AMIGA 500 OCS Version 2 Beta 1 - RELEASE CANDIDATE
We are approaching the V2 release and therefore we enter the Beta phase. The Beta 1 has these additional features / enhancements compared to the last Alpha I published here (Alpha 9):
New Feature
- New option "DVI (no sound)" in the HDMI menu: sends a plain DVI signal instead of HDMI, for displays that stay black on an HDMI stream.
Improved Compatibility of the Core (ported from upstream MiSTer MiniMig):
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The CIA timers can count pulses on their external CNT pin, as the real 8520 chips do. Software that selects this mode, by accident or on purpose, no longer sees a timer running when it should stand still. Fixes the black screen at startup of Crystal Kingdom Dizzy (Fairlight release). MiSTer PR 230.
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The blitter freezes when a program switches off fill mode via BLTCON1 while a fill blit is still running, exactly like a real Amiga. Fixes the "red vector cube inside a white object" scene of the demo Absolute Inebriation by Virtual Dreams. One other scene of that demo still shows garbage in the left border, a known issue in all Minimig cores. MiSTer PR 236.
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Reading the beam position register VHPOSR returns the exact value a real Agnus reports. It used to read one colour clock ahead and returned zero instead of the line length at the end of a line. This matters for programs that time their effects by polling the beam. Verified against the real-A500 reference images of the vAmiga test suite. MiSTer PR 234.
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A non-interlaced screen is no longer mistaken for an interlaced one when a program clears or toggles the long-frame bit (LOF) without switching on interlace, which could make the HDMI flicker fixer treat it as interlaced. MiSTer issue 231, commit d16cd84.
An ask to the community
Please work, play and have fun with this core as much as you can and if you encounter bugs, then please report them on GitHub: https://github.com/sy2002/AExp/issues
Plus - can someome please test (and report on GitHub if something does not work):
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Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Fairlight crack, used to boot to a black screen. Should work now.
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Absolute Inebriation by Virtual Dreams, the red vector-cube scene used to draw garbage; one other scene still shows garbage in the left border, a known gap in every Minimig core, not something new.
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Hybris, let the attract mode run in PAL and watch the score list for jitter.
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Rampage by The Electronic Knights, should run through to the end credits.
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Beyond those four, anything that behaves differently than in Alpha 9 or in the official release 1 is is worth a report.
Next steps: From here to the release V2
Beta means feature freeze, i.e. from here on I will not add new features. The plan is to let the community work and test with this Beta 1 (aka Release Candidate) and in about 4 to 8 weeks I plan to release Version 2 of the core and upload it to the FileHost.
Please report bugs here as I cannot monitor Discord that regularly: https://github.com/sy2002/AExp/issues
I will preferably fix so called regression bugs, i.e. bugs that are in Beta 1 that where not in the official release version 1. Other bugs or incompatibilities are out of scope.
After my release V2, Kiwi drives the core forward from there. Please also see his recent posts in <#1313409877393276948>
