For everyone who’s waited patiently all month, MAME 0.237 is out
today! As well as the updates to the UI and debugger that we’ve
already announced, there are several updates to the included plugins:
* A brand-new input macro plugin.
* The data plugin can now show text from the Japanese command.dat
file (or a Chinese command.txt file if you rename it to command.dat).
* The location the hiscore support plugin uses to store its data
and configuration has changed. You won’t lose your high scores,
but you need to move the .hi files from the hi folder to the hiscore
folder in your plugin data (homepath) folder.
* The configuration format for the autofire plugin has changed.
Unfortunately, you will need to add your autofire button settings
again.
Interesting machines added this month include a Mexican TRS-80
Color Computer clone, Tronica Thunder Ball (a re-skin of Space
Rescue with a nautical theme), the original version of Pengo that
the widespread bootlegs seem to be based on, the original hardware
revision of the Laser 128 (Apple II clone), and a slightly older
version of Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha for Asia.
Master of multi-memory controllers kmg is still on a roll broadening
NES/Famicom and clone cartridge compatibility. Highlights of the
month include:
* Railway management simulator A Ressha de Ikou.
* Recent NES/Famicom games released by Ancient to promote Gotta
Protectors (Minna de Mamotte Knight). NES development is still
alive over two decades after the last licensed title was released
in 1995.
* The two Korean Brilliant Com (영재컴) edutainment games.
* Some multi-game cartridges featuring the ambitious Titenic game,
inspired by a highly successful James Cameron film.
* Kart Fighter – using the engine from an unlicensed NES port of
Street Fighter II, and unlicensed depictions of the character roster
from Super Mario Kart, this is almost a premonition of Super Smash
Bros. It even features Yoshi’s tail smash, and depicts Kinopio
(Toad) as a bare-knuckle brawler long before the Mii costume was
available for purchase.
* Well-known low-effort Mario-themed hack 7 Grand Dad. PUSH ↑ START
BUTTON. GET ADDITION GAME. AND NOURISH THE BLOOD
Amiga software compatibility has been improved this month, the NEC
PC-6001 family has gained a cartridge software list, and another
batch of Commodore 64 cassettes has been added. An issue was
identified with “fake E7” Apple II cracks that could prevent them
from working if they were written out to disks to use on original
hardware. Although this didn’t prevent them from being used in
MAME, disk images with the issue fixed have been added to the
software list. Over a hundred Apple IIgs cracks have been added,
too.
Since there are no simh releases there are also no release notes to summarize.
The previous snapshot was over 3 years ago: 2018-09-19.
A somewhat controversial change with some people is that simh now
appends a "footer" block to disk image files, containing metadata
(struct simh_disk_footer). ATTACH -r <disk_unit> <filename> will avoid
this but makes the device read-only.
New information from the README.md file:
DO <stdin> Invokes a nested DO command with input from the
running console.
RUNLIMIT Bound simulator execution time
TAR Manipulate file archives
CURL Access URLs from the web
Changes in the built emulator models:
- several new VAX models (vax8200, vaxstation{3100,4000}*, infoserver*)
- several new PDP-10 models (pdp10-{ka,ki,kl})
- new: pdp6
- Intel-Systems: Merge MDS, SDK, OEM simulators into Intel-MDS simulator
The files ka655x.bin and vmb.exe are no longer installed since they are
not required for operation (they are built into the VAX models that use
them), and it is strange to single out these ROM images out of over 30 to
install. LOAD -r can load alternative versions.
The big event of the day is here! MAME 0.236 is ready for your
enjoyment! Sadly, this month marked the passing of Sir Clive
Sinclair, who it could be argued did more to put computers into
the hands of everyday people than anyone. There’s a small update
to MAME’s ZX Spectrum software list in this release.
The effort to dump and preserve protection microcontrollers is
still going well. This month’s additions include Juuouki and Wonder
Planet. Protection simulation has been removed for Wonder Planet
and Space Harrier. Remember, this is a worthy cause that provides
multiple benefits: it improves accuracy by taking guesses out of
emulation, helps people maintain and repair ageing arcade boards,
and simplifies MAME’s code.
