Today I've released an update of the MoonBlaster v1.4 BASIC driver. It contains fixes and a few requests. There is no need to use MAP.COM or MAP.BIN anymore.

Changes in this version:

• adapted error to use BASIC errors
• added Hertz equalizer, controllable with _MBEQUAL
• added DOS2 mapper support, controllable with _MBBANK, _MBALLOC and _MBFREE
• added DOS2 directory support
• fixed incorrect writes to PSG R#7 bug
• fixed MSX-MUSIC detection
• fixed a few other typical internal bugs

Recently Paragon released an updated BASIC driver to fix incorrect writes to PSG R#7. Investigation has turned out this 'fix' can cause unstability when using PSG drums.

The driver can be downloaded from my Home Page or MSX Banzai!.

(April 8, 2011: official assembly source updates are available, fixing the incorrect writes to PSG R#7 bug and MSX-MUSIC detection)
(August 18, 2011: important bug fixed regarding loading files under DOS2. Also a few small fixes in the MBLOADER.SRC file)

Yesterday I decided to create a YouTube account. I'm not 100% certain with what kind of videos I will populate it, but I'm sure there will be very interesting ones among them.

Video's uploaded right now (first of all more or less to test, but still interesting nevertheless):

• Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake - New IPS Combi Pack
  new in this version is the v1.3 English translation of the game
• Pointless Platform release 2
  revealing a few hidden features
• Sky Jaguar Sound Cartridge edition
  a better conversion of this Konami Game Collection version to ROM image

Today I released a new version of ROMLOAD. New in this version are:

• Improved /0 implementation
• Minor tweak in support for MSX-DOS 2 Kernel in a Sound Cartridge
• Removed /C for Konami without SCC specification. Konami without SCC detection attempt when no conversion switches were given
• Fixed bug in command line switches parser, some switches could be lower case only
• Use low speed mode (Z80, 3.58 MHz) for compatibility, unless forced otherwise
• Fixed small bug in ASCII8 mapper init
• Added 50Hz/60Hz init /S[:<Hz>]

Today I released version 2.44 of COMMAND2.COM as a patch for version 2.20 or 2.31 as a TNI product.

Changes in version 2.44 are:

• Fixed a bug causing TAB completion to go into an infinite loop in a subdirectory with only the . and .. entries. In such a case a BEEP will occur indicating it couldn't find any name to complete.
• The COMPATCH is implemented natively. This is to display the free size of a FAT16 partition.
• Added SHIFT command for batch files. This allows to shift arguments 1 position to the left, including an option to specify from which argument the shift will take place.
• New external command: TYPEWW to type text with word-wrap.
• New external command: MORE piping command to pause output display per screen.
• Added BOOT command. Sets the boot drive for when leaving MSX-BASIC.
• Added HERTZ command. Sets VDP refresh frequency.
• SET PROMPT ON and SET PROMPT OFF are restored to their respective defaults. If PROMPT wasn't set, it defaults to %_CWD%>.
• Restored ERA, ERASE and RENAME commands for compatibility reasons.
• Added missing COMMAND2.COM version 2.41 features to the help files.
• Internal Variable _MSXVER now supports all MSX generations.
• Added @STRING Internal Variable Function. Returns a string of the specified length containing the first character of a string.

(November 18, 2010: it turns out the help files packaged weren't that up to date. The current archive contains the correct help files)
(November 29, 2010: there was a bug causing a "Wrong version of COMMAND" error appearing on MSX2 machines. The current archive contains the fixed version of COMMAND2.COM)

A few days ago I read about a bug in the tab completion of COMMAND2.COM version 2.41 causing it to loop infinitely when tabbing in an empty subdirectory and about a version 2.42 fixing this. After getting my hands on this version I started some comparisons:

1. the first downloadable version was infected by the ZAPP virus, both the unpatched and the patched version
2. it's not based on version 2.41, but more likely on 2.40 (although I did notice an unchanged 2.41 version string which is quite strange)
   (October 13, 2010: it's confirmed COMMAND2.COM version 2.42 is based on version 2.40)
   (October 31, 2010: a version 2.43 was released, fixing some simple textual bugs, no new features are added)
3. by examining the code at first I thought the tab completion bug was fixed by simply removing the feature, but it turned out it wasn't removed. This first assumption was because of the ZAPP virus.

The tab completion is fixed in a very strange way. It made me decide to look into things in the actual version 2.41 release and write a proper fix.

Right now I have a COMMAND2.COM with the bugfix and some new stuff. We're planning a release in the very near future with some very interesting features.