Problems With Colecovision Emulation

[telengard]

This, folks is why he deserves guru status

* Note: I just recently added all my colecovision roms to my folder and I get a crash as well. I have over 255 for sure It worked just fine when I only had 4 or 5 ...

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Hehe, thanks for confirming the bug TelcoLou. What exactly is this guru status thing I keep seeing? Do I get some Turtle Wax or something?

The fix will be in the next release (hopefully soon) as well as Coco support and a virtual keyboard (which is quite a pain in the rump!!).

~telengard

 

[remowilliams]

I have found and fixed this bug. If either greenchili or halo9 can confirm that the directory had > 255 or so entries I'd like to have you try out this fix. If that is not the bug you are experiencing I'll have to find a way to get more debugging info from your gp2x's. I'm hoping that on the gp2x I can use ulimit or something to generate a coredump that you can send to me.

~telengard

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I'll try it out if you'd like.

 

[Greenchili]

I only have 127 coleco ROMS in my coleco directory. No other directory even comes close.

 

[telengard]

I have found and fixed this bug. If either greenchili or halo9 can confirm that the directory had > 255 or so entries I'd like to have you try out this fix. If that is not the bug you are experiencing I'll have to find a way to get more debugging info from your gp2x's. I'm hoping that on the gp2x I can use ulimit or something to generate a coredump that you can send to me.

~telengard

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I'll try it out if you'd like.

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Ok great! I haven't been a good boy about using CVS or anything so I can't give you a patched 0.6-alpha to try. This will be what I have currently (for good or bad) with the fix in there. I don't anticipate anything bad happening if you don't hit the right shoulder button. Even then I think you'd be OK.

I'll work on staging it somewhere for download...

~telengard

 

[telengard]

I only have 127 coleco ROMS in my coleco directory. No other directory even comes close.

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Hmmmmm. So there are 2 people w/ 1.20 that are experiencing this. Others are getting it with any emulator w/ more than 256 entries. I'm going to have to see if coredumps will be saved so I can see what's going on. There has to be something subtle going on. Do you have a file in there with an extrodinarily large file name perhaps? I'm just throwing ideas out there in the hopes it's something like that.

The fix I just did sounds like it will help your "larger" directories though.

~telengard

 

[Greenchili]

Send your fix directly to my email, or make it available somewhere and I will try it for you. I reduced the number of files in my directory to something like 25 and now it works fine!!

So apparently 127 is a problem number as well.

 

[telengard]

Send your fix directly to my email, or make it available somewhere and I will try it for you. I reduced the number of files in my directory to something like 25 and now it works fine!!

So apparently 127 is a problem number as well.

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Hi everyone,

I've done a build and tested that it can handle a large # of files in a directory ( I have 270+ coleco roms). Worked fine on my gp2x.

That's about all I tested though, so all bets are off on other stuff.
I just want to make sure that this fixes the Coleco issue that has come up.

This fix will be in the next release which I should have out soon. And I have submitted the fix back to the mess team so that it won't happen w/ xmess/win32mess.

Grab the test version here:

http://users.adelphia.net/~bsturk/gp2x/gp2xmess-test.zip

thanks for all your help everyone, much appreciated!!
~telengard

 

[remowilliams]

I've done a build and tested that it can handle a large # of files in a directory ( I have 270+ coleco roms). Worked fine on my gp2x.

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Well, the TI/99 problem seems to be fixed. I can browse the full directory (~235) and can select files and no longer get trapped in the menu.

Coleco seems to be working as well. Nice!

Can't wait for the release with a virtual keyboard. Though now that I think about it - are definable (and save/loadable) controls do-able? I'm thinking that in some cases for the computers (i.e. Tunnels of Doom) being able to map the joystick directions to E/S/D/X would make the game EXTREMELY easier to play

 

[telengard]

I've done a build and tested that it can handle a large # of files in a directory ( I have 270+ coleco roms). Worked fine on my gp2x.

​

Well, the TI/99 problem seems to be fixed. I can browse the full directory (~235) and can select files and no longer get trapped in the menu.

Coleco seems to be working as well. Nice!

Can't wait for the release with a virtual keyboard. Though now that I think about it - are definable (and save/loadable) controls do-able? I'm thinking that in some cases for the computers (i.e. Tunnels of Doom) being able to map the joystick directions to E/S/D/X would make the game EXTREMELY easier to play

​

Great, glad it's working. I hope one of the 1.20 users that had the issue can confirm it fixes for them too.

You can map controls right now per system and they do save/persist. Although once the virtual keyboard is introduced you have to be careful. Mappings for say the 'E' key to a joystick button will work but you have to make sure you also re-map the 'E' key to the 'E' key. This is how MAME works also. You can do a OR type of thing for mappings and this would need to be done here. On the TI 99/4a cfg now the Start button OR the '1' key on the virtual keyboard triggers a '1'. So that kinda thing. That's the way xmess is designed and it would take a *lot* of gutting/redesign I think to do it differently. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

Saving per game is do able and I'll add that to the TODO list, not sure when I'll be able to get to it though. Most dungeon crawls were like that, including my favorite, Telengard.

