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Amstrad CPC WiFi

Started by Duke, 07:36, 07 May 16

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Duke

#1600
@RobertM
I uploaded the web files here:
http://www.spinpoint.org/cpc/m4webfiles.zip

Compare to the output of the webinterface to understand whats generated for the various <!--#?-->

I have always used firefox for the webinterface, though I must admit that I am no longer on latest version, since they abandoned Java. Will have to check with latest version one of them days.

@KaosOverride
Thanks, that could be part of the explanation. Will try to see if I can find other "padded/mirrored" dumps to see if it makes any difference.


@00WReX
Thanks again for the comprehensive testing.
Unfortunately your results are not the same as mine. All the games works for me, I started each one and tried to play a bit (ok not much as I am shitty gamer!).
I also tested with several revisions of M4 board. So if we are using same dumps that leaves:
Different CPC+ (asic revision) or different version of the "Burning Rubber+Basic+Amsdos" rom having some impact.
Will try to source another CPC+ and hopefully I will have similar problems, so I can work it out, right now I have no idea what to try.
CPC reset (on v2.4 pcb's) should reset the cart game to restart. M4 reset to restart to basic.

@gerald
I agree, as every game (except plotting) works fine for me, without any mirroring.

Maniac

#1601

Thought I'd give this a go and I've had very mixed results.


At first I did wonder if there was some kind of conflict between me M4 and the other hardware I've got installed so I removed my C4CPC and X-Mem but the results are consistent with or without them. These are cart images I tried, all of which work fine with my C4CPC (these are the images provided by Gerald on the SD card shipped with it):


Robocop II - works
Navy Seals - screen goes black and nothing further happens
Pang - screen goes black and nothing further happens
Switchblade - works until try to start game after intro sequence
Crazy Cars II - Gfx corrupt on title screens but main game works
Fire & Forget II - Same as Crazy Cars II
Tennis Cup II - seems ok but I can't play it
Panza Kick Boxing - works
Copter 271 - starts but when you try to start it restarts the cart
Klax - works
Dick Tracy - Gfx corrupt throughout
World of Sports - Crashes with corrupt gfx
Operation Thunderbolt - works
No Exit - works
Pro Tennis Tour - works
Tin Tin On The Moon - Intro sequence works but then blank screen when try to start game
Batman The Movie - works
Mystical - Starts but then gfx corrupt when starting game

KaosOverride

Quote from: gerald on 09:33, 25 June 17
To my knowledge, none of the released game make use of the rom mirroring. If any of them did, it would not work on C4CPC.
C4CPC always show as a 512k ROM.

So a 128Kb or less (I did a 32Kb CPR with firmware and a Softbreumen made autorun ROM with a game) is expanded to 512Kb. But is AMSDOS ROM at 131 (0x83) and 7 (0x07) mirrored at 0x17  0x27 0x37 0x47 0x57 0x67 0x77? If no game reads this other mirrors and is just a partial decoding glitch then is fine.

Unfortunately I'm moving to a new home and I cannot plug any hardware for now :( Last time was when I made the video of dumping a GX4000 game thanks to the M4 firmware and basic ROMs overriding the cartridge but maintaining the full cart at rom 128 and above.

After 2 weeks I think I will be able to play a bit with this.
KaosOverride · GitHub
MEGA Amstrad Public Amstrad folder

Duke

@Maniac
Thanks for the testing, it's interesting but even more confusing :)

I am just doing some more tests, using my only other plus card (burning rubber without basic/amsdos), see if that has any effect. PANG plays fine with it, I noticed that was one the games which failed for both you and 00WReX. Oh well I'll probably not figure out the issue until I can reproduce it myself.
Fwiw. I tried using the 512KB version on CPC power and no change, so the CPR's themselves are hardly at fault.

00WReX

Thanks Duke.

This was what was used for the latest test.

M4 board rev 2.1 with only the M4 reset button.
The M4 is on FW 2.0.4beta2
All ROMs blank on the M4.  No other expansions fitted.
AZERTY 6128 Plus with an MC0122E revision mainboard.
The standard BASIC/AMSDOS - Burnin' Rubber cartridge that comes with the Plus.

