Ok, I've just uploaded the public release of ROMPackager v1.00.
It's now nearly fully functional, only some small features are still missing and improvemets still have to be done (e.g. package-loader, compression, drag&drop, emu-version specifier - still hardcoded).

Some of the changes are:
* file-lists editable
* select multiple files in open-dialogs
* automatically build sis-files

With this one, the SIS-file will be built automatically, so xfering ROMs/DSKs to your phone is completely done over the GUI.
Hope there won't be any probs using it!

As usual, bugreports via mail or here
Download link: www.hl-soft.net/downloads/ROM_Packager_v1.00.rar

Just uploaded fMSX/S60 v0.94 to my web page. Hopefully larger gzipped disks are now also usable, I changed the caching scheme. Some other new features & fixes are also included, check my page for details.

Not as big an update as v0.93 was but I thought I'd release it anyway

personal.inet.fi/private/riihimaki/s60

Oh, and while I remember, the auto and turbo fires only work for joystick fire button 1 at the moment (no button 2 or space key). This means that for example in Gradius/Nemesis the default emulator configuration needs to be changed if you wish to use turbofire because by default space and joystick fire button 1 are mapped to the phone's left soft key so in essence you will be pressing space and joystick fire button 1 at the same time. The game will interpret this as a continuous press (as it should, of course) even if the joystick fire button is being "flipped" all the time... so all you need to do is to remove the space key mapping from the left soft key. If you have this problem, that is. Hope this makes sense to you... =)

AMAZING!!! Thanks so much to implement the Auto and Turbo Fire feature, this has improved the gameplay of shot'em ups at the phone greatly!!! Also the rearrange of the menu is nice. Indeed one of the greatest ports of fMSX. I'm so sorry for people who don't have a Series 60 / Symbian based phone, they are missing so much.

Keep up this great work!!

Quote:

Just uploaded fMSX/S60 v0.94 to my web page. Hopefully larger gzipped disks are now also usable, I changed the caching scheme. Some other new features & fixes are also included, check my page for details.

Even tho the update isn't as big as the last one, it's great!
The new caching sceme is marvellous! Gzipped 720kb Diskimages are playable now w/o problems!
And the menu-fix lets the user reconfigure the keyboard-mapping more easily!
Thx for the great effort!!

Hope that I can release a new version of my ROMPackager soon

Sousuke

I wonder... there are other mobile phones running Symbian, right? What does it take to get fMSX/60 running on those phones? (fMSX/Symbian ;P)

Juha!

First of all, thanks a lot for porting this emulator! Seeing the good
old MSX screen come up on the tiny 3650 monitor is the coolest thing!
Now, I will always have my MSX with me

Second, if I may offer a suggestion, it would be great to be able
to map joystick diagonal combinations like Left+Up, Right+Up, Left+Down, Right+Down
onto a single key. I am not sure that Symbian supports multiple key presses,
and even if it does the 3650's "joystick" key does not seem to allow
to press diagonals.

Thanks again!

Stan R.

Quote:

I wonder... there are other mobile phones running Symbian, right? What does it take to get fMSX/60 running on those phones? (fMSX/Symbian ;P)

Basically nothing, it should work as-is. That's the nice thing about the Series 60 platform, they are all binary compatible.

Of course, if you mean other Symbian based systems than Series 60, there are things to do - how much, depends on which system but recompilation is necessary for sure. The main architectural difference lies in the UI handling as plain Symbian OS does not have a GUI at all. Since I don't use the operating system's UI libraries too much it might still be relatively easy to port the UI code. I have been thinking about trying out a different UI approach for the menus, though - something like what the Series 60 messaging center has.

Also depending on the Symbian OS version some of the other subsystem APIs may be different.

The closest relative Symbian OS based product to current Series 60 phones might be Nokia's latest Communicator series (92xx). For those it would be rather easy to port the emulator. Dunno if they have enough processing power, though, as they have slower CPUs and bigger screens than current Series 60 based phones.

Do you have something specific in mind?

Quote:

The new caching sceme is marvellous! Gzipped 720kb Diskimages are playable now w/o problems!

Thanks - I still have one improvement in mind for the disk performance. Keeping the first n tracks of the disk in the cache all the time would give yet a small boost because now if the system is reading small files from the end of the disk it will read sectors from the beginning and end of the disk and the cache doesn't work too well with that (it has a sliding window). With the first n tracks in the cache all the time the access to boot sector, FAT and directory entries would not hurt the disk data cache. I'll see what I can do for that =)

Quote:

Second, if I may offer a suggestion, it would be great to be able to map joystick diagonal combinations like Left+Up, Right+Up, Left+Down, Right+Down onto a single key. I am not sure that Symbian supports multiple key presses, and even if it does the 3650's "joystick" key does not seem to allow to press diagonals.

Stan,

The OS supports multiple simultaneous keypresses. I don't know about 3650's hardware limitations. Your suggestion is anyway doable, I'll put it on my to-do list - thanks for the input!

Here another update of ROMPackager (v1.01).
This small update took a while, because I was a little bit busy

As jr has suggested, it's now possible to edit the package dependency, so I don't have to release a new ROMPackager for each version of fMSX/S60

Changes since v1.00:
* added package loader
* added package configuration editor
* minor (and unimportant ) fixes here and there

DOWNLOAD

Excellent work Saosuke! I just can't wait to see the new version of the fMSX/S60 that it is already a great emulator.

Thank you guys for your work and dedication ^^

Sorry for the long silence, I've also been occupied with other stuff lately. I have implemented the diagonal key support for joystick emulation, improved the disk caching by having boot, FAT and root directory sectors always cached and added an option to choose between PAL/NTSC system. Previously the system was always NTSC (60Hz), now I changed the default to PAL (50Hz).

I have also been testing and tweaking sound support - it is (still) working in the Symbian emulator on PC with some sync problems but I guess it would be usable - I will run some final tests on a 7650 this week and if it runs out of CPU power then I will skip the sound support for 7650/3650 and wait for the 6600 to come out and I'll try again with it.

So I guess I'll see what happens with the sound support and release 0.95 after that...

Thank you very much for these updates, we're looking forward to the next release!!

About the sound , isn't it possible to switch the sound on and off then? So if CPU power is running out, just disable the sound. It would be great if sound is supported, it plays such a defining role in the MSX as a computersystem.

Quote:

About the sound , isn't it possible to switch the sound on and off then? So if CPU power is running out, just disable the sound. It would be great if sound is supported, it plays such a defining role in the MSX as a computersystem.

Well yes, but if it is like that in general then I see no point in having the possibility to enable sound in the first place since the CPU power for a 7650 or 3650 is not going to increase... =)

But in any case, this is exactly why I'm so reluctant to add the sound support - because it basically sucks, it's only like giving you _some_ sound to replace the complete silence... but it isn't in sync and doesn't sound right otherwise either, hehe.