MAME 0.222 Apple II highlights

[messd...@gmail.com]

We've got a lot of Apple II highlights this time:

- The CFFA2 emulation now lets you attach disk images to both IDE channels
- Double hi-res has been fixed for correct output in monochrome mode, and all 8-bit A2 modes now work correctly with MAME's CRT simulation and NTSC decoder to produce real emulated Woz NTSC color. Not totally useful, but a fun demo.
- Fixed an interaction between IIe-style aux writes and IIgs shadowing that caused Cinemaware games like Rocket Ranger and Three Stooges to be missing some graphics. Yes, those GS-native games use IIe-style code to write to the SHR framebuffer.
- Fixed the IIgs $C029 monochrome double-hi-res bit (it used to work but regressed at some point)
- Fixed IIgs hangs when certain GS/OS extensions are enabled (the 6.0.4 Live Install image now works properly)
- RamWorks III banking now mirrors the location as AE's patent describes. Not necessary for any known software but might as well be correct.
- Started phasing out our old IWM emulation for a new cycle-accurate version based on a decap of the chip. This means all IIc models past the original one can boot .WOZ images now.
- The IIc and IIc Plus mirrors SETIOUDIS/CLRIOUDIS at $C058/$C059 (and probably $C05A/$C05B and $C05C/$C05D if someone wants to test that) and the mouse firmware relies on that. This is now supported correctly. (Before we were ignoring IOUDIS on the IIc, which usually worked but was wrong).
- All IIe and IIc models now can have an optional 4 MHz Zip Chip accelerator which Total Replay will use to speed up decompression.
- The IIc Plus built-in accelerator (which is mostly but not 100% Zip Chip register compatible) is also now supported.
- The Laser 128EX and 128EX/2 built-in accelerator is also now supported. This makes the emulated Laser 128EX and EX/2 excellent Total Replay machines; configure a Mockingboard and CFFA2 in the 2 slots.
- A Brazilian IIe clone called the "Spectrum ED" is now supported and works. Due to non-standard ID bytes most software thinks it's a 64K II Plus, but Total Replay 4.0 final will know about it.

Thanks to MAME's floppy maestro Olivier Galibert for the new IWM emulation and to Apple II MVP Peter Ferrie for assistance with some IIc and IIgs issues.

As always, Apple II info and configuration instructions are here: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Apple_II

These instructions have been updated to include information on configuring the new Zip Chip emulation.

[fadden]

On Friday, June 26, 2020 at 10:45:17 PM UTC-7, messd...@gmail.com wrote:
> - Fixed an interaction between IIe-style aux writes and IIgs shadowing that caused Cinemaware games like Rocket Ranger and Three Stooges to be missing some graphics. Yes, those GS-native games use IIe-style code to write to the SHR framebuffer.

Like https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/230/56 , or something else? (Just curious.)

The fixes and Total Replay integration should make MAME quite the Apple II gaming emulator...

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 10:35:51 AM UTC-4, fadden wrote:
> Like https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/230/56 , or something else? (Just curious.)
>
> The fixes and Total Replay integration should make MAME quite the Apple II gaming emulator...

I didn't dig very far into the code, but it wasn't doing PEI or PEA tricks that I saw. Looked like very normal copy loops. Someone could probably disassemble the games and get a bit more perf out of them.

Total Replay is certainly a focus, especially with Peter helping out.

[Brandon Taylor]

I'm sorry, but I fail to see why I should dump my current Apple II emulators (AppleWin and GSport) for MAME's emulation of these computers.

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 9:42:00 AM UTC-4, Brandon Taylor wrote:
> I'm sorry, but I fail to see why I should dump my current Apple II emulators (AppleWin and GSport) for MAME's emulation of these computers.

You don't have to do a thing if you like what you've got. AppleWin and GSPort/GSPlus are great emulators written by great people.

