WinUAE 0.8.21R2 released

[Toni Wilen]

http://www.winuae.net/

Filesystem fixes, CD32/uaescsi.device fixes, custom chip emulation fixes, hopefully better sound (?) etc...

[Ian]

I had work to do tonight, guess that's all out of the window now;)

Keep up the good work Toni:)

[Paul]

Thanks again Toni. Keep up the good work.

Looking good so far. State of the Art runs as well as it does on Winfellow. Well it does on my PC anyway!:D

[rlake]

Just to let u know that the new code to scan drives and boot the CD works great (well, my config is probably as bad as it gets), am now playing a quick game on Beneath a Steel Sky. Must not play until the early hours, must work... d'oh :great

[Steve]

I'm just a little curious Toni. How come the size of the WinUAE executable has dramatically dropped from 2.71MB (0.8.17r3) to 1.93MB in the latest version. Was there a lot of code not being used or something like that? Also is there going to be an updated help file. I think that's quite overdue. Keep up the good work though Toni. The best thing about this release to me sounds like the CD32 Joypad emulation. I'll go try it out now and see what it's like.

[RetroMan]

Heyhey :) New Version works like a charm here, no more Bluesreens as in R1 :D Keep up the good work Toni !

[jmmijo]

Great work Toni, keep it up :cool

@Steve, since Toni mentioned he had re-written and streamlined some of the code, this would be expected. Of course there maybe a point where tweaking the code could also result in a larger file size ;)

[Steve]

Ok I've had a bit of a play with it and I'm quite impressed by the latest version. It's a lot better than release 1 anyway. I've found that setting the CPU tab to about 6 or 7 gives a good stable speed with not much slow down. On version 0.8.17 I used to keep the "Fastest Possible" radio button selected and I had perfect speed in every game I played but it doesn't seem to offer fast results in the latest version. It slows the emulation right down in fact. Is that option now redundant? Another thing I've noticed is that the sound isn't as crystal clear as it was. It gives an occasional crackle every few seconds. Could this be a Soundblaster Live issue? I'm running on an Athlon 600 with XP. I was hoping for proper CD32 joypad emulation that uses the sidewinder joypad and is configurable but I'll have to wait a bit longer for that. :)
I managed to get Aladdin AGA to work (boot properly) at last using the latest release which I was very pleased about. Unfortunately it Guru'd before the first level loaded. Has anyone tried Gloom Deluxe out? That's really bizarre. The palette looks all corrupt. Very strange. I'll stick to 0.8.17 for now because I suspect that the latest release demands a faster processor than what I currently have. The games and Workbench appear quite a bit slower on my machine. I'm not moaning by the way. I'm hoping this will help Toni a little bit. I'm really pleased with the CD32 emulation. Top stuff. One more thing before I sign off. Is it possible for a HDF file to become corrupt and get a read error. Because it happened to me yesterday with one of my HDFs. I booted it up and it came up with the read error on sector 5543.... blah. How is that possible? I had a backup though so it wasn't a big disaster. :)

[andreas]

I managed to get Aladdin AGA to work (boot properly) at last using the latest release which I was very pleased about. Unfortunately it Guru'd before the first level loaded.
Well I wasn't half as lucky as you.
I'm using the PRODIGY crack (you too?) and it gurus immediately after the intro. Could you post your config, please? I'll try to tweak it because I remember this problem before 1st level could be solved if you adjust the mem settings appropriately.
:)

[Chuckles]

In playing around with WinUAE and trying to create configs for all of my games that actually work, I've run across a few that exhibit problems. I thought I'd pass these along in the hope that the info might be of use in working out the kinks in the emulator.

Batman - The Caped Crusader

This one was working perfectly under 0.8.17, but under 0.8.21, when it reaches the title screen, both the sound and the graphics are badly corrupted.

Faery Tale Adventure

This one has been baffling me for a long time. The game works fine, but during the intro (when it's flipping through pages in the book), the sound is VERY scratchy/noisy. When you get past the intro and into the game, the sound is fine. I've tried this one with a number of WinUAE versions, including the 0.8.8 version that so many people swear by, with the same results. With 0.8.21, the problem has actually gotten somewhat better, in that the sound starts to clear up before the intro is finished, but it still starts out sounding really bad.

If there's any other information that I can provide that might be helpful in trying to isolate the problem, I'd be happy to do that when I'm at home.

[Steve]

Here is the config file I'm using. I've just tried it again and tweaked a couple of things and lo and behold it has actually managed to load up the level. HOORAH!! :). Finally this awesome game works on WinUAE. There's just one small problem with it. It runs incredibly slow on my machine for some reason. All other Amiga games run at good speeds but not this. It's super slow even with sound emulation turned off. Anyway I Hope you can get it to work on your machine Andreas. Good luck.

[stainy]

Well that scratchy sound in the into for Faery Tale Adv is in the original sometimes too.. as a massive fan of FTA, I can say this without doubt :)

[Chuckles]

@Stainy
I don't doubt that, but it doesn't do it when I run it on my real A500 - only when I run it in an emulator. Hmmm, I'll have to see if that affects WinFellow as well - should have done that already.

