MESS wish list
Back to TI MESS emulation home page.
General
Cleanup
Clean up the drivers (ti99_4x and geneve and all related). A checklist is provided on the MAME developer wiki.
Documentation
We should have some documentation of the drivers. This will allow people to quickly understand the internals and to extend them.
Keyboard issues
Using the PC keyboard in the emulation
Currently, the TI emulation uses an emulated keyboard layout. While this layout correctly emulates the original keyboard, it is very difficult to work with such a layout when the keys are labeled differently.
This should be solvable using keymaps. However, I have not yet checked this.
Update: This is available as the natural keyboard. Note the following mapping:
- F2 ... F10 are mapped to FCTN-2 ... FCTN-0
- F12 is FCTN-= (QUIT)
- Del is FCTN-1
- Arrow keys are mapped to FCTN-ESDX
The mapping should be reconsidered, because the Del/Ins handling is confusing.
Cut/Paste facility
Classic99 obviously allows that, but currently there is no way to interface between MESS emulations and the system clipboard. Mind that MESS emulates more than 200 different systems. Could be some special function, though.
In that case, it would be interesting to copy the screen image table to the clipboard. Pasting could be translated to a key press sequence.
Miscellaneous
- Better and/or individual configuration of keyboard
- Shortcut and/or function key to toggle Throttle
Emulation
Visible/audible feedback
The LEDs which indicate peripheral access should be emulated as well. It would also be nice to hear floppy activity to give a "real feeling".
MESS maintainers believe this should be possible with the artwork subsystem.
User interface
Replace the close-to-unusable OSD in SDLMESS by a GTK+-based interface.
Devices
Compact Flash Device
Emulate the CF7 device.
SCSI subsystem
Emulate the ASCSI / Whtech SCSI controller.
Tool to sync harddrive and image
A tool would be nice which syncs the changes on the emulated hard drive with those on the real drive. This would greatly help to keep consistency between the emulated and the real system.
TI-99/2 emulation
Complete 99/2 emulation
More expansion cards
- 128K GRAM
- The CorComp controller should be re-animated. Moreover, the Myarc FDC could be emulated.
- Emulate the CP/M card. However, I don't have any specs.
Check IDE emulation
IDE is not verified to work. The problem is that there is no working IDE HD image currently. We need to produce a good image first.
True serial interface
The RS232 emulation should be connected to the real serial interface in both directions to allow for external communication. Also the parallel port could be hooked up.
Tools
Create disk image from file
Input: some TI files; output: a disk image to be mounted in MESS.