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Altirra 3.00 released


phaeron

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@Sheddy: That's correct.

 

@Mclaneinc: Mapping 67 is not particularly useful for the common man, but suppose you are a developer who would like to create a new video game as a swap-in replacement for existing XEGS ROM boards. Then, having the ability to emulate various XEGS PCB variants would help in testing your ROM.

 

Sheddy himself suffered a bit form a similar issue a few years ago when his magnum opus video game turned out to not work on some variants of the MaxFlash cartridge that were not covered by emulation at the time.

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Something's up, since a new 512bps, 65,535 sector disk image created in the disk drives dialog is not subsequently recognized by SDX. Choosing to pre-format the new image SDFS causes a write error, as well.

 

EDIT: Workaround is to explicitly set the boot sector count to 0 before hitting OK. ;) All is well then.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Meh, no weirder than Typing with Ys. I'm fine with typing games as long as "Mavis Beacon" isn't in the title.

 

Update:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test26.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test26-src.zip

 

  • Fix list view double-click crash.
  • Improve handling of double-clicks so that double click on checkboxes doesn't activate the item.
  • Disable boot sector field when creating disks with 512 byte sectors.

 

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Hi Avery...

 

A few people I know have gone hot for those 2 button USB joystick adaptors, I can't see a way to map them at the moment (possibly missed it?) but if not any chance of adding it for things that use the old KB for a second key like the Space in Defender etc where Altirra lets you pick the key its mapped to?

Edited by Mclaneinc
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Just stumbled across Covox on Altirra after reading a post on another forum and although I have some covox demo's ie a Blackjack one it expects recorded input yet despite the covox enabled at D600 I can't see my web mic being activated..

 

So to anyone that can answer, how do I test covox, is there something I'm missing (bar a brain)...

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@JAC!: Links to SourceForge are obsolete, Atari800 has now migrated to GitHub. This is the correct link.

 

Regarding Type 67: Some 64KB XEGS cartridges address their banks differently, specifically they use $F8-$FF as bank numbers instead of the more straightforward $00-$07. IIRC Lode Runner is one of them.

 

Analysis of PCB photos @Jindroush's site proved that there are two XEGS SuperCart PCB variants that work differently - one of them unmaps all banks when bit 3 of the bank number is set. Lode Runner and a few other titles were programmed to be compatible with this PCB.

 

It was undetected for years because the other PCB variant is backwards compatible - is ignores bit 3, so all ROMs created for the former PCB work correctly on the other as well. It is not true the other way - ROMs that address banks with $0-$7 work only on the latter PCB variant.

 

So, this is actually new cartidge type, existing since the 80s.

 

Examples of Type 68 are uploaded at AtariOnline, specifically the ones without the [h decoded] tag (the others are Type 17).

 

All three known examples of Type 69 are posted here. Since the Arabic PCBs also support 64KB PROMs, I went future-proof and added support for the larger variant as well (Type 70). No actual ROM examples of this type exist. A kind-of-example can be created manually, by stitching two copies of a 32KB Type 69 ROM together.

 

I see on the AtariOnline page that AtraX 7 isn't listed. Does anyone have a backup of it?

Also can you use AtariMax USB Programmer to read AtraX cartridges? If you can, what settings do you use?

 

Thanks

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http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test28.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test28-src.zip

 

  • Rewrote POKEY rendering back-end -- high-pass now has correct half-cycle timing so PDM works without needing to fudge the cycle offset. Hopefully shouldn't have broken much and might even be a little faster.
  • Fixed Blizzard 32K cart type to use 8K banks instead of 16K banks.
  • Fixed hang when using AST 32K cart type.
  • Rewrote cart mapper dialog. It now has a checkbox to display technical details for each cart type to assist when trying to find something vaguely similar to an unknown cart.
  • Minor compiler update from VS2017 15.7.1 to 15.7.2.
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Is possible run Altirra with randomize? Now at start Altirra run with the same random value. Atari800Win can do it :)

 

Are you talking about memory config at boot?

 

If yes then in the memory part of the emulation (in profiles, Configure system, memory) on the newer beta's then set Power up Pattern to Random or not depending on what you meant in the post, randomise should be random and not the same value :)

 

Small typo ish thing Avery, Configure System is called configure Emulation when you open it....Just as ultra minor heads up, might lead to a .00001% confusion if giving help to someone..."I can't find Configure Emulation" type things...

Edited by Mclaneinc
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Are you talking about memory config at boot?

 

IMHO no.. he surely means that when you boot or open image or just start it by association in windows, then the program always reads the same values from $d20a (RANDOM) register (if you use the same starting method).

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What would be the use of that MaPa?

 

As you know or can guess I'm not programmer like yourself so these little requests sometimes seem a little odd to me :) and its always nice to find out why?

 

Thank you

 

Paul.

Edited by Mclaneinc
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IMHO no.. he surely means that when you boot or open image or just start it by association in windows, then the program always reads the same values from $d20a (RANDOM) register (if you use the same starting method).

 

yes, that's what I mean

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http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test28.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.10-test28-src.zip

 

  • Fixed Blizzard 32K cart type to use 8K banks instead of 16K banks.
  • Fixed hang when using AST 32K cart type.

 

Can't believe I had spent 2h yesterday trying to figure out why my unit test generated Blizzard 32k didn't work - now I know :-)

I see you have reverted the change of the XEGS enabling in The!Cart mode which was actually correct before and not working due to the wrong The!Cart type set by the The!Cart studio. Correct?

AST: 256 byte banks... man... at least my unit test shows the cartridge type before the page ends.

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Is possible run Altirra with randomize? Now at start Altirra run with the same random value. Atari800Win can do it :)

 

What kind of image are you dealing with? For a cart, no can do, real hardware is deterministic there and I won't add an option to fudge it. For disk or exe load, could add one. However, I would still highly recommend fixing code to properly randomize on start as you never know how your program will be loaded -- even if it starts on disk it can be converted to an image and loaded deterministically from a cart.

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However, I would still highly recommend fixing code to properly randomize on start as you never know how your program will be loaded -- even if it starts on disk it can be converted to an image and loaded deterministically from a cart.

 

Well, I don't recall seeing this on the Atari 8-bit, but the protection on some ST titles do depend on startup randomization to work properly. It affects some titles with so called "manual" protection that ask you for a specific word on the manual. The idea, obviously, is that it would be random. Most titles do it properly, and they ask the user to user to press a key or controller button to seed the randomization. But some just use the system timer that counts cycles since reset. In real hardware it works because the floppy operation is never fully deterministic. If emulation is deterministic however, then the seed would always be the same and the protection would always ask you for the very same word. Which is good or bad depending your point of view :)

 

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Floppy operation is non-deterministic on real hardware, yes. Until someone takes your floppy image or program within the floppy image and bakes it into a cart loader, or something hits init mode along the way. Then you're back to square one with a deterministic RANDOM. Even loading off disk isn't necessarily a guarantee of this as the "disk" may be a solid state emulation device with timing good enough to significantly reduce the range of random seeds you are going to get. This is becoming more common as use of actual floppy disk drives decline.

 

RANDOM does not give a random number. It gives a psuedorandom number using a known formula based on the number of cycles since init mode was exited -- and particularly not the number of cycles since power-on. That means it needs to be seeded properly. If a program is getting loaded normally, there is nothing that guarantees that init mode won't be triggered along the way and remove expected sources of randomness from the generator. If a program is running as a diagnostic cartridge and bypassing OS init, doing this is really necessary as it's the program's responsibility to trigger init mode and reset the PRNG anyway -- failing to do so can leave it in the lockup state.

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