MAME: How to ... ?

[Pernod]

In Elkulator it is possible to load both DFS and ADFS disks and switch modes by typing *DISK.

Is it possible to get this same functionality in MAME? When I use the software lists for the Electron, a great many disks will not load with the default settings, I think because they are DFS. When I type *DISK in MAME, I get a "no directory" error.

You need to understand how you can have both DFS and ADFS on real hardware. The easiest way is to use the Advanced Plus 3/4 which is a cartridge:

Code: Select all

mame electron -exp plus1 -cart1 ap34

[Tomkun]

Thank you very much!

On a related topic, is this the same hardware combination that Elkulator emulates, or is that a special case?

[Pernod]

On a related topic, is this the same hardware combination that Elkulator emulates, or is that a special case?

It's effectively the same, but Elkulator doesn't accurately represent a real hardware configuration in this case. It just lets you do it without having to know how you'd do it.

[beebman82]

Hello,

Thank you for useful MAME information.

How do I please run MAME for BBC Master 128 (bbcm) from command line for ADFS to load adfs files. By default it runs DFS for ssd files. Also, in similar way, is there command line to force DFS to load ssd/dsd?

Ta.

[Tomkun]

In Elkulator it is possible to load both DFS and ADFS disks and switch modes by typing *DISK.

Is it possible to get this same functionality in MAME? When I use the software lists for the Electron, a great many disks will not load with the default settings, I think because they are DFS. When I type *DISK in MAME, I get a "no directory" error.

You need to understand how you can have both DFS and ADFS on real hardware. The easiest way is to use the Advanced Plus 3/4 which is a cartridge:

Code: Select all

mame electron -exp plus1 -cart1 ap34

What is the correct method for loading a DFS disk in this scenario? I tried to use *DISK and *CAT like I would in Elkulator, but I keep getting errors. I don't know if that's because I am doing something wrong or because MAME has a bug.

[jgharston]

Any help on getting a fully-populated System 5 running? With RAM all the way up to &DFFF.

I've tried various combinations of: mame acrnsys5 -bus1 32k -bus 8k or mame acrnsys5 -bus1 32k

but it refuses to give me any RAM at &A000-&BFFF, it gives me RAM at &2000-&3FFF /twice/ and ROM at &A000-&BFFF. Which is useless as I'm trying to load BASIC to &A000-&DFFF.

Ta.

[Pernod]

Any help on getting a fully-populated System 5 running? With RAM all the way up to &DFFF.

I've tried various combinations of: mame acrnsys5 -bus1 32k -bus 8k or mame acrnsys5 -bus1 32k

but it refuses to give me any RAM at &A000-&BFFF, it gives me RAM at &2000-&3FFF /twice/ and ROM at &A000-&BFFF. Which is useless as I'm trying to load BASIC to &A000-&DFFF.

The System 5 comes pre-configured with two 32K cards, but you'll need to go into Machine Configuration to configure one of them as 16K: &8000-&BFFF.

[jgharston]

Wey hey. Thanks!

[dominicbeesley]

Aha so you can do *SBASIC3 so I must either be doing something wrong with the images or my DOS is shonky!

[SteveF]

I'd like to emulate a BBC B with the "we32kram" expansion *and* at least 16K of sideways RAM. Is this possible please? I'm playing around with the MAME menu and I can't seem to get access to the "romslot[0-3]" options where I might be able to choose a 16K sideways RAM module. I have only skimmed this thread just now so apologies if I missed an earlier answer...

(I'm using MAME v0.224 on Windows, FWIW. I'm happy to switch to a different version as long as I can download a prebuilt binary, since I don't have any compilers set up on Windows.)

[Deleted User 13004]

"mame bbcm -listslots" shows there's an awhd (Acorn Winchester Disc) for the 1mhzbus slot

After running "mame -window bbcm -1mhzbus awhd", I can now see "awhd" under the slot menu, but it has further sub-options from which I suspect I need "harddisk". How do I add that to the command line too?

And how to reference a HD image on the host file system (similar -flop1=file) as I can't see any HD from "-listmedia"?

Thanks

[Pernod]

"mame bbcm -listslots" shows there's an awhd (Acorn Winchester Disc) for the 1mhzbus slot

After running "mame -window bbcm -1mhzbus awhd", I can now see "awhd" under the slot menu, but it has further sub-options from which I suspect I need "harddisk". How do I add that to the command line too?

