Virtual Aquarius v0.72 Released

[olaf]

Emu#dreams reports that Virtual Aquarius, the Radofin Electronics Aquarius Home Computer System emulator for Microsoft Windows, has been updated to version 0.72. Below are the changes in this version.

 

- Added ROM, cassette, and Quicktype images from several different sources.

- Util/WAV->CAQ logger. It's enabled if ROM Hacks are enabled. With this selected, the emulator will write out a CAQ file for WAV data it attempts to read during a normal cload/cload* operation. Please note that cload truncates files when it reaches some number of nulls. Also, cload* truncates files when it reaches the end of the array it's loading. And, of course, the Aquarius tape format has no checksums or qualtiy-of-data checks, so it's entirely possible for framing errors to occur and you'd never know about it. Caveat Emptor. You might want to wait for someone to write a real WAV2CAQ utility.

- Slightly changed WAV file handling, which, I hope, makes it more like the real computer. The real computer won't change state unless the input level hits a certain point, which smoothes out noise. Also, previous versions of the emulator were reading the waveform inverted; that's been fixed.

- Fixed WAV loading to recognize WAVs written by programs that don't do the header right (which unfortunately includes most sound editors, but not the one I use so I didn't know about this problem).

- The power up beep now works reliably. The emulation is now delayed until well after the window appears on the screen, but you didn't need to know that.

- Full Screen mode can now access the menus. Right click on the full screen to toggle menus.

- ROM Hacks are enabled by default. ROM Hacks provide emulation trapping for faster I/O for cassette input, cassette output, and printer output. This feature is available only when using the built-in S2 ROM.

- Save RAM behavior changed; now the file is saved to the directory the program was run from.

- Save RAM behavior changed; now filters memory through the cartridge scrambler.

- Fixed a bug in which bringing up a dialog box would zero the AY sound registers.

- You can't turn off the border any more. On the plus side, you got Full Screen mode. On the minus side, you need a better computer to run Virtual Aquarius. But then, your computer is probably newer than mine anyway (mine is from, like, 1998), and mine runs it just fine.

- The sound buffers will attempt to resynch themselves when no sound has been playing for a while (a half-second or so). This is detected by the speaker clicker not being written to and by the three AY chip volumes being set to 0.

- The POV hat can be used as the control disk in a modern USB joypad.

- The Help/About box has my newer pictures on it.

- Util/Load Binary -- This is useful for assembly language program development.

- Util/Screenshot (F11)

- Util/Full Screen mode (F12 to toggle)

- Util/Paste -- this Quicktypes text that was on the text clipboard, i.e. Copy from Notepad and Paste onto Virtual Aquarius.

- Some file access routines are smarter about remembering which file you were using last. It takes getting used to, but it really is better than before. Really.

- The emulator should no longer crash when you have Configure/System Timing>Speed up when accessing files checked.

- Soft Reset is now F9 on the keyboard.

- Hard Reset is now Shift F9 on the keyboard.

You can visit the official homepage here, or simply download it here.