CPCWiki forum
General Category => Emulators => Topic started by: OffseT on 21:43, 17 July 16
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Ok guys. Since Push'n'Pop died, I finally created an account here to post news about ACE.
I know that you are mainly about PeeCee and that ACE is not really your cup of tea, but I need to post news somewhere. ;D
So, ACE 1.12 is finally released after being delayed for quite a long time.
This new version fixes some issues in CRTC emulation (mostly on CRTC 0/2 since CRTC 1/3/4 are already almost perfect 8) ). It also extends the plugins API and comes with new plugins for mice and joysticks.
More details about ACE on the dedicated web page.
http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net/)
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Will definitely be grabbing this tomorrow. Thanks @OffseT (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1826) ;)
Edit: Downloaded and installed... Ever better, this is without doubt the best Amstrad Emulator on any platform.
I'd love to see Arnold for OSX match this, and I am sure it will get there. but right now it's not there yet.
Thanks @OffseT (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1826) and keep up the good work @arnoldemu (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=122) :)
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I know that you are mainly about PeeCee and that ACE is not really your cup of tea, but I need to post news somewhere. ;D
Maybe you see the following post from Kevin about acid testing: amstrad cpc "acid" test (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/emulators/amstrad-cpc-'acid'-test/)
It would be nice to share all limit cases you told me about :P
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@OffseT (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1826): Yes I hope I already tested some of these limit cases but if there are some I missed please tell me about them and I will add a test.
I can tell you if the limit case is already tested and the name of the program to run to see it.
I have tested a lot of things but I have probably missed something.
All the tests I made and published have been run on the following setups: GX4000, 464Plus, 6128Plus, 464 (type 0, tall keys), 464 (type 4), 6128 type 0, 6128 type 1, 6128 type 2, KC Compact.
+ I also tested some hardware devices I have: X-MASS, X-MEM, PlayCity, Symbiface 2, Amram 2, Dobbertin ROM board.
Ace has always been the emulator which people say is the best because of it's higher accuracy and compatibility. I can't run it myself but I have asked Craig to run some tests :)
The name "acid" tests comes from the html acid test. e.g. http://acid3.acidtests.org/ (http://acid3.acidtests.org/)
It means to thoroughly test features. In our case to thoroughly test the hardware of cpc and plus so that the accuracy of emulators can be confirmed and to highlight and show limits and features of our machines so that they can be used (or worked around) in demos and games :)
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Ok. I didn't know about this acid test (I don't read forums very often).
I'll run it and I'll fix what might be wrong in ACE asap!
That's a very good idea to try to gather this kind of tests. I'll let you know if I have some additional stuff I could provide you
(I guess Roudoudou was thinking about some timing tests for I/O ASIC register page).
I don't know if ACE is that accurate. Well, at least for me it is not accurate enough. :P
Anyway, last time I checked Arnold and WinAPE, ACE was better at almost every stage. ;)
(I cannot check on a regular base because I don't have any PC at home)
Now, the good news is that Arnold and WinAPE are still being improved, and that some other good emulators are on the way for PC users.
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Welcome OffseT, nice to read from you again. :)
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Now, the good news is that Arnold and WinAPE are still being improved, and that some other good emulators are on the way for PC users.
Arnold's accuracy has improved a lot but It doesn't pass the tests 100%.
Feel free to ask questions about the tests. Please put the questions in the thread about them :)
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Glad to see some news - the more, the merrier. Even though I still have a MorphOS machine on my to-do list...
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Can MorphOS run on WinUAE? I believe it's possible to run AmigaOS4 now?
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Morphos is not a free software :(
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MorphOS is a commercial operating system and cannot be run emulated.
Anyway, it is free to download and install on any supported machine (the trial version is limited to 30 minutes sessions).
The goal of ACE never was to be widely spread; I just wanted a proper the best CPC emulator on the machine I have at home. 8)
On PC you already have Arnold and WinAPE which are good and still being improved.
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MorphOS is a commercial operating system and cannot be run emulated.
Anyway, it is free to download and install on any supported machine (the trial version is limited to 30 minutes sessions).
The goal of ACE never was to be widely spread; I just wanted a proper the best CPC emulator on the machine I have at home. 8)
On PC you already have Arnold and WinAPE which are good and still being improved.
ACE is in my opinion the best emulator on *any* platform. It's a shame I am probably the only one who gets to appreciate it. Thanks for your continued work on ACE it is awesome.
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On PC you already have Arnold and WinAPE which are good and still being improved.
You forget JavaCPC, which is in few ways more precise than all other emulators. :)
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ACE is in my opinion the best emulator on *any* platform. It's a shame I am probably the only one who gets to appreciate it. Thanks for your continued work on ACE it is awesome.
