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Altirra 1.3 final released.


Mclaneinc

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http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html

 

The changes since the initial 1.2 release are HUGE, a look at the READ.ME text file is a MUST, what started out as a project has turned into a fully fledged emulator.

 

And do have a read as you might find a surprise or 2 :)

Edited by Mclaneinc
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http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html

 

The changes since the initial 1.2 release are HUGE, a look at the READ.ME text file is a MUST, what started out as a project has turned into a fully fledged emulator.

 

And do have a read as you might find a surprise or 2 :)

 

Now that is one whole heap of new changes! Excellent. Thank you for the support for the Atari 8 bit. I remember looking at VirtualDub many years ago and didn't know that the talented coder behind it was going to move onto the Atari 8 bit. I found that out a few months ago.

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http://www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html

 

The changes since the initial 1.2 release are HUGE, a look at the READ.ME text file is a MUST, what started out as a project has turned into a fully fledged emulator.

 

And do have a read as you might find a surprise or 2 :)

 

Now that is one whole heap of new changes! Excellent. Thank you for the support for the Atari 8 bit. I remember looking at VirtualDub many years ago and didn't know that the talented coder behind it was going to move onto the Atari 8 bit. I found that out a few months ago.

 

 

Hi, just to note, I'm not Phaeron / Avery, I'm just an old Atari enthusiast some on here know who happens to keep a close eye on Altirra / bug test it. Since my beloved Atari800win left the building I've been watching this emu go bit by bit upwards.

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Fantastic. This is well on the way to being my favourite Windows emulator. Can't use it for development work, however, until the key mappings are completed. It's a bugbear with many emulators, and easily overlooked: many shift+ctrl key combinations (including shift+ctrl+number key/up and down cursor) aren't implemented, thus many features of The Last Word don't work. There was lots of work done recently on getting the keymappings right in Atari800MacX, so it's not an uncommon failing. LW is the first thing I use to test any emulator, so this cropped up straight away.

 

Other than that small niggle, brilliant work. Nice to see an emulator which uses the Windows UI to its best effect. The many improvements in this version make it a terrific step forward! :)

 

...also just noticed the auto repeat on the cursor keys isn't working properly.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Looks good... I'm going to have to give it a good look over.

 

I've thrown a LOT of stuff at it over the last few months and I have to say I am well pleased, certainly like some it's my first emulator of choice. What really drew me to it was that it made genuine loading noises, sad I know but it really helps with the feel and happily transports me back to the days of going to Silica shop before the XL's were out.

 

Real nice simple thing that adds to the charm...

 

It's also nice to see PRO images finally being ran by an emulator and well as the already emulated VAPI support.

 

Phaeron has spent a fantastic lot of time on it even tho he's snowed under with Virtual Dub.

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Fantastic. This is well on the way to being my favourite Windows emulator. Can't use it for development work, however, until the key mappings are completed. It's a bugbear with many emulators, and easily overlooked: many shift+ctrl key combinations (including shift+ctrl+number key/up and down cursor) aren't implemented, thus many features of The Last Word don't work. There was lots of work done recently on getting the keymappings right in Atari800MacX, so it's not an uncommon failing. LW is the first thing I use to test any emulator, so this cropped up straight away.

 

Other than that small niggle, brilliant work. Nice to see an emulator which uses the Windows UI to its best effect. The many improvements in this version make it a terrific step forward! :)

 

...also just noticed the auto repeat on the cursor keys isn't working properly.

 

Yes, the key mappings are basic, things like the HELP key don't seem to exist but I know Phaeron is plugging the emulation holes one by one at the moment I'm over the moon with it, I've nicely integrated it into Directory Opus on the PC for various configs and gaming wise it seems to hold it's own as far as I can see.

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Fantastic. This is well on the way to being my favourite Windows emulator. Can't use it for development work, however, until the key mappings are completed. It's a bugbear with many emulators, and easily overlooked: many shift+ctrl key combinations (including shift+ctrl+number key/up and down cursor) aren't implemented, thus many features of The Last Word don't work. There was lots of work done recently on getting the keymappings right in Atari800MacX, so it's not an uncommon failing. LW is the first thing I use to test any emulator, so this cropped up straight away.

