The Computer And General Tech Thread - Software, Hardware, Questions, etc.

Vilike · Post by **Vilike** » Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:22 pm

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:38 am
Vilike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:00 am Those games are made available with Steam Play, a manager of compatibility tools (in this case Proton). It is possible to toggle the settings to enable it for all titles. I haven't tested it that extensively, but at least I can again play the games I purchased on my previous OS.
Does it work for the more hardware-demanding games? Games tend to take a big performance hit, because (1) the compatibility layer adds computations, and (2) GPU manufacturers don't always create drivers for Linux (or if they do, they're lower quality, or deliberately downgraded). It may not be a problem for small indie games, but the big 3D tentpoles are another matter.

Then again, I haven't played very much on PC in the past few years, so my remarks may be outdated.

I am more on the small indie game side, but I got only a laptop, not a wild gaming setup. The fact is, I was content to buy it based on its performance with Minecraft. I was supposed to be more work-oriented.

But who knows, if there's a sale, I may try some speedy graphics game, and wait for a hardware update in six years if it doesn't work.

LingEarth · Post by **LingEarth** » Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:28 pm

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:50 amBut the other problem is that Japanese text and ÅÄÖ get replaced by random strings. Is there some way to define encoding in the file, or should I give up on this?

After the <head> line, put:

Code: Select all

<meta charset="utf-8">

Rounin Ryuuji · Post by **Rounin Ryuuji** » Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:40 pm

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:38 am
Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 9:42 am Speaking of video games, I've just successfully "modded" an old NA SNES to play Japanese games.
Hey, I did the same a few years ago. I modded a PAL SNES to play Japanese games and to run at 60Hz (by default, European models run at 50Hz, so the games are slower). I did the same with a Mega Drive (= Genesis) and a Saturn.

The NA and Japan version already use the same video output format, so all I had to do was a bit of plastic chopping.

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:56 am
Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 9:42 amI bought it to play it, not for the collector's value, and it wasn't half the price of an overinflated Gamestop stock).
Wait, are you saying that you bought a SNES game cheaply? Was it a crap game?

No, it's Tales of Phantasia — the original version, though I've played both the GBA and PS1 versions, and loved both very much (note I am the clearly JRPG-influenced one); I was surprised by the low price. Apparently, they made a *LOT* of Japanese copies of a *LOT* of things, so the prices aren't particularly high (I also don't live in Europe, so I think importing Japanese things here is cheaper because there's such a mass of 20- and 30-something Japanophiles, so there's already a market for it). It had the box and all the paperwork and everything. I was very happy with the find.

Edit - Addendum: I have no idea how much the SNES itself cost — I've had it something like twenty-seven years. It's the one I was given for my fifth birthday. I'm just old enough to have an original. Most of the games I have are childhood "memorabilia"; I've only bought this and maybe one other cartridge in my adult life. A lot of the English cartridges I might want are significantly more expensive than this Japanese one was. I'm told the Japanese Famicom systems themselves are, however, significantly more expensive, and this may also factor into the specifically Japanese cartridges being cheaper — there aren't a lot of people playing them, so there isn't as much demand (especially if there are already a lot of them).

I'm simply speculating about the cartridge price, however.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:57 pm

I now have a frustrating problem with zeptoforth on the STM32F746 DISCOVERY board. While it now boots and polling-based serial works, interrupt-driven serial IO fails for some inexplicable reason. It appears that the USART1 interrupt it uses simply does not fire. I know I am using the right USART because it uses the same one and the same registers as polling-based serial, and overall my implementation of interrupt-driven serial IO is almost identical to that used by a very similar MCU aside from which USART is being used. It even fires the USART1 interrupt when I manually set its pending flag, and I am quite sure from the documentation that I am using the right IRQ number. So I am kinda stumped, and I need to get this working before I can get multitasking working on this board.

