Emulation News 286: Updates for 2-6-12

The news keep coming! Emulation style!

Altirra 2.1 Test 12

"Bugs Fixed:
Disk: Fixed inverted write protect bit status.
Disk: Attempted writes to a write protected disk now return errors instead of a NAK.
Disk: Fixed command response when accessing a drive with no disk.

Author's Comment:
Fixes several disk drive issues, tunes the drive sounds a bit, and fixes the Dimension X regression.
XEGS game ROM banking should be fixed now.
DOS XE issue should be fixed now (was a problem with XF551 high speed I/O).
Dimension X issue was due to a display list timing issue related to a jump instruction fix -- both cases should work now.
CPU emulation speed should be cycle exact or very close to exact, certainly not off by an order of magnitude. The rule for performance is: anything done in a loop in BASIC is going to be dog slow, no exceptions. BASIC is itself an interpreter, and on top of that Atari BASIC is not a particularly fast one. The only way to get good performance for vertical sprite movement is to move the sprite data in assembly language, which means either calling an ML routine directly or aliasing the sprites on top of string buffers so you can move the sprites with Atari BASIC string commands."


QMC2 v0.35

"- fix: minor: hide the software-list favorites column 'device configuration' for MAME targets as it's a MESS-only feature
- fix: minor: corrected the main progress-bar's visual behavior when ROM status checking and software-list caching are running in parallel
- fix: MAME targets: the software-list widget wasn't cleared upon reload
- fix: the last active detail-tab's header wasn't always shown initially
- fix: software-snapshots were positioned incorrectly under certain circumstances
- fix: corrected a few minor log-scrolling issues
- fix: individual ROM checks didn't work correctly when the ROM status was 'not found' since output is written to stderr in this case and not to stdout as otherwise
- fix: YouTube video-player: avoid crashes on exit by waiting for all application threads to finish before returning to the OS
- fix: YouTube video-player: attached videos could get lost when changing the current game/machine very quickly
- fix: ROMAlyzer: correctly 'remove' the progress-bar item-widget before deleting it (worked w/o until Qt 4.7.x, crashed since Qt 4.8.0)
- fix: corrected restoration of main-widget's layout when the front-end was showing a maximized embedded emulator during clean up on the previous run
- fix: corrected Windows 64-bit builds with DEBUG=2 (see bug tracker ID #21)
- fix: file-chooser: the underlying item model now produces correct minimum widths for icon-less columns (size and modification date)
- fix: embedder on X11: corrected initial input focus after launching a new embedded emulator
- imp: ROM status exporter: additional output-format choice ('all formats') to export the ROM states to all three formats at once
- imp: when a software-list can't be found (though it's expected to exist), leave the software-list widget disabled and don't try to parse the invalid XML (a warning will still be logged since this is actually an emulator bug, but probably also a wanted/known situation as told by etabeta78)
- imp: MAME/MESS emulator templates updated to 0. 145
- imp: faster display of software-snapshots by using tool-tip like window attributes for the viewer widget (this also fixes bad-window errors on X11)
- imp: slightly bigger icons in all game/machine list views
- imp: updated template format to v0.2.5 which adds support for an optional 'part' attribute that can be used in file-type options to specify the extracted part of the file's path (currently only "basename" is supported, used by the effect-option)
- imp: loading of software-lists can be interrupted now and is indicated accordingly for larger lists (i.e. cpc_cass/cpc_flop)
- imp: Mac OS X build: moved macx/Info.plist.in to arch/Darwin/Info.plist.in where it belongs
- imp: build: added a 'configure' make target to create platform dependent project file(s) and stop (i.e. to open it in XCode and build from there on Mac OS X, or to run MinGW make in job-server mode on Windows)
- imp: MiniWebBrowser: browser-plugins are now enabled per default (see make option BROWSER_PLUGINS)
- imp: build: removed make option PRETTY as it's no longer usable in the supported Qt versions
- imp: Mac OS X build: provide application icons (.icns) to be associated with the apps
