MiSTer: MiST on Terasic DE10-nano board.

[glaucon1984]

One minor thing is that the Alt Gr + \ is not producing the \ entry. I have the feeling that Alt Gr is not registered at all. I am using a German keyboard layout under MS-DOS 6.22. Could be an easy fix. Maybe something for the next version of MiSTer

Did you try <Ctrl+Alt+\> ? Does it produce the same result?

[Jimjans]

One minor thing is that the Alt Gr + \ is not producing the \ entry. I have the feeling that Alt Gr is not registered at all. I am using a German keyboard layout under MS-DOS 6.22. Could be an easy fix. Maybe something for the next version of MiSTer

Have the same problem using swedish layout. But using the ASCII code 92 when i need it instead.

[azesmbog]

find some PC app which shows what key is pressed - so you can check the keys.

DOS Utility - keycheck.com

http://s1.micp.ru/35oYO.jpg

[Sorgelig]

here you can download keycheck: http://www.ers.kestar.com.au/dos.html

[NegSol]

Thank you all for the good advise on the topic. I did a little research and found the "Alt Gr"-key not working topic is an old hat that was also present in various command line implementation in Win 98 and Win ME etc. So somehow I guess this thing is to be expected. Anyhow, I also used various keycheck utilities and can confirm that all keys are passed to the core correctly. So no need to change anything in the core itself I guess. Using the ascii code 092 works a treat. So to anybody affected: press Alt and enter "092" on the numpad. This produces \ reliably.

[toromand]

Also I did some more testing on the ao486. The new core with opl3 support is really stable for the most parts. However running Wolfenstein 3d or Spear of destiny I get freezes after 20 sec of play. This did not happen with the 20170813 core. Not a biggie but could point to some issue.

Any news on the "freezes" issue? Have you guys managed to investigate it further?

[NegSol]

Yesterday I had the freeze all the time (10 x different core and software combinations). Today (wanting to record it) I cannot reproduce it. Maybe it was a combination of things. I do not know. Wolf 3d and Spear of Destiny both work fine on the 20170818 core. I will keep on testing - wanted to play some wolf 3d anyway

[NegSol]

So I did more testing and sure enough the freezes reoccurred - I will upload the footage for anybody to re-test. With Wolf 3d it take a bit longer so I was able to finish a level without a freeze. But with SoD it strikes after the first 20 secs. Feels like a memory thing. FM music keeps playing - I guess the same thing happens on the intro screen of Monkey Island VGA (Lucasfilm logo).

Video SoD - https://youtu.be/K_WmvPht4OM

[toromand]

So I did more testing and sure enough the freezes reoccurred - I will upload the footage for anybody to re-test. With Wolf 3d it take a bit longer so I was able to finish a level without a freeze. But with SoD it strikes after the first 20 secs. Feels like a memory thing. FM music keeps playing - I guess the same thing happens on the intro screen of Monkey Island VGA (Lucasfilm logo).

Video SoD - https://youtu.be/K_WmvPht4OM

And you say it is working in the previous builds?
Unfortunately I don't have the opportunity to test myself now

[NegSol]

Yes - 20170313 does not freeze (at least not for Monkey Island VGA, Wolf 3D and SoD). At least it does not freeze early (like the first 10 min). I did not test it for hours though.

[Sorgelig]

I will test mentioned games for freezes, but from description it looks like overheat problem.
Actually FPGA on DE10 gets very hot - no matter what core it runs.
So, i think it's better to add some heatsink, even though these freezes aren't related to overheat. That's why i've advised to use vertical SDRAM board.

[Sorgelig]

I'm testing support for second HDD which will be handy for many usage scenarios.
After more BIOS exploration i found it doesn't support disks more than 8GB. Since performance of ao486 isn't very good, i don't see a reason to modify the BIOS and add larger disks support. For software up to ~1992 year, 8GB should be more than enough. Especially, if you can have many images.

[Sorgelig]

How to setup sound in SoD?
It shows splash screen where i can see AdLib but no key work there to select. It writes "one moment" and then load the game.. Weird..

[NegSol]

I guess you will have figured out the Sound menu item in SoD by now

Second harddrive would be a great feature indeed! 8GB should be enough for everybody - to quote from famous MS employee ;-P
No really 8 GB is quite a lot for the ao486 considering CPU performance and all.

I also though it might be a heat related freezing but, it does happen only in few games. Some games and demos run a really long time even when heat is at its max.

[Sorgelig]

I guess you will have figured out the Sound menu item in SoD by now

if you mean the main menu with sound option, then it's useless as i have only None and Speaker options.
No Adlib, no Soundblaster.

[NegSol]

Strange thing - I only get the grayed out sound menu in SoD with the 20180813 and earlier cores. with the more recent one their is a soundblaster option I can select. May set the blaster variable in the autoexec.bat? (SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330) Should not make much of a difference but worth a try.

I just had SoD ran on a cold DE10. I could play for quit some time. So it is up-time related maybe the heat. On the other hand the 20180813 core plays the games even when it ran for hours. So I am not really convinced.