But if you ever want to do slightly "out there" Apple II or /// things like booting the Golden Orchard CD-ROM .iso, emulating the ComputerEyes digitizer, putting Phasors in all 7 slots just because you can, or playing a MIDI keyboard into synthLAB, we're here for you.

[Michael J. Mahon]

A very classy answer to a somewhat prickly question. ;-)

--
-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://michaeljmahon.com

[James Davis]

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 6:42:00 AM UTC-7, Brandon Taylor wrote:
> I'm sorry, but I fail to see why I should dump my current Apple II emulators (AppleWin and GSport) for MAME's emulation of these computers.

You can have them all. You do not have to dump any one emulator for another.

But I agree that MAME is not so hot. It is an emulator for Game Console Technicians/Programmers/Creators to emulate old and new arcade machines accurately and authentically. And, it is NOT easy to use or get ROM images for all the machines it can emulate. It is more trouble than it is worth.

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 4:57:23 PM UTC-4, James Davis wrote:

> But I agree that MAME is not so hot. It is an emulator for Game Console Technicians/Programmers/Creators to emulate old and new arcade machines accurately and authentically. And, it is NOT easy to use or get ROM images for all the machines it can emulate. It is more trouble than it is worth.

Obviously I consider that to be not true. MAME is a framework to emulate anything from a collection of chips, and the wide variety of supported machines helps to perfect those chip emulations. Some recent work on a legendary 1980s sampling synthesizer fixed a shared chip error and caused some beloved-to-Brits games based on the UK TV show "The Crystal Maze" to work. It's that kind of unexpected stuff that we really love.

MAME's Apple II support does have a lot to offer people creating and debugging new Apple II and /// software (it's used by qkumba to debug problems with Total Replay), but there's a lot to offer when you're just playing games or screwing around in Applesoft BASIC too.

Complete ROM sets are available from the Internet Archive and a lot of much shadier places that Google can direct you to if you ask politely. And you can run Apple II software right in your browser on the Internet Archive thanks to MAME's flexibility.

[fadden]

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 3:14:24 PM UTC-7, messd...@gmail.com wrote:
> MAME's Apple II support does have a lot to offer people creating and debugging new Apple II and /// software (it's used by qkumba to debug problems with Total Replay), but there's a lot to offer when you're just playing games or screwing around in Applesoft BASIC too.

I used the debugger quite a bit when disassembling Battlezone. MAME's debugger is particularly good at figuring out when values change in certain ways.

I think MAME's scope and flexibility, while being its greatest strength, are also its biggest weakness, as simple tasks like setting up ROM images for execution can turn into a scavenger hunt. Getting Battlezone to work required some trial and error. (Example: you must put the contents of the unpacked zip file into a directory called "bzone" in the "roms" directory. If it's not called "bzone" it won't appear in the GUI list. You get the name "bzone" by opening a multi-megabyte XML file and searching for a match. There might be a way to specify it by command-line; you can find the options with "-showusage", which also dumps about a hundred lines of GPU options. You really, really want to use the command line, as any warnings and errors only appear there.) Compare to an Apple II-specific emulator like AppleWin, where you just click on the 5.25" drive icon to select images and do disk-swapping.

Another example: at one point I was trying to modify the Battlezone ROM image while it was executing, but you can't just edit the image in memory. I googled for a solution, found nothing but sites that say you can't do it, so I ended up using the cheat engine (which is very handy but also rather obscure). Then a month later, while reading a thread by somebody with extensive MAME experience, I learned that you can just select a different entry in the "region" drop-down menu to make ROM writable. Was not my first guess. (Some notes here: https://6502disassembly.com/mame-dbg.html )

I think I can say that MAME's functionality is far in advance of its usability without contradicting anything that has been said in this thread so far. :-) Once it's set up and working it performs very well, and things like the new-ish launcher GUI are really helpful (especially on Windows where command-line is not the default).

What encourages me about something like Total Replay is that you can create a simple install that lets people play hundreds (how many now?) of games without having to fiddle around with a large number of individual image files. The things I find awkward about MAME -- configuration and setup -- are greatly simplified because everything is in one package.