For some games that crashed, it definetely mesed with the M4 reset.
The LEDs would flicker quickly but no reset.

I think I need to make a more comprehensive checklist (or even a video would probably be good, but not my strong point).

I also should do a complete side by side comparison with my 464 Plus (although this actually has the same mainboard revision as the 6128 Plus).

I did try a few on the 464 Plus on the original beta, but in normal circumstances I don't have either Plus permanently setup, so I have to get them out for testing.

Also, just to confirm.
I have no other issues with any of the M4 boards I have (3x boards, 2x ver2.1 and 1x ver2.4).
Everything else I have tried on them works just fine on either an original CPC or the Plus.
The only issue is with the Plus games.

Out of interest, what changed from beta 1 to beta 2, as 2 games (possibly more), Navy seals and Panza kick boxing 100% failed on multiple tries with beta 1.
On beta 2 they worked 100% of the time with multiple tries.

Cheers,
Shane
The CPC in Australia...
Awa - CPCWiki

Duke

#1605
Quote from: 00WReX on 22:44, 25 June 17
M4 board rev 2.1 with only the M4 reset button.
The M4 is on FW 2.0.4beta2
All ROMs blank on the M4.  No other expansions fitted.
AZERTY 6128 Plus with an MC0122E revision mainboard.
The standard BASIC/AMSDOS - Burnin' Rubber cartridge that comes with the Plus.
Thanks for the info's.
My QWERTY CPC6128+ is a MC0122D revision. Everything else is the same as I tried.
Quote
For some games that crashed, it definetely mesed with the M4 reset.
The LEDs would flicker quickly but no reset.
Impossible :) well I guess not, but have not experinced that, must have crashed the code bad.. Hmm actually that could indicate something, something causing the code on M4 board to crash.
Quote
I think I need to make a more comprehensive checklist (or even a video would probably be good, but not my strong point).

I also should do a complete side by side comparison with my 464 Plus (although this actually has the same mainboard revision as the 6128 Plus).

I did try a few on the 464 Plus on the original beta, but in normal circumstances I don't have either Plus permanently setup, so I have to get them out for testing.
Thanks, don't do it if its too much trouble as it is, I am the only one out of four (you, craig and maniac) that has it all working perfectly.

Quote
Out of interest, what changed from beta 1 to beta 2, as 2 games (possibly more), Navy seals and Panza kick boxing 100% failed on multiple tries with beta 1.
On beta 2 they worked 100% of the time with multiple tries.

Some changes to the startup code.
Actually here is another, with a few fixes, it wont change anything in regards to the cpc+ games not working for you, I think.
http://www.spinpoint.org/cpc/M4FIRM_v204b3.zip
It fixes a bug that cleared the lowerrom in normal startup, making it impossible to use another CPC+ cart for bootup (ie. burning rubber without basic and firmware/lowerrom).
And also remaps physical roms 1 and 3 to logical 0 and 7. This way I could use the "burning rubber+basic" as ctr image, working fine aswell for me.

Thanks again.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, whatever ROM setup you have initially, it doesn't matter, once it switches to CTR mode they are all cleared.

00WReX

#1606
Ok, got home from work and decided to give things a go again.
Really random results and the M4 reset button was pretty much not resetting the board for most things.
I decided that I should clean the centronics connectors with Isopropyl Alcohol. No change.
I then dug out my only other Centronics connector to MX4 ribbon cable.
This actually changed things a bit... I was no longer having the reset button issues.
And my .CPR experience was now a lot like those of 'Maniac'.

I tested all the CPRs...

