Emu#dreams reports that Virtual Aquarius, the Radofin Electronics Aquarius Home Computer System emulator for Microsoft Windows, has been updated to version 0.72. Below are the changes in this version.

- Added ROM, cassette, and Quicktype images from several different sources.

- Util/WAV->CAQ logger. It's enabled if ROM Hacks are enabled. With this selected, the emulator will write out a CAQ file for WAV data it attempts to read during a normal cload/cload* operation. Please note that cload truncates files when it reaches some number of nulls. Also, cload* truncates files when it reaches the end of the array it's loading. And, of course, the Aquarius tape format has no checksums or qualtiy-of-data checks, so it's entirely possible for framing errors to occur and you'd never know about it. Caveat Emptor. You might want to wait for someone to write a real WAV2CAQ utility.

- Slightly changed WAV file handling, which, I hope, makes it more like the real computer. The real computer won't change state unless the input level hits a certain point, which smoothes out noise. Also, previous versions of the emulator were reading the waveform inverted; that's been fixed.

- Fixed WAV loading to recognize WAVs written by programs that don't do the header right (which unfortunately includes most sound editors, but not the one I use so I didn't know about this problem).

- The power up beep now works reliably. The emulation is now delayed until well after the window appears on the screen, but you didn't need to know that.

- Full Screen mode can now access the menus. Right click on the full screen to toggle menus.

- ROM Hacks are enabled by default. ROM Hacks provide emulation trapping for faster I/O for cassette input, cassette output, and printer output. This feature is available only when using the built-in S2 ROM.

- Save RAM behavior changed; now the file is saved to the directory the program was run from.

- Save RAM behavior changed; now filters memory through the cartridge scrambler.

- Fixed a bug in which bringing up a dialog box would zero the AY sound registers.

- You can't turn off the border any more. On the plus side, you got Full Screen mode. On the minus side, you need a better computer to run Virtual Aquarius. But then, your computer is probably newer than mine anyway (mine is from, like, 1998), and mine runs it just fine.

- The sound buffers will attempt to resynch themselves when no sound has been playing for a while (a half-second or so). This is detected by the speaker clicker not being written to and by the three AY chip volumes being set to 0.

- The POV hat can be used as the control disk in a modern USB joypad.

- The Help/About box has my newer pictures on it.

- Util/Load Binary -- This is useful for assembly language program development.

- Util/Screenshot (F11)

- Util/Full Screen mode (F12 to toggle)

- Util/Paste -- this Quicktypes text that was on the text clipboard, i.e. Copy from Notepad and Paste onto Virtual Aquarius.

- Some file access routines are smarter about remembering which file you were using last. It takes getting used to, but it really is better than before. Really.

- The emulator should no longer crash when you have Configure/System Timing>Speed up when accessing files checked.

- Soft Reset is now F9 on the keyboard.

- Hard Reset is now Shift F9 on the keyboard.

You can visit the official homepage here, or simply download it here.

AEP Emulation Page reports that Emulator2001, the Emerson Arcadia 2001 emulator (as well as other systems) for Microsoft Windows, has been updated. Below are the changes in this version.

- minor improvement to in-line block mode switch correcting jumpbugs fuel bar

You can visit the official homepage here, or simply download it here.

I am publicly releasing a little project I call: olafds. Below is information on olafds (taken from the homepage I've created for it).

olafds is a nintendo ds emulator that does nothing more than emulate the nintendo ds's wifi capabilities. this program is used to communicate with other microsoft windows applications as though it were a nintendo ds (for those without a nintendo ds or without the proper utilities for the nintendo ds). examples of these types of applications would be: stephen stair's udp test program or infernods's ds chat.

You can visit the official homepage here, or simply download it here.

Emu#dreams reports that the Microsoft Windows port of MESS, the Multiple Emulator Super System, has been updated to version 0.103. Below are the changes in this release.

System Driver Changes

- [ADVISION] Added sound support. [Dan Boris]

- [AMIGA] Fixed regression introduced in MESS 0.102. (bug #801) [Nate Woods]

- [APPLE2P] Fixed BIOS. (bug #820) [Nick Westgate]

- [ARCADIA] Added support for 12k cartridges, fixed a buffer overrun and enhanced sound generation. [irving Gould]

- [AT486] Fixed regressions introduced in MESS 0.102. [Nate Woods]

- [C128] Fixed regressions introduced in MESS 0.102. [Nate Woods]

- [DGNBETA] Implemented MMU, keyboard and floppy support. [Phill Harvey-Smith]

- [GAMEBOY] Fixed several games that did not loard properly. (bug #116) [Wilbert Pol]

- [NES] PPU, palette reading, mapper and sprite handling enhancements and implemented some undocumented N2A03 opcodes. (bugs #810, #811) [Rob Bohms]

- [NES] Switched to use the MAME NES APU implementation. [R. Belmont]

- [PCE] Added imperfect sound. [Rob Bohms]

- [sGI] Added a harddisk to the ip22 systems. [R. Belmont]

- [sNES] Fixed save RAM to store and save properly, improved memory mapping improved raster timing, added HIRQ support and better VIRQ support, improved joypad support, DSP-1 support (including all subtypes), Counter latching support, fixed OAM read/write. [R. Belmont]

 

User Interface Changes

- [Windows GUI] Fixed a bug that prevented column width changes in the software picker from being saved. (bug #589) [Nate Woods]

- [Windows GUI] Fixed a bug that caused "ghost filenames" to be introduced when using images with spaces in the filename. (bug #784) [Nate Woods]

- [Windows GUI] Fixed a bug that could cause clones to not be ran due to software settings "spilling" over onto the clones. (bug #704) [Oliver

Stoeneberg]

 

Imgtool Changes

- Implemented a feature that allows filters to qualify files, to see if they are appropriate for any given filter. [Nate Woods]

- Updated Mac module; moved to floppy abstraction system, as well as support for directories and filters. MFS disk image creation now works. [Nate Woods]

- Added support for modules to specify specific for icons. Enhanced the Mac module to support this feature. [Nate Woods]

- [imgtool] Changed the Imgtool "put" command to require a destination argument, like the UNIX "cp" command. This is so that a directory argument can be properly specified. [Nate Woods]

- [imgtool] Added the ability to get and put the boot block, as if it was a

file called "??BOOT??". The FAT module has been enhanced to support this feature. [Nate Woods]

- [Windows Imgtool] The insert file dialog will no longer let the user specify a file that does not exist (which was allowed, but eventually resulted in an error.) Also, fixed a few cosmetic errors. [Nate Woods]

- [Windows Imgtool] The disk title is now displayed on the title bar, if present. [Nate Woods]

 

Source Changes

- The core is based on MAME 0.103. This incorporates all features of the update to this core. [MAME team]

- Changed generic cartridge loading so that a ROM_LOAD_CART declaration can be placed in a ROM_REGION. This change makes cartridge loading be specified similar to BIOS loading, and makes things cleaner and more declarative. [Nate Woods]

- Makefile tweaks. (bug #819) [Oliver Stoeneberg]

- Added mandatory attribute to the device tags on the -listxml data. [Nate Woods]

- Pruned out some redundant PORT_NAME declarations. [Justin Kerk]

- [Messtest] Added a trace command, to emit debug traces. [Nate Woods]

You can visit the official homepage of MESS here.