LisaEm 1.2.7 next features/work requests

[rayarachelian]

I've used October as "Pack(age)tober" to add code to allow building of packages for things like Linux RPMs, DEBs, snapcraft, OpenIndiana/Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows (NSIS), OpenBSD (this last one is a failure and needs more work).

At absolute minimum I want/need to complete code on the following before RC4 as well as a few other bugs that may come up in testing.

  1. TerminalWX

  2. Profile emulation code to allow UniPlus's install environment to work (kernel v1.1 aka "sunix").


Are there any other features you guys would like me to attempt to include in RC4, RC4 will be the final one before the prod release. (No guarantees ofc, all will be best effort, but will do my best with whatever free time I can provide.)

(Some things reserved for 1.2.8 and 2.0, such as the debugger, I likely won't be able to do because those will require me to upgrade libGenerator to the 1.3.0 code.)

Reply back if there's something else you'd like that I've not included in the options - but don't vote until I edit the poll for options 4+5. I've set the poll to allow you to vote upto 5x so you can pick one or more of the options, and you should be able to change your vote.

Poll is open for 15 days from today to allow for a couple of days to flesh out options 4,5 if there are replies.

[Lisa2]

Before adding MW+II support consider that MW+II is not public domain and the required PFG hardware is proprietary and not documented.   James the MW+II developer is a member of the group, maybe he will give some guidance on this.

Rick

[rayarachelian]

Before adding MW+II support consider that MW+II is not public domain and the required PFG hardware is proprietary and not documented.   James the MW+II developer is a member of the group, maybe he will give some guidance on this.

I am aware. I don't believe any approach that allows this to work on LisaEm would take away sales of MWII+, rather it would provide compatibility within LisaEm to allow it to run. You'd still need to obtain your own (presumably) legal copy of MWII+.

Whatever code I'd presumably write to work around the PFG would not be applicable to a physical Lisa running MWII+ w/o the PFG as it would not provide proper timing for floppy and/or serial ports, and would only be another case of HLE. This would not duplicate an actual PFG, nor allow for someone to use it as a way to duplicate a PFG. If anything, it would be free advertising for it.

But I would note that things such as (mini and the original) vMac, Basilisk II, Executor, and the like exist, which do provide far better Macintosh emulation than anything I could provide with LisaEm.

At least one person asked privately about providing more MW support and has mentioned MWII+ specifically as an example. The goal here would be to allow someone who owns a well loved Lisa, with a highly customized/personalized setup, and be able to take an image of their Widget/ProFile, and take their apps and files with them on their laptop and enjoy them wherever they go.

(This has been a general goal I've had for years - to be able to run emulators of all of the various machines I've owned and enjoyed over the years since over several decates. i.e. CBM PET, VIC20, C64, C128, ZX81, SPARC, SGI Indy, HPPA, Canon Cat, IIe, IIgs, toaster Macs, color Macs, PPC Macs, G4 macos x, Alpha AXP, SPARC, UltraSPARC, AIX machines, TRS-80 model 100, Newtons, etc. all on my laptop, accessible anytime and anywhere.)

However, if this is something James objects to, I'll skip it.

[D.Finni]

I voted to fix up existing code/bugs and release as-is.