SofaRun v2.3 "Christmas edition" released

Great work Louthrax, thanks for supporting the ESE SCC and by that the Zemmix NEO/OCM
Nice art, Lars!

Awesome tool Louthrax. Good job!

No (not to me at least), enlighten us! (Who the f*** is 'Dave'?)

Probably he was too pretty for the Netherlands..

I do recognize the song, I guess this was also a popular tune in NL back then + seems he also had some other hits over here as well.

It seems he has been knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau this year!

(My YT is currently 'stuck' on French chansons.. thx! ;))

OMG, ripped SFX & musics ! (darn, I did ...)

The original song is almost unknown here, we only know Dave's version. We had lots of singers in France in the 60s-70s making covers of US songs, not always for the best I must say.

For some reasons, that's one of my favorite tune now Dion - The Wanderer
(yeah, might go for some modern gaming after Christmas !)

Argl, this one hurts...

Great work, Louthrax. SofaRun keeps getting better and better !

Since you added ESE-SCC support, will you consider adding Megaram support as well? Execrom supports megaram, and its source code is available here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/execrom/

Several patches (xpc files) to convert megarom games to run using Megaram are available as well.

Nice christmassy picture, too .

Tadaaa :

####################################################################
[system]
####################################################################

# Path where your save files (PAC-SRAM, ROM or Game Masters) will be
# placed. Files will be placed in the game directory if not defined.
# SAVEPATH=A:\SAVES

# Disk drives displayed in the file browser
# DRIVES=ABC

# Video mode
# HZ=60
# INTERLACED=1

# User interface background and text colors
# BGCLR=1
# TXTCLR=3

Just uncomment the DRIVES line from the SR.INI file and specify the drives you want to be displayed.

I found no quick & reliable way to detect all available drives, and I did not want to display a list of useless entries in the game browser, that's why this has to be configured manually for now.

If you add ABC to the "DRIVES" line, you'll get this in the game browser:

During use, just select A: B: or C: to switch to another drive.

Or maybe I misunderstand the point? Please give an example of what you want to do or what's causing problem.

Impeccable!
I should have read the doc less quickly.
Is it normal that few Roms of 8~32KB are supported?

It's a little better. Some games have graphics bugs. (ex: Boogie Woogi Jungle)
They start in SCREEN 1?

Not for now, only supported extensions are recognized.

I recommend having all ROMs in one big ZIP file. For Windows, using 7zip, it can be done this way, starting from the directory you want to merge:

mkdir foo
cd foo
7z e ..\*.zip
7z a foo *.*

You'll get a foo.zip file with long filenames that you can use with SofaRun. It's also possible to merge all files by manufacturer, date or first letter. The smaller the zip file the faster it opens.

Thanks for your fast response Louthrax. One follow up question:

As TOSEC is rather use (hundreds, maybe even 1000es of files), will that still be workable in 1 ZIP?

2 more questions:

1. When I enter a certain DIR with a lot of files/ROMs in it I get an error message and SR quits. It says something like: "Not enough TPA memory". Anything I can do to fix this? I have a GT with 512 and 512 in the MegaflashROM SCC+ 512K.
2. How to handle games with multiple disks? Can you assign a disk number list or something from SR per game?

Yes, until the TPA memory is filled up. This still allows lots of files. If you have a turboR MSX, speed should not be a problem.

SofaRun uses "TPA" memory (the 64KB memory seen by the Z80) for ZIP & directories browsing. More memory is needed for the directories compared to the ZIP files because file names are kept in memory and sorted before beeing displayed. So a directory can have up to 2000 or something files, when a ZIP file can have a lot more (something like 8000). Conclusion: try to favor ZIP files instead of directories if you have lots of ROMs.

You have to concatenate all disk images into a single .DSK file from MSX-DOS or Windows (let me know if you need help on that). You can then swap disks at run time with keys or even joystick. See the SofaRunIt "Usage" section on my site.

I try the following few games.

AG Software:
Bag Man -> x
Bakerman -> x
Balloon City -> x

Ample Software:
Boogie Woogi Jungle -> Graphical bugs in presentation screen but Works
Car Race -> Works
Scramble Eggs -> Works
Super Drinker -> Works

ASCII:
3D Tennis (J) -> x
Actman -> x
Angelo -> x
Athletic Ball -> x
Banana -> Works
The Black Onyx (J) -> Works
Bokosuka Wars -> x
Boomerang -> x
Break Out -> x

Sometime the screen turns green (the text remains white) or totally black when I execute Sofarun.

Is there no way to prevent the creation of .PRM or .SST files when we execute a Rom?

