blueMSX 2.0

As of today a new version of blueMSX is available. The most important new feature in version 2.0 is turboR emulation, including PCM support (only playback) and turboR SRAM. MIDI support is planned for future versions. Another surprising new feature of blueMSX is the capability to emulate the Spectravideo SVI-318 and SVI-328 computers, which are almost completely MSX1 compatible. Other changes and new features to the emulator are:

Fixed timing of the Panasonic Floppy Drive Controller
Added support for the Western Digital FDC and 4 new mappers : National/Daewoo, Philips/Sony, Microsol and SVI-738
Added new general machines : MSX1 German, MSX1 Swedish, MSX2 Spanish
Extended the choice for specific machines, including machines without diskdrive
Updated all machines to use an appropriate FDC
Added mappers for 2 digital-to-analog converters : Konami's Synthesiser, Matjusushi
Added support for the MSX-AUDIO DAC
Added support for the Pause switch
Added support for external RAM
Added video frequency selector
Added monitor display mode
Added hotkeys to minimize the emulator and use the Pause key
Added oversampling feature for MSX-MUSIC, MSX-AUDIO and Moonsound
Added checkbox to enable/disable priority boosting of the emulator
Added support for 1 or 2 FDC's (selectable in the machine editor)
Added Z80/R800 frequency selector in the machine editor
Added new arguments for the command line
Added toggle CPU trace shortcut (to define by advanced users)
Added the cassette database and updated the rom database
Fixed differend bugs in the VDP timing
Fixed a bug in the overflow detection for CPU load
Rewritten the whole save state feature to allow better backward compatibility and include saving of the cassette position
Extended the themes features with new triggers and actions, support for sliders controls, native windows fonts and clips regions to hide the windows borders

Last but not least, blueMSX is now completely free from all fMSX code, on which the emulator once was based.

Relevant link: blueMSX website

Comments (13)

By Bart

Paragon (1422)

20-11-2004, 13:45

"blueMSX is now completely free from all fMSX code"

Pretty amazing! Great job Daniel!

By Manuel

Ascended (18794)

20-11-2004, 13:55

It's not completely free from openMSX code and openMSX code is also not completely free from blueMSX code! I'm very happy that we can cooperate to improve each other's emulators. Let's keep it all up!

By Haohmaru

Paladin (774)

20-11-2004, 13:58

I downloaded the file blueMSXv20full_sse2.exe a few minutes ago, but I don't see 'turbo R' as emulated machine I can select in the configuration and both the startup screen and the About dialog claim I have v1.7.0 build 11335.

Please tell me this is not my fault!

20-11-2004, 14:06

Okay, found the problem:

Do not install blueMSX 2.0 in the same directory as your previous version.

By flyguille

Prophet (3028)

20-11-2004, 14:34

so, now can run MNBIOS? i want to see that!!!!

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

21-11-2004, 08:16

Great work on the new version guys...

<nitpick>it's Konami's Synthesizer and Hai No Majutsushi</nitpick>

By meits

Scribe (6502)

21-11-2004, 20:17

I was sad to see that the diskdrive emulationspeed went down drastically... I put the older version back on...

By dvik

Prophet (2200)

21-11-2004, 21:00

The reason why we slowed down the disk drive emulation is because some games does not work correclty if the disk drive speed is not emulated correctly. One example is the PeachUp 'Seesaw de Peroncho Special' game which will get corrupt graphics if loading is too fast.

For the next version I guess we can add an option to not use correct disk drive timing. Most games and demos work well without correct timing so I think it could be good do be able to disable it.

Another solution is to 'fast forward' the emulation while loading. You can do this by pressing SHIFT+F9.

By Yobi

Master (149)

21-11-2004, 21:35

The mouse in the ROM magazine's does not work. snif

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (5923)

22-11-2004, 13:10

Spectravideo SVI-318 and SVI-328 computers, which are almost completely MSX1 compatible.

I think, this is a bit missleading... MSX and SVI both have same chips, but BASIC is only about 80% compatible (SCREEN command, SOUND ON/OFF command, GET/PUT graphic commands etc.) , BIOS is not compatible at all, cassette format is different, chips are connected different way and to different I/O ports, Disk Basic is different (actually SVI loads Disk BASIC from disk!) Disk format is different (First few tracks have 18 sectors and rest are traditional 9 sector/track) and memory format is also totally different. There exists 32KB MSX1 emulator for SVI, but that does not make it "almost completely compatible"

By gargamel

Expert (101)

22-11-2004, 22:33

I have to agree with Nyyrikki:-) The MSX standard was based on the Spectravideo SVI-328/318 design (SV-318 was released in January 1983, SV-328 in June 1983).

The BASIC interpreter is actually a back ported GWBASIC (Gee Whiz BASIC) and was named SV Extended BASIC. Then some changes were made to what became MSX BASIC.

The BIOS is a result of the implementation of the BASIC. The functions in the SVI-328 BIOS are located at different addresses than MSX, some features are also different due to the technical changes.

ASCII (Microsoft Japan at that time) managed the project of porting the MS Extended BASIC and Disk BASIC to the SVI-328 computer.

The hardware design was a Spectravideo joint venture with its parent company, Bondwell.

The rights to what became the MSX design were provided to ASCII in exchange for a badly-needed financial bailout.

manuel and others: blueMSX contains indeed quite a lot of openMSX code. In fact all opl emulation except MSX-AUDIO is from openMSX (soon the MSX-Audio will also be based of the openMSX source) and we've been using openMSX as a reference while developing blueMSX. We've also used the openMSX source for technical information in many cases.

The openMSX team has also been very helpful in describing technical issues and solutions and we are really thankful for the good cooperation.

Even though the blueMSX development probably had more use of openMSX I hope that blueMSX has been of help to the openMSX development as well.

23-11-2004, 09:42

Of course! That's why I said: let's all keep up the good work!

Share

Related content

Comments (13)