Hatari version 1.2.0

[thothy]

Hello everybody!

I just released Hatari version 1.2.0. Unfortunately the file server of
berlios.de seems currently to be down, so I decided to put the release
on Sourceforge.net for the last time:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=655966

Currently, there is only the source code release available. Binaries will be published during the next days...

Enjoy,
Thomas

[alexh]

What's the changelog?

[npomarede]

What's the changelog?

The release was mainly done due to a bug that could overwrite a disk image (if you inserted disk2 in drive A for example, modifications to disk1 could be written to disk2 instead of being flushed to disk1 when it was ejected).

Appart from that, here's the part from the release note :

- MIDI input supported in addition to output; --midi option is now
replaced with separate --midi-in and --midi-out options
- Support for STE hardware horizontal scrolling in medium res
- Make the FDC Read Address command always return success, even if
we don't really return the correct bytes for now (fixes a few game loaders)
- Improved shadow register when writing to the YM2149 (fixes X-Out music)
- Cleaner blitter code with improved timings
- Emulation of interrupts jitter for HBL and VBL + improved timing accuracy
- Improve color alignment with the shifter (for spectrum512 like images)
- Fix to the fire button detection reported in some games
- Added IDE hard disk emulation


Nicolas

[alexh]

Yo Mr.Styckx nice to see you again. I still use MYST almost every day!

[npomarede]

Yo Mr.Styckx nice to see you again. I still use MYST almost every day!

Well, I can't say I do But I'm glad some people still use it ; perhaps one day I will have time to release everything (sources, data) for those that could be interested (including a few non released tunes that are sitting on my HD)

Nicolas

[alexh]

I use it with Deliplayer on the PC and there are some MYST tracks in my Playlist.

Sound quality is pretty good. I think WinJAM + SNDH files might give better results but I just want to use one player for everything.

[thothy]

Windows and Mac OS X binaries are now available, too:

http://developer.berlios.de/project/sho ... e_id=15721

[alexh]

What's the general direction of Hatari going? Is accurate STe compatibility the main goal?

Or does the work usually take a "what ever takes my interest" sort of direction?

How close is Hatari to say STeeM or SainT? (which I understand are limited to Windows platform)

[Desty]

Works quite well so far with the STOT games for me, at least Not much of a demo man, so I haven't tested those... so I guess I haven't used much of the STe features.

[npomarede]

What's the general direction of Hatari going? Is accurate STe compatibility the main goal?

Or does the work usually take a "what ever takes my interest" sort of direction?

How close is Hatari to say STeeM or SainT? (which I understand are limited to Windows platform)

Hard to tell ; the final goal is of course to achieve perfect compatibility at least with STF and STE mode, and especially without using "patches" as in Steem. We really want to have a generic emulation without those kind of special cases.
Falcon mode is also a work in progress, but emulating all its functionnalities might take longer.

I can't really compare with Saint, as there's no linux version and it doesn't work correctly under Wine on linux.

I would say that thanks to uae cpu core, hatari has a very solid base to emulate the 68000 ; Saint and perhaps Steem too are using more "hand made" cpu core, sometimes with lots of hard coded asm, which makes it less portable and perhaps harder to evolve if needed (for example, Hatari is the only emulator that support unpatched Transbeauce II / Phaleon heavy cpu protection).

Steem certainly has some better blitter cycle accuracy, but thanks to recent work by Tobé Hatari is really closing the gap on this and I'm sure we will soon support demo that steem doesn't run (RGBeast fullscreen plasma for example).

I think Hatari also support better video tricks, even if this makes only a little difference with Steem as only a few very old demos are impacted (support 0 byte line, or enchanted land "full" right border).

Sound seems better under Hatari too ; the YM sound engine was rewritten with great care and under certain STE demos, Steem is really sounding wrong (Hi Fidelity by Aura if I recall correctly).

