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1996-11-10
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Sinclair ZX Spectrum Emulator 'Z80' v3.05 - 11/11/96 - by G.A. Lunter
Contents:
1. INTRODUCTION, REGISTRATION, GENERAL INFORMATION
1.1 Some general remarks
1.2 Registration
1.3 Other emulators
1.4 Acknowledgements
1.5 Disclaimers
1.6 Copyright notices
2. THE EMULATOR
2.1 Starting the emulator
2.2 Using the emulator
2.3 Keyboard emulation
2.4 Screen emulation
2.5 Sound emulation
2.6 Loading programs from tape
2.7 Using .TAP files
2.8 Using .VOC files
2.9 Multi-load games
2.10 Using the Microdrive
2.11 Using the Disciple and Plus D interfaces
2.12 Using the Multiface
2.13 Using the RS232 channel
2.14 On joysticks and mice
2.15 The utility ConvZ80
2.16 Converting file formats - the utility CONVERT
2.17 The utilities Z802TAP, TAP2TAPE and TAP2VOC
2.18 The utility OUT2VOC - and how to make .OUT files
2.19 The utilities READVOC and READSB
2.20 Quick overview of command line switches, and features
2.21 Miscellaneous remarks
3. THE SAMRAM
3.1 Basic extensions
3.2 NMI software
3.3 The built-in monitor
4. THE SPECTRUM
4.1 The Spectrum
4.2 The Interface I
4.3 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - Introduction
4.4 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - Basic commands
4.5 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - More advanced commands
4.6 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - The snapshot button
4.7 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - The system variables
4.8 The Spectrum 128
5. TECHNICAL INFORMATION (in file TECHINFO.DOC)
5.1 The Spectrum 48K
5.2 The Spectrum 128K
5.3 The AY-3-8912 sound chip
5.4 The ZX Printer
5.5 The Interface I
5.6 The SamRam
5.7 The Multiface 128
5.8 The AMX mouse interface
5.9 The Z80 microprocessor
5.10 File formats
1. INTRODUCTION, REGISTRATION, GENERAL INFORMATION
1.1 Some general remarks
This is the documentation for 'Z80', a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48/128
emulator. The program turns your PC into a Spectrum. Its features in
a (largish) nut-shell:
- Emulates ZX Spectrum 48K model 2 or 3, and Spectrum 128K.
- Best compatibility of current Spectrum emulators.
- Emulates Interface I and Microdrive (cartridge in cartridge file),
Disciple and Plus D disk interfaces, Multiface 128.
- Full tape support: loads both normal and turbo-saved programs using
either tape interface on LPT port, SoundBlaster AD converter or
.VOC sound sample files; can also use .TAP binary tape image files
by trapping ROM save/load routines. Saving back to tape is also
possible, either directly to tape or to a .VOC sound sample file.
- Full emulation of Spectrum screen, including all colour effects.
Border, and timing-sensitive border and attribute effects are also
emulated.
- Emulation of ZX Printer, for Epson and HP Laserjet compatible
printers.
- Emulation of beeper through PC beeper, and of 128K sound through
either PC beeper or AdLib (SoundBlaster) compatible cards
- Supports digital and analogue joysticks, and mouse, controlling
Cursor, Sinclair, Kempston or user-defined joystick.
- Emulates Spectrum AMX Mouse interface (used by e.g. Art Studio)
- Runs on any PC, including oldies with 8088/8086 processor.
- Emulator runs just above 100% of actual Spectrum speed on 20 MHz
286 and 25 MHz 386SX; can be slowed down on faster machines.
- Z80 emulation includes emulation of R register, all unofficial
instruction codes, and unofficial flags; interrupts once every
1/50th emulated second; I have tried to make each instruction
execute in a time proportional to the time taken on a real Z80.
- Registered package includes all source files.
- Interface I and Spectrum 128's "p" channel input/output can be
re-routed to LPT or COM port, or to a file.
- Includes several utilities; to convert from and to other snapshot
and tape file formats, to convert snapshots into tape files, tape
files into sound sample files, to display contents of snapshot
files, to convert screen snapshots to .PCX and .GIF files, to read
.VOC sound sample files from the LPT tape interface or
SoundBlaster.
- A program is included which makes .VOC or raw sound sample files
of sounds produces by the Spectrum, either by the beeper, the
soundchip of the Spectrum 128, or the MIC port.
