nfg.forums

Hello again everyone.

I noticed there are many games not included in the X68000V4 .hds image. It seems it may be more centered around games that aren't Japanese text heavy. I was confused at first and thought Die Bahnwelt was actually developed in English lol.

I was wondering if anybody happened to have a .hds image that is fully loaded with as many games as possible. I'm learning the language and I'd really like to give the RPG/text adventure etc. games a try as well.

I'm using a XVI with 12MB of RAM so I think it should be able to play just about whatever I throw at it.

I saw a couple of posts mentioning .hds images that may contain more games on them but they are in the uploads section and it says I don't have access to that. I could be mistaken and they are the same as V4 for all I know.

Any help with this is much appreciated. Thank you!!

*Edit 1*
Seems there's at least a few shmups I'm interested in that are not present as well.

*Edit 2*
So I think I learned a bit more. I think the max size of certain CF to Flash setups may be 1gb so people were trying to get the best they could fit into that space. I'm under the impression mine is able to hold 4gb or maybe more so I'm going to experiment. After going through a ton of games, there are ~375 extra games I came across that I'd like to add, being platformers, RPGs, text adventures, shmups, beat- em-ups, etc. Quite a few of these look really awesome too.

This is probably going to be a ton of work getting all these games converted it seems but I'll just chip away at it till it's done. If anybody else wants to help feel free to let me know. I'll update more as things evolve.

Keep in mind that copying a game to C: doesn't mean you're good to go.  Many games have (c) in them to make sure that you play from FDD.  They expect the game to be on A: and B: Talented developers figured out how to modify the game to work from the hard drive, but not all games are hacked.

If you really want to be able to play all of them, you'll also need to look into FDX86 and see how to load games from Pi

Hey Leonk,

Thank you for the reply. That's good information and I think I'll see if I can get one of those.

Do you happen to know if there's a list documenting which games require this device?

*Edit*
Also I'm wondering. Can a floppy emulator do everything a CF drive can do + more? If yes, I'm thinking, why do people even want to use a CF drive at all? Why not just floppy emulator only?

Quote from: bleepbloop on April 14, 2021, 07:19:26 AM*Edit*
Also I'm wondering. Can a floppy emulator do everything a CF drive can do + more? If yes, I'm thinking, why do people even want to use a CF drive at all? Why not just floppy emulator only?

No. Because a floppy emulator can only emulate a single high density floppy at a time. Many games require multiple floppies inserted at the same time. There's also the messing about with swapping virtual floppies all the time. If you *can* manage to install the game to HDD/SD/CF then it's a much better solution.

Okay, that makes sense. I figured there had to be a catch somewhere

I've been doing some experimenting with setting up games for use on the CF drive, I'm learning a lot. I was wondering if there's an area on this site or another one that has information on games that may have issues being converted.

I'm going to attempt to convert as many as I can, but I may be doing work that's already been done and would be pointless for all I know. Anyway, if anybody has any extra info on this I would appreciate it.

Thank you again for the info Leonk and Megatron. It has been very helpful.

*Edit*
Also, a side note. Has anybody had any issues launching River City Ransom from the X68000V4 pack? It seems to not work on both emulator and my XVI.

Quote from: megatron-uk on April 14, 2021, 08:37:27 PMNo. Because a floppy emulator can only emulate a single high density floppy at a time. Many games require multiple floppies inserted at the same time. There's also the messing about with swapping virtual floppies all the time. If you *can* manage to install the game to HDD/SD/CF then it's a much better solution.

This is false.  fdx86 can emulate 2 FDD at the same time.  You can insert/remove floppies at the same time, or independently. You can also choose if the FDD is locked or unlocked. There's even an app you can run on the Pi that gives any web browser (tablet or smartphone included) the ability to switch games with a single click.

FDX86 has 100% compatibility rate, assuming the original floppies were dumped correctly. There's a worldwide effort to do just that. Your X68000 also has to have the ability to select drive 0,1 on external connecter (default is 2,3) If you have an older X68000 that doesn't have the switch, you'll need to install the FDD Switcher (does not work on OG X68000 at this time)

CF solution is faster and cheaper to setup, but the game list hasn't changed in years, the system requires a keyboard and the system also requires more RAM to run games from the CF vs floppies / emulated floppies.  CF solution is the only modern solution if you own the original X68000 or have an older X68000 without FDD switch.

