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-*- Outline -*-
* About this file
=================
This file lists the most important user-visible changes for each
official release of VICE. See `src/ChangeLog' for a more detailed
list of all the changes in the code.
* Changes in VICE 1.0
=====================
** General changes
------------------
- Attached disk images can be stored into a flip list. Changing
disks requires just one keypress.
** C64 changes
---------------
- Support for TAP tape images has been added.
- The emulation of the processor port has been corrected.
- The CIA timer emulation has been further improved.
- RAM/ROM banking is done 100% accurate now.
- Ocean cartridge crash fixed.
- Funplay and Super Games cartridges are supported now.
- Doing a snapshot with REU enabled could crash the emulator. This is
fixed now.
- Fixed huge memory leak.
** C128 changes
---------------
- Speed up emulation.
** CBM-II changes
-----------------
- Speed up emulation.
** Drive changes
----------------
- New 1541-II emulation.
- Disk change detection has been improved.
- The virtual drive emulation can be used with G64 images now.
** C1541 changes
----------------
- New function to set the name of the disk.
** Unix changes
---------------
- A full screen mode using XFree86 vmode extension has been added.
- Support for different ROM sets has been added.
- A new joystick driver that is compatible to both old and new Linux
joystick API has been added.
- Support for the 1351 mouse has been added.
- The source can be compiled on IRIX using the native compiler now.
** MS-Windows changes
---------------------
- The monitor is available now.
- Added more UI elements for sound settings.
- Shortcut keys have been implemented.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
- P00 and PRG files can be autostarted from the command line again.
- Drive memory can be loaded/saved in the monitor now.
- The monitor can read and write blocks from disk.
- Attaching a non-existant image via command line does not crash the
emulator anymore.
- ROM snapshots do not save ROMs with "traps" anymore
* Changes in VICE 0.16.1a
=========================
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
- The joystick support has been fixed.
** MS-Windows changes
---------------------
- Full joystick support has been added.
- There are some more UI elements for sound and drive coupling (PAL/NTSC)
now.
* Changes in VICE 0.16.1
========================
** Drive changes
----------------
- The content of 1581 disk images is displayed correctly now.
** Unix changes
---------------
- Fixed AIX audio header problem.
- The emulator does not crash with "X Error of failed request:
BadColor (invalid Colormap parameter)" anymore when a bad or old
`.vicerc' file is present.
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
- The filter of the attach dialog has been fixed to display D64, D71
D81, G64, G41 and X64 disk image names.
- Cartridge attach and snapshot write dialogs could crash emulator on
certain DOS extender. This bug has been fixed.
- The name of currently attached tape images is displayed again.
** MS-Windows changes
---------------------
- Disk images can be attached to drives 9..11 too now.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
- Some bugs in T64 handling have been fixed. The image lister now
displays all files, the first file found is the first in the T64
archive (and not the second), detaching tapes works now and "LOAD
ERROR" should be gone.
* Changes in VICE 0.16.0
========================
** C64 changes
---------------
- A couple of bugs in the emulation of 6510 CPU core, VIC-II and REU
have been fixed.
- Final Cartridge, Ocean Cartridge, Super Snapshot 4 and 16KB CRT
image support has been added.
- Display modes in Ultimax mode have been corrected.
** C128 changes
---------------
- Some memory banking bugs have been fixed (C128 GEOS works).
** VIC20 changes
----------------
- RS232 interface has been added.
** CBM-II changes
-----------------
- A new Commodore 610 (aka CBM-II) emulator has been added.
** Drive changes
----------------
- Drive 9 can be emulated at hardware level.
- The 1571, 1581 and 2031 disk drives are emulated.
- Moved drive ROM images into a separate directory.
- Emulation of drives has been sped up consuming less host CPU power.
** SID changes
--------------
- Dag Lem's enhanched reSID engine is now part of VICE.
- A bug in the random number generator has been fixed.
** Unix changes
---------------
- The "Custom" joystick mapping is now compatible with the German
keyboard layout, and possibly other non-US layouts.
- Non-default screen depths should really work on X11 now.
- Generation of core dumps can be controlled from command line.
- Smart attaching lynx and zipcode images works correctly now.
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
- The menu system now uses a CBM-lookalike character set borrowed from
Star Commander.