 

Other than that small niggle, brilliant work. Nice to see an emulator which uses the Windows UI to its best effect. The many improvements in this version make it a terrific step forward! :)

 

...also just noticed the auto repeat on the cursor keys isn't working properly.

 

Yes, the key mappings are basic, things like the HELP key don't seem to exist but I know Phaeron is plugging the emulation holes one by one at the moment I'm over the moon with it, I've nicely integrated it into Directory Opus on the PC for various configs and gaming wise it seems to hold it's own as far as I can see.

I agree... I'm not a gamer but I understand these things are used for gaming 99% of the time and in that respect and many others Altirra holds its own very well indeed.

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Hi, just to note, I'm not Phaeron / Avery, I'm just an old Atari enthusiast some on here know who happens to keep a close eye on Altirra / bug test it. Since my beloved Atari800win left the building I've been watching this emu go bit by bit upwards.

 

Ahh, I see, thanks for letting me know!

 

I've had a little play around with this and from what I can tell, this seems like the best emulator on the Atari for debugging/development purposes. I'm going to switch my development platform from Atari800Win to this now.

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Hi, just to note, I'm not Phaeron / Avery, I'm just an old Atari enthusiast some on here know who happens to keep a close eye on Altirra / bug test it. Since my beloved Atari800win left the building I've been watching this emu go bit by bit upwards.

 

Ahh, I see, thanks for letting me know!

 

I've had a little play around with this and from what I can tell, this seems like the best emulator on the Atari for debugging/development purposes. I'm going to switch my development platform from Atari800Win to this now.

 

As a non dev person I can't vouch for that side too well, as has been mentioned there are some key related issues but I can't see them being the be all and end all, as a test platform it should be fine as everything seems to be plugged in OS wise?

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As a non dev person I can't vouch for that side too well, as has been mentioned there are some key related issues but I can't see them being the be all and end all, as a test platform it should be fine as everything seems to be plugged in OS wise?

It very much depends on what you're testing on it. :) The debugging tools are great: I'll consider the switch from Atari800WinPlus if the keyboard is accurately emulated in a future release.

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I installed it and it looks real good... however, the first program I ran on it bombed... This is a utility I wrote earlier this year which runs fine on a800winplus and real hardware... MMG compiled Atari Basic...

 

post-8623-125216453439_thumb.jpg

 

What kernel are you using? This looks like you're running on the internal HLE kernel, which is not so good at console I/O yet. If so, you should have much better luck with a real XL kernel ROM image.

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Great to see such a big update to this emulator. Thanks for this Avery. Are you intending to keep it's development ongoing? We certainly need further developed emulation of the A8 range as the others we have available to date are still short of the mark.

 

I'll throw some stuff at this now and see how it handles with the latest updates.

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Great to see such a big update to this emulator. Thanks for this Avery. Are you intending to keep it's development ongoing? We certainly need further developed emulation of the A8 range as the others we have available to date are still short of the mark.

 

Haven't found a reason to stop yet. :)

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I installed it and it looks real good... however, the first program I ran on it bombed... This is a utility I wrote earlier this year which runs fine on a800winplus and real hardware... MMG compiled Atari Basic...

 

post-8623-125216453439_thumb.jpg

 

What kernel are you using? This looks like you're running on the internal HLE kernel, which is not so good at console I/O yet. If so, you should have much better luck with a real XL kernel ROM image.

 

I put the ROMS in the altirra folder...

 

post-8623-125218392629_thumb.jpg

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I installed it and it looks real good... however, the first program I ran on it bombed... This is a utility I wrote earlier this year which runs fine on a800winplus and real hardware... MMG compiled Atari Basic...

 

What kernel are you using? This looks like you're running on the internal HLE kernel, which is not so good at console I/O yet. If so, you should have much better luck with a real XL kernel ROM image.

 

I put the ROMS in the altirra folder...

 

Do you have a link to the program in question?

