wraggster
December 10th, 2013, 11:05
Okay, after several months, here is finally a new version of rpix86! Here is a list of the changes in this version:
Unified codebase between the ax86 (http://ax86.patrickaalto.com/) and rpix86 versions of my emulators. The Raspberry Pi -specific features are handled using compile defines, otherwise the emulation code is exactly the same in both versions.
Implemented an option to run rpix86 without needing 4DOS.COM, by launching a game directly from the command line. This is done simply by giving the full path to the DOS exe or com file as a command line parameter to rpix86. The full path is needed because rpix86 needs to emulate the logical DOS path where the executable is started from.
Implemented FPU (floating point unit) support. This is only implemented when running in 32-bit protected mode (using dos4gw, for example). All the games I have encountered that need FPU opcodes (for example the X-COM series games) only use FPU opcodes when in protected mode.
Implemented experimental screen output and keyboard input code for running rpix86 in a terminal window. Note that only text mode is supported, and not all keyboard keys work as expected. This code uses the curses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)) library for input and output.
Implemented various game-specific fixes: REP MOVSD to Mode-X VRAM, 32-bit INSB opcode, DOS INT 21h AH=67h (set number of files) call, 486-only opcode BSWAP.
Most of my time since the last blog post has gone into the new project I am working on. You can read more about that project from my ax86 (http://ax86.patrickaalto.com/ablog.html) blog page. I decided to release a new version of rpix86 mostly because I unified my emulator code base, and that brought the FPU emulation also to rpix86, among with various other fixes. I also experimented a bit with running rpix86 via a terminal connection, but that code is far from finished.
It is also possible that I introduced some serious bugs into this version, so feel free to use your current version if you encounter any problems with this version. Let me know of any such problems, though, so that I can attempt to fix the issues in the next version. Thank you again for your interest in rpix86!
http://rpix86.patrickaalto.com/rblog.html
Unified codebase between the ax86 (http://ax86.patrickaalto.com/) and rpix86 versions of my emulators. The Raspberry Pi -specific features are handled using compile defines, otherwise the emulation code is exactly the same in both versions.
Implemented an option to run rpix86 without needing 4DOS.COM, by launching a game directly from the command line. This is done simply by giving the full path to the DOS exe or com file as a command line parameter to rpix86. The full path is needed because rpix86 needs to emulate the logical DOS path where the executable is started from.
Implemented FPU (floating point unit) support. This is only implemented when running in 32-bit protected mode (using dos4gw, for example). All the games I have encountered that need FPU opcodes (for example the X-COM series games) only use FPU opcodes when in protected mode.
Implemented experimental screen output and keyboard input code for running rpix86 in a terminal window. Note that only text mode is supported, and not all keyboard keys work as expected. This code uses the curses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)) library for input and output.
Implemented various game-specific fixes: REP MOVSD to Mode-X VRAM, 32-bit INSB opcode, DOS INT 21h AH=67h (set number of files) call, 486-only opcode BSWAP.
Most of my time since the last blog post has gone into the new project I am working on. You can read more about that project from my ax86 (http://ax86.patrickaalto.com/ablog.html) blog page. I decided to release a new version of rpix86 mostly because I unified my emulator code base, and that brought the FPU emulation also to rpix86, among with various other fixes. I also experimented a bit with running rpix86 via a terminal connection, but that code is far from finished.
It is also possible that I introduced some serious bugs into this version, so feel free to use your current version if you encounter any problems with this version. Let me know of any such problems, though, so that I can attempt to fix the issues in the next version. Thank you again for your interest in rpix86!
http://rpix86.patrickaalto.com/rblog.html