Feature requests for next WinUAE release

[superfrog]

Hi Toni,

I have a few small feature requests for the next release of WinUAE:

1. Hotkey combinations to send Ctrl-Alt-Del and Ctrl-Alt-Esc to the emulator without Windows intercepting them, for use with Bridgeboard emulation. For example, with VirtualBox it is possible to use RightCtrl-Del to send Ctrl-Alt-Del to a guest OS. Something similar for BB in WinUAE would be nice for soft reset and AT BIOS Setup access.

2. I'd like to have 5.25" HD PC (1.2MB) floppy size added to the "New Floppy Disk Image" selector in the Floppy Drives panel.

3. Currently, the RTC Offset specified in the Advanced Chipset panel (to the right of the RTC type selection) is not saved in the config file, and I'd like to have a way to save it. Persistent clock offset is useful for non-Y2K compliant programs. I typically use an offset of -946684800 seconds (30 years) so I still get correct time and date, but the year is 30 years in the past.

I think these are pretty small requests that should be easy to implement, and while not absolutely essential, I think would be nice to have.

Thanks for all your work!

[hexaae]

4. add a forced delay option with audio buffer clean-up in Host\Miscellaneous to avoid rare sound glitches (looping sounds) on fast switching between RTG P96<->native screen games. Classic situation: you quit a game started from WB like Ambermoon and go back to P96 WB very quickly: sometimes you can hear beep sounds looping… (Or is it something present also on real Amigas I can't remember?)

[Mark sealey]

Emulation....Furia 020/33 would be nice

Retina card emulation too.

Plus why does everything work with winuae when building a OS3.1.4 sd card then not work in a real Amiga lol

[Toni Wilen]

There is separare request forum and don't mix different requests, thanks..

1. Hotkey combinations to send Ctrl-Alt-Del and Ctrl-Alt-Esc to the emulator without Windows intercepting them, for use with Bridgeboard emulation. For example, with VirtualBox it is possible to use RightCtrl-Del to send Ctrl-Alt-Del to a guest OS. Something similar for BB in WinUAE would be nice for soft reset and AT BIOS Setup access.

Applications can't do it (without admin privileges and installing service/driver. I won't touch Windows drivers)

2

Perhaps..

3

I planned to fix that long time ago but I forgot. Again.

4

Correct fix is to initialize all required D3D buffers/stuff for both displays at startup to speed up switching. (and dynamic sound buffer is not going to work very well)

Emulation....Furia 020/33 would be nice

Boards without boot ROM don't need any extra emulation. Simply set up correct CPU and memory spaces etc. You are not going to get correct speed anyway until someone published/reverses 68020 internal logic.

Retina card emulation too.

Uses SVGA chip that that was not popular. No one has written emulation. (I don't write complex PC board emulations)

Plus why does everything work with winuae when building a OS3.1.4 sd card then not work in a real Amiga lol

Two possible reasons and a bonus:

1) hardware compatibility problem. Amiga IDE is not 100% compatible.
2) SD card in USB adapter vs SD card in CF/IDE adapter may not have exact same capacity or "geometry". (and "geometry" usually is not readable in Windows because USB adapters don't bother to implement all nice commands). Geometry difference rarely causes problems, main difference usually is that last few megabytes of drive not being accessible. Always leave ~8M of unused space at the end as a workaround.
*) User didn't configure emulator correctly.

[hexaae]

Is 4 something that could be implemented in future versions of WinUAE to alleviate (?) the random issue?

[Mark sealey]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

There is separare request forum and don't mix different requests, thanks..



Applications can't do it (without admin privileges and installing service/driver. I won't touch Windows drivers)



Perhaps..



I planned to fix that long time ago but I forgot. Again.



Correct fix is to initialize all required D3D buffers/stuff for both displays at startup to speed up switching. (and dynamic sound buffer is not going to work very well)



Boards without boot ROM don't need any extra emulation. Simply set up correct CPU and memory spaces etc. You are not going to get correct speed anyway until someone published/reverses 68020 internal logic.



Uses SVGA chip that that was not popular. No one has written emulation. (I don't write complex PC board emulations)




Two possible reasons and a bonus:

1) hardware compatibility problem. Amiga IDE is not 100% compatible.
2) SD card in USB adapter vs SD card in CF/IDE adapter may not have exact same capacity or "geometry". (and "geometry" usually is not readable in Windows because USB adapters don't bother to implement all nice commands). Geometry difference rarely causes problems, main difference usually is that last few megabytes of drive not being accessible. Always leave ~8M of unused space at the end as a workaround.
*) User didn't configure emulator correctly.

Very Interesting.

Ok sd card is in a card reader (built in to my laptop)

[turrican3]

I'll add my 2 cents.
the cdtv front panel (play/next,etc) doesn't work anymore (for me)!
does it work for you Toni, if yes forgot about it.
If i really need it in a newer winuae version, i 'll ask again, for the moment i can wait and switch to an older version when needed.
Anyway, thank you for your hard work.


ps:do you think you could add one day something to make wipeout 2097 ppc working ?? I think the amiga version is the best one.

