Contact:
oak (at) helsinkinet fi

News and History of things I'm (or have recently been) involved with

2019

2019/08: Added 32-bit Linux FB driver, libinput keyboard + mouse, evdev mouse support, and removed obsolete SVGAlib from the W Window system (WWS). First one is to help WWS testing on x86 Linux, input drivers to help getting it running on m68k Linux
2019/06: EmuTOS v0.9.11 released with much nicer icons and other improvements
2019/04: Added Linux Loader (LILO) support, improved RTC emulation and debugger backtrace support for Hatari. Latter makes sometimes debugging Linux kernel issues easier under Hatari than natively on x86. As result, found out that Linux relies on ignoring bus errors on certain situations, but 030 bus error handler didn't do that (which resulted in BUG / system hangs)
2019/03: Fixed W Window system to build with latest Debian GCC and packaging tools
2019/02: Hatari source repository switched from Mercurial to Git
2019/02: Hatari v2.2.0/2.2.1 released with a lot of small fixes and improvements

2018

2018/12: EmuTOS v0.9.10 released with largely improved disk handling performance and other improvements
2018/10: Ported Hatari Python UI from PyGtk v2 to Gtk v2. Several Hatari bug fixes and debugger improvements
2018/09: Thomas added experimental SCSI emulation support and IDE improvements to Hatari
2018/05: changed all Hatari output to have a suitable prefix and respect specified logging level, a huge reduction in output Hatari produces by default (a popular request)
2018/03: Added Gtk2 evaluation report to docs, and fixed links
2018/02: Hatari v2.1 released which adds full MMU support, cache emulation for 020/030/040/060, changes mentioned below, and more
2018/01: Implemented some Hatari debugger symbol handling improvements requested by others

2017

2017/12: EmuTOS v0.9.9 released with VDI blitter support, additional desktop features, and a lot of bug fixes
2017/11: Fixed Python 2 vs 3 issues in Hatari TOS bootup tester, and issues related to autoboot & resolution setting changes
2017/11: Added a.out symbols support (contributed by Thorsten Otto) to Hatari debugger and did some other symbol handling improvements
2017/10: Added CMake integration and fixes for Hatari PortMidi support (contributed by Jari Kleimola), which means that Hatari finally supports MIDI input/output on OSX and Windows
2017/05: Re-factored Hatari virtual INF file / autoboot handling to provide modified version of existing INF file (instead of overriding it), support for overriding TOS resolution (for VDI emu) and to be able to autoboot progams also from other than GEMDOS HD emulated disks
2017/04: EmuTOS v0.9.8 released with additional desktop features, improved Amiga support and a lot of bug fixes
2017/04: Minor improvements to Hatari autoboot / GEMDOS HD emulation
2017/02: Made fixes to Hatari virtual INF file / autoboot and error handling
2017/02: Mesa v17.0 released with GL 4.5 support, and Mesa moves to year based release numbering
2017/01: Added support for both Python v2 + v3 to Hatari Python utilities / GUI (needed by few Linux distros)

2016

2016/11: EmuTOS v0.9.7 released with many additional desktop features, a standalone version of EmuCON2, improved HW support and lot of bug fixes
2016/11: Added dumb Videl address counter emulation to Hatari (fixes several Falcon programs) + minor debugger improvements
2016/11: Hatari v2.0 released which enables SDL2 support / GL window scaling by default (fixes OSX performance issues) + uses WinUAE CPU also for ST/STE emulation
2016/11: Mesa v13.0 released with GL 4.4 support
2016/06: Mesa v12.0 released with GL 4.3 support
2016/05: EmuTOS v0.9.6 released with proper Atari TT support and many fixes
2016/04: Did several minor fixes and improvements to Hatari debugger + test-case updates
2015/03: Rewrote Hatari's TT palette handling to behave like real HW (thanks to Roger's test programs + testing on real TT)

