Homebrew msxDS version 0.8

[tomrev]

The right kanji ROM is a ROM of 256KB. The checksum is crc32: 1F6406FB.
WinRAR can display crc32.

This is the elixir for me! Kanji ROM is wrong file like you suggest. Thanks a lot!!

 

[wolfmanz51]

yeah thanks for updating this emu love the way it displays the action on both screens to avoid scaling. Also id love to see improvement in emulation of Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, and Castlevania if possible, Im shure many would be thankful for this as they are very Popular games. Thanks again for all your hard work!
p.s. you should create a paypal donate button on your site might make a few bucks!

 

[tbrazil]

First of all I would like to congratulate you for your great emulator. I also qould like to tell you a couple of things :

I have the DSTWO Flashcart and the emulator doesnt work. The problem is that every time that I load a game (DSK or ROM), I select system (msx1, msx2) etc, and press reset, it tries to initialize but the screen freezes in black, and the logo of MSX doesnt appear. In my old clonic r4 everything was perfect, so I dont know where the problem may be.

In the Nintendo DS Lite, the sound was too low, is there any way to make it louder??

Other than that a great emulator

T.Brazil

 

[supercarte]

Thank you for your feedback.

I'm surprised that it doesn't work on DStwo.

msxDS runs on following flash card adapters:

Acekard 2i
EZ5i (Kernel 3 ob1) (There are only a graphical bug on startup in upper screen).
Supercard DS one (EOS 1.0 sp3)
Supercard miniSD
R4DS (Wood R4)
R4i SDHC (but perhaps not all different models)

Try with iMenu.

http://spinalcode.co.uk/ds/new-dstwo-menu/

Maybe msxDS works with this launcher.

 

[VatoLoco]

it works fine on my dstwo, as a plug, and launching it as a normal .nds
im thinking tbrazil must have wrong bios, or maybe hasnt added the newly required KANJI.ROM, or A1WXKDR.ROM

i really like the progress being made, the games ive tried on the newest version seem to run @ 90 to 100% speed =)

 

[supercarte]

It's confirmed too by a friend, msxDS works on DStwo.

 

[derebo]

hello,

successfully tested msxDS-0.86 on nds two games: penguin adventure an gradius (welcome screens are displayed in japanese). tried save state mode with gradius and after switchin off then on, loading gradius rom and loading state the game is displayed again with the only thing that the black background is now blue

other than that, msxDS is a WONDERFUL emulator. thumbs up!!!

greetings,

 

[supercarte]

Thank you, the bug has been confirmed.

 

[derebo]

Thank you, the bug has been confirmed.

Hello,

Glad to support! Wonderful job. One feature request: any chace of a enabling cheats database? I could end Salamander some day...

 

[hnhnhn]

hello, is there any way to keymap by myself?
every time when i play metalgear i must use keyboard on down screen to open item menu

if keymapping F2,F3 to L,R that'll be much more convenience
btw the emulator is wonderful, thx for hard work

 

[myselfo]

msxDS (a good MSX/MSX2/MSX2+ emulator) has been updated.

Is source code available somewhere?
I spent some hours reading and modifying fmsxDS source trying to speed up memory access for the Z80. The results were rather poor

But I've just found msxDS and I'd like to have a look at its sourcecode too, both for curiosity and in the unlikely event of me finding something to optimize.

 

[supercarte]

hello, is there any way to keymap by myself?
every time when i play metalgear i must use keyboard on down screen to open item menu wacko.gif
if keymapping F2,F3 to L,R that'll be much more convenience
btw the emulator is wonderful, thx for hard work

The keymapping F2,F3 to L,R for metal gear is already planned for the next version.

Is source code available somewhere?
I spent some hours reading and modifying fmsxDS source trying to speed up memory access for the Z80. The results were rather poor

But I've just found msxDS and I'd like to have a look at its sourcecode too, both for curiosity and in the unlikely event of me finding something to optimize.

Popolon says the source code will not be yet available for a indeterminate time.
Popolon thinks the Z80 can be optimized in machine language only. What have you done to optimize the Z80?

The optimization of msxDS was did mainly on the displaying and the sound routines. The VDP and the FM sound uses the most resources.
The Z80 emulation hasn't changed since FmsxDS, except the Z80 structure that has been moved to the DTCM memory of ARM9.