- You can now browse disk images both with the graphics and business
CBM character sets, and you can autostart any file on a disk image.
- A file descriptor leak has been fixed.
** C1541 changes
----------------
- C1541 has been restructured; the batch mode syntax has changed, and
some commands take different parameters.
- You can create D71 and D81 disk images now.
- Lynx and zipcode support has been improved.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
- It is now possible to save the emulator's state into a file, and
load it back at any time.
- A new logging system has been added.
- The Monitor now handles zero page watch points triggered by memory
wrap-around too.
- Two new palette entries have been added.
* Changes in VICE 0.15.0
========================
** C64 changes
--------------
- A couple of little but annoying bugs in the VIC-II emulation have
been fixed.
- CIAs have been sped up considerably in those cases where several
consecutive underflows happen.
- Cartridge support has been added.
- "4064" and "SX" are now valid ROM patch IDs (the same as "100" and
"67" respectively).
** C128 changes
---------------
- YES! The one and only free C128 emulator (x128) is back into
operation! No VDC, though. No, don't ask us to implement it
because we are not going to. But of course contributions are
(still) welcome.
** VIC20 changes
----------------
- The VIA emulation is now cycle-exact.
- Autostart is now implemented and works as in the C64 emulator.
- Tape support has been added.
- Cartridge support has been added.
- The memory configurations can be added at runtime.
- The RESTORE key works correctly now.
** PET changes
--------------
- The VIA emulation is now cycle-exact.
- Autostart is now implemented and works as in the C64 emulator.
- Tape support has been added.
- Several PET models have been added. Moreover, the model type can be
changed at runtime, without leaving the emulator.
** 1541 changes
---------------
- The VIA emulation is now cycle-exact.
- Support for 40-track disk images has been added.
- Support for a new GCR-encoded ("G64") disk format has been added.
- It is now possible to completely disable the idle trap.
- Some little but possibly dangerous bugs have been fixed.
** Monitor changes
------------------
- The old monitor has been replaced by a completely new one, written
by Daniel Sladic. Although it is still under construction, it also
allows access to the CPU in the 1541 drive, and features watchpoints
and breakpoints.
** Unix changes
---------------
- Sound and joystick is now supported on NetBSD too (courtesy of
Krister Walfridsson <cato@df.lth.se>).
- Support for multiple keyboard layouts and joystick mappings has been
added. A "positional" layout for US keyboards is provided. On the
C64, VIC20 and C128 emulators, Ctrl is now mapped to Tab; the
Commodore key is now mapped to left Ctrl.
- The emulators and c1541 now use the real, full-featured GNU readline
library if found. Use `./configure --without-readline' for the old
behavior.
- RS232 and printer support has been added.
- The XDebugger has died (R.I.P.).
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
- Support for two "hardware" joysticks has been added.
- The emulated drive LED has been moved to the CapsLock LED; the
ScrollLock LED is turned on when "warp" (maximum speed) mode is
enabled.
- The menu system has been made a bit more usable. It is now possible
to open a submenu directly from the emulator screen by pressing Alt
and the corresponding hotkey.
- An Allegro-based sound driver has been implemented. It replaces the
old MIDAS driver in binary distributions because of licensing
incompatibilities.
- The video driver can now use triple buffering for much smoother
animations (don't use it under Windows).
- 1351 mouse emulation has been implemented. Make sure a working
mouse driver is installed.
- It is now possible to use up to two "real" joysticks and to
configure the keyboard settings for both emulated joysticks. As a
result, it is now possible for two people to play together with two
"real" joysticks or just with the keyboard.
- A bug that could corrupt the file descriptor table has been fixed.
- The file selector is now much faster when running under plain
MS-DOS, as it uses `findfirst()'/`findnext()' instead of DJGPP's
Unix-like `opendir()'/`stat()' calls.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
- The file system can be accessed from any drive now, and complete
support for P00 files has been implemented.
- A major cleanup of the code has been done (this is what took most of
the time between 0.14.2 and 0.15.0). Porting and adding features or
emulators is now much easier.
- "On the fly" Lynx and Zipcode support has been added (use with care,
though).
- A couple of bugs in the fast serial emulation have been fixed
(courtesy of Peter Andrew Felvegi <petschy@derceto.sch.bme.hu>).
- Sound output can now be oversampled up to 8 times.
