KEGS v1.19 released

[Kent Dickey]

I've updated KEGS, an Apple IIgs emulator for Mac OS X and Linux, to 1.19.
The Mac executable should run on 10.13 or later. It's also a universal app,
so it runs native on Apple M1 silicon. There's a Linux executable as well.

KEGS v1.19 is available at: http://kegs.sourceforge.net

Changes in KEGS v1.19 since v1.18 (03/11/23)
- 'L' on the disk selection screen locks/unlocks images.
- Ignore case when detecting image extensions like .PO.
- Allow setting ROM image on command line: -rom=/path/to/rom/file
- Big changes to disk emulation for better WOZ image compability.
Writing to WOZ images works properly now, recalculating CRC correctly.
Automatically changes a floppy disk image to .WOZ if writing to the
image makes it no longer a standard format. User can rename image to
save the new .WOZ changes.

Changes in KEGS v1.18 since v1.17 (02/09/22)
- Alpha version of KEGSWIN, KEGS will soon run on Windows 10 or later.
(No binary yet)

Changes in KEGS v1.17 since v1.16 (02/09/22)
- Implement $C02C "Test Mode" reading of the character ROM. This enables
SuperConvert 4 TDM conversions to work properly.
- Add Video->Swap Command/Option menu item to support Windows keyboards better.

Full source code is included. To rebuild on the Mac, all you need is to
download XCode and KEGS, "cd src; make". It's 2 more commands to compile
for Linux. KEGS source has no dependencies on any other 3rd party tools.

Kent

[I am Rob]

Post by Kent Dickey
I've updated KEGS, an Apple IIgs emulator for Mac OS X and Linux, to 1.19.
The Mac executable should run on 10.13 or later. It's also a universal app,

Very Nice. Thank you so much for keeping the IIGS alive. I can confirm it still works under 10.13.

Simply the best IIGS emulator out there. Compressing graphics with LZ4 is so much fun at unlimited speed.

First, if I may, I would like to make some requests to speed things up, then show what I have done, thanks to KEGS.

I use the "Dump Text Screen" quite a bit. Can this be made into a hotkey? And can you make it copy to clipboard instead of to a file? I more often have an empty text window open to take notes, and is quicker to Copy/Paste, rather than have to navigate to find the Dump file.

And secondly, I use the ESCape key to exit everything in my programming. If this doesn't cause too much confusion? Once one enters the Configuration Panel with F4, have ESC exit back to the previous screen immediately, and remove the "Exit Configuration" option, and have a 2nd press of the F4 key go to the "Save Changes to Config.kegs" for a choice to save the configuration. This will eliminate 1 keypress every time one goes into the Configuration Panel.


What has been done?

I created a 2 gig disk image that works with SmartPort that allows 63 volumes of 32 Mb in one slot. This works beautifully with Kegs. Instead of handling a ton of disk images, I wrote a block copier that copies any volume to a 2nd blank volume, which is needed to run S16 files from. Currently there is no driver for GSOS to access any of the volumes other than the first volume and the driver I wrote for Prodos 8 requires Basic.system to be in memory to access the other volumes.

Which means, Prodos 8 system files and S16 files have to be run either from the first volume, which is where I keep the most used Prodos 8 applications, or, from another empty slot volume. The first volume is set up to be a Boot volume into either Prodos 8 or GSOS and can launch the applications copied to the slot volume. A block copier makes short work of copying from a SmartPort volume to a slot volume.

This is what my ONLINE call looks like for the SmartPort volumes:

Volumes:

0:BOOT 1:DOCS 2:UTILS 3:APPS 4:STUFF
5:BASIC.PGRMS 6:MUSIC 7:FONTS 8:WORK8 9:WORK9
10:SOFTDISK 11:FORTH 12:PRINTSHOP 13:HTML 14:EAMON.ADV
15:WORK15 16:WORK16 17:WORK17 18:WORK18 19:WORK19
20:GAMES.BASIC 21:GAMES.BINARY 22:GAMES.DISKS 23:WORK23 24:WORK24
25:WORK25 26:WORK26 27:WORK27 28:WORK28 29:WORK29
30:WORK30 31:WORK31 32:WORK32 33:WORK33 34:WORK34
35:WORK35 36:WORK36 37:WORK37 38:WORK38 39:WORK39
40:WORK40 41:WORK41 42:WORK42 43:WORK43 44:WORK44
45:WORK45 46:WORK46 47:WORK47 48:WORK48 49:WORK49
50:SHR.APPS 51:SHR.APPS 52:SHR.GAMES 53:SHR.GAMES 54:SHR.GAMES
55:SHR.GRAPHICS 56:SHR.GRAPHICS 57:SHR.GRAPHICS 58:SHR.GRAPHICS 59:GRAPHICS
60:GRAPHICS 61:BAD.APPLE.MOV 62:LZ4.GRAPHICS