More info on this modern solution:  https://www.michaels-home.com/title/fdx68con-setup/

Swapping floppies? No thanks.

Floppy drive emulators have their place - it's why they're popular on virtually every platform that had a floppy drive of some sort; from the ZX Spectrum to the PC. But, they simply do not replace the convenience, speed or flexibility of a mass storage device.

Back to the original question - there are some more (different) games on the Mini V2 image; a lot of duplication, but a reasonable number of different titles arranged in the same folder naming convention.

Then there are newer dumps that have been made as well as various homebrew titles that are constantly being discovered.

One suggestion I can make - remove the Multimedia folder from the V4 image, either delete it or add it to a second 1GB partition on your CF card (if you want to keep it and still play the music). That should free up a good 150MB or more of space - and allow you to drop in those games from the V2 image that rely on remapping the floppy drives to the first HD partition.... that said, it's not difficult to change the !start.bat files if you do want to add them to a second partition... and not everything relies on the convention of being on A:.

Quote from: megatron-uk on April 15, 2021, 02:30:48 AMSwapping floppies? No thanks.

Floppy drive emulators have their place - it's why they're popular on virtually every platform that had a floppy drive of some sort; from the ZX Spectrum to the PC. But, they simply do not replace the convenience, speed or flexibility of a mass storage device.

Did you even look at that link I posted? Games load faster from power on to game play. There is no "floppy swapping"

Personally, I have both solutions and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything (unlike the OP)

Agree with Leon. Loading games from SCSI2SD and floppy emulator seems to be same speed.

It's true there are a few broken titles from V4 image but I'm still very greatful it's there so I don't have to be a 68K ASM wizard and do it myself.

I found the HD GUI helpful verifying my OC circuits are actually working. Also has a lot of other data visible. Also convenient to access switch.x or other programs from scsi2sd instead of relying on floppy emulator.

Quote from: leonk on April 15, 2021, 04:47:12 AM

Quote from: megatron-uk on April 15, 2021, 02:30:48 AMSwapping floppies? No thanks.

Floppy drive emulators have their place - it's why they're popular on virtually every platform that had a floppy drive of some sort; from the ZX Spectrum to the PC. But, they simply do not replace the convenience, speed or flexibility of a mass storage device.

Did you even look at that link I posted? Games load faster from power on to game play. There is no "floppy swapping"

Personally, I have both solutions and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything (unlike the OP)

There's virtual floppy swapping every time you want to play another game... via a tablet, phone or computer... Ok, so you could build a touchscreen and put that menu interface together with sdl or pygame (or whatever it is using) rather than relying another device accessing the Pi over wi-fi or ethernet, but how much extra complexity has that introduced and how can needing *another* computer and *another* display be as convenient as having the games installed and ready to run on a hard drive?

Look, let me clarify; I think having these virtual floppy solutions is great - whatever form they take... And I'm glad the options are there.

I just fail to see how messing about with selecting games from virtual floppy images (be they on a gotek with a mini screen, or the Pi with fdx68 interface board and some method of controlling it) can be as simple to use as a hard drive full of games.

I get that there may be the rare situation where the multitude of HDD based floppy simulation tools don't work, but that's a tiny minority of the titles out there.

If its down to the fact that people don't want to mess around with a command line and a keyboard, well... It's a computer, not a video game console.

Plus, if you use one of the floppy emulators, you won't be able to use my amazing* games browser/launcher.

(* The authors opinions may be biased)

I understand your point.  I'm a huge fan of the SCSI2SD solution (if you look at the Wiki, you'll notice I'm the one who wrote the english instructions). 

The point is not which is better, but more how do we get to enjoy every game.  There's a whole world of X68K games out there that have not been ported to HDD, and if you want to enjoy them TODAY, the next best solution is the FDX86. Nothing is stopping you from having both; just like some people play games from the HDD and also have original floppies which they still use in the real FDD.

Some interesting information. Thanks for the input everyone.

I checked into the FDX86 but it seems it's out of stock right now. Maybe the HxC could be the solution instead if the FDX86 isn't in stock for a while.

So far I have managed to get about 10 games working on the hard drive. They booted up anyway... XD

Another 10 or so that don't seem to work with the basic conversion setup.