The harddisk is selected by default, when using -listslots you can also specify the additional devices selected to list slots for:
mame bbcm -1mhzbus awhd -listslots

And how to reference a HD image on the host file system (similar -flop1=file) as I can't see any HD from "-listmedia"?

Same for -listmedia, shows you can specify a file with -hard1=file:
mame bbcm -1mhzbus awhd -listmedia

PS: Edit your mame.ini and search for window, change from 0 to 1 to always run in windowed mode.

[Deleted User 13004]

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply!

Oh, I've just found https://arcade.vastheman.com/minimaws/machine/bbcm which assembles a basic template command line from a selection of Options droplists. Which makes daisy-chaining the 1MHz bus easier. But wouldn't have answered my question.

[Deleted User 13004]

Back for more help. I've tried a few sources for a HD image:

The prebuilt scsi0.dat from ahttps://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=400
"MkImg hd.dat -fs adfs -pad -size 128m" (but adding no files) from https://mdfs.net/Apps/DiskTools/
The "New Image" tool from "Disc Image Manager" at https://www.geraldholdsworth.co.uk/inde ... mageReader

Each of the three images opens successfully in Disc Image Manager.

MAME is started with: mame bbcm -1mhzbus awhd -hard hd.dat -flop1 hd_utils.adl

Although MAME seems to be able see any of the HD images, it always reports "Broken Directory" when trying to catalogue it:

I suspect I've missed (or misunderstood) something basic, are you able to provide any pointers? Thanks

[Pernod]

MAME is started with: mame bbcm -1mhzbus awhd -hard hd.dat -flop1 hd_utils.adl

Although MAME seems to be able see any of the HD images, it always reports "Broken Directory" when trying to catalogue it:

As there is no hard disk geometry information provided with your hd.dat then MAME is assuming a sector size of 512 bytes, whereas your ADFS image has 256 byte sectors.

The recommended solution is to convert your hd.dat into MAME's CHD container format using chdman.exe, that you should already have in your mame folder. To convert try something like:
chdman -i hd.dat -o hd.chd -ss 256 -chs 3971,16,33
This specifies the (i)input, (o)utput, (ss)ector size, and (chs)cylinders/heads/sectors of the physical drive. The -chs values are for a 512MB images. Then mount the resulting chd file instead of your dat file.

You can also use HD images with the emulated DataCenter, actually CompactFlash images. With this you'll have the opposite issue as the device expects an image with 512K sectors but all images out there have 256 byte sectors. in this case the files need padding to add 256K bytes to every sector in the file.

[Deleted User 13004]

The recommended solution is to convert your hd.dat into MAME's CHD container format using chdman.exe, that you should already have in your mame folder. To convert try something like:
chdman -i hd.dat -o hd.chd -ss 256 -chs 3971,16,33

Thanks. With a small addition "chdman createhd -i hd.dat -o hd.chd -ss 256 -chs 3971,16,33 -f" it produced a CHD file which chdman info and verify seemed happy with.

Then mount the resulting chd file instead of your dat file.

Running "mame bbcm -1mhzbus awhd -hard hd.chd -flop1 hd_utils.adl" I can see the floppy disc image but "*MOUNT 0" give a "Disc error 61".

If I run WEDITOR, sector 0 of the HD shows up as the raw CHD file:

Looking around at hints and tips, I can only find mention of CHDs for ROMs and placing the imagine in the ROMs directory. Which isn't the case here.

Sorry for the questions - but can you see what I'm doing wrong?

[vanekp]

mame bbcb -cassette <file name>
to start BBC b emulation and load a cassette file but is there a way to get mame to stat up without DFS?
Is there also a way to turn off the warning screen/messages when starting BBC emulator in MAME?

[bob147]

I'm sure @Pernod will be along soon but I think I can answer this. You can use command line -skip_gameinfo to skip the first message describing the machine, but I don't think it's possible to skip the 'this machine has imperfect graphics' warning without mucking about with the source code yourself.

They had a lot of problems with people using unfinished systems then flooding them with complaints/bugs, hence this being enforced to remove ambiguity. Of course now they have a lot of complaints about being unable to skip the warning instead, it's one of those tricky problems where every solution is ultimately unsatisfying in a different way

[vanekp]

I'm sure @Pernod will be along soon but I think I can answer this. You can use command line -skip_gameinfo to skip the first message describing the machine, but I don't think it's possible to skip the 'this machine has imperfect graphics' warning without mucking about with the source code yourself.

