[ATARI] Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 17 4/08/2026

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 17 4/08/2026

features added:

• nw

bugs fixes:

• nw

author's comment:

• Reverted change to emulate the VBXE P/M graphics size 2 bug, as it broke collision.
• Fixed a couple of issues with PDF export (thanks to ilmenit).
• Fixed printer positioning to be more consistent. The vertical position is now always at the text baseline.
• FX-80: Implemented user-defined characters, horizontal/vertical tabs, underline, and international character set selection.
• FX-80: Fixed the width of elite and compressed characters to be more accurate.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 16 27/07/2026

features added:

• Devices: Add Device UI now has a checkbox to show all devices for browsing.
• Printer: Added Epson FX-80+ emulation.

bugs fixes:

• nw

author's comment:

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 15 21/07/2026

Nadral (1985, Atari)

features added:

• Printer: PDF export now preserves characters when printed from HLE printer devices.

bugs fixes:

• Printer: Fixed 1029 handling of EOL characters in graphics mode.

author's comment:

• PDF export now tracks characters where available (HLE printers) and exports them as searchable/extractable text in the PDF file.
• PDF now uses Darken blend mode for vector graphics similarly to the SVG export.
• Fixed some TrueType font exporting issues in the PDF exporter.
• Printers now start the head at the left margin instead of left page edge.
• Fixed 1029 handling of EOLs in the middle of a bit image graphics command.
• Added post-line delay for 1025.
• Returned 1020 movement speed and pen change movement pattern, and fixed the 1020's timeout value being far too low.

If you have a list of the most horrific things in the world, how PDF supports Unicode would be a good nominee for that list.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 14 12/07/2026

features added:

• Printer: Added SVG and specifically sized PDF export.
  
• Printer: Added 1020 options for accurate line stepping behavior, accurate timing, and sounds.

bugs fixes:

• HDevice: Fixed a crash when write errors occurred during close operation.
  
• Printer: Fixed crash when printing long underlined lines on a 1029.

author's comment:

• Printers: Added horizontal head position indicator.
• Printers: Optimized graphics rendering.
• Printers: PDF export now has options for US Letter, A4, and 12" continuous paper size, and sets the producer and creation date fields.
• Printers: SVG export now uses darken blending where available and more compact vector path encoding.
• 1020: Added sound and accurate timing emulation support.
• 1020: Added FIFO emulation.
• 1020: Improved accuracy: disable line styles when printing text, reset line style for the X command, and print a line feed when returning to text mode.
• 1020: Fixed paper feed accuracy issue when repeated vertical movements.
• 1029: Fixed a crash that occurred with long word-wrapped underlined lines.
• HDevice: Fixed crash if I/O error occurred while closing text files, and improved host to CIO error conversion.

This version has a major rewrite of the printer graphics rasterizer to support the moving head display, which needed a cached image to render quickly. This was particularly a problem with the 1020 accurate Bresenham mode, which puts 10-50x more line vectors into the vector database. To handle this, the printer rasterizer now has a tile cache, a faster culler, and AVX2 rasterization optimizations. The 1020 emulator can now emulate the head movement, including the clicking at the left margin when changing pens, and playing sounds. The sound clips are taken from a microphone aimed at a 1020, but the head and platen movement sounds are provisional. The problem is that X-Y movement is done via stepper motors, so the sounds should lower in pitch/rate for the minor axis when moving/drawing along a line. This is hard to simulate with the current sound sample approach, which always the full-speed movement sounds. The steps are too fast for a sample approach to work well, so I'd probably need to come up with a resonance-based scheme to emulate the sounds better.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 12 14/06/2026

features added:

• Printer: Added 1020 option for accurate line stepping behavior.

bugs fixes:

• Debugger: Fixed tracing not being disabled after interrupting a gt command.

author's comment:

• Fixed some copy text context menu items not being grayed without text selected.
• Added a new view submenu to the quick bar.
• Debugger now turns off CPU tracing when a go-traced command is interrupted.
• Fixed 1020 clipping bug.
• Added 1020 option for accurate line stepping. This will switch to Bresenham line stepping for more accurate stepped lines, but will create a lot more line segments.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 12 14/06/2026

Astro Chase, jedna z gier na Atari, która miała najbardziej obiecujące intro, a i tak kończyło się na obijaniu o planety;P

features added:

• nw

bugs fixes:

• Printer: Improved accuracy of 1020 command parsing and plot behavior.

author's comment:

• Fixed issue where auto-suggest could not complete filenames starting with digits.
• Reworked 1020 Color Printer emulation based on device testing.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 11 8/06/2026

Feud - Czech Hack

features added:

• UI: Added UI commands for cycling to quick maps with specific controller types.
  
