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No, it draw all sprites an do not wait so much time as u imagine. It also does not suport swap sprites, it just draw all two sprite buffers. BTW Danymic games did not work because game became slower and it is not good for games whithc is dynamic. And again I repeat: the point was not that it make 50 frames per second, point was that game was playable! I mean it has more that 12 - 25 fps

I do not think. with a large amount of sprites could not be up to 10 framesx seconds. this is because msx sprites are piece of bits not nearly compatible to the bitmapped modes. So you cannot do a ldir to copy because:

- Bit encoding layout is different, similar to the CPC monocromatic mode, but sprites overlap on a 16 color mode.
- You need to support trasparency.
- You spend some time to calculate address for plotting sprites.

So adding to those requirements the needing of some animations (scrolls) and the needing to save / restore buffers you could not get > than 12fps. But if a game is based on a higher frame rate, slowing it or frameskipping it would impact severely on playability

HW sprites are somewhat limited in all platforms but there is a reason for this limit. HW sprites literally FLY! this is because could not be emulated in SW at a reasonable speed.


There are however some msx2 games that uses SW sprites made with VDP, but results are by far less smooth than using more limited HW sprites.

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HW could not be emulated with so low cpu power. try to look at the work that do our today's PC when emulating a CPC or MSX or c64. With the enourmus amount of power available i get a processor occupancy of 18% in average on my p4 centrino @ 1.8ghz!

Well, I remember me playing with the first spectrum emulator I saw, circa 93, and getting about 1/2-1/3 of the full speed on an old Amstrad 1640 (XT 8Mhz). Of course an spectrum is a far easier machine to emulate than a MSX; but we must not forget that Windows "middleware" and high-level languages are always stealing CPU power...

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Quote: HW could not be emulated with so low cpu power. try to look at the work that do our today's PC when emulating a CPC or MSX or c64. With the enourmus amount of power available i get a processor occupancy of 18% in average on my p4 centrino @ 1.8ghz! Well, I remember me playing with the first spectrum emulator I saw, circa 93, and getting about 1/2-1/3 of the full speed on an old Amstrad 1640 (XT 8Mhz). Of course an spectrum is a far easier machine to emulate than a MSX; but we must not forget that Windows "middleware" and high-level languages are always stealing CPU power...

Yes, but not so far easier. to have raster effects we need high speed sync & refresh.

About windows, you are absolutely right! but remember most emu does use also DirectX that alleviate the load using the facilities of HW .

@mars2000you:

The Sord M5 did NOT use MSX cartridges (I used to own one), I sold it to Jazzy.
Some of the games for it were ports from konami games (ex. Crazy Train), but the OS and the cartridges were definitely not MSX.

K.

So is the Aleste 520 on the list of symbos porting? Does a working copy of this machine still exist?

Argon : thanks for the precisions, the infos were on a czechoslovakian site, but as you can imagine, I don't understand this language and online translators are not so good ...

At start nobody believe that it was at all! Everybody said - there was no amstrad clone at Russia. Then - start masx games on amstrad clone it is joke. Today everybody explain why VDP emulator will not works.

Shame on you people. It worked!

You can tell me even 1000 things why it should not be. But the point - It worked! Worked! No porblems!

BTW The aleste520.narod.ru site is updated.

Valeriya, I did not say that this machine didn't exist, I did even said that it was possible because Russians are experts in making clones.

The only intriguing thing was the fact that Google couldn't indicate me a Russian site with more details. Probably because Google works first with English, I don't know ...

Anyway, here's the Babelfish translation of the page that you have mentioned !

"Computer "alesta 520EX"

Site is dedicated to the computer Of "alesta" created in
company Patisonic (Omsk) in 1990- X years. The computer, which we fell
in love with and which "left" from us the epoch of "dandies" and
Internet.

The computer Of "alesta" these are clone "Amstrad S.PS" but is working
on by control MSXDOS. English version of the name computer "Aleste
520EX".



Some technical special features were borrowed from MSX 2, "Atari ST"
and "Amiga".