/RAM/ /BOOT/ /MY.WORK/ /DEMO400/ /WORK/

Type PREFIX,S4,Vx to set the Prefix of a SmartPort volume 0-62
Type PREFIX /volname/ to set the Prefix of a regular volume


... Notice how more than one SmartPort volume can have the same name. But the SmartPort volume that is set as the current volume in the SmartPort slot, cannot have the same name as one in an ordinary slot. One or the other has to be ejected first.

I have also converted a lot of box art graphics to 320x400 mode and am in the process of creating a viewer to view directly to the VOC interlaced screen display. Currently this is a pain as all the 320x400 graphics are in APF format, and the VOC demo disk has only one sample graphic that is split into 2 binary files of $8000 bytes each. The VOC demo works as expected though.

Still have wishful thinking that you will do a 640x400x256 color mode for me yet. Even if it has to match the Second Sight card. Got my LZ4 compressor working for SHR graphics and it compresses quite a bit better than APF, but is a bit slower at compression. Thus the unlimited speed is a big help. Due to the number of colors, complex graphics don't compress as much but I believe I can compress a fairly complex graphic by 50%. A graphic with areas of solid color, even more so. A full 640x400x256 would take 256kb on disk, but could possibly get compressed down to 128kb or less.

[Kent Dickey]

Post by I am Rob

Post by Kent Dickey
I've updated KEGS, an Apple IIgs emulator for Mac OS X and Linux, to 1.19.
The Mac executable should run on 10.13 or later. It's also a universal app,

Very Nice. Thank you so much for keeping the IIGS alive. I can confirm
it still works under 10.13.
Simply the best IIGS emulator out there. Compressing graphics with LZ4
is so much fun at unlimited speed.
First, if I may, I would like to make some requests to speed things up,
then show what I have done, thanks to KEGS.
I use the "Dump Text Screen" quite a bit. Can this be made into a
hotkey? And can you make it copy to clipboard instead of to a file? I
more often have an empty text window open to take notes, and is quicker
to Copy/Paste, rather than have to navigate to find the Dump file.

KEGS 1.20 (when it is released) will have Copy. Press Ctrl-F9, and it will
copy the text screen to the clipboard. On a Mac, there also will be an
Edit->Copy_Text_Screen menu item you can select. Let me know if you are
on Linux, I probably need to do more testing there, Copy&Paste on X11 is
very complex.

Post by I am Rob
And secondly, I use the ESCape key to exit everything in my programming.
If this doesn't cause too much confusion? Once one enters the
Configuration Panel with F4, have ESC exit back to the previous screen
immediately, and remove the "Exit Configuration" option, and have a 2nd
press of the F4 key go to the "Save Changes to Config.kegs" for a choice
to save the configuration. This will eliminate 1 keypress every time
one goes into the Configuration Panel.

There is usually no need to manually "Save Changes to Config.kegs". Inserting
or ejecting disks automatically update it. But things changed by the
Function keys (like F5 to turn the status lines on and off) don't immediately
write to config.kegs. This is mostly for my personal convenience, since
changing the speed is not something I want to save to the config.kegs file
right away. I guess I could make the default setting to write a new
config.kegs on any state change, if you can explain a little bit why you
need it.

And F4 toggles the config panel on and off. So if you are on the disk
selection submenu, and press F4, you go back to the Apple IIgs, and if you
press F4 again, you go right to the disk selection submenu again.

