WinUAE 2.8.2 beta 5 - Big accelerator board emulation update

As if the big CD32 FMV update wasn't enough for WinUAE, Toni Wilen is going the full stretch with another big update today that relates to Accelerator Boards. WinUAE 2.8.2 beta 5 is the latest version and adds CyberStorm MK3, CyberStorm PPC and Blizzard PPC support including many other fixes and improvements. As we stated before for those that don't know what WinUAE is, it's an Amiga emulator that works on the PC, which enables you to play Amiga games and set up Amiga operating systems, especially useful for internal CF Amiga hardware. Read on for the change log!

Beta 5:

Added CyberStorm MK3, CyberStorm PPC and Blizzard PPC. ! There is no PPC CPU ! Technically it emulates board with PPC CPU removed. (Which surprisingly does not seem to cause any problems, at least under emulation, real hardware may get confused if PPC chip is removed). SCSI fully supported, boot menu works, boot menu options can be modified and saved to flash, flash updater works. Map rom should work, including BlizKick.

Boot menu config is saved to flash rom which means selected flash rom will be modified, only use copy of your flash rom image (If it is writable, files inside archives are never modified).

You need to be really fast or select slower CPU mode if you want to enter boot menu (ESC key). This needs some emulator updates to allow easier way to press keys when starting emulation.

Map ROM is software selectable in boot menu, map rom option in GUI does nothing when using these boards.

Flash ROM images must have following names and must be in ROM directory because checksum based ROM detection can't work:

- CyberStorm MK3: cyberstormmk3.rom

- CyberStorm PPC: cyberstormppc.rom (emulates Phase5 version that has 128k flash, DCE 512k flash version not tested)

- Blizzard PPC: blizzardppc.rom (Note: flash is 512k but second half is only used for config, if rom image is 256k (size you get if you simply dump the F0 space from real hardware), it gets extended to 512k after onfig save or flash update). ROM images uploaded to the zone.

EDIT: Physical flash file is updated (after flashing) only when emulator is reset or quit.

GUI/config file ROM selection will be added later. Note that real flash rom images also contain some card specific information (PPC CPU speed, serial number which also includes card type). This area is blank in rom images uploaded to the zone (they are from official flash updater, old serial is kept when flashing). blank serial does not seem to cause any problems but some software probably gets confused.

NOTE: Only Blizzards use Accelerator board memory slider, other boards use CPU Board memory slider and Accelerator board slider still needs to be set to some non-zero memory amount. (Will be fixed later).

Blizzard PPC seems to have something else in F50000 which may be important. (I only have CyberStorm PPC for testing). Blizzard is (and can't be) JIT compatible due to high RAM addresses and RAM mirroring, CyberStorms are much more JIT friendly but it is not guaranteed to be safe. Blizzard also does not boot if MMU emulation is enabled.

- Added optional FPU emulation that uses softfloat library, another feature not for normal use. Full 80-bit FP accuracy, bit-perfect results (not including trigonometric functions), supports FPU arithmetic exceptions, much slower (Uses integer algorithms, host FPU is not used).

- Added mostly unmodified Qemu 53c895a SCSI emulation (originally heavily modified for 53c710 emulation). It is 53c770 compatible, 53c770 is used in CyberStorm MK3 and CyberStorm PPC.

- Some 53c710 updates, Blizzard PPC SCSI driver didn't work.

- Added simple flash rom emulator.

- Fastest possible CPU option is now available for cycle-exact modes. CPU internal cycles are not counted, only (mainboard) memory accesses are cycle exact (DMA steals cycles from CPU) in this mode.

- 68040/060 "cycle-exact" mode is back, emulates only Amiga mainboard memory accesses cycle-exactly, includes instruction(*) cache emulation. Any 32-bit fast ram or cached access is still immediate. (Which is still much closer to real 040/060 than old behavior, 040/060 is heavily bottle-necked when accessing mainboard)

- 68040/060 "compatible" mode now adds instruction cache emulation.

- 68030/040/60 MMU mode "more compatible" (68030: adds both instruction and data cache emulation, 68040/060: instruction cache only) and "cycle-exact" modes supported. (more compatible + mainboard access slowed down)

- 68030: data cache support is temporarily disabled. (Didn't work with MMU for some reasonm)

- DFx: eject messages appeared in new status bar even if drive was already empty.

- Right-align status messages in fullscreen mode.

- A2065 autoconfig was broken (b4)

- b1 directory filesystem change rewritten again, removed also lots of unneeded complexity from original code.

- On screen CPU halt message reason code was always 1.

- Generated virtual RDB (when IDE/SCSI mounting partition hardfile) created empty string for device name.

- 270b6 "JIT MOVEM used direct mode if memory was direct capable but direct mode was disabled." was wrong fix, original code probably was done to work around some JIT indirect bug.. (AmiKit crash during boot if JIT is in indirect mode)


*) Instruction cache only? because emulating data cache would not make any useful difference (except to slow down emulation), data cache normally does not cache any mainboard addresses anyway.

Beta 5 is located here

Forum Discussion here

If you wish to test this version out, remember to make it a portable edition in another folder by creating a new blank WinUAE.ini file as not to screw over the previous final.