| Posted By
Luca
on 2012-11-24
05:48:25
 |  VICE 2.4
Being the most popular multiplatform Commodore 8-bit machines emulator available since several years, any new version's release of VICE is a most yearned, and the VICE 2.4 released just some days ago doesn't miss that fame too. Although the Plus/4 emulator included Xplus4 doesn't match yet the same degree in emulation of other competors, the whole project has big shoulders than anyone else, and a bright future can be easily expected for it in the near future.
Here is the full list of changes having an impact on the Plus/4:
** General
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- New SDL based MIPS Windows NT port.
- New SDL based native Dingoo port.
- New monitor commands: autostart and autoload.
- Rewrite of the sound system, output is now mono/stereo selectable.
- Split off the 5x0 model from the 6x0/7x0 models in xcbm2, new emulator is called xcbm5x0.
- Split off sid player from c64, new program is called vsid.
- New maintainer for the polish translations, they are now 100% up2date.
- New IEC FD2000/4000 drive support.
- New 1541 drive sounds emulation.
- 1541 drive emulation has been greatly improved.
** PLUS4 changes
----------------
- The TED border mode can be selected now (none, normal, full, debug).
- PLUS4 model can be selected.
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Posted By
bubis
on 2012-11-30
05:48:25
| Re: VICE 2.4
I have looked into the hardcore TED emu part of it. It's funny what I found there.
The function that is responsible to handle $FF1E writes looks like this:
714 inline static void ted1e_store(BYTE value)
715 {
716 /* FIXME */
717 /* int new_hcount = (~value & 0xfc) >> 1; */
718 }
I.e. this function does nothing! 
Crown, any plans to improve this in the foreseeable future?
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2012-11-30
16:46:04
| Re: VICE 2.4
I think Tibor has left the team around 2010 (non-officially probably earlier). Actually, the TED emulation in VICE was lifted entirely from the VIC-II core at around 2002 and minimally adjusted by Andreas Boose to be fit for the TED's features. I recall Crown complaining that it was very bothersome to even get the clocking right because the VICE architecture was not very well suited for single/double clock switches. I would even go as far as state that implementing FF1E writes would have required a major rewrite of the code and it is very hard for anyone to find the required devotion for such a task... btw, even the VIC-II core has been recently rewritten from scratch to accomodate for a true cycle exact engine even though the VIC-II emulation is much more trivial than that of the TED (forgetting about sprites for a second for the sake of comparison). Perhaps someone could lift the new cycle based VIC-II core of VICE and redo the TED?
(BTW I also contributed a few DMA related patches to VICE about 2 years ago. Although the functions were very well separated in the code so you could easily pin point places that needed improvement, it was very difficult to get things work more or less the way they should within its weird, ill-suited architecture. Noone can be blamed for abandoning it I'm afraid...  A complete TED rewrite is unavoidable.)
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