openMSX 0.6.0

After a long wait, openMSX 0.6.0 was released today, along with a new version of Catapult, its GUI/launcher. The most important changes are:

Full support for GCC 4, allowing compilation on Mac OS X 10.4 and recent Linux distributions.
Zoom factor 3: MSX images are enlarged to 960x720 resolution.
New scaler: RGBTriplet (3x only), which plots the red, green and blue subpixels slightly shifted.
V9990: speed improvements, enabled scalers, scanline and blur.
Improved sound from DAC devices, such as turbo R PCM and Konami DAC.
Support for saving to cassette.
Internal CAS to WAV conversion uses 5520 baud for faster loading.
Option to automatically switch to maximum speed when the MSX is loading from disk or tape.
More extensive debugging, including conditional break points.
Workaround for the infamous CAPS LOCK problem.
Catapult can test which machines and extensions have the necessary ROMs installed and display only those.

For the complete list of changes, you can read the release notes. You can download openMSX 0.6.0 here. Source and Win32 packages are available now, Debian packages are expected soon and the Gentoo ebuild is already updated in their CVS.

The openMSX team is still looking for a Windows developer who can keep the Windows version of openMSX up-to-date. If you like openMSX, run Windows, can work systematically and have a bit of free time (it's not a huge job), please contact the openMSX team, or leave a message on the openMSX Forum.

Relevant link: openMSX Home Page

Comments (46)

By Vampier

Prophet (2415)

22-01-2006, 05:00

We also look forward to see you on http://www.openmsx.org

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6977)

22-01-2006, 10:20

The new catapult crashes as soon I start the emulation of any machine !!!###!!#!#??!!!##!!!
The strange thing is that openmsx keeps going on, while catapult crashes and is closed by windows.
The error message is about 3 registry keys missing... does anyone have found the same problem?

By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

22-01-2006, 10:57

Works fine for me (the win32 ZIP file). Catapult reads the old configuration data, maybe there's something in your old config that it doesn't like. You can try to uninstall/delete all the old OpenMSX files.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6557)

22-01-2006, 11:10

The problem comes from the fact that Catapult keeps in the Windows registry at least 2 data : the path to the openmsx.exe file and the path to the share directory of openMSX.

As there are some changes between 0.5.2 and 0.6.0, it can explain the crash of Catapult if you don't have changed the settings in Catapult (in Settings/ Edit configuration).

By the way, it should be better to keep these data in an .ini file in stead of the Windows registry. Each version of Catapult could be used without any problems with the corresponding version of openMSX (in the case that you want to keep on your harddisk different versions of the emulator)

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6557)

22-01-2006, 11:17

Little correction :

Normally, the new Catapult displays a message that invites you to indicate the path to openMSX 0.6.0 .... so, the problem is maybe in some of your files

By andete

Expert (97)

22-01-2006, 13:57

Debian packages will be available soon; for the impatient, source packages are available at:

http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openmsx/

http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/o/openmsx-catapult/

Greetings, Joost

By andete

Expert (97)

22-01-2006, 14:01

Further clarification: there will be NO .deb files on the openmsx download site; they will appear in debian soon and will be available via apt-get then.

By DarQ

Paragon (1038)

22-01-2006, 16:20

very nice andete! and of course, congratulations with the new improvements! ill try it very soon!

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6977)

23-01-2006, 00:38

I have deleted any openmsx old file and this is the error I get when I run openmsx from catapult:

00:37:16: Can't close registry key 'HKCU\Software\openMSX team\Catapult\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets' (error 0: operazione completata.)
00:37:16: Can't open registry key 'HKLM\Software\openMSX team\Catapult\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\Aliases\Aliases' (error 2: impossibile trovare il file specificato.)

It is about catabult that isn't able to find some files or registry key!!
Help!!
(now I have lost also openmsx 0.5.1)

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6557)

23-01-2006, 01:29

Strange ... on my system, Catapult works without any problem.

I've checked the Windows Registry. The 2 mentioned keys don't exist. The tree is as following :

openMSX team/Catapult/configuration (4keys)
openMSX team/Catapult/connectors (3keys)
openMSX team/Catapult/history (11 keys)
openMSX team/Catapult/openMSXpaths (3 keys)
openMSX team/Catapult/preferences (4keys)

No trace of another sub-tree ...