MAME’s NEC PC-8001 now supports floppy disks. The PC-8001 and
PC-8801 software lists have been reorganised to match, and a big
batch of items from the Neo Kobe collection have been added. MAME
continues to improve its NES/Famicom cartridge coverage. There are
a whole lot of games you can play now, including Chinese RPGs,
fighting game bootlegs, and pirate multi-game cartridges. Experience
a parallel universe of software of such inconsistent quality that
you can’t stop going down the rabbit hole! Saturn emulation has
seen a few improvements, with several games that didn’t boot
previously reaching playable status this month.
As you might expect, the FM Towns, PC-98 and V.Smile software lists
have been updated as usual. A couple of recently dumped prototypes
have been added to the SNES and Game Boy software lists. The
SpongeBob SquarePants Jellyfish Dodge game has been dumped and
emulated, and a Korean version of Sotsugyo Shousho known as Jor-eop
Jeungmyeongseo has been found. More pleasant surprises include
working emulation for the IDE protection dongle included in Killer
Instinct 2 upgrade kit, and some fixes for Atari 8-bit home computers
using the ANTIC video chip.
For people with more exotic tastes, MAME has added its oldest
working software list additions: Munching Squares and Punchy for
the MIT TX-0. There’s also a new disassembler for the DEC VAX
architecture. In more mundane news, you can now reduce the
proliferation of duplicate ROM sets for families of similar keyboards
and other devices.
----
r6572 | debug | 2021-08-29 17:53:05 +0100 (Sun, 29 Aug 2021) | 1 line
The ARM "permanently undefined" instructions now result in an und exception
(patch from Nick Hudson).
----
r6573 | debug | 2021-08-29 18:02:18 +0100 (Sun, 29 Aug 2021) | 1 line
Storing to memory is not allowed until the CPU has initialized completely; this
code was for ARM OpenFirmware, which is not currently in use by any machine.
----
r6576 | debug | 2021-08-30 10:23:38 +0100 (Mon, 30 Aug 2021) | 1 line
Fix for ARM carry flag update for some instructions (patch from Nick Hudson).
Also updating the NetBSD/cats installation instructions to 9.2.
What’s in store with MAME 0.235? First of all, the lost unencrypted
version of Rafflesia has resurfaced, ending a long saga! A genuine
copy of Bubble Buster, an early North American version of Puzzle
Bobble, has been found, and a prototype of Tecfri’s Sauro known as
Sea Wolf has been dumped. This release includes an update to BGFX
and fixes for the long-standing issues with YUV decoding, so
LaserDisc games can be played with BGFX shaders.
Konami Viper emulation now has sound support thanks to Windy Fairy,
and a big batch of unlicensed multi-game cartridges for NES/Famicom
are now playable. As usual, the Apple II, FM Towns and PC-98 software
lists have been updated with the latest dumps.
* Add workaround for NetBSD/amd64. Not tested under other LP64PLATFORMS
and OSes.
* Include some header files to resolve implicit uses.
* Fix some warinigs.
* 6.1.0 release has NetBSD NVMM support.
* Fix NetBSD NVMM compile errors.
* Remove integrated Alpha patches.
Changelog:
Highlights include:
* block: support for changing block node options after creation via
'blockdev-reopen' QMP command
* Crypto: more performant backend recommendations and improved documentation
* I2C: emulation support for I2C muxes (pca9546, pca9548) and PMBus
* TCG Plugins: now enabled by default, with new execlog and cache modelling
plugins.
* ARM: new board support for Aspeed (rainier-bmc, quanta-q7l1), npcm7xx
(quanta-gbs-bmc), and Cortex-M3 (stm32vldiscovery) based machines
* ARM: Aspeed support of Hash and Crypto Engine
* ARM: emulation support for SVE2 (including bfloat16), integer matrix
multiply accumulate operations, TLB invalidate in Outer Shareable domain,
TLB range invalidate, and more.
* PowerPC: pseries: support for detecting hotplug failures in newer guests
* PowerPC: pseries: increased maximum CPU count
* PowerPC: pseries: emulation support for some POWER10 prefixed instructions
* PowerPC: new board support for Genesi/bPlan Pegasos II (pegasos2)
* RISC-V: updates to OpenTitan platform support, including OpenTitan timer
* RISC-V: support for virtio-vga
* RISC-V: documentation improvements and general code cleanups/fixes
* s390: emulation support for the vector-enhancements facility
* s390: support for gen16 CPU models
* x86: new Intel CPU model versions with support for XSAVES instruction
* x86: added ACPI based PCI hotplug support for Q35 machine (now the default)
* x86: improvements to emulation of AMD virtualization extensions
* and lots more...
changes:
All platforms:
BIOS support.
