WinUAE 2.4.0 beta series

[rsn8887]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I tried WHDLoad SlamtiltAGA, perfect smooth scrolling. (with or without JIT)

Could you try Vision Megademo IV? It is my favorite vsync test program because it has lots of parts with big scrollers (For some reason I need to have JIT enabled when starting it or it crashes.. after it has started JIT can be disabled)

winuae.zip also updated again, some sound adjusment tweaks (must use DirectSound)

I will have to test vision later. Still testing slamtilt and hyperdrive.

Hmm... it seems the SND% is a bit different now, e.g. instead of being at +-12 all the time, it is around +-5 and then sometimes jumps to 20, 30 or 40, and goes back after a little bit.

Otherwise, same behaviour. I can sometimes play on no buffering for ~20 seconds, before it suddenly starts to stutter severely. Once stuttering starts, it is as if a frame skip of +4 is turned on. I am not sure how to get it back to not stuttering, minimizing/maximizing helps sometimes but not always. It looks like switching between no buffering/double buffering modes helps and sometimes gets it back to no stutter mode for a while.

If I disable sound it is immediately smooth again, but turning sound back on goes back to stuttering.

Could it be that your vbl thread is not getting enough CPU? Is there a way to force it to high priority or something?

It is sooo frustrating because it works perfect for about half a minute now, and then goes to crap! I wonder if it is my sound (crappy on-board Realtek?). I ordered a usb sound solution (Behringer UC202) that looked promising (e.g. ultra low latency). I should get it on the weekend to test.

EDIT: I just tested in windowed mode, and it stutters the same. I looked at winUAE cpu usage in task manager: it only reports 30%-40% cpu usage by WinUAE, even though WinUAE shows CPU% 100. I suppose this is normal on dual core?

[rsn8887]

Ok, I tested with Vision Megademo IV, 100 Hz, no buffering. Same behavious: At first there's only tearing at the very top of the screen, then after ~20 seconds the scrolling starts stuttering.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

Could it be that your vbl thread is not getting enough CPU? Is there a way to force it to high priority or something?

Is already uses highest priority.

EDIT: I just tested in windowed mode, and it stutters the same. I looked at winUAE cpu usage in task manager: it only reports 30%-40% cpu usage by WinUAE, even though WinUAE shows CPU% 100. I suppose this is normal on dual core?

Vblank thread waits until vblank is close enough (90% of vblank time used), then it starts busy waiting.

WinUAE uses ~13% CPU here (4+4HT cores = 100% single core usage)
Does it increase over 50% if you disable sound?

Any changes if you change sound frequency? (44100 vs 48000)

It is also possible Windows XP has problems with this kind of near-realtime behavior but it does not really explain why it works for 20s..

Hmm.. Could you also check CPU clock rate while running windowed winuae? (use CPU-Z) Perhaps it is some kind of strange powersaving/throttling that causes the problem.

[rsn8887]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

WinUAE uses ~13% CPU here (4+4HT cores = 100% single core usage)
Does it increase over 50% if you disable sound?

Any changes if you change sound frequency? (44100 vs 48000)

It is also possible Windows XP has problems with this kind of near-realtime behavior but it does not really explain why it works for 20s..

Hmm.. Could you also check CPU clock rate while running windowed winuae? (use CPU-Z) Perhaps it is some kind of strange powersaving/throttling that causes the problem.

Taskmanager reports 35% to 40%, same for sound enabled and sound disabled.

Maybe _slightly_ less stutter if I change sound frequency from 44.1 to 48.

Checked CPU clock rate... constant at ~2.7 Ghz (see screenshots). Something weird. In the very beginning when starting winUAE CPU-Z clock rate dropped briefly to 2400 MHz ?!?! Maybe a glitch in the CPU-Z routine? Then it went back up and stayed at the highest constantly. I did turn my power management to "always on" shouldn't that disable any throttling?

Note: Having task man and CPU-Z open at the same time as winUAE makes it stutter even when sound disabled, closing both programs fixes that however.

[Toni Wilen]

Ok, some more sound related changes, also rewritten portaudio support, wasapi and openal also updated with new sync code.

http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae.zip

Does the 20s "working period" become longer if you set bigger buffer size?

PortAudio also updated to latest svn: http://www.winuae.net/files/stuff/portaudio.zip
WDMKS SVN branch: http://www.winuae.net/files/stuff/portaudio_beta.zip (Seems to detect more WDMKS devices, this version could be useful for Windows XP users) Also includes WASAPI and ASIO.

[rsn8887]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Does the 20s "working period" become longer if you set bigger buffer size?

Tested new version, buffer dependence is too hard to tell, sometimes it is only 3 seconds, sometimes it is tens of seconds. It is as if the vblank thread "looses sync" at some point and then never gets it back?!?!? Changing buffers to triple buffer and back to no buffer allows it to work for a while again.

Portaudio now works the same as directsound. Interesting, it looks like I actually get less sound lag with dsound, probably cause my buffer settings in asio4all are quite large (512 and 3 kernel), determined from tests with ableton etc. Looks like sound buffer setting in WinUAE does not make any difference for portaudio?

Triple buffering is still the only mode that works without stuttering and/or tearing though.

EDIT: Sound buffer definitely does not seem to make a change: I set sound buffer to 7, used Dsound, and it still stutters after a few tens of seconds. Can get it back always by switching first to triple buffer and then back to no buffer. Time till stutter is random: I was able to play for almost 1 minute just now, before it started stuttering!

