Steem SSE 3.7.0 release notes _______________________________ Atari ST __________ You may skip this part if you know what the Atari ST is, this is just a point of view. The Atari ST was the first 16/32 computer available at a reasonable price. It was built around a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and made of cheap, sometimes outdated, off-the-shelf components like the WD1772 floppy disk controller (no side control!), the HD6301 "intelligent keyboard", or IKBD, that also handles joysticks and mouse, the YM-2149, or "PSG" sound chip, the infamous MC68901 MFP (Multi-Function Peripheral), and some custom Atari chips, like the DMA (direct memory access), the GLUE, the MMU, the video shifter... all hastily patched together and rushed to market, because Commodore had just stolen the Amiga from Atari. Considering the way it was designed, it did fairly well against the Amiga. The machine had many downsides, yet some fantastic programs (apps, games, demos) were made for it. The most was drawn from each of its chips, which became almost legendary: the video shifter, the Yamaha sound chip, later the blitter... the Atari magic! The system was run by a stable and intuitive graphic user interface (GUI) controlled by mouse, the GEM. Anybody with some competency could code in C and other languages some serious applications for the ST (games were coded in assembly), that would be more user-friendly (windows, menus, dialogs... like today) and powerful than on the PC (stuck with poorer Intel microprocessor, text-mode display, keyboard control). It also featured a very good flicker-free monochrome display, which for professional use was more important than fancy eye-killing Amiga high resolutions. It wouldn't have taken so much to be a serious competitor to the Mac and the PC. Maybe Atari didn't tackle the right market. Anyway it's done, and now we have thousands of great games not to mention the demos. To run this all on your much faster PC, you need an emulator and files containing images of the content (ROM, disks...). Steem Engine, by Anthony & Russell Hayward ____________________________________________ Steem is a legendary Atari ST emulator, both accurate and easy to use thanks to its great user interface. Its development was stopped in 2004, at v3.2. The Steem authors probably got sick of all the lamers. In 2011 the Hayward bros released the source code for further development. SSE _____ Steem SSE is a new version of Steem based on that source release. It incorporates new features and emulation improvements, some of them based on the Hatari and SainT emulators (this "emulation" goes both ways), some on various internet discussions technical documentation, like chip datasheets, and tests on real hardware. Steem SSE aims to be the #1 STF/STE emulator. There's no limitation in the original Steem code structure (in C++) that would make that goal unreachable. 'SSE' stands for 'Steven Seagal Edition'. Steven Seagal is a well known Aikido grandmaster, action movie star, musician and playboy. It is rumoured he has a shadowy past working for some secret agencies. This is also my silly handle at http://www.atari-forum.com (AF). With this release we celebrate 3 years of Steem SSE fun! Installation ______________ Extract files to a folder of your choice, this may be Steem's original folder. There's no setup program. You're responsible for any shortcut you wish. HD6301V1ST.img is an image of the "IKBD" keyboard chip, it's necessary for 'C1' option. ym2149_fixed_vol.bin is used by option 'Sampled YM-2149'. Both files must be inside the main folder. Patches may be copied to your usual 'patches' folder if you have any. The PRG folder may be anywhere, provided you set it up in the disk manager. Guess what's the use of folder DriveSound, it should be in main folder too. You don't need to copy files Bugs or Hit List, but they're quite informative. steem.new goes into the main folder. Don't miss the new brags! Manual ________ An up-to-date manual is now included in the main download of Steem SSE. It is based on the old readme.txt. This manual provides an extensive presentation