Dear Atari Community!


We are happy to announce a new public release of EmuTOS:

EmuTOS 0.8.7 -- June 19th, 2012


INTRODUCTION

EmuTOS is a single-user single-tasking operating system for the 32-bit Atari
computers, clones and emulators. It can be used as a replacement for the TOS
images typically needed today for using emulators and can also run on some
real hardware, like the Atari Mega STe or the FireBee. All the source code
is open and free, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).



CHANGES SINCE LAST RELEASE

- Added full XBIOS support for Falcon and TT video hardware
- New video mode switching dialog box for Falcon and TT
- New EmuTOS variant on ROM-port cartridge
- New UK country and keyboard layout with PAL frequency
- Added potential support for non-Atari hardware
- Fixed wrong keyboard layout read from the NVRAM
- Fixed bogus _AKP cookie values
- Fixed _IDT cookie with unique language ROMs
- Use the _IDT date ordering in the default desktop
- Fixed the _SND cookie to remove unsupported bits (0.8.6 regression)
- Added support for XHDI XHNewCookie()
- Added minimal stub Blitmode()
- Fixed floprw() to be able to read multiple sectors
- Return function number rather than zero for unimplemented (x)bios calls
- Fixed VDI polygon fill
- Fixed VDI line drawing in transparent mode
- Fixed VDI to draw text underlines & perimeters in the correct colour
- Fixed VDI text scaling
- Fixed VDI line styles and arrows for thin line arcs/ellarcs
- Fixed AES sh_addpath() when there was no PATH variable
- Increased allowed number of desk accessories from 3 to 6
- Allowed up to 7 windows on the desktop
- Fixed the desktop to use "view as icons" by default
- Fixed random character at the end of desktop "view as text" lines
- Fixed alerts with no icon and a single text line
- Changed desktop alerts to conform to the limit of 32 characters per line
- Fixed the version displayed in the desktop about box for translated ROMs
- Workaround against GFA startup crash
- New erd tool for converting binary resources to source files
- New mkrom tool to build custom ROM formats
- A lot of other minor bugfixes and cleanups

Have a look at the changelog.txt for more detailed information.


DESCRIPTION

EmuTOS is basically made up of six subsystems:

- The BIOS, which is the basic input output system
- The XBIOS, which provides the interface to the hardware
- The BDOS, which are the high level OS routines, what you know as GEMDOS
- The VDI, the virtual device interface - means the screen driver
- The AES, the application environment services or window manager
- The desktop, which is the graphical shell to the user

The BIOS and XBIOS code is our own development. It is really written from
scratch and implements nearly all of the TOS 1.0 BIOS functionality, and a
bit more, like e.g. hard disk access.

The GEMDOS part is based on Digital Research's GEMDOS sources, which were
made available under GPL license in 1999 by Caldera. 

The graphical parts like VDI and AES are now more or less fully
implemented. They work in all the graphics modes of the original Atari
ST. On some emulators EmuTOS can be patched to work with much bigger
screen resolutions without any problems.

The desktop is not as nice as the original one, but is pretty usable
now for a start. You are free to use a more advanced desktop
replacement any time, like TeraDesk for example.

Since EmuTOS just implements the TOS's functionality, you might want to
use MiNT on it in order to run more modern software. EmuTOS is not an
alternative to MiNT. But EmuTOS is the only free base OS to boot MiNT.



EMULATION AND FUTURE PLATFORM

EmuTOS and MiNT cooperate well. Both can make use of a standard native
call interface for emulators.
EmuTOS itself still uses this new standard native interface for all its 
supported native functions. When running EmuTOS in an emulator, this
interface will provide access to use the power of the underlying OS kernel.
It may allow using modern graphics cards, provides fast native filesystem 
access and will enable you to use networking with all bells and whistles - 
and many things more you always dreamed of. This all will at first get 
possible on the ARAnyM platform.



HARDWARE

Making EmuTOS running natively on a new hardware platform is more or less
just a question of driver support for EmuTOS. The same for MiNT, if you'd
like to have it running on top of EmuTOS.

This is the currently supported hardware:

- CPU support for m68000, m68010, m68020, m68030, m68040, m68060, ColdFire V4e
- FPU detected
- Memory controller (both ST and Falcon)
- Monitor type detection (mono, RGB or VGA)
- WD 1772 Floppy disk controller (write track not tested)
- DMA controller
- MFP
- PSG
- ST shifter
- STE shifter
- VIDEL
- ACIAs, IKBD protocol, mouse
- MegaST Real-Time Clock (set clock not tested)
- NVRAM (including RTC)
- Falcon IDE (experimental, enabled on the FireBee only)
- The native feature interface to some degree


AVAILABILITY

EmuTOS has its home at SourceForge:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/

The latest releases can be downloaded from:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/files/emutos/ 

Development snapshots allow you to test the current development progress: 

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/files/snapshots/ 

The latest sources are always available from our CVS server at:

    http://sourceforge.net/scm/?type=cvs&group_id=36560

If you are just curious or would like to help us develop this nice little
OS, you are invited to subscribe to our mailing list for developers at:

    http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=36560


We hope that you like EmuTOS. If you have any suggestions or comments, we 
always appreciate to hear the good and also the bad things about it.


The EmuTOS development team.

-- 
Originally written by Martin Doering
http://emutos.sourceforge.net/
