Altirra 4.10 released

[oo7]

@phaeron

 

is memory in altirra at time of boot all random or all 0?

 

[_The Doctor__]

9 minutes ago, oo7 said:

@phaeron

 

is memory in altirra at time of boot all random or all 0?

 

Isn't there a configuration setting for this? I believe there is. Check it out. Computer -> Memory     Cleared

Edited July 2, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Wrathchild]

6 minutes ago, oo7 said:

is memory in altirra at time of boot all random or all 0?

Configurable

[oo7]

Oops thanks guys

[phaeron]

This is something I keep forgetting to clarify in the UI -- the default for that setting is DRAM 1. In most cases, cold-powering up an Atari with original or contemporary DRAM will give a mostly stable pattern in memory, usually stripes. This is because the DRAM is generally split into two banks with opposite biases toward a particular state. The DRAM 1-3 patterns are modeled after various 800XL and 130XEs that I have.

 

However, unless running from a diagnostic cartridge, most programs will never see these patterns because main memory regions are all cleared by the OS. The main regions where the power-up pattern can be seen include: RAM under the cartridge/BASIC, RAM under the OS, memory location 0, and extended memory. For this reason, it's seldom that programs are affected by this setting, though there are notable exceptions like Quest for Quintana Roo on the 5200.

 

[phaeron]

https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test17.zip
https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test17-src.7z

• Fixed a crash in the FLAC decoder on some CPUs.
• Fixed audio output with two-tone mode enabled not reflecting stop bits.
• Fixed a bug with MDDOS cartridge banking.
• Added command-line switches: /[no]casautobasicboot, /kernelref, and /basicref.
• Fixed input diagrams sometimes appearing blank in Input Setup dialog.
• Added Help > Export Debug Help command.
• Added @hwwritereg(...) debugger function to read back write-only hardware registers. For instance, @hwwritereg(irqen) can be used to read back the IRQEN state.
• Fixed up some omissions from the debugger help, such as the linear cart: address space type.

The exported debug help produces an HTML page that is inspired by some ones that others have generated; it works by dumping the dbghelp.txt into an HTML template and parsing with JavaScript. I wanted to just drop in the dbghelp.txt file raw, but needed to escape characters since HTML doesn't support CDATA. You can, however, easily substitute in an escaped version of dbghelp.txt from any other version. An example is attached.

debughelp-4.20-test17.html

[oo7]

been using Altirra alot more lately and am having a small issue.

 

 

There is a arrow I need to enter. On my XL I push escape hold control then press clear.

 

I cant seem to get it to happen in altirra.

 

looks like this

 

 

 

nevermind found it. esc, ctrl, home on my pc.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by oo7

[Suppawer]

10 hours ago, phaeron said:

• Added Help > Export Debug Help command.

Thanks!

Minor request: Export "Command-Line Help" (cmdhelp.txt to .html)

[FULS]

4 hours ago, oo7 said:

There is a arrow I need to enter. On my XL I push escape hold control then press clear.

 

I cant seem to get it to happen in altirra.

 

looks like this

 

 

 

nevermind found it. esc, ctrl, home on my pc.

 

 

 

 

When I'm in hurry, I use the built-in Keypad in Altirra.

Explained Here

Edited July 5, 2023 by FULS

[phaeron]

4 hours ago, Suppawer said:

Thanks!

Minor request: Export "Command-Line Help" (cmdhelp.txt to .html)

cmdhelp.txt isn't processed like dbghelp.txt -- it just has colorization applied. You can just copy it out of the dialog.

[mirao]

I can enable tracking of a value in "Debug => Window => Memory" on a screen. I just right click a memory value and select "Track On-Screen". 
But how could I disable the tracking? If I click to "Track On-Screen" again (on the same value I'm already tracking), unexpectedly the value will be tracked twice on screen.
Only way how to get rid of tracking is a restart of Altirra.

Any idea?

[phaeron]

8 hours ago, mirao said:

I can enable tracking of a value in "Debug => Window => Memory" on a screen. I just right click a memory value and select "Track On-Screen". 
But how could I disable the tracking? If I click to "Track On-Screen" again (on the same value I'm already tracking), unexpectedly the value will be tracked twice on screen.
Only way how to get rid of tracking is a restart of Altirra.

Any idea?

Yeah, the UI should be a bit smarter there. Use the 'wc *' command in the debugger to clear the on-screen watch table.

[jindroush]

@phaeron, btw, is there a way how to preserve content of watch window between runs / enter it through cmdline/console commands? wc creates 'different' watch onscreen...

[mirao]

11 hours ago, phaeron said:

Use the 'wc *' command in the debugger to clear the on-screen watch table.