Post by I am Rob
What has been done?
I created a 2 gig disk image that works with SmartPort that allows 63
volumes of 32 Mb in one slot. This works beautifully with Kegs.
Instead of handling a ton of disk images, I wrote a block copier that
copies any volume to a 2nd blank volume, which is needed to run S16
files from. Currently there is no driver for GSOS to access any of the
volumes other than the first volume and the driver I wrote for Prodos 8
requires Basic.system to be in memory to access the other volumes.
Which means, Prodos 8 system files and S16 files have to be run either
from the first volume, which is where I keep the most used Prodos 8
applications, or, from another empty slot volume. The first volume is
set up to be a Boot volume into either Prodos 8 or GSOS and can launch
the applications copied to the slot volume. A block copier makes short
work of copying from a SmartPort volume to a slot volume.

I'll be honest, I don't fully understand what you've done. But if you think
it's useful, I recommend you make your code public, it might be useful
to others.

Post by I am Rob
0:BOOT 1:DOCS 2:UTILS 3:APPS 4:STUFF
5:BASIC.PGRMS 6:MUSIC 7:FONTS 8:WORK8 9:WORK9
10:SOFTDISK 11:FORTH 12:PRINTSHOP 13:HTML 14:EAMON.ADV
15:WORK15 16:WORK16 17:WORK17 18:WORK18 19:WORK19
20:GAMES.BASIC 21:GAMES.BINARY 22:GAMES.DISKS 23:WORK23 24:WORK24
25:WORK25 26:WORK26 27:WORK27 28:WORK28 29:WORK29
30:WORK30 31:WORK31 32:WORK32 33:WORK33 34:WORK34
35:WORK35 36:WORK36 37:WORK37 38:WORK38 39:WORK39
40:WORK40 41:WORK41 42:WORK42 43:WORK43 44:WORK44
45:WORK45 46:WORK46 47:WORK47 48:WORK48 49:WORK49
50:SHR.APPS 51:SHR.APPS 52:SHR.GAMES 53:SHR.GAMES
54:SHR.GAMES
55:SHR.GRAPHICS 56:SHR.GRAPHICS 57:SHR.GRAPHICS
58:SHR.GRAPHICS 59:GRAPHICS
60:GRAPHICS 61:BAD.APPLE.MOV 62:LZ4.GRAPHICS
/RAM/ /BOOT/ /MY.WORK/ /DEMO400/ /WORK/
Type PREFIX,S4,Vx to set the Prefix of a SmartPort volume 0-62
Type PREFIX /volname/ to set the Prefix of a regular volume
... Notice how more than one SmartPort volume can have the same name.
But the SmartPort volume that is set as the current volume in the
SmartPort slot, cannot have the same name as one in an ordinary slot.
One or the other has to be ejected first.
I have also converted a lot of box art graphics to 320x400 mode and am
in the process of creating a viewer to view directly to the VOC
interlaced screen display. Currently this is a pain as all the 320x400
graphics are in APF format, and the VOC demo disk has only one sample
graphic that is split into 2 binary files of $8000 bytes each. The VOC
demo works as expected though.
Still have wishful thinking that you will do a 640x400x256 color mode
for me yet. Even if it has to match the Second Sight card. Got my LZ4
compressor working for SHR graphics and it compresses quite a bit better
than APF, but is a bit slower at compression. Thus the unlimited speed
is a big help. Due to the number of colors, complex graphics don't
compress as much but I believe I can compress a fairly complex graphic
by 50%. A graphic with areas of solid color, even more so. A full
640x400x256 would take 256kb on disk, but could possibly get compressed
down to 128kb or less.

I'm still thinking about this, but the palette is an annoyance, since trying
to support palette changes during screen drawing is a big complexity.
Would you find an 8-bit graphic mode without palettes useful: each byte
fully describes the final color: 3-bit Red, 3-bits Green, and 2-bits blue.
640x400 bytes fits in four 64KB banks.

Kent

[I am Rob]

And F4 toggles the config panel on and off. So if you are on the disk
selection submenu, and press F4, you go back to the Apple IIgs, and if you
press F4 again, you go right to the disk selection submenu again.

I was using the Copy Screen selection quite a bit, which means I was pressing the sequence of: F4, ESC, up arrow, up arrow - rather than a whole bunch of down arrows. If Copy Screen gets put to a hot key, I won't need to enter the control panel very often. Thanks

Post by I am Rob
I created a 2 gig disk image that works with SmartPort that allows 63
volumes of 32 Mb in one slot.