The virtual keyboard code has taken so long to do that I'm going to wait to add the clock speed and joystick stuff until a later release. I'd like to get the Coco stuff tested and make sure it runs at a decent speed and then get it out.

thanks again,
~telengard

 

[remowilliams]

So that kinda thing. That's the way xmess is designed and it would take a *lot* of gutting/redesign I think to do it differently. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

Gotcha - I've got a MAME cab, so I know the control configs, I'll give it a shot.

Saving per game is do able and I'll add that to the TODO list, not sure when I'll be able to get to it though. Most dungeon crawls were like that, including my favorite, Telengard.

You like that game too? Who would have guessed?
Configs per game would be very neat. Actually while I'm thinking about it - and I hate to keep asking for things - but save states would be REALLY nice

Hmm. and paging in the rom selection lists too h34r: :lol:

 

[Greenchili]

Sorry for the late response but I kinda got carried away with copying a bunch of stuff over to my SD card, then I got involved with a coleco game. :lol:

Anyways the updated version works great with my 127 roms.

Thanks

 

[luteijn]

Not having had time to look at the code, what was the problem?
Note that I just pulled the number >255 roms out of my ass, because using that would point out to most people that it was probably wrapping something when there's too many entries in the directory. If the original code used something like a signed char, it might very well break at 127 directory entries already.

P.

 

[TelcoLou]

Simple 'fix', I just made seperate folders for all my Coleco roms, named "Coleco_#toF", etc ... works just fine

(I like to keep all my roms in one SD card ... portable, y'know )

 

[telengard]

Not having had time to look at the code, what was the problem?
Note that I just pulled the number >255 roms out of my ass, because using that would point out to most people that it was probably wrapping something when there's too many entries in the directory. If the original code used something like a signed char, it might very well break at 127 directory entries already.

P.

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I think the number could be < 255. The issue was that it was pre-allocating enough elements to hold X number of entries but the sizeof was wrong. They must have changed from char* to ui_menu_items at some point and didn't update all of the places necessary. So after a while filling up the array walked off the end.

The patch made it's way into core mess last night.

~telengard

 

[telengard]

Simple 'fix', I just made seperate folders for all my Coleco roms, named "Coleco_#toF", etc ... works just fine

(I like to keep all my roms in one SD card ... portable, y'know )

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Hehe, good idea. I do the same on my NFS server. directories a, b, c, etc. Although once the new version is out you can keep them all in one dir.

~telengard

 

[Greenchili]

What is funny is I shoulda picked up on this earlier. Cause at one point I used the "file selector" in the 7800 to go into the directory that contained the "coleco" ROMS and it crashed.

Shoulda been obvious at that point that maybe the number of ROMS was an issue. But then I wa kinda rushed at the time.

 

[telengard]

What is funny is I shoulda picked up on this earlier. Cause at one point I used the "file selector" in the 7800 to go into the directory that contained the "coleco" ROMS and it crashed.

Shoulda been obvious at that point that maybe the number of ROMS was an issue. But then I wa kinda rushed at the time.

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Hehe, that's cool. Sometimes things don't jump out at you, esp when you are probably more focused on playing games than debugging.

I had seen this crash also in my coleco directory and had put it in the TODO (it should be in the one you have) and I removed it.

The xmess folks have agreed to roll my port into their tree at some point which will make it a lot easier (hopefully) to track newer releases.

I'm hoping to get the next release out on Thursday. I ended up re-doing the virtual keyboard stuff which has taken some time.

~telengard

 

[telengard]

So that kinda thing. That's the way xmess is designed and it would take a *lot* of gutting/redesign I think to do it differently. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

Gotcha - I've got a MAME cab, so I know the control configs, I'll give it a shot.

Saving per game is do able and I'll add that to the TODO list, not sure when I'll be able to get to it though. Most dungeon crawls were like that, including my favorite, Telengard.

You like that game too? Who would have guessed?
Configs per game would be very neat. Actually while I'm thinking about it - and I hate to keep asking for things - but save states would be REALLY nice

Hmm. and paging in the rom selection lists too h34r: :lol:

​

Heh, is that all you could come up with?

mame/mess do support save states but they seem to be in a state of flux and only certain drivers support it. Couldn't you just save your game to cassette? :lol:
Seriously though, I'm hoping the existing stuff can be leveraged, that'd be a TON of work to do for each driver.

Paging in the rom lists shouldn't be too difficult. I added everything you mentioned into the TODO file.

Also, I'd love to see a pic of your mame cab. I never get sick of looking at people's creations. I have one also and love it to death. One of these days I have to finish my glass bezel artwork to go with the rest of the Defender motif. Also need to upgrade MAME and Daphne on it.

~telengard