Release Notes for CD-i Emulator, version 0.5.3-beta9

This version of CD-i Emulator is the ninth beta release for version 0.5.3,
which is now in maintenance mode as all development has shifted to
version 0.6.0 for which a first public beta release is expected soon.

This beta release can be used standalone, or you can install it over an
existing version 0.5.2 installation (both limited and unlimited editions).

To avoid overwriting the existing wcdiemu.exe file, the executable of
this release is named wcdiemu-v053b9.exe; it will co-exist alongside an
existing version 0.5.2 executable.

The files cdiroms.ini and cditypes.rul are updated versions of those
shipped with version 0.5.2; most files in the sys directory have also
been updated. All other files are either new or identical to their
version 0.5.2 counterparts, except for this RELNOTES file.

These Release Notes expand but do not supersede the Release Notes for
CD-i Emulator version 0.5.2 and earlier 0.5.3-beta versions. You can
find these in the RELNOTES-v052 file and various RELNOTES-v053b* files.

This beta executable is essentially a limited edition: CD-i emulation
is limited to three minutes between CD-i player resets unless you have
already activated an unlimited edition v0.5.2 on your machine or you're
using a Philips Mono-I player system ROM (200 F1, 210 F1, 220 F2).

The Mono-I exception is mainly intended to allow for full compatibility
tests against the MESS/MAME CD-i driver; the limited edition restrictions
will be dropped entirely for all version 0.6.0 releases.

There will be no separate unlimited edition of beta releases and
you cannot activate such releases. You can achieve the same effect by
activating an unlimited edition of version 0.5.2, however,
which is still available for sale on my website.

The beta executable will not register itself with Windows; as a
consequence the Options | Associations menu is not useful (it will
associate file extensions with the version 0.5.2 executable if one
exists on your system).

On Windows Vista and newer registering and associating file extensions
would not work correctly anyway because they require UAC elevation.

The following changes have been made between the version 0.5.3-beta8 and
this version 0.5.3-beta9 release:

- The built-in expiration date has been updated to 2026/07/01.

- A "skip system code" option has been added to the debugger trace command
"t", use the syntax "t[N]s". This will skip tracing into system calls
and exceptions.

- The "unknown" DCP instruction $70 has been renamed from "unk" to
"border $x", based on the SCC66470 VSC datasheet, even though the
instruction does not seem to have any effect for the VDSC.

- The displayed parameter order of these DCP instructions has been
changed to match the corresponding  cp_ macro: dprm, icm, tctl;
some display errors in these instructions were also fixed.

- The format of the video mode displayed with VIDEO SETMODE has changed to
WIDTHxHEIGHT (DEC) *RES RATEHz SCAN where SCAN is either "P" or "I" for
progressive and interlaced, respectively; the format used to be
WIDTHxHEIGHT (DEC) RATEHz /RES which was incomplete.

- GitHub issue cdifan/cdiemu#15 was fixed where the debugger "a" command
would not load an stb (symbol table) file with two or more dots in the
filename.

- Video memory dumps can now be saved by selecting Emulate | Dump,
pressing its keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F12 or using the new debugger command
"ex dump". The video memory dump will be written to a subdirectory
of the dump directory. These dumps can be used with the (to be released)
cdiconv program and source release.

A memory dump consists of both a textual meta information file with
extension .dmp and a binary memory data file with extension .dat; the
former contains the filename of the latter. For video memory dumps the
meta information is actually recoverable from the data file except for
the dump source information under [dump] and video mode information under
[cdivideo] for which cdiconv will have a mode parameter.

Actually, any emulator memory can be dumped using the new -dumpfilter
option or an additional parameter to the "ex dump" command; the default
"planea;planeb" value however will only dump video memory. Use filter "*"
to dump all devices; for non-memory devices only name, type, address
and attribute meta information will currently be written, the same
information shown by a debugger "eb" emulator bus display command.

At some future date the dump function will be extended into a full state
save facility and a single-file IFF-based file format will be introduced.

No other user-visible changes have been made. Saving the contents of
the CD-i NVRAM to a file is still supported.

If you have bug reports or feature requests, please use the GitHub issue
tracker at https://github.com/cdifan/cdiemu/issues; as of right now
no CD-i Emulator source code is on GitHub but eventually there will be.

For comments, questions, and discussion, you can use the #emulation
subforum of the Philips CD-i Community Discord server reachable
at https://discord.gg/TKPejTfw6D. I am known there as CD-i Fan (cdifan).

You can also reach me via e-mail using cdifan@gmail.com, but this will
not involve the larger CD-i community and is hence discouraged.

If you like my work and/or would like to support future development,
you can also send me a donation. You can send PayPal payments to
payment@cdiemu.org or use one of the following websites:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/cdifan
https://ko-fi.com/cdifan

Have fun emulating your favorite CD-i titles!