WinUAE 2.8.2 Beta 9 - PPC Emulation is finally here!

The Amiga forums are going crazy at the moment with a number of people pushing donations towards Toni Wilen's way. The reason for this is, Toni Wilen has released the latest WinUAE 2.8.2 beta 9 which contains a number of fixes and improvements including the awesome feature of PPC emulation, although only a proof of concept so far. So what are you waiting for, read on for the change log and download latest Amiga emulator for your PC!

Beta 9: PPC emulation that was supposed to never happen has happened. Sorry

- PearPC PPC emulator core added. Only because it was very easy to add, it may not be compatible enough. (and it isn't, at least not fully compatible, at least it has some unimplemented instructions, some programs or operating system surely won't work)
- PPC disassembler added to debugger ("dp", PPC mode is remembered, use "do" to switch back to m68k)
- Windowed mode status bar shows PPC state (if CyberStorm PPC or Blizzard PPC selected). Shows 4 possible states: STOP (inactive), RUN (executing instructions), SLEEP (low power state, waiting for interrupt), CRASH (CPU emulator detected something bad, like invalid instruction etc)
- BlizzardPPC memory GUI adjustment fixed.
- Fixed 68020/030 CE + fastest possible hang if program executed loop that didn't do any memory accesses.
- 68040/060 CINVx instruction was still disassembled strangely.
- Adjusted 68040/060 "cycle-exact" mode timing, also if data cache is enabled, emulate all data memory accesses as immediate. (until data cache is emulated fully)
- CyberStorm MKII F0 ROM section of flash rom is now flashable. (third party mk2diag flash updater works)
- Blizzard PPC flash rom chip emulation now works correctly (was wrong mapping and wrong flash chip device code..)
- Added special JIT indirect CPU core that supports code execution from non-linear and/or aliased memory. Technically also should allow to emulate A2091/A590 but it still crashes for some reason. (But at least now it executes some ROM code before accessing invalid memory. A2091/A590 is perfect test case because it does not copy driver code from autoconfig ROM to RAM like most other HD controller drivers do, code runs directly from ROM and same memory "bank" also has IO registers)
- Memory allocation source clean up. Can break nearly anything..
- SCSI CD READ CD command didn't read audio tracks 2+.
- Entering debugger forze the emulator if m68k CPU was stopped with STOP instruction and all interrupts disabled.
- NCR53C770 emulation tweaks, fixes netbsd hang. Now it gets unexpected interrupt, no fix available yet.
- Version bumped to 2.9.0

PPC Notes:

- Only a proof of concept currently.
- Automatically enabled when CyberStorm PPC or Blizzard PPC emulation is selected.
- Only PearPC interpretive PPC emulation is currently supported. Speed is totally irrelevant at this point.
- PPC emulator runs in separate thread, it requires special handling with PPC IO accesses, IO accesses are serialized and sent to m68k-side. Plain memory accesses are direct. (This assumes M68K is still doing Amiga housekeeping duties and PPC is mainly used as a co-processor, probably will cause huge performance hit if PPC does everything, for example when running PPC-only operating systems)
- Should be fully m68k JIT compatible, at least in indirect mode.
- Dual core CPU or better required. If you don't have one, you are not allowed to report anything, sorry.
- PowerUP kernel does not work (hardware is not fully emulated). WarpOS appears to work.
- Do not use BlizzardPPC, it has (currently incompatible) PowerUP in flash and it runs at boot.
- Make sure CPU speed is fastest possible. PPC IO access serialization will be slowed down if m68k is waiting for chipset.

(Donations would be nice because PPC stuff is even more boring than "normal" stuff. Thanks)

Download

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.