Barbarian II - works.
Batman The Movie - works.
Burnin' Rubber - Blank screen after intial menu screen.
Copter 271 - start screen OK but when you try to start the game it restarts the cart.
Crazy Cars II - Works.
Dick Tracy - works.
Fire & Forget II - works.
Klax - works.
Mystical - works.
Navy Seals - Varying results. But tends to keep resetting.
No Exit - works.
Operation Thunderbolt - works.
Pang - Varying results, but never works.
Panza Kick Boxing - works.
Pinball Magic - screen corruption.
Pro Tennis Tour - works.
Robocop 2 - works.
Skeet sSoot - works.
Switchblade - Goes through intro then blank screen.
Tennis Cup II - Looks like it works but cannot play it.
The Enforcer - works.
Tin Tin On The Moon - works
Wild Streets - works.
World Of Sports - Crashes with flashing screen / corrupt screen.

During testing, my Commodore 1084S monitor that I use with the Plus went 'Pop', but that's another story  ::)

Cheers,
Shane
The CPC in Australia...
Awa - CPCWiki

Duke

@00WReX

Thanks a lot. Glad the results are more consistent now. I will compare with Maniacs, see what makes sense, maybe I can debug one of the trouble games (ie. pang) to see what is different from the others and maybe figure out what I should look into :) Thanks!

Sorry about your 1084S, its a good monitor!

Targhan


2 questions:- Did anybody managed to make OCP Art Studio work with the M4Board ? The software runs well, but freezes (at best) when I try to load a file. This is strange because I was always told the software was cleanly opening/saving files.


- Also, would it be possible to have the A drive be the SDCard, and B a normal drive (or the opposite)?
Targhan/Arkos

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Disark - A cross-platform Z80 disassembler/source converter
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Imperial Mahjong
Orion Prime

rpalmer

Targhan,

The only way the "Drives" can be swapped is through hardware for the floppy drives only.
To get the SD card to be "A" you would need to patch the disc rom to call another routine in a support ROM with the SD card routines to read the SD Card just like a floppy disc.
It can be done, but is really difficult to get working with many "Games" as they use virtually all of the available RAM. This means that support ROM routines will loose its own workspace.

rpalmer

Duke

#1610
Quote from: Targhan on 11:37, 29 June 17
2 questions:- Did anybody managed to make OCP Art Studio work with the M4Board ? The software runs well, but freezes (at best) when I try to load a file. This is strange because I was always told the software was cleanly opening/saving files.


- Also, would it be possible to have the A drive be the SDCard, and B a normal drive (or the opposite)?

Art studio should work fine, I ran it from a sub directory earlier and could save and load images just fine. Be sure to run it from a sub dir, not a .dsk file.

As for the A/B thing, I suppose it's possible, though not super easy, much hacking about to be done.

EDIT: You may have to set M4 rom to 7 if you can or use the modified lower rom. (I dont remember)

GUNHED

Well, one can use OCP with patched ROM number. Mine uses ROM 6 instead of ROM 7, so I can use another DOS and have 700K on B. One can patch it to M4 ROM.

http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

Targhan

Thanks for your answers. I struggled a bit but managed to get it working! Thanks !
Targhan/Arkos

Arkos Tracker 2.0.1 now released! - Follow the news on Twitter!
Disark - A cross-platform Z80 disassembler/source converter
FDC Tool 1.1 - Read Amsdos files without the system

Imperial Mahjong
Orion Prime

Targhan

After some more use, I have two suggestions:
- Would it be possible to change the current folder read on CPC directly from the PC web interface? Instead of having to type ùCD,"whatever" on CPC...
- On the web interface, you can drag'n'drop files. Could it be possible to do the same with folders?


Thanks again.
Targhan/Arkos

Arkos Tracker 2.0.1 now released! - Follow the news on Twitter!
Disark - A cross-platform Z80 disassembler/source converter
FDC Tool 1.1 - Read Amsdos files without the system

Imperial Mahjong
Orion Prime

Duke

Quote from: Targhan on 14:02, 01 July 17
- Would it be possible to change the current folder read on CPC directly from the PC web interface? Instead of having to type ùCD,"whatever" on CPC...
Yes, someone else requested such feature from the xfer tool, shouldn't be much of a problem. (todo list)
Quote
- On the web interface, you can drag'n'drop files. Could it be possible to do the same with folders?
Probably, I am not a very skillful web programmer, I did manage to hack together the current UI, but I would like encourage someone more used to javascript/xhtml to add such features.
The entire web ui is downloadable here:
http://www.spinpoint.org/cpc/m4webfiles.zip

One can test locally, adding /sd/ prefix to all links.  And accessing the web ui via http://ip or netbios name/sd/index.shtml

RobertM

Quote from: Duke on 16:24, 25 June 17
@RobertM
I uploaded the web files here:
http://www.spinpoint.org/cpc/m4webfiles.zip
Thanks.