Thank you very much! ;D
Anyway, there are more users than you think!
You forget JavaCPC, which is in few ways more precise than all other emulators. :)
Sorry, I don't know much about PeeCee. :P
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Sorry, I don't know much about PeeCee. :P
Yeah, they're not that important anyways. :laugh:
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Planning an emulator round-up for issue 2 of my fanzine, I'm assuming a Mac Mini G4 and trial MorphOS is the cheapest way to get thus emu up and running?
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Planning an emulator round-up for issue 2 of my fanzine, I'm assuming a Mac Mini G4 and trial MorphOS is the cheapest way to get thus emu up and running?
Yep, sure is. It's best if you get a g4 "silent upgrade" Mac mini. But the 1.42ghz is OK too.
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ACE 1.13 is available.
This version comes with numerous small improvements related to usage for crossdev (thanks Krusty for the advices).
It also fixes several small bugs (mainly in MUI code) and introduces some minor improvements in the emulation engine (thanks to Kevin Thacker test suite). Finally, it also includes internal reworks to improve portability and 64-bits support.
http://ace.cpcscene.net/fr:downloads (http://ace.cpcscene.net/fr:downloads)
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I've been playing with my vampire 600 v2 recently so have not tried thus new release yet. But I guess it will be awesome
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Played with this latest release in preparation for the Amiga event in 3 weeks time. All working beautifully.
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Hey there!
Just a few words to let you know that ACE 1.14 is released. 8)
A lot of improvements, including CRTC 0 now as good as CRTC 1/3/4, reworked GUI, updated German translation, new icons, new features...
More details about ACE on the dedicated web page.
http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net/)
Still for MorphOS only, but internals were also improved to ease a future AmigaOS port.
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Hi there!
ACE 1.15 is released. :o
A lot of improvements, including real time video recording, extensive symbols handling, clipboard support and a bunch of new stuff...
More details about ACE on the dedicated web page.
http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net/)
Still for MorphOS only, sorry guys! :P
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I own a MacMini G4 with dual OS (MacOS/MorphOS) installed, and i think ACE is the best Amstrad CPC/CPC+ emulator i have tested and used on an Amiga compatible platform.
Great work ! ;)
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Planning to pick up a PowerPC Mac Mini this week and looking forward to trying out this emulator finally!
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Additionally, I published the source code of a small tool which can be used to convert ACE video recordings (AREC files) and then encode them (thru ffmpeg) in your preferred format.
Here it is: ace-arec2raw (http://ace.cpcscene.net/en:downloads#ace-arec2raw)
It is the POSIX compatible version of the tool already provided for MorphOS with ACE. The goal is mainly to be able to use a big fat PeeCee to do the durty encoding job instead of injuring your little MorphOS machine. ;D
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ACE 1.16 released. 8)
What new?
- Fixes and improvements in ASIC emulation.
- Speed optimization (much faster!).
- GUI and AREXX small adds.
- And a few bugs where killed during the process.
Grab it there:.
http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net/)
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I forgot to mention that...
ACE 1.17 was released 8)
It is new, it is nice; you need it!
Grab it there:
http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net/)
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Downloaded and installed under MorphOS 3.11 on macmini. That' great, as always !
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Feel free to download ACE 1.18 now! 8)
This version includes various GUI improvements, as well as new plugins (for more light guns), optimized speed, and more.
[/size]It's always free, just use your mouse to click there:[size=78%]
http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net/)
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ACE 1.19 is ready; I am looking for a few additional beta testers before the release.
Ping me if you wanna be the first ones to check this new version of the best emulator ever. :)
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In a truly unbelievable event, the best emulator became even better!
:o ACE 1.19 is out! :o
Lot of exciting new stuff, but here are the main ones:
- Added management of plugins activation from ACE icon.
- Fixed overflow detection in CRTC editor window.
- Fixed the last kwown emulation issue of CRTC 3 (fixes Tennis Cup 2 intro).
- Fixed wrong timing of OUT (0),A opcode when putting data on bus.
- Added support for up to 4096K expansion RAM (compatible with MemCard 2M and CPC4MB).
- Added support for new snapshot chunks MX??, so that up to 4160K can be stored.
- Added preferences save from the menu (resynchronize the icon's tooltypes with run time settings).
- Improved joysticks plugin to make use on the sensors.library instead of the lowlevel.library (thanks to Szilárd Biró for his code examples)
- Fixed small issues and made internal modifications to ease code portability.
Heaven is just here: http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net) 8)
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C’est bien beau tout ça mais à quand une version Windows ??