of Steem (+SSE) and its features. Steem SSE manual, Steem SSE FAQ and Hints may be read from inside Steem. v3.7.0 Features _________________ - Some options have been shuffled about (again), so look around: STF/STE switch -> Machine page Wake-up state -> Machine page Display size -> Display page Pasti only for STX -> Disk manager Slow disk -> only in Disk manager now (lamer alert!) PSG Filter; Drive sound; Keyboard click -> Sound page - Optional Direct 3D video rendering for fullscreen, probably the most important new feature. For this you must check the 'D3D' option on the 'Fullscreen mode' page. This option should be more compatible with Windows 7 and 8. You can choose the resolution among all the 32bit modes proposed by your video card (don't clamour for 16bit, if your system can handle DX9, it can handle 32bit). There's also a new option to emulate the Atari ST's distorted aspect ratio in this fullscreen mode. The screen is higher than it should be, so that squares and circles ain't. DirectDraw modes are still available (if the option isn't checked). If you don't need D3D and don't want to upgrade your system just for that, a separate build is available, without the option. It's built with Visual Studio 6 and is less optimised than the main VS2008 build, a tad smaller too. - Display New options "Lock window size" and "Lock aspect ratio". - Disk manager Double click on nothing goes up one level in the path, like in some file managers. Right click on the HD icon to toggle on/off the "Gemdos" hard drive emu. "Improved" auto-insert disk B. - "STW" disk images support This format was devised for Steem and holds "clock" bits as well as all data and format bytes on the floppy disk, in MFM encoding. The goal is to be able to fully emulate the WD1772 floppy drive controller also for write commands (write sector, write track = format). Notice that it doesn't record timings and so doesn't compete with Pasti, Kryoflux, SCP, etc. It is compatible with the Hxc floppy emulator though. Support for: Dragonflight; Realm of the Trolls; Union Demo etc. A STW version of the Union Demo is included in the download. Specification: http://ataristeven.t15.org/txt/STW%20specification.txt - "STG" ghost disks Those are used to harmlessly save high scores, and more, when using CTR/IPF/STX disk images, if the option in disk manager is checked. It's a hack, but quite effective. Specification: http://ataristeven.t15.org/txt/STG%20specification.txt - Support for launching standalone PRG and TOS files (see /PRG/note.txt; option in disk manager). - Some emulation improvements 6301: More precise mouse speed (we still don't claim perfection) 68000: Many prefetch and rounding corrections using the "Yacht" doc Some instructions logic fixes: ABCD,SBCD, copied from Hatari (Espana 92 -ICS) DIV (Speed-Packer II, thx Maartau) ILLEGAL assertion conform to real ST for all 16bit opcodes (thx Petari) Some stack frame improvements in case of bus error (The Teller STX, Blood Money -SUP) Stop emulation on HALT, indicate in status bar, no more annoying 'crash and burn' 68901: IACK latency more generally handled (Anomaly Demo) Spurious interrupt emulated GPIP-IRQ and timeout-IRQ delays (V8 Music System, Overscan Demos STE) Write on register delay (Audio Artistic Demo) Cycle-accurate timers For performance and risk reasons, those MFP improvements are activated by the new 'C2' option. Advanced: on the SSE page there's a new option that allows you to set the CPU clock in relation to the MFP's. It's an interesting variable in emulation, it can be used to "fix" some programs. Blitter: Timing hack (Relapse Grafix Sound II) Drive: Fix $D8/$D0 confusion (Wipe-Out -RPL) Media change for Pasti (4 Wheel Drive/Combo Racer STX) Drive sound: you have the choice between two kinds of 'seek' sounds if you right click on the drive icon. New hacked pasti.dll is available: http://ataristeven.t15.org/Other_downloads.htm#Pasti (Jupiter Masterdrive ,4 Wheel Drive/Combo Racer) GLUE: Correct timings for STE "line +2", this was possible only after many CPU/MFP timing corrections, oddly, and could still be troublesome. Because of