- The `Directory' resource is now a list of paths. The separator is
`;' on MS-DOS and `:' on Unix.
- Serial traps can be enabled/disabled at runtime.
- Palette files have been introduced.
- Support for Dag Lem's new reSID SID emulation engine has been added.
- Automake is now being used.
- Color palettes are now completely configurable via system files.
* Changes in VICE 0.14.2
========================
** C64 changes
--------------
- A few VIC-II and CIA timing bugs have been fixed.
- The "sprite crunch" effect should now be emulated properly.
- Changes to $3FFF/$39FF in the video bank in the middle of one raster
line do not affect the whole line anymore.
- Color of forced $FF DMA characters is now correct.
- The SpeedDOS parallel cable is now emulated.
- More accurate SID filter parameters when the sampling frequency is
different from 44.1 KHz.
- The `TapeName' resource has been removed.
** VIC20 changes
----------------
- An annoying bug that prevented BASIC from working has been fixed;
- True 1541 emulation works again.
- The `TapeName' resource has been removed.
** PET changes
--------------
- Emulation of joysticks connected to the user port has been added.
** Unix changes
---------------
- The "change working directory" command displays the current working
directory as default.
- A new status bar on the bottom of the emulation window displays the
current speed and frame rate, and the status (i.e. LED + R/W head
position) of the disk drive when the true 1541 emulation is turned
on.
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
- A bug that caused sprites to appear near the screen when the
640x480 resolution was used has been fixed.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
- A little timing error in the 6510 RMW instructions using absolute
indexed addressing has been corrected.
- Much improved 1541 emulation: most custom write routines should now
work.
* Changes in VICE 0.14.1
========================
** C64 changes
--------------
- A nasty CIA-related bug has been fixed.
* Changes in VICE 0.14.0
========================
** 6502/6510 changes
--------------------
- Several mostly timing-related 6510 bugs have been fixed (thanks to
Andreas Boose's test suites).
** C64 changes
--------------
- Better SID (audio chip) emulation. Now filters are emulated and
waveforms are more accurate. (Many thanks go to Michael Schwendt,
author of SIDplay, for helping out with this and for providing the
filter code and the SID wave tables.)
- Some CIA bugs have been fixed (big thanks to Andreas Boose for
reporting them).
- The IEC bus recalculation has been made slightly faster (but you
will probably not notice this, also because the true 1541
compatibility improvements have made the emulation a bit slower).
- Some VIC-II bugs have been fixed (more big thanks to Andreas for his
invaluable test suite).
- Disk/tape images can be "autostarted" from the command-line (with
the new `-autostart' option) or at runtime (i.e. you can attach the
image and let the emulator run and execute the first program on it
for you). This also works with `P00' and raw CBM binary files.
** VIC20 changes
----------------
- Fixed a small resizing-related bug.
** PET changes
--------------
- Improved/fixed keyboards on X11.
- New `PetModel', `VideoWidth' and `KeyboardType' resources.
- Added support for 2001, 4032B and 8096 PETs.
- Better CRTC emulation: R01 (line width) and R12 (control register)
are honoured now.
** Unix changes
---------------
- Dispatching of Xt events fixed (there was a very stupid bug that
caused event loops to do busy waits--argh!).
- Made WindowMaker-compliant (x64, xvic and xpet can now be docked).
Now, could anybody please contribute cool NeXTish truecolor icons?
:-)
- Better handling of window resizing.
- `configure' now uses Xaw3d only if `--with-xaw3d' is specified on
the command line.
- The pop-up menus now work also if NumLock or CapsLock are activated.
- A private colormap is automatically used (even if `-install' has not
been specified on the command line) if the emulator cannot allocate
all the colors at startup.
- Increased portability: now compiles successfully on SunOS 4.x.
- Improved automatic frame skipping algorithm; it now gives a higher
average frame rate.
- Different, possibly more usable, menu layout.
** MS-DOS changes
-----------------
- The contents of disk and tape images can be inspected before
attaching them.
** Miscellaneous changes
------------------------
- The 1541 emulation is now more accurate (disk rotation is taken into
account, but hardware formatting still does not work although we are
not far from it).
- Safer handling for 1541 ROMs: a checksum is calculated, and turning
full 1541 emulation on when no ROM is available does not make the
emulator crash anymore.