[NML32]

@NegSol could your case design be modified to accommodate a fan? That is if a fan can even be added and controlled by the DE10.

[glaucon1984]

Hi,

I have my MiSTer FPGA working, thanks to Gagadagatika who sold me a memory module (it holds at 150MHz for half hour without errors!)

About the stability errors reported above, I have to say that I didn't have the same experience. I've tested 3 different versions of Monkey Island without issues, perfect speed, nice sound:
EGA version in 720KB disks
VGA version in 1.44MB disks
Version generated with the Special Edition that adds voice over.

None of them have issues for me. I'm using the ao486 core provided by Sorgelig in page 17 with OPL3 selected.

Other DOS games I've tried (~10 minutes) without issues:
Dune 2
Civilization
Gabriel Knight
Space Quest 1 (VGA)
Larry 1 (VGA)
UFO Enemy Unknown
Wolfenstein 3D +SoD (same issue as above with sound card detection)
Lost Vikings
After installing Qemm386 7.5:
Lotus III
Elite 2: Frontier
Masters of Orion

Games with issues:
Lotus III - Too slow (~2 minutes to open the main menu)
Elite 2: Frontier - Needs EMS
Ultima 7 - I'm not even surprised this game doesn't work, I could run it with a patch for Win9X

I haven't tested 3rd party memory managers like qemm386 or jemmex to get EMS working, but I will soon.

About the other cores, NES and Minimig run great, FpgaGen seems to be in an early stage of development, but what I've seen is promising.

Thanks Sorgelig for the amazing job you are doing!

[Sorgelig]

I found that SoD requires EMS/XMS to find the SoundBlaster/Adlib.

Here i found an issue i would like to fix, but cannot find solution:

1) EMM386: Cannot find frame for EMS. I i provide some FRAME address in command line, it complains about found ROM/RAM at the same address (no matter what FRAME address i specify) and asks to press the key. After that everything works fine. How to disable key waiting?

2) QEMM - works well, but takes a lot of time at every boot to verify the memory. How to disable this memory counting?

QEMM looks more solid as it doesn't complain about anything. Just this crap with memory counting is killing!

I've spent a whole day(instead of developing) to find the answer to either problem but couldn't..

[NegSol]

Yes, XMS and EMS are kind of important. However, SoD and Wolf 3D not not picky. I get it to work with Himemsys + EMM386 and QEMM configuration.
I use this in the config.sys file:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /testmem:off /v
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE noems x=a000-c7ff i=c800-efff

for QEMM (which is not part of MS-DOS 6.22) I use:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM ROM NOSH ST:F X=A000-B9FF

An alternative for EMS could be this (takes up lots of regular RAM though:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /testmem:off /v
DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE 4500 RAM FRAME=E000 d=256

[NegSol]

@NegSol could your case design be modified to accommodate a fan? That is if a fan can even be added and controlled by the DE10.

I am testing some ideas https://youtu.be/oKOi_1VU4Uc

[glaucon1984]

2) QEMM - works well, but takes a lot of time at every boot to verify the memory. How to disable this memory counting?

QEMM looks more solid as it doesn't complain about anything. Just this crap with memory counting is killing!

I've spent a whole day(instead of developing) to find the answer to either problem but couldn't..

I've just tested Qemm386 7.5 on MS-DOS 6.22 and it's working great! Boots very fast and provides EMS, XMS and plenty of basic RAM (620KB in my case).

The following games now also work despite requiring EMS:
Masters of Orion
Elite 2: Frontier

EDIT: Oh, forgot to say that now Wolfenstein 3D now detects the Sound Blaster and both music and sound effects are working great.

[NegSol]

Alright my first test with my new fan setup definitely show improvement of the freezing I got earlier. After 30 min of Sod with full sound no freezing has appeared yet. So heat is an issue.

@Sorgelig I notice look on htop over ssh that the MiSTer's ARM CPU are at 100% all the time. This is not the case with the terasic provided images. Maybe it would help to give them more idle time. They should not do much or is it required because of latency?

[Sorgelig]

ARM CPU in Cyclone V has no Power Management, so it never sleeps according to my tests. Thus, it doesn't matter how much it's loaded. You can run original Linux image from Terasic and see it's hot at the same level.
From other side MiSTer binary cannot sleep because it has to poll FPGA and listen for commands. This is the current design and i don't see a better way without re-design the whole API.

I found that Qemm 8.0 is ideal. It doesn't count the memory and loads fast. Qemm 8.03 and 9.x count the memory which takes too much time to boot.
I will try emm386 later again. Thanks for info.
Actually i don't know if EMS(noems option) more important for games or XMS.

Just played SoD at least 1 hour and it didn't freeze. So, i think overheating is the issue.
Especially if you put it into tight case. Heatsink with cooler is advised.

[Sorgelig]

I am testing some ideas https://youtu.be/oKOi_1VU4Uc

You need to add heatsink as well. Those with sticky tape like for RPi, but slim and larger sirface. It will help a lot comparing to blowing to bare chip.