The board is working fine now. I did an firmware update (with what I thought was the same version) and it works fine now. I can see the files/settings/control etc pages. I wasn't seeing all the page before as the JavaScript wasn't working for some reason.

I would like to just write some custom pages that I would make available for anyone else and access them through 192.168.1.3/sd/
There are two minor issues -

1) I am used to a normal server setup where there is a default index page but I don't see a default. I have tried index.htm index.html and index.shtml I have had a (quick) look at files you sent and the SSI tags like <!--#tz--> (&lt;!--#tz--&gt;) will be fine. Are there others that I wont see in the shtml files??
2) On the files page the links are clickable which is perfect for web pages but the URL have a problem due to URLENCODE characters that are not needed. In (really really) old versions of HTML (that Noah used on the ark) links weren't put in quotes so extra chars were needed like href=%2Fmy%20page.htm (href=%2Fmy%20page.htm) but for the last 2000 years we have been using quotes href="/my page.htm". The links in the "files" page are like this href="/sd%2Fexample.shtml" (href="/sd%2Fexample.shtml")when it really needs to be just href="/sd/example.shtm"
I will write up some pages to do things. It's just so so good that this little board can serve web pages to. I will be having fun :)

I will let you know what I come up with, I am old hand at HTML - I started with version 1.0
Thanks again.


RobertM

PS: The time seem to be one hour ahead. I changed to an NTP server in my country and it's the same (one hour ahead of real time).

00WReX

Hi Duke,

My previous .cpr tests were on my 6128 Plus.
Today I ran the same tests (using the same M4 board) on my 464 Plus.
Every file worked (except 'Plotting', but you already know about that one).
None of the odd behaviour with certain games, all appeared to work just fine.
Even 'Tennis Cup II' that on my previous test (6128 Plus) would appear to work but unable to play, worked and I could play the game.

One interesting note (maybe).
Pang, which I had previously experienced mixed results, worked perfectly (loaded three times and played fine).
This was the .cpr from my C4CPC.
I had previously also downloaded it from CPCmania.
That version, brings up the initial 'PANG' text screen (but it is missing the 'Ocean' logo, and then immediately goes into a game, bypassing all the other screens. I tried loading this three times and received the same result every time.

To me, it is still almost like a timing sort of issue.
Or, probably a silly question, just throwing it out there...
Is there any pins on the M4 that are used with the .cpr files that are not utilised for regular use.
I'm still wondering if I have a connector issue on the 6128 Plus, with possibly a single pin or something.
When running the M4 normally all appears fine though.

Cheers,
Shane
The CPC in Australia...
Awa - CPCWiki

pelrun

Quote from: RobertM on 02:30, 02 July 17
PS: The time seem to be one hour ahead. I changed to an NTP server in my country and it's the same (one hour ahead of real time).


You have to set your timezone correctly. The NTP server doesn't tell you what your timezone is, it just gives you the accurate meridian time.

Targhan

#1619
Quote- Would it be possible to change the current folder read on CPC directly from the PC web interface? Instead of having to type ùCD,"whatever" on CPC...
Yes, someone else requested such feature from the xfer tool, shouldn't be much of a problem. (todo list)


Awesome. I don't know how you would be implement this, but I think of two ways:
- Either a full path to type with a "go to" button.
- Or "go to current folder" in the explorer of the web interface.