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 11:58:17 AM UTC-4, fadden wrote:
> I think MAME's scope and flexibility, while being its greatest strength, are also its biggest weakness, as simple tasks like setting up ROM images for execution can turn into a scavenger hunt. Getting Battlezone to work required some trial and error. (Example: you must put the contents of the unpacked zip file into a directory called "bzone" in the "roms" directory. If it's not called "bzone" it won't appear in the GUI list. You get the name "bzone" by opening a multi-megabyte XML file and searching for a match.

I'm so sorry for what you went through, the intended version of what you were doing is a lot easier.

1) MAME is intended to be used with the ROMs still zipped or 7zipped. If you unzipped them, that works too, but you're just making it harder on yourself. You just need bzone.zip or bzone.7z in the roms/ folder. Exactly as the Internet Archive has it.

2) To find out what the set name for a game is, type "mame English-name-of-game" at the command line. MAME has a fuzzy text parser that suggests similar things, and it's pretty good at figuring out what you want most of the time. Or you can use http://www.progettoemma.net/ (click the UK/US flag for English). Or download one of the many GUI frontends for MAME. On Windows there's about a zillion.

> Another example: at one point I was trying to modify the Battlezone ROM image while it was executing, but you can't just edit the image in memory.

Right, the "maincpu" region is, as the name suggests, a view of the 6502's address space, and that means you have the same limitations the 6502 does in terms of not writing to the ROM. (This is super important for the IIgs, which as you probably know has dozens of places it deliberately writes to ROM for Apple's internal ICE debugging use). When you switch the region to the actual loaded ROM file you have free reign.

We do know that the functionality overtook the user documentation; we recently had our technical writer take a complete pass through the extensive user manual on mamedev.org. And of course the Apple II specific documentation on the wiki at https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Apple_II attempts to both explain everything in depth and give easy examples of how to get up and running quickly.

> What encourages me about something like Total Replay is that you can create a simple install that lets people play hundreds (how many now?) of games without having to fiddle around with a large number of individual image files. The things I find awkward about MAME -- configuration and setup -- are greatly simplified because everything is in one package.

Over 300 games in Total Replay 4.0 on 128K Apple IIs, somewhat less for 64K.

The Apple /// Ready-To-Run packages have been great for easing people into things, and I'm hoping someone puts one together for TR 4 when it comes out.

[fadden]

On Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 2:50:31 PM UTC-7, messd...@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm so sorry for what you went through, the intended version of what you were doing is a lot easier.

I think there might be a discoverability issue. :-)

I went back through https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/usingmame.html and aboutromsets.html and didn't find any of what you mentioned. AFAIK that's the "welcome to MAME" document set for new users. FWIW, I'm using the Windows GUI that comes with the distribution, and I don't see anything that would help figure out ROM installation. (Still on v0.221 though.)

I had other issues getting started, e.g. https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/defaultkeys.html tells you nothing about how to control a game. It probably can't, since every game is a little different, but you'd like it to tell you how to *figure out* how to control a game: start the game, hit Tab, select "Input (this machine)", read the list, go from there.

I felt like I was in a constant state of "there must be a way to do this". Persistence generally won the day. The "quickstart" section on the Apple II doc page is the sort of thing that the MAME docs could use more of. I know that's hard to do when the emulator supports about a billion different things, and everybody coming to it is looking for something different.

The in-app documentation is generally good, e.g. the debugger command-line help was very helpful, but some of it is stale. For example, running "mame64 -help" says, "For usage instructions, please consult the files config.txt and windows.txt", but neither of those appear to be included in the Windows distribution.

So there's a bit of a bump to get started.

Returning this thread to Apple II relevance: life would be easier if the Apple II hardware ROM sets were easier to find. I spent 5 minutes googling for them and came up empty; the one place I found that had them has apparently "gone legit". Most of the search results for "Apple II ROMs" turn up sites with disk images, because "ROM" now means "game".