2015

2015/10: EmuTOS v0.9.5 released
2015/09: Added Uwe's NatFeats SCSI drive emulation to Hatari
2015/09: Hatari v1.9 released
2015/09: Mesa v11.0 released with GL 4.1 support
2015/08: Completed EmuTOS Line-A drawing API support + fixed all known issues
2015/06: Supported both oldUAE and WinUAE CPUs + TT-Ram in Hatari TOS bootup tester. Rewrote CPU halt dialog
2015/05: Added d-cache profiling, cache hit info and 'os_base' trace option to Hatari debugger. Support WinUAE CPU core in Hatari Python debugger GUI. Fix Hatari bugs listed in Debian bug tracker and debug symbol reading on Windows. Conditional breakpoint fixes
2015/04: Added TT-RAM support to Hatari profiler and fixed debugger issues with it. Helper script for renaming files with long file names so that they work also under TOS + TT-RAM in addition to MiNT (fixes OpenTTD and ScummVm)
2015/04: EmuTOS moves (finally) from CVS to Git
2015/03: Added multiple ACSI bus support for Hatari
2015/03: EmuTOS v0.9.4 released
2015/01: Did misc Hatari fixes + many documentation updates. Added script for autorunning Atari programs with arguments (uses debugger to inject arguments into program basepage)

2014

2014/12: BadMooD Beta released
2012/12: Added TT-RAM support to Hatari SDL GUI (config dialog, statusbar)
2012/11: Made minor improvements to Hatari harddisk image handling
2014/08: Nicolas updated Hatari WinUAE CPU core: TT-RAM, 030 MMU and 060 work now!
2014/08: Added keyboard shortcut + joystick navigation, file selector sorting and UTF-8 to latin1 conversion to Hatari SDL GUI, MIDI tracing and 'reset' debugger command. Max provided code for mapping 8-bit file names between host and emulation
2014/07: BadMooD Beta optimizations by Doug
2014/07: Hatari v1.8 released
2014/07: Spent a week in London with Kirsi and my sister's family. Following the paw prints of Paddington and visiting Harry Potter studios...
2014/06: Added support for many new Hatari options to its Python/Gtk GUI, improved Hatari's Native Features support, debugger symbol type support and Hatari console
2014/05: Hatari statusbar improvements and misc fixes
2014/02: EmuTOS v0.9.3 released
2014/01: Hatari exception debugging support rewrite and Native Features example / test code
2014/01: BadMooD Alpha released