• UI: Added quick bar in lower right for shortcut access to common commands. 

bugs fixes:

• UI: Fixed regression where Quit option in side panel didn't work.

author's comment:

• Fixed bug where Quit on the side menu had stopped working.
• Added new quick bar in the lower right.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 10 11/05/2026

Mercenary: Escape From Targ (1985, Novagen)

features added:

• Debugger: ln command has options for specific read/write/execute symbol lookups.
• Simulator: Added option to write text files with LF line endings.
• UI: Added auto-suggest feature for H: paths and PEEK/POKE addresses. 

bugs fixes:

• Debugger: Computer OS ROM symbols are no longer loaded in 5200 mode.

author's comment:

• Debugger: Fix 800/XL OS symbols being loaded in 5200 mode.
• Debugger: ln (list nearest) command now has -r/w/x flags to lookup read/write/execute symbols.
• Added option to write text files with LF-only endings instead of CR/LF.
• Adjusted default VBXE FX core version to 1.26 (latest).
• Added autosuggest feature.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 9 15/04/2026

Speed Ball (1989, CMS)

features added:

• nw

bugs fixes:

• AltirraOS: Fixed incorrect orientation byte from some line flushes in P: handler. (3.49)
  
• AltirraOS: Fixed occasional bogus timeout errors in SIO routines. (3.49)
• Disk: Fixed Percom AT-88/AT-88SPD not saving 1795 FDC setting.
  
• SAP: Fixed converter causing player to swap channels when repeating a stereo type R file.

author's comment:

• AltirraOS 3.49: Fixed a bug with a occasional bogus SIO timeout, and a corruption issue with long printer lines.
• Fixed an issue with some Percom AT-88/SPD settings not saving.
• Fixed bogus drive select settings for AMDC-I/II disk drives.
• SAP type R converter fixed to avoid channel swapping on restart.
• SAP type R player now shows time elapsed/length.
• Portability fixes.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 8 06/04/2026

features added:

• Cartridge: The!Cart emulation now supports mode 37 (MegaCart 4M) from newest CPLD firmware.
  
• Cassette: Tape Control dialog is now resizable and has options to load/save/unload tapes.

bugs fixes:

• Disk: Standard disk emulator now turns on motor on disk change for 1050 and Indus GT profiles to emulate density detection.
  
• VBXE: GTIA size mode 2 lockup bug is no longer emulated when VBXE is active. 

author's comment:

• Fixed a debugger crash with Happy 1050 full emulation.
• Fixed motor indicator being left on when removing a Indus GT full emulation device.
• Additional minor optimization and signed zero fixes to AltirraOS math pack and FP acceleration.
• Standard disk drive emulation now simulates motor turning on momentarily on disk change for density detection.
• Fixed VBXE incorrectly emulating P/M graphics size 2 bug, which it doesn't support.
• Tape control dialog is now resizable and has new/load/save options.
• Added support for emulating updated The!Cart firmware with MegaCart 4M support.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 7 29/03/2026

Sargon 3 (1985, Hayden Software)

features added:

• Command Line: Added /cmd and /cmd1 switches for invoking UI commands from the command line.

bugs fixes:

• Disk: Adjusted XF551 style high speed timing on generic emulation profile and split XF551/USD high speed timings.
• Recorder: SAP recorder now uses prescribed text for unknown author/title

author's comment:

• Split and readjusted XF551 and USDoubler style high speed timings in standard disk emulator.
• Fixed Indus GT ROM version autodetection names to match the Field Service Manual.
• Added /cmd and /cmd1 switches to invoke UI commands from the command line.
• Fixed broken <<= and >>= operators in custom device compiler.
• SAP type R recorder now uses <?> for unknown fields.
• Fixed misspelling of IFP as IPF in built-in debugging symbols.
• AltirraOS updated to 3.47 with math pack updates: fixed normalize routine using too many mantissa bytes, fixed underflow issue in FDIV, optimized IFP/FMUL/FDIV operations.
• Fixed log spam in the debugger with drag and drop.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 6 03/03/2026

features added:

• Devices: Added Karin Maxi Drive

bugs fixes:

• AltirraOS: Fixed screen corruption in screen editor when moving cursor with a Get Byte call. (3.46)
• Devices: Standard device emulators now support SIO timeouts where implemented by the original devices.
• Devices: Fixed erroneous control signal inputs on 850 full emulation serial port 1.
• Disk Explorer: Fixed MAC/65 decoder mis-decoding some constants.

author's comment:

• Fixed bug in MAC/65 decoding in Disk Explorer.
• Added SIO timeout for standard 1025 and 1050 emulators.
• Fixed incorrect serial port 1 control signal inputs on 850 full emulator.
• Added Karin Maxi Drive emulation.
• AltirraOS 3.46: fixed incompatible cursor behavior when reading from screen.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 5 16/02/2026

features added:

• AltirraOS: Math pack rewritten to better match standard math pack results and for TurboBasic XL compatibility.
  
• GTIA: Added emulation of known defective GTIA types.
• HLE: Fast math acceleration now much better matches standard math pack results.

bugs fixes:

• Cartridge: Added DCart to cartridge type autodetection list.
• UI: Reset Window Layout wasn't resetting undocked panes.
• UI: Layout restore is more robust at fixing panes that are off-screen or unreasonably small. 

author's comment:

• Fixed Reset Window Layout not resetting undocked panes.
• Improved recovery of off-screen panes when restoring window layout.
• Added DCart to cartridge autodetect list.
• Fixed a bug where a caption bar would sometimes draw over the performance analyzer.
• Fast math acceleration now much more closely matches the results of the standard math pack.
• Rewrote AltirraOS math pack for better compatibility with the standard math pack and compatibility with Turbo Basic XL.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and get Turbo Basic XL working on AltirraOS. The issue is that TBXL duplicates the exp/log routines in the math pack while reusing its constants, so the algorithm in the math pack has to match. Previously, the AltirraOS math pack used different algorithms, so TBXL was using the wrong polynomial constants for its algorithm and produced garbage results from several functions. A few main changes were needed to fix this:

• The polynomial approximations have been replaced with the algorithms from the upstream source that was used to write the original math pack, a book called BASIC Scientific Routines. The formulas and coefficients are largely implemented straight out of this book, with some minor changes (and errors).
• Several constants had to be moved to addresses expected by TBXL.
• Rounding has been removed from the math pack, which now truncates intermediate results like the original math pack.

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 4 02/02/2026

features added:

• Custom Devices: Added continue statement.
• Custom Devices: Added C-style hex constants (0x prefix).
• Custom Devices: Added $sio.set_external_clock().

bugs fixes:

• UI: Removed inner edge on display window when there are no other docked panes visible.
• UI: Files can now be dragged from folders mapped with the H: device to paste in the emulated path to the file. 

author's comment:

• Removed the inner 3D edge on the display pane in the center well.
• Drag and drop now has the option to paste in the encoded CIO filename for a file mapped through the H: device (useful for encoded long filenames).
• Partial workaround for major drag and drop bugs in Wine (unfortunately, Wine will still hang if an error occurs).
• Custom Devices: Added continue statement and 0x-style hex literals.
• Custom Devices: Added $sio.set_external_clock().

Altirra x86 i x64 4.50 test 3 18/01/2026

Scramble (Konami, 1984)

changes:

• nw

features added:

• Cartridge: The CAR header checksum is now ignored if it is zero.

bugs fixes:

• nw

author's comment:

• Fixes shutdown crash.
• The CAR file format checksum is now ignored if the checksum is set to 0.
• Removed obsolete old checksum algorithm from compatibility system (should not affect anything, SHA256 has been in place forever)