News

• it supports standard and extended .DSK image files, as well as using a real disk in the PC floppy drive (the latter is not very useful in practice, since it is limited to standard PC format DD (720K) disks, which are not supported by AMSDOS)
• 4 drives can be emulated (although AMSDOS will only use 2)
• there is (not perfect) emulation of the timing of disk rotation, stepping, head (un)load, and data transfers; however, this may not work if the image file includes a track format that is not possible on a real DD disk (~6250 bytes per track)
• the FORMAT TRACK (0x0D) command is unimplemented - it will always report a write protect error
• the floppy drive emulation has not been tested extensively yet, so there may be problems with unusual disk formats, rarely used FDC commands and parameters, and some copy protections
• reading the I/O ports 80H-9FH in the debugger will return some debugging information about the FDC emulation (see the README file for details)
• changes to the installer/packaging: new machine configuration files have been added that include AMSDOS (the default is now CPC 6128 with AMSDOS), the disk.zip package includes an empty CPC disk image, and on Windows .DSK files can be associated with the emulator

implemented IDE hard disk emulation, with support for up to 4 2 GB image files in raw or VHD format; a 126 MB disk image with 4 FAT12 formatted 31.5 MB partitions is also included for use with the emulator

more accurate Z80, video memory, and NICK I/O port timing; note that this change breaks demo compatibility with previous versions

improved NICK emulation: all possible video modes, including undocumented and “invalid” ones, are now emulated, and some bugs have been fixed as well

a 4-channel 8-bit external DAC is emulated at ports F0h to F3h

it is now possible to load and use epmemcfg format memory configuration files, which allow for avoiding the limitations of the GUI based memory configuration; the file format is documented in README

DAVE sound emulation fixes

the ‘motor on’ bit of WD177x is emulated (the RockDigi demo now runs)

on Windows, native file selection dialogs are also used in tapeedit.exe

machine configurations generated by makecfg automatically enable or disable the ‘virtual file I/O’ setting, depending on whether epfileio.rom is included

the debugger prints more detailed information about syntax and runtime errors in Lua scripts, and there is a new button to insert an empty breakpoint callback function

fixed interlace in single buffered OpenGL mode at quality=0

fixed compile error on Linux when building without SDL, or using old SCons or Lua versions

some other minor bug fixes, and optimizations

Various improvements have been made to the debugger:

• memory read watchpoints can have a type of r or x to break on data or Z80 instruction reads only; the Ignore data reads button has been removed
• new “step” buttons for stepping to the target of any conditional branch instruction (Step into), the 16-bit address at the top of the stack (Return), or any 16-bit address specified by the user (Step to)
• the memory dump, CPU, and I/O register displays include more information now
• in addition to the default hexadecimal format, it is also possible to specify numbers in the monitor in binary (e.g. %1010), octal (12o), and decimal (10l) format
• the Step over button can also be used to skip conditional JP and JR instructions
• fixed the flickering window effect while using the step buttons

Several new GUI keyboard shortcuts have been added; since these shortcuts can only be triggered while the Alt key is pressed, in the default configuration only the right Alt key (and, on Windows, the menu key) are bound to the Enterprise emulation now.

Native file dialogs are used instead of FLTK on Windows.

Some improvements have been made to the installer:

many new ROM files and machine configurations are installed

on Windows, it is possible to associate snapshot and demo files with the emulator

ROM images are downloaded as a single compressed archive, rather than separate uncompressed .rom files, for faster installation

the Win32 emulator executable has an icon and includes file information now

FILE: is the default device on startup when using the epfileio.rom extension.

Floppy drive emulation improvements: implemented the ‘write track’ command (formatting), image file I/O is buffered for improved performance when using real disks, and a few emulation bugs have been fixed.

In the memory configuration, ROM files can also be loaded to segments 40h to 43h.

Video display improvements and bug fixes; the screen is no longer blanked while the emulator is paused; interlace effect is also displayed at lower quality settings (1 and 2) in OpenGL mode.

Some NICK emulation fixes (note: the timing of demos recorded with older emulator versions may possibly be incorrect).

If there is an error initializing the display in OpenGL mode on Linux, the emulator will automatically switch the buffering mode, or fall back to software video to fix the problem.

Screenshots are saved in 256 color RLE compressed BMP format now, instead of TGA.

A few minor user interface improvements in the display, sound, and disk configuration windows.

The process priority of the emulator can be set in the menu (this is currently only implemented on Windows).

If not specified by the user, the extension is automatically added to file names by the file dialogs when saving files.

New ‘Gtk+’ GUI theme (-colorscheme 3).

Various minor bug fixes.