2013

2013/11: Found out that fixing broken thermostat for a fridgerator is surprisingly simple... Except for the problem of getting the capillary pipe attached properly back behind the cooling element (spend nearly 1/2 hour at that, with hands shaking at the end).
2013/10: Hacky port of Douglas' Atari ST Doom-style rendering engine from GCC 4.x cross-compiler to native GCC 2.x (needed to disable a lot of inline asm with newer syntax), and some profiling/automation for that.
2013/09: Mesa v10.0 released
2013/09: Contributed support for most of Line-A functions to EmuTOS (included into EmuTOS CVS-20130925 snapshot). This allows many additional (old) games to work with it.
2013/08: Support for profiling loops (to optimize register waits and DSP / CPU communication) and several debugger improvements to Hatari.
2013/07: Spent a week in Barcelona with Kirsi and my sister's family. We had an apartment with a (shared) pool as we thought that children would like it. Whole week had hot weather, so it turned out that adults appreciated the pool too, after walking hours around the city...
2013/07: EmuTOS v0.9.1 released
2013/06: Hatari v1.7 released
2013/06: Hatari support for outputting backtraces while profiling. Automated Hatari profiling support to Douglas' Quake 1 Atari port.
2013/05: Many small fixes to Hatari in preparation for v1.7 release + some documentation updates. Doom profiling improvements and some optimizations to its startup.
2013/05: Started as graphics performance engineer at Intel
2013/05: Added support for building Douglas' Atari Doom I/II port natively with Vasm & GCC 2.95 and wrote some automated profiling for it. Fixed more profiler corner-cases and (finally) "finished" documentation for Hatari profiler and its post-processor, debugger section is now >1/3 of the whole Hatari manual...
2013/04: Profiled Quake2 startup and Doom frame-rendering under Falcon emulation and found out that Vincent's MiNTlib (Atari libc) build is lacking symbols for the part taking over half of the CPU... After adding symbols manually and reading MiNTlib sources, I found the cause and Douglas fixed the Doom sources.
2013/04: Added support for collecting accurate subroutine call costs to profiler as costs cannot be reliably calculated in post-processing. Fixed many (hopefully all) corner case issues in the CPU and DSP profiling functionality, added some minor post-processing features, and post-processessor installation to the system. Added symbol importing from DRI/GST format symbol tables in Atari binaries and some minor debugger features + fixes. Updated debugger and profiler documentation in Hatari manual.
2013/03: After many new features and bugfixes, Hatari profiler and its data post-processor are starting to be pretty complete. Profiling data can be used e.g. to verify accuracy of rest of the emulator. Adding Callgrind format output to be able to view the profile data in Kcachegrind took only a couple of hours, but unfortunately Kcachegrind source view doesn't handle TABs properly in the profile assembly data.
2013/03: Investigated Badmood (Doom I/II WAD BSP viewer for Falcon) MIDI player and came up with a MIDI format 1 to format 0 (i.e. from multi to single track) converter which produces MIDI files that this player accepts.
2013/03: EmuTOS v0.9.0 released. It includes important improvements for emulator usage and a bug fix to a drawing bug for which I wrote a test-case. Did a lot of testing for it and contributed some doc update + code cleanup patches.
2013/02: Added caller information to Hatari emulator profiler output and callgraph generation to its post-processor. Provided with it a graph of what calls are done and where the time goes on EmuTOS disk info functionality.
2013/01: Added preliminary CPU cycles & cache miss support to Hatari profiler and wrote profiler disassembly post-processor which (with suitable symbol address information) provides function level information on executed DSP & CPU instructions, used cycles and CPU cache misses.
2013/01: Read about "Modern C++", re-learned C++ & Qt and wrote a Qt settings editor and launcher for/included with my Mortar game.
2013/01: Hatari debugger is used to debug issues with FPGA Atari implementation, and to optimize Doom for (16Mhz) Falcon by splitting the work appropriately between CPU and DSP.
2013/01: Did a lot of Aranym testing, including running the latest m68k version of Debian, which is much slower than m68k Debian Sarge at boot & login. Boot is slow due to udev etc, login because PAM is now by default using sha512 instead of md5 for password encryption.

2012

2012/12: Updated versions of Clac and Mortar and found more issues with AHCC and VBCC C-compilers and their standard libraries. Some experimentation with LZO and LZ77 compression/decompression speeds on Atari.
2012/11: Did lots of testing for the experimental standalone Atari TOS version of VBCC compiler (latest VBCC 0.9b release was built with GCC/MiNTlib, not by VBCC itself) and found several issues when it's run under TOS and several corner case issues with the compiler code generation. Provided a native C-build environment with AHCC and VBCC for Hatari on my Atari development page.
2012/11: Added "next" and "step" shortcuts and fixed a lot of (mostly corner-case) Hatari debugger issues based on feedback from Frank Wille (VBCC compiler Amiga/Atari backend maintainer) and what I noticed while debugging Hatari GEMDOS HD emulation Pexec() bug reported by him. Made Hatari dissassembler selection run-time configurable (as UAE CPU core's internal dissassember and the default external disassembler have their own pros & cons).
2012/10: Added separate page for my old Atari programs and moved Filler & PUNSSi info from open SW page to there. It has information and links to sources of also other older Atari programs I've ported to ANSI-C and newer compilers. I'm doing this to test new AHCC and VBCC C-compiler versions and their m68k/ColdFire support.
2012/10: Added sources for Python m68k instruction encoder and my old WWS Python bindings to open SW page.
2012/09: As Nokia is getting rid of even its remaining Linux operations, I resigned from there and I'm now looking for a new job.
2012/09: Debugged issues Filler has with multitasking AES (mainly XaAES / fullscreen) and fVDI VDI replacement (drawing operations), reported bugs on them on the MiNT mailing list and added workarounds for them to Filler code. Built also a ColdFire version of Filler with latest AHCC that is compatible with XaAES and fVDI, which Vincent kindly verified to work on a FireBee.
2012/08: Spent weekend and few evenings writing a simple new game for Atari computers and emulators called Filler.
Some time went to debugging evnt_multi() button input handling bug I found in EmuTOS.
2012/07: Spent a week driving around Sottland with Kirsi and my sister's family. Some things that stuck to mind from the trip were:
- The rented car's tire breaking completely, less than 2 miles out of the Airport. At night. When my sister had a flu bug and was vomiting.
- The tropical paradise looking, but really cold beach at Fraserburgh.
- Climbing to the clouds at Ben Nevis mountain.
- In Oban, the children's chocolate making course (on which I acted as interpreter for my nieces, aged 8 and 10) and the fresh plate of langoustines later in a seafront restaurant. The crustacean put up a fight, but I finally won it with only minor casulties...
- Everything being deep-fried, even pizza and Mars bars.
- The large tide differences, causing hundred(s) of meters of revealed seabottom with beached boats.
The views on the country side around Scottland were memorable, I hope to visit some of those places again, with more time.
2012/07: PR1.3 software update for N9.
2012/06: Hatari v1.6.2 released with a boatload of fixes all over + support for Videl borders. My TOS (bootup) tester supports now all TOS versions and Hatari HW configurations.
2012/06: EmuTOS v0.8.7 released with resolution switching and full TT + Falcon XBIOS support. It also fixes a large number of VDI rendering and crash issues (for which I've written test programs).
2012/05: ARM Thumb support fixed in Functracer v1.4 by patches from Siarhei.
2012/04: AHCC v4.10 gives warnings for issues (taking address of syscall, nested comments) for which I got in earlier version just mystery linker errors.
2012/02: PR1.2 software update for N9.
2012/01: Hatari v1.6 and v1.6.1 released with more accurate FDC emulation and 030 MMU emulation with WinUAE CPU core.

