ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine

[Dave Yeo]

Some of those games I remember enjoying, and many needed joystick support to enjoy.
Looking into USB joystick support, I was hoping to find something fairly easy to port, without luck.
The basic HID (Human Interface Devices) is here in appendix D, https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/documents/hid1_11.pdf and should be able to be implemented with libusb I hope, but someone knowledgeable would need to be interested in doing it, along with extending DTA and SDL or such to support it.
I miss some of those games but just found them too hard to play with a keyboard.

[guzzi]

Some of those games I remember enjoying, and many needed joystick support to enjoy.
Looking into USB joystick support, I was hoping to find something fairly easy to port, without luck.
The basic HID (Human Interface Devices) is here in appendix D, https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/documents/hid1_11.pdf and should be able to be implemented with libusb I hope, but someone knowledgeable would need to be interested in doing it, along with extending DTA and SDL or such to support it.
I miss some of those games but just found them too hard to play with a keyboard.

Could ask Wim Brul.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

Different question.

Do you have any comments about GAMESRVR.DLL ?
I noticed that some games required it and I want to know:

1) To know which is the last version available for the DLL
2) To know if was merged to other library/dll or if it just stands as a separate runtime in the last Warp.

I just found these version on the native games I'm testing:

Directory of X:\warp\D\Doom

 3-17-95  2:55p        30,444      0 a---  gamesrvr.dll
        1 file(s)      30,444 bytes used

Directory of X:\warp\F\Flight

12-06-95 12:50p        30,484      0 a---  GAMESRVR.DLL
        1 file(s)      30,484 bytes used

Directory of X:\warp\S\Semtex

 2-27-96 10:19a        30,484      0 a---  gamesrvr.dll

Any more information is welcome to be included on the EDM/2 wiki.

Regards

[Roderick Klein]

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/incoming/GAMESRVR-1995-09-12.zip

If you do distribute copies of these DLL's I would at least include a warning in a textfile . You see the last thing you want todo is that people install a version of dive.dll from 1995. Or svga.exe used by video installers. Loading that downleveled DLL's can potentially make applications less stable.

The TXT file in the ZIP mentions that by running the .EXE file in the ZIP file that:

 Copy GAMESRVR.DLL and DIVE.DLL to d:\OS2\DLL, where d is the boot
 drive.

Since \OS2\DLL comes first any DIVE.DLL installed on system \MMOS2\DLL would came later as \OS2\DLL comes first in the libpath. So you would always load the old version of dive.dll.

Just my thoughts on this package.

Roderick

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi.

I think that possible "GAMESRVR.DLL" was merged to something else on some Warp (4?). I just delete that DLL from Semtex and the game keep working without issues. I will need to keep testing it.

Roderick, I uploaded that file on Hobbes just in case someone is looking for it in the future while trying to run some old games. If someone founds different versions or more documentation, please let me know.

Regards

[Lars]

GAMESRVR was only necessary for Warp 3 where the DIVE support was not existent and was added with this package.
For >= Warp 4 this is completely unnecessary. In fact, it is counterproductive as the install package for GAMESRVR installs a hook to load GAMESRVR.DLL via the PM_ED_HOOKS keyword in OS2.INI. You DO NOT want that to happen. In the best case Warp 4 just ignores that keyword (in which case GAMESRVR is not loaded anyway). In the bad case, you screw up your whole system.

Lars

[Martin Iturbide]

GAMESRVR was only necessary for Warp 3 where the DIVE support was not existent and was added with this package.
For >= Warp 4 this is completely unnecessary. In fact, it is counterproductive as the install package for GAMESRVR installs a hook to load GAMESRVR.DLL via the PM_ED_HOOKS keyword in OS2.INI. You DO NOT want that to happen. In the best case Warp 4 just ignores that keyword (in which case GAMESRVR is not loaded anyway). In the bad case, you screw up your whole system.

Lars

Thanks for the feedback Lars . I will also add this on the EDM/2 wiki.

Regards

[Mathias]

Report for the 13th Retro gaming night @ Leipzig, Germany on 11th of May 2019!!
First of all some pictures --> http://www.schreibfabrik.de/img/spielenacht2019/

I have been there with an ArcaOS machine that I had prepared only for this con, loaded with DOS, Win3.x and OS/2 games.

Machine was advertised as:
DE:
ARCA OS "Blue Lion"
Retro-Gaming-Plattform
für DOS, Win3.x und OS/2
mit der Hardware von heute!

EN:
ARCA OS "Blue Lion"
Retro-Gaming-Platform
for DOS, Win3.x and OS/2
using the hardware of today!