that I accepted those timings only after some tests on a real STE. LMC1992: Some fixes, doc is not correct. MMU: Adapt video counter when ST is temporarily set in high res (trace routine in My Socks are Weapons by Legacy) PSG: Now the table by ljbk is used for all PSG (soundchip) emulation. This makes it louder and quite distorted but that's correct emulation. The ST was a screaming beast, that's why it was beloved. Need (provided) file ym2149_fixed_vol.bin for this option. Bugfix rendering when quantizing high frequency changes (YMT player). Addition of a 'Hatari' sound filter, based on... guess what. Shifter: Bugfix display "line -2" (BIG Demo #2) Read palette returns a value depending on dbus (hack, Awesome 04 STF) - Joystick: you may define a second button for 'up' (jump), for a better arcade feeling on platform games. - Video: nuked AVI recording feature, that wasn't satisfying. Apparently some 3rd party software do a better job. - Patches Additionally some new patches hack the password protection of the following original games (STX): Carrier Command Elite Great Courts RVF Honda Starglider II They work on the standard STF configuration (TOS102, 1MB). Those patches were easily made using the powerful Steem SSE Boiler. Development screens _____________________ http://ataristeven.t15.org/Steem_370_coming_soon.htm STG http://ataristeven.t15.org/Steem_370_coming_soon2.htm STW http://ataristeven.t15.org/Steem_370_coming_soon3.htm 6301, MC68000, Shifter... http://ataristeven.t15.org/Steem_370_coming_soon4.htm D3D fullscreen http://ataristeven.t15.org/Steem_370_coming_soon5.htm MFP Bugs ______ There are no bugs. If despite this fact you find bugs please report them here: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=27687 You may send an email to: another.steven.seagal@gmail.com (some jerk stole my name) I generally reply but I don't always check daily so have some patience before you send me insults. Please read the 'Hints', the answer to some questions is already in there. Please try different settings before reporting, not all programs are supposed to work with all versions of TOS, or on a STF, STE, etc. Also try with slow (accurate) disk drive mode, or with drive B disabled; real life STs generally had only one drive, non accelerated. Some rare games want the disk to be write-protected... other rare games, write-enabled! You may try with or without options C1, C2, 'Hacks'. Sometimes the "wake-up" option makes a difference (flicker in some demos). It's also helpful if you can compare with other versions of Steem and with other emulators - normally they will fail too :) - or with harware. Beta ______ Want to be a beta tester of the glorious Steem SSE builds and make history? Just send an email at: another.steven.seagal@gmail.com or PM Steven Seagal at AF. Steem SSE Web sites _____________________ http://ataristeven.t15.org/Steem.htm (all builds, ST programs, pics, doc) http://sourceforge.net/projects/steemsse/ http://code.google.com/p/steem-engine/ (source v3.3, Subversion) http://steemsse.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/steemsse (source v3.4 & up, Subversion, you can download a snapshot of the source) If you want to contribute some code, you should have an account at sourceforge, and use SVN. If you're allergic to that, you may also submit your changes and I'll integrate them myself. Release history _________________ Steem SSE V.3.3.0, 28/02/2012 Steem SSE V.3.4.0, 22/09/2012 XSteem SSE V.3.4.0, 06/10/2012 Steem SSE V.3.4.1, 14/11/2012 Steem SSE V.3.5.0, 27/02/2013 XSteem SSE V.3.5.0, 02/03/2013 Steem SSE V.3.5.1, 11/06/2013 XSteem SSE V.3.5.1, 13/06/2013 Steem SSE V.3.5.1 OPT, 15/06/2013 Steem SSE V.3.5.2, 04/08/2013 XSteem SSE V.3.5.2, 04/08/2013 Steem v3.2+, 27/08/2013 Steem SSE v.3.5.3, 13/10/2013 XSteem SSE v.3.5.3, 20/10/2013 Steem SSE v.3.5.4, 17/11/2013 Steem SSE v.3.6.0, 28/02/2014 XSteem SSE v.3.6.0, 28/02/2014 Steem SSE v.3.6.1, 13/04/2014 XSteem SSE v.3.6.1, 13/04/2014 Steem SSE v.3.6.2, 16/04/2014 Steem SSE v.3.6.3, 04/05/2014 XSteem SSE v.3.6.3, 04/05/2014 Steem SSE v.3.6.4, 15/06/2014 Steem SSE v.3.7.0 28/02/2015