Simulant Keyboard

[Bridgette Kubis]

Thekeyboard packaging is really attractive and worth keeping hold of. It would certainly not look out of place on a shelf in you local Currys (PC World). Opening it up reveals the keyboard safely cocooned inside a foam bag along with a guide sheet and some promo flyers.

This keyboard is probably what I was looking for a long time, but I have a question about the use of this keyboard with fs-uae emulator : are the [A]miga keys recognized as real amiga keys, out-of-the box, meaning, no need to setup anything in the emulator in order to be able to use the amiga-keys based shortcuts ?

There were no instructions supplied with the kit at all, not even a bit of paper with a URL to visit for more info. Unsure if that was an oversight or not. Thankfully I received an email from them shortly before the delivery was due and it contained a link to download some new firmware for it. Within the zip file there was a small text file with basic instructions and a few photos. It was enough to set me on the path anyway.

The two halves fit together extremely snugly so to avoid any cosmetic damage I used a plastic spudger tool to gently prise the them apart and then slid it along, disengaging the clips as I progressed.

Before closing everything up I wrapped the adapter in the plastic sheathing provided and secured it with a little sticky tape. This was there just to prevent any kind of electrical short occurring between the adapter and the bottom of the keyboard circuit board.

I then carefully mounted the keyboard back into the bottom of the case making sure that nothing got trapped in the process and then re-seated the top of the case over everything to hold it all together once more.

Note: To activate the keyboard FUNCTION LOCK - hold right Amiga key and then press the left Amiga key whilst the right is still held down. The Func light should then illuminate and you can then release both keys. Repeat to disable FUNCTION LOCK.

The Amiga "Classic" USB mechanical PC keyboard is a brand new officially licensed Amiga product manufactured by Simulant Systems Ltd. The keyboard is built to last, with a sturdy construction and quality components. Enjoy the ultimate typing experience with genuine Brown Cherry MX key switches.

Now you can use your PC, Mac or Linux computer with an Amiga keyboard that mixes traditional style with modern usability and comfort. If you wish to use this keyboard with classic big box Amigas and not modern systems, an adaptor is available to convert the cables/connectors here: -usb-to-ps2-din

I would like to use an Amiga-looking keyboard on my PC. (I prefer not to use my old original A2000 keyboard with an adapter, partly because it lacks many keys present on modern 105-key keyboards, and partly because it's not localized.)

The Simulant Input Kickstarter campaign is currently running (as of 11th June) to raise the production costs needed to create a Keyboard and Mouse with similar style to the CPC464 colours. The keyboard is aimed at retro computer enthusiasts and is mainly for use with modern PCs, emulators, FPGA and custom builds.

No i have a very strange errror where only in Sierra games, the mouse and keyboard inputs are very slow. It takes 5 to 10 seconds until a button press or mouse click will do something. On Lucas games it is working fine.

While I was trying things yesterday, I started testing some older versions of ScummVM and everything was working fine and after going through all available scripts, everything was suddenly working fine again with 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7.

I am currenty building a MiSTer based on the Irconclad ITX. It will have an mt32-pi connected to the second User IO slot. Other Cores need to be compiled specifically to use this 2nd Port.

My question: As I understand ScummVM is basically using the Menu core, do I need a special version of the menu core to get mt32 sound in ScummVM with my setup?

Thanks

The MIDIMeister driver (which ScummVM uses) can optionally transmit the raw MIDI data over network UDP to the mt32-pi, however to have the sound piped back to the MiSTer you'd still need a special menu.rbf.

bbond007, you may remember that Mister is my fave way to play ScummVM games. Thanks again! Something messed up after some updates so I am trying manually with 2.7.1 and my "ScummVM 2.1.0 'Electric Sheep' Complete Collection" of games. I had to disable CIFS mount to my RetroNAS drive in order for ScummVM to even load, and the THEMES were at the default dark screen. I now have 2.7.1 installed on my SD card and used WinSCP to copy the install directory to act as a backup on the RetroNAS drive directory. Now when CIFS is mounted, I don't get an error loading. It just gets confusing knowing if the ScummVM launch scripts are trying to load locally from SD or remotely from RetroNAS networked drive. Is there an option or .ini setting to address this?

