Father Christmas aka Santa Claus remembered about Atari 8-bit lovers and put under the Christmas tree a new Atari800Win PLus 2.7b emulator, based on the Atari800 v1.0.6 kernel and the original Atari800Win v2.5c sources.

What have the elves done this time?

• added a new window that allows to change color saturation parameters for generated and loaded palettes,
• F1-F4 keys emulation is back,
• added printing support with possibility to change the print command by the user,
• added tools for converting Atari text files to PC ones and vice versa,
• added the option for turning the disk drive activity indicator on and off,
• some new OS images are automatically recognized by the emulator,
• kernel-based autofire method is available now instead of the poor-working old one,
• the list of using-mouse emulated devices has been modified,
• small variants of dialog windows have been slightly improved,
• added the '<<' and '>>' buttons in the help window,
• added the XFormer emulator palette file,
• some bugs have been fixed.

See the help file for more details.

It is very pleasant to announce that the elves have got in touch with Daniel Noguerol. Dan has ported Tom Hunt's R: emulation, that allows to run BBS software in the Atari800 emulator, over TCP/IP to Winsock 2. His code will be merged with Atari800Win PLus in the near future, so stay tuned, please...

There is Atari800Win PLus 2.7 available for download. This version is based on the Atari800 v1.0.4 kernel with the latest patches and the original Atari800Win v2.5c sources.

Here is some information what is new in the release:

• the help file with context help support; thanks to Piotr Fusik (for writing most of that) and Zdenek Eisenhammer (for a wonderful Atari XE keyboard picture was used in the help),
• various devices emulation using the mouse (paddles, touch tablet, light pen, light gun, an Amiga/ST mouse, joystick, 5200 controller),
• the ability to change the speed of an emulated Atari of range from 50 to 200 percent,
• a new DirectDraw full-screen mode support (400x300),
• the double-buffering method is now available for all full-screen display modes,
• some "special effects" for DirectDraw display modes,
• multiple instances of the emulator are disabled by default now,
• the "maximize" button allows to toggle between the normal and double-windowed modes,
• file associations can be automatically restored at each startup,
• the ability to disable all the functions assigned to joystick's buttons,
• the "read only" indicator for H: devices,
• improved compatibility with Atari 5200 console,
• a new superb external palette file by Zdenek Eisenhammer,
• some bugs have been fixed.

See the help file for more about the changes.

An unofficial Atari800Win 2.6c is now available for download. This version is based on the Atari800 v1.0.3 kernel and the original Atari800Win v2.5c sources.

The project is now called Atari800Win PLus. I have decided to change the project name since I couldn't get in touch with the author of an original Atari800Win.

Here is what is new in the release:

• the "New Disk Image" function is now available from the level of the "Drive Selections" dialog box,
• choosing the position "Read Only" or "Read/Write" at an appropriate drive in the window "Drive Selections" allows enabling or disabling write-protection for a disk image attached to the drive,
• added the button "Search" in the "ROM Images" dialog box,
• added the conversion of the "raw" ROM images to CART format (the menu "Misc/Convert/ROM to CART"),
• added new file types in the "File Associations" dialog box,
• some bugs have been fixed.

See the included Changes.txt file for the complete release notes.

There is an unofficial release of Atari800Win based on Atari800 0.9.9j sources available for download: Atari800Win 2.6b. The changes in the Windows code are minor. The basic aim to create this version was making emulator kernel updated using the latest Atari800 sources.

Here are major changes in the Windows code:

• added the drag&drop support for Atari executable files and disk/cartridge images,
• fixed some serious bugs in the user interface.