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

23-01-2006, 08:59

Very strange. We do not explicitly write those registry keys... Does any Windows developer have a clue?

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

23-01-2006, 09:04

Does anyone else have this problem? Maybe it only occurs on localized Windows installations?

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

23-01-2006, 11:54

strange how you are wondering about this, since it's like that from day 1 of the wx development... at least for the Win32 version...

By BiFi

Enlighted (4348)

23-01-2006, 11:55

though the specific wx keys are new to me too... never seen those before...

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

23-01-2006, 12:18

What is like what since day 1? I haven't heard any of these complaints before, really. And they're not on the fora, bug tracker or mailing lists.

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6977)

23-01-2006, 12:19

Any idea on how to get openmsx0.5.1 ?
I whould install it, unistall it and then reinstall openmxs0.6.1

By Edwin

Paragon (1182)

23-01-2006, 12:39

This thread is related to the problem I think. I don't really have time to make sense of it right now, but it mentions one of the keys at some point.

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

23-01-2006, 12:58

ARTRAG, all older openMSX versions can be downloaded from the SF.net download page:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=38274

If you like, try 0.5.2, which is the previous stable version.

By Ramones

Champion (264)

23-01-2006, 16:58

In my Mac Mini, with Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger), works fine, with SDL_GL renderer. More fast than 0.5 version.

And support gcc4 ... oooeee oooeee ...

By Philip

Champion (380)

23-01-2006, 20:14

I also get the wxwindows registry errors. I noticed I had this key in my registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\openMSX team\Catapult\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\
Aliases\Aliases\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\
Aliases\Aliases\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\
Aliases\Aliases]

Notice that strange repeating pattern

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6977)

23-01-2006, 20:34

My windowsXP continue to give
20:35:09: Can't close registry key 'HKCU\Software\openMSX team\Catapult\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\Aliases' (error 6: handle non valido.)
20:35:09: Can't open registry key 'HKLM\Software\openMSX team\Catapult\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\Aliases\Aliases' (error 2: impossibile trovare il file specificato.)

and catapult crashes!!!
Sob!

By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

23-01-2006, 21:41

Having uninstalled old and new versions I think you still need to clean the registry, I've checked too the openMSX 0.6.0 registry entries and none mentions wxWindows; so if you delete these entries (if I've understood correctly they exists in your registry) by hand or using some regcleaner and then install again the last version, the problem must gone,...or maybe not?

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

23-01-2006, 22:01

On other windows XP installations, the wxWindows keys do not appear....

I have no idea why they do appear on your systems!
Philippe, are you running a French version of Windows? It seems to be related to localization.

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

23-01-2006, 22:05

Oh, and indeed, please try to uninstall and then remove all these Catapult registry keys and try again.

By Philip

Champion (380)

23-01-2006, 23:08

I am running english XP pro.
Tried to uninstall, delete the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\openMSX team] key from the registry, reinstall. But it is still the same.

By Philip

Champion (380)

23-01-2006, 23:20

The strangest thing is, on my laptop with a dutch xp pro it works great !

By Edwin

Paragon (1182)

23-01-2006, 23:30

Try the following. Leave the an empty key:
HKCU\Software\openMSX team\Catapult\wxWindows\FontMapper\Charsets\

And delete everything else you find under the wxWindows key and subkeys. On my win2k system it seemed to cause it to bypass whatever is causing te crash. It would be interesting to find out if this works for others as well.

By boukichi

Resident (33)

24-01-2006, 12:37

I guess a cause of the problem is internatinatization which wxWindows does is not working properly.
and permission for access to registry might be a problem as well.

# but I can't find out string like "Charsets" into the Catapult binary.

I'd suggest to delete keys of local machine's , not only current user's
if you like to do and you have the keys in the your windows.

By cax

Prophet (3741)

24-01-2006, 23:14

Registry is evil.

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6977)

24-01-2006, 23:20

I give off!!!
please, in next release avoid the use of damn registry

By Philip

Champion (380)

25-01-2006, 00:34

Catapult works fine in a fresh installed english xp in vmware.
So it does not seem to be dependant on the os language.
I also tried no service pack, service pack 1 and service pack 2 for xp on my vmware machine, but this made no difference.
Then I tried some different 'input languages', copied some dll's around, but no go....