I'll be honest, I don't fully understand what you've done. But if you think
it's useful, I recommend you make your code public, it might be useful
to others.

Normally Prodos only has a 16-bit word for access to 65536 blocks on a volume. Thus the limitation of only 32 Mb per disk image. Smartport gives me access to the third byte which gives me up to 256 * 65536 blocks, for a max size of 8 Gb in a disk image. Instead of using the 2 Gb (max 8 Gb) as one large volume, look at it as having 63 (max 256) volumes in one disk image. All that needs to be updated is the third byte to access each of the other volumes. I let the driver know which volume I want to access with use of the ,V parameter. The volume that is initiated gets treated as if it were the only volume on the device which the SmartPort is found to be in.

Post by I am Rob
Type PREFIX,S4,Vx to set the Prefix of a SmartPort volume 0-62
Type PREFIX /volname/ to set the Prefix of a regular volume
I have also converted a lot of box art graphics to 320x400 mode and am
in the process of creating a viewer to view directly to the VOC
interlaced screen display. Currently this is a pain as all the 320x400
graphics are in APF format, and the VOC demo disk has only one sample
graphic that is split into 2 binary files of $8000 bytes each. The VOC
demo works as expected though.
Still have wishful thinking that you will do a 640x400x256 color mode
for me yet. Even if it has to match the Second Sight card. Got my LZ4
compressor working for SHR graphics and it compresses quite a bit better
than APF, but is a bit slower at compression. Thus the unlimited speed
is a big help. Due to the number of colors, complex graphics don't
compress as much but I believe I can compress a fairly complex graphic
by 50%. A graphic with areas of solid color, even more so. A full
640x400x256 would take 256kb on disk, but could possibly get compressed
down to 128kb or less.

I'm still thinking about this, but the palette is an annoyance, since trying
to support palette changes during screen drawing is a big complexity.
Would you find an 8-bit graphic mode without palettes useful: each byte
fully describes the final color: 3-bit Red, 3-bits Green, and 2-bits blue.
640x400 bytes fits in four 64KB banks.

The 256 colors is pretty crucial so would need a full 8-bit color. I thought about it afterwards that I was still thinking in terms of how the IIGS would do it to get extra colors. But this no longer holds true when one has access to 256 colors, as this is no longer 16 colors per line but 256 colors per line. After thinking about this with more context, the palette does not need to be updated during screen drawing. Only one read from each palette in each bank is needed before drawing the 100 lines that each bank represents.

The order is just basically, read palette from first bank, draw its 100 lines, read palette from 2nd bank, draw its 100 lines, read palette from 3rd bank, draw its 100 lines, read palette from 4th bank, draw its 100 lines.
This will give each set of 100 lines its own palette or one can choose to copy the same palette to all 4 banks.

I also thought about how the luminescence part of the palette would work ($FF00.$FFFF). The idea would be able to quickly give the next gradient of a color in sequence, but for a max distance of 128 points in either direction.

For instance if:

Red = $B7, Blue = $78, Green = $34

a luminescence value of 0 uses Red = $B7, Blue = $78, Green = $34
a luminescence value of 1 uses Red = $B8, Blue = $79, Green = $35
a lumin value of 2 uses Red= $B9, Blue = $7A, Green = $36
etc...

a lumin value of $FF (-1) uses Red = $B6, Blue = $77, Green = $33
a lumin value of $FE (-2) uses Red = $B5, Blue = $76, Green = $32
etc...

And any time a color reaches 0 or $FF, then freeze that color at 0 or $FF and increase or decrease the other colors.

The palettes themselves would not need to be changed, just the luminescence value. If this sounds cool, by all means implement it. If not, I am ok with that too.

[Charlie]

Post by I am Rob

And F4 toggles the config panel on and off. So if you are on the disk
selection submenu, and press F4, you go back to the Apple IIgs, and if you
press F4 again, you go right to the disk selection submenu again.

I was using the Copy Screen selection quite a bit, which means I was pressing the sequence of: F4, ESC, up arrow, up arrow - rather than a whole bunch of down arrows. If Copy Screen gets put to a hot key, I won't need to enter the control panel very often. Thanks

Post by I am Rob
I created a 2 gig disk image that works with SmartPort that allows 63
volumes of 32 Mb in one slot.