[barkingboy]

Chaos Engine CD32

Under R1, The Chaos Engine CD32 had no sound (except from the CD), now that is fixed in R2 :D

However there is still some graphic corruption in the game (horizontal garbage lines about 1 per screen) , but much much more playable with the fixed sound!

CDTV

Tony, can you please confirm if CDTV is emulated yet? I have the ROMs from Amiga Forever 5, but get WinUAE error "Error while reading kickstart" when I try!! :sad

Regards

[Toni Wilen]

Oops, CDTV Kickstart error is caused by a stupid bug..

"Fortunately" fixing this bug doesn't help much because CDTV CDROM hardware isn't emulated yet. (you only get red CDTV boot screen)

[andreas]

Thanks so much @Steve.
Unfortunately, nothing works here (yet).
Aladdin AGA gurus like before, and if I use your unmodified config (except changing the location of the Kickstart ROM) I get this error:

"DirectDraw initialization failed with Unsupported. /-2147467263".

This doesn't happen in windowed mode, but it happens in full-screen mode (the one pre-selected by you).
Pity. I even tried it with the encrypted Cloanto ROM you were using.
However, it boots to Track 19 if I use an 68000 CPU.
Absolutely weird. 68000 + AGA is seldom seen in the Amiga world ... ;)

[oldpx]

"DirectDraw initialization failed with Unsupported. /-2147467263".

After loading your config, click "detect 16-bit pixel format" once, save it the way it is and then click ok.

edit: You need to do that detection when you change your display driver or use someone else's config. Doing it once and then saving the config solves the problem completely.

[Steve]

Also the screenmode I'm using is 720x576. This is a custom (PAL) resolution I have setup which gives the best resolution to play Amiga games on WinUAE. You'll either need to get a program that lets you create and select that resolution (can't remember the name of it now) or just stick with 800x600. Either way that shouldn't make a difference to get Aladdin to work. Try setting immediate blits and switching fast ram to 8MB. Has anyone else managed to get Aladdin to work or is it just me? Incidently I also managed to get Aladdin working on WinUAE 0.8.17! :D

What is your PC setup andreas. RAM, OS etc.

[andreas]

Ok, relevant setup information:
(well I actually HATE these people vying for bragging rights by competing in some silly "best, fastest and most expensive hardware" race)

- Athlon Thunderbird 1.333 GHz
- Jetway 849 BS motherboard
- Win 2000 Service Pack 2
- enough RAM to feel satisfied with
- quite an ancient gfx card
- a SB Live! Value sound card
... :)

[Steve]

Ok. Well my processor is half the speed of yours so I'm wondering if it's something to do with the CPU and Chipset slider. try booting Aladdin at different settings. If that fails then I'm stumped at to what the problem is. The only other major difference is that I'm running WindowsXP. I also have a GeForce II GTS. Good Luck. Here is some motivation for you: :)

[Paul]

Tried WinUAE 0.8.21R2 in 800x600 full screen mode for the first time in this release (usually have it set to 640x480 correct aspect) and it did not slow my system down or course choppy sound as much as other releases.

This is only a minor thing, but I can’t get my screen to centre in 800x600 (see pic). The screen stays to the right and has corrupt graphics on the left.

[ethylene]

Originally posted by Paul
This is only a minor thing, but I can’t get my screen to centre in 800x600 (see pic). The screen stays to the right and has corrupt graphics on the left.

Yes, I have this problem(?), too. It's not so bad, though, because I only use that res for games that are meant to run on a PAL system. The happiest picture I have is nice, uncorrupted GFX but with a black border along the right side of the screen. Just leave both centering options unchecked.

A really good idea is to set your video card's refresh rate to 100Hz for 16-bit/800x600. This is double the 50Hz PAL rate, so you'll see much smoother movement than at the default rate (usually 75Hz). You'll just get a little blurring effect because images stay on the screen for two retraces. Of course, the same is also true for 120Hz/16-bit 640x480/NTSC, but if you can do 60Hz, that's perfect. As a bonus, some monitors will remember separate screen geometries for these modes (including my Sony 200ES).

The C64 emulator CCS64 is able to set my monitor to 50Hz or 60Hz automatically. Can or will WinUAE support this someday? The way I see it, WinUAE is very close to a completely convincing experience, lacking only screen synchronization. Just a matter of time?

Originally posted by Steve
Also the screenmode I'm using is 720x576. This is a custom (PAL) resolution I have setup which gives the best resolution to play Amiga games on WinUAE.

What kind of video card/monitor do you use? My ASUS V6800 Deluxe (GeForce 256 32MB DDR) doesn't like it when I add custom resolutions by making new registry keys. My old Gainward CARDExpert i740 (Intel 740 8MB) loved it! Also, can that utility make your monitor refresh at 50Hz?

[andreas]

This is only a minor thing, but I can’t get my screen to centre in 800x600 (see pic).
Bernd Schmidt, UAE author, says:
"The horizontal/vertical centering option wasn't designed for 800x600 resolutions. If you want a centered screen, use resolutions at 640x... or at even lower values."

Confirmed. I too do not feel well about this bare truth, but that's life. I tried to convince him that 800x600 resolutions could need a proper centering code as well, but the only thing I could achieve was that he put it on the bottom of the TODO list. Not that this is extraordinarily good news, but at least he didn't forget about it.

[Paul]

Thanks! :D