Dragon-s-Lair-X68k

51 Commits 1 Branch 0 Tags

3 Commits

Include renames

Author	SHA1	Message	Date
prosolis	2f9f5cc995	Pace the ring, then read the DMAC config out of the IPL ROM: audio is cheap and the disk is not Two sessions that were never separated in the working tree, so they land as one commit. check.sh ALL GREEN before and after both. SESSION 19 -- the ring rig gets a frame clock (FINDINGS 51). src/player/stream.s had no frame clock: it asked for record i the instant it finished i-1, outran any finite pipe, and never let the ring back up. The 49.1 sweep passing at 48 KB was therefore a wrap-correctness result and nothing else. PACE/PACEON ($18034/$18038) hold the decoder to 12 fps, so FR_HEAD-FR_TAIL finally means what it reads as: whole frames the decoder could still draw with delivery stopped dead. PACEON=0 free-runs and is what the wrap gate still uses, so every figure in 49 is unmoved. Paced, on the gate container: 64 KB holds 2 frames, 256 KB holds 7-8, 512 KB holds 14-15, all pixel-exact. Tolerance is ceiling-1, measured by cutting the pipe: 256 KB buys 500 ms of dead pipe, not 583. SLACK IS ACCUMULATED, NOT OWNED. It is built out of pipe-wire and a seek spends all of it. At 488 KB/s a 256 KB ring needs 4.83 s of play to reach its ceiling from empty; 512 KB needs 8.42 s to reach 14. A bigger ring raises the ceiling AND lengthens the climb, so a branch point does not ask "is the buffer big enough" but "has there been enough play since the last one" -- and Dragon's Lair's decision points are seconds apart. The rig now also says WHICH resource is binding: at 460 KB/s every ring from 192 KB to 512 KB is rate-bound at ceiling 4 and never fills, so larger rings are dead RAM in that scene. 20_seek_slack.py is the same model rewritten in Python from record sizes, sharing no code with the Lua producer: 35/35 ceilings inside its bracket. SESSION 20 -- the DMAC configuration was in the IPL ROM the whole time (FINDINGS 52). ROADMAP's "do this first" was to put the ADPCM stream on the bus. That needs a clocks-per-byte figure for the audio channel, and 11_cpu_budget.py was charging audio the DISK's rate -- 5 clk/B, its own help text calling it "single-address, bus held". Audio was being charged the favourable end of B3, a 242 KB/s open question. It never had to be a guess. The IPL ROM programs all four HD63450 channels itself and MAME boots the rig with it, so 21_iplrom_dmac.py reads the configuration out of the image and decodes the MC68450 fields. Eight (address, expected bytes, meaning) sites; a mismatch or an unknown revision exits non-zero. In check.sh, no emulator, milliseconds. ch3 DCR=$80, OCR=$32: dual address, 8-bit port, cycle steal WITHOUT hold, REQG=10 external request. The DMAC arbitrates once per byte with no burst to amortise the 5..8 + 2 over, so an audio byte is 16..19 clocks, not 5 -- the old debit was 3.2x..3.8x small. And on the bus it is still nothing: 651 B/frame is 1.25%..1.48% of a frame, about 4% of what the decoder leaves. P6's bus risk does not materialise. The unit worry was worth checking and nearly right: 15.6 kHz is 8 MHz/512 = 15,625 samples/s, two 4-bit samples to a byte = 7,812.5 B/s exactly, and AUDIO_KBPS=7.8 is that in decimal kB while the tool multiplied by 1024. THE DISK CHANNEL IS PROGRAMMED IDENTICALLY. ch1 (SASI) is DCR=$80 too, and so is ch0. That is 16..19 clocks per delivered byte, where 42.4 brackets W at 5..12 and 42.5 has W=8 already missing 47/120 frames. The only worked example of a disk DMA configuration on this machine sits above the entire bracket, and at that price nothing fits at any container size. It is not scsiexrom.bin so B3 stays open -- what changed is that a cheap configuration is now the thing that has to be SHOWN. W <= 12 is a requirement on the player's DMAC programming, not a range the hardware hands us, and it is now the largest open number in the project, ahead of the rate. An unforced cross-check fell out: 15_bus_occupancy.py's new W sweep puts W=8 at 105.7% of the frame, agreeing with 42.5's 47/120, from mode histograms and bus clocks respectively, two models sharing no code. Also: ADPCM outranks the disk at the arbiter (CPR 1 against 2), so an audio byte never waits and a video byte does -- relevant to 51's smooth-rate delivery model. README MEDIA. stream.lua gains DLX_SNAP_EVERY=1 (needs DLX_PACE, off by default, on no path check.sh takes) and tools/media/make_readme_media.py turns the PNGs into docs/img/. The stills and both clips are MAME's own screen pixels. Building it turned up something worth recording. 