The following games were installed:
===========================
DOS-Games:

A320
AGENT (Secret Agent Man)
ALADIN
ALIEN
Asterix
ATOMINO
BILLARD (Magic Pool Billard)
bmenace (Bio Menace)
BMH (Bundesliga Manager Hattrick)
Bombrman
BOULDER (Boulder Dash)
CARMAG (Carmageddon)
CComic (Captain Comic)
CIV (Civilisation)
COLON (Colonisation)
CRYSTAL (Crystal Caves)
DESCENT
DOOM1
DUCK (Duck Tales)
DUKE3D (Duke Nukem 3D)
Dune2
dynablas (Dyna Blaster)
ELECTRO (Electro Body)
EXTREME (Extreme Pinball demo)
EXTREMEV (Extreme Pinball full version)
F15
F22LIGHT
Flashb (Flashback)
GAMEBOY (Gameboy emu)
GLUECKSR (Wheel of fortune)
HiOctane (Hi-Octane (Bullfrog))
HL14-18 (History Line 1914 - 1918)
iTrader
JILL (Jill of Jungle)
Keen1
Keen2
Keen3
Keen4
Keen5
Keen6
Lionking
LOLLYPOP
machine1 (The Incredible Machine)
machine2 (The even more Incredible Machine)
MAHJONG
MARIO
MENACE
MIG29
MMissing (Mario is missing)
MSFS5 (Microsoft Flight Simulator 5)
NASCAR (Nascar Racing 1 with ultra high resolution and details)
OUTRIDGE (Outer Ridge)
PACMAN
PAGAN (Paganitzu)
PRINCE (Prince of Persia)
QUAKE
ROBOT (The game of Robot 1 - 6)
S1 (Settlers 1)
S2 (Settlers 2)
S2_Gld_E (Settlers 2 Gold English)
Schach (various Chess games)
SEGA (SEGA emulator)
SIDE (Side Tetris)
SIM2000 (Sim City 2000)
SIMCITY (Sim City 1?)
SolarWnd (Solar Winds)  -- WOW niice one!
SpeedH (Speed Haste)
StarBl_D (Star Blade German)
StarBl_E (Star Blade English)
STARTREK (numerous Star Trek games)
TD3 (Test Drive 3)
TFX
TIE (Tie fighter)
TORNADO
VEGI
Warbots (self programmed robots fighting game )
Wrestle (WWF Wrestlemania)
XARGON
XWING


===========================
native OS/2 games:

ABE-1_0
ASTEROIDS-2_30
BINGO2-1_4
BLACKJACK-0_50
Blubbels
ColorCode__Mastermind-0_7_0
Connect-Four
Connect-Four_PM-1_24
Dave_Gnukem
December_Poker-1_0a
Formido-1_0
Hex-a-Hop-8_8
HexMines
JumpNBump-1_50
Kniffel
Krone_der_Macht
Las_Vegas_Craps-2_00
lBreakout2-2_6_5
Lemmings-Demo
Lode_Runner-1_2B2
Makman
Master_of_The_Empire
Mine2
Mine_Sweeper2-1_4a
Overthrow-0_90
Pipeline-2_2b4
Prince_of_Persia-1_16
Project_Starfighter-1_6
RockDodger
SIM2000Demo
Sim_Blob
Sokoban-1_1_5
Sudoku
The_Ancient_Game_of_GO
Tower_Toppler-1_1_6
tWorld (Tiles World)


===========================
Windows 3.11 games:

BACKGAM (BackGammon)
Blitzer
BLOCK-BR
CHECKERS
CHESS
HATHOR
HERMAN
HEX-TET
Hyperoid
JULIETTA
KARTEN
MISERMIN
PIPE
ROULETTE
SYMBOLR
TETRIS
TRIPLETS
WINPOKER
Winskat
YACHT-Z

-------------------------

The crowd was NOT interested in the OS itself, just the games. Well yes, surely no owners of their own retro machines.. just playing games that they were playing when they were young, but apparently they don`t play these games anymore, as most of them told me. o.O

ONE guest actually asked how this is possible on such a modern hardware.. without CD drive, no floppy drives, etc.
So I had the chance to show him without boring him.. ; )
Clearly that guy wa simpressed by the OS! - But well yea.. what did I expect.. :p  -The majority of peole is not interested in HOW the games can be played, but rather the games themselves. - This is too pro for them.

But I suspect all the other exhibitors weren`t asked for the details either... just the crowd rolled in over the day, and was plaing the games on the machines, and that was it. Maybe this is NOT the right con for presenting ArcaOS.. but on the other hand, we might need two things to bring the attention to the masses.. :p
1) Soundblaster 16 sound wrapper for DOS & Win 3.x to (f.i. Uniaud and co)
2) Better merchandising, banners, etc... to get the attention ``Hey wait.. what is this?!``

: )  - Still, the machine comes with me next year again..

[ivan]

Hi Mathias,

It sounds as if you had fun.  Since this is an OS/2 site maybe you could give us the information about which modern machine you were using and how well it performed.

