Emuladores de Ajedrez de MESS

[CBF]

dummy_timer is for the CPU divider. If you remove the CPU divider, you won't need this.
IRQ timer is unrelated to it.

Ok, thanks.
So I'll use the first 3 lines of the newer (IRQ timer) code, but remove the "dummy_timer" line -
I hope that these devices will then work correctly again ...

CBF

[berger]

I agree that the 4*more taxing resources is unfortunate. But it is as expected.

Hmm? Are you serious?
How useful is it to add this CPU divider code just to make the device timing a bit more accurate,
when now even a modern computer (Core i5/3GHz) is not able to emulate a 4-8 MHz 6502 CPU with full (100%) speed???

This has some memories for me. When in 2009 I assembled my first arcade machine, I installed my favorite childhood/teenage games. About 50 games. They all worked well except for one... the Asteroids. Remember what game it is? It is vectorial and very simple in terms of graphics... but it was the most demanding in terms of process. This is the cost of 100% fidelity emulation. I hope hap finds some way in the future to optimize the "Fidelity divider".

Best regards,
Berger

[CBF]

I hope hap finds some way in the future to optimize the "Fidelity divider".

Well, I've already 'optimized' it by simply removing it.

But I'm still curious what the real difference is between running these Fidelity machines with or without this CPU divider!?

CBF

[CBF]

Ok, a new (fixed) CB-Emu version is online - it's now working well again.

Just download the new CB-Emu_2018.zip and unpack ALL files (replacing the previous version).
I haven't changed the date of the files, but many of them are different to the last versions (e.g. in the
folders 'nvram' and 'sta'), and I've optimized many artwork files, so this new package is more than 20 MB smaller.

CBF

[berger]

But I'm still curious what the real difference is between running these Fidelity machines with or without this CPU divider!?

The 'real' difference may be minimal, but MAME should always try to emulate the hardware as much as possible, and this Fidelity hardware works this way... I can vouch for that!

In the future I guess the driver could be optimized, or maybe the normal evolution of the PC hardware will stop this from being a problem... as it happens all the time: if I remember correctly, I started using MAME in the Pentium III period. But of course for those who enjoy playing with emulated chess computers, your work with CB-Emu is invaluable, too.

Best regards,
Berger

[CBF]

The 'real' difference may be minimal, but MAME should always try to emulate the hardware as much as possible, and this Fidelity hardware works this way... I can vouch for that!

Well, but not with these negative side-effects, at least in my opinion.

In the future I guess the driver could be optimized, or maybe the normal evolution of the PC hardware will stop this from being a problem...

In my tests I didn't see any problems in the PC hardware, there must be an other reason.
After Tibono has reported this problem, I've checked it on my notebook (Core i5/3GHz) with the Taskmanager
and one other CPU utility, and I didn't see any difference in the CPU load of my computer - it was around 30%
in both cases, with or without this CPU divider activated.
I only saw the problem when I switched on 'Show FPS' in the 'Options' menu: here the last value is the emulation speed,
and it should be 100% for a module running with the correct speed.
But for these Fidelity modules this value went down (sometimes even to 65%) although the computer CPU was still
showing not more than 30% CPU usage!?
Especially my overclocked modules (e.g. feasbu_8, the 8 MHz Elite A/S) was suffering extremly from this CPU divider,
after the program was out of book and started thinking the module's speech was totally distorted and stuttering.

So it seems that it's not the fault of the computer CPU (with only 30% CPU load), but rather the fault of MAME itself -
maybe this new CPU divider code is not working well in the old MAME version 0.175?
In CB-EmuX (which uses MAME 0.190) this problem is not as noticeable, but of course in CB-EmuX I've not added
such overclocked versions (or any code for chess pieces) for these Fidelity devices.

For me this problem (not 100% emulation speed despite only 30% CPU usage) is still a mystery ...

CBF

[berger]

I see.... I didn't quite understand the problem, sorry.

Regards,
Berger

[CBF]

Hi,

there's an 'Update.zip' for CB-Emu_2018 available on my website!

There was a small problem with moves on the 8. row in the CSC-module, which is fixed now.

CBF

[berger]

Thank you!

Regards,
Berger

[Volodymyr]

My blog about chess.

https://quirkchess.blogspot.com

It is not necessary to read this blog. Now it's in Russian. It's convenient for me.
But I will sometimes post my new artworks for CB-Emu there.