Hatari has a mode to support IKBD reprogramming (as in Transbeauce II menu or Froggies over the fence) ; this is not as generic as a real 6301 emulator in Saint, but this does the job (Steem doesn't support this)

One area where Hatari really lacks compatibility is regarding FDC emulation. The availability of the Pasti library for Steem and Saint can really make a difference when running protected games or less common disk format. As Ijor made a huge work on this, I don't think we will put effort on this ourselves, we'd better wait for Ijor to have time to port his work to open source.

Hatari/Steem both support hard disk mode on the host's filesystem, which Saint doesn't.

Also Steem has a very nice debug mode, even if that's more developper oriented.

I think that one of the really important point of Hatari is that it's open source ; so any "old demo coder" out there can come and look at the source and try to fix some parts (STE sound mixing, dsp emulation, FDC, ...).
Hatari development is really an open process with active developers and port on many platforms, not just intel cpu.

So, If you want to see Hatari improve, just throw us whatever bug you find and they're likely to be fixed in a next version.


Nicolas

[alexh]

I would say that thanks to uae cpu core, hatari has a very solid base to emulate the 68000

Does the UAE CPU core offer the cycle accuracy you need for demos?

I like that the GUI is also portable being written in SDL

[npomarede]

I would say that thanks to uae cpu core, hatari has a very solid base to emulate the 68000

Does the UAE CPU core offer the cycle accuracy you need for demos?

I like that the GUI is also portable being written in SDL

Yes, uae core supports cycle accurate emulation (a few cases where wrong when compared with an ST instead of an Amiga, but it is quite easy to modify uae cpu core to fit your needs). This way with some extra "glue" overscan and similar effects can work under Hatari.

Uae cpu core only supports total number of cycles per instruction ; one item in the todo list is to use Winuae cpu core, which amongst other things supports "sub cycle" in each instruction. This is similar to the prefetch article by Ijor and allows to know at which cycle (during for example a 20 cycles instruction) a read or a write is really effective. This would simplify some heuristics in Hatari that I used to support correct overscan timings.

Nicolas

[alexh]

I understand what you mean.

Didn't Ijor explain a problem that had bugged the original author of WinSTon, that on the real 68k some instructions vary their timing relative to their surrounding instructions? Or is this the same thing?

[npomarede]

I understand what you mean.

Didn't Ijor explain a problem that had bugged the original author of WinSTon, that on the real 68k some instructions vary their timing relative to their surrounding instructions? Or is this the same thing?

Yes, this is "instruction pairing", but that's yet another problem in Hatari. Using uae cpu core, this is supported by creating a list of all known instructions that can pair.

Another advantage of winuae cpu core is that by emulating the internal prefetching mechanism of the 68000, with some extra work we could have "automatic pairing" detection.

Only problem is that replacing a cpu core by another one, even if similar, can lead to a lot of regressions.

Nicolas

[thothy]

Well said, Nicolas. I have hardly anything to add. I just want to stress the Falcon emulation, too. Neither Steem nor Saint emulate the Falcon. Aranym does, but has a different goal, providing rather a next-generation virtual machine for GEM applications than a cycle-accurate emulation. When you want to run Falcon games or demos, Hatari is the only promising candidate, I think, though there is still a lot to do until it gets really, really usable for this job.

[npomarede]

Well said, Nicolas. I have hardly anything to add. I just want to stress the Falcon emulation, too. Neither Steem nor Saint emulate the Falcon. Aranym does, but has a different goal, providing rather a next-generation virtual machine for GEM applications than a cycle-accurate emulation. When you want to run Falcon games or demos, Hatari is the only promising candidate, I think, though there is still a lot to do until it gets really, really usable for this job.

In fact, let's not be shy, Hatari is just meant to be the best 68000 based Atari emulator. Period

[simonsunnyboy]

Don't forget to add "open source" to best 68000 Atari emulator ^^

[ppera]

Great improvements ! IDE emulation works well, even partitioning (with my PRG). H-blank emulation is good in games, what I tested.