Qwynegold · Post by **Qwynegold** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 8:28 am

LingEarth wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:28 pm
Qwynegold wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:50 amBut the other problem is that Japanese text and ÅÄÖ get replaced by random strings. Is there some way to define encoding in the file, or should I give up on this?
After the <head> line, put:
Code: Select all
<meta charset="utf-8">

Thanks for the reply. I tried this now, but it made no difference.

Qwynegold · Post by **Qwynegold** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 8:29 am

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:40 pm No, it's Tales of Phantasia — the original version, though I've played both the GBA and PS1 versions, and loved both very much (note I am the clearly JRPG-influenced one); I was surprised by the low price. Apparently, they made a *LOT* of Japanese copies of a *LOT* of things, so the prices aren't particularly high (I also don't live in Europe, so I think importing Japanese things here is cheaper because there's such a mass of 20- and 30-something Japanophiles, so there's already a market for it). It had the box and all the paperwork and everything. I was very happy with the find.

I had no idea the Tales series was that old!

LingEarth · Post by **LingEarth** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 10:29 am

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 8:28 am
LingEarth wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:28 pm
Qwynegold wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:50 amBut the other problem is that Japanese text and ÅÄÖ get replaced by random strings. Is there some way to define encoding in the file, or should I give up on this?
After the <head> line, put:
Code: Select all
<meta charset="utf-8">
Thanks for the reply. I tried this now, but it made no difference.

Hmm... What program are you editing the html file in? Is there an option for character encoding, either in some menu or in the save dialog, that says something like "UTF-8" or "UTF-8 with BOM"? If so, make sure UTF-8 with BOM is selected. Some programs don't read Unicode correctly without a Byte Order Mark to tell it the exact format.

Qwynegold · Post by **Qwynegold** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:21 pm

LingEarth wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 10:29 am Hmm... What program are you editing the html file in? Is there an option for character encoding, either in some menu or in the save dialog, that says something like "UTF-8" or "UTF-8 with BOM"? If so, make sure UTF-8 with BOM is selected. Some programs don't read Unicode correctly without a Byte Order Mark to tell it the exact format.

That worked!

Thank you so much!

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:37 pm

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:21 pm
LingEarth wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 10:29 am Hmm... What program are you editing the html file in? Is there an option for character encoding, either in some menu or in the save dialog, that says something like "UTF-8" or "UTF-8 with BOM"? If so, make sure UTF-8 with BOM is selected. Some programs don't read Unicode correctly without a Byte Order Mark to tell it the exact format.
That worked! Thank you so much!

One note though is that, on the other hand, there are many programs that process text files which do not handle the BOM as one would expect and which may function incorrectly as a result (e.g. many compilers).

LingEarth · Post by **LingEarth** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:50 pm

You're welcome!

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:37 pmOne note though is that, on the other hand, there are many programs that process text files which do not handle the BOM as one would expect and which may function incorrectly as a result (e.g. many compilers).

Yes, character encodings are a mess and what one program requires, breaks another one. Notepad on Windows used to always require a BOM for UTF-8 text, but I noticed with a recent update that it now saves UTF-8 without a BOM by default.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 1:24 pm

On Unix-like OSes the standard as far as I can tell is to not use a BOM, as no one in their right mind encodes files in UTF-16 format, and UTF-8 has become the standard for file encoding, since it is backwards compatible with ASCII while allowing a much wider range of characters to be encoded than Latin-1, the previous de facto standard, allowed. Using a BOM is really just a Windows thing, which may cause compatibility problems with software not specifically written for Windows (which is probably why Notepad stopped saving files with a BOM by default).

Rounin Ryuuji · Post by **Rounin Ryuuji** » Sun Feb 14, 2021 4:26 pm

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 8:29 am
Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:40 pm No, it's Tales of Phantasia — the original version, though I've played both the GBA and PS1 versions, and loved both very much (note I am the clearly JRPG-influenced one); I was surprised by the low price. Apparently, they made a *LOT* of Japanese copies of a *LOT* of things, so the prices aren't particularly high (I also don't live in Europe, so I think importing Japanese things here is cheaper because there's such a mass of 20- and 30-something Japanophiles, so there's already a market for it). It had the box and all the paperwork and everything. I was very happy with the find.
I had no idea the Tales series was that old!