 

[myselfo]

Popolon says the source code will not be yet available for a indeterminate time.
Popolon thinks the Z80 can be optimized in machine language only. What have you done to optimize the Z80?

It's not that my "optimizations" were too effective but if the source was available either me or someone else could have a look at it and maybe have an idea to optimize some stuff.
Anyway, I did a couple of things: not checking for 0xFFFF at RdZ80 (and writing its expected value in WrZ80), and writing a "fast WrZ80" function where nothing was checked at all (I didn't use RAM[], I created WriteRAM[] where pointers to ROM were mapped to the scratch-ram). I used that "fast WrZ80" in PUSH, CALL, LDIR, etc.

Later I thought that I would have a look at the screen emulation... but before I started I found msxDS, so why should I reinvent the wheel? Anyway now I've moved to dingux-msx (for the Dingoo A320 console).

 

[myselfo]

The Z80 emulation hasn't changed since FmsxDS

Now (many days after my post) I realize msxDS is based on fmsxDS 0.7, but I had looked at the code for 0.9. That means:

1) floppy is emulated by patching the bios, which is good speed-wise, because it's not checked at every memory write. This was one of the reasons for me to write a "fast WrZ80" function.

2) you're not using the OpZ80 function to fetch opcodes from Z80 memory. I think Popolon should have a look at this since the speed increase here will be noticeable: trying in dingux-msx I got an extra frame per second

Actually my rewrite of RdZ80 makes it look like OpZ80, but the difference is that the OpZ80 one comes from a reliable source: fMSX itself

so it is tested. And you could use the "fast WrZ80" anyway if you think that skipping the checking of EnWrite is worth enough.

 

[supercarte]

Popolon will try it for the next version...

 

[myselfo]

Popolon will try it for the next version...

Yup, I saw he just released v0.87 with updated Z80 emulation

I haven't tried it yet though.
I guess he has removed the code for the floppy disk emulation in WrZ80 and RdZ80 and stick with the rom-patching approach.
By the way I thought of another way of shaving some extra cycles from the Z80 emulation. I don't know if it's worth it, I would have tested it myself but... you know, no sourcecode is available

Anyway, the idea is to remove this:

R->ICount-=Cycles;

and instead do the substraction at the emulation of every Z80 instruction using its known constant value, i.e:

R->ICount-=4;

This saves one access to the Cycles[] table for every Z80 instruction, and makes some of them a bit faster (the conditional JP/CALL/RET ones since they may have two timing depending on the condition).

 

[derebo]

Thank you, the bug has been confirmed.

Thank you for fixing it up and for the brand new release 0.87!

 

[derebo]

Thank you for a great Christmas MSX present 0.88

 

[Envasahans]

version 0.9 works really great on my ds with a TT-card... Good emulation speed and great sound: SCC and PSG works perfect and FM Pac works good (Be sure you have the right FM Pac rom because the first one I had kept the sound mute). Installation was easy, just be sure you have the right roms. Ofcourse, a TT card doesn't need DLDI patching which simplifies the installation.

As for game playing I hardly encountered any problems (Runemaster II is the only gameI didn't get to work, freezes at the titlescreen).

At this moment I'm playing SD snatcher and Xak and I am truly amazed by the quality of this emulator! Also a great feature is the loading speed of the disks which is much and much faster than on a real MSX!!!

To everyone who made this emulator possible: THANK YOU!!! You made this old MSX-dude a really happy one!!! THANX THANX THANX!!!!

 

[Buleste]

It works really great on my ds with a TT-card... Good emulation speed and great sound: SCC and PSG works perfect and FM Pac works good (Be sure you have the right FM Pac rom because the first one I had kept the sound mute). Installation was easy, just be sure you have the right roms. Ofcourse, a TT card doesn't need DLDI patching which simplifies the installation.

As for game playing I hardly encountered any problems (Runemaster II is the only gameI didn't get to work, freezes at the titlescreen).

At this moment I'm playing SD snatcher and Xak and I am truly amazed by the quality of this emulator! Also a great feature is the loading speed of the disks which is much and much faster than on a real MSX!!!

To everyone who made this emulator possible: THANK YOU!!! You made this old MSX-dude a really happy one!!! THANX THANX THANX!!!!

See if you can find the updated versions of KnightLore and Alien 8 for the MSX2. They look stunning.