• .GST files (Game SeTtings) are containing the settings for eash game. They are created only if the game settings differ from the default settings, and automatically deleted if you revert to default settings.
• .PRM files (Patched RoM) are the patched versions of the ROM. They are only generated if needed (JoyMega, language, PSG 2 SCC...), and automatically deleted if a patch is no longer needed after changing the settings. The "Cleanup directory" option removes all .PRM files, and .UNZ files (unzipped files).
• SR.SST file is a unique file containing the default Sofarun SeTtings.

There's no option to prevent creating these files. I'm making the assumption there's enough space on SD cards / IDE drives to handle them.

I'll have a look at the games you mentioned. Did you launch them with default settings, no JoyMega or PSG 2 SCC ?

So this one is weird
It might be related to these lines in SR.INI:

# User interface background and text colors
# BGCLR=1
# TXTCLR=3

Never seen that here... Maybe something introduced by the DRIVES setting you are using.

I have one, I can send it to you for testings.

That would be great. I'll first do some tests on openMSX and send you a beta version.

Metal Gear 2 does not work when in "subslot". There's a patch for it here: MSX IPS Patch Archive ("Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake slotfix patch"), along with other interesting fixes.

Gradius 2 should definitively work. Which version are you using (you can get the ROMs CRC in the title of the launch menu in the form xxxxxxxx.UNZ) ?

Also, what is your flash device ?

OK, if I disable the option "Force flash" these games work (except Angelo that start but it is not playable).

Strange I do not use ZIP file.

Details please ! Which game & settings, and when does the "Bad signature" displays (launch time, browsing ??) ?

This message seems to occur randomly when I reset the MSX and execute again Sofarun after I have already executed a ROM.

I have a lot improved games. Is it the problem? It's very annoying if that's the case.

My Angelo crc32 is 20143ec7. It works fine on emulator and on my MSX with the Musical Memory Mapper or a MAB 8k cartridge.

Sofarun froze when I launched Breakout.

Yes, think I've found the fix for the "Bad signature" on ROM files !
Gdx, extra question for you: do you still have a SR.SST file in your SOFARUN directory, and does it have a size of 232 bytes ? Also, is this file "writeable" (not on a write-only partition) ?

Version 2.4 has been released, here's the changelog :

• Support for MegaRAM thanks to sd_snatcher ExecROM tool (http://sourceforge.net/projects/execrom/).
• MegaROM support for MSX with no flash device thanks to LOADROM by Trunks & Victor. That's a bit experimental for now: you have to select the ROM file again in the UI at launch time, and LOADROM does not work on MSX 1 (for MegaROMs).
• Palette settings are preserved when launching a BASIC program (well, until the next SCREEN instruction).
• Fix strange "file-padding" bug in Nextor (by adding a fflush() call).
• Fix "ZipFileEntry" default value handling in SR.SST (should fix the bug mentionned by gdx).

Great news to all megaram users! Thanks for this new (one more) christmas present !

I'll try this one as soon as I get home, and I'll post my impressions here.

Hi Bastiaan,

Thanks for the feedback, glad to see SofaRun is useful to you

Yes, I'm pretty sure that BASIC and home computers in the 80s started lots of vocations at the time. Kids prefer to play only these days!

To answer your question: sources for the latest execrom are not available, and I had to patch some code in it so that it works well together with SofaRun.

I'm anyway planning to drop the use of execrom.com & loadrom.com & romload.com and have a kind of "unified" loader if I cant make it. Most of the code to patch and flash a ROM is the same between the different devices, and I don't want to maintain too many external tools. That being said, if I have access to the latest execrom sources meanwhile I might release an update

Does anyone know if Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha (the outhor of ExecRom) is still active in MSX?
The websites and email addresses I had/ could find, do not work anymore....

Does anyone have recent contact information of him, so we can help find a newer source code of ExecRom, to help Louthrax?

Thanks! I was looking for some of his other files too!

At least we have found sources of 1.2c ☺

I think I see sources of 1.2a in file http://www.cybernostra.com/msx/Projetos/AdrianPage/execrom_f... :RNFF:

And I found some SCC versions that I lost because my previous SD card broke in 2 pieces...

Glad I could be of help for your great program!

What padding settings would you recommend for your kgc2rom program for the use with SofaRun (on a megaflashrom scc+sd)?

The best way is Long Path Tool. My problem was solved.

Hi Oxana,
What was your problem exactly? This "Long Path Tool" is a Windows utility right?

Hi, great tool, thanks! What do I need for PSG 2 SCC? Only MFR SCC+ SD?
Is there a way to quit games to MSX-DOS2 and some way of saving states? (not Konami's) Is this possible?

Hi Louthrax,

Thanks. I indeed read the SR.TXT file, but I cannot get the PSG2SCC work with for example Metal Gear 1. It creates the .PRM file, flashes it, but then the computer hangs. I do have Turbo-R ST with MFR SCC+ SD 512kB.