WinUAE 3.3.0 Beta 3 - The latest Amiga emulator beta release

Good morning readers, it's going to be a busy week full of games and to start it off we again have Toni Wilen's Amiga Emulator for the PC to mention as it's reached a beta version of ' WinUAE 3.3.0 beta 3 '. Although this was released yesterday and does show up as beta 2, Toni has assured the community that it is infact beta 3 and features more bug fixes and possible future support such as on the fly directory harddrive changes. Remember to read the changelog below and if you need to make a separate WinUAE portable install, just create a blank WinUAE.ini file.

Beta 3: (It says b2 but just ignore it for now..)

- When matching config file and on the fly connected game controllers, first check if both id and friendly name match and only if no match, check id only and finally name only. Some multi slot controller adapters have unique name for each port but all ports have same ID. (Was id and then name matching previously)
- Remembered input device selections are now forgotten when new config is loaded.
- On the fly unplugged devices are now properly remembered and re-inserted if on the fly reconnected.
- PC Bridge disk drives raw image support (extended adf, ipf and so on.) Standard DOS disks only, no copy protections or other tricks supported. Read-only, writing is not supported.
- JIT slider now only shows power of 2 cache size values and max is 16384. (Max was already changed in previous betas)
- Linked config files loaded unreliably (or never) due to uninitialized variable.
- Real storage device (harddisk, memory card etc..) failed to open the device if it didn't have device path, only drive letter.
- CDFS automount didn't mount CDs with empty label, dos does not like empty volume names, replace empty name with "NO_LABEL"
- BPLCON0 BYPASS bit emulated. AGA-only, bypasses palette selection, creates gray scale output. (Microcosm cheat mode effect)
- Added A1000 composite out monochrome output mode emulation when BPLCON0 COLOR bit is zeroed. Option in advanced chipset panel. Only emulated if no video port display devices enabled, monochrome emulation shares same code (and in real world it is also not possible, RGB video out is not affected by COLOR bit). Also added always-on monochrome
mode option to Display panel. (Uses HRM documented gray scale brightness = 30% red, 60% green and 10% blue)
- "Atari ST palette fix" added to Display panel, called "Dark palette fix". It is wrong to mention Atari ST in GUI  There are few stupid Atari ST ports that use original palette (3 bits/component) = halved brightness in Amiga.
- UAE autoconfig board/boot ROM selection added to ROM panel. Do not touch unless you wan to run OS4 + UAE expansions. OS4 + UAE expansions: must be set to last option, "New UAE (128k, ROM, Indirect)". (Quickly added to GUI, probably will change in future versions)

OS4 compatible UAE autoconfig board, boot ROM and communication interface.

OS4 UAE expansion thread is here, all OS4 related goes there:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=81146

Currently supported UAE devices:

- Directory harddrives.
- uaehf.device (UAE HD controller hardfiles)
- uaegfx RTG. (Copy OS3.x uaegfx and uaegfx.info to OS4.x Devs:Monitors)
- uaenet.device
- uae.resource
- uaelib ("uaelib_demux" trap)

Not yet supported (lots more work needed):

- bsdsocket.library (This is the most difficult)
- uaenative.library
- clipboard sharing
- uaescsi.device
- virtual mouse driver
- on the fly directory harddrive changes.

And everything else that was not mentioned.

Notes:

- Slower than normal host<>Amiga communication because every read or write that accesses Amiga memory needs to be done in Amiga side (due to non-1:1 logical/physical mapping). It will never be as fast as direct communication.
- Remember to set ROM panel UAE expansion type to "New UAE (128k, ROM, Indirect)".
- Directory harddrive (copied from HDF) OS4 installation will boot but it is not recommended, it is slower than HDF and there is mysterious issue that causes random read errors. (Missing font requester when booting is the
most common side-effect)
- Most UAE expansions have preliminary updates for indirect trap support and support required multiple major changes = many things can be strangely broken..

Development speed of OS4 compatible UAE expansion and priority of features mainly depends on donations.

Links : 1) Discussion 2) 32bit 3) 64bit