New Atari800MacX version 5.3.0

[pedgarcia]

 

The macOS emulator for Atari 8-bit computers has been updated to version 5.3.0. Among the many changes and improvements, the most notable one is the update of the emulator core, using Atari800 4.2.

 

The last core update happened more than eight years ago.

 

The UI has also new features that the users were longing for so much time, like continuous scaling of Atari display by simply dragging the window resize handle. You don't have to choose between 2x, 3x or 4x anymore!

 

This is the full changelog:

 

• Add continuous scaling of Atari display by simply dragging the window resize handle.
• Added ability to set scaling to integer values only, still by dragging the window resize handle.
• Changed Fullscreen to use true MacOS Fullscreen, with seperate workspace. This elimiinates the need for a Fullscreen GUI, since the normal Mac windows and dialogs work in Fullscreen now.
• Added option to maintain Atari screen aspect ratio in fullsize
• Added 80 column card selection pull down to Media Center
• Add Touch Bar contatining special Atari keys for use on laptops with Touch Bars
• Integrated features from atari800 emulator core, version 4.2, including:
  • Support for new ROM types
  • Added support for AltirraOS 400/800, AltirraOS XL, Altirra 5200 BIOS and Altirra BASIC. This means the emulator will now work out of the box without external ROMs
  • Many core emulator fixes around Pokey, ANTI, GTIA, PIA, and CPU.
  • Removed built-in Basic for 400/800 type machines for more accurate emulation, and removed separate OS A/OS B machine types.

 

Bugs Fixed:

• Fixed copy/paste in Debug Monitor and Sector Editor.
• Removed Drawer from Monitor/GUI Debugger which is deprecated by Apple and was not working in Fullscreen. For now, Debug GUI is always visible, another solution may be available in the next release.
• Fixed issue with Rename in Disk Editor that was introduced in 5.1.0.

 

 

Link: Atari800MacX on Github

 

From: https://vintageisthenewold.com/new-atari800macx-5-3-0-includes-atari800-4-2-core-update/

 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2020 by pedgarcia

[tuf]

So incredibly awesome!

[darwinmac]

It’s great to see the Atari800 core update. 
 

Bob C

[luckybuck]

Sleepless, speechless and all you can think of.

Blowing my mind.

From all five continents plus Antarctica:

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by luckybuck
forgot something

[Marius]

This indeed is pretty cool!

 

I am very pleased to notice that it also still works on 'older' versions of OS X ( I am with Sierra here). Great development, I always loved Atari800Mac. 

[+Ripdubski]

Thanks Mark!  I've been extensively using the new TouchBar support and it make things sooo much easier! Thank you!

 

Heres the TouchBar in action.  

 

Main:

 

Ins/Del/F expanded:

 

[mikesk8]

Thank you! I am a big fan of your application

[tsom]

Awesome! The Touch Bar buttons are the best (finally a good use for the Touch Bar!)

[tsom]

The font scaling seems a little off, though:

[+skr]

And we Germans are comlaining again

 

@FlorianD figured out a problem with Umlauts in folder names. ATRs can´t be mounted, when there is a Umlaut in the folder path. I´ve opened an issue about this in GitHub.

 

Besides that: A W E S O M E! You rock!

[atarimac]

@tsom The font scaling isn't going to be exact with a non-integer scale.   Do you see the issue if you lock scaling to Integral values? (This is set by the "Always Use Integral Window Scaling Factor" checkbox on the Display tab of preferences.

 

@FlorianD and @skr  Did the Umlaut actually work before?   I think that's the one known bug that has been there since 1.0 (on the Known Bugs page of the application help).  We are inheriting that from the atari800 core emulator, since it's using UNIX routines to open files.  All that would have to be abstracted out and replaced with Mac file handling to be able to handle unicode.  (At least that's my memory of it, it was 18 years ago when I looked at it  ).

[tsom]

15 minutes ago, atarimac said:

@tsom The font scaling isn't going to be exact with a non-integer scale.   Do you see the issue if you lock scaling to Integral values? (This is set by the "Always Use Integral Window Scaling Factor" checkbox on the Display tab of preferences.

 

That was it! I was looking for an option to limit the scaling - I missed that checkbox! Thanks!

