Cumulus Issues

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This includes generic Oric talkings and things that are totaly unrelated but want to share with people here :)
Godzil
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Godzil »

Dbug: That was something I think about
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ibisum
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by ibisum »

FAT32 is not just FAT32. What sort of partition table does it have - MBR (I think this is needed) or something else?

As far as I know, the best is: 1 Partition, MBR, FAT32. Thats what my SD card says it is.
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Chema
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Chema »

Bought an SDHC 8 GB card, and it works!!!

I could play 1337 in my Atmos, at last!!
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Godzil »

The FAT32 support for card without MBR (ie non partitionned) but there is no support for FAT16, some "old" SD card (even some 2GB one) can be formated as FAT16...

But I doubt this is the problem..

Again for thoses with problem with a SD card if you have access to a linux box (whatever it can be a beagleboard, a RaspberryPi) it could give some invaluable information, but the SD reader must not be a USB one.
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metadata
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by metadata »

but the SD reader must not be a USB one
are an usb reader not always usb. my internal one is usb too.
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barnsey123
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by barnsey123 »

Chema wrote:Bought an SDHC 8 GB card, and it works!!!

I could play 1337 in my Atmos, at last!!
Excellent! Did it feel more "real"?
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Godzil »

metadata: yes some internal reader are USB :(

The problem with USB reader is they don't expose internal information of the SD card like registers CID, CSD, OCR.. and they give invaluable informations about the SD card itself and my help us to understand why the Cumulus does not want them..
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Chema
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Chema »

barnsey123 wrote:
Excellent! Did it feel more "real"?
It was an incredible experience. I only played a couple of minutes, though. I need to find time to make some tests on other games, programs and demos, but it is am incredible and indispensable device for our Orics... A really must have.

I plan to store all the game I like on disk images, so I can play them easily, without all the loading trouble.

Thanks to retromaster and metadata!!!
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peacer
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by peacer »

Can we start a project to build disk images holding most favourite oric programs in tapes?

I know there are hundreds (thousands?) of Oric software available, but choosing best of them and making a stable disk archive of oric "discography" could be so nice for everyone, especially after cumulus usage.

We can first decide which games deserve to enter disk images by vote or suggestion method. The games must be long, detailed, graphical and soundful ones other than easy basic type-ins .

Then we start to create disk images holding tens of tape images. I can be voluntary in this stage. Together with some other volunteers, we can divide and share those hundred of games

The disk images can be categorised as arcade, sport, logical, adventure games etc. or just by alphabetical..

Then, we can upload this archive to internet for everyone to download as tidy categorized oric disk images archive.

What do you think? Useless or time consuming?
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ibisum
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by ibisum »

I think its a great idea, peacer .. I've already looked at what it would take to make the Top-100 games in oric.org into a single .DSK file .. and I think its definitely worthwhile, because it really opens up the door for new users as well.

Maybe we'll get some folks who'd like to do some of these special releases, now that there are tons of Cumulus' out here.

And btw, doesn't the Cumulus just kick ass? Its like our little computers got another chance to do something really interesting, now ..
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Chema
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Chema »

Cumulus is indeed invaluable.

The problem with game compilation disks is that many games are multipart, so storing the files in a disk is not enough. I guess we would need a loader and a kind of snapshot of the game. All this is doable, but not easy.

It should be possible to create the snapshot as a memory dump, plus status of registers, plus some extra info about the needed ROM, so the loader can do everything quite automatically.

Then there are games that save the player status on tape. Need a kind of patched rom for that. Again it is doable unless the game uses its own load/save routines... Guess a PC will be needed there to act as tape player.

Not something simple as adding files to a disk with tap2dsk....
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by coco.oric »

i'm agree with chema.
I think that the best solution is to limit 1 program by each file dsk.

making compilations need time and won't be easy to patch the tap software.
coco.oric as DidierV, CEO Member
Historic owner of Oric, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga
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Chema
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by Chema »

Ok, made a few more tests. I have noticed some small details and I would like to ask if you had the same experience.

Everything seems to work ok in my games, they play well, they load and save, etc, but some of Twilighte games had issues. For instance zip&zap and also pulsoids seem to not recognize the keyboard. In the latter I could see the instructions and hall of fame, but little else.

(Do not try with Impossible Mission, because it won't load. That is because it wants to load data on page four, which conflicts with OS code. This is not a cumulus issue.)

In buggy boy demo the digitized sound for DTS and 20th CF logos sounds horrible.

Booting Oric Dos and trying to launch Author gives me a garbled screen.

Sometimes it takes quite long to load Sedoric and boot it. Probably it takes quite long to load things. Not sure if this is due to read errors and retrying or something else... Of course this should be compared with a real disk or something like that.

I think I had a couple of loading errors which led to the Oric freezing, but most of the time everything worked perfectly.
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barnsey123
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by barnsey123 »

I haven't had a problem with Pulsoids (but the ointment helped a lot!). Ho ho.

But seriously folks, Pulsoids worked ok for me. The buggy boy sampled sound seemed the same to me as on oricutron. BTW, the sampled sound on the Rhetoric disk menus sounds great.

Having the cumulus does indeed give the oric a new lease of life...
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ibisum
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Re: Cumulus Issues

Post by ibisum »

I had no problems with Pulsoids - just hit the fire key to get started, and of it goes. We (me and the 6-year old) played it for an hour last night before moving on to other things ..

The samples from the Sample Disk collection (made by Twilighte of course) all sound great to me. Didn't notice any difference between them and the oricutron versions.

What I have noticed is that you can hang the Oric if you hit a key during a "DIR" listing .. for example, just load up SEDORIC.DSK, get to the Ready prompt, type 'DIR' and while its scrolling, hit a key. The Oric hangs - not sure if this is a Cumulus bug, or if indeed you're not supposed to hit keys while a listing is being generated - wasn't this also the case with original Oric Microdisc hardware, too? I have vague memories of it, anyway.
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