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- Added support for up to 4096K expansion RAM (compatible with MemCard 2M and CPC4MB).
- Added support for new snapshot chunks MX??, so that up to 4160K can be stored.
HiSo.... How many MX chunks? Starting from 00 or 01 ?I will add support for Rasm in the next release :-*
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HiSo.... How many MX chunks? Starting from 00 or 01 ?I will add support for Rasm in the next release :-*
MX?? chunks are following MEM0-8 chunks. They are numbered from 09 to 40 (hexadecimal numbering).
Information are stored compressed like in MEM0-8 chunks.
I wanted to add this description to the snapshot CPCWiki page (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Snapshot), but my password was lost and password recovery do not work!
C’est bien beau tout ça mais à quand une version Windows ??
Ça représente une quantité de travail très conséquente et il y a déjà de bons émulateurs sous Windows, ça n'est donc pas une priorité pour le moment. ;)
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MX?? chunks are following MEM0-8 chunks. They are numbered from 09 to 40 (hexadecimal numbering).
Information are stored compressed like in MEM0-8 chunks.
I wanted to add this description to the snapshot CPCWiki page (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Snapshot), but my password was lost and password recovery do not work!
Done!
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Done!
MX09 to MX40 i counted 55 slots of 64K -> 3520K
plus MEM0-8 -> 9 slots of 64K -> 576K
total 4096K, not 4160K so i guess some 4M extension are not really 4M or we cannot use the last page of 64K because of IO adressing
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MX09 to MX40 i counted 55 slots of 64K -> 3520K
From MX09 to MX40 included, there are 56 slots, not 55 slots ;)
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From MX09 to MX40 included, there are 56 slots, not 55 slots ;)
rhaaaaaaaaaaa, i forgot the 09 in fact when counting :o
thank you
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Hey guys
It's cool to extend snapshot memory over 512K but what about the snapshot ram configuration still a 8 bits value in the header :D
Let me know when it's done (for rasm integration)
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Someone can send me (or post here) snapshot wih Xtra memory sna made with ACE for implemting it on my CPC emulator and test purpose ;D ?
Thanks in advance ! :D
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Someone can send me (or post here) snapshot wih Xtra memory sna made with ACE for implemting it on my CPC emulator and test purpose ;D ?
Thanks in advance ! :D
Here is a snapshot (with an animation)Offset told me it works with ACE
If you use with Winape the animation will stop quickly as there is only 512K read and 3.5M free occuring blank screens before it loops again
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I made another one in mode 0 (probably better visual result, can't say)
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I confirm, 4MB snapshots from rasm are correctly supporting the new MX?? chunks introduced by ACE. 8)
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What a pleasant day!
:o ACE 1.20 is out! :o
New features and a few fixes in emulation engine (quite hard to find improvements by now, since it works soooo good! :laugh: ):
- Added a history of the last 10 used files in devices context menus.
- Added a preferences window to edit ROMs configuration (in addition to tooltypes and AREXX interface).
- Fixed minors bugs in emulation of Amstrad Plus hard sprites.
- Implemented emulation of ASIC bug where hard sprites' pixels are not displayed right after a bitmap read of write access.
- Fixed a few Z80 vs memory access timings with illegal instructions.
- Improved symbols window.
- Improved memory editor.
- Added preferences for screen geometry settings depending on the CPC model.
Enlightenment here: http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net) 8)
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The best CPC emulator strikes back with a small update!
:o ACE 1.21 is out! :o
- Added full implementation on Z80 IM 0 when used from plugins.
- Fixed ROM icon transparency from ROM preferences window.
- Fixed a bug in internal ROM management which was introduced with 1.20
Magia here: http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net) 8)
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Now waiting for amiga-like demos on CPC.
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Neither a demo, nor Amiga-like, but surely something will happen. :D
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I am looking for new beta-testers for ACE and the upcoming version 1.22 (which includes new Spanish localisation and an improved/simplified plugins SDK).
Feel free to ping me. 8)
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Does it run on a Vampire?
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It runs only under MorphOS.
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It runs only under MorphOS.
or Haiku :D
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Does it run on a Vampire?
Building a 68k version would be doable but it might require MUI 5 and not only the old 3.8.
I already did an AmigaOS 4 version (never released, for testing purpose-only) and it was not a huge effort. An AROS version was tried also, but cancelled because of AROS being really too buggy. But basically, in all these Amiga ports, the main point was the video rendering (no acceleration at all on AROS, and AmigaOS 4 didn't have a proper overlay support, but now with 4.1 I could try again and use their new compositing engine).