It works, thank you.
I didn't know that a screen watch is tracked in watches, because I didn't see it in the window "Watch". But now I can see that the window "Watch" contains different items than "wl".

Edited July 8, 2023 by mirao

[oo7]

On 7/5/2023 at 12:28 PM, FULS said:

When I'm in hurry, I use the built-in Keypad in Altirra.

Explained Here

This doesn’t work because there is no clear key.

 

maybe it can be added one day.

 

currently the solution is pressing esc followed by ctrl followed by home on the pc keyboard which is clear

 

maybe an update to the onscreen keyboard can come one day with all keys that would be nice

[mirao]

6 hours ago, oo7 said:

This doesn’t work because there is no clear key.

This works for me: Click on "Escape", "Control" and "<" (to the left from "Ins")

 

 

[phaeron]

Yup, Altirra's on-screen keyboard matches the actual keyboard layout -- where there is no separate Clear key, because it's Shift/Ctrl+<.

[oo7]

1 hour ago, phaeron said:

Yup, Altirra's on-screen keyboard matches the actual keyboard layout -- where there is no separate Clear key, because it's Shift/Ctrl+<.

I could of sworn on my old hardware i used to push esc ctrl then clear aka tab maybe my memory is wrong.

[flashjazzcat]

Well it's got CLEAR written on it as well.

[oo7]

True. Anyway doesnt really matter was just a mission to find making that character. Not complaining just talking. Altirra for me has been a dream come true.

[phaeron]

This has been a small long-term issue, since even if you know the original keyboard it doesn't map 1:1 with a PC keyboard, and the on-screen keyboard doesn't help find the keys on the PC keyboard. The ways you can find that out right now are either the Help file or the keyboard configuration dialog (if you copy to a copy layout), which aren't the most immediately accessible. But if you need to look up a key, the easiest way is to copy the layout to Custom and edit that, as the keyboard layout dialog has search and lookup-by-press.

 

I've thought about whether it'd be feasible to display an image showing the default mapping, but just drawing lines between the keyboards would probably create a bit of an unreadable mess -- and that's before considering international keyboards.

 

[phaeron]

https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test18.zip
https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test18-src.7z

• Added support for saving and loading traces in the Performance Analyzer.
• Added menu commands for selecting all text on screen and deselecting.

The PerfAnalyzer .attrace format contains most of the same data as the in-memory trace, but with better compression and a more version-independent format. CPU instructions, hardware channels, and video frames are saved; tape trace channels are not currently supported. The existing in-memory CPU trace format compresses the raw history from 28 bytes/instruction down to ~8.5 bytes/instruction, while the serialized format uses a combination of Deflate and more aggressive encoding and blocking to get this down as low as ~1.2 bytes/instruction. The result is that a 2min. PAL trace takes about 70MB on disk, and a full 12min. trace of the Numen demo is ~600MB. The encoding/decoding process is fairly involved and the trace needs a bunch of memory to unpack, so the 64-bit version is highly recommended if trying out this feature as you may run out of memory with the 32-bit version.

 

The .attrace format itself is not yet documented, though I plan to once it's more finalized and the reader is more flexible. The top-level container is a .zip file, though the majority of the data is binary encoded. The CPU trace format is designed with a flexible predictor system, so it's possible to encode traces without the full set of predictors that Altirra uses -- which means mostly just dumping register state per instruction into a fixed-size record stream.

 

[oo7]

6 hours ago, phaeron said:

This has been a small long-term issue, since even if you know the original keyboard it doesn't map 1:1 with a PC keyboard, and the on-screen keyboard doesn't help find the keys on the PC keyboard. The ways you can find that out right now are either the Help file or the keyboard configuration dialog (if you copy to a copy layout), which aren't the most immediately accessible. But if you need to look up a key, the easiest way is to copy the layout to Custom and edit that, as the keyboard layout dialog has search and lookup-by-press.

 

I've thought about whether it'd be feasible to display an image showing the default mapping, but just drawing lines between the keyboards would probably create a bit of an unreadable mess -- and that's before considering international keyboards.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I think things are good as is, people like me just need to learn to look more before posting.

 

 

[jenorton]

Hi:

 

Thanks for this update.

 

I really appreciate not needing a mouse to copy all text to clipboard.

 

Just had a go at booting up Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy and got the light turned on.  Might just see if I can get off the earth.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

[fox]

Can Altirra emulate the PAL color delay line? Numen looks washed out of colors.

If you look closely at an APAC or TIP picture on a CRT screen, the "gray" GRAPHICS 9 lines are not displayed as gray, but are colored from the GRAPHICS 11 line above.