WinUAE 2.5.0 Beta series (Was 2.4.2)

[Dr.Venom]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I am not even sure what it should do.. Will improve it later..

OK

Yes, it won't help at all in 68000 CE, it would only make compatibility worse.. I think I'll make it impossible to have it enabled in this mode.

It again depends what you want as usual

- fastest possible: immediate blitter
- program that don't like too fast blitter (for example it assumes blit taking some time): no immediate blitter, waiting blitter won't break anything and possibly helps in some situations.

I'd enable it always when using 68020+ modes. (If immediate blitter not enabled).

I'll probably make following changes to quickstart settings:

- 68000 CE: does nothing, always ignored.
- Any approximate CPU mode or 68020+CE: enabled, only pause CPU if blitter would steal all cpu cycles. (no idle cycles in blitter cycle diagram + blitter nasty). Without this Hostages would break with usual insta-kill behavior
- Fastest possible CPU: enabled, any kind of blit.

Great, thanks for explaining..

[dlfrsilver]

Hello Toni, just to say that with the new 'Wait For blitter' option, with cycle exact mode on A1200 + 030 configuration, the graphics bugs encountered on Night breed the Movie are suddenly corrected if this option is activated So this is a good thing, and an example of what it can bring

Thank you for that

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Hello Toni, just to say that with the new 'Wait For blitter' option, with cycle exact mode on A1200 + 030 configuration, the graphics bugs encountered on Night breed the Movie are suddenly corrected if this option is activated So this is a good thing, and an example of what it can bring

Thank you for that

Note that this also can be dangerous option, it can hide really obvious game blitter bugs too, not just those that are caused by too fast CPU.

In other words, if/when this option gets more intelligent, it could "break" some games that shouldn't even have worked.. and it isn't a bug!

[dlfrsilver]

i have tried with many games so far, everything is copping right until now Winuae has now got even further !!

[Toni Wilen]

http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae_2420b11.zip

Beta 11:

- END special qualifier didn't work when combined with other qualifiers, some END + shortcuts leaked key presses to emulated Amiga side (b10)
- GUI wasn't centered and/or scrolling if single monitor, full screen mode and resolution smaller than 640x480. (b6) Automatically center to screen if GUI title bar isn't visible on any monitor. Two or more monitors and >800x600 resolution desktop in any monitor = always allow manual GUI positioning.
- Wait for Blitter changes:
* - Does nothing in 68000 cycle-exact mode.
* - Approximate CPU speed or 68020 CE: Pause CPU if blitter would steal all CPU cycles
* - Fastest possible: Any kind of active blit pauses CPU if writing to any blitter register.
* - Logged if triggered (only first 10 times)
- Quickstart modes (except 68000 CE) enables Wait for Blitter option.
- Wait for Blitter GUI only sets above "automatic" mode, manual config file editing supports forced "always" and "only if not idle" modes. (for debugging purposes)
- RTG video capturing uses now RTG vsync timing, not (possibly very different) custom chipset vsync timing.
- Added UAE Boot ROM AOS "heart beat" vblank interrupt, do not sync clock or check filesystem insertions if heart beat counter does not change = OS has been taken over, prevents possible memory corruption if program also overwrote system structures.
- RTC year tens digit was not in correct BCD format, probably no program cared about the difference. (Bug since the beginning)
- Extended adf writing was disabled, forgotten debugging and it was also disabled in 2.4.1. Oops. (241b11)
- POTGO register state was not fully reset when loading state, disabled mouse right/middle button in some situations. (for example Sound of Silents)
- AUDxDAT manual audio mode and new period was written to AUDxPER: new period value was loaded too late, after first 8-bit sample was finished.
- AUDxVOL is 7-bit register (64-127 = max volume, 128 = 0, 129 = 1 and so on..). Actual volume range is 0-64.
- Sinc interpolator updated from UADE (from few years ago, better late than never..)
- Debugger 'm' command didn't show last byte of memory region.
- Log COPJMPx while copper is waiting blitter cycle conflict. Does not yet emulate blitter pointer = COPxLC copy.