- OUTs to any port can be logged, and stored in a log file with
timing information. This log file can be translated into a .VOC
sound sample file using OUT2VOC, for both ear and AY soundchip
output.
- Simple tracing feature
- Opcode mapping feature, tags bytes that are executed during
emulation; useful for debugging and disassembling purposes.
(It is meant to be used with the disassembler program DNSA by
Leslie Styles, lms@soton.ac.uk)
- Multi-level support as in XZX 0.5.2; also support of .SLT files.
- Emulator can set a breakpoint, invisible to the running program.
- Emulator can load and save blocks of Spectrum memory to disk
directly.
- Emulator can run under Windows (95).
- Supports VGA, EGA, CGA and Hercules video adapters including
monochrome VGA. (Support for Plantronics discontinued.)
There is quite a lot to explain in this documentation. First of all
the emulator itself requires some of your PC's resources. It is not
really a demanding program, but there are some things that need
attention. These technicalities are dealt with in section 2.1.
Some general things about the emulator are explained in section 2.2.
After reading sections 2.1 and 2.2, you will know most of the basics.
The details can be found in subsequent sections.
The Spectrum has a number of ways to communicate with the outside
world, like the obvious keyboard and the screen, but also the
microdrives, the DISCiPLE/Plus D disk interfaces, the tape interface,
the beeper, the sound chip of the Spectrum 128, the Kempston joystick,
the AMX Mouse, the ZX Printer interface, and the RS232 channel of the
Interface I and Spectrum 128 can be used to communicate with PC
channels in some way. For instance, the keyboard is connected to the PC
keyboard, and the tape I/O can be routed to a file, as well as to a
physical tape recorder, or it can come from a .VOC sound sample file.
All these things are explained in the rest of chapter 2.
For our own Spectrums Johan Muizelaar and I built a piece of hardware
we called the SamRam (which has nothing to do with the SAM Coupe, by
the way!). It contains a monitor program and software to make
snapshots of programs. It's still very useful and I still use it a
lot. An explanation of its functions is to be found in chapter 3.
Some things peculiar to the Spectrum or its interfaces, not specific to
this program but useful to know, are collected in chapter 4. It
contains for instance a table of Spectrum keywords and the key
combination to get them; unfortunately this information is not printed
on standard PC keyboards! More importantly, in this chapter it is
explained how to use the Microdrive and DISCiPLE interfaces, both of
which are probably unfamiliar to many former Spectrum users.
There are some interesting technical facts about the Spectrum that I
discovered while debugging the emulator. As much as I could think of
is contained in the final chapter, which can be found in the separate
file TECHINFO.DOC. You don't need to read this chapter to use the
emulator. A specification of the file formats used by the emulator is
also included there.
Please note that the Tatort BBS, which used to be the 'Spectrum
emulator support BBS', has ceased to exist.
There is by now a great lot of Spectrum-related information and
software available on the net. A good starting point is the FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions) list originally started by Marat
Fayzullin, and now maintained by Damien Burke. It can be found at
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~dmb/speccy/faq.html. It is also available at
ftp://ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/sinclair/docs/specfaq. This latter site
carries a lot of Spectrum snapshot and Sinclair-related information.
Highly recommended! A long list of FTP sites carrying Spectrum
programs is included in Damien Burke's FAQ list.
If you have access to internet newsgroups, take a look at
comp.sys.sinclair, where many Sinclair enthousiasts meet and share
thoughts. You will find lots of well-informed people there. Please
read the aforementioned FAQ file before asking questions, but be
invited to join in afterwards. Note: Please do *not* post binaries to
the comp.sys.sinclair newsgroup!
1.2 Registration
'Z80' is a shareware program. The program is not completely
functional, and the parts which are left out are included when you
register. You are encouraged to give this demo version to friends, but
DO NOT change the original archive in any way, please. The shareware
version of the emulator consists of the Z80-304.ZIP archive file, which
should contain the following 12 files:
Z80.EXE - The emulator itself.
Z80.INI - Default initialisation file (used by Z80.EXE).
Z80.PIF - Program Info File to run 'Z80' under Windows
Z80.ICO - Windows icon.
Z80.DOC - Documentation file for the emulator.
Z80FAQ.DOC - Frequently asked questions and answers.
REGISTER.DOC - This file.
NEW.DOC - The What's New file.
ROMS.BIN - Various ROM images (used by Z80.EXE).