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Fantastic. This is well on the way to being my favourite Windows emulator. Can't use it for development work, however, until the key mappings are completed. It's a bugbear with many emulators, and easily overlooked: many shift+ctrl key combinations (including shift+ctrl+number key/up and down cursor) aren't implemented, thus many features of The Last Word don't work. There was lots of work done recently on getting the keymappings right in Atari800MacX, so it's not an uncommon failing. LW is the first thing I use to test any emulator, so this cropped up straight away.

 

Other than that small niggle, brilliant work. Nice to see an emulator which uses the Windows UI to its best effect. The many improvements in this version make it a terrific step forward! :)

 

...also just noticed the auto repeat on the cursor keys isn't working properly.

 

This version should have Ctrl+letter/number working and arrow key autorepeat fixed:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.4pre1.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.4pre1-src.zip

 

Things get a bit weird in the keyboard setup because a number of the keys use character mappings instead of raw key mappings (which in theory is nicer to non-US keyboards) and the emulator drives keys off of the key auto-repeat in Windows.

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Great work, I was waiting for this :)

The only thing that I miss right now is the "change palette" options, and it seems to me that the frame rate is a little more unstable than with Atari800Win, something like a lower priority thing, but maybe is just me (I'm testing it on WinXP by the way).

 

One question.. what would you say is the status of the IRQ timers emulation? complete or work in progress? (I am interested in the 1.79Mhz timer interruption and the STIMER behaviors). Thanks!

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One question.. what would you say is the status of the IRQ timers emulation? complete or work in progress? (I am interested in the 1.79Mhz timer interruption and the STIMER behaviors). Thanks!

 

POKEY timers in Altirra are cycle based, and their periods should be exact according to the hardware manual. I had to get this working exactly in order to avoid weird squeaky sounds in some demos. You may encounter incorrect behavior if you do something like strobe STIMER really close to the timer deadline. I also haven't double-checked the exact timing from STIMER to the timer IRQs firing.

 

1.3 supports shifting the 15KHz and 64KHz clocks via bits 0-1 of SKCTL. (This means your code will now break if you aren't properly initializing POKEY.) The delay between when you turn off initialization mode and when the clocks start counting again should be close to the real Atari but probably isn't cycle-exact. I had some trouble determining the exact timing of the 15KHz clock, since there is a non-trivial and surprisingly large delay. The big problem, though, is that Altirra still doesn't exactly emulate the interaction between the 6502 and incoming IRQs, so you can still get slightly different timing when you start doing things like intentionally triggering interrupts on the spot, etc. 1.3 should be closer than 1.2 in that regard, though, because I fixed some of the cases, like executing CLI when the IRQ line is already active.

 

Altirra doesn't currently emulate the bug discussed in the recent epic thread where NMIs are ignored when IRQs or BRK occurs at exactly the right cycle. I didn't want to emulate that bug until I have a very high level of confidence in timer and IRQ timing, as otherwise it could break code.

 

Note that I think there are also a couple of bugs in GTIA timing, which will probably affect what you're doing. I tweaked a couple of things to make demos work, particularly midline PRIOR bit 6-7 changes, but I know of a few cases were mid-screen P/M graphics changes don't quite match the real hardware.

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This version should have Ctrl+letter/number working and arrow key autorepeat fixed:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.4pre1.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.4pre1-src.zip

 

Things get a bit weird in the keyboard setup because a number of the keys use character mappings instead of raw key mappings (which in theory is nicer to non-US keyboards) and the emulator drives keys off of the key auto-repeat in Windows.

Thanks - that works great. :) There are still quite a few keys missing but it's much more useable with the auto-repeat fixed on the arrow keys. I'm aware of how difficult it can be to get the keyboard mappings to work. Many more shift+key combinations still need to be implemented, as well as a few more ctrl+key combinations, but hopefully these will be fixed over time. Great work!

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@Phaeron, hope you didn't mind the Altirra promotion, as you know I'm a real fan of the emu and nag you daily on the blog ;)

 

As for the CDS util, I don't get that error, it runs as it looks from the image on the website?

 

Oh, incase you didn't get the files here's a direct link to the file

 

http://bf.amfband.com/files/hdt_0901.zip

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