[dlfrsilver]

I guess you have now a very good release beta.
Not more slow down under A1200, the sound is once again great (thanks to the sound correction you brought in 2420b11), and the wait for blitter option works great
All the tricky games are all ok (Brian the lion, lionheat, super stardust and so on)

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I guess you have now a very good release beta.

It does not work that way, I need to break something before it is time for official version!

Not more slow down under A1200, the sound is once again great (thanks to the sound correction you brought in 2420b11), and the wait for blitter option works great

What program did have noticeably different sound? Just wondering because I never really noticed anything until I run Nut's test cases..

[dlfrsilver]

On the previous beta release, all the games, on A500 config and A1200 suffered from noise, and even worse, the frame work was just horrible.

Your latest modifications on sound, and the wait for blitter just made it

The only game i found which has a problem with screen bounds is brian the lion AGA, look at the screen i made

Quite a good part should be hidden And it's not....

[Toni Wilen]

http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae_2420b12.zip

Beta 12:

- Moved cycle-exact option to Chipset group in GUI. Other options are minor options/hacks, CE is not.
- Do not enable wait for blit if immediate blitter is enabled in quickstart mode.
- Added RTG hardware sprite (mouse cursor) enable/disable option. Enabled by default if D3D mode. Was always enabled previously if D3D mode.
- GUI Memory panel 32-bit RAM size information text incorrectly included Z2 mode RTG memory.
- Added directory harddrive limit option to Harddrives panel. When enabled, all directory harddrives size is faked to ~950M with free space relative to original size (for example 500G HD with 100G free = 950M HD with 950*100/500=190M free) This hack is workaround for installers that think drive is full or have negative free space if drive is larger than 2G (32-bit overflow). Can be changed on the fly. Edit configuration file manually if you want custom limit size. Also virtual fake block size changed from 1024 to 512. More compatible with KS1.x dos commands that seem to use hardcoded 512 block sizes when calculating disk size.
- cpu_throttle configuration entry also accepts decimal values.
- Added Start minimized and Start mouse uncaptured Misc panel options.
- In minimized mode D3D/DirectDraw display updates are also now completely stopped.
- ECS Denise/AGA border blanking handling rewritten again. (Brian the Lion borders are black again)
- Ignore color 0 (background) writes if borderblank is currently enabled when deciding autoscale start vertical coordinate. (Brian the Lion)
- Parallel port audio sampler emulation partially rewritten, it actually sounds correct now, mono/stereo option added. AudioMaster IV confirmed working. Very pointless feature.

[dlfrsilver]

yummy release :P ; It works nicely for brian the lion AGA now

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

- Parallel port audio sampler emulation partially rewritten, it actually sounds correct now, mono/stereo option added. AudioMaster IV confirmed working. Very pointless feature.

Historic moment - Tony actually considered to implement a pointless feature and did it. I'm imagining that hell is right at this moment freezing over.

[Coagulus]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Historic moment - Tony actually considered to implement a pointless feature and did it. I'm imagining that hell is right at this moment freezing over.

My "badly tuned tv" suggestion went in a while ago!

[Mclane]

He turned down my 'in the day' audio experience, for those that miss the copy parties etc I thought winuae should randomly play samples of people shouting LAMER & NOOB etc

Hold on, people might actually like that daft idea

[Toni Wilen]