- BZIP v2 support has been added (from Andreas Boose).
- Read-only support for various archiving formats (`.tar.gz', `.zip',
`.lzh', `.zoo') has been added.
- The character ROMs are no longer built-in.
- Removed `.doc' extension from certain files in the documentation, as
it confused HTML browsers.
- Useless Makefile target that caused problems with newer versions of
GNU make removed.
- C1541 can now create disk images from Zipcoded files (`zcreate'),
import Lynx archives (`unlynx') and execute DOS or UNIX commands
(`system'). (`unlynx' and `system' have been contributed by Ricardo
Ferreira.)
- Wrapping around $FFFF in monitor commands works now (beware: not for
all of them, yet!).
- New, more usable, version of the `recomment' utility.
- Support for Simple DirectMedia Layer has been added.
- Character generator ROMs are not built-in anymore.
* Changes in VICE 0.13.0
========================
- Improved (now cycle-exact!) VIC-II emulation (big thanks go to
Andreas Boose for helping me to improve it).
- More accurate 6510 emulation (emulates extra unused read accesses).
- Lower memory requirements.
- Complete MS-DOS port.
- Several CIA fixes.
- The VIC-I chip now emulates the reverse mode.
- Loading from tape handles the memory pointers correctly.
- Joystick emulation in the VIC20 emulator.
- Slightly better source code organization.
* Changes in VICE-0.12.1
========================
- The CIAs have been rewritten and are now more compatible and much
faster (most of the games that ran much more slowly than usual with
0.12.0 should now run at normal speed).
- VIC-II screen updates are now a little faster and also eat less
memory.
- Disk images can now be attached in read-only mode.
- Gzip-compressed disk and tape images can be attached directly,
without uncompressing them.
- The hardware-level 1541 emulation now supports writing to the disk
through the VIAs, so that write patches to the drive ROM are not
needed any longer. [please notice that this might not work with
everything, as the emulation is not 100% exact]
- VICE can now be compiled also with the standard (0.8.0) joystick
module (without digital joystick support, obviously).
- A little bug related to the right Shift key has been solved
(courtesy of Bernhard Schwall).
- The numeric keypad can now be used to emulate diagonal directions
too.
- The Linux audio driver also works on 8-bit sound cards.
- When a CPU jam happens (illegal opcode), the user can now choose
between entering the monitor, enabling the XDebugger or resetting the
machine.
- Implemented the new `skip' button in the XDebugger.
- Some little annoying bugs in the SID emulation have been fixed and
combined pulse/sawtooth and pulse/triangle waveforms have been
implemented.
- The automatic refresh rate setting works better when sound is
enabled.
- The adaptive playback speed in the sound driver can now be disabled.
- Sound can now be turned off automatically when buffer overruns
happen, and is automatically turned on again after a specified
interval.
- AIX audio support has been implemented (courtesy of Chris Sharp
(sharpc@hursley.ibm.com)).
- The sprite collision interrupts are more correctly triggered.
- A bad bug related to the sprite expansion register has been fixed.
- The video cache now handles sprite-background collisions correctly.
- A nasty bug that could cause VICE to hang has been fixed.
- Attaching floppy images to drive 9 or 10 no longer makes them appear
in drive 8 when full 1541 emulation is enabled.
- Solved some problems with systems that do not have regexp.h (at
least we hope so).
- GNU make is no longer needed to compile the PET and VIC20 emulators.
- The documentation has been updated.
- The `tounix' and `toiso' utilities have been added.
- The problem that made VICE die with an `alarm clock' signal on very
slow or overloaded machines should now be gone.
- The file selector no longer dies if you type `~' with no `/' in the
directory field.
- The file selector now has a "contents" button with which you can see
the contents of a disk or tape image before attaching it.
- The X11 video driver automatically disables usage of the MITSHM
extensions if they are not supported by the X11 server (even if the
`mitshm' resource is non-zero).
- Some annoying REU-related bugs have been fixed.
- The MS-DOS version uses the Scroll Lock LED to emulate the drive LED.
* Changes in VICE-0.12.0
========================
Well, almost 90% of the emulation code has been rewritten (that's why
it took so long to have this release out), so it would be quite long
to list everything here. Anyway, here are the most important new
features:
- New 6510 emulation, which is much faster and has (hopefully) correct
memory fetch timings and exact emulation for all the opcodes.