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

There is separare request forum and don't mix different requests, thanks..

Moved the thread to the correct sub-forum.

Originally Posted by turrican3

I'll add my 2 cents.

Not a good idea if you read the above quoted text.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by turrican3

I'll add my 2 cents.
the cdtv front panel (play/next,etc) doesn't work anymore (for me)!
does it work for you Toni, if yes forgot about it.
If i really need it in a newer winuae version, i 'll ask again, for the moment i can wait and switch to an older version when needed.
Anyway, thank you for your hard work.

Works for me. (When did this become a request???)

ps:do you think you could add one day something to make wipeout 2097 ppc working ?? I think the amiga version is the best one.

Not interested.

[GetBoinged!]

Radeon gfx card emulation. (For Warp3D Nova, OpenGL ES 2.0 and CANDI)

[sparhawk]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Applications can't do it (without admin privileges and installing service/driver. I won't touch Windows drivers)

You can not intercept these key combinations, that's true. But AFAIK you can still provide a menu which sends this combination to your own application, like Virtual Box does.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by GetBoinged!

Radeon gfx card emulation. (For Warp3D Nova, OpenGL ES 2.0 and CANDI)

No. I don't do PC graphics card emulations and I am quite sure Radeon cards are far too complex to emulate without being painfully slow.

Originally Posted by sparhawk

You can not intercept these key combinations, that's true. But AFAIK you can still provide a menu which sends this combination to your own application, like Virtual Box does.

Could you be a more specific? Some kind of menu shortcut? It sounds like it can only work properly "known" program is running (like VMs do) so that it can convert it to matching code?

[LocalH]

Pretty sure that the idea is to have a way to press "Ctrl-Alt-Del" and "Ctrl-Alt-Esc" on the emulated Amiga keyboard without needing those key combinations on the host PC.

[ransom1122]

Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't you just remap the reset button to any key?

[hexaae]

@Toni
THIS
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...6&postcount=21

Done!

[superfrog]

Originally Posted by LocalH

Pretty sure that the idea is to have a way to press "Ctrl-Alt-Del" and "Ctrl-Alt-Esc" on the emulated Amiga keyboard without needing those key combinations on the host PC.

Yes, this is what I am requesting, exactly. I only want to send Ctrl-Alt-Del or Ctrl-Alt-Esc to the emulated Amiga/Bridgeboard; it can be any key combination or menu option that does it.


In PCem you can select "Ctrl+Alt+Del" from the System menu in an emulated PC window and it will send Ctrl+Alt+Del to the emulated PC. You could perhaps put a button on the F12 control panel in WinUAE that does the same thing. If you could also add a hotkey combination, like maybe Ctrl-Alt-Insert, or End+F1, something like that, to act as a hotkey alias for that button, that would be even better.


It must be possible to do this without a driver, since PCem does not install any special drivers as far as I know.

[Toni Wilen]

I am not going to add any menus (I thought "menu" meant something more useful) because AmigaOS does not use "incompatible" key combinations. Bridgeboard does not count..

Perhaps some common shortcuts can be added to "systray" right button menu... Or perhaps exact same menu can be added as a normal menu..

btw, you can already use Input panel to create any max 8 key combination.

[superfrog]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Perhaps some common shortcuts can be added to "systray" right button menu... Or perhaps exact same menu can be added as a normal menu..

btw, you can already use Input panel to create any max 8 key combination.

Systray shortcuts would be nice, but hotkey combinations that can be used from fullscreen mode is what I'd like to see most. If I could use End+Del to send Ctrl+Alt+Del and End+Esc to send Ctrl+Alt+Esc (or any other logical key combination) seamlessly from fullscreen mode, I'd call it a done deal.


I looked over the Input panel for setting up keyboard shortcuts. I can see how to define a new target for a key or key combination, but how do I specify a key combination as a target, like Ctrl+Alt+Del? I see there is a way to specify a custom target, but that seems to just be a string input box. Is there a format for specifying keys that send non-printable characters as targets?

[superfrog]

After playing around with the Input panel some more, I've now got it set up so that Ctrl+Alt+Keypad0 sends Ctrl+Alt+Del, and Ctrl+Alt+Grave (`/~) sends Ctrl+Alt+Esc. These keyboard aliases work well with the emulated Bridgeboard.

One interesting thing I noticed is that if I don't install the keyboard driver in DOS (e.g. KEYB US) before doing a warm reset, the keyboard will no longer work with the emulated PC after it finishes rebooting. After that, the only way I've found to recover BB keyboard functionality is to completely reset WinUAE.

Now that I've figured out how the Input panel event mapping editor works (which was a little bit of a challenge) I am pondering what other useful things I might be able to do with it.

Perhaps all that is really needed to satisfy this feature request is for a pair of key mappings to be added to the Input panel default configuration when Bridgeboard emulation is enabled.