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 7:05:04 PM UTC-4, fadden wrote:
> I think there might be a discoverability issue. :-)

Yeah, I was getting that vibe :-)

> I went back through https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/usingmame.html and aboutromsets.html and didn't find any of what you mentioned. AFAIK that's the "welcome to MAME" document set for new users. FWIW, I'm using the Windows GUI that comes with the distribution, and I don't see anything that would help figure out ROM installation. (Still on v0.221 though.)

I'll forward this thread to the documentation person so we can work out better discoverability for some things.

> I had other issues getting started, e.g. https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/defaultkeys.html tells you nothing about how to control a game.

The majority of arcade games have a common default key setup, it really should be included on that page.

> I felt like I was in a constant state of "there must be a way to do this". Persistence generally won the day. The "quickstart" section on the Apple II doc page is the sort of thing that the MAME docs could use more of.

Yeah, I had the advantage writing that wiki page of being focused specifically on emulating the Apple II series.

> So there's a bit of a bump to get started.

Aye. I appreciate you walking me through your difficulties, hopefully we can improve the documentation from there.

> Returning this thread to Apple II relevance: life would be easier if the Apple II hardware ROM sets were easier to find. I spent 5 minutes googling for them and came up empty; the one place I found that had them has apparently "gone legit".

"MAME (version) ROMs" is usually a good Google search term, but I'll go slightly rogue here because I doubt Apple gives much of a damn about this stuff now:

https://archive.org/download/MAME221RomsOnlyMerged

Get "a2aevm80.zip" through "a2zipdrv.zip" and all of the "apple2*.zip" ROMs and you'll be able to emulate any Apple II or Laser 128 configuration with any of the supported expansion cards.

[James Davis]

On Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 4:50:02 PM UTC-7, messd...@gmail.com wrote:

> https://archive.org/download/MAME221RomsOnlyMerged
>
> Get "a2aevm80.zip" through "a2zipdrv.zip" and all of the "apple2*.zip" ROMs and you'll be able to emulate any Apple II or Laser 128 configuration with any of the supported expansion cards.

That is a lot of trouble to download each individually. Put all the zips in one big 7zip ultra-compact file for downloading and we could run everything there (not just Apple II) right from the standard MAME front end, right from the get-go. KISS! Oh, except for the fact that probably not all will work on older versions of MAME. Getting MAME all setup was hard enough in the first place, I do not want to have to setup MAME over and over again, with every new version released. Make an installer package.

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 10:24:08 PM UTC-4, James Davis wrote:
> That is a lot of trouble to download each individually. Put all the zips in one big 7zip ultra-compact file for downloading and we could run everything there (not just Apple II) right from the standard MAME front end, right from the get-go.

You can. IA lets you download everything in that directory at once as either a large archive or via bittorrent.

And I'm pretty confident there are no additional ROMs hiding in any Apple II computers, so those sets won't change in future versions.

[TomCh]

Thanks for the link to IA's MAME ROMs.

I've never been able to get the mouse-card to work with MAME (now using 0.222), so I downloaded a2mouse.zip to my "ROMs" folder, but I still get an error:

D:\Apple][\Emulators\mame0222b>mame64 apple2ee -w -sl4 mouse
bootstrap.bin NOT FOUND (tried in m68705p3 apple2ee apple2e)
Fatal error: Required files are missing, the machine cannot be run.

In my "ROMs" folder I have:
a2mouse.zip, apple2ee.zip, apple2ep.zip

In fact looking in apple2ee.zip, I can see the 4 files from a2mouse.zip are already in there.

Any idea what this error means?

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 4:18:26 AM UTC-4, TomCh wrote:
> Thanks for the link to IA's MAME ROMs.
>
> I've never been able to get the mouse-card to work with MAME (now using 0.222), so I downloaded a2mouse.zip to my "ROMs" folder, but I still get an error:
>
> D:\Apple][\Emulators\mame0222b>mame64 apple2ee -w -sl4 mouse
> bootstrap.bin NOT FOUND (tried in m68705p3 apple2ee apple2e)
> Fatal error: Required files are missing, the machine cannot be run.
>
>

> Any idea what this error means?