Then about ~20 more that start, but then seem to be asking for disk swapping. I'm not sure if that's something that can be worked around or if a floppy emulator is required for those.

It seems the odds of a basic conversion working are on the low side, but hey, I'll take it

Also, I took all the games from X68000V4 and from the MiniV2 and combined them together as suggested. Looks like around ~230 games on there at the moment with room to spare.

Also, thank you to anybody who has also put work into the X68000 community. The tools and information provided here have been very helpful.

I'm hoping I can get some of these more advanced games working but I still know very little about how this whole conversion process works.

I'll add more as things evolve hopefully

Suppose I'll chime in.
First some of the older games like River City Ransom and V'Ball do work off HDD, but only on SASI machines using SxSI drivers.  On real SCSI they fail.  Most likely due to them being very sensitive to file access times.

Personally, I see no point to a floppy emulator device at this point.  95% of games that don't run off HDD installs will work fine via 2HDBoot.  2HDBoot is also happy to run images off of a secondary partition, so you can have a whole 1gb B: drive partition full of images. 

There are about 5 or so odd games like Naious and Chojin that only run off floppies.  But the x68000 itself is a powerful disk writing beast.  So I just keep the images for those games on my B drive and write when I need them.  Takes less than 5 mins.

Due to some members sensitive pride, 2hdboot tends to get hated on here.  But its a great tool, especially for systems with lots of RAM.

Quote from: leonk on April 16, 2021, 12:35:26 PMThe point is not which is better, but more how do we get to enjoy every game.  There's a whole world of X68K games out there that have not been ported to HDD, and if you want to enjoy them TODAY, the next best solution is the FDX86. Nothing is stopping you from having both; just like some people play games from the HDD and also have original floppies which they still use in the real FDD.

I can fully agree with that - the easier the bar of entry to these systems, the better.

Quote from: bleepbloop on April 16, 2021, 12:45:22 PMSome interesting information. Thanks for the input everyone.

I checked into the FDX86 but it seems it's out of stock right now. Maybe the HxC could be the solution instead if the FDX86 isn't in stock for a while.

So far I have managed to get about 10 games working on the hard drive. They booted up anyway... XD

Another 10 or so that don't seem to work with the basic conversion setup.

Then about ~20 more that start, but then seem to be asking for disk swapping. I'm not sure if that's something that can be worked around or if a floppy emulator is required for those.

It seems the odds of a basic conversion working are on the low side, but hey, I'll take it

Also, I took all the games from X68000V4 and from the MiniV2 and combined them together as suggested. Looks like around ~230 games on there at the moment with room to spare.

Also, thank you to anybody who has also put work into the X68000 community. The tools and information provided here have been very helpful.

I'm hoping I can get some of these more advanced games working but I still know very little about how this whole conversion process works.

I'll add more as things evolve hopefully

Just for your awareness you cannot directly plug a floppy emulator into the computer. Well, you can but it won't work. There are some unique data lines that aren't present on shugart BUS interface. That's why with FDS swapper you're required to have a floppy in the computer.

Quote from: Cyothevile on April 18, 2021, 12:59:49 AMJust for your awareness you cannot directly plug a floppy emulator into the computer. Well, you can but it won't work. There are some unique data lines that aren't present on shugart BUS interface. That's why with FDS swapper you're required to have a floppy in the computer.

This is correct for HxC but not FDX86.  FDX86 perfectly emulates all the X68000 unique data lines.

Hey all. Thanks for the additional information.

@Cyothevile  I didn't realize there were some additional parts needed for the HxC. I'll keep tabs on the FDX86 and hopefully they will be in stock again sometime soon. Thanks for the tip!

I also didn't know that some games could have issues with SCSI, that certainly explains River City Ransom.

@SuperDeadite  I'm curious about 2HDBoot and would be interested in any more information on what it is and how it works if it won't stir the pot. I found a site in Japanese that hosts it, but there doesn't seem to be any additional info on it. If it could work as a solution to get many more games working properly that would be great especially since I can't get my hands on the FDX86 right now.

Thank you everyone!

2hdboot is already installed in the v4 image.  It is a driver for running disk images via virtual floppy drives.

Using it requires a lot of RAM as it loads all images into RAM and you still need enough RAM free for the game to run in.  But with 12mbs, you can load 7 or 8 disk games. 

Some people don't like it because they have spent a lot of time to get games running off hdd by using as little RAM as possible.  But if you have 6mbs or more it's a great tool.