- Completely rewritten video emulations, now much faster and more
versatile: the window size can be doubled at run-time and the video
cache can be disabled when not necessary.
- (Much) better VIC-II (C64 video chip) emulation, mostly rewritten
from scratch: it can now handle most $D011 tricks such as VSP
(Creatures and Mayhem in Monsterland work) and FLI; [yes, the silly
sprite priority problems are gone]
- (Slightly) better VIC-I (VIC20 video chip) emulation (still
incomplete).
- New SID emulator by Teemu Rantanen, with support for Linux, FreeBSD,
Solaris and HP-UX (not all of these are stable, though).
- New CIA emulation with correct timing.
- Faster interrupt handling.
- Xaw-based GUI with popup menus and interactive file selector from
the Free Widget Foundation.
- Hardware-based 1541 disk-drive emulation, that works with many
custom loading routines.
- New resource handling that allows saving and loading of settings.
- MS-DOS port (no sound yet, UI almost non-existent).
- Better T64 handling (still buggy).
- Removed C128 emulator and RAM tester (sorry, we had no time to work
at them).
- Much better Linux joystick support, that works with digital and
analog joysticks with auto-calibration (courtesy of Bernhard Kuhn
<kuhn@eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>); [it should compile out of the
box now]
- Support for all possible VIC20 memory configurations on the command
line (courtesy of Alexander Lehmann <alex@mathematik.th-darmstadt.de>).
- Added `extract' command to c1541 (courtesy of Gerhard Wesp
<gwesp@cosy.sbg.ac.at>).
- Added configure script for easier configuration and installation.
- Overall better source code organization, that should make porting
much easier; [volunteers, you are welcome!]
- Better keyboard handling (reverse polling is correct now).
- The REU works.
- Several other bugs fixes and improvements we have lost track of.
* Changes in VICE-0.11.0
========================
- The CPU in x64, xvic and xpet is now 2 times faster on average; :->
- The VIC-II steals the correct number of cycles for bad lines and
sprites, and correctly fetches the video RAM, so that FLD and other
effects involving bad lines are now emulated correctly.
- The interrupt handling and the CIA/VIA emulations have been almost
completely rewritten, thus dramatically increasing compatibility and
reliability.
- The VIC-II sprite-sprite and sprite-background collision register
emulation is (much) faster.
- The Read-Modify-Write bug of the CPU is correctly emulated when
accessing the VIC-II register $D011.
- D64 and T64 can be directly attached (T64 in x64 and x128 only).
- A bad bug in the handling of the I/O registers of the 6510 has been
fixed.
- The ADC and SBC decimal mode has been fixed.
- Various bugs in the 1541 error channel emulation have been fixed.
- The 1541 emulator and the standalone c1541 program support the Rx:
(Rename) command and the Sx: (Scratch, delete) command now handles
wildcards correctly.
- The infamous keyboard problem which caused key events to be lost
when refresh was > 1 has been fixed.
- A IEEE-488 interface emulator has been introduced (emulates the
original Commodore one) in x64, x128 and xvic.
- The xdebugger functionality has been improved (this part is still in
the experimental stage, though).
- The `-8' and `-9' options allow to attach diskimages as drive #9 too.
- The Unix FS driver (Unit 11) has been improved, so that it supports
the command/error channel and wildcards properly; moreover, new
FS-specific commands (mkdir, rmdir, chdir) and errors (`permission
denied' and `directory not empty') have been added.
- The VDC emulation in x128 supports variable character and screen
size and bitmap mode as well (monochrome only and still under
development).
- Some minor bugs in the VDC emulator have been fixed.
- The MMU implementation in x128 is much more complete, with true (not
hard-coded) shared RAM and memory configuration support.
- A nasty bug which caused x128 to crash when changing speed and
enabling/disabling the video emulators at runtime has been fixed.
- The Linux joystick has been fixed (it did not work at all in 0.10.0).
- The monitor `set' command no longer accepts ambiguous variable names.
- A new `hjoyport' variable/resource allows the user to choose the port
for the hardware joystick (Linux only).
- Sun64 is no longer supported (if you need it, download x64-0.3.1).
- One thousand other little bugs have been fixed.