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Showing results for tags 'Atari++'.
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Hi folks, here's a small update to the Atari++ emulator in the form of a new operating system and (two) new basic interpreters. A new compiled version of the emulator itself with the new versions build in will follow: basic++.zip I'm providing it here so you can play with it until I find the time to rebild the emulator itself. The operating system fixes one rather nasty bug in the editor handler that would have overwritten some memory when disabling the cursor (ough). That's the Os++ ROM dump in the ZIP file above. It's a 16K ROM for the XL machine. Basic++ is present in two versions, each of which assembled in three variants. The variant without a file extension is a ROM dump, to be used for the emulator. Then there are two self-loading binaries per version. The versions without "a0" in the file name load into the lower memory region and keep the traditional cart space starting at $a000 free. This minimizes the RAM footprint, but causes some compatibility issues with Basic files that expect the ROM at $a000. This is what the "_a0" versions are for. They require about 1K additional memory, but run in the traditional cartridge area. Clearly, the ROM-dump is also for this area, but does not require additional RAM. So what's new? In release 1.07, I streamlined the interpreter a little bit further, especially "READ" got a little bit faster and shorter, providing a small advantage over the previous revision. Release 1.08 is quite experimental, and I'm not sure whether I will keep the changes - so I let you try. The advantage is that it eliminiates one of the "hot spots" of Atari basic, namely the line number lookup. This was a linear search through a list, with a minor optimization to start from the current line if the target line number is larger than the current line. In 1.08, I'm trying the same trick as in Turbo Basic where I keep a "hash list" of lines of 128 entries, one entry per 256 possible line numbers. This makes GOTO and GOSUB quite noticably faster. Whether this is a substantial improvement depends on the program. Programs with many GOSUBs or GOTOs like the ABC basic compiler profit a lot. Linear programs or programs with FOR-NEXT loops do not profit (FOR-NEXT is already optimized). Unfortunately, the hash list requires 256 bytes additional RAM, and more ROM space, so the title had to go. Hence, please try and let me know how it goes. Greetings, Thomas
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I'm close to release an updated release of Atari++, the portable Atari emulator. This will be in some sense a minor update as the emulator core will not change, though Os++ will (minor), and I will include a "System Disk" with additional utilities in place. I'm attaching a couple of screen shots on what is coming. - A "CONFIG.SYS" file will be included that releases additional memory to BASIC and Oss switching carts. All disk buffers will then be relocated, taking only 256 bytes of memory for Dos. - An updated version of the Antic "DiskIO" basic extension will also be included (see screen shot). This is a unique extension for Basic and Mac/65 that adds disk-specific extensions, for example a sorted directory dump and commands to load, save and modify files on disk. - In addition to the built-in command line processor of Dos 2.++, a menu driven DUP menu will be included as well (see screen shot). The DUP menu is unique in so far as you can configure it yourself, i.e. which features you want to have included. Command items can be "pulled out" of the main menu to save memory space, for example to copy a disk or files. All this stuff is actually more than 20 years old, but has now been ported to the ROM based infrastructure of Dos 2.++, so it is probably still useful for the community as I never released this before. Anyhow, anyone willing to help me to beta-test this, please let me know. Note that this requires the ROM-based Dos 2.++. It will (likely) not work with any other Dos. Greetings, Thomas
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Hi folks, please find the "Easter Release" of the portable Atari emulator, Atari++, on its usual webspace at http://www.xl-project.com/ Besides many minor bug fixes, the major news for this release is support for the ATX file format, namely the emulator now includes emulation of disk timing, duplicate, missing or erraneous disk sectors and so on. It also includes support for "stuck" Player/Missile shift registers, a new type of break point, better control of the monitor window in Win, plus many many modifications of Os++, the built-in operating system. The most notable changes are that FMS++, the built-in DOS, finally allows to mix the directory modes with any regular file access modes - which fixes a series of long-standing bugs in all Atari DOSes I have seen so far, including 2.0S, 2.5, Os A/+ and probably many others. Dos 3 might be a notable exception here. Here is the change list: - The binary file loader automatically generated when inserting a COM or EXE into the disk drive and booting from it is now much shorter and requires a lot less RAM. It requires now, however, an additional ESCape code and hence emulator support. This will now also load binary files that require RAM from 0x800 and up. - This release adds support for ATX files and includes an emulation of the disk drive timing, handling of bad and duplicate sectors and a more precise emulation of the SIO timing. - An additional type of watch point was added: The default watch point now only reacts on memory writes, whereas the new watch point continues to react on reads and writes. - Experimented a lot with the timing of the GTIA Prior writing and found that the currently implemented logic is actually very close to the real system, additional delay cycles make results only worse, not better. Thus, leaving it as it is right now. - The SDL StringGadget now reacts on Ctrl+Backspace and Ctrl+Delete and erases its contents on this keyboard command. - Added emulation for "stuck" Player/Missile shift registers when switching from 4x or 2x expansion to the size register "2" value, which is almost, but not quite 1x expansion. - The built-in Os blocks NMIs now early in the reset cycle and by that tries to work around bad display lists left over by buggy programs. - Minor modification in the built-in FMS (Dos 2.++): CONFIG.SYS can now change the position of the FMS buffers by poking into DiskBufferBase $710,$711 and relocate them. - Minor modification of the short VBI: GPrior, ColBK and Col1 are now only reloaded if the graphics mode really requires it. This applies to fine scrolling text modes, and the text window modes with the GTIA modes (modes 9+64,10+64 and 11+64). This fixes compatibility issues with Atari Tennis and some Lucasfilms intros. - Minor modifications in the FMS: Rename with wildcard was broken, and the FMS no longer tries to load non-valid VTOCs. Invalid VTOCs are now reported as error 178. - The DUP COPY command avoids now trying to overwrite BASIC program memory or other user memory protected correctly by setting APPMEMHI. Some cartridges do not set this Os pointer correctly, though. Mac/65 does not. The new DUP command NEW will erase user memory and make it available for COPY. - Fixed a long standing bug of all Dos 2.XX compatible FMS'es: Directory reading mode did not cooperate with any other operations that would access the directory, and would invalidate the directory access channel. This is no longer the case now. Additionally, reading the directory sets now the EOF warning flag (Y = 3) correctly right before the EOF. - The STATUS command, as specified by DOS 2.0S and DOS 2.5, was actually quite unuseful as it required a file specification which was never supplied by BASIC. The new implementation returns the status of the last CIO command on the same channel if the channel is open, allowing BASIC for example to access the near-EOF warning return code. Happy Easter! Thomas
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