2011

2011/12: Hatari hosting moved from BerliOS to TuxFamily as it was announced during fall that BerliOS will close down.
2011/11: AHCC v4.8 with fix to bus error and v_pieslice bug I've found with my EmuTOS VDI testers.
2011/11: PR1.1 software update for N9.
2011/11: EmuTOS v0.8.6 released which is VFAT compatible and fixes serious VDI arrow mis-drawing/crasher bug (for which I provided a minimal test-case as it was triggered by several nice GEM games).
2011/09: N9 is finally in shops...
2011/08: Ubuntu/Linaro tracing release includes some Maemo (tracing) tools. For more details, see the blueprint.
2011/07: Hatari v1.5 is released with large improvements to debugger and sound emulation + optional WinAUE support for more accurate 030+ CPU emulation.
2011/06: N9, Nokia's best phone at the moment (and running Linux) is announced.
2011/06: AHCC v4.5 and v4.6 Atari C-compiler versions with completed ColdFire instruction set support and fixes to additional issue I had + atan2 from pmlib (which I needed to build Ballerburg with AHCC).
2011/04: Spent a week in Paris with Kirsi. This time we got only few hundred photos. The best of the traditional tourist places were the ones with the most memorable architecture or statues:
- Musée d'Orsey
- Musée Rodin (with its statue garden being nearly on par with Stockholm's Millesgården)
- Cimetière du Père-Lachaise (especially the WW II statues on its eastern edge)
- Montmarte district (but wear a large hat to protect from pidgeon diarhea around Sacré Cœur)
- Eiffel tower (looks great in the morning mist)
Additionally:
- we toured several of the parks in Paris, the favorite being Buttes Chaumont with its children's Easter egg hunt and hills...
- The most memorable thing from the Arc de Triomphe were the police with their submachine guns and from Champs-Élysées, the luxory Macaron shop and the amazingly long queue in front of the Luis Vutton shop (personally I wouldn't buy anything that expensive if I would need to queue for it)...
- Best food on the trip we ate in restaurant L'Avant-Goût!
2011/02: AHCC v4.4 with preliminary ColdFire support and fixes to some issues I've reported, is released.

2010

2010/06: Hatari v1.4 is released with large improvements to debugger + sound & DSP emulation.
2010/04: Open sourced Maemo analysis tools (start) moving under gitorous.org version control.

