on some games.
• Mirrors for PIA now handled.
• Macros for Dungeons of Daggorath added!
• Added first pass at Save/Load State

@nitrozz - my guess is that the BASIC roms you are using are not correct... very little checking is done on them. See the CRC32 values in my readme file.

 

[CrashMidnick]

@nitrozz - my guess is that the BASIC roms you are using are not correct... very little checking is done on them. See the CRC32 values in my readme file.

On my side, all BIOS/BASIC files match CRC32 values as per your readme file.

 

[nitrozz]

On my side, all BIOS/BASIC files match CRC32 values as per your readme file.

View attachment 514994

the same crc on my bios

 

[wavemotion]

@nitrozz just noticed your 3D Lunattack is 1K short and CRC doesn't match mine.

Mine is 27K with CRC 8C1EFDB4... direct from the Dragon Archive which is quite a reliable source.

 

[nitrozz]

I got it
Keyboard or joystick for this game config ?

 

[wavemotion]

Guys! I screwed up 0.6 and the joystick handling wasn't right. Ooof.

I've put up a hotfix 0.6a just now:

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

Sorry about that... Some other improvements as well.

 

[nitrozz]

Can you test DRAGON FLY
error:
F FLY
?FM ERROR
OK

 

[wavemotion]

Can you test DRAGON FLY
error:
F FLY
?FM ERROR
OK

FM ERROR normally means that you tried to load a binary file but the program is actually a BASIC file.

Instead of CLOADM try just CLOAD (without the M).

It runs - though I have no idea how to actually start the game doing anything useful...

 

[nitrozz]

It runs - though I have no idea how to actually start the game doing anything useful...

Yep, anything useful…but it’s star.

 

[Chillimonster]

Happy!

Brings back so many memories

 

[wavemotion]

Nice Chilli! Looking good... Just checked in 0.6b with fixes for the SemiGraphics modes. Not a ton of games use that mode, but some are really fun. If you run any game and can hear sound-effects but no visuals... 0.6b will be the answer.

Working hard on this - I know the Dragon / CoCo library isn't the greatest in the world, but there are some gems here!

Just went back and spent 20 minutes playing XROAR-DS ... I think we can safely say that DracoDS is an improvement

 

[CrashMidnick]

Just went back and spent 20 minutes playing XROAR-DS

Already deleted on my side

 

[wavemotion]

Well... yesterday was a comedy of errors... I had a world-record 4 releases yesterday (0.6 and three hotfix releases).

I think this new 0.7 release should be much more stable!!

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

V0.7: 07-July-2025 by wavemotion-dave

• Numerous small fixes for joystick/keyboard handling.
• Fix for the SemiGraphics Modes not showing anything (blank screen).
• Improved Disk Icon.
• Improved 64K memory handling - we now pass the known 64K mem tests (still... Sailor Man won't run).
• Pressing START will now Load and Run cassette based games.
• Other small tweaks and improvements across the board.

Let's see if I can manage to not put out another release today

Sometimes the betas are messy.

 

[Chillimonster]

Decided to give the Dragon / Coco version of Manic Miner a try and all versions i have tried the game will start as it should but Miner Willy just stays in the bottom corner jumping up and down.

Not sure if this is an issue with the files i'm using or with the Emu, so just a heads up - not sure if anyone else can confirm the issue?

 

[wavemotion]

I can confirm, Chilli. Both the port to the CoCo and the original Dragon version have the Willy corner-jump-forever issue with DracoDS. It's definitely an emulation issue. It doesn't support joysticks - it's keyboard only I think... and some of the other keys are working fine (P=Pause, Q/S for Sound/Quiet music). So it's not completely broken... but yeah, it's not working.

The instruction booklet says SHIFT/SPACE is jump. Using Shift sets off some alarm bells ... maybe something in my emulation there isn't right. Or maybe there is some other culprit. I'll do my best.

Post automatically merged: Jul 8, 2025

Spent a few hours looking at the Manic Miner issue. It's doing nothing unusual that I can detect. It's calling the usual routines and handling the keyboard reading in the usual way... in fact, the keys look like they are processing fine but for some reason the game thinks jump is being continually pressed and I can't figure out why. To the best of my ability, the SHIFT key is not handled any differently than any other key. And there doesn't appear to be any unusual IO reads by MM. I'm at a total loss... my Motorola 6809 CPU is not good (I'm more familiar with the Z80 and MOS-6502) so I'm really struggling to debug this one. It might just go on the 'not compatible' list until I can find more time to dig in.

[did I mention how much I hate the "double-post" merge... might be the all-time worst forum feature]

 

[wavemotion]

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

V0.8: 09-July-2025 by wavemotion-dave

• Added disk write-back to SD support.
• Improved artifact color handling.
• Better 'Auto-Center' of analog joysticks.
• Other minor improvements as time permitted.