116 of 119 captured frames are pixel-exact against dlx.py; three are TORN -- frame n on top, frame n-1 below the tear line -- because MAME captured the screen while the block loop was partway down it. decode.s writes straight to the displayed page (one display path, 28.1), so a real player tears the same way, and this is the first time that consequence has been visible rather than argued. The script ASSERTS the tear and refuses to build otherwise, rather than trimming three frames and reporting "every frame I kept is exact". Second correction the capture forced: the snapshot fires before frame n is decoded, so the obvious reading is that it holds frame n-1 -- it does not, because MAME renders the screen at the end of the machine frame, by which time the 68000 has finished frame n. 11_cpu_budget.py's "validated to within 1 pt" line is also corrected: the model reads 2..10 pt HIGH and by more as the frame gets harder, which was already true before either session. src/player/decode.s is unchanged; decode.bin is still 1,296 B at the same MD5. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6	2026-08-24 18:14:01 -07:00
prosolis	34f9ee341d	A real 256x256 CRTC mode, derived not recalled; palette ceiling was 2 dB low Session 3 left the harness on the IPL's 768x512 text timing because no CRTC values had been derived and guessing them was the failure mode to avoid. This derives them from MAME 0.277's divisor ladder instead, and the derivation is self-checking: the 256-wide mode runs at div 6 against the 768 mode's div 2, so htotal is exactly 1104/3 = 368 dots and every horizontal register divides by three with no remainder. Only the blanking split rounds. Verified by snapshot: native 256x512, active area pixel-exact, x=512 wrap gone. Two things fell out that change numbers elsewhere: - The palette's shared LSB I must be chosen per entry, not hardcoded to 1. Doing so lifts the display ceiling from 38.85 to 40.81 dB and is the only way to reach true black at all, since pal6bit(1) = 4. 102 of 256 entries want I = 0, so this is not a corner case. Supersedes FINDINGS 22.4; scsi has ~2 dB more headroom than that section claimed. The encoder does not do this yet. - Letterboxing costs a palette entry: GVRAM cleared to zero shows entry 0, and a free mediancut palette puts a real image colour there. 255 colours plus a reserved black, via prep_frame.py --reserve-black. MAME's graphics double-scan is phase-shifted one raster line (it halves the absolute scanline and vbegin is odd), which produced a false failure before it was understood; the regression test now asserts the shifted pairing explicitly. Still Lua-side. No 68000 instruction has drawn a pixel; the 38% blit estimate remains unvalidated. What this buys is a defined geometry for the decoder to write into: 256 words per row, 1024-byte stride, rows 32..223. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6	2026-08-23 13:27:17 -07:00
prosolis	b322e84cd4	Get a real Dragon's Lair frame onto the emulated X68000 First pixels on an actual X68000 screen. Everything up to now was Python-side or a headless -video none run, which cannot snapshot at all. The blocker was not the video controller. The IPL leaves CRTC R20 = 0x0B16, and bit 11 is "G-VRAM set to buffer", which makes MAME's draw_gfx() return early. GVRAM writes still land and read back correctly while the layer is invisible, so six attempts at $E82400/$E82500/$E82600 all rendered black with every register holding the value I intended. Two more facts, both confirmed against MAME 0.277 source rather than assumed: - $E8E001 monitor contrast is left at 14 by the IPL, scaling all output to 93.3%. The player must set it to 15. Contrast 0 blanks the screen, which is a free fade-to-black for scene transitions. - The palette word is GGGGGRRRRRBBBBBI with a shared LSB, expanded as pal6bit((field<<1)\|I). With contrast at 15 the render is pixel-exact, not merely close, which also confirms the 1024-byte GVRAM line stride. That exactness gives a new quality ceiling: the 15-bit+I palette alone costs 38.88 dB against the 24-bit palettised source, the same order as the scsi profile's own codec error. scsi is close to display-transparent on hardware, which bounds how much further it is worth raising. Unblocks next step 2, the 68000 decoder skeleton, which now has a known-good reference image to diff against. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6	2026-08-23 13:12:27 -07:00

Author

SHA1

Message

Date

prosolis

2f9f5cc995

Pace the ring, then read the DMAC config out of the IPL ROM: audio is cheap and the disk is not

Two sessions that were never separated in the working tree, so they land as one
commit. check.sh ALL GREEN before and after both.

