Minimig Discussion Forum

fascinating, iam looking forward to this project.
but what you mean with "I have compared the gameplay of Giana Sister on C64 emulation and FPGA. The FPGA wins, no doubts" ? do you mean that on emulators it don`t run that smooth in scrolling? iam a big fan of emulators and had much fun over the last years using ccs64, vice,win-uae,zsnes,gens plus,magic-engine,stella,mame,project64,epsxe,visual-boy.

for c64 emulation for example iam using the emulators "ccs64" and "vice" on my pc. and i must say, ccs64 has absolutely no difference to a real c64 when using the perfect configuration with it. i compared this by starting games on my pc and on my real c64 and putting both monitors (c64 and pc) besides. in games with fast scrolling like "dropzone" "paradroid" or "giana sisters" i can see absolut no difference.

but most important thing, and i think many people don`t take care of this when using emulators, is using the correct hz-refresh-rate on the pc-monitor for the screen-resolution you use in the emulator. only then you can have an absolut perfect smooth scrolling.

for pal games (50 fps) screen-refresh-rate should be 100 hz (or 50 hz, but this could not be done by most monitors and also is very bad for the eyes) and for ntsc games (60 fps) using 120 hz is the best. i recommend screen-resolutions 640x480 for pal and 800x600 for ntsc. there is a good tool on the pc, called "hz-tool" in which you can give any screen-resolution a own refresh-rate. so in ccs64 you should use 640x480 with "antialising" and 100 hz refresh-rate on the monitor.

but all this dont work with many new tft- or lcd monitors. for this case, older monitors are much better than the new ones, because new monitors mostly can not handle 100 hz (and its not needed for them because they work in a different way.) only for emulating pal-games this would make sense. and with many new monitors you even can not change the refresh-rate, they use 60hz all the time. so then the emulation looks not perfect smooth and games makes not the fun they did on the original. but when using correct config they did.

and by the way, i have an "1541ultimate" for my c64. very cool hardware. do you know this?

The scrolling was not smooth (some tearing) because of the scanrate mismatch. Plus, the character was not so responsive. I think this is due to windows XP missing some key inputs from the keyboard. I used VICE but I have noticed the same issue under WinUAE. Another point is that there is some delay in the sound output. The computer used was a laptop with a 1.6GHz Pentium-M. On the other hand, with the FPGA, using a speedking joystick or the joystick emulation on the numpad, no problem at all.



Yes, I read about it and I do not need it since I also integrated the VIC-1541 in the FPGA.
I tried a D64 image of Summer Games II and it perfectly worked. Currently, I can load P00 file in less than a second (this is what you see in the video). I wrote an auto-boot menu that scans the P00 files and display the available games. I also put an auto-start feature so you do not have to type "RUN".
The next steps are to implement a pseudo stereo SID mode (I put two SIDs already but one is not used by most of the games/demos). I saw that Jeri Elsworth did an experiment by "detuning" the second SID. I think I will do that and add a delay to give some spaciality.
I also want to accelerate the D64 reading by adding a little bit of VHDL code and by patching the 1541 firmware and the C64 Kernal.

Regards,

Frederic

hm, i do have perfect scrolling, my monitor brings exactly 100hz. character not so responsive? i had this problem too when using my usb-competition-pro sticks but then i made me an parallelport-adapter for the old sticks and using "pp-joystick" and "direct pad pro". then this works very good.

please integrate in the autoboot-menue all four big file-types: d64, t64, prg and p00, when it`s possible, so nobody needs to change file-types

stereo-sid? this sounds very cool. i like the c64 sound. i burn me a mp3-cd with c64 game and demo-sounds for my car. some of my friends think iam crazy, but i like these sounds

no, AW72, you're not crazy, or at least you're not alone: I also have a CD with SID music for running, driving, etc...

We all are a bit of sid . I also like this music and in the early 90th some music cassette full of amiga mod recordings was always present in my car

ha, good to hear, that iam not alone
by the way, here the links of two cool sides with remixes for amiga and c-64 game and demo-sounds.
i think we all have the original sid-tunes from the best games and demos (roland`s ratrace one off my favourites ) and on this sides here are some very cool remixes in modern art. not all remixes are good, but some are very good. have a look. especially at "fist 2 (tune 1 cavernous bongo mix". that`s a cool one from a very cool original sid-tune.
www.remix64.com
www.amigaremix.com

Thanks!! smashing amegas, echoing, RSI...

no news on the FPGA64 core? Who should I PM to get "help"?

maybe you call COMMODORE
okay, bad joke, i am sad about, what happened to that great firm and also to ATARI. they both are cult all over the world!!!

So... no C64 with D64 support for the Minimig? There hasn't be any progress at Pacedev.... any other battlefronts we should check?