The BIG MSXVR Q&A thread

By gdx

Enlighted (6221)

20-09-2019, 09:43

It's not common 4 slots. How are those configured?

By meits

Scribe (6544)

20-09-2019, 11:46

gdx wrote:

It's not common 4 slots. How are those configured?

Meits wrote:

Which four slots are those at the top?

By MsxKun

Paragon (1124)

20-09-2019, 16:12

msxvr wrote:

[
Screen 9
Sorry, It is a bit confusing. When we mentioned SCREEN 9, we were talking about the VDP mode, not the BASIC mode. We know that Screen 9 is used in the Korean BASIC. In VR-BASIC, "VDP Screen 9" is SCREEN 13. This presume that this is not a problem to use Screen 13? Thank you.

How about sprites in this mode? Disabled sprite limit per line? Faster blitter? No VDP bottleneck?

By MsxKun

Paragon (1124)

20-09-2019, 16:20

msxvr wrote:

To us the most important apps that should work in the initial STAGE are: VR-OS and system tools, VR-DOS, VR-BASIC, VR-SCRIPT.

Does VR-Script include in-line z80 assembly?

msxvr wrote:

NOTE: Books (VR-BASIC, VR-DOS, VR-SCRIPT) are an extra ítem that we would want to offer next year, so, they are not our priority now because they won’t be included in the computer package. Is not the case of the SERVICE MANUAL, that it has high priority.

Until then. Will be there any PDF, online help or on-screen manual?

By msxvr

Rookie (31)

20-09-2019, 17:45

4 x slots
You can choose in what SLOT-SUBSLOT do you want every one .. you can have 4 slots in a real MSX machine if you want or only 2 or only 1 or only 3. It depends of you Machine configuration.
You can access them with VR-DOS and VR-Script too.

NEW MODE VDP - [256x212x8 indexed palete RGB888] - VR-BASIC SCREEN 13 - WORK IN PROGRESS
It is like Screen 8 ... you have 4Gb of VRAM available (obviously not , RPI3B+ only has 1Gb in total]
You can choose the StartPNT with registers [60][61][62][63] - 32bits
And this mode use a DMA to share VRAM-RAM information. You put 16bits RAM address and decide IN or OUT. So you can transfer bitmaps fastly. In this mode, VDPCommands use more registers to be 32bit compatible.
Sprites in this mode are like Screen 8 ... this mode gives you power to use Blit with transparency.

VR-Script include inline Z80 assembly?
Yes. You can transform VR-Script to Z80 and you can include native code in this VR-Script too.
AS (transcompiler/compiler/linker) can support SDCCAsm + SJASM syntax.

Help online
Some months ago we created a GITHUB for that. We would want to put there docs and tutorials and code to learn the use of all this questions.

By santiontanon

Paragon (1810)

20-09-2019, 17:59

Thanks for all your answers!!

I just found this GitHub repo (still empty), am I correct in assuming this is the GitHub repo where you will be putting the documentation once it becomes available?

https://github.com/msxvr/documentation

By msxvr

Rookie (31)

20-09-2019, 18:13

Yes Santi, thank you! .. it is still empty but we will add items there.

By sdsnatcher73

Prophet (3963)

20-09-2019, 20:17

What I am starting to like more and more (although it is my imagination for now) is using all these modern peripherals quite easily with MSXVR. I am imagining using USB controllers (wired/wireless), USB floppy drives maybe even USB DVD-ROM/RW drive.

With such USB-DVD (but also maybe from SD card) we could emulate LaserDisc games by using the MPEG2 HW decoder in the Pi (it requires a €4 license but that could be purchased by the end-user). How cool would it be to do all that on an MSXVR! Ah, dreams...

Well another dream and a real question (this being Q&A). Have you guys considered switching to Pi4? I understand it has a new port layout which may make it not trivial but then again it would make the MSXVR a lot more future proof as the Pi4 has dual HDMI, much faster ARM CPU (not unimportant in emulation I think, to allow more dreams to come true).

By Pablibiris

Paragon (1815)

20-09-2019, 20:38

Actually,you can change the Raspberry Pi 4,instead the Raspberry 3...but I think this could break the warranty

By sdsnatcher73

Prophet (3963)

20-09-2019, 21:08

Pablibiris wrote:

Actually,you can change the Raspberry Pi 4,instead the Raspberry 3...but I think this could break the warranty

Well Pi4 has different power port (USB-C), micro HDMI out instead of full HDMI so it would not be as easy as taking out the Pi3 and putting in the Pi4 (at least not without other modifications). So doing that in the VR design/product now would make more sense. Pi4 is priced similarly so should not have to increase the price by much. And even if so, I would gladly pay €25 extra to get the most current hardware in the VR. I don’t expect there will be a VR2 in a couple of years (there is no need really)...