[Stella-devel] Bradford's last post

[Eckhard S. <Eck...@we...>]

Hello,

I just joined the list, so I can't quote from Bradford's
last status report, but I like to comment on it anyway.

I ran a little test on my Cuttle Cart, and it showed
that bit 6 is indeed alway 0 when reading from CXBLPF and
the INPTx registers. Bits 5 - 0 have the state of whatever
was last on the bus. We emulate it like that in z26,
and it seems to work fine with all games.

I think the current version of Stella evaluates bit 0
of the colour registers as well and therefore generates
256 different colours, while the VCS only has 128. I think
this should be changed for the next release. Also I think
that the palette could probably use a little renovation.

Also in z26 we have made the dummy BIOS in the Supercharger
emulation set up the system between loads like the real
thing does. Some loads rely on the state of the TIA. You
can see this in Escape from the Mindmaster, if you kill
off all your lives pretty quickly. Then the evaluation
screen will be pretty garbled. It only is readable, if
you play well enough to earn the fireworks. I could adapt
our version of the SC BIOS to Stella, if you like.

In an attempt to get used to the Stella source code, I
added support for the Commavid extra RAM carts and for the
Dynacom Megaboy. You can have these classes too, but they
were added to the source code of Stella 1.1. Is there a FAQ
somewhere that explains the whole CVS thing in simple enough
terms for a Windows user, so that I can get access to the
current version of the Stella source code too? ;-)

BTW, I think that adding 7800 support to Stella is a good
idea. I'd really like to see a stand-alone 7800 emulator,
since the MESS monster is a bit too much, if you only want
to use it for one system. And the Stella code structure is
probably universal enough to allow the addition of the 7800
system.


Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg