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Author Topic: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation (Read 6495 times)

Offline TomH

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Very minor: I've added Enterprise emulation to the emulator that I write, Clock Signal, for macOS and other Unixes.

GitHub; macOS binary releases; Linux binary releases via Snapcraft.

On macOS it's a fully-native, signed application using Metal and the native UI. Elsewhere it is available both as a Qt GUI application and as an SDL build that's more useful for command-line invocation and for file associations.

Probably its most interesting feature is that it can simulate composite video by generating and then decoding the actual composite video stream. No post hoc blur-it-up-a-bit filters here. It also does audio by sampling internally at a sensible native rate for the emulated machine and then low-pass filtering down to whatever your host machine can output. So e.g. on any garden-variety Mac from the last decade or so you can listen to your Enterprise at 96 kHz.

That all being said, Enterprise support is very provisional and known to be imperfect. So tolerate it only as far as you can.

Specifically:
  • it supports IMG files only, there's presently no other way to load software; and
  • something is definitely off in terms of timing.

Notable software issues of which I'm aware include the conversion of the CPC version of Chase HQ playing its sampled sound (like 'Let's go, Mr Driver!' way too quickly, but then weirdly slowing way down every time it would make a sound effect that the Spectrum would use its toggle speaker for; and SIDBASIC reporting a 3MHz CPU And then just not playing any audio. Like, no Dave writes at all, not like I'm processing the audio incorrectly.

Any other feedback would be greatly appreciated. Some screenshots are attached. Alternatively, here it is on YouTube.

---

Some random technical details, in case they're interesting:

In this implementation Nick runs 40434603/11360000ths as fast as the CPU, which is currently always 4Mhz. So I've clocked Nick at around 14.2375Mhz.

If the Z80 performs a Nick access it must wait to start the final clock cycle of its machine cycle until it is in the first two Nick cycles of the six-cycle block allocated for Z80 access. I should read mode on this. I observed that the entire six-cycle window is only around 1.68 Z80 cycles long, but of course the Z80 is paused in half-cycle increments so the maximum it could depend upon getting is 1.18 cycles of clear space. Hence fitting the final cycle into that window.

Nick's interrupt output is adjusted immediately after reading that byte of the mode line.

I wasn't clear on the correct way to transition between noise polynomials on Dave, so that's probably inaccurate. But the LFSRs all use IstvanV's documented polynomials, at least.

lgb.hu mentions that "There is some odd behaviour that you can read the (Nick's) bus state on these I/O ports. In theory it can be used for some video effects. I can't say I can understand that very well though :)"; through a lack of further information reads from my Dave return the last byte fetched, if any, otherwise 0xff. That's permitting for the fact that I haven't read up on how the refresh addresses are generated though.

As per my reading of the documentation, column 10 is the first one output in composite mode. The colour burst covers columns 8 and 9. Output starts at column 8 in RGB mode, even on lines in which a mode line isn't read.

There's a simulated spinning platter for disks, so floppy access should be approximately real time.

Because the simulated CRT runs a couple of phase-locked loops to track discriminated syncs, you'll get some screen bouncing during phase-breaking display transitions.

It's likely I'll add tape image support before figuring out a way to bridge to the local filing system, though for the latter I'm thinking of maybe implementing an IDE drive and mapping FAT back and forth. That'd be more reusable with other machines I implement, e.g. the MSX and Atari ST both also use FAT12 and FAT16.

I forgot I hadn't yet implemented the 8/12MHz Dave divider. It'll be in the next release. I don't think it factors into any of the known incompatibilities.
« Last Edit: 2021.July.04. 19:41:55 by TomH »

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #1 on: 2021.July.04. 19:58:43 »
Cool :-)
I will try to test it next week if i have time.
what i saw in the video i r-type, the ship is flashing when crane lift it up, it does not flash on a 4MHz Ep, left 1-2 column is not visible of the demo end screen, as i remember it has 46 char width.

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #2 on: 2021.July.04. 20:09:29 »
SidBasic plays digi from Dave interrupt, and interrupt frequency is set by frequency of  tone channel 1 or 2, and this frequency is calculated by CPU speed, which is get by number of 1KHz Dave interrupts within a 50Hz video interrupt. Probably there is small problem in Dave emulation.
Other thing, Let's go driver, and speccy emulated beeps are played by cpu (no interrupt is used for playback) as i remember, so it is very strange one is fast, the other is slow.

