Altirra w/VBXE emulation

[Mclaneinc]

@Phaeron, are there any compatibility disadvantages to always having Vbxe always ticked?

Edited December 28, 2009 by Mclaneinc

[Rybags]

Looking good... TBH first chance I've got to check it out for a while.

 

Just one thing I've quickly noticed, re warmstart of VBXE:

 

Any write to $D080-D0FF should "warmstart" VBXE, that's not currently happening, ie you press Reset and colourmap will still be active. Since the normal OS cold/warmstart zeroes all the legacy $Dxxx areas, it happens automatically on a real machine.

[drac030]

I am trying to trace the odd behaviour of the S2 driver. Hence the question, phaeron: which core type is emulated? A or R?

Edited December 28, 2009 by drac030

[Heaven/TQA]

http://madteam.atari8.info/index.php?prod=vbxe

 

Mission Shark + VBXE colors map$

Version with the new title is attached.

 

crashes on AtariMac Emulator... VBXE enhanced games should print out when hardware is not available...

[Heaven/TQA]

before I spend hours of debugging but which blitter functions are not implemented yet?

[drac030]

phaeron: there is some small problem with handling the "H:" device. Once cold booted, it is there, but a warm start removes it

[candle]

heaven, mission shark should not be released as it is, since it is not finnished at all

[Heaven/TQA]

@candle...

 

ah, ok... just wanted to see Tezz title screen...

[phaeron]

I am trying to trace the odd behaviour of the S2 driver. Hence the question, phaeron: which core type is emulated? A or R?

 

Whichever one overlaps RAMBO memory with RAM at VBXE $40000-7FFFF.

[phaeron]

@Phaeron, are there any compatibility disadvantages to always having Vbxe always ticked?

 

Mostly, no -- the ANTIC and GTIA cores are still the same. The main thing that doesn't work is NTSC artifacting, since the NTSC artifact engine can't handle the 14MHz output from the VBXE back-end.

 

You don't want to enable VBXE all the time, though, because the VBXE renderer is much slower than the regular GTIA renderer. It slows down the emulator to about half speed. Without optimizations, this will get worse when attribute map collision is implemented.

[phaeron]

before I spend hours of debugging but which blitter functions are not implemented yet?

 

All of them: Src/dest X/Y step, and/xor mask, collision mask, zoom, patterns, modes 0-6, IRQ, and blit list.

 

Whether they work is TBD....

[Heaven/TQA]

so NO blitter support yet?

[drac030]

I am trying to trace the odd behaviour of the S2 driver. Hence the question, phaeron: which core type is emulated? A or R?

 

Whichever one overlaps RAMBO memory with RAM at VBXE $40000-7FFFF.

 

So this is R. News for you: the MEMAC B banks are mapped improperly onto RAMBO banks. This is why S2 doesn't work (it overwrites SDX code residing in an ext bank) and this is why SysInfo identifies the core (improperly) as "A". They should correspond one to another the following way:

 

MEMAC B $10 $11 $12 $13 $14 $15 $16 $17 $18 $19 $1A $1B $1C $1D $1E $1F
PORTB 	$EF $EB $E7 $E3 $CF $CB $C7 $C3 $AF $AB $A7 $A3 $8F $8B $87 $83

Edited December 28, 2009 by drac030

[phaeron]

so NO blitter support yet?

 

Bah, you know what I mean.

[phaeron]

Changes:

 

Phaeron, your emulator is my #1, mostly because of internal debugger

Do you plan to add an option to load symbols for the running program? It would be very useful.

The second question/feature request is about palette files. Do you plan to support it?

 

I can't support palette files, because the artifacting engine relies on knowing the luma/chroma separation of the palette. That's why I added the Adjust Colors dialog instead.

[phaeron]

phaeron: there is some small problem with handling the "H:" device. Once cold booted, it is there, but a warm start removes it

 

Try this version... should fix H: on warm reset and also the VBXE <-> RAMBO mapping:

 

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.5-test14.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.5-test14-src.zip

[dwhyte]

Try this version... should fix H: on warm reset and also the VBXE <-> RAMBO mapping:

 

You are a machine, phaeron! How can you crank out these revisions and fixes faster than any of the other A8 emulator maintainers? I think your work is going to become the A8 emulator of choice very soon!!! Keep up the awesome work!

[drac030]

Try this version...

 

It is my pleasure to report, that "this version" works:

 

(SDX 4.42d VBXE 80-column console)

[+bf2k+]

Try this version...

 

It is my pleasure to report, that "this version" works:

 

 

(SDX 4.42d VBXE 80-column console)

 

Is that the 80-col mode built-in SDX? Should I be able to get it to look that way using 4.42?

[Rybags]

That appears to be VBXE in text mode. Check the "M" characters - usually a dead giveaway of 320 pixel 80 column is the fact that they're only 3 pixels wide and look nearly the same as an "H".

[dwhyte]

Is that the 80-col mode built-in SDX? Should I be able to get it to look that way using 4.42?

 

Naw... You can tell by the snot-green text. It's the VBXE 80 column SDX driver you see in that screenshot.

[candle]

Cabel: sure You can, just go to Draco's web page and download screen handler for vbxe

[+Roydea6]

Hi

 

Does this emulator support Rtime8 cart. SDX needs the jiffy.sys to make my program work. But my config.sys is set to initialize rtime8.sys. I know I can set up multiboot folder with SDX 4.42 but I would prefer not.

 

Thanks,

[flashjazzcat]

Try this version...

 

It is my pleasure to report, that "this version" works:

 

(SDX 4.42d VBXE 80-column console)

Looks great! I'm transplanting VBXE this morning, then it'll be time for some coding...

[phaeron]

Does this emulator support Rtime8 cart. SDX needs the jiffy.sys to make my program work. But my config.sys is set to initialize rtime8.sys. I know I can set up multiboot folder with SDX 4.42 but I would prefer not.

 

Thanks,

 

It does now:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.5-test15.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-1.5-test15-src.zip

 

(Would have been easier to implement were it not for the @ SDX detection routine writing to the week counter.)

 

I also added support for an alternate burst I/O mode that works with the SDX disk routine... use with caution, though. It's much faster and safer to use DEVICE SIO /A in your CONFIG.SYS with SIO acceleration enabled.