3D glasses support (choose eye).
Janggun mapper.
Fix incorrect region detection.
Many performance improvements.
Several bug fixes.
Windows , Linux and Mac (desktop):
Fullscreen.
Multi-line cheat input to add multiple cheats in batch.
BSD support.
Debugger: go-to address, double click in jumps, back, memory breakpoints.
RetroArch (libretro):
Apple TV
macOS ARM
OpenDingux
All platforms:
GBA mode.
Bootrom support.
Many performance improvements.
Several bug fixes.
Windows , Linux and Mac (desktop):
Fullscreen.
Multi-line cheat input to add multiple cheats in batch.
BSD support.
5 custom palettes.
Debugger: go-to address, double click in jumps, back, memory breakpoints.
RetroArch (libretro):
Apple TV
macOS ARM
OpenDingux
Version 0.14.5
This version is backwards compatible with save states from SameBoy 0.11.x
and newer, as well as save states from any BESS compliant emulator.
Outside of macOS, this version is identical to 0.14.4 other than the
version number.
Bug Fixes
* Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented opening GBS files
Version 0.14.4
This version is backwards compatible with save states from SameBoy 0.11.x
and newer, as well as save states from any BESS compliant emulator
New/Improved Features
* GBS support updated to support common non-standard formats, as well as
ugetab’s GBS extensions
* SameBoy is now better categorized on Linux desktops
* Improved support for running without OpenGL in the SDL frontend, added
command-line flag to disable OpenGL
* SameBoy will now attempt to load .snX save states (used by other
emulators such as BGB) if a .sX save state is not found
* The Cocoa and SDL frontends now include an optional speedrun-friendly
OSD
* The SDL frontend now supports the -s/–stop-debugger command line flag,
which starts SameBoy with a stopped debugged on the first instruction
* A new realistic low contrast color correction mode, “Harsh Reality”,
was added
* Improved the ticks debugger command with more detailed output
* Improved warnings when entering PPU or APU odd-modes
* The libretro frontend has been updated to the newer options API, which
majorly improves core option screens in RetroArch and other libretro
interfaces
Accuracy Improvements/Fixes
* Improved accuracy of RTC latching
* Fixed a bug that prevented STAT interrupt blocking from functioning
correctly in the transition to VBlank while the OAM interrupt was
disabled
* Disabled an attempt to improve audio accuracy that resulted in audio
regressions in several games
* Improved T-cycle accuracy of VBlank
* Major improvements to emulation of the STOP instruction and speed
switching
* MBC5’s RAM enable register is now correctly emulated as an 8-bit
register
* Improvements to several edge cases of the OAM corruption bug
* Fixed an issue where several DMG games would boot with incorrect
palettes when using SameBoy’s built-in boot ROMs
Bug Fixes
* Fixed a bug where the ‘O’ key could not be mapped in the SDL frontend
Misc Internal Changes
* The GBS APIs now allow loading from a buffer
* Redundant MBC data removed from BESS save states
Version 0.14.3
This version is backwards compatible with save states from SameBoy 0.11.x
and newer, as well as save states from any BESS compliant emulator
New/Improved Features
* GBS APIs available in the core
* Support for emulation of the homebrew TPP1 MBC
* Save states can be dropped into emulator windows to load them in both
the Cocoa and SDL frontends
* SameBoy now uses the BESS (Best Effort Save State) format within its
save states, allowing interoperability between big and little endian
save states, future versions of SameBoy, as well as other BESS
compliant emulators (Such as the incoming releases of BGB and
Emulicious)
Accuracy Improvements/Fixes
* Fixed time syncing issues when turning the LCD off and on, fixes
timing issues in Link’s Awakening
* Fixed a bug where an invalid SGB command would be ignored, while the
actual SGB firmware would still process it in some manner, fixes
Donkey Kong Land
Bug Fixes
* Better handling of more edge cases in the Linux build system
* Fixed a memory leak in the SDL and libretro frontends when loading a
second ROM
* Fixed several potential crashes involving cheat codes