They had a lot of problems with people using unfinished systems then flooding them with complaints/bugs, hence this being enforced to remove ambiguity. Of course now they have a lot of complaints about being unable to skip the warning instead, it's one of those tricky problems where every solution is ultimately unsatisfying in a different way

Thanks for that that seems to work fine less key pressing to get it to run.
I also added skip_gameinfo 1 and skip_disclaimer 1 in the mame.ini which seem to get rid of the warning but did not get rid of the machine info screen this one

MameMsg.png (20.76 KiB) Viewed 3438 times

But with this on the command line that seems to remove this as well.

[Pernod]

mame bbcb -cassette <file name>
to start BBC b emulation and load a cassette file but is there a way to get mame to stat up without DFS?
Is there also a way to turn off the warning screen/messages when starting BBC emulator in MAME?

Sorry, been away for a few days.

To start without any FDC/DFS installed use:
mame bbcb -fdc ""
This simply removes the 8271 and associated DFS, it defaults to acorn8271.

Looks like you've already found the options to skip the messages. The machine emulation status is also skipped when running from command line, but is always shown when using the internal UI to select a machine.

[vanekp]

no problem and thanks for the info easy if you know how.

[dp11]

Could I request the first post is updated to give a location of where the roms etc can be found ?

[Pernod]

Could I request the first post is updated to give a location of where the roms etc can be found ?

All the Acorn 8-bit ROMs are stickied in this section of the forum. I'm not publicly posting links to the full romsets, they are out there and searching for 'mame roms 0.246' should take you to the archive.

[bob147]

Does anyone know if there's an extra step needed to load a tape in Mame? I attempted to load the repton tape from the software list using the bbcb driver, using the usual *TAPE followed by CHAIN"", but the data is never found, it's either stuck endlessly searching or just gives me a bad program error. I'm sure the image is fine, they all ultimately come from stairway to hell anyway so will be well tested.

[Pernod]

Does anyone know if there's an extra step needed to load a tape in Mame? I attempted to load the repton tape from the software list using the bbcb driver, using the usual *TAPE followed by CHAIN"", but the data is never found, it's either stuck endlessly searching or just gives me a bad program error.

The handling of UEF tape images in MAME requires a rewrite, it generally fails with any form of tape protection. You should have more success with a disc image of Repton.

[bob147]

Thanks Pernod, just one more! Do we expect the FSD discs in the bbc_flop_orig softlist to work? I can load Repton using the bbcmicro.co.uk ssd as a loose disc but Mame didn't seem to like the software listed FSD version.

[Pernod]

Thanks Pernod, just one more! Do we expect the FSD discs in the bbc_flop_orig softlist to work?

Support of the FSD format is only partial (due to the nature of the format), some will work, others don't. Eventually I intend to replace the FSD's with HFE's which will greatly improve support for protected disc images.

[bob147]

Yeah it'd be great to mirror all the great work that's in beebjit / disk beast in Mame as well. Thanks for clarifying.

[james]

Hi. Two questions ...

"mame bbcmt -bios mos350" gets a Master Turbo with MOS 3.50. But what else is needed on the command line to select Tube OS 1.20 (instead of the default 1.10)?

Running MAME 0.256 (and just tried with 0.258) on Mac OS Ventura 13.5.2 freezes slightly too often - the Beeb screen dims and there's no response to any key press. There's very little else running on the Mac (just Firefox and Mail at the moment). Is there any log I can look at / share next time that might help diagnose the probelm?

Thanks.

[Pernod]

Hi. Two questions ...

"mame bbcmt -bios mos350" gets a Master Turbo with MOS 3.50. But what else is needed on the command line to select Tube OS 1.20 (instead of the default 1.10)?

Try adding "-intube 65c102,bios=120", though it's much easier to select it from the internal UI.

Running MAME 0.256 (and just tried with 0.258) on Mac OS Ventura 13.5.2 freezes slightly too often - the Beeb screen dims and there's no response to any key press. There's very little else running on the Mac (just Firefox and Mail at the moment). Is there any log I can look at / share next time that might help diagnose the probelm?

Sounds like you have UI controls enabled and have pressed 'P' to pause.