Tom Charlesworth announced via usenet newsgroup comp.emulators.apple2 that a new beta of the popular 8-bit Apple II emulator, AppleWin is available. Tom’s posting is quoted below:

Just a quick post to let you know there’s a new beta build of AppleWin with Apple // Game Server support (plus other significant changes) here:

http://prdownload.berlios.de/applewin/AppleWin1.16.0.0-beta.zip

1.16.0 – 1 Feb 2009 (beta)

Changes:

  • Support for Apple // Game Server via TCP (port 1977) : beta
  • No longer patch Disk II firmware (caused bug in The CIA Files)
  • For GPL reasons, switched the following modules:
  • – AY8910 (from MAME  to FUSE) : beta Mockingboard/Phasor
    – MC6821 (from MAME  to VICE) : beta Mouse card
    – Z80 (from Z80Em to VICE) : beta CP/M Softcard
  • Printer support:
  • – Printer dump filename
    – Filter unprintable characters
    – Append to print-file
    – Terminate printing after n seconds of idle
    – Encoding conversion for Pravets
    – Dump to printer (CAUTION! Enabled via command line switch: -use- real-printer)
  • Added Pravets 8M (Apple II clone)

Fixes:

  • BugID-014557: Fix for loading serial port from Registry (caused AppleWin to crash when booting Apple Pascal)
  • Some floating bus bugs (fixes the Bulgarian game: “Walking in the town” Annunciator read)
  • FLASH rate (now 3Hz, was 6Hz)
  • Fix for Willy Byte MB support (strange 6522 behaviour!)

It’s important to note that since v1.15.0 the CP/M support now uses completely different Z80 emu code, so can you CP/M users please redo your testing. Thanks!

Also the backend chip emu for Mouse card and Mockingboard/Phasor has been replaced, so these could also contain new emulation issues.

Incidently the AY8910’s (sound chip in Mockingboard) emulation is now better, as the AY reg writes are now cycle-accurate. What this means is that it could be possible to playback 8-bit samples via the AY8910 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910)