Open MESS issues

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Crashes

TI-99/8 Extended Basic II with selected floppy controller locks up on start

Symptom: When selecting Extended Basic II, the floppy is accessed, and then the emulator is trapped in an endless loop. This does not occur if no floppy controller is active.
Reason: Possibly bug in TI-99/8 emulation. May also be a bug in the real machine since it never left the prototype stage. To be determined.
Workaround: None, if you want to have floppy emulation.

HFDC crashes on floppy format

Symptom: The HFDC controller crashes when you try to format a disk.
Reason: The track read/write routines are not implemented.
Workaround: Please use the separate imgtool to prepare an empty new disk.

Opengl crash

Symptom: When using opengl rendering, the emulator crashes on startup or shows a distorted output.
Reason: Possibly bugs in the video driver; MESS makes use of functionality which is less frequently used in mainstream graphics rendering
Workaround: Check that you have a recent video driver. There are some opengl settings; try to find a working combination (have a look at gl_vbo and related settings). If all else fails, set video to soft.

Emulator crashes in games with speech synthesis

Symptom: Games like Parsec crash with a segfault at some time during the game or right at the start.
Reason: Problems with the sound streams. To be fixed.
Workaround: Deactivate speech.

Failures

Geneve fails to boot from disk

Symptom: The Geneve does not boot from disk when the disk is inserted too late. Once the "CANNOT READ FROM FLOPPY DISK" appeared (because there was no disk in the drive), it fails to read the disk on retry.
Workaround: Ensure that a boot disk is inserted when starting. Or try to pause the emulation (partial mode, press p), insert the disk, and continue.

Serial output does not work

I have not yet managed to write output to the emulated RS232 interface.

Slow performance

Symptom: The emulator has a bad performance. Sound comes chopped from the speakers. Earlier versions performed much better.
Workaround: Keep the window small. Larger windows or fullscreen display cause a high CPU load. Using the "opengl" setting in mess.ini may help. Use the F9 key to increase the skip rate (in Partial mode).

BwG controller reports bad diskette

Symptom: The BwG controller reports a bad diskette (Disk Error 16) on Quick Test in Disk Manager II or I/O error in TI BASIC. This occurs

• on all drives except DSK1
• with all valid formats
• on the first test with that drive; the next attempt is successful
• if DSK1 has not been tested before
• at least since MESS 0.99

Possible reason: Drives higher than DSK1 are not properly initialized.
Workaround: Access DSK1 first.

Other controllers (TI FDC, HFDC) do not have this issue.

Update: TI FDC has the same problem, only HFDC works correctly.

Geneve's color palette

Symptom: After resetting with Ctrl-Shift-Shift from a program (Fractals), the text color is red or other colors have changed (i.e. background). Does not get fixed with another reset.
Reason: Unknown

Geneve joystick

Symptom: Joystick in native mode has been reported not to work. Needs verification.

Keyboard issues with natural keyboard

Symptom: Natural keyboard keyboard sluggish; key repetition interferes with TI key handling