WinUAE 3.4.0 beta - A BIG Amiga Emulation update with a huge changelog!

More Amiga news this evening as Toni Wilen has finally come out of hibernation and released another WinUAE Amiga emulator beta update. You probably thought the previous final WinUAE 3.3.0 (06.06.2016) was the last one as it came across perfect for us, but not so it seems as now we've got this new update 'WinUAE 3.4.0 Beta'. This one has a huge changelog, perhaps the biggest one yet ! So if you fancy testing and reporting bugs, give this one a try, it will surely keep you busy!

Big updates:

- New GUI panel (currently named "Hardware info") that lists most installed hardware and allows reordering of autoconfig boards.
- Multiple Z2/Z3 RAM boards can be enabled simultaneously. Manufacturer/product or full autoconfig data can be customized.
- Multiple graphics boards can be active simultaneously (with some limitations). Note that there is still only one viewport, END+F9 (this needs simpler option) cycles between active displays.
- Multiple sound cards can be enabled simultaneously.

Expansion device updates:

- Added NE2000 PCMCIA NIC emulation, cnet.device compatible. On the fly insertion/removal supported.
- Blizzard 1230 MK II and SCSI Kit II emulated. MapROM emulated, only power of 2 RAM sizes supported.
- Blizzard 1230 MK III added, ROM software dumped (Physical chip is 32k, boot rom is only 16k, other 16k is either duplicate of first or not mapped, physical dump needed). MapROM emulated, SCSI Kit III not emulated, SCSI Kit ROM is MIA.
- ESP/53C94/FAS216 emulation PIO mode FIFO handling updates. Multi Evolution and E-Matrix work again.
- Catweasel MK II emulation moved to expansion select menu. Network cards may be moved later.
- Multiple different sound cards can be enabled at the same time. (Multiple identical boards not yet possible)
- Sound card audio internal emulation improved, now supports up to 8 simultaneous streams. (1 stream = supports up to 7.1 channel audio. Each stream can have different sample rate.) Each emulated sound card (and CD audio emulation) now dynamically allocate streams on the fly.
- uaesnd hardware "emulated" Z2/Z3 DMA sound card, more information later. I also may write AHI driver later.
- Simplified Blizzard 1230MKIV/BPPC memory layout, now it is always located at $400000-$4fffffff and mirrors are removed (which weren't correctly emulated anyway). MapROM feature emulation updated.
- Added A2620 v1 ROM image to ROM scanner, use correct autoconfig product id, A2620 is product $50, A2630 is product $51.

Blizzard SCSI Kit MK II:
- FAS216 based, true DMA.
- SCSI Kit MK II only has SCSI chip. Everything else (including boot ROM chip) is located on accelerator board.

Misc updates:

- Added network led (N). red=transmit, green=receive. yellow=both in last 1 second or so.
- Input panel always press/onoff option. Click on name of input event to change it. press:each button/key press and release generates only press events. onoff:button press=activate,button release=deactivate. (for example when mapped to warp mode, warp mode is active only when button is kept pressed)
- FPS counter can now show FPS values up to 9999. (was 999.9)
- CD32 logging can be now enabled with command line parameter (-cd32log and -cd32log2). Was compile time previously.
- If config file has input device(s) with empty name, insert it in first free slot instead of dropping it.
- Moved Logitech LCD updating to separate thread. LCD updates using new API are slower, at least in some situations.
- Catch console window CTRL+C and window close button click and remove notification icon before exiting.
- Custom game port settings were lost if they were edited again or config was loaded.
- Floppy drives 2 and 3 didn't have same floppy sound default volume as 0 and 1.
- Mounting file smaller than 512 bytes was mounted as a zero block size virtual harddrive.
- Don't try to set D3DPRESENT_INTERVAL_TWO in windowed mode (D3D error in low latency vsync with 100Hz+ desktop refresh rate).
- Limit joystick buttons to 20 (not 32) to leave space for [+][-] events, both share same max 32 button space. Also check limits correctly, previously it was possible to have >32 buttons causing strange input behavior.
- Added Single Step input event, when activated, unpauses (if paused), emulates one field and then (re-)activates pause.
- When paused, show current field, not previous field.
- FPS.Adj was not saved to config file and load duplicated built-in PAL/NTSC entries.
- Environment variables in file paths (%VAR%) are now always expanded internally.
- Event ("pull") mode audio support added, currently only supported by WASAPI (Vista or later only). Lower sound latency, no need for extra sound sync adjustments and also should be more stable.
- SND% is hidden in pull mode, status is not that simple to calculate.
- CDTV statefiles work again, support was broken in some recent previous version.
- Starting AVI recording from shortcut didn't initialize audio if both video and audio was enabled.
- -scanlineadjust <lines> command line parameter, added to low latency vsync scanline counter to manually adjust frame flip vertical position.
- Added longPathAware manifest entry (Removes 260 character path limit, supported by Windows 10 version 1607 or later)
- Network drive ("Include network drives.." option) device name is now NDHx: to reduce possible name conflicts.
- On the fly directory/archive mounting only worked once under OS4.x.
- Max windowed mode window size was still restricted to very old 3072*2048 max resolution.
- added "default" displaydata parameter, always selected if no other displaydata entry matches.
- added "custom" displaydata parameter, previously existing pal and ntsc parameters now only match standard PAL/NTSC modes, custom matches any programmed (BEAMCON0 bit 7 set) mode.
- Reduced input latency.