Offline TomH

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #3 on: 2021.July.06. 04:12:42 »
Cool :-)
I will try to test it next week if i have time.
what i saw in the video i r-type, the ship is flashing when crane lift it up, it does not flash on a 4MHz Ep, left 1-2 column is not visible of the demo end screen, as i remember it has 46 char width.

I guess I need to take another swing at video access timing; probably I have some sort of error in the way that fractional offsets between the two clocks pan out.

Otherwise: for now I'm still taking the official documentation as the best reference on column visibility; it has the colour burst active until the beginning of column 10 so in composite mode my emulator is producing a colour burst until column 10. R-Type tries to display pixels prior to column 10, so those pixels are usurped.

SidBasic plays digi from Dave interrupt, and interrupt frequency is set by frequency of  tone channel 1 or 2, and this frequency is calculated by CPU speed, which is get by number of 1KHz Dave interrupts within a 50Hz video interrupt. Probably there is small problem in Dave emulation.

I spoke too soon; SIDBasic is indeed receiving those interrupts and responding to them by adjusting the channel 0 volume, but since the last thing it wrote to port A7 was $65, it has channel 0 in sync mode, i.e. held at level 0, and hasn't activated direct-output mode. Therefore its adjustments of the channel 0 volume have no effect per my current implementation.

So I guess my next task is to figure out why $65 doesn't mean what I think it means, or else figure out what my emulator is doing incorrectly such that SIDBasic ends up writing $65.

It's a shame that the SIDBasic repository appears to contain the Spectrum player only.

Other thing, Let's go driver, and speccy emulated beeps are played by cpu (no interrupt is used for playback) as i remember, so it is very strange one is fast, the other is slow.

Yeah, that one remains a mystery to me too. I'm going to focus on SIDBasic first, I think, and maybe I'll get lucky and the same fix will fix both. If not, more work to do.

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #4 on: 2021.July.06. 08:38:47 »
SIDBasic can be downloaded from the forum from downloads.
I hope it contains the sources also
Latest release

Offline TomH

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #5 on: 2021.July.06. 16:11:37 »
SIDBasic can be downloaded from the forum from downloads.
I hope it contains the sources also
Latest release

No, no sources included. A .com and a .rom and nothing more. And since it's described as working on an unmodified Enterprise, I've not even been using the .rom.
« Last Edit: 2021.July.06. 16:14:54 by TomH »

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #6 on: 2021.July.06. 18:32:15 »
This post contains the main source file, if you need more, i can send you.
https://enterpriseforever.com/sound/sid-lejatszo/msg63231/#msg63231

Offline TomH

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #7 on: 2021.July.06. 19:13:24 »
This post contains the main source file, if you need more, i can send you.
https://enterpriseforever.com/sound/sid-lejatszo/msg63231/#msg63231

Oh, fantastic! You're a hero!

I hope to be suitably ashamed about whatever my dumb error was, soon.

EDIT: after reading that, especially the speedts routine, and taking another look at the Dave documentation I can already see a flaw; my B4 b0 is toggling at the rate of the attached tone generator, or correspondingly at 2KHz or 100Hz for 1KHz and 50Hz interrupts, with the interrupt occurring on the downward toggle. So it's the exact same logic as for the external inputs. And ditto the 1Hz bit toggles at 2Hz.

But clearly the relevant bit is supposed to toggle at 1KHz or 50Hz or only upon the tone generator's downward stroke — the documentation is completely straightforward now that I review: "two flip-flops toggling off the timer interrupts". I dare imagine SIDBasic's false clock-speed conclusion is a direct result of that.

It also strikes me as I'm writing this that my implementation of the 1Hz input as completely disjoint from the 1KHz/50Hz, and the latter two as another programmable counter with limited reload options, is probably wrong. There's probably just some sort of internal cascading clock division going on, such that all three remain exactly in-phase for as long as the machine runs?

