[X68] XM6 Pro-68k 2.06 12/12/2024

Release 63 (241212)

Fast Forward (tilde key) and No-Wait MPU (Shift-Tilde) are now permitted while in high-priority mode if a suitable number of logical processors are available.

The caption bar (title bar) now shows additional strings. While running, "[Debugging]" alerts the user that certain debugging features are active, possibly degrading performance, and, in the case of non-memory breakpoints, potentially reducing emulation accuracy. "[Mid-Frame]" indicates that the VM paused in the midst of frame rendering, implying that the screen being displayed may be inaccurate, potentially combining parts of the previous and current frame. This won't normally happen outside of debugging.

Bug fixes:

• One of the changes documented in the previous release was omitted.
• Screen shots taken with the VM unpaused were often inaccurate.
• Changing certain view settings while paused did not also re-render the screen.
• Eliminated a potential buffer overrun.
• Eliminated several race conditions, some of which were my fault.
• Eliminated a double reset in the power-on case.
• Removed redundant redraws / refreshes.
• Fixed some minor bugs related to special debugging commands I added long ago.
• "Painting" the main window had some inconsistencies.
• Menu detritus was sometimes lingering.
• The level meter wasn't behaving consistently when fast-forwarding.

Release 62 (241111)

The 68000 assembler dialog now marks text pre-loaded from the clipboard. In order to simplify thread-safety analysis, certain debugging commands are now performed exclusively by the VM thread. The difference should not be noticeable; I only mention it in case some unanticipated consequence manifests itself.

Bug fixes:

• Debugging commands utilizing F10 could cause menus to activate unexpectedly.
• Eliminated a pattern of race conditions related to thread termination. It never actually caused any problems as far as I know, however.

    Release 61 (241031)

The dialog interface for the 68000 assembler (a feature of disassembly windows) was tweaked to make it easier to use. Notably, erroneous input is now retained for at least one cycle, enabling it to be corrected without re-entering it. If the same erroneous input is resubmitted, the dialog will be aborted.

Different mouse linearization algorithms are now used for specific games.

Loading state while the VM power is off is no longer prohibited.

The VM is now paused on single-processor systems while extracting files from large archives, which can be very CPU-intensive.

Bug fixes:

• Mouse Mode was sometimes not being restored after closing dialogs.
• Fixed many more defects/inconsistencies related to the power switch being off.

Release 60 (240929)

Headerless 2HDA images can now be created in the New Floppy Disk dialog.

Reworked the CRTC/VICON window to be more informative and less misleading.

Added a few safeguards for corrupt SRAM.

Added a submenu under Tools for manipulating SRAM and the SRAM.DAT file (which stores the contents of SRAM between sessions).

Added a submenu under Tools for manipulating the text-based configuration file (usually named XM6.ini). For technical reasons, there is currently no way to safely write out the file while XM6 is running, so most of the commands are not very useful, but being able to see and toggle the read-only attribute is handy.

The Insert New Disk commands now skip the creation dialog whenever practical.

(The UI just keeps getting better!) You still get the dialog if you select certain container formats in the save dialog, or if you use one of the commands under the Tools menu instead of the drive-specific menus. Furthermore, if you hold Shift while selecting the command, it will default to an unformatted disk.

Whenever you open the Options dialog and activate the Joystick page, controller-type input devices will be rescanned. This allows you to configure and use a controller connected after XM6 starts. I only have one such device to test with, so there could still be issues; however, you can always restart the program if something goes awry.

Bug fixes:

• Undoing a Reset and Clear wasn't working because the in-memory backup copy of the VM state was being made after the memory clearing had already taken place.
• Reset and Clear wasn't clearing TVRAM. This was originally done intentionally, albeit not for very good reasons; it became an oversight with the advent of state-file compression.
• Controller hardware errors (such as unplugging) were not handled correctly.
• If the Save History / Keep History option was disabled, paths for hard drives were still being saved even if unused. Now paths for unused drives are omitted.Also, paths to non-existent HDD images are now considered unused.
• The "even/odd" interlace field state was not being restored on state load.
• Changes implemented in Release 49 to the text-based configuration file caused the documentation/help to be inaccurate regarding certain points.
• Text window contents copied to the clipboard could be outdated/incomplete.
• Status bar panes were sometimes blacked-out during dialogs.
• Fixed a ridiculous UI error of my own making related to the power switch.
• Fixed a few bugs that might not have affected public releases.

Release 59 (240822)

Support for 24-kHz display modes was improved, but only for the Unicode edition.
Horizontal timings are now slightly more accurate (by less than 1 nanosecond.)
The real-time clock (RTC) window now accepts mouse and keyboard input. This makes it much easier to set the RTC to arbitrary dates/times.
Removed some potential annoyances with the Apps and F10 keys. Notably, the Apps key now closes menus, since it can also open them (often unintentionally).
Added safeguards to prevent renaming / deleting image files that are in use. This only applies to using the F2 / Delete keys in conjunction with the various applicable menus - you can still modify files outside of XM6.
F2 can now be used with menu items associated with cheats for easier renaming.

Bug fixes:

• When loading state, audio from the previous state could sometimes be heard.
• When loading state, extraneous FM sounds could rarely be heard.
• The real-time clock (RTC) emulation had numerous mistakes. (Accurate handling of invalid values, such as Hexadecember 0th, is still not emulated perfectly.)
• The former anti-screen-saver method was not compatible with some systems.
• The Shift-F10 system hotkey (which opens pop-up or context menus) was sometimes unreliable due to interference from the meta-key feature (refer to the manual).
• Renaming files (by holding F2 while selecting a menu item) was sometimes not also renaming matching items in the MRU lists.
• F2 was not able to rename files when used with some of the MRU menus.
• Active state files were not being marked in the "Nearby" menu in certain cases.
• The (Shift-)Alt-Backspace accelerators, used for state file cycling, were not behaving similarly depending on whether or not the state files that were being cycled were stored within an archive. The new behavior should be more intuitive.

Release 58 (240303)

Frame skipping is no longer performed. It was not well implemented and hardly anyone knew how to configure it. Consequently, the animation is now smoother for most people. The MBCS edition still skips frames, so that option remains if your computer is extremely slow. Furthermore, the previous version will remain available on the website indefinitely, albeit for unrelated reasons.

Bug fixes:

• Starting full-screen could lag under certain circumstances. It is unclear if the original program had the same defect; its full-screen mode involved changing the display resolution, which is slow.

Release 57 (231221)

The program now starts up slightly faster.

Bug fixes:

• Formerly, audio recordings were vulnerable to subtle distortions, but this has (hopefully) been eliminated. For example, pausing emulation during recording or starting recording immediately after loading state were causing corruption. Furthermore, the audio was randomly stretched/contracted by a few milliseconds.
• As a side effect, you might hear occasional audio glitches only while recording is in progress, but the .WAV file that is actually produced will be unaffected.