[Mathias]

Ivan, sure thing. : )

The machine is what I had free at the moment. It's not toooo modern, but modern for OS/2 aspects. It is an Intel Atom with 2x 1,6GHz with Hyperthreading, so it shows 4 cores.
It's got a 512 GB SATA hdd and 4 GB RAM installed (plenty for the OS), has no external drives, just USB slots.

Installing the current AracOS (DE beta) I had troube, as the ION chip onboard appears to be incompatible with the installer; It didn't recognise the hard drive at all, just the ArcaOS install USB stick, so I could have installed it there, but naw... I wanted the stuff to be on hdd.

So I took a Transcent USB3 PCIe 1x card, that I had flying around. This one also comes with an SATA controller onboard. (If you are interested in the controller type, please let me know. I will have a look.) The martian SATA controller on there was recognised by the ARCAOS installer, and so it worked out. - I was VERY surprised this weird SATA controller was supported, and the much more widely spread Intel ION chip was not.

The installer ran trough, and finally the ArcaOS desktop showed up.
It turned out, all hardware was supported and did work instantly. Also the network card. - Instantly I went and updated everything step by step using the Arca Noae Packet Manager. After two reboots this process was done, and I tried to set up SNAP, just to find out, that it does not support my onboard ION graphics chip. - Still, as it turned out later, THIS installation was much more stable than my other Panorama test installations. - It ran all DOS, Windows and OS/2 games fine without crashing once, it had no trouble switching between DOS full screens and OS/2 windows, everything was smooth and nice. - I never had such trouble free usage with Panorama... so ... even though SNAP offered no acceleration (I had to disable full window dragging... dragging the frame itself was fine and quick), the whole user experience was good still.

Besides graphics and SATA controller, I had no trouble at all with that machine. Everything worked as expected.

Of course I've created an image of the finished machine with all games and stuff, using Clonezilla. - Just to allow me to roll back to a working OS in the case of an emergency.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Mathias.

The pictures looks great, it seems it was a nice event for retro gamers. Is there a picture of your machine there?

It is clear that the audience was not there to know about ArcaOS, just to remember old games and play it, but I think that you had accomplished your goal. This was the first time ever ArcaOS was shown as a gaming (retro gaming) platform and it is important to show the platform in different events.

I also think it was a good opportunity to test what ArcaOS is missing and what can be improved on this area (like SoundBlaster emulation on DOS). 

Thanks for your efforts !!

Regards

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I also noticed that there are some games that require MIDI support for some background music. I vaguely remember from the past that I can install midi support with TiMidity++ (I guess ) and some instrument (?) patches like GUSPAT or EAWPAT.... or was it timidityMCD the one required to have MMOS2 MIDI support? I also don't remember if it can work with UniAud if it requires specific hardware with its drivers.

I honestly don't remember, this time I will write it down on the wiki. Any tip / help is welcome.

Regards.

[Mathias]

Just had a look at the martian SATA controller, that was compatible with the ArcaOS installer. : )

--> Asmedia SATA Controller 106X Version 0.95 AHCI Mode (SMART supported, PCIe Gen2)


Martin, thanks for your feedback! : )) - Yes there is indeed a picture of the machine, but it's quite small, since the picture shows the whole room. I have made a couple of photos just now.
It's not the nicest case, but I like it for some reason.

As for MIDI... mhmm.. unfortunately I have no MIDI knowledge with OS/2. Just Linux and Windows. But of course, as I love testing stuff out, this might only be a temporary situation.. :p - I'll try to free up some time.
And yup.. next year I hope for the Soundblaster 16/AWE32 wrapper/translator to bind DOS sound to UNIAUD. - This will definitely raise the attraction level quite a bit!

[Dave Yeo]

Hi

I also noticed that there are some games that require MIDI support for some background music. I vaguely remember from the past that I can install midi support with TiMidity++ (I guess ) and some instrument (?) patches like GUSPAT or EAWPAT.... or was it timidityMCD the one required to have MMOS2 MIDI support? I also don't remember if it can work with UniAud if it requires specific hardware with its drivers.

I honestly don't remember, this time I will write it down on the wiki. Any tip / help is welcome.

Regards.

Timidity, including its derivatives and fluidynth all play midi files as waves. Work fine with UniAud but not as a midi sound card replacement though I guess a driver could be written. Modern computers have lots of power for that kind of thing (software midi playback)

[ivan]

Hi Mathias,

That sounds like a rather nice machine, although I'm not well versed in Intel processors - all AMD here.  I am not surprised about the ASMedia SATA card working because those chips are used by the Ryzen chipset and since I have several Ryzen based machines working with only one problem - USB 3.0 - which means that I have to use a VIA USB 2 PCIe1 card for any USB needs.

The fact you made an image after you got it installed is good.  I had to do that to bypass problems with the ArcaOS installer on all the Ryzen boards I have.