I'll be honest, I don't fully understand what you've done. But if you think
it's useful, I recommend you make your code public, it might be useful
to others.

Normally Prodos only has a 16-bit word for access to 65536 blocks on a volume. Thus the limitation of only 32 Mb per disk image. Smartport gives me access to the third byte which gives me up to 256 * 65536 blocks, for a max size of 8 Gb in a disk image. Instead of using the 2 Gb (max 8 Gb) as one large volume, look at it as having 63 (max 256) volumes in one disk image. All that needs to be updated is the third byte to access each of the other volumes. I let the driver know which volume I want to access with use of the ,V parameter. The volume that is initiated gets treated as if it were the only volume on the device which the SmartPort is found to be in.

Not that it matters for your project but just in case you didn't know,
Prodos doesn't quite have access to 65536 blocks but one block less than
that. The 16-bit word is not a zero based number but the actual number
of blocks accessible.

Charlie

<snip>

[I am Rob]

Post by Charlie

Normally Prodos only has a 16-bit word for access to 65536 blocks on a volume. Thus the limitation of only 32 Mb per disk image. Smartport gives me access to the third byte which gives me up to 256 * 65536 blocks, for a max size of 8 Gb in a disk image. Instead of using the 2 Gb (max 8 Gb) as one large volume, look at it as having 63 (max 256) volumes in one disk image. All that needs to be updated is the third byte to access each of the other volumes. I let the driver know which volume I want to access with use of the ,V parameter. The volume that is initiated gets treated as if it were the only volume on the device which the SmartPort is found to be in.

Not that it matters for your project but just in case you didn't know,
Prodos doesn't quite have access to 65536 blocks but one block less than
that. The 16-bit word is not a zero based number but the actual number
of blocks accessible.

Yes, I guess I knew that as 0 is a place holder for sparse files. It won't affect how many volumes can be accessed though as 0 is valid for a volume number.

[mmphosis]

Thank you. It builds and runs on Linux Mint 20.3 Una.

Liking the Lock/unlock feature.
Without having to first rename the file to lower case, it booted FASTARC.PO
I haven't used any WOZ images yet.

Here is my crazy long alias so that I can copy and paste:

alias t=tput sgr0 ; clear ; tput sgr0 ; tput setab 0 ; tput setaf 7 ; printf
'KEGS Configuration ' ; tput setaf 15 ; echo F4 ; tput setaf 7 ; printf
'\n\342\206\262 Serial Port Configuration\n\n Serial Ports = Only use
sockets 6501-6502\n Serial Output = Mask off high bit\n \342\210\232
Modem on port 0 (slot 1) = Simple socket emulation mode\n\n' ; tput setab 4
; tput setaf 7 ; printf ']' ; tput setaf 15 ; printf "PR#1\033[K\n" ; tput
setaf 7 ; printf ']' ; tput setaf 15 ; printf "IN#1\033[K\n" ; tput setab 0
; tput setaf 7 ; printf 'telnet> ' ; tput setaf 15 ; echo 'mode character' ;
tput setab 17 ; telnet localhost 6501

Type t in the Terminal.

[Kent Dickey]

Post by mmphosis
Thank you. It builds and runs on Linux Mint 20.3 Una.
Liking the Lock/unlock feature.
Without having to first rename the file to lower case, it booted FASTARC.PO
I haven't used any WOZ images yet.
alias t=tput sgr0 ; clear ; tput sgr0 ; tput setab 0 ; tput setaf 7 ; printf
'KEGS Configuration ' ; tput setaf 15 ; echo F4 ; tput setaf 7 ; printf
'\n\342\206\262 Serial Port Configuration\n\n Serial Ports = Only use
sockets 6501-6502\n Serial Output = Mask off high bit\n \342\210\232
Modem on port 0 (slot 1) = Simple socket emulation mode\n\n' ; tput setab 4
; tput setaf 7 ; printf ']' ; tput setaf 15 ; printf "PR#1\033[K\n" ; tput
setaf 7 ; printf ']' ; tput setaf 15 ; printf "IN#1\033[K\n" ; tput setab 0
; tput setaf 7 ; printf 'telnet> ' ; tput setaf 15 ; echo 'mode character' ;
tput setab 17 ; telnet localhost 6501
Type t in the Terminal.

