Makaron is a Dreamcast emulator for the PC and it had a WIP (work in progress) update today!

I found and squashed a bug in new GD code. Not only Elemental Gimmick Gear boots again but it also cured Street Fighter Zero 3, which now seems to work just fine.

 

 

 

I've also devised a tweak to GD-DMA code for that accursed MPEG library. It interferes with SH4 main loop, effectively causing a temporary slowdown. This should not be a problem and is only visible during CD boot sequence, as BIOS decrypts the executable on the fly using thousands of 32-byte reads. As a side effect it fixes (or so it seems) those MIL-CDs that required SH4 speed to be reduced in order to load properly. One of these days I'll have to try and verify that on hardware, to see just how much of a slowdown G1 bus DMA transfer in background really is.

However, this is not yet the final solution to the problem. Sofdec library still expects some reads to start in close to zero time and I can't figure out why - still not conviced any code could be that braindead, so I'm not ruling out a bug on my side. For the time being I try to detect situations where DMA is started before GD buffer has anything in it, but every now and then this too fails. It looks awfully suspicious so I'll be investigating this next.

In the meantime, all Dream Preview GDs from Yuki boot now and here's a proof:

 

 

And as special bonus, an extra episode of How It's Made: Dreamcast by SEGA

 

 

By the way, there are games shown here I've never even heard of before...

 

 

More to follow soon.

 

 

Too bad WinCE games are so slow, but cheap 3GHz C2D are around the corner now

Also, some of the titles above require modem and ISP settings stored in the FLASH. Modem is not exactly on the top of my TO DO list.

 

Okay, last batch for today:

 

 

Ever seen VMU-compatible cell phones?

 

UPDATE: Oops, I've uploaded more images, but forgot to post them here. Here I brag about WinCE games and Biohazard 2 screens are missing... Fixed now

 

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The commercial Amiga emulator Amiga Forever is now available in a new version.

Amiga Forever 2008: What´s New

 

• Amiga Forever 2008 is the most significant upgrade ever released in the Amiga Forever series. It sets new references in usability while more than tripling the featured content and providing easy access to a universe of free downloads. Amiga Forever 2008 was rewritten from scratch to redefine itself and the perception of emulation and retrogaming in general.
   
  The first impression when seeing the new skinned player on Windows can be stunning, compared to previous software. At the same time, the new player feels as familiar as "this is how it should always have been". Behind the scenes, though, it took a monumental effort just to provide a Yes answer to questions like "Can´t you just double-click an ADF to play it?" With your help, we will keep listening and improving the software, also with lots of free updates.
   
  New features in Amiga Forever 2008 (all editions) include:
  
• Revolutionary new and intuitive player interface for Windows, for easy selection and playback of games and other content
  
• The new Amiga Forever player makes it possible to double-click or drag-and-drop downloaded disk images (e.g. ADF, ADZ, IPF, etc.) to play them, using heuristic content analysis to preset a suitable Amiga hardware configuration
  
• The player has built-in support for dual screens and multiple emulation sessions
  
• Rather than closing an emulation session, it is possible to save its state, for example to resume a game at a later time (the experience can be amazing, because the session is up and running again in an instant)
  
• Full undo of ADF, ADZ, HDF and HDZ disk writes (disk changes may be committed or discarded when exiting the emulation)
  
• Full support for Windows Vista x86 and x64 (probably the first and only Windows software with custom-shaped glass-enabled skin)
   
  Additional details about the new player for Windows:
  
• Professional skin design with familiar "media player" interface
  
• Buttons and other visual controls provide intuitive access to content and emulation features (pause, resume, disk change, reboot, joystick vs. keyboard selection, window size selection, full screen, Amiga screen capture, etc.)
  
• Windowed mode visualizes games and demoscene productions as they were meant to be displayed, without large unused overscan areas
  
• Helpful visualization of additional details (Amiga mouse options, device status with green/red read/write LEDs, etc.)
  
• Integrated video playback (requires MPEG-2 support by the operating system, otherwise the Amiga Forever videos can be read by any DVD player)
   
  Additional new features in the Plus Edition of Amiga Forever 2008:
  
• Content more than tripled (disk images are now compressed, and also used directly by the installer)
  
• New "Amiga Forever Game Pack I" (more than 100 games)
  
• More than 100 beautiful demoscene productions
  
• New Gallery items: original Tripos article, "top secret" Amiga-Atari documents, and much more
  
• New system HDFs: complete Amiga OS 1.3, 2.1 and 3.1 installations with only a minimum of add-ons (e.g. Y2K fixes, RTG update for 3.1), but otherwise identical to the original (including file attributes as intended by Commodore, which were lost in later distributions)
  
• New ADFs (1.3 Extras, complete 3.1 install set, etc.)
  
• New ROMs (Amiga 1000, A590 and A4091 boot ROMs, system-specific ROMs required for added compatibility, etc.)
  
• Preinstalled WHDLoad "kickemu" support
  
• New KX Light, bootable from CD and with HD installation option (featuring live updates) and extended hardware support
   
  New features in the Value Edition of Amiga Forever 2008:
  
• Includes 50 games and 50 demos (more than the 2006 Premium Edition!)
  
• Change of name (used to be "Online Edition")
   
  For their help during the development of Amiga Forever 2008, special thanks to Amir Ansari, Robert Trevor Dickinson and Toni Wilen. See the Credits section in the Amiga Forever documentation for additional details.

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Thanks to our affiliate, AEP-Emulation, for the news!

Marat Fayzullin released version 1.6.2 of his Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16kB, 48kB and 128kB, Spectrum +2, +2A and +3, Timex Sinclair TC2048 and TS2068 emulator Speccy for Maemo.

I have just updated Speccy-Maemo port to version 1.6.2. The new

version fixes synchronization problems so that Speccy does not take

100% CPU any more and contains a few more fixes. Get it for free from

 

http://fms.komkon.org/Speccy/

»» Download / Information

Thanks to our affiliate, AEP-Emulation, for the news!

JMEBoy is a Java-based / Game Boy emulator for J2ME / MIDP 2.0 mobile phones.

1.1 (based on SVN rev. 87)

- enable suspend and resume for the emulator (feature request ID 1972555)

- fixed a lot of bugs, improving compatibility with existing Gameboy ROMs

- avoid hangups when a user denies access to a Gameboy ROM file (bug ID 1991536)

- fixed the problem that some phones tried twice to load a game (bug ID 1986194)

- fixed the problems that existed on some phones with the image buttons (bug ID 1984843)

- added a screen scaling setting

- fixes screen size being calculated incorrectly on the Sony Ericsson G900 (bug ID 1984841)

»» Download / Information