I'd like to help, but I'm no web developer, sorry.
Targhan/Arkos

Arkos Tracker 2.0.1 now released! - Follow the news on Twitter!
Disark - A cross-platform Z80 disassembler/source converter
FDC Tool 1.1 - Read Amsdos files without the system

Imperial Mahjong
Orion Prime

RobertM

Quote from: pelrun on 09:46, 02 July 17

You have to set your timezone correctly. The NTP server doesn't tell you what your timezone is, it just gives you the accurate meridian time.
Yes, We are GMT+10 here so I entered 10 but it shows an extra hour ahead as though I entered 11 instead of 10. Can I check if it can tunnel through the boundary firewall ?? Perhaps NTP is blocked. Hmm now that I think of that I should check the firewall settings in the boundary modem.

Duke

Quote from: RobertM on 02:23, 02 July 17
1) I am used to a normal server setup where there is a default index page but I don't see a default. I have tried index.htm index.html and index.shtml I have had a (quick) look at files you sent and the SSI tags like <!--#tz--> (&lt;!--#tz--&gt;) will be fine. Are there others that I wont see in the shtml files??
When re-directing to microSD it does not default to any file, so you will have to add it with the link, ie /sd/index.shtml.
There shouldn't be other tags than those I use in the files.

Quote
2) On the files page the links are clickable which is perfect for web pages but the URL have a problem due to URLENCODE characters that are not needed. In (really really) old versions of HTML (that Noah used on the ark) links weren't put in quotes so extra chars were needed like href=%2Fmy%20page.htm (href=%2Fmy%20page.htm) but for the last 2000 years we have been using quotes href="/my page.htm". The links in the "files" page are like this href="/sd%2Fexample.shtml" (href="/sd%2Fexample.shtml")when it really needs to be just href="/sd/example.shtm"
I will write up some pages to do things. It's just so so good that this little board can serve web pages to. I will be having fun :)
If you make any good fixes, feel free to share them, I will be happy to update the internal fs, if I have screwed anything up or something can be done smarter.
And good you got it all working, have fun ;)

Quote from: 00WReX on 07:53, 02 July 17
To me, it is still almost like a timing sort of issue.
Or, probably a silly question, just throwing it out there...
Is there any pins on the M4 that are used with the .cpr files that are not utilised for regular use.
I'm still wondering if I have a connector issue on the 6128 Plus, with possibly a single pin or something.
When running the M4 normally all appears fine though.
Thanks for the test results, similar to mine. Don't supposed you have the MC0122D motherboard in your 464+ ?
Other than that, yeah I think it's a timing issue too, I have done some more work on it and have it sync'ed with reset now, still need to debug a few things, but hopefully it will work better for those where it didn't work for all games (probably MC0122E boards).
There isn't any other pins in use for CPC+ rom mapping, that isn't used for everything else.

RobertM

Quote from: RobertM on 23:28, 02 July 17
Yes, We are GMT+10 here so I entered 10 but it shows an extra hour ahead as though I entered 11 instead of 10. Can I check if it can tunnel through the boundary firewall ?? Perhaps NTP is blocked. Hmm now that I think of that I should check the firewall settings in the boundary modem.
I think I answered my own question - seems to be some local problems with accessing a NTP server.

00WReX

QuoteThanks for the test results, similar to mine. Don't supposed you have the MC0122D motherboard in your 464+ ?
Other than that, yeah I think it's a timing issue too, I have done some more work on it and have it sync'ed with reset now, still need to debug a few things, but hopefully it will work better for those where it didn't work for all games (probably MC0122E boards).
There isn't any other pins in use for CPC+ rom mapping, that isn't used for everything else.

Both my 464 Plus & 6128 Plus happen to have the same revision mainboard - MC0122E

Cheers,
Shane
The CPC in Australia...
Awa - CPCWiki

pelrun

Quote from: RobertM on 23:28, 02 July 17
Yes, We are GMT+10 here so I entered 10 but it shows an extra hour ahead as though I entered 11 instead of 10. Can I check if it can tunnel through the boundary firewall ?? Perhaps NTP is blocked. Hmm now that I think of that I should check the firewall settings in the boundary modem.


I'm +10 too (Brisbane) and had the correct time on mine, so I knew you had some other issue :)

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