If this were a discord server, I would post a picture of the guts of the cartridge. And yes, I love the series, and it's pretty old. The SNES Tales of Phantasia is the first entry (I first encountered it on the GBA, and I've also played a fan-translation of the PS1 release).

Qwynegold · Post by **Qwynegold** » Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:54 am

I only have Tales of Symphonia, which is my best game. Besides that I've only played Tales of the Abyss at a friend's place. Oh, I recently saw an anime about game development, called New Game. The game they were making seemed like it was mock version* of a Tales game. Or maybe it was just a JRPG in general.

*I don't what to call it, you know like when they have brand names like Panasony, PZ (Playstation) or Pineapple (Apple) in anime.

Rounin Ryuuji · Post by **Rounin Ryuuji** » Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:55 am

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:54 am I only have Tales of Symphonia, which is my best game.

It seems widely-known; it's actually a distant prequel to Phantasia. I haven't actually finished it yet.

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:54 am Besides that I've only played Tales of the Abyss at a friend's place.

Abyss and Phantasia are the ones I rate the best as complete adventures, though the aesthetic elements of Legendia really gripped me.

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 1:54 am Oh, I recently saw an anime about game development, called New Game. The game they were making seemed like it was mock version* of a Tales game. Or maybe it was just a JRPG in general.

*I don't what to call it, you know like when they have brand names like Panasony, PZ (Playstation) or Pineapple (Apple) in anime.

It's what TVTropes calls Brand X, I think.

Either way, sounds fun.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Wed Feb 17, 2021 4:21 pm

Okay, I got interrupt-driven serial IO working for zeptoforth on the STM32F746, which was not working due to a stupid typo (I wrote $40001100 when I should have written $40011000). However, now I am running into problems with multitasking (it hangs on boot), and I am not sure what it is due to, because the STM32F746 is very similar to the STM32F407 and the STM32L476, which this already works on.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:06 pm

I have release 0.14.0 of zeptoforth out, which now includes basic support (i.e. no support for external flash or SDRAM or for the touchscreen yet) for the STM32F746 DISCOVERY board!

bradrn · Post by **bradrn** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 7:37 am

I’ve gotten syllabification and suprasegmentals working in my new SCA! I think. That is to say, it finally seems to be working now, but I’ve spent the past few days finding and fixing edge cases one by one, and I can only hope there aren’t any more which I’ve missed. I must admit that I’m not too happy with how it’s implemented at the moment (on the basis that something which gives this many edge cases even in trivial usage can’t be too well-designed), but I can’t think of anything better. Ah well, at least an SCA with badly-designed suprasegmental support is still better than one with no suprasegmentals, which category includes most if not all of the currently-available alternatives. (Though if you have a proposal for a better design, please do tell me so I can use it!)

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:30 pm

I would be impressed with an SCA with real stress and suprasegmental support at all, since this is an area which SCA's are notoriously poor at, and which is why I don't use an SCA for Laqar despite it seeming like it would benefit from one with the complexity of its diachronics.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:51 pm

I am now working on a Quad SPI flash driver for the STM32F746 so I can use the 128 Mbit external flash that comes with the STM32F746 DISCOVERY board. Once I am done with this I will work on a memory controller driver for the external SDRAM on the board, and after that I will work on a display driver so I can use the built-in touchscreen on the board.

Travis B. · Post by **Travis B.** » Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:11 pm

Now that I am done with my Quad SPI driver for interfacing with the external flash on my STM32F746 DISCOVERY board, I have written a "block" interface for said flash, which treats it as an array of writable 1K blocks, which I will shortly add code for doing wear leveling to (which the Quad SPI flash chip does not do on its own).

Zompist Bboard Again

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