EDIT2: Tested some more with Vision Megademo. In fact, in no buffering/100 Hz, there's always some screen tearing visible at the top, even before it starts to stutter. In no buffering/60 Hz NTSC, the screen tearing is not there, or probably just no visible due to bigger borders. Once it started stuttering, sometimes pressing F12 only makes a mouse pointer appear, but not the preferences window.

[rsn8887]

I got my new Behringer UCA-202 USB audio device. I disabled my onboard sound and switched to that. New option under portaudio: Behringer ASIO.

Well, I tried all options, dsound and portaudio, but still screen-tearing on top of screen and eventual stuttering.

Triple buffering still works perfect. Good thing: there's no audible audio latency anymore in portaudio mode (before there was still some latency.)

What does it mean if SND% stays at -99 for long time? That happens for me a lot now with portaudio. Sound is perfect though.

[Toni Wilen]

http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae_2400b5.zip

Beta 5:

- Removed obsolete fake (50), (60), (100) and (120) refresh rates.
- Primary Display Driver monitor selection removed.
- Only primary monitor allowed >75Hz modes.
- Does not load or use ddraw.dll anymore if D3D mode enabled.
- Display and mode enumeration rewritten (does not use ddraw aymore).
- DirectDraw mode vertical positioning fixed (was always on top of screen)
- Fixed Sound panel crash if sound card id stored in configuration file was larger than available number of sound card drivers.
- Handle situation where PortAudio Pa_IsFormatSupported() returns true but Pa_OpenStream() fails with paInvalidSampleRate. (Usually seems to happen when requesting 44100Hz but hardware supports only 48000Hz)
- VSync sound syncronization improved (All types: DirectSound, WASAPI, OpenAL and PortAudio). Note that buffer settings are not same between device types.
- SND% blue/yellow/red flickering fix, previously flickering speed changed depending on buffer size.
- More fastest possible/JIT low latency vsync updates.

- AROS CDFS is now UAE boot ROM built-in. "Include CD/DVD drives.." now has two modes:
* - if uaescsi.device is not enabled: mount as Windows drive (same as previously) This mode may disappear in the future.
* - if uaescsi.device is enabled: mount using built-in CDFS. (Correct file names, protection flags, audio tracks etc..) There is no need to install Amiga-side CDFS anymore. I am not sure if AROS CDFS if good enough but at least it appears to work..

"Include CD/DVD drives.." (+uaescsi.device) can now be used to install OS3.0+ safely. KS2.0+ only. (CDFS requires 2.0+ features)

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

- Only primary monitor allowed >75Hz modes.

My lappy only has a 60Hz mode - does this mean I can no longer run WinUAE?

D.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Dunny

My lappy only has a 60Hz mode - does this mean I can no longer run WinUAE?

It means WinUAE didn't list >75Hz modes if monitor was secondary monitor, even if monitor supported them.

[Toni Wilen]

Does anyone know RTG demos that have big scrollers that are supposed to be smooth?

I am currently implementing RTG vsync (using low latency method).

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

- AROS CDFS is now UAE boot ROM built-in. "Include CD/DVD drives.." now has two modes:
* - if uaescsi.device is not enabled: mount as Windows drive (same as previously) This mode may disappear in the future.
* - if uaescsi.device is enabled: mount using built-in CDFS. (Correct file names, protection flags, audio tracks etc..) There is no need to install Amiga-side CDFS anymore. I am not sure if AROS CDFS if good enough but at least it appears to work..

"Include CD/DVD drives.." (+uaescsi.device) can now be used to install OS3.0+ safely. KS2.0+ only. (CDFS requires 2.0+ features)

Does this only work with real drives?[/Quote]

Using an iso file in the drive/image selector doesn't automatically mount, is there anyway to accomplish this as it would be more useful to people than using physical media/daemon tools.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Ian

Does this only work with real drives?

Using an iso file in the drive/image selector doesn't automatically mount, is there anyway to accomplish this as it would be more useful to people than using physical media/daemon tools.

Works with CD image mode too. Selecting image automatically disables all other uaescsi.device units. (Both images and real drives are supported at the same time but there is no GUI support) Note that uaescsi.device still needs to be enabled.

[Ian]

Try as I might I cannot get the CD to show up.

I used quickstart mode, selected a4000 for the sake of testing, made sure uaescsi.device was enabled, OS3.9 iso was selected and I load WB 3.1 (From ADFs) yet the CD does not show up.

I'm not really an expert at any workbench activity, is there anything additional I should be doing like manually mounting CD0: through CLI or should it just appear?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Ian

Try as I might I cannot get the CD to show up.

I used quickstart mode, selected a4000 for the sake of testing, made sure uaescsi.device was enabled, OS3.9 iso was selected and I load WB 3.1 (From ADFs) yet the CD does not show up.

I'm not really an expert at any workbench activity, is there anything additional I should be doing like manually mounting CD0: through CLI or should it just appear?

Forgot "Include CD/DVD drives.." checkbox?

[Ian]

Yes, that did it.

Thought that was just for real/emulated drives so didn't select it.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Ian

Yes, that did it.

Thought that was just for real/emulated drives so didn't select it.

It can't automatically enable CDFS because it would break all existing CDFS WB setups. ("CD0: is already mounted" or something like that)

[koseidon72]

Hi, in latest beta seems that on filter menu extra bar is broken. When I point and try to move it, emulator hangs and I have to kill the task manager process.

I'm using XP with 2gb ram memory

[Mclane]

I hope he means 2gig of memory?

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It can't automatically enable CDFS because it would break all existing CDFS WB setups. ("CD0: is already mounted" or something like that)

Understood.

How about changing the text of the button to "use built in CDFS" or something like that?

If you are planning to remove using CDs as windows drives it won't cause to much harm in the long run?