Emulation News 240: Updates for 12-22-11

More news news news! Happy Holidays!

VirtualBox v4.1.8

"- VMM: fixed VERR_MAP_FAILED during savestate under certain circumstances (bug #7929)
- GUI: stop updating the VM status icons when the VM is paused (bug #8368)
- VBoxManage: fixed wrong return code after startvm (bug #9642)
- BIOS: fixed hang at launch of DOS applications generated by Clipper 5.3 (note that hardware virtualization may be required)
- USB: fixed OS/2 boot hang when using recent USB drivers
- NAT: increase maximum number of parallel connections making connections with port forwarding more robust (#8471)
- Metrics: fixed potential problem with invalid access in guest metrics collection upon VM destruction
- Main: don't crash if a medium is ejected twice (bug #9922)
- VBoxSVC: fixed crash under rare circumstances (e.g. client crash)
- VRDP: fixed screen freeze (bug #9620)
- OVF/OVA: fixed broken disk images on import under rare circumstances
- OVF/OVA: better error message when importing corrupted appliances
- VMDK/VHD: fixed a possible corruption with host cache disabled when using snapshots under rare circumstances (bug #9749)
- 3D Support: Fixed fullscreen mode issues for ATI graphics (bug #9775), Windows Media Player rendering for XPDM-based Direct3D support (bug #8341). Multiple fixes to XPDM and WDDM - based 3D support for Windows Guests and for 3D support in general
- Linux hosts: fixes for Fedoras Linux 2.6.41 (bug #9948)
- Linux hosts/guests: fixes for Linux 3.2 (bug #9743)
- Solaris Additions: various shared folder fixes (bugs #9856, #9862, #9917)
- Windows Additions: various fixes for Direct3D support (un)installation, added detection of missing or wrong Direct3D system files"

Source

Stella SVN r2291

"r2291
The sound system is now opened once per program invocation, and paused
when it isn't needed. According to SDL this shouldn't be necessary, but
some combinations of video modes and audio hardware cause sound to stop
working if it's repeatedly opened and closed. So we have to keep it open.

Always attempt to use 2 channels (aka stereo) when opening the SDL audio
device. This is now required, since ROMs can request mono or stereo mode,
and the sound system can no longer be closed and re-opened with the
desired settings. So we need to always use 2 channels to accommodate
when it might be needed. This actually more closely emulates the 2600,
which does have two audio channels. The 'mono' vs 'stereo' ROM property
basically controls whether these channels are exposed (ie, does the
virtual console have two-channel audio hardware installed). In that sense,
these settings control how the channels are mixed.

Updated some settings to have more reasonable defaults.

Added acknowledgement for people that have donated hardware to help with
development."

Source

QMC2 SVN r3378

"r3378
fix: avoid video-player crashes on exit by waiting for all application
threads to finish before returning to the OS"

Source

MESS SVN r13664

"r13660
uimain: MW 4575 fix [O. Galibert]
r13661
uimain: MT 4569 fix [O. Galibert]
r13662
softlist: buglet (nw)
r13663
ipf: Cope with a probable image error (Chase H.Q. ST in particular) [O. Galibert]
r13664
wd1772: Remove leftover printf (nw)"

Source

PCSX2 SVN r5005

"r5005
GSdx: Saving the conditional var update (vista or better) before I try a new idea again. That Sync() call is wasting too much time, if there was only one queue then the main thread could also grab and process elements instead of just waiting for the workers."

Source