Chipset updates:

- 24-bit addressing on the fly change + reset crash fixed.
- Disable AGA subpixel scrolling if odd and even plane has different subpixel scroll value, current emulation can't support it. (Worms DC and ACSYS)
- Added hack that fixes Smooth Copper part in demo Coolfridge / Upfront.
- Sprite to bitplane collision stupid optimization fixed. Fixes Jumpman Junior.
- Emulate "extreme" AGA-only bitplane DMA overrun special case, if display position is exactly right, it is possible to have overrun that does not conflict with other DMA channels (at least when disk DMA is inactive), 32/64-bit fetch mode only. Fixes game Moon Child.
- Implemented "secret" Akiko PIO mode CD command/response packet transmit/receive emulation.
- Fixed edge case where invalid word or long access (by some buggy program) to end of UAE expansion space crashed the emulation.

Graphics card emulation updates:

- Multiple cards can be now enabled simultaneously, for example UAEGFX + PC Bridgeboard VGA.
- Limitations: Only one uaegfx, A2410 and x86 bridgeboard VGA supported simultaneously. Uaegfx must be first (if enabled) card. Any Cirrus Logic based card can be enabled multiple times (up to 4). Invalid config is automatically fixed.
- END+F9 cycles between displays (native->gfx board 1->gfx board 2->..->native). Inactive displays are skipped.
- Board name is shown in status bar when manually switching.
- After reset, board that initializes its output first gets autoselected replacing chipset display.
- Autoswitch status bar message is only shown if more than one board is configured. Bridgeboard VGA never autoswitches.
- NOTE: still no support for multiple outputs visible at the same time.

Expansion/autoconfig handling updates:

- All autoconfig boards and their final addresses are now known before emulation starts.
- Added new GUI panel that shows all configured expansions (expansion = autoconfig boards and few other internal expansions. Others will be added later, perhaps also other types of hardware information lists), autoconfig addresses and board locations are always updated in real time.
- RAM board manufacturer and product id or full autoconfig data can be set/modified per board. (But you are on your own if you change board size bits without matching configured board size!)
- All Z2/Z3 autoconfig boards (includes HD controllers, sound cards etc) can be manually reordered.
- Multiple Z2 and Z3 RAM cards are now supported. (Max 4 at the moment)
- All RAM size combinations are now supported (Previously second board had to be smaller or same size as previous)
- Most autoconfig related config validations removed, for example if you add more than 8M Z2 fast, config is not automatically fixed anymore, result now depends on what KS autoconfig code does.
- Multiple Z2 HD+RAM boards are now fully supported, RAM board's autoconfig data is now always copied from HD board's data structure instead of always using first HD controller's or default autoconfig Z2 RAM data.
- Accelerator with Z2 RAM will be always paired with first Z2 RAM board.
- New RAM select menu also shows paired Accelerator/HD expansion.
- Default autoconfig sort order is optimized for best fit, boards are ordered from largest to smallest.
- Moved GUI sound card options to SCSI/IDE/etc expansions section.
- Built-in SCSI and IDE controllers are now separate expansion devices (old GUI options still work, there is no need to use Expansion GUI to enable them). They are also not anymore listed in HD controller list if not enabled.
- A1200/A600 PCMCIA is now single option in HD controllers and also only listed if PCMCIA configuration is enabled. SRAM/IDE selection moved to separate select menu.
- 128k UAE Boot ROM works now even if autoconfig address is not 0xEA0000.
- If there is not enough memory, error message is shown and GUI reappears. Memory sizes are not automatically lowered and retried like previously (It would get really messy without old RAM size restrictions). This can break old configs that only worked because of memory allocation retries.
- Most RAM size/position related JIT direct restrictions should be gone.
- Multiple PCI and x86 bridgeboards are now automatically disabled. (Has always been unsupported config) Support can be added if there really is some real world situation where it makes sense.
- Expansion device lists are now alphabetically sorted.
- WD33C93 based SCSI controllers with drivers that execute directly from boot ROM (not copied to RAM) are now JIT direct compatible, for example A590/A2091. (Others aren't yet converted to new expansion handling)

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