Anyway, thanks again! That's already really helped.
« Last Edit: 2021.July.06. 23:05:53 by TomH »

Offline TomH

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #8 on: 2021.July.07. 05:39:50 »
This post contains the main source file, if you need more, i can send you.
https://enterpriseforever.com/sound/sid-lejatszo/msg63231/#msg63231

Thanks again for this! The main emulation bugs affecting SIDBasic were:
  • a very faulty conditional meant that for M1 cycles 'not video' + 'no wait states' => wait for a video slot. Hence the low CPU speed detection (and, it seems, the flickering ship in R-Type); and
  • I wasn't applying ring modulation to channels in sync mode, hence the lack of audio production subsequently.

So: fixed, and here's the YouTube proof.

Time to start worrying about Chase HQ, I guess. I'll aim for a new binary release this weekend, most likely, as I'm sure more corrections will be identified before then.

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #9 on: 2021.July.07. 11:31:44 »
cool :-) I do not know this Axel Foley sid tune, it sounds a littlebit strange to me, but it can happen the original sounds the same, or use filters which are not implemented in Sidbasic.
I will check if there is any trick in digi playback in Chase HQ, but as i remember there is nothing.

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #10 on: 2021.July.07. 13:28:14 »
I checked Chase HQ:
I think you solved also problem of Chase HQ with your fix, because as i remember you mentioned that the digi played well, and the effects were slow, from codes below i see delay is a self jumping DJNZ in digi routine, but in effect routines 0A51 called always which contains extra instruction.

The following is the digi playback code:
Code: [Select]
 0B85  21 5D 0B     LD    HL, 0B5D
  0B88  4F           LD    C, A
  0B89  06 00        LD    B, 00
  0B8B  09           ADD   HL, BC
  0B8C  5E           LD    E, (HL)
  0B8D  23           INC   HL
  0B8E  56           LD    D, (HL)
  0B8F  23           INC   HL
  0B90  7E           LD    A, (HL)
  0B91  23           INC   HL
  0B92  66           LD    H, (HL)
  0B93  6F           LD    L, A
  0B94  0E 02        LD    C, 02
  0B96  7E           LD    A, (HL)
  0B97  1F           RRA
  0B98  1F           RRA
  0B99  E6 3C        AND   3C
  0B9B  D3 A8        OUT   (A8), A
  0B9D  D3 AC        OUT   (AC), A
  0B9F  06 1F        LD    B, 1F
  0BA1  10 FE        DJNZ  0BA1
  0BA3  7E           LD    A, (HL)
  0BA4  17           RLA
  0BA5  17           RLA
  0BA6  0D           DEC   C
  0BA7  20 F0        JR    NZ, 0B99
  0BA9  23           INC   HL
  0BAA  1B           DEC   DE
  0BAB  7A           LD    A, D
  0BAC  B3           OR    E
  0BAD  20 E5        JR    NZ, 0B94

These are some effect play code:
Code: [Select]
 09AF  AF           XOR   A
  09B0  CD 51 0A     CALL  0A51
 *09B3  CB 06        RLC   (HL)
  09B5  10 F2        DJNZ  09A9
  09B7  23           INC   HL
  09B8  0D           DEC   C
  09B9  C2 A8 09     JP    NZ, 09A8


  0A51  D3 A8        OUT   (A8), A
  0A53  D3 AC        OUT   (AC), A
  0A55  C5           PUSH  BC
  0A56  06 09        LD    B, 09
  0A58  FE 00        CP    00
  0A5A  10 FC        DJNZ  0A58
  0A5C  C1           POP   BC
  0A5D  C9           RET