SESSION 19 -- the ring rig gets a frame clock (FINDINGS 51).

src/player/stream.s had no frame clock: it asked for record i the instant it
finished i-1, outran any finite pipe, and never let the ring back up. The 49.1
sweep passing at 48 KB was therefore a wrap-correctness result and nothing else.
PACE/PACEON ($18034/$18038) hold the decoder to 12 fps, so FR_HEAD-FR_TAIL
finally means what it reads as: whole frames the decoder could still draw with
delivery stopped dead. PACEON=0 free-runs and is what the wrap gate still uses,
so every figure in 49 is unmoved.

Paced, on the gate container: 64 KB holds 2 frames, 256 KB holds 7-8, 512 KB
holds 14-15, all pixel-exact. Tolerance is ceiling-1, measured by cutting the
pipe: 256 KB buys 500 ms of dead pipe, not 583.

SLACK IS ACCUMULATED, NOT OWNED. It is built out of pipe-wire and a seek spends
all of it. At 488 KB/s a 256 KB ring needs 4.83 s of play to reach its ceiling
from empty; 512 KB needs 8.42 s to reach 14. A bigger ring raises the ceiling
AND lengthens the climb, so a branch point does not ask "is the buffer big
enough" but "has there been enough play since the last one" -- and Dragon's
Lair's decision points are seconds apart. The rig now also says WHICH resource
is binding: at 460 KB/s every ring from 192 KB to 512 KB is rate-bound at
ceiling 4 and never fills, so larger rings are dead RAM in that scene.
20_seek_slack.py is the same model rewritten in Python from record sizes,
sharing no code with the Lua producer: 35/35 ceilings inside its bracket.

SESSION 20 -- the DMAC configuration was in the IPL ROM the whole time
(FINDINGS 52).

ROADMAP's "do this first" was to put the ADPCM stream on the bus. That needs a
clocks-per-byte figure for the audio channel, and 11_cpu_budget.py was charging
audio the DISK's rate -- 5 clk/B, its own help text calling it "single-address,
bus held". Audio was being charged the favourable end of B3, a 242 KB/s open
question.

It never had to be a guess. The IPL ROM programs all four HD63450 channels
itself and MAME boots the rig with it, so 21_iplrom_dmac.py reads the
configuration out of the image and decodes the MC68450 fields. Eight
(address, expected bytes, meaning) sites; a mismatch or an unknown revision
exits non-zero. In check.sh, no emulator, milliseconds.

ch3 DCR=$80, OCR=$32: dual address, 8-bit port, cycle steal WITHOUT hold,
REQG=10 external request. The DMAC arbitrates once per byte with no burst to
amortise the 5..8 + 2 over, so an audio byte is 16..19 clocks, not 5 -- the old
debit was 3.2x..3.8x small. And on the bus it is still nothing: 651 B/frame is
1.25%..1.48% of a frame, about 4% of what the decoder leaves. P6's bus risk
does not materialise. The unit worry was worth checking and nearly right: 15.6
kHz is 8 MHz/512 = 15,625 samples/s, two 4-bit samples to a byte = 7,812.5 B/s
exactly, and AUDIO_KBPS=7.8 is that in decimal kB while the tool multiplied by
1024.

THE DISK CHANNEL IS PROGRAMMED IDENTICALLY. ch1 (SASI) is DCR=$80 too, and so
is ch0. That is 16..19 clocks per delivered byte, where 42.4 brackets W at 5..12
and 42.5 has W=8 already missing 47/120 frames. The only worked example of a
disk DMA configuration on this machine sits above the entire bracket, and at
that price nothing fits at any container size. It is not scsiexrom.bin so B3
stays open -- what changed is that a cheap configuration is now the thing that
has to be SHOWN. W <= 12 is a requirement on the player's DMAC programming, not
a range the hardware hands us, and it is now the largest open number in the
project, ahead of the rate.

An unforced cross-check fell out: 15_bus_occupancy.py's new W sweep puts W=8 at
105.7% of the frame, agreeing with 42.5's 47/120, from mode histograms and bus
clocks respectively, two models sharing no code.

Also: ADPCM outranks the disk at the arbiter (CPR 1 against 2), so an audio byte
never waits and a video byte does -- relevant to 51's smooth-rate delivery model.

