PALE 8.0 Information
REAL DISK support is now working, writes and reads
to real 5 1/4" floppies. Formatting of LynxDOS floppies works.
And also new ZX Spectrum Emulator Mode added (for fun)
SPLYNX works (Patched ZX Speccy games for Lynx by Tim Titchmarsh)
* LynxDOS Arrives 24.7.2005*
Well I have to say it, ccccccccoooooOOOOOOOooooolllllllll is
the only way to describe Pale with the LynxDOS addition. And many thanks are due to MARTYN SMITH
who provided the all important LynxDOS ROM image for me.
Although LynxDOS itself is a straightforward little OS, Pale itself is
still a little buggy at running it. So no controlling that nuclear power station ok folks!
And if you had any ideas about its use for medical emergencies thenI suggest
a cool bath and a lie down.
**** NEW FEATURES IN 6.0 ****
LynxDOS (although a few problems, try the PALE HINTS page for some help)
New Locked Emulation Speed Routines (thank goodness)
Printer Simulation (FX80 ish) again needing some work but have a laugh anyway
Lots of GUI improvments and Bug Fixes (and many many thanks are due to RUSSELL DAVIS for helping
out with the testing of Pale under WINE
Thanks Russell :)
Again a massive THANKS to JOHN ROBERTS, without software this would all
be for nothing.
6.0 was a large update to Pale and I hope that it works okay for you, if not then try out 5.5 instead
Keep it chilled people
-x-
--x-- PETE --x--
-x-
---- Pale 5.5 Update ----
Okay, well NEW for 5.5 are some imrovements to the 6845 emulation and some improvements to the tape reader.
The reader now scans for checksums and length matches and is getting quite robust.
The 6845 emulation is undergoing some work at the moment, in 5,5 I added some programs
6845TEST etc. to show off the emulation and the effects that can be acheived.
At the moment the full 6845 emulation is kicked in when ACCURATE mode is selected
from the DEV settings on the status screen.
In conjunction with a C mode setting of around 400 Iperiod this should result in a fast display update
but you'll need a fairly hefty PC to cope with it. Once you have the mode running
try running the programs 6845TEST0 and after it 1, hopefullly
you should see some cool FX.
------------------------------------
************** Update for 5.4 ************.
ts been a busy week on the Pale front, new to Pale this version (5.4) is an updated video driver, now sporting
emulation of 8 of the 6845 registers. This means that a lot of games like Pengo, Star Rover are now running
much better without any missing lines or shifts. Also, thanks to a brilliant bit of tape
reading by John Roberts there is now a stack of software just itching to be given the Pale
treatment. Already John's good work has furnished me with two programs which break the emulation,
wonderful testing material, and a big THANK YOU is due to him.
New Features in Pale 5.4:
Fixed bug in Memory Map window (bank + button was wrong)
Fixed 6845 emulation for Pengo, Powerblaster, Star Rover, and many others
Extra tweaking parameters, including faster C mode emulation
Improved multiple buffer sound routines
Enhanced Tape Reader and Autoscanner now searches for good checksums
A few GUI bugs nailed
An important bug in the ROM load has been fixed - 'couldn't find ROM 0' error
-----------
Personal highlights? STAR ROVER hacked to scroll at Ninja in C mode, with no collision detection. Trippy...
----
*** UPDATE FOR VERSION 5.0 11/07/2005 ***
Its taken a week :) but finally Pale Version 5.0 is ready for release. A major
effort in collaboration with Russell Davies means the latest version of Pale now works
running under WINE for the Linux OS. For information on how to get Pale up and running
in WINE read the HOWTO on Russell's site.
___
Additional improvments in this version are
an improved screen display, much improved 6845 emulation, debug utilities,
Tape Reading Tools, ROM Building Program, and Improved Sound.
Thanks to much effort by Russell theres finally some programs being made available
for this system. Check out the Lynx Archive website to download games & demos to run
on the Pale emulator.
Have fun, and keep chilled...
Pete
_________________
UPDATE for PALE 4.0
YES!!! After hours of sweat and toil, here's PALE 4.0, with
many thanks to Russell Davis for much help along the way
in particular testing PALE under the WINE system.
it :) Yes, the sound is still a bit glitchy,
the move to a new sound engine seems to have
broken the sound on pengo for example :(
HOWEVER !!!
The new Lynx 128 mode is great, particularly if you speed it up to about 1000%,
makes some of those old programs burst back into life. Heh.
After a LOT of work and finding that there are MANY versions of the
Lynx ROMs, it's finally stable enough to play around on.
More software is in the pipeline, for some typeins
try the Lynx Archive website
on the previous page.
New features
---------
Partial 6845 emulation
Named SAVE ability
Binary Image (eg: disk) to PALE .TAP converter
New sound engine (but STILL buggy... rats!)
Updated Status Pages & Memory Maps & System VARS
Fixed the 4K/second memory leak that's been hanging around since v1.6 (Yeeeeeehah!)
Slightly updated speed (for the graphics routines)
Next Version Plans:
Move the whole lot to VC++ will make things
a lot simpler for the core routines.
Fix the bugs in 128K mode
More 6845 emulation (mode change/scanline)
Disk emulation
Move PALETAPE into the windows frontend
PLEASE ! ! !
I'm still in need of software to test this thing with, many thanks are due to Martyn Smith for
giving me the 128K information AND two pieces of software to test the emulation with. Without
his input the 128K mode of the emulation just would not have happened.
Cheers everyone... and enjoy...
Pete.
Contact
h e r a c lion@talk talk. ne t
(just remove the spaces from the above email address)