Orion-128 floppy emulation in MAME

[spycat]

Hi folks.
I'm currently trying to emulate the Orion-128's floppy games in MAME/LaunchBox.
I can play the tapes but can't figure out how to play the floppies.
Any help would be appreciated.

 

[JoeViking245]

Just playing around a little, I was able get this to work

mame.exe orionpro -flop1 game1715

(you'll need orionpro.zip [vs orion128.zip] and game1715.zip)

At the menu, select Orion-Pro.  This'll automatically load Norton Commander.  Arrow down to chess.com and hit enter.

[spycat]

Many thanks @JoeViking245. I was trying with the parent orion128 system which I use for the cassettes.

[JoeViking245]

You're very welcome.   Loading game1715 is nice because that disk automatically loads Norton Commander.  I imagine if I actually knew how to 'use' the Orion system, I probably wouldn't need it.  But I don't.  

So if you're like me and have not-a-clue, you can load games1715 into flop1 and then a second disk into flop2.  NC will load, and then you can press "D" and select "Drive B" to load it.  Use TAB to switch between left and right panes (A:\ and B:\) [if you haven't pressed Scroll Lock to Enable MAMEs UI Controls]. 

mame.exe orionpro -flop1 game1715 -flop2 games

It's capable of loading up to 4 disks, so load 'em up.  And then share if you find any games that are worth trying.  

[spycat]

That's the route I used as well. I found that it's mainly only the floppies named games, games10, 11 and 13 that have game COMs.

With the orionpro the games tend to run too fast, making some look odd and tricky to play.
I managed to get the floppies to work using the parent orion128 system, and here the games run at normal speed same as the tapes.

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, spycat said:

I managed to get the floppies to work using the parent orion128 system

Hmmm... for me, using "orionpro -flop1 game1715 -flop2 games10" and then selecting Orion-128, all I get is a prompt.  I also tried "orion128 -flop1 game1715 -flop2 games10". Same thing. Different prompt.

 

Glad you got it working.  I can't read Russian(?) anyway. lol

[spycat]

When I first tried floppy emulation using orion128, I didn't realise that the Romdisk was needed just like it's needed for the tapes.

orion128 -cart romdisk -flop1 game1715 -flop2 games10

Run and then and run the BOOT loader, BOOT¤
At the NC loading you'll temporarily see a lot of garbage, but you'll arrive at the NC screen ok as per the clone orionpro.

Out of curiosity I also tried the orionpro in Orion-128 mode with Romdisk mounted, but the floppy games still ran too fast and the tapes threw a loader error.

[shift]

On 9/16/2021 at 1:39 AM, spycat said:

When I first tried floppy emulation using orion128, I didn't realise that the Romdisk was needed just like it's needed for the tapes.

orion128 -cart romdisk -flop1 game1715 -flop2 games10

Run and then and run the BOOT loader, BOOT¤
At the NC loading you'll temporarily see a lot of garbage, but you'll arrive at the NC screen ok as per the clone orionpro.

Out of curiosity I also tried the orionpro in Orion-128 mode with Romdisk mounted, but the floppy games still ran too fast and the tapes threw a loader error.

Hi everyone, I'm reopening this post because I wasn't able to find any other information about this machine, for example, how do I load cassettes? I guess I have to first load the romdisk cartridge and mount the cassette from the mame file manager, but what about the next steps? Thanks to anyone who can give me a hand.

[spycat]

Emulating the Orion-128 cassette software list games with MAME via LaunchBox.

MAME requires the bios orion128.zip as well as the orion_cart and orion_cass software list sets.

Cassettes are handled via the ROMDISK, so the Default Command-Line Parameters are
orion128 -cart romdisk -cass

Launching a game opens the ROMDISK interface. Run СН4¤ to open the tape to memory loader.
Press key A when the loader's ВВОД (Input) box appears - the blinking cursor should disappear.
Enable MAME's UI controls, press F2 to play the tape, then disable the UI controls again.
The ВВОД box now shows the loading file.
Once the tape has finished playing, wait for a new ВВОД box to appear and then press F4 to close the loader.
The loaded file shows in the ROMDISK screen's B panel. Run it to play the game.

By the way, for the life of me I couldn't get games to play with sound.
Games do have sound, as there are Orion-128 emulators that play sound for games that support sound.
 

[shift]

3 hours ago, spycat said:

Emulating the Orion-128 cassette software list games with MAME via LaunchBox.

MAME requires the bios orion128.zip as well as the orion_cart and orion_cass software list sets.

Cassettes are handled via the ROMDISK, so the Default Command-Line Parameters are
orion128 -cart romdisk -cass

Launching a game opens the ROMDISK interface. Run СН4¤ to open the tape to memory loader.
Press key A when the loader's ВВОД (Input) box appears - the blinking cursor should disappear.
Enable MAME's UI controls, press F2 to play the tape, then disable the UI controls again.
The ВВОД box now shows the loading file.
Once the tape has finished playing, wait for a new ВВОД box to appear and then press F4 to close the loader.
The loaded file shows in the ROMDISK screen's B panel. Run it to play the game.

By the way, for the life of me I couldn't get games to play with sound.
Games do have sound, as there are Orion-128 emulators that play sound for games that support sound.
 

Thank you! It works perfectly. Now I'm working without sound too, but I'll look and update you.

[spycat]

You're welcome. Yes, the lack of game sound also has me at a loss.

By the way, if you also want to play the cassettes using MAME by itself without using LaunchBox, you can create a new ini file in your MAME ini folder. Call it orion128.ini and put the following line into it.
cart romdisk

If you add this ini file to MAME, then you can also reduce your LaunchBox parameters to just
orion128 -cass