[blueMSX] Emulating OBSONET and TCP-IP UNAPI

Paladin (712)

13-03-2020, 16:15

Hi everyone,

I've made available a package that makes it a lot easier to have blueMSX working with OBSONET emulation and using interNestor lite to have UNAPI TCP/IP capabilities, so you can run MSX HUB, TELNET and other MSX-DOS UNAPI / Internet applications... There is a video explaining how to do it:

Video Explaining the Setup of blueMSX to use Internet / UNAPI

The place to download the package with everything needed is in the video description.

Hope you all enjoy and that this make it easier for developers to go ahead and develop and test TCP/IP UNAPI applications. ;)

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By DarkSchneider

Paragon (1030)

15-03-2020, 12:27

This is great! Shocked that this has no response yet.

By fr3nd

Expert (112)

15-03-2020, 18:42

Does it work with MacOS or Linux?

By ducasp

Paladin (712)

16-03-2020, 00:49

fr3nd wrote:

Does it work with MacOS or Linux?

I don't think so, I know that there are ports of blueMSX in retroarch but I'm not sure whether they have ported obsonet code and the pass through that ncap does, since this is an "obscure" feature, my guess is that it is not working... On the other hand, if you run Windows through parallels/virtual box it should work, I've recorded the video on a Windows 10 Virtual Machine that was running in VMWARE

By ducasp

Paladin (712)

20-03-2020, 16:43

DarkSchneider wrote:

This is great! Shocked that this has no response yet.

Internet on MSX isn't really something that caught on, and I guess that even most people that have gr8net do not use most of the Internet features of it...

Just doing my part trying to make it more popular, be it through enhancing current UNAPI programs / applications, my own applications and releasing the sour code of it all being available....

Eugeny has been really kind on offering a C library for sdcc / fusion-c to make it easier to make UNAPI TCP/IP applications, just don't understand why Eric chose to say Fusion-C has gr8net support, as that library supports any UNAPI adapter (OBSONET, DENYONET, XS-M, and futures adapters like MSX USB + Ethernet driver that is in the works, XSWiFi that xavirompe is working, etc).

And this blueMSX image is a really nice way to debug applications being developed for that library or any UNAPI TCP/IP application as long as it is not UDP (emulator has a bug on UDP implementation that UDP packages received are being received multiple times, not only once).

Hopefully more people will get engaged on the idea, an UNAPI TCP/IP game would be really awesome...

P.s.: I've added english subtitles fixing the automated english closed captions, of course You Tube did not understand my accent some times, and it has a hard time understanding MSX, most times having "sex" as result of S X being spelled.

By Grauw

Ascended (10821)

20-03-2020, 17:26

I did buy GR8NET for the Ethernet, I also have a MSX Ethernet (ObsoNet), and I definitely am looking forward to XSWiFi as well. But it’s true I haven’t actually developed for it yet (this little experiment is related, but offline). Emulator support (particularly, openMSX) would be welcome, it would definitely simplify experimenting with it and starting a project, or adding internet support to one of my existing projects if it makes sense. I’m on MacOS so BlueMSX doesn’t do it for me unfortunately.

By ducasp

Paladin (712)

20-03-2020, 19:35

Grauw wrote:

I did buy GR8NET for the Ethernet, I also have a MSX Ethernet (ObsoNet), and I definitely am looking forward to XSWiFi as well. But it’s true I haven’t actually developed for it yet :) (this little experiment is related, but offline). Emulator support (particularly, openMSX) would be welcome, it would definitely simplify experimenting with it and starting a project, or adding internet support to one of my existing projects if it makes sense. I’m on MacOS so BlueMSX doesn’t do it for me unfortunately.

Would OpenMSX team be open to a "non-existent" hardware? It would be a lot, lot, lot easier to make an abstraction layer implementing UNAPI on the host system and then just have a simple ROM or Memory Mapper driver contact that abstraction layer through a port, it would be fully acellerated and pretty fast, and not require npcap or similar solution... I've thought on doing something like that for my own testing before learning about blueMSX, not so much useful for myself but if the team would be willing to pick it up, I might spend some time on this as a side-side project. ;)

By Manuel

Ascended (19682)

20-03-2020, 20:23

IMHO: you shouldn't let the openness of the openMSX Team for this decide whether you want to spend time on this or not...

In general, we don't emulate non-existing hardware (because that's not emulation). But if such a thing as you describe would help developers develop real MSX software, it seems like definitely worth it. And whether or not it is included in the official openMSX repo doesn't matter. If it becomes popular enough, people may just switch to your fork

There is always a grey area anyway. We also made (a very long time ago) a debug device. Doesn't exist, and was only targeted to help developers.

Last note: I haven't discussed this with any fellow openMSX developers (yet). Just encouraging you to develop what is needed for you guys

By S0urceror

Master (220)

20-03-2020, 20:52

Hi Ducasp,

For my MSX USB project I built an IO extension for both CocoaMSX and OpenMSX. To assist in debugging. Currently that extension connects to my USB board that is similar to the USB cartridge I built. Both are relatively easy to make once you have the development environment running.

Along the same line we could emulate a virtual ethernet device running on an IO port that serves Ethernet packets.

An UNAPI driver can then connect to that virtual ethernet device, et voila. On my GitHub is all the code available for OpenMSX, UNAPI driver etc. We can adapt this for your purpose.

I would like to help but I'm a bit busy completing the MSX USB Ethernet driver. It works but there are still some bugs to take care of. ;)

By Manuel

Ascended (19682)

20-03-2020, 22:30

Whatever you decide, we can and will support you. And I think it might be a very nice first step to get some form of TCP/IP networking into openMSX!

By x1pepe

Master (149)

20-03-2020, 22:37

Nice! congratulations!