All you do is put the images in a directory and make a batch file like this:

2hdboot -$2 -adiska.xdf -bdiskb.xdf

This tells 2hdboot to reserve 2mbs for the game to run in, and then which images to mount in drive a and b.  You can load multiple images at once in the same drive as long as you have enough RAM.

2hdboot -$2 -adiska.xdf -adiskb.xdf -bdiskc.xdf

And as stated you can load images off of a secondary partition as well.  Only real negative is that it is read only, so not good for games that require saving.

Quote from: leonk on April 16, 2021, 12:35:26 PMI understand your point.  I'm a huge fan of the SCSI2SD solution (if you look at the Wiki, you'll notice I'm the one who wrote the english instructions). 

The point is not which is better, but more how do we get to enjoy every game.  There's a whole world of X68K games out there that have not been ported to HDD, and if you want to enjoy them TODAY, the next best solution is the FDX86. Nothing is stopping you from having both; just like some people play games from the HDD and also have original floppies which they still use in the real FDD.

This

I use my CF HD solution for 99% of stuff, but there are games out there that refuse to run correctly, or at all, from HD.

If you want to play Wanderers From YS (one of my favourites), you either need an FDX68 or the original floppies.

The FDX68 is also essential IMO to back up your original floppies, they are not going to last forever!

Quote from: leonk on April 18, 2021, 02:07:33 AM

Quote from: Cyothevile on April 18, 2021, 12:59:49 AMJust for your awareness you cannot directly plug a floppy emulator into the computer. Well, you can but it won't work. There are some unique data lines that aren't present on shugart BUS interface. That's why with FDS swapper you're required to have a floppy in the computer.

This is correct for HxC but not FDX86.  FDX86 perfectly emulates all the X68000 unique data lines.

According to Jean-François Del Nero, Pauline is 100% compatible with the X68000 range of computers now.

It's also open source and can be found on his sourceforge and even on PCBWay as a shared project.

It's also rather cheap to build (around 40 euros)

Quote from: Fularu on April 23, 2021, 02:19:34 AMAccording to Jean-François Del Nero, Pauline is 100% compatible with the X68000 range of computers now.

It's also open source and can be found on his sourceforge and even on PCBWay as a shared project.

It's also rather cheap to build (around 40 euros)

I think you missed the FPGA board it is attached to. Looks like a DE10-nano board that is used for MiSTer project.

Quote from: stas2k on April 23, 2021, 05:17:05 PM

Quote from: Fularu on April 23, 2021, 02:19:34 AMAccording to Jean-François Del Nero, Pauline is 100% compatible with the X68000 range of computers now.

It's also open source and can be found on his sourceforge and even on PCBWay as a shared project.

It's also rather cheap to build (around 40 euros)

I think you missed the FPGA board it is attached to. Looks like a DE10-nano board that is used for MiSTer project.

I didn't? FXD needs a Pi (easy to find) but the boards are seldom available
Pauline is open source but needs an FPGA board with a GPIO connector and is very cheap to build (all things considered). While Jeff provided the necessary code for a Cyclone V DE10-nano board, it should be rather easy to "port" to something that's far cheaper like say, a DE0-Nano board.

Anyway my point was that there are other options now than FXD86 that are even more advanced/feature complete (and I trust Jeff on it)

@SuperDeadite The commands for 2HD were VERY helpful. Thank you so much. I wasn't sure what those parameters set exactly but after you explained it I was able to get a few more games working

That's a shame I won't be able to get RCR to work without extra hardware as I was wanting to play that one moreso but oh well

Thank you again for the info because that really helped clear things up!

Thank you to everyone else as well

Quote from: bleepbloop on April 27, 2021, 03:04:55 AM@SuperDeadite The commands for 2HD were VERY helpful. Thank you so much. I wasn't sure what those parameters set exactly but after you explained it I was able to get a few more games working

That's a shame I won't be able to get RCR to work without extra hardware as I was wanting to play that one moreso but oh well

Thank you again for the info because that really helped clear things up!

Thank you to everyone else as well

For games like RCR, I just keep the images on my hdd, and write them to real floppies directly by the x68000 itself when needed.  There are several programs that do this, dpack is the best but its not in v4.  V4 does have makimage installed which is good enough for most standard type games.