WinUAE 3.3.0 Beta 1 - The best Amiga emulator gets a new beta release for 2016!

I wondered when a new beta release would appear for Ton Wilen's Amiga emulator WinUAE, and sure enough today the creator has now released ' WinUAE 3.3.0 Beta 1 '. Personally I didn't think there was anything wrong with the previous final but as typical of Toni he's found more bugs that needed fixing, and improvements needed to be made. In this version the main points of interest are Game Ports panel custom mapping, first phase of hardware based host/emulation interface done, and uae-configuration is now OS4 compatible! For further details, see the changelog below.

Beta 1:

- Added extra validation checks for STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR, buggy drivers may return invalid (negative) offset values.
- 64-bit JIT harmless "Warning! 12 is locked" log spamming disabled.
- Updated copper/blitter cycle conflict emulation. It only triggers when CPU writes to COPJMP, Copper is waiting and Copper DMA is enabled (and blitter uses same cycle). If Copper DMA was off, bug won't trigger, even if DMA gets
enabled few cycles later. Copper bug emulation is again always enabled if 68000 and cycle-exact config.
- Cancel main thread sleep state immediately (Sleep due to CPU idle or similar) if PPC thread caused mainboard interrupt. This should reduce PPC to M68K interrupt emulation latency.
- Hardware RTG emulation rendered same frame twice in some situations. Caused very slow performance in triple buffered mode.
- Debugger keyboard presses were buffered and output to Amiga-side when debugger was exited.
- Starting disk DMA does not flush Paula internal 16 bit buffer. Poll DSKBYTR for DSKSYNC, immediately start disk DMA with WORDSYNC enabled: following sync word must not be missed. (Original Virus really slow loading in cycle-exact mode)
- Chip ram was marked as 16-bit Fast RAM for the CPU (no DMA contention emulation) if any memwatch point was active.
- Amithlon partition type (0x78/0x30) support was broken, partitions were detected but it was not possible to mount them.
- Added SX32 Pro board and ROM image. (Not all RAM sizes are correctly mapped)
- Only unmap Z3 Fast RAM at reset if Z3 mapping mode is "Real" for better compatibility with old configs that assume Z3 RAM does not temporarily disappear at boot.
- JIT on/off on the fly change without other CPU settings changed at the same time with uae-configuration didn't work.
- Hardware emulation autoconfig board UAE interface first working feature: uae-configuration now works under OS4 Requires also updated uae-configuration, interface can also work under other non-m68k AmigaOS operating systems, only requirement is simple native uae-configuration port. Interface design is not final yet.
- If CSPPC or BPPC is booted with empty or zero size flash rom image, fake resident idtag is automatically added that fools official flash rom updater to detect working board, "updating" the empty flash with full image (updater contains full flash rom image in encrypted format)
- Debugger memwatch points can now match only CPU instruction (CPUI) or only CPU data accesses (CPUD, CPUDR, CPUDW)
- "Heat map" debugger added, shows optional visual heatmap of CPU and DMA accesses. Can list highest addresses used by CPU instruction fetches or all addresses that single device accessed (Some DMA channel, CPU)
- Some AGA modes were incorrectly detected as bitplane DMA overrunning causing screen corruption.
- AROS ROM updated.

Input system and mapping updates:

- Added SPC_SWAPJOYPORTS input event, swaps gameports joystick ports.
- Added END+J default mapping = SPC_SWAPJOYPORTS.
- Device autoswitch didn't ignore button release without matching press.
- Device autoswitch switches to new Game Ports custom event if it has fire button mapped to mouse or gamepad.
- "WinUAE null keyboard" renamed to "WinUAE keyboard", this is now the default global virtual keyboard. GamePorts panel only uses this keyboard, multiple keyboards are only supported in Input panel mode and only if manually enabled. Reduces complexity and confusion when moving configurations between systems with different number of keyboards.
- Game Ports custom mapping rewritten. Now Game Ports list has 6 custom slots which can me inserted to any joystick port. New custom mapping data is also saved to separate config entries, one per slot.
- Old Game Ports custom config is automatically converted to new custom mapping system.
- Removed X-Arcade built-in layouts. Re-create them with new custom mapping system if needed.
- Cleared custom input event string equals setting event to "<none>".
- Fixed since the beginning bug that caused incorrectly matched input device(s) and input config when config was loaded with different connected input devices and order of devices was also different.
- Rewritten game ports validation (Detect and fix if same device in multiple ports etc..).
- Old config files should still work like previously except: game Ports custom mapping and first keyboard input config goes to WinUAE keyboard slot.
- Last few Game Ports panel inserted devices (layout or real input device) are remembered. For example if config is loaded with joypad A inserted in port 2 but pad is not plugged in, then user manually changes it to joypad B. Now if pad A is later reinserted and pad B is removed, A is automatically put in port 2. It also works with keyboard layouts or new custom layouts, if keyboard layout was previously selected, then it was later replaced with gamepad, if gamepad is unplugged on the fly, previous keyboard layout is automatically selected.

Links : 1) Discussion 2) 32BIT 3) 64BIT - UAE Configuration available on the forums!