"alesta" was popular among amateurs MSX since it had the analogous
organization of memory, the size of disks, the operating system
MSXDOS

There was complete compatability with MSX not, but "alesta"
computer was accessible, whereas To "yamashku" it was not purchase.
Some collected its houses, and others simply bought.

The special pride Of "alesty" - sonic pay "MagicSound" with the aid of
which it was possible to reproduce STM, S3M (who does not know - you
look that similar "Scream Tracker". Characteristics of pay at the
level "Amiga" (4 channels on eight bits to sempl). "alesta" "sounded"
healthily, and indeed in those times "Covox" it was the top of
perfection.

However, games for CPC were not popular this, perhaps, and was the
main disadvantage in the computer.

For "alesta" it was created "GameBios" with emulator VDP from MSX2. it
was sufficiently - to replace the first several kilos-byte of game and
MSX2 game worked. Certainly, video processor MSX is by apparatus
sharpened for the games, but they worked sufficiently rapidly to 8MGts
of game on "alesta" in order in them to play. Game "FireBird" typical
"vertical scroller" worked very well.

One of the programmers of those participating in the project created
for "alesta" the pay of expansion the "processor of light". This pay
governs luminous sources in the theaters and the disk libraries. As
the minimum in one of the similar institutions of city "alesta" it
governed light.

All, Ttrue

Good translation! I will ask man who support narod.ru site put this translation here

And I do not know why google or Yahoo aor another search sites do not find it too :/ I am not expert about internet technologies

Some passages must be improved in this translation, for example 'yamashku' is of course Yamaha

And emulating such a machine should be a real challenge, as we have a mix of CPC, MSX2, Amiga and Atari !

I think it took from Amiga audio systmem. But I took from Atari the main idea - to use just graphics and make efficient programing for making cool stuff. And not only.

Yes, I think like you : with some changes/additions in the hardware and skilled programmation, you can make miracles.

SymbOS is another example : the MSX experts thought first such OS should not work easily on MSX ... they are now under the charm of Prodaton's work ... yes, someone with different approach and experience can make miracles !

blueMSX is another example : if blueMSX is now the best MSX emulator, it's the result of a team work, with as kernel 3 different personalities. Without this interaction, between dvik, me and our Japanese member, blueMSX should had never become in one year (!) the best MSX emulator.

I will examine more deeply this wonderful Aleste 520EX. I've downloaded all the files from the mentioned site. Probably I should try to learn Russian, but Babelfish is a good help !

@Valeriya Of course, you do not had clear what i mean:
I will explain in a short.

The VDP as any other HW chip (like the c64 VIC II IC) is simply to hard to be full emulated in sw with a simple z80 @8mhz. 'it worked' by itself means nothing: for me the word emulate means that the hw is emulated almost at 95%. If a sw approach, can reach about the 50% of the emulation, it's not a true emulation,it's only a tricky solution. Instead of trying to write an almost impossibile TRUE emulations developer should had tryied to re-write the graphical parts of KV II , Vampire Killer and so on to use the HW peculiarities of Aleste. In this way you probably can see the difference between a real sw for a specific machine and a tricky working layer that works in 50% of games.

There is only one problem for true emulation: Z80 has no hardware which let redirect all hardware access to software subrotine! Another problem is speed. I believe that 30-40MHz of z80 plus fast DDRAM can emulate 100% of VDP and even make it faster that real one. So imagine that Aleste show 12 fps only with 300 ns memory. Whell lets multiply 8MHz to 5 for 40Mhz and increase speed of memoy to 60ns. And it will have 50fps.

Another topic about software tricks like: how VDP containg sprites data and that it is impossible to use LDIR and so on. My answer is simple who said that emulation program should contain sprites information same as VDP? It can insted convert data while CPU send it to VDP. Do not forget that there is "narrow boutle hole" such VDP to CPU interface.

Same as java on a fly bytecode compiller the VDP's emulator can convert data when CPU VDP exchange happen. I do not want focus on details the poit of all converstations around Aleste is: Aleste shows that Z80+VDP has posibilities to emulate it. And ALeste showed it!

So what? Nothing! It has no future - it is just interesting and nobody knew it before.