Re: [hatari-devel] Mega ST(E)

[Thomas Huth <th.huth@xxxxxx>]

Am Fri, 13 May 2016 22:13:18 +0200
schrieb Nicolas Pomarède <npomarede@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> Le 13/05/2016 21:41, Thomas Huth a écrit :
[...]
> > The differences between STE and Mega STE (and also between ST and
> > Mega ST) seem to pop up every couple of months... So just a thought
> > for discussion: Should we maybe finally introduce the Mega ST and
> > the Mega STE as real selectable machine types in Hatari?
> >
> > Mega STE is already available as machine type in the sources thanks
> > to some work of Nicolas in the past already, so this just (?) needs
> > to be added to the GUI, and we've got to do some more fine-tuning
> > like the difference between joypad ports vs. the DIP switches. (Can
> > somebody list all other differences between the two machines?)
> >
> > Mega ST ... we could maybe define this as ST + Blitter + RTC, and
> > then get rid of the selectable Blitter and RTC options in the GUI.
> > These two options were also often causing confusion in the past:
> > Users wondered for example why they could not enable the Blitter
> > for the TT machine type (or disable it for STE or Falcon) that way.
> 
> yes, I also thought that adding plain selection for megastf/megaste 
> would be a nice addition, even if the corresponding machines differ
> only by a few HW changes, it's easier to select for the user.
> 
> As for removing blitter and rtc option, maybe they could be moved
> under a new system/advanced setting windows ? It could be useful to
> some people for prototyping to be able to test under emulation what a
> real st would give with blitter/rtc and emutos for example (I know
> emutos people are often testing all the HW combination) ?

FYI, I've now committed a change that allows to select "Mega ST" and
"Mega STE" machine types now. The RTC option is gone - just like with
the real machines, the RTC is only available with the Mega ST/Mega STE
machine type now.
I've kept the blitter option, since a real non-Mega ST could be fitted
with a blitter, too.

> A system/advanced window could also include the new wakeup state 
> settings that I'm actually developping and more generely "hide" any 
> really advanced option that normal users should not have to bother
> about (such as 24/32 bit addressing too)
> 
> So, if someone feels like adding a system/advanced window, I have
> plenty of things to move in it :)

I thought about this for a while ... and maybe it would be best to move
all CPU related options into a separate dialog? With the WinUAE core,
we've got now plenty of CPU options, so they would justify a dialog on
their own, wouldn't they? Then we would also have space in the "System"
dialog again, where you could put in new options like the wakeup state
settings, I think (we could place them in a box labeled "Advanced
settings" there, so it is clear that they should only be touched by
people who know what they are doing ;-)).

But the main problem is maybe rather: How to add another button to the
main dialog, without disturbing the nice 3x4 button raster that we
currently have?

 Thomas