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VirtualAcorn are delighted to announce that version 1.4 of VirtualA5000 will be released at the RISC OS SouthWest show on the 22nd of February 2003. This new version of VirtualA5000 includes a number of quite major changes including:


Direct Acorn format floppy disc access on Windows 2000 and XP
Floppy disc support includes both 800K and 1600K discs (as well as 720K and 1.44Mb DOS discs)
Direct Acorn format CD access on Windows 2000 and XP (You can even run DrawWorks direct from CD)
Directly access DOS format and Music CDs
Play Music CDs directly from RISC OS usign the supplied CDPlayer application
Improved sound support allowing much shorter sound samples to play
Sharper sound playback without the "muffled" sound of a real A5000
Smoother mouse pointer in hi-resolution screen modes
"ColourCard" style graphics acceleration which can improve application redraw speed by up to 50%
A number of new screen resolutions including 1128x864 in 16 colour and 1024x384 in 256 colour.
Support for Acorn style display of DOS files names so that the trailing DOS extensions can be displayed
An updated Manual

In addition a number of extra applications have been added to the disc build, increasing the size by almost 50%. These include:


FasterPC - the PC Emulator with a copy of FreeDOS
Asylum and Oddball games (kindly supplied by AcornArcade)
The GameSuite games programming package (kindly supplied by AcornArcade)
Ample the music programming language
SoundCon sample player and convertor
PDVivaldi Tracker editor with sample tracker file
ReMidi midi file player with the latest instrument patches
Updated versions of Account2, Merlin and other programs
An increased selection of PD and Freeware applications
A number of commercial demos including Ancestor+, Prophet, Schema and Techwriter

An upgrade to existing users will be available for ??10 plus p&p (??1.50 in the UK, ??3.50 overseas). To quality for an upgrade users will need to return their original CD in the VirtualAcorn jewel case.

A free upgrade that will include direct floppy for Windows 2000/XP will be available from the VirtualAcorn website early next week. This upgrade will not include the new bundled applications, new screen modes, "ColourCard" style graphics acceleration or CD-ROM support.