The key here is "(tried in m68705p3 apple2ee apple2e)". Those are the 3 zip/7z names it thought that file might be in, and in this case you also need m68705p3.zip because someone separated out the 68705 internal boot loader without my knowing :-)

[TomCh]

Thanks, that did the trick.

[James Davis]

I got this message when I tried to download the whole kit:

"total size of requested files (67 GB) is too large for zip-on-the-fly"

Could we get it put into a completely finished single zip/7z to download, please?

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Monday, July 6, 2020 at 3:31:53 PM UTC-4, James Davis wrote:
> "total size of requested files (67 GB) is too large for zip-on-the-fly"
>
> Could we get it put into a completely finished single zip/7z to download, please?

Ask an IA admin? 67 GB is more than you can legally fit in a .zip I think, but .7z should work.

[Andrew Roughan]

What Apple II stuff is taking 67GB?
That’s ridiculous. Even for an emulator.

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 8:47:23 AM UTC-4, Andrew Roughan wrote:
> What Apple II stuff is taking 67GB?
> That’s ridiculous. Even for an emulator.

The Apple II stuff you need is probably around 512K total. The other poster wanted a MAME full set, which includes a lot of things that aren't Apple II. I mean, except for the Soviet arcade machine that was a II Plus clone internally.

[Antoine Vignau]

Hi,

"- Started phasing out our old IWM emulation for a new cycle-accurate version based on a decap of the chip. This means all IIc models past the original one can boot .WOZ images now."

=> Does that mean that the IIgs emulator aupports woz images?

"0.210 fixed a problem where the Rev C SCSI Card firmware would wait 60 seconds before booting the HDD if a CD-ROM drive with no disc was present. I haven't quite worked out CD audio yet."
=> Does Mame now support audio CDs?

Thank you,
Antoine

[messd...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 8:05:17 PM UTC-4, Antoine Vignau wrote:
> => Does that mean that the IIgs emulator aupports woz images?

Not yet. The IIgs and IIc Plus are still using the legacy IWM implementation because we don't have 3.5" working with the new one yet. Once we do, it will support woz images (and hopefully 3.5" woz images).

> => Does Mame now support audio CDs?

Not yet, I did do some work on it but never finished. I would like to get audio to work though, it would be cool.

[James Davis]

The object is to get it for MAME running under Microsoft Windows on a modern IBM compatible machine with >= 500 GB HDD to emulate everything MAME can.

[Antoine Vignau]

Thank you for your prompt answer.
Keep up the good work,
Antoine

[Nick Westgate]

On Saturday, 4 July 2020 08:14:24 UTC+10, messd...@gmail.com wrote:
> Obviously I consider that to be not true. MAME is a framework to emulate anything from a collection of chips, and the wide variety of supported machines helps to perfect those chip emulations.

Definitely the mother of all emulation projects. Great work, and thanks for engaging here. A very interesting thread.

> Some recent work on a legendary 1980s sampling synthesizer fixed a shared chip error and caused some beloved-to-Brits games based on the UK TV show "The Crystal Maze" to work.

That is cool. Looking at the videos online, over time the arcade version accumulated some interesting similarities to the Archimedes/PC game!

Cheers,
Nick.

[Andrea Odetti]

On Saturday, June 27, 2020 at 6:45:17 AM UTC+1, messd...@gmail.com wrote:
> We've got a lot of Apple II highlights this time:
>

Very interesting.

I use mame in Ubuntu 20.10 which is 0.224.
I figured out how to use command line and how to use roms, but one thing not clear to me is if there are any special key shortcuts.

The only one I got is Alt-F4 to exit the emulator.
No other key seems to do anything. I read somewhere that ScrollLock should do something, but I could not get it.
None of the keys mentioned here do anything https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/defaultkeys.html

I feel I am missing something trivial.