A TAP works and now it does not?

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 5:10 pm

Odd instance here... in randomly checking something in GB20 I find that one game I have (Pilot Pursuit) loads fine in Vice 1.22 but gives a load error when trying 2.1 instead. Any ideas as to why this might be the case?! Cleaning the TAP appears to have no effect.

I really hope there aren't more like this... problems, problems!

nojoopa · Post by **nojoopa** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 12:13 am

I'm no TAP expert, can't say if the tape handling has changed since 1.22. It might work (again) with 2.2.

I do remember 1.22 having wrong timing for some opcodes ($9B, $9C, $9E and $9F); these were fixed in VICEplus 1.0 which is otherwise very similar to VICE 1.22 (x64dtv nonwithstanding). Please test with that version (win32 binary available here) if it's still broken in VICE 2.2.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:45 am

As 2.2 finally came up for download, I've tried it with that and it still gives a load error. Most peculiar. Sounds like it could be something similar to what you suggest.

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 8:10 am

If you want, I may try to convert it on prg/d64 but the problem may still remain for other tap files of course

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 8:39 am

As you have GB20 NBLA, then you'll have the TAP. Give it a whirl, see if you can determine anything or whether a clean your end helps. And if not, please extract it to a PRG and I'll include that in the database instead.

Now it means I'll be on the lookout for other similar issues... I tested every PRG and TAP with 1.22 you see, and only tried a portion of games with 2.1.

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 11:51 am

Email sent with working tap and prg versions.

Btw it seems that Vice 2.2 does not start anymore tap files...

nojoopa · Post by **nojoopa** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:32 am

nbla000 wrote:Email sent with working tap and prg versions.

"Working"? Does this mean that the old TAP file only worked with 1.22, but the new one does with 2.0 - 2.2? If so, then I'd consider the old TAP broken and the compatibility with 1.22 an unfortunate coincidence. In any case, I'd still like to hear if the old TAP works with VICEplus 1.0 (link in earlier post); it's the quickest way to determine if the opcode mistimings are/were the issue behind this.

nbla000 wrote:Btw it seems that Vice 2.2 does not start anymore tap files...

After reading this I realized I hadn't tested a single TAP file after the rewrite and thought I completely broke TAP support in xvic... panic ensued, as you can imagine

By "start", I hope you're referring to not doing the RUN after the loading is complete (as reported by Mayhem elsewhere). This is due to the changes in the autostart system, which waits for the emulated code to leave ROM area to stop the autostart procedure. Unfortunately 2.2 uses the C64 addresses for this (so BASIC is assumed to start at $A000) instead of machine specific checks. This is fixed now (in r21877) but it doesn't help much with GB20...

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:10 am

The original TAP I had before loaded fine in 1.22 but failed on anything 2.x. The new TAP supplied by NBLA loads fine in any Vice. I downloaded the VicePlus you linked to and the old TAP loads fine in it.

As for the non-autostart of TAPs in Gamebase, was the comment about being "fixed" mean it will be resolved in Vice 2.3? In the meantime I'll make a note about non compatibility with 2.2 then; however the release of GB20 to come doesn't support that version yet anyways.

nojoopa · Post by **nojoopa** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:47 am

Mayhem wrote:The original TAP I had before loaded fine in 1.22 but failed on anything 2.x. The new TAP supplied by NBLA loads fine in any Vice. I downloaded the VicePlus you linked to and the old TAP loads fine in it.

Thanks for testing. As it loads fine in VICEplus 1.0, my guess was wrong; a more detailed analysis on what broke the old TAP would be tedious. Since there's a new TAP, I doubt anyone will bother to look at the issue unless more not-working-anymore TAPs pop up.

Mayhem wrote:As for the non-autostart of TAPs in Gamebase, was the comment about being "fixed" mean it will be resolved in Vice 2.3?

Almost; it means that the fix is committed to the public svn trunk, so anyone who grabs and compiles it gets the fix now. As for source tarball & binary releases: yes, it will resolved in 2.3.

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 11:13 am

My work was very easy:

I've simply loaded the original tap file from the 1.22 Vice version and saved the program to a disk image, then I've loaded the disk image from the 2.2 Vice version and saved to the tape image, that's all

This new tap version works fine in any VICE version, tested on 1.22, 2.1 and 2.2 version, btw the new 2.2 version does not autostart TAP files anymore, there is a command for that ?