If RetroNAS is mounting at "/media/fat" then its hiding the actual "/media/fat". So that would be like maintaining two separate systems as far as cores, settings, updates, etc... I personally don't like that approach(confusing like you say) and at the very least would change the mount point to "/media/fat/games".

Be aware that the library files ScummVM uses use symlinks (for the libs) and I don't trust WinSCP is going to recreate those correctly. Unfortunately, I think you'll end up with a bunch of duplicated libraries. Running Install_ScummVM.sh again should fix the symlinks.

The scummvm.ini file (located in $SCUMMVM_HOME_DIR/.config/scummvm/) contains absolute paths to each game added. If those paths have changed then those games need to either be removed and readded, which can be tedious with a large collection, or you can manually edit scummvm.ini to correct the paths.

Thank you bbond007! Ultimately I have everything running greatly again, including MT-32 pi working. I basically deleted my ScummVM folders completely on both my SD card and RetroNAS and reinstalled onto the SD card ONLY. I also created a 'ScummVM' directory within 'games' on the RetroNAS to avoid accidental deletion of games/saves/icons- basically all needed things that don't come with ScummVM.

I am confused how this is a suggested product to connect the Mister and MT32 pi. My pi has no midi ports... maybe there is an alternative pi-hat? I do have a MiST FPGA with midi ports and wondered if this cable might be good for cores there.

I feel like I am overlooking something very simple. How do I define a custom location for the games folder? I have ScummVM installed at the default location on /media/fat but I have my games on my NAS located at /media/fat/games/ScummVM.

edit: nm, I was trying to configure prior to launching the first time, I see where that's set now. Although it's not finding my games that are zipped up so I'll need to learn a bit more on what ScummVM needs. It has been a LONG time since I last used it.

This device would allow you to connect your MiSTer (or modern computer) to a real MIDI module such as MT-32, Sound Canvas, Yamaha, etc... It is a great product and well worth it over cheaper (and possibly less compatible) alternatives.

Some people have mt32-pi configs with alternative pi-hats, and maybe they are using that approach to connect which was an option that existed prior to MIDIMeister driver and the corresponding menu.rbf updates.

I started compiling the branch-2-8 (pre 2-8-0) earlier this month in prep for the upcomming branch-2-8-0 so I could work out any build errors and test if it worked properly, however I did not make it the default (just added bins and scripts to the repo)

Hello to you all,

I am having an issue with my MisterFPGA setup installed on a IronClad Plus when running ScummVM, at present the 2.7.1 version (the most recent the Install script downloaded).

The problem is that I have an internal 2TB HDD installed where almost all the game/system files are placed, I have followed the guides to recreate the directories to be correctly recognized by various cores and it works flawlessy. Except for ScummVM because a strange behaviour of my setup at boot.

Sometimes the internal HDD is seen as usb0 and sometimes as usb1, and since the present ScummVM core use absolute path, when the Mister wake up with the wrong foot it does not find the games anymore because the absolute path.

The ideal solution (for my setup, of course) would be ScummVM acting as all the other cores where they simply scan the connected devices looking for a directory structure they can recognize but in the meantime how I can solve the problem of an erratic HDD assignement?

The HDD is connected to the internal USB port of IronClad via an USB-eSATA bridge (the HDD is powered by the internal SFX PSU) while the external ports are plugged with following devices:

The ideal solution (for my setup, of course) would be ScummVM acting as all the other cores where they simply scan the connected devices looking for a directory structure they can recognize but in the meantime how I can solve the problem of an erratic HDD assignement?

Right now when I build ScummVM I have a script that downloads whatever branch specified, adds a MiSTer target option to the configure script, compiles and finally updates my MiSTer_ScummVM repo. It is all very automated and very reliable. I don't modify the .cpp source files, and don't want to start doing so (especially to compensate for flaky edge-case behavior).

My idea is to create a script (ScummVM_Drive_Fixer.sh) which will locate the ScummVM games and then create a symlink "/tmp/ScummVM_GAMES" so that the games can by located in a consistent location. Modify ScummVM_2_7_1.sh to call this script. If you have a lot of games, you can edit ".config/scummvm.ini" and use a search and replace to update the path rather than reinstall each game individually.

3a8082e126