I don't understand the above at all. In KEGS 1.19, you can paste into
KEGS. Just press the middle button (on Linux--on a Mac, use Edit->Paste).
KEGS 1.20 (when ever it gets released) will add
Copy_Text_Screen_to_clipboard as well using Ctrl-F9. It works fine on
Linux between xterm and KEGS. But if you want it to work with Chrome,
then I need to do more work (since X11 creates a dance between programs
trying to cut&paste, and Chrome is stuck in MIME-world, not Unix plain
strings, so I have to fiddle with things to make it more compatible).

Kent

[mmphosis]

Post by Kent Dickey
I don't understand the above at all. In KEGS 1.19, you can paste into
KEGS. Just press the middle button (on Linux--on a Mac, use Edit->Paste).
KEGS 1.20 (when ever it gets released) will add
Copy_Text_Screen_to_clipboard as well using Ctrl-F9. It works fine on
Linux between xterm and KEGS. But if you want it to work with Chrome,
then I need to do more work (since X11 creates a dance between programs
trying to cut&paste, and Chrome is stuck in MIME-world, not Unix plain
strings, so I have to fiddle with things to make it more compatible).
Kent

Middle button! haha. I was actually reading through the readme files today.
It also explains why the speed goes crazy when I accidentally click the
Right button. I don't care about Chrome as I am a Mac dude trying to use
Command+C and Command+V on a boring Linux PC. I've also been opening the
debugger and typing r to reset, but I discovered today that Ctrl+Break does
reset! I rarely use any of these weird PC keys and mouse buttons.

Also, copying way more than a screen at a time and much larger paste buffers
already works using the socket emulation mode -- thank you for this feature.
It works amazingly well on Linux between whatever Terminal I am using and
KEGS -- I can drag text from another program to the Terminal and it pastes
into KEGS. That's what the unreadable one-liner alias is about. I have it
set up so I can remember what to do from a Terminal. All I do is type t and
follow the instructions:

KEGS Configuration F4

↲ Serial Port Configuration

Serial Ports = Only use sockets 6501-6502
Serial Output = Mask off high bit
√ Modem on port 0 (slot 1) = Simple socket emulation mode

]PR#1
]IN#1
telnet> mode character
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

[mmphosis]

Sorry, I should know better than to ever paste code into USENET

alias t

https://mmphosis.netlify.app/kegs/alias-t.html

[Kent Dickey]

There's a minor update to KEGS to v1.20 to add Copy Text Screen on Mac and
Linux. Use Ctrl-F9, or on a Mac you can also use Edit->Copy Text Screen.
Paste it into any other application on your computer.

KEGS v1.20 is available at: http://kegs.sourceforge.net

Changes in KEGS v1.20 since v1.19 (03/31/23)
- Ctrl-F9 is now Copy. The text screen is copied to your host system
clipboard. On a Mac, Edit->Copy Text Screen can be selected, too.
- Fix Mockingboard emulation to pass mb-audit.1.3 (it was a reset-related
issue).
- Fix VOC support for the program "Fat Screen" VOC SHR from main-memory to
work properly.

Kent

[I am Rob]

Post by Kent Dickey
There's a minor update to KEGS to v1.20 to add Copy Text Screen on Mac and
Linux. Use Ctrl-F9, or on a Mac you can also use Edit->Copy Text Screen.
Paste it into any other application on your computer.
KEGS v1.20 is available at: http://kegs.sourceforge.net
Changes in KEGS v1.20 since v1.19 (03/31/23)
- Ctrl-F9 is now Copy. The text screen is copied to your host system
clipboard. On a Mac, Edit->Copy Text Screen can be selected, too.
- Fix Mockingboard emulation to pass mb-audit.1.3 (it was a reset-related
issue).
- Fix VOC support for the program "Fat Screen" VOC SHR from main-memory to
work properly.

Thanks for doing that. It well help out a lot.

I have downloaded a lot of software but have not come across the program, Fat Screen, for the VOC. Can you share a link?

Have been converting a lot of graphics to 320x400 mode so your VOC gets used. Once I get the 2 gig image I am working on about half full of graphics, I can send it your way to include with Kegs if it helps show off its VOC capabilities.