http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae_2500b13.zip

- Parallel port audio sampler had very bad quality on some systems. NOTE: Sampler requires exact DirectSound recording position reporting = not that good results when using some onboard Realteks etc.. (It can be made better but because this is really pointless feature: pay or buy a better PC)
- Very old statefiles triggered keyboard powerup initialization sequence when restored, caused phantom keypresses.
- Sinc audio interpolation filter clipping fixed. (Was always wrong in UAE, was much more noticeable after b11 audio update)
- Input configuration parser didn't parse custom input event strings correctly if it contained '.' or ',' characters.
- Added experimental (and mostly useless) option that removes DOS reserved name restriction (CON is the most popular because it is also included with WB disks). Note that this causes some interesting side effects: most Windows programs, including Explorer, won't be able to open any file if it has DOS reserved name... You don't need this option, UAE has always mangled illegal names transparently (for example CON becomes something like "__uae__con" on host side) Configuration file only: win32.filesystem_mangle_reserved_names=false (defaults to true if not set)
- Disable screensaver option didn't work, SetThreadExecutionState() needs to be called periodically, not just once, function documentation is a bit confusing..
- When deciding first visible line and programmed mode: select which is largest, VBSTOP or VSSTOP. (SuperPlus)
- Added Keep autoscale aspect ratio checkbox, only sort of working now...
- Map rom region size mirrors ROM size, address automatically moved to 0xe00000 (512k) or 0xa80000 (1M) if 24-bit CPU.
- Remove interlace artifacts option halved size of display horizontally in some programmed screen modes.
- Portaudio sound and sound was deactivated automatically: sound led kept showing buffer underrun state.
- Disable screen updates if monitor enters power saving mode.
- When restoring state file with floppy image(s) missing (files moved etc..), there still was rare possibility that floppy drive was reported as empty.
- Some more manual BPLxDAT emulation updates, Sequential Magnet part garbage introduced in previous update is gone.
- Color registers were emulated as non-existing instead of write-only in OCS/ECS modes. (I guess only visible difference will be more colorful display if program crashes or does weird things and starts reading from color registers..)
- DENISEID is now non-existing if 68000 prefetch or cycle-exact and OCS Denise. (Programs may misdetect if no prefetch emulated, and now programs, if they even exist, that misdetect it on real OCS A500 will misdetect it on emulation too! )
- Renamed Paths panel "WinUAE defaults"-paths, meaning of selection should make more sense now.
- Better input qualifier GUI, Windows key default qualifier added.
- Slot #5-#8 custom events didn't work correctly.

And finally:

- GUI resize and font selection support added (misc panel). It was possible after all, needed only some hacking..
- * Default size is now larger then previously.
- * This is a hack, rebuilds classic Windows dialog resources on the fly while adjusting GUI element coordinates and size.
- * GUI size after resizing may not be exactly what you expected.
- * Windows always closes and reopens after resize. It is also normal, can be improved, later if ever..
- * Window/Fullwindow/Fullscreen have separate position, size and font settings.
- * Less than 80% size not officially supported, overlapping and clipping is normal. Select smaller font.
- * Possible future improvements: more preset sizes, some kind of autofit in smaller fullscreen modes.
- * I hope GUI now appears to be more modern than it actually is

- Version bumped to 2.5.0.

[lordofchaos]

Wow nice update ^ Looking forward to putting this through it's paces. Thanks Toni!

[SedrynTyros]

Thanks for all your hard work, Toni. Much appreciated.

[kfasheldon]

Hi Toni

Thanks , great update. One problem, I just changed font and have no GUI at all now, just a nice blank box, HELP - where is the setting stored , can't for the life of me find a .uae file on my hard drive and I am very confused, need a reset button in the gui I think ! Thanks

[1time]

Wonderful!

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by kfasheldon

Hi Toni

Thanks , great update. One problem, I just changed font and have no GUI at all now, just a nice blank box, HELP - where is the setting stored , can't for the life of me find a .uae file on my hard drive and I am very confused, need a reset button in the gui I think ! Thanks

Oops, I guess I missed some sanity checks in GUI resize code..

It in registry (HKCU/Software/Arabuusimiehet/WinUAE) All settings that needs to be stored without loaded config file goes to registry. (or to winuae.ini if enabled)

Attach values of GUIFont and GUISizeX and GUISizeY first. You can safely delete these keys to return back to defaults.

Which Windows version?

[Toni Wilen]

http://www.winuae.net/files/b/winuae.zip should fix it automatically (automatically reset back to defaults if GUI size is too small or too big)