2009

2009/11: N900 with Maemo5 is released.
2009/09: N900, Nokia's first Linux phone is announced.
2009/09: Hatari v1.3.1 bugfix release.
2009/09: W Window System v1.4.5 released. It's now Debian packaged, updated to build with GCC 4.x, terminals build with Unix98 PTS, WLua interpreter builds with (latest) Lua 5.1 and manual pages are added to all games & apps missing them.
2009/09: Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 is launched!
2009/08: Hatari v1.3 released. It has major DSP emulation and internal debugger improvements + many other improvements.
2009/08: Fixed GCC 4.x compilation warnings, added Debian packaging and long-lost documentation to Clac.
2009/06: Added conditional breakpoints support to Hatari debugger. They work a bit like Gdb watchpoints, but are for the emulated CPU + DSP registers and memory contents.
2009/05: Moved Hatari UI code to Hatari repo at BerliOS and updated it for Hatari v1.2.
2009/04: Gave Maemo Open Source contributions presentation at FRUCT seminar in St. Petersburg.
2009/04: Spent 10 days in New York with Kirsi. We got over 600 photos, visited e.g. Harlem and the Apollo theater, but skipped (the queue) for Statue of Liberty... Favorite spots on NY:
- Cloisters (especially the surrounding park/garden and the views from it),
- Central park (and the Museum of Natural history at its side),
- Flatiron building (which seems like it's ready to raise anchors and sail away).
2009/01: Hatari v1.2 released

2008

2008/11: Hatari v1.1 released.
(builds fine for N8x0 devices and includes readymade config for them)
2008/10: Debian packaged version of Mortar.
2008/09: Was at Maemo Summit 2008 in Berlin.
2008/06: Diablo, a new Maemo OS (v4.1) feature upgrade for Nokia N800 and N810, is released.
2008/05: Maemo packaging policy (devel list announcement)
2008/03: Gramps v3.0 is released.
2008/02: Was at Tracing Summit 2008 in Montreal.

2007

2007/11: N810 with OS2008 is released.
2007/10: N810, Nokia's third Linux based internet tablet (now with keyboard and GPS) is announced.
2007/10: Hatari v0.95 packaged for N800.
2007/08: Was at Guadec 2007 in Birmingham.
2007/01: N800 with OS2007, Nokia's second Linux based internet tablet, is announced and released.
2007/01: Moved from Movial to Nokia.

2006

2006/10: Changed Clac license to GPL (from "freeware") so that it's more acceptable to FreeDOS.
2006/10: Gramps v2.2 is released.
2006/9: Hatari v0.90 packaged for N770.
2006/8: Updated + packaged Mortar for N770.
2006/8: Fixed a stack overflow in Clac.
2006/8: Hatari v0.90 released
2006/8: Added page about Airstrike and level design and Airstrike design diagram.
2006/7: Announced Hatari for N770 (I've actually been working on Hatari for a few years, but now I also packaged it for N770 along with a few free Atari ST games).
2006/6: Ported Ballerburg to ANSI-C and fixed issues with other C compilers. Translated it to Finnish and English. The new sources.
2006/5: Maemo OS2006, a new OS version for the Nokia 770, is released.
2006/5: Added my historical pages from 1997.

2005

2005/11: Nokia 770 with OS2005 is released.
2005/5: Was at Guadec 2005 in Stuttgart.
2005/5: Nokia 770, Nokia's first Linux based internet tablet, is announced.
2005/4: Gramps v2.0 is released.
2005/2: Added a couple of new screen update modes to Mortar game source code: either blit each updated screen area separately or coalesce successive regions together if they overlap. Earlier there was just max. updated area rectangle.
2005/1: Major update to the Gramps statistics chart plugin. Takes advantage of the report plugin API rewrite discussed with Alex Roitman.

2004

2004/10: Fixed compilation warnings in W window system and Makefile bug in the Wyrms W game.
2004/9: I created a bar graphics statistics report plugin for Gramps.
2004/7: I translated Gramps, the Gnome genealogy program to Finnish.
2004/5: Mortar updated. Nicer wind meter, frame time fix (game speed / CPU usage fix for fast machines).
2004/4: Thomas Huth kindly cross-compiled PUNSSi for Atari, so that I could include the binary with PUNSSi source code.
2004/3: Did some performance improvements for sound to the Hatari Atari ST emulator + minor code cleanups. I've heard that Hatari can be used with sound on some PDA machines, e.g. on Sharp Zaurus.
2004/2: I found the code for my PUNSSi game from one of my old Atari floppies, so I put it up here. I also added links to Solarwolf graphics I've created (both of these things are under GPL).