By DarQ

Paragon (1038)

25-01-2006, 02:23

Well, as i expected... the debian packages just upgrade as easy as i've expected oh, i don't have a registry... and a good packager! Thanks andete, im glad i won't have to bother with it anymore since i can use my time a lot better..

Well, im happy with the improved Catapult and openMSX itselfs works like a charm as well..

By boukichi

Resident (33)

25-01-2006, 10:10

http://www.emucamp.com/boukichi/uocatap01.zip

I made an unofficial Catapult,
It's only recomplied with --disable-html and --disable-fontmap.

Please try it if Catapult doesn't work on your environment.

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

25-01-2006, 11:29

artrag: we do not use the registry any more than we did in previous versions.

However, we do use a new version of wxWidgets. I think that is where we should look for the problem.

BouKiCHi: thanks for building this, I look forward to rest results. If it does not help, we should try to build wxWidgets without Unicode support. The previous version was also without it, maybe that's part of the problems then. But first, let's see if disabling the fontmapper and such helps.

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

25-01-2006, 11:39

Philip: are you saying that you cannot reproduce the problem at all, in any way?

By Philip

Champion (380)

25-01-2006, 18:48

Manuel: No I cannot reproduce it, although I did not install all programs I have on my regular windows in the vmware windows.
I did look with filemon which files are loaded and copied most of them around though...

boukichi: Your compile of catapult works like a charm here !

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

25-01-2006, 20:24

Philip: are you saying that BouKiCHi's build solves all problems you have on your normal WIndows XP?? Good news!

The bad news is that it doesnt' solve the problems I've seen on Windows 2000 yet. But that might be something else.

By Ivan

Ascended (9372)

25-01-2006, 20:47

I also had a lot of problems installing the previous version of openMSX.

I had to clean manually the Windows registry. I hope that this issues will be solved in future versions. By now I'm not going to install openMSX 0.6.0.

By Philip

Champion (380)

25-01-2006, 22:41

Yes, BouKiCHi's build fixed all my problems op my normal XP.
Except for that empty msx type thingy, but that is just a very minor detail.
Also tried windows 2000 in vmware, but again not able to reproduce any problems (with eather BouKiCHi's build or the original).

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

26-01-2006, 08:59

The empty MSX type thing seems to happen only on Windows; I'll try to fix it.

ARTRAG: could you try to test with BouKiCHi's version? Just install openMSX as normal and replace the Catapult stuff with the files from BouKiCHi's ZIP.

By boukichi

Resident (33)

26-01-2006, 13:13

how problem on Win2K?
registry stuff like happened on WinXP? or something else?

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

26-01-2006, 17:04

BouKiCHi: on some WIndows 2000 systems I have seen several problems, e.g. openmsx -v crashes, but a debug build of openMSX does work.
Very strange, because we didn't change anything special to openMSX itself that could explain this.
We should await Edwin's tests to get a more complete picture.

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

27-01-2006, 12:03

On Edwin's Win2000 machine, BouKiCHi's Catapult works fine, and openmsx -v does not crash.

It seems that we can at least solve all registry problems by using BouKiCHi's compile options.

Can anyone who has problems with the registry when using openMSX 0.6.0 please send me a private e-mail to manuel AT msxnet DOT org? Thanks.
I'd like to give you a testbuild of an improved version that should work, based on BouKiCHi's suggestion. If it works, we are one step closer to a re-release.

There is also hope that we have fixed the problem with the empty "MSX Type" field at first startup. Bifi is running some tests today to see if the fix didn't berak something else.

By ARTRAG

Enlighted (6977)

27-01-2006, 23:05

@Manuel
I have installed your new catapult and everything goes fine now!!
Thanks a lot!

By Manuel

Ascended (19678)

28-01-2006, 17:57

OK folks, we will do a rerelease of the Windows packages of openMSX really soon.

Please test the files before we release:

http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/openmsx-0.6.0-win32-bin.exe

and

http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/openmsx-0.6.0-win32-bin.zip