README MEDIA.

stream.lua gains DLX_SNAP_EVERY=1 (needs DLX_PACE, off by default, on no path
check.sh takes) and tools/media/make_readme_media.py turns the PNGs into
docs/img/. The stills and both clips are MAME's own screen pixels.

Building it turned up something worth recording. 116 of 119 captured frames are
pixel-exact against dlx.py; three are TORN -- frame n on top, frame n-1 below
the tear line -- because MAME captured the screen while the block loop was
partway down it. decode.s writes straight to the displayed page (one display
path, 28.1), so a real player tears the same way, and this is the first time
that consequence has been visible rather than argued. The script ASSERTS the
tear and refuses to build otherwise, rather than trimming three frames and
reporting "every frame I kept is exact". Second correction the capture forced:
the snapshot fires before frame n is decoded, so the obvious reading is that it
holds frame n-1 -- it does not, because MAME renders the screen at the end of
the machine frame, by which time the 68000 has finished frame n.

11_cpu_budget.py's "validated to within 1 pt" line is also corrected: the model
reads 2..10 pt HIGH and by more as the frame gets harder, which was already true
before either session.

src/player/decode.s is unchanged; decode.bin is still 1,296 B at the same MD5.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6

2026-08-24 18:14:01 -07:00

prosolis

34f9ee341d

A real 256x256 CRTC mode, derived not recalled; palette ceiling was 2 dB low

Session 3 left the harness on the IPL's 768x512 text timing because no CRTC
values had been derived and guessing them was the failure mode to avoid. This
derives them from MAME 0.277's divisor ladder instead, and the derivation is
self-checking: the 256-wide mode runs at div 6 against the 768 mode's div 2, so
htotal is exactly 1104/3 = 368 dots and every horizontal register divides by
three with no remainder. Only the blanking split rounds. Verified by snapshot:
native 256x512, active area pixel-exact, x=512 wrap gone.

Two things fell out that change numbers elsewhere:

- The palette's shared LSB I must be chosen per entry, not hardcoded to 1.
  Doing so lifts the display ceiling from 38.85 to 40.81 dB and is the only way
  to reach true black at all, since pal6bit(1) = 4. 102 of 256 entries want
  I = 0, so this is not a corner case. Supersedes FINDINGS 22.4; scsi has ~2 dB
  more headroom than that section claimed. The encoder does not do this yet.

- Letterboxing costs a palette entry: GVRAM cleared to zero shows entry 0, and
  a free mediancut palette puts a real image colour there. 255 colours plus a
  reserved black, via prep_frame.py --reserve-black.

MAME's graphics double-scan is phase-shifted one raster line (it halves the
absolute scanline and vbegin is odd), which produced a false failure before it
was understood; the regression test now asserts the shifted pairing explicitly.

Still Lua-side. No 68000 instruction has drawn a pixel; the 38% blit estimate
remains unvalidated. What this buys is a defined geometry for the decoder to
write into: 256 words per row, 1024-byte stride, rows 32..223.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6

2026-08-23 13:27:17 -07:00

prosolis

b322e84cd4

Get a real Dragon's Lair frame onto the emulated X68000

First pixels on an actual X68000 screen. Everything up to now was Python-side
or a headless -video none run, which cannot snapshot at all.

The blocker was not the video controller. The IPL leaves CRTC R20 = 0x0B16,
and bit 11 is "G-VRAM set to buffer", which makes MAME's draw_gfx() return
early. GVRAM writes still land and read back correctly while the layer is
invisible, so six attempts at $E82400/$E82500/$E82600 all rendered black with
every register holding the value I intended.

Two more facts, both confirmed against MAME 0.277 source rather than assumed:

- $E8E001 monitor contrast is left at 14 by the IPL, scaling all output to
  93.3%. The player must set it to 15. Contrast 0 blanks the screen, which is
  a free fade-to-black for scene transitions.
- The palette word is GGGGGRRRRRBBBBBI with a shared LSB, expanded as
  pal6bit((field<<1)|I). With contrast at 15 the render is pixel-exact, not
  merely close, which also confirms the 1024-byte GVRAM line stride.

That exactness gives a new quality ceiling: the 15-bit+I palette alone costs
38.88 dB against the 24-bit palettised source, the same order as the scsi
profile's own codec error. scsi is close to display-transparent on hardware,
which bounds how much further it is worth raising.

Unblocks next step 2, the 68000 decoder skeleton, which now has a known-good
reference image to diff against.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6

2026-08-23 13:12:27 -07:00