Just a quick release before my life's greatest emulator project kicks in. This version adds preliminary support for some effects that double the vertical resolution of the plus/4 by scanline interleaving. While the effect itself has been considered possible since around 1993, it has not been explored further until recently. Here's the - very short - list of changes:
• support for true interlace
• more new icons from Chronos
• couple of bugfixes
Obviously, true interlace will only work properly on the 'Very high accuracy' emulation level and in double sized window modes.
• new fancy Vista ready icons (courtesy of Chronos)
• preliminary MPS802 printer emulation
• improved file association dialog
• optional 1:1 sound sampling (111150 Hz, PAL only for now)
• bugfixes
• MPS801/803 printer emulation
• very preliminary ACIA emulation
• a couple of configurability improvements
o decoder hue (tint control, mainly for NTSC)
o sound output settings
o T6721 and ACIA emulation selectable individually
• all missing D64 sector errors emulated in true drive emulation
• bad sector info (copy protection) support also in fast IEC mode
• optional fast autostart for D64 files
• various minor bugfixes
The printer emulation includes the standard MPS801 character ROM as well, but you can specify your own (it should be at offset 0x800 in the image though, and should follow the rules of the MPS801 set). The printer emulation is complete with all special control characters, bitmap, reverse, enhance modes etc. The D64 error info emulation enhancements make it possible to use some of the copy protected disks to run under the fast IEC disk emulation mode (Typing Professor, Hulk).
• support for custom drive ROM images
• added parallelized 1541 drive emulation (both types)
• optional breakpoint opcode ($F2)
• /BREAK command line parameter now accepts hexadecimal addresses (0xADDE)
• true drive emulation and high accuracy mode are now the default
• couple of bugfixes (custom joystick keys etc.)
• dialog window for custom joystick controls
• customizable RAM startup patterns
• adjustable interlaced line shade in double sized VDU emulation mode
• command line parameter for initial breakpoint (/BREAK:address)
• added CPU level emulation support in fast (line based) mode
• no need to reattach D64 files when switching from IEC to CPU level drive emulation
• deadlock on SCRATCH-ing unclosed files fixed (IEC/D64)
• slightly improved SID filters
• improved mixing of audio channels
• regression TED bug fix in fast emulation level
• a couple of minor fixes
• changed the drive timing hack a little for turbo loaders that fail to work properly ("almost" a solution; only in VHA mode)
• drive settings are not lost anymore when switching between emulation levels
• crash bug on saving tapes fixed
• some minor TED fixes in VHA mode
• other fixes
• another new emulation level (VHA, very high accuracy)
• started implementing exact video shift register emulation in VHA mode
• improved PAL-NTSC switch artifacts
• oversampling now also for the SID card
• selectable sound replay frequency
• more fullscreen mode options
• added support for test mode
• bug in the FIR filter fixed
• TED border flipflop check was 1 cycle off
The new emulation level implements support for the emulation of the video shift register and also better support for demos that mess with the horizontal counter (about 3 of them exist at the moment). Since about 99.9% of the available programs don't require these to be emulated, it has never been a priority, as they do have a rather high performance hit (about 20 percent but your mileage may vary). The new mode is still experimental and therefore it may not work perfectly in all cases, so please report if you encounter problems. Most users won't have true benefits from this new mode, as it is mostly meant for demo coders or as means for watching the few available demos that require these to be emulated.
• advanced settings dialog window
• forced UpdateOverlay call introduced in 0.70 now optional
• optionally allow only one instance of the emulator to run
• two older tweaks (load vector patch and 1541 loader hack) are incorporated
• command line options (at long last...)
• '/DISK#:image' for attaching an image to drive {8,9,10,11} at startup
• '/TAPE:image' for attaching a TAP/WAV image on startup
• '/TYPE:text' for typing 'text' on startup
• '/NOSTART' will suppress autostart
• a couple of TED bugfixes
• tape counter in the status bar
• joystick fire on PageUp key (for laptops)
• TED and SID mixed sound can now also be saved to AVI/WAV
• fixed full screen mode autodetection
• stupid new bug in 1551-IEC/filesystem mode fixed
• potential crash and clicks on recording to WAV
• zip support got accidentally disabled in 0.68
1) The Flexible Disk Image support has been upgraded to include the new FDI v2.1 format with CRC-32 error detection.
2) T64 read-only file support has been added. A T64 directory browser has been added to the Tape menu.
3) The SID resonance has been boosted.
4) The SID ADSR timings have been corrected to be cycle exact.
5) Fixed long standing incorrect implementation of the SID "Hard-Sync".
6) The SID "combined waveforms" now uses an 8bit wave table. The samples were taken from a Commodore C64C with serial number "HB5 527013 E" via the SID register $D41B.
7) Minor adjustment of SID sample holding behaviour for waveform $00.
8) An intermittent performance slow down issue with the SID filters has been fixed. The performance loss was a result excessive underflow with ultra small numbers known as de-normal floating point numbers.
13 December 2005 v1.0.3.12
==========================
1) Fixed sprite bug introduced in release (v1.0.3.8) where a sprite could empty its buffer at column cycle 63 even thought the sprite was hidden at X position >= 0x1f8. This was noticed as occasional blank sprite lines in the second part of the "Ice Cream Castle" demo by Crest.
12 December 2005 v1.0.3.12
==========================
1) Sprite hiding, distortion and buffering near the fetch clocks is now correctly emulated.
"Demus Interruptus" by Crest should now display correctly with true cycle based sprites.
2) Frame skip is off by default and VBL Sync is on by default.
A new build of WinVICE as well as the other VICE builds for multiple platforms has been released. WinVICE is a multiple commodore system emulator for Win32. You can grab other builds for other platforms such as UNIX, MSDOS, BeOS and so on over at the official site.
** General
----------
• Compiling for QNX 6.x works now (binary package is available).
• Binary packages for Solaris machines are available.
** C64 changes
--------------
• Added full GeoRAM memory expansion support with sizes from 64KB to 4MB.
• Added full RamCart memory expansion support.
• Added full +60K memory expansion support.
• Correct REU values after reset.
** C128 changes
---------------
• Added full GeoRAM memory expansion support with sizes from 64KB to 4MB.
• Added RamCart memory expansion support without the read-only option.
• Fixed some C64 mode bugs.
• Correct REU values after reset.
** Unix changes
---------------
• New dutch translation.
• Language support has been extended to include commandline-options.
• BSD platform problems with using the sounduss and soundsun driver have been fixed.
• Problems compiling with older versions of libpng have been fixed.
• Problems with MAXPATHLEN and PATH_MAX when compiling have been fixed.
• New ALSA sound driver.
• Fixed some compile errors if GCC4 is used.
• Added support for more analog joysticks.
** MS-Windows changes
---------------------
• Added international language support (experimental, disabled for now).
• The Wine Resource Compiler is now required to compile using gcc for proper international language support.
• Added support for recent ffmpeg libraries.
• Fixed some directory lister bug.
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
• Added ethernet support using the wattcp stack and libpcap library.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
• Compiling without C++ or ReSID works now.
• Added support for more 3rd party basic extenders to petcat.
• Userport RS232 emulation should work as expected now.
Head on over to the official site for more information and to download the other platform builds.
