Jump to content
IGNORED

Altirra 3.20 released


phaeron

Recommended Posts

Thank you for the monochrome monitor (green/amber) option! No other colours, ok. But maybe pure black & white too?

 

For the stereo/mono, it's just that I'm often surprised at the computer with my headphones, when I was doing something else and then I play my old favourite Atari games; suddenly all sounds are in L only. I go to my sound card settings and change that. I was hoping to find in Altirra, maybe, a drop down menu option, easily accessible to route L to both L & R for simplicity.

 

Again, I'm very happy to see a new Altirra version coming, and I'm very grateful for all this work. Altirra IS my very favourite emulator. Thank you for all this!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, ldelsarte said:

Thank you for the monochrome monitor (green/amber) option! No other colours, ok. But maybe pure black & white too?

 

Thank you for the monochrome modes!  Small caveat - scanlines need to be turned off as well as the artifacting!

 

I'll second Idelsarte's request for a b&w mode as well.  When I first purchased my 400 the family didn't have a colour TV so I used an old 13" B&W instead.  It would be fun to see that again!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Philsan said:

I agree with the exception of default overscan mode.

It is "extended" but I think it should be "normal", no standard TV shows extended overscan.

Moreover, some games shows garbage on the sides.

Yes, I agree with this, extended gets set to normal here any time I reset the settings during testing..Maybe a setting to offer a choice of default machine video setting, NTSC is the default but many of us use PAL..A choice at setup may be nice.

 

And yes its simply a matter of profile use but that is complicated for a first time user.

Edited by Mclaneinc
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, ldelsarte said:

For the stereo/mono, it's just that I'm often surprised at the computer with my headphones, when I was doing something else and then I play my old favourite Atari games; suddenly all sounds are in L only. I go to my sound card settings and change that. I was hoping to find in Altirra, maybe, a drop down menu option, easily accessible to route L to both L & R for simplicity.

 

If the Stereo option is ticked then you get stereo, with older non-stereo games playing through the left speaker and drive motor sounds through the right speaker.

 

If you un-tick it then all sounds play through L & R channels equally.

 

228336220.thumb.png.af77965bc5bf786d31f25ae8ee0e5761.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, ldelsarte said:

Thank you for the monochrome monitor (green/amber) option! No other colours, ok. But maybe pure black & white too?

For B/W simulation I just turned down the Saturation Slider to zero. You can also tweak the brightness, contrast, intensity, and gamma, also. Whether it's accurate or realistic IDK, YMMV.

 

 

229113317.png

228922463.png

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Philsan said:

I agree with the exception of default overscan mode.

It is "extended" but I think it should be "normal", no standard TV shows extended overscan.

Moreover, some games shows garbage on the sides.

Sorry, I should clarify -- for this one there are no concerns, I'm just lazy. Will get to it in a future test release.

 

11 hours ago, Keatah said:

For B/W simulation I just turned down the Saturation Slider to zero. You can also tweak the brightness, contrast, intensity, and gamma, also. Whether it's accurate or realistic IDK, YMMV.

Should be reasonably accurate, since that option works by scaling down the color contribution before color correction takes effect. Black and white TVs effectively do the same by ignoring the color subcarrier (imperfect filtering or duty cycle aside). Just not as convenient as a separate option, as you'd have to whack the setting and remember what it was before. Perhaps a more important concern is how white black and white displays actually were -- probably not the same white as #FFFFFF on a modern display. Most of the mono displays with video input that I used were amber or green, but I had a TRS-80 Model 4 that I think had a bluish-white display.

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

One problem I'm seeing is with Altirra and Google Drive. I store all of my Atari files in a folder in Google Drive, and it works when using Altirra at first. But, floppy drives set to R/W will switch to VR/W and cannot be saved, while hard drive images will become unusable with a "File in use" error.

 

I'm assuming this is a Google Drive issue. If I turn off sync while using Altirra I don't have any issues, but thought I would mention it just in case something can be done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One problem I'm seeing is with Altirra and Google Drive. I store all of my Atari files in a folder in Google Drive, and it works when using Altirra at first. But, floppy drives set to R/W will switch to VR/W and cannot be saved, while hard drive images will become unusable with a "File in use" error.
 
I'm assuming this is a Google Drive issue. If I turn off sync while using Altirra I don't have any issues, but thought I would mention it just in case something can be done.
Perhaps it's useful to know that I do the same with Dropbox without problems.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Philsan said:
6 minutes ago, gozar said:
One problem I'm seeing is with Altirra and Google Drive. I store all of my Atari files in a folder in Google Drive, and it works when using Altirra at first. But, floppy drives set to R/W will switch to VR/W and cannot be saved, while hard drive images will become unusable with a "File in use" error.
 
I'm assuming this is a Google Drive issue. If I turn off sync while using Altirra I don't have any issues, but thought I would mention it just in case something can be done.

Perhaps it's useful to know that I do the same with Dropbox without problems.

That is good to know! I'll test Altirra with some files in Dropbox just to make sure it's not something goofy with my machine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Altirra remounts R/W disk images as virtual-R/W if it encounters a file I/O error trying to update the file. This keeps the modified image in memory so you have a chance to resave it somewhere else. You should also see the disk drive indicator blink.

 

I don't have Google Drive at home, but I have used it at work and have seen some rather interesting I/O errors from its mapped drive even with a standard tool like robocopy. A search for issues shows some comments by people that seem to indicate that Google Drive locks files during a sync without using a mechanism like oplocks or shadow copies to allow concurrent access to the file. This is bad ju-ju for applications trying to write to the file as it will cause sharing violation errors during file access. For floppy disk images it might be possible to use a retry loop since the write access is only going to be required during the update, but for hard drive images the file needs to be opened read-write from the beginning and the delay will be too long. I'm not terribly fond of doing workarounds like this, it makes the application I/O logic messy to work around interference for other programs.

 

I should also point out that mounting images read/write on a synced folder is also risky in that Altirra relies on the file not being updated without its knowledge while it is mounted, since it caches the file in memory for reads and does incremental updates to the file for writes. Any updates to the file without the emulator's knowledge will result in a desync between the emulator and the file on disk, and result in corruption of the emulated disk.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please excuse my idiotic error re a first time setup of saying it would be nice to have a choice between pal and ntsc which of course it DOES offer as standard, what I was fumbling to say was that when you run an image off a file type, say an atr, it defaults to launching as NTSC and XL while running Altirra directly boots to the last way it was ran. Maybe it would be nice to have a choice on the video system when booting via a filetype.

 

Just my personal preference..And thinking of the way a first time user may react to the different ways it works...Its not an issue..

Edited by Mclaneinc
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please excuse my idiotic error re a first time setup of saying it would be nice to have a choice between pal and ntsc which of course it DOES offer as standard, what I was fumbling to say was that when you run an image off a file type, say an atr, it defaults to launching as NTSC and XL while running Altirra directly boots to the last way it was ran. Maybe it would be nice to have a choice on the video system when booting via a filetype.

 

Just my personal preference..

This time I don't agree with you at all.

I am used to PAL, so I always use that video standard exceptions apart.

NTSC people always use that video format too, apart for running some PAL only games.

 

Therefore, I think it would be annoying to choose video standard every time.

Moreover, when I program, the compiled program starts with Altirra.

The need to choose video standard every time would be a disaster.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, I didn't mean a per running choice, just the option to say if the machine boots as PAL as a preference or the other way around as a built in option. Hell no, the notion of choosing pal or ntsc on every boot would drive you insane

Edited by Mclaneinc
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Philsan said:

Therefore, I think it would be annoying to choose video standard every time.

Moreover, when I program, the compiled program starts with Altirra.

The need to choose video standard every time would be a disaster.

It is important not to over-engineer emulators. Besides, would a real Atari 8-bit rig do that?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, I didn't mean a per running choice, just the option to say if the machine boots as PAL as a preference or the other way around as a built in option. Hell no, the notion of choosing pal or ntsc on every boot would drive you insane
Ah, OK.

If I am not wrong, if I double click on a file, Altirra starts with the last configuration.
That's OK for me.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, phaeron said:

I don't have Google Drive at home, but I have used it at work and have seen some rather interesting I/O errors from its mapped drive even with a standard tool like robocopy. A search for issues shows some comments by people that seem to indicate that Google Drive locks files during a sync without using a mechanism like oplocks or shadow copies to allow concurrent access to the file. This is bad ju-ju for applications trying to write to the file as it will cause sharing violation errors during file access. For floppy disk images it might be possible to use a retry loop since the write access is only going to be required during the update, but for hard drive images the file needs to be opened read-write from the beginning and the delay will be too long. I'm not terribly fond of doing workarounds like this, it makes the application I/O logic messy to work around interference for other programs.

 

I should also point out that mounting images read/write on a synced folder is also risky in that Altirra relies on the file not being updated without its knowledge while it is mounted, since it caches the file in memory for reads and does incremental updates to the file for writes. Any updates to the file without the emulator's knowledge will result in a desync between the emulator and the file on disk, and result in corruption of the emulated disk.

 

Google Drive for home works differently than if you have Google Drive File Stream in a business setting. The first uses a folder on the local hard drive and syncs all files and folders, the latter maps a drive letter and caches the files you are working on locally. 

 

But, what you've said makes sense, and was what I was assuming. It's no big deal to pause the sync while I'm using Google Drive. :-) Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, Philsan said:

Ah, OK.

If I am not wrong, if I double click on a file, Altirra starts with the last configuration.
That's OK for me.

Reset the settings and now double clicking a file starts with the last settings...Weird...Oh well, it works so I'm happy..I play around with stuff to much, need to get a proper life :)

 

A. Because I seem to break things and B. because I'm making silly false reports.....Its not like I don't have 101 other things to do :)

Edited by Mclaneinc
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Avery, did you ever consider adding "The Pill" emulation just for completeness?

 

Obviously not so far but there's still disks of Pill Menu carts out there...

 

And yes, I know there's other cart emulation that they can be put on, this is just a cosmetic idea to sort of honour the initial way carts were hacked / made run-able as non cart images..

 

Its just one of those random "Altirra supports X" thing that is totally and easily a throw away thing..

 

Something for those freezing cold wet and windy nights with nothing to code idea's....Hold on, where you live you don't get those sorts of nights...Bah, idea scuppered :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a problem when using Altirra64 3.90, test 11 or test 12. It is also affecting me on Altirra64 with version 3.20.

 

When I try to enter the debugger, it hangs for a few seconds and then crashes out.

 

I am on Windows 10, 64-bit, version 1903. Build 18632.418

 

I've also tested the 32 bit version of Altirra and the same issue occurs.

 

It hasn't been an issue for me until now, so I am wondering if the OS is an issue here? I've just tried taking all the Windows updates and this doesn't cure anything.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, snicklin said:

I have a problem when using Altirra64 3.90, test 11 or test 12. It is also affecting me on Altirra64 with version 3.20.

 

When I try to enter the debugger, it hangs for a few seconds and then crashes out.

I'm also experiencing this issue under Windows 8.1. I don't use my main Win 10 PC for dev.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello everyone, 

 

Not sure if this fits here, apologies if not. Have been using Altirra for a couple of years, but never figured out how to do this. I just downloaded the 3.90 build 12 to make sure I am using the most recent version. 

 

I am running a Win10 on Parallels in MacOS, and my keyboard map is Swedish. This means that Shift+4 produces a € instead of $ and would like to remap the keyboard to make Shift+4 on the host keyboard result in $.  

 

I have tried System >Configure System > Keyboard where I copied a cooked keymap to customise, and have tried both setting the emulated Shift+4 to virtual key Shift+4 and Character €; neither works. 

 

What am I doing wrong? 

 

Kind regards, 

Klas

 

Never mind, just figured it out. I'd rather boil my head than admit the simple mistake I made. 

Edited by KlasO
Idiot mistake
Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test13.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test13-src.zip

  • Fixed horizontal position being slightly off when Alt+Shift+clicking in the debugger.
  • Change default overscan setting to Normal.
  • Add H.264 + MP3 recording setting to work around an apparently long-standing and unavoidable bug in the Microsoft AAC Encoder, which introduces random oink errors into the encoded stream. Strangely this bug seems to exist in all versions of Windows that have this encoder (7-10), and has also been reported in SDK samples and OBS Studio. ?
  • Update some video recording error dialogs to new style.
  • Add bluish-white phosphor setting.
  • The 'yr' and 'yw' debugger commands now take ? as the path, too.
  • Add /reset switch to allow for selective settings reset.
On 10/12/2019 at 8:50 AM, Mclaneinc said:

Avery, did you ever consider adding "The Pill" emulation just for completeness?

I'll throw it on the list.

 

15 hours ago, snicklin said:

I have a problem when using Altirra64 3.90, test 11 or test 12. It is also affecting me on Altirra64 with version 3.20.

 

When I try to enter the debugger, it hangs for a few seconds and then crashes out.

 

I am on Windows 10, 64-bit, version 1903. Build 18632.418

 

I've also tested the 32 bit version of Altirra and the same issue occurs.

 

It hasn't been an issue for me until now, so I am wondering if the OS is an issue here? I've just tried taking all the Windows updates and this doesn't cure anything.

Don't think it's OS, as I've upgraded to 18632.418 without seeing this issue. But I'm not exactly sure what might be going on here. It sounds like a crash that is also bypassing the crash handler, which makes it difficult to get info without a debugger. But if it's in the program, then I'm not sure how it would have gone unnoticed for so long until now.

 

Window layouts are one thing that come to mind -- you can try /reset:windowlayouts on 3.90-test13 to nuke the window layouts for both default operation and the debugger and see if that helps. If that doesn't work, launch with /portabletemp to have the emulator launch with clean settings in-memory to see if one of the existing settings might be a problem. If it still crashes, then we can try to fish the crash report out of the Reliability Monitor if Windows Error Reporting is seeing it (View Reliability History in Start search on the latest Windows 10 version).

 

  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...