2003

2003/8: Documented Scratchbox design and the problems it's aimed to solve with Erik, Lauri and Veli.
2003/7: Scratchbox, a toolset & environment for cross-compiling whole Linux distributions (based on ideas in the FOSDEM presentation below) gets its own www-site.
2003/6: Mortar has new cannon and shot images and some Makefile improvements.
2003/5: Added SDL backed to W Window System, updated W-Lua interpreter to Lua v4 and updated the HTML documentation to current state. W toolkit is now in the same package with the rest of WWS.
2003/3: Had a presentation about Cross-compiling Open Source in FOSDEM 2003.
2003/1: Wrote some code and animated POV models (dragon, cannon, zeppelin etc) for Airstrike game.

2002

2002/9: Made a lot of sounds with Spiral Synth.
2002/7: Validated and uploaded the poems page from my archives.
2002/6: Uploaded my script (shell, python etc) collection.
2002/5: 16-bit framebuffer support added to Mortar.
2002/4: Naputus, my first PyGame program.

2001

2001/10: Public version of the GTK Toolkit v1 Evaluation document.
2001/10: SDL/SDL_mixer port of Mortar game. Game images can now be compressed.
2001/9: Moved from Adcore to Movial.

2000

2000/10: Added preliminary Lua bindings to WWS (Lua is one of the smallest script languages and can be programmed in OO-style) for Wlib and W toolkit.
2000/7: WWS wterm color attribute handling is fixed (by Benjamin Sittler) and there are some minor fixes and updates to makefiles and sources.

1999

1999/10: Frank Wille brought W window system Amiga NetBSD port upto date.
1999/9: Amiga port of Mortar game.
1999/5: WWS has now separate key press and release events. I needed this for the W port of Heretic. MacMiNT port of W (by Jonathan Oddie).
1999/3: Faster GGI version of Mortar game.
1999/1: Wt support for W special keys (arrows etc).
1999/1: x86-linux FB/GPM support for W.

1998

1998: I'm now the W Window System and Wt maintainer. For more information on WWS, see my historical pages.
1998: W, GGI, FB and TOS version of the Mortar game with GSI sample and midi playing support.

1997

1997: Started working at Netmill doing www-sites with PHP and SQL on top of LAMP stack. (Netmill was later bought by a Swedish technology company called Information Highway which after several other purchases and a merger with a Danish consultation company and changed its name to Adcore.)
1997: Wlib palette, image block handling and font handling completed with appropiate server modifications. All Wlib functions have now manual pages. W linux version works now also on x86.
1997: Ported the Mutt language and text editor (ME) v3 to Linux. I had used a GEM version of ME2 on Atari and wanted to use ME on Linux console too...
1997: PUNSSi game got rewritten 680x0 asm-code for the keyboard handler, which can now emulate joysticks.

1996

1996: W window system v1 releases 2/3 (resizable windows, clipping, polygons, color, GCs and graphics modes) from Tesche. W toolkit and Wetscape browser from Kay. Made networked board game framework and did a couple of games for W and Wt.

1995

1995: Created PUNSSi, my first arcade game for Atari. Multitasking friendly, supports joystick and works in the monochrome mode. I even got a postcard for it from overseas.
1995: Updated version of Clac calculator (with readline and Atari GEM user interfaces). Used it in testing two new free Atari C-compilers. Clac GUI popup code is used in the Mgif graphics manipulation program which included convolution filters, DSP code etc. before any other Open Source image viewer / editor I know of.

1994

1994: Made ST-Guide hypertext versions of some of the project Gutenberg texts and Alko's Cocktail Guide.
1994: Clac command line calculator is created. A simplified version of it is included as a column filter for Edith, a commercial programmer's text editor for Atari. A message passing version of Clac for MiNT.

Even earlier

Wrote a midi player, sound synthetizer and ASCII graphics editor in GFA Basic for Atari ST. Sound synthetizer had some supporting assembler code to actually create the sounds fast enough according to what user had selected in the GUI.