  0A7A  4B           LD    C, E
  0A7B  CD AA 37     CALL  37AA
  0A7E  E6 10        AND   10
  0A80  28 12        JR    Z, 0A94
  0A82  3E 18        LD    A, 18
  0A84  92           SUB   D
  0A85  47           LD    B, A
  0A86  10 FE        DJNZ  0A86
  0A88  3E 3F        LD    A, 3F
  0A8A  CD 51 0A     CALL  0A51
  0A8D  42           LD    B, D
  0A8E  10 FE        DJNZ  0A8E
  0A90  AF           XOR   A
  0A91  CD 51 0A     CALL  0A51
  0A94  0D           DEC   C
  0A95  20 E4        JR    NZ, 0A7B
  0A97  15           DEC   D
  0A98  20 E0        JR    NZ, 0A7A
  0A9A  C9           RET
  0A9B  0E 0A        LD    C, 0A
  0A9D  21 05 05     LD    HL, 0505
  0AA0  15           DEC   D
  0AA1  20 FD        JR    NZ, 0AA0
  0AA3  53           LD    D, E
  0AA4  3E 18        LD    A, 18
  0AA6  91           SUB   C
  0AA7  47           LD    B, A
  0AA8  10 FE        DJNZ  0AA8
  0AAA  3E 3F        LD    A, 3F
  0AAC  CD 51 0A     CALL  0A51
  0AAF  41           LD    B, C
  0AB0  10 FE        DJNZ  0AB0
  0AB2  AF           XOR   A
  0AB3  CD 51 0A     CALL  0A51
  0AB6  25           DEC   H
  0AB7  20 E7        JR    NZ, 0AA0
  0AB9  65           LD    H, L
  0ABA  0D           DEC   C
  0ABB  20 E3        JR    NZ, 0AA0
  0ABD  C9           RET

Offline TomH

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #11 on: 2021.July.08. 19:59:45 »
Alas, no, things have actually gone the other way; since eliminating the '[not video] + [no wait states] + [M1 cycle] = [wait for video]' bug, Chase HQ now exhibits two faults:

  • the added introductary music plays way too fast, as do and did the sampled sound effects; and
  • the game occasionally pauses for several frames, which I think correlate to where the Spectrum and MSX would play speaker sound effects (and, honestly, I'm not sure what the CPC does).

I added a 6MHz CPU option in the hope of getting more input data, but it didn't reveal much. Though SIDBasic does correctly detect a 6MHz CPU and then output at a higher rate, so that's nice and reassuring.

So I'm extremely grateful for your having dug out the relevant routines. I note that, luckily for me, they're running from no-wait-state memory, and interacting only with Dave ports, so I think the smart thing to do next is to get pen and paper, figure out how many cycles I think the full loop should take, then see how many the emulator seems to think it should take.

The exact same Z80 has passed relevant timing tests on the ZX80/81, CPC and ZX Spectrum with the relevant WAIT and clock-stretching schemes in place, so I'm at least mildly optimistic that the problem is small and local. But we'll see. Almost a 100% chance it's a dumb coding error very specific to me rather than an Enteprise comprehension error that I could reasonably expect somebody else to know about.
« Last Edit: 2021.July.08. 21:09:24 by TomH »

Offline TomH

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #12 on: 2021.July.10. 04:59:31 »
Quick summary: new release available, in the same locations as before: macOS, Snapcraft, repository.

---

The issue with Chase HQ is that there's a timing calibration routine around $680 which compares Dave's 50Hz counter and the rate at which the INT1 input changes. It dynamically reprograms the values loaded to B prior to the DJNZ busy loops in the assembly above, e.g. it'd write a suitable constant to $0BA0 in the first case.

I had bit 4 of $B4 reflecting the state of the input as active low. It appears that active high is correct. From this flowed all timing issues.

There is now only one weirdness that I know of in Enterprise emulation: outputting an entire frame of sync doesn't cause any visible output — my GPU handler, I think both the Metal and OpenGL versions, thinks that frame skipping must be afoot and leaves up what is currently on screen rather than blanking it out. This has probably been a bug in my display simulation for this emulator's entire lifespan, it just so happens that I've never realised.

I'll fix it in the near future.

Offline geco

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #13 on: 2021.July.10. 10:34:58 »
Cool :-)
That routine is used to check the CPU speed and based on that sets delay values in digi playback to keep digi at nearly the same speed.

Offline Zoldalma

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Re: 'Clock Signal' is a new option for Enterprise emulation
« Reply #14 on: 2022.March.27. 15:03:59 »
Hi Tom,

not sure if you're still active here, anyway someone else may also have experience with this :)

I compiled and tried Clock Signal on Linux, but could not get Enterprise to start. If I supply a disk image, some disk activity will be shown (I guess that is the green dot that appears), but no actual content is shown, screen remains blank. I supplied the ROMs that are used for ep128emu (changed the file names to match clock-signal expectations), but I am not sure if that's the right approach?

(I had even less success with the snap version, it just crashes complaining about "Could not link shader program: "" ".)