TECHINFO.DOC - Technical info about the Spectrum etc.
LAYOUT.SCR - Keyboard layout help screen (used by Z80.EXE).
DIAGRAM.Z80 - Circuit diagram for tape interface, and calibration
The shareware version of the emulator differs from the registered
version in the following respects: it displays a message when the
program is started, and will only run normally for five minutes, after
which the program cannot be slowed down anymore. Furthermore, it
cannot load from or save to tape, and it does not emulate the DISCiPLE
and the Plus D interfaces. Everything else works as in the registered
version.
If you register, you get the fully working version, and the following
utilities:
CONVERT - a general conversion program: can list out BASIC and
translate it back, produce .GIF or .PCX files from
screen dumps, translate Spectrum ASCII (CR) to PC ASCII
(CR/LF), and some other things.
CONVZ80 - Translates various snapshot and tape formats of other
Spectrum emulators into each other. Can handle the
familiar .SNA format use by several emulators (JPP,
XZX,...), and also Pedro Gimeno's (VGASPEC and SPECTRUM)
.SP format and Kevin J. Phairs' (SPECEM) .PRG format.
It can also handle tape files of SPECEM and L. Rindt and
E. Brukner's emulator ZX.
DISCIPLE - Reads DISCiPLE and Plus D diskettes, both 3.5'' and
5.25''. It translates the 48K and 128K snapshot files
to .Z80 snapshots, and ordinary files and screen
snapshots to .TAP tape files. (Not necessary for the
fully registered version, but handy for the cheaper
one.)
ADDDAT - Utility to edit the additional data part of .SLT
snapshot files, which contain loading screens and level
data.
Z802TAP - Converts a .Z80 snapshot, 48K or 128K, to a .TAP file
which can be loaded into the emulator and saved to tape
by the next utility:
TAP2TAPE - Saves the contents of a .TAP file back to tape, to load
it into an ordinary Spectrum.
TAP2VOC - Converts a .TAP file to a .VOC sound sample file, to
write to tape, or to load into the emulator.
READVOC - Reads in a long, 'digital' .VOC sound sample, to be used
as input to the emulator, from the LPT tape interface or
a SoundBlaster.
READSB - Reads .VOC sound samples from SoundBlaster using DMA,
and applies a digital filtering and oversampling algo-
rithm tuned for Spectrum tapes.
OUT2VOC - Converts .OUT log files into .VOC or raw sound sample
files, so that you can easily extract music samples from
Spectrum/Spectrum 128 games, or SAVE directly to a .VOC
or raw sample file.
Z80DUMP - Shows the header and the contents of a .Z80 file.
You will also receive the source files of the emulator, the above
utilities and the SamRam, and you will be kept informed about future
updates.
You can also choose to register for the emulator without DISCiPLE and
Plus D emulation, if you are not interested in those parts. The
registration fee is a bit lower then, but you will receive everything
stated above (including the DISCIPLE program); the only difference is
that you get a version of the emulator that will not emulate the M.G.T.
interfaces.
There are several registration sites, the main one being B.G. Services
in the U.K. You can also register with Jimaz in the Czech Republic,
or David Pomeroy in New Zealand, whichever is most convenient. Please
note that Friendware in Spain and Sinclair Freakeren are no longer
registration sites.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
When sending registrations, please either PRINT your order and address,
or use BLOCK CAPITALS to aid readability. If you use a postal cheque
service, or direct transfer, please try to also send a letter to the
site with details of the payment etc. Many payment slips are
unreadable copies.
B G Services, U.K.
------------------
The registration fee is BP 20 or BP 15 (BP=British Pound) for the
version with or without DISCiPLE/Plus D emulation respectively.
Payment can be by cheques (Sterling on a UK bank, or Eurocheques) or UK
postal order made payable to B G Services. You can also transfer
directly to the Giro account 324.82.16 (B G Services). Girobank plc,
Bootle, Merseyside G1R 0AA.
You can also send money in cash. Please send British Pounds and no
other currencies!
Please do not use other currencies than British Pounds on cheques; it
is not economic to change. If it is the only option available, please
add BP 8 to cover drawing costs. I regret I cannot accept orders via
charge or credit card.
The address is:
B G Services
64 Roebuck Road
Chessington
Surrey KT9 1JX
(United Kingdom)
Telephone enquiries on (0181) 287 4180, Fax (