Rainbow 2.0.2 Atari 400/800XL/130XE/5200 Emulator released

[chris_rainbow]

Hi all,

 

Bug fix so Rainbow can cope with different keyboard layouts around the world.

 

http://www.chrislam.co.uk/rainbow-atari-8bit-emulator.htm

 

Any further keyboard issues please let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

Chris.

[goldenegg]

Do you happen to know if Richard Bannister is planning to update his OS X port to version 2?

[chris_rainbow]

Do you happen to know if Richard Bannister is planning to update his OS X port to version 2?

 

If Richard is interested then I don't see why not. The difficulty is choosing at which point to hand over the code, as I imagine there will be some significant changes in coming months.

[Vaughan]

Hm, on the surface this looks good. I use Altirra all the time, and alternative is always appreciated.

 

I do have a couple issues though. At the moment I can't get it to detect my gamepad at all (works fine in Altirra and Mame). Also, my keyboard didn't work (couldn't start Donkey Kong).

 

Any ideas? This is a Windows 2003 Server - basically an XP system. I downloaded the C++ runtimes etc.

[Vaughan]

Okay, the keyboard seems fine actually, I had just assumed it would work the same as Altirra (same keys).

 

Still no gamepad though.

[Vaughan]

Reboot seems to have fixed it. Maybe it was the updates I'd done to the system..... anyway - working now.

 

Next problem - anyone found that full screen (the only way i like to play emulators) there is an extreme speed degradation? In a window speed is good.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Vaughan

[chris_rainbow]

Rainbow runs slower with the larger display options as obviously more pixels need to be drawn by Windows, and time is needed to stretch the bitmap. My laptop is 5 years old and can run full screen flat-out at twice normal Atari speed.

[Vaughan]

I admit, my computer at home is basically rubbish (Pentium 4, 1.8Ghz, 1.5GB of RAM). Altirra runs great full screen though.

 

Just an observation.

[phaeron]

I'm betting the difference is the OS. I ran a trace on Rainbow, and it is using GDI StretchDIBits() to render images. Stretching an image through StretchDIBits() is very slow on versions of Windows prior to Vista (with WDDM), and you can run an order of magnitude faster simply by just doing the stretch yourself into a DIB and then doing an unscaled blit from that. Altirra avoids this bottleneck because it defaults to Direct3D.

[Vaughan]

Thanks for the explanation, although I can't fix it, myself, it at least prevents me from tinkering trying to make it work.

[chris_rainbow]

There were plans to moved to Directdraw but with the passage of time and faster computers this is unlikely to happen.