- imp: created new logo images (thanks to JacKc)
- imp: ROMAlyzer: checksum-wizard: when the user changes the checksum-type and the current checksum is available in the 'other' type as well, display it in the line-edit (not available when the checksum is edited manually)
- new: the ROM state filtering mechanism can now be enabled/disabled on-the-fly (the default is 'enabled', just as before)
- new: added support for multi-device software-list entries as well as automatic vs. manual mount-device selection (includes the ability to mix parts from different software-list entries)
- new: added an alternative game/machine search entry box to the tool- bar
- new: added a CSV and ASCII export tool for software- lists
- new: added import/export functionality for software-list favorites
- new: changed the MESS device configurator so it offers available device-instances based on the slot-options specified, thus allowing to mount them as well (through the legacy device-mapper and the file-chooser)
- new: added ZIP support for software- snapshots
- new: X11 and Windows only: game/machine icons are now also shown on the tab headers of embedded emulators
- new: all images have an additional context-menu item ('refresh') now to clear and reload their cached pendants
- new: integrated the HTML editor from Qt Labs / graphics-dojo for all kinds of (upcoming) rich-text editing purposes
- new: added content-zoom to the MiniWebBrowser
- new: top-level windows can now optionally be minimized upon emulation launch and automatically restored when the (last) emulator instance has ended
- new: YouTube video-player: added a semi-transparent overlay widget to display status information at the bottom of the player's viewport
- new: software-lists: added software-compatibility filtering
- new: added a 'MESS wiki' detail to look up available driver information
- new: added an option to suppress all messages sent through QDebug and related convenience functions
- new: added an optional startup splash-screen utilizing the new logos
- new: added support for emulator-embedding on Windows (!) -- note, however, that embedding of emulators running in Direct 3D mode ('-video d3d') has two known issues: full-screen switching will lead to a crash (of the emulator) and screen-shots aren't taken correctly from within the GUI (just a black image)
- new: X11 and Windows only: added an option to select the default launch-mode used when starting emulation by activating (i.e. double-clicking) an entry in any list
- new: X11 and Windows only: replaced the style-controlled embedder-release icons (usually a red 'X' which some users wrongly interpreted as 'exit emulator') with a more suitable / less irritating and style-independent icon by setting explicit style-sheets on the tab-bars of all embedders
- new: added two options to allow for hiding of BIOS and/or device sets in all master-lists (see Front end -> Game/Machine list in the main setup dialog) -- both will trigger an automatic reload when changed
- new: added a dock-able/floating software-detail widget with a separate snapshot-browser, a ProjectMESS software-lookup feature, and an HTML editor/viewer for personal rich-text software- notes
- inf: the new required minimum Qt version is 4.7.0, support for older versions of Qt has been dropped"



WolfMame v0.145


multiMAN v04.01.00

"* Changed: Nethost PC server application "ps3serv" is replaced by new windows/linux application "ps3netsrv" !
NOTE: For best performance and compatibility of the new net_host interface, a WIRED network may be required (Wi-Fi is also supported) ! NOTE: Root folders served by remote hosts must contain /PS3ISO, /BDISO, /DVDISO and /PSXISO folders to enable remote content
* Added new option in SETTINGS column: "Network Servers" for setting up to 10 remote nethost IP:PORT values
* Removed: *nethost* settings from options[_default].ini are ignored and no longer supported
* Added support for thumbnail images for remote BD/DVD/PS3/PSX ISO/BIN+CUE files (*.jpg / *.png)
* Added support to copy files from one net_host to another
* Added support to delete folders from remote net_host
* Added support to view files in TextViewer from remote net_host folders
* Added support to copy games and ISO images to remote host from SIDE menu ([TRIANGLE] in XMMB/XBDM/BOARD display modes)
* Added support for 3.55DEX (additional DEX UPD MOD update package required)"