[ATARI] Atari++ 1.6.0

Atari++ 1.6.0 08.05.11

• Redesigned parts of the pokey emulation. The new version offers the option to be cycle-precise, i.e. pokey interrupts (POTs and timers) arrive now at the cycle. This improves the audio output for the "Electronic Speach Systems of Berkeley" considerably. (Kennedy Approach and others)
• Redesigned parts of the audio interfaces. The smarter audio output count now clock cycles and generate output for exactly the number of clocks passed. The output frequency still requires dynamic adjustment since the CPU load of the host system is never precisely in sync with the emulated clock.
• The control mechanism to bring the emulated clock and the system clock in sync has been improved, it is now a PID type of control loop that gets faster in sync than the previous versions.
• The improved audio output is available currently only for the ALSA and DirectX audio output chains. Oss/OssHQ and SDL remain unaltered. There is, however, little reason to fall back to the less precise chains. Prefer ALSA on Linux and DirectX on Windows.
• The parser for the keypad stick emulation was still buggy (oh bummer!) and was finally fixed. "Space" and " " can now both be used.
• The windows emulation of the readdir() primtives still had a bug and could crash the emulator on accessing a network volume. Fixed.

Atari++ 1.59 7.01.11

• Fixed the Antic DMA cycle allocation for narrow playfields. Due to misalignment between various DMA allocation slots, more cycles were available to the CPU than possible in the original hardware.
• Added a cycle-precise Pokey emulation that updates interrupt registers and potentiometer registers on a cycle-by-cycle basis.

Its emulation features are stunning:

• Cycle precise emulation; this includes correct emulation of horizontal kernels and programs that modify chip registers within a horizontal line. In a less technical language, software making use of advanced displaying techniques will be emulated correctly.
• Emulation of an advanced 1050 disk drive including single, double and enhanced density. The emulator not only understands .atr and .xfd files, but comes with a mini-boot loader that allows you to boot from binary load files (.exe and .com).
• Supports .gz compressed images, and .DCM disk images. No additional tools required to load these disks.
• Precise emulation of ANTIC and GTIA graphics, including undocumented scrolling features, undocumented GTIA player/missile priorities and collision detection, and some other less known GTIA features. Color artifacting is also available.
• Precise emulaton of POKEY sound, including "Software Speech", high-pass filters and POKEY hardware timer interrupts. An emulation of the console speaker is also included.
• Precise emulation of the POKEY SIO (serial transfer) protocol, including the Atari "sound effects" on disk loading and some lesser known influences of serial transfer on the sound subsystem.
• Pokey stereo hack ("Gumby") included in the emulation.
• Emulates graphics output either thru X11, or the SDL library, including a screen snapshot feature, saving images as PGM, BMP or PNG.
• Sound output is either emulated by the Open Sound System (OSS), the ALSA system, the SDL library, or by recording the sound samples into a WAV file in CD quality.
• Cylce-precise 6502 emulation, including "extra-instructions" that are not documented in the 6502-manual, and also including all known hardware-bugs of the 6502.
• Cylce-precise emulation of Pokey timer and interrupts.
• Printer emulation thru  standard LPR printer user interface.
• Flicker-Fixer option for games that toggle palettes fast for more colors.
• Emulation of color artifacts due to PAL color subsampling
• Optional de-blocking filter for magnified output
• Built-in Os emulation
• Joystick, paddle and lightpen emulation by keyboard or mouse, or by standard analogue PC joysticks. A special home-made interface allows the connection of Atari digital joysticks by an additional joystick driver. Hence, you'll be able to play all your old games even with your digital joysticks.
• Includes emulation of the Pokey POT reading mechanism.
• Saves and loads machine states to save games in the middle of the game play, and allows to resume from that point later on.
• Includes emulation of a variety of cartridge types, including 5200 games cartridges and Oss supercarts.
• Effective emulation of 800XL/XE and cartridge bank-switching mechanisms.
• Emulation of the Atari 850 Interface box by the serial port of the host computer, including a full 850 driver "in ROM".
• Interfaces to "Hias'" AtariSIO driver, allowing you to connect real Atari hardware to the PC.
• Includes a Dos 2.xx compatible interface to the filing system of the emulator.
• Easy to use graphical user front-end for simple setup and configuration, includes saving and loading of (human-readable) configuration files. The user front-end also allows to setup details like the player/missile collision setup to build "game-trainers" on demand.
• Includes a built-in monitor allowing experts to debug Atari software easily.
• And the best: It is free.