Difference between revisions of "MAME"

Revision as of 11:18, 2 March 2012

MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System) is a multi-system emulator which emulates more than 400 computer systems, many of them from the good old days of the Home Computers. Among them are also a number of TI platforms:

TI-99/4, 50 Hz and 60 Hz
TI-99/4A, 50 Hz and 60 Hz
TI-99/8
Geneve 9640

A number of peripherals are also emulated, ranging from various disk controllers (up to HFDC), to serial interfaces, USB interface, IDE interface, HSGPL, and also SGCPU.

I would be happy to see more people from the TI community helping to improve the TI emulation in MESS.

The emulator is currently available as version 0.145 pre-built for Windows systems, and as a source zip archive for all platforms. If you want to build MESS from source, do not forget to download the corresponding MAME source package first, unzip it, and unzip MESS over MAME. You get MAME from http://mamedev.org/.

You can download and work on the MESS source codes, but MESS is not an open source project in the GPL sense. If you want to contribute, download the sources, and get in contact with the maintainers. A good location for that is the MESS message board.

Important changes in the latest version

Since MESS 0.145, hard disks are stored in CHD version 5 format. You must use chdman to convert your hard disk image version 4 or lower.

Since MESS 0.145, the HSGPL stores the contents of its Flash ROMs as separate files. You should reinstall your HSGPL; alternatively you must split the file into four pieces at offsets 0x000001 (DSR), 0x080003 (U4), 0x100005 (U1), and 0x180007 (U6); each file is 512K + 2 bytes long. Start MESS and close it again to find out how the files are named.

Since MESS 0.145, configuration has considerably changed. The expansion cards are plugged in as separate devices that you either specify on the command line (like -peb:slot8 hfdc) or by using a frontend like QMC2 where you can specify "slot options".

Installing and setup

Using

The Official MESS User's Manual
Working with the TI emulation
Change MESS menu mode key from Scroll Lock to another key
Tools
Cartridges
Media handling
- Using your TI/Geneve hard drive in MESS
- Formatting disks
- Setting up a blank hard disk
- TIImageTool - a GUI-based image manager

Troubleshooting

Some help for MESS Troubleshooting.
We are currently preparing a Frequently Asked Questions section especially related to the TI/Geneve emulation in MESS.

Details

Basics: Emulation and Simulation
The cartridge system of MESS version 0.131 and later
Programmer's Guide to MESS
MESS version history with features, fixes, and regressions list
MESS issues
MESS Work in progress

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 You can download and work on the MESS source codes, but MESS is not an open source project in the GPL sense. If you want to contribute, download the sources, and get in contact with the maintainers. A good location for that is the [http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1&page=1 MESS message board].
+=== Important changes in the latest version ===
+* Since MESS 0.145, hard disks are stored in CHD version 5 format. You must use '''chdman''' to convert your hard disk image version 4 or lower.
+* Since MESS 0.145, the '''HSGPL''' stores the contents of its Flash ROMs as '''separate files'''. You should reinstall your HSGPL; alternatively you must split the file into four pieces at offsets 0x000001 (DSR), 0x080003 (U4), 0x100005 (U1), and 0x180007 (U6); each file is 512K + 2 bytes long. Start MESS and close it again to find out how the files are named.
+* Since MESS 0.145, '''configuration''' has considerably changed. The expansion cards are plugged in as separate devices that you either specify on the command line (like ''-peb:slot8 hfdc'') or by using a frontend like QMC2 where you can specify "slot options".
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