LISTINGS!

Discuss the reverse engineering and emulation (as opposed to simulation) of any sort of Prevue hardware, including Atari-based and Amiga-based EPG channels and the Amiga-based Prevue/TV Guide channels.
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nwgatwcfan
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by nwgatwcfan »

swest77 wrote: Anywho. Any help for my enfeebled brain on setting that clock? ;)
You can have WinUAE to syncronize with the system clock on the host machine by selecting the Miscellaneous tab in WinUAE Settings screen and then checkmark the box next to the Synchronize clock. By default, this is not set.

Hope this helps,

Steven
Last edited by AriX on Sun Nov 21, 2010 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Fixed quote
hen7713
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by hen7713 »

I used this to get time to worK: Go under Adv. Chipset, uncheck compatible settings, then selecting MSM624B as the battery back up clock.
PearGuide - mms://hen7713.com:8081/ (Open in something such as Windows Media Player, VLC, etc)
hen7713
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by hen7713 »

Also, one more thing. AriX, How were you able to get the listings to pause every 3 "blocks?"
PearGuide - mms://hen7713.com:8081/ (Open in something such as Windows Media Player, VLC, etc)
AriX
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by AriX »

hen7713 wrote:Also, one more thing. AriX, How were you able to get the listings to pause every 3 "blocks?"
I have no idea. It just happens. I wish I knew how to turn it off.
swest77
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by swest77 »

Alright, sweet. Success under WinXP with WinUAE. http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/6053/worksl.png

For the record, nwgatwcfan's suggestion to check "synchronize clock" under Miscellaneous did not work. It did set the time in the Amiga environment (as verified by typing "date" at the 2> prompt during boot-up), but ESQ itself still thought it was January 1, 1970 at 12:00 AM. Only tin's and hen7713's MSM624B suggestion worked (checking MSM624B under Adv. Chipset > Battery Backed-Up Real Time Clock). (tin's and hen7713's way also resulted in the correct date being reported when typing "date" at the 2> prompt, FYI.)

Anyway, this all appears to jive with LocalH's experiences with ESQ and with his real Amiga. AmigaDOS maintains a virtual clock in memory that's separate from the host Amiga's battery-powered clock. When AmigaDOS boots, it sets its virtual clock according to the battery-powered clock. But any changes made to the virtual clock with the "date" command thereafter don't change the battery-powered clock itself. And since ESQ only looks at the battery-powered clock [or the satellite feed] for clock information, he had to track down the right AmigaDOS tool to alter the battery-powered clock, rather than just using the conventional clock setting command.

So I guess what's happening in WinUAE is similar. If you check MSM624B, the emulated battery-powered clock is set to your Windows PC's current time. Then as AmigaDOS boots, it reads that emulated battery clock and sets its separate virtual clock to match. Yielding correct time for both AmigaDOS and ESQ. But if instead of checking MSM624B you check "synchronize clock" instead, no emulated battery clock is created; and WinUAE just waits for AmigaDOS to load and then haxishly directly modifies the memory space of AmigaDOS' separate virtual clock. Resulting in a correct AmigaDOS virtual clock (as evidenced by typing date) but no battery-powered clock information for ESQ to read (ESQ thinks its 1/1/1970). So bottom line for WinUAE users: the correct method is checking MSM624B (or even checking both MSM624B and "synchronize clock"), but never checking only "synchronize clock" alone.

Anywho. I'm using WinXP Pro (32 bit version) and went with the serial port emulation software nwgatwcfan suggested in another thread for this. Specifically AGC's COM Port Data Emulator & Traffic Generator for data injection/sniffing and Eterlogic's Virtual Serial Ports Emulator to create a virtual null modem-style link between the injector and WinUAE. In VSPE, like this: 1, 2, 3. Then in CPDE&TG, like this: 1, 2. Then in WinUAE, used these IO settings when starting ESQ. And finally once ESQ was up and running and scrolling with its "no listings" message, I made a file called test.bin containing the suggested test bytes from post 1 of this thread, and clicked "[Start]" in CPDE&TG to inject them ... the overall result being: test.bin -> CPDE&TG -> COM4 -> VSPE -> COM2 -> WinUAE -> ESQ.

Incidentally, tin:
No, no, hang on, it's starting to make some sense! I would lay good money that the demod and audio cards talk to each other over the ISA bus. No reason why they can't. Amiga signals demod card via serial, it signals audio card over the bus. Makes sense to me, especially as all other options (including the brown and grey wires, sorry) make no sense to me :)
That would require that the Amiga's ISA slots be active for data, though, wouldn't it? As far as I know, the ISA slots in Amigas only provide voltage for powering cards, but not data connectivity.

I suppose theoretically there could be an active ISA bus that allowed cards to talk to each other, even if the ISA bus wasn't connected to the rest of the motherboard (i.e. where ISA cards could intercommunicate but not talk to any of the software running on the Amiga). Guess only an Amgia platform expert could say if this is true, though I'd doubt it. The fact those brown/grey wires exist at all suggests to me that, at least via ISA, those cards were as much isolated from ESQ as from each other. Hmm...

