WARNING!!! It's a beta version!!! Before using ZX-Pilot you must
backup all data from your PDA. Please test all new games on POSE first
and only after that load them to your PDA.
You can run ZX-Pilot on any PDA with PalmOS 3.5 and 8+ Mb RAM (except Sony CLIE PEG-S300) and above, but the best result can be achieved on
Sony CLIE devices with HiRes(+) screen and PalmOS 4. You MUST enable High Resolution Assist in Prefs. Emulator works on PalmOS 5 devices,
but b&w mode is not quite correct yet.
ZX-Pilot requires about 145 Kb of free RAM to run properly.
Emulator supports a standard SNA48 format (49179 bytes of size).
Please follow the steps below to prepare PDB file with game:
a. Run one of the emulators, which can save SNA48 files (R80, ZX-Emul
and others), on you PC.
b. Load and run you favorite game.
c. Save SNA.
d. Add the header (Header4ZX-Pilot) to your SNA. You can use
makepdb.bat with Header4ZX-Pilot for this, just type in command line:
makepdb your_game_name.sna
All games will have the same internal PDB name, so only the game
loaded to the device last will play in ZX-Pilot. You can keep your
favorite games on a memory card and copy selected game to PDA when you
want to play it. Igor Vagin write good program ZX-Launcher which help
you to load and run games from memory card.
You can download thousands of free games for Spectrum and other
emulators on main ZX-Spectrum portal "World of Spectrum":
ZX-Pilot is written on pure Assembler using the most optimal
algorithms, it does not use PalmOS SysTraps, some things are reduced
for speed-up (ROM write protection, R-register and other), but it's
still slow because DragonBall is a very slow processor for this task.
Such a pity, but it's a maximal speed achievable on this CPU. Though
you can use an overclocking utility, such as FastCPU or Afterburner,
to speed the CPU up.
To speed up emulation I need some info about low level hardware
buttons scan without using SysTraps. I need to know ways to low level
access for Palm beeper too.
Please send all your comments, bug reports, thanks, suggestions, etc.
to:
* to Tim N. Tashpulatov for moral support and answering my questions about PalmOS programming
* to Dmitriy Zhivilov for ZX-Live for Amiga and answering my questions
* to Vladimir Yudin for ZX-Emul for PC and answering my questions
* to Bodo Wenzel for his open source GameBoy emulator for PalmOS
* to Artem O. Kozakov for testing
* to Alex Pakhotin for moral support and and for help with documentation
* to Dmitriy Paltchevsky aka DiPal for some routines, LoRes version testing and support
* to Dmitry Molotchko for HandEra 330 version testing and support
* to Andrey Lysenko aka fyrex for some advanced routines and optimization
* to Igor Vagin aka Antares19 for ZX-Launcher
* to Kirill Buravlev for web-site and other web help
* to Oleg Orlov for web hosting, beta-testing and moral support
* to all other people who support my project
- redesigned keyboard for HiRes version;
- new port of ZX-Printer is emulated;
- corrected emulation of some Z80 instruction, now are working Ping-Pong, Lords of Midnight, The Rocky Horror Show, Dizzy 7, Movie, Green Beret and other;
- RESET of ZX-Spectrum (exit to BASIC) is available when emulator
can't found snapshot in memory.
Version 0.4b (May 17, 2003)
- added sound emulation;
- added Kempston Joystick emulation on hardware keys;
- added flash-color emulation;
- corrected graphic engine for more correct screen update;
- some kernel optimization for faster emulation;
- fixed bugs in some Z80 instruction;
- added new undocumented Z80 CPU instructions;
- removed on-screen keyboard in 1:1 mode for LoRes version.
Version 0.3b (April 7, 2003)
- major kernel optimization for faster emulation;
- added screen keyboard;
- added exit dialog with pause and save options;
- added some new screen modes (including color!) for LoRes devices;
- added ability of moving screen in HandEra 330 version;
- added more undocumented Z80 CPU instructions;
- rewrote b&w screen update routine to improve picture quality in LoRes version;
- rewrote non-scaling screen update routines for faster emulation;
- redesigned icons;
- fixed bug in PDB header;
- fixed many bugs in kernel and instructions emulation.
Version 0.2b (March 6, 2003)
- added standard Palm screen 160x160 support (grayscale and monochrome modes);
- added HandEra 330 screen 240x320 support (grayscale and monochrome modes);
- added HiRes grayscale support;
- added more undocumented Z80 CPU instructions;
- fixed many bugs.