I don't know if there is overlay or some other hardware accelerated frame buffer rendering on Vampire, if so, it could be funny to test how it could run on it... but I don't have a Vampire, and my regular 060 Amiga is surely too slow.
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I do have a licenced copy of MorphOS on my Mac Mini (currently not setup) but my A500 with vampire is setup - I was using MorphOS for about 10 years between selling my A1200 PPC then on Pegasus 2 then to Mac Mini - but then when the Vampire came out, I could have my nice all in one keyboard computer back again... i collect all in one keyboard computers, it is how home computers should be :D
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The best CPC emulator strikes back with version 1.22! 8)
Download it here: http://ace.cpcscene.net (http://ace.cpcscene.net)
Here is a simplified list of enhacements and new features in this update:
- Improved plugins SDK:
- Now a baby could create a plugin!
- Better portability.
- Default plugins preferencs can now directly be saved by ACE.
- New Spanish translation thanks to Juan Carlos Herran Martin:
- All plugins and their documentation are also translated.
- ACE is now entirely translated in the main four CPC languages!
- Memory default contents now depends on chip type.
- Removed tape to hard disc wrapper (TAPE2HD option):
- New Albireo plugin and AlbiDOS are a perfect replacement (to be downloaded separately).
- Added ability to emulate the GX4000:
- 39.90 MHz ASIC instead of 40.00 MHz.
- Disabled keyboard (apart of the 'P' key).
- No tape nor disc interface.
- Added a fast preferences menu to quickly reconfigure ACE in one of the main stock models:
- CPC464, CPC664, CPC6128.
- 464plus, 6128plus.
- GX4000.
- Added support for extended cartridges:
- Can handle cartridges up to several hundreds on megabytes.
- Support of XPR format (even if this new format sounds quite useless regarding that CPR is already easily expandable to support extended cartridges).
- Improved virtual keyboard:
- Unicode support for all CPC characters.
- Better display depending on different MUI preferences.
- Improved symbols handling window:
- Can now be sorted by name or address.
- Added an item in contextual menu to export symbols in form of an AREXX script.
- Improved AREXX interface:
- New configurable export pattern for commands EXPORTBREAKPOINTS et EXPORTSYMBOLS (by default, both commands export an AREXX script).
- New commands ACTIVATEPLUGIN et DEACTIVATEPLUGIN to control plugins activation.
- Internal modifications to ease portability.
- Fixed minor bugs and regressions in GUI and plugins.
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any chance for M4 emulation? and perhaps some other cpc hardware?
My wish list:
- M4 support
- Code Coverage Tracking (I am sure you can come up with a tagging method for code that we can put in our source - even if it is subroutine entry / exit) that the emulator can tag it's copy of memory when an instruction is read and/or when data is read within a session, then dumped out and compared with the source - in a generic way via the tags so it can work in any source code environment. This will help debugging a lot.
- Multiplay support
- SSA1 support
etc...
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My wish list:
- M4 support
- Code Coverage Tracking (I am sure you can come up with a tagging method for code that we can put in our source - even if it is subroutine entry / exit) that the emulator can tag it's copy of memory when an instruction is read and/or when data is read within a session, then dumped out and compared with the source - in a generic way via the tags so it can work in any source code environment. This will help debugging a lot.
- Multiplay support
- SSA1 support
etc...
That's a nice wish list, but my time is limited... and in fact I'm not required for most of this. 8)
M4, SSA-1, Multiplay support: ACEpansion interface can be used to create plugins to emulate most I/O expansion cards. Feel free to create them! Plugins SDK is fully documented and example source code of all default plugins is given (Albireo one is also given in a dedicated repository).
Code coverage tracking: it should be possible using breakpoints (there is an observer mode) and scripting (a script can be executer everytime you enter en breakpoint). In fact, using the AREXX interface, a lot of scripts could be created to automated almost everything and to integrate ACE in any kind of IDE.
I made ACE as open as possible so that external people could create their own scripts and plugins. :D
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M4, SSA-1, Multiplay support: ACEpansion interface can be used to create plugins to emulate most I/O expansion cards. Feel free to create them! Plugins SDK is fully documented and example source code of all default plugins is given (Albireo one is also given in a dedicated repository).
Code coverage tracking: it should be possible using breakpoints (there is an observer mode) and scripting (a script can be executer everytime you enter en breakpoint). In fact, using the AREXX interface, a lot of scripts could be created to automated almost everything and to integrate ACE in any kind of IDE.
Any audio demo for SSA-1 ?
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A new version of Albireo ACEpansion plugin (emulating Albireo card from PulkoTronics) is available for ACE.
Get it here: http://ace.cpcscene.net/en:downloads (http://ace.cpcscene.net/en:downloads)