And to Ari: did my e-mail of the 18th reach you? I don't need a [fast] reply, just that my ISP's outgoing mail delivery has had some problems this week and I wanna be sure you got it.
AriX
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by AriX »

swest77 wrote:And to Ari: did my e-mail of the 18th reach you? I don't need a [fast] reply, just that my ISP's outgoing mail delivery has had some problems this week and I wanna be sure you got it.
I did, and I sent you a response about two hours later :P

I'll resend it, but maybe check your spam folder just in case?
tin
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by tin »

swest77 wrote:
Incidentally, tin:
No, no, hang on, it's starting to make some sense! I would lay good money that the demod and audio cards talk to each other over the ISA bus. No reason why they can't. Amiga signals demod card via serial, it signals audio card over the bus. Makes sense to me, especially as all other options (including the brown and grey wires, sorry) make no sense to me :)
That would require that the Amiga's ISA slots be active for data, though, wouldn't it? As far as I know, the ISA slots in Amigas only provide voltage for powering cards, but not data connectivity.

I suppose theoretically there could be an active ISA bus that allowed cards to talk to each other, even if the ISA bus wasn't connected to the rest of the motherboard (i.e. where ISA cards could intercommunicate but not talk to any of the software running on the Amiga). Guess only an Amgia platform expert could say if this is true, though I'd doubt it.


The fact those brown/grey wires exist at all suggests to me that, at least via ISA, those cards were as much isolated from ESQ as from each other. Hmm...
Aha I'm gonna declare myself amiga expert (well for the purposes of these boards anyway!!) and say that's exactly what the ISA bus was for. Idea being you get one card like for example the a2286d PC on a card, which has both zorro and ISA parts. This allows ISA cards to use the ISA bus to communicate with the a2286d PC side. Indeed the ISA slots aren't active, you just need 2 or more cards that talk ISA to be on the bus for it to be active.

In our case there's nothing that then bridges this over to the amiga side, but then there's no need. Only our cards need to talk to each other. In fact theres no real need for the cards to talk proper ISA. The ISA bus can be viewed to a degree as a bunch of passive wires between each of the slots - no reason we can't talk whatever we like over them, as long of course we can guarantee there's not something else installed that talks ISA or indeed another home brew protocol, which in prevue's tightly controlled machines, there won't be.

I still think looking at the brown/grey wires they are really just for grounding tbh.

Of course all speculation... Willing to be shot down!
AriX
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by AriX »

tin wrote:Aha I'm gonna declare myself amiga expert (well for the purposes of these boards anyway!!) and say that's exactly what the ISA bus was for. Idea being you get one card like for example the a2286d PC on a card, which has both zorro and ISA parts. This allows ISA cards to use the ISA bus to communicate with the a2286d PC side. Indeed the ISA slots aren't active, you just need 2 or more cards that talk ISA to be on the bus for it to be active.

In our case there's nothing that then bridges this over to the amiga side, but then there's no need. Only our cards need to talk to each other. In fact theres no real need for the cards to talk proper ISA. The ISA bus can be viewed to a degree as a bunch of passive wires between each of the slots - no reason we can't talk whatever we like over them, as long of course we can guarantee there's not something else installed that talks ISA or indeed another home brew protocol, which in prevue's tightly controlled machines, there won't be.

I still think looking at the brown/grey wires they are really just for grounding tbh.

Of course all speculation... Willing to be shot down!
Next time I talk to my friend I'll ask him if this is the case; I hadn't asked him about how the various cards communicate.
LocalH
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by LocalH »

I'm not sure if ISA cards can talk to each other, but I know for a fact that signals on the ISA bus do not make it to the Zorro II bus unless one has a Bridgeboard and the necessary software installed. Many, if not all, of the ISA "Amiga" cards (TBCs, etc) communicated with the Amiga software over RS-232, either internally or externally connected.

I still think the wires on the back are contact closure, however (if anyone here has heard the term GPI, that's what I think they're for). Lots of Amiga software back in the day supported GPI for various things - for example, I never used it, but Broadcast Titler 2 has facilities for using a GPi input to trigger playback of a sequence, so that you don't have to worry about the BT2 UI appearing onscreen right before the sequence begins to play.
LocalH
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Re: LISTINGS!

Post by LocalH »

swest77 wrote:For the record, nwgatwcfan's suggestion to check "synchronize clock" under Miscellaneous did not work. It did set the time in the Amiga environment (as verified by typing "date" at the 2> prompt during boot-up), but ESQ itself still thought it was January 1, 1970 at 12:00 AM. Only tin's and hen7713's MSM624B suggestion worked (checking MSM624B under Adv. Chipset > Battery Backed-Up Real Time Clock). (tin's and hen7713's way also resulted in the correct date being reported when typing "date" at the 2> prompt, FYI.)
This may be affected by whether you use WinUAE's Quickstart functionality, or a manually created config file. Different Amigas use different clock chips, and WinUAE emulates the proper clock chip for the system you select if you use Quickstart mode. I never used Quickstart mode except as a base for my config, so that may be why I never needed to mess with the clock chip setting.

One thing I did find, way back when I was messing around with this under emulation - if I used the "synchronize clock" setting, and set my Windows 7 PC's host clock to the desired time, then ESQ would display the time that I wanted it to be. Actually, I also seem to remember it working without "synchronize clock" if the host clock was set properly - I think WinUAE may indeed stuff battery-backed RAM on first emulated system boot (so for example, if you use the "Restart" button in the emulator UI, it does the equivalent of an Amiga poweroff, while just restarting the emulated Amiga with the three-finger salute does not). AFAIK, "synchronize clock" just keeps the emulated Amiga clock synchronized with the host clock over the course of the emulated session, since there would undoubtedly be some drifting if the emulator is paused, etc.
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