[atarimac]

@FlorianD and @skr it looks like it's an encoding issue on the Mac side in translating from NSString to char *.  I'll look at it for next release, I think it's just an encoding constant change, since the C lib fopen() on the Mac is now suppose to be able to handle UTF8.  I don't know if it did 18 years ago, or if I just didn't know much about unicode then.   

[dschmidt]

Love the Touch Bar buttons! I tried in vain to get this to work a while back. Totally awesome!!

 

[+bhall408]

I'm having trouble getting lower case to work when emulating an 800XL. Toggling caps-lock on the Mac keyboard has no effect, and can't seem to get the Atari into lower case. This is with either the keyboard on my laptop (MacBook Air) or Mac USB keyboard attached to the same. Mac OS 10.14.6.

 

Oddly, when emulating Atari 800 instead of XL or XE, it is flaky, but I can get it to switch to lower case after a few tries.

 

In both cases, am using the latest version of SpartaDOS X (4.49) in case that makes a difference.

 

Just me?

 

[tsom]

All of a sudden, Atari800MacX 5.3 does not want to load a disk image. Doesn't matter what the format is (Dos 2.5, DOS Xl, etc.) or model I'm emulating (800, 800XL, 130XE), when I try to load a disk image, it crashes with the error 

 

Not sure what happened. Not sure if it helps, but clicking on the Monitor button shows the PC is on page zero somewhere:

[tsom]

17 hours ago, tsom said:

All of a sudden, Atari800MacX 5.3 does not want to load a disk image. Doesn't matter what the format is (Dos 2.5, DOS Xl, etc.) or model I'm emulating (800, 800XL, 130XE), when I try to load a disk image, it crashes...

FWIW, I clicked the "Revert To Default Settings" button and that fixed things. Still unsure what I may have changed to cause the problem.

[+bhall408]

On 9/8/2020 at 5:04 PM, bhall408 said:

Oddly, when emulating Atari 800 instead of XL or XE, it is flaky, but I can get it to switch to lower case after a few tries.

 

In both cases, am using the latest version of SpartaDOS X (4.49) in case that makes a difference.

More info... @pedgarcia

 

Emulating the 800XL, and perhaps in general, what I notice is that I can get caps-lock to register if I switch Atari800MacX between being the foreground app and background app. Do that once or twice and then it picks it up. So perhaps Atari800MacX is only checking the status of the Mac caps-lock on suspend/resume events?

 

[+bhall408]

@pedgarcia

 

Feature request - could the "Atari/Mac Linefeed Translation" option under ATR Disk Edit (cmd-E) be enhanced to *also* translate the tab character between Mac and Atari? That would come in super handy for moving source code back and forth (I use tabs extensively in both ASM and C code).

 

[tsom]

1 hour ago, bhall408 said:

More info... @pedgarcia

 

Emulating the 800XL, and perhaps in general, what I notice is that I can get caps-lock to register if I switch Atari800MacX between being the foreground app and background app. Do that once or twice and then it picks it up. So perhaps Atari800MacX is only checking the status of the Mac caps-lock on suspend/resume events?

 

Was going to say I was having the same problems - trying to get lowercase is problematic.

[+bhall408]

4 minutes ago, tsom said:

Was going to say I was having the same problems - trying to get lowercase is problematic.

Does my trick make a difference for you?

[ivop]

On 8/29/2020 at 1:38 AM, darwinmac said:

It’s great to see the Atari800 core update.

Can you confirm that these now run correctly on Atari800MacX?

[tsom]

20 minutes ago, bhall408 said:

Does my trick make a difference for you?

Switching out of the app and back in didn't seem to make a difference. If I toggle the caps lock key, it doesn't change case. If I hit Shift-Caps Lock, then I can get lowercase by toggling the caps lock (but then the caps lock state is backward of what my keyboard think - lock lite is on, but in lower case).

[tsom]

6 minutes ago, ivop said:

Can you confirm that these now run correctly on Atari800MacX?

I grabbed a couple at random and they seem to work for me. Songs were playing with 3 flashing bars. I assume that's correct.

[ivop]

Just now, tsom said:

I grabbed a couple at random and they seem to work for me. Songs were playing with 3 flashing bars. I assume that's correct.

Yep, that's correct. It's three players of which the width changes by volume of the channel. Not much more CPU time left to do something more fancy   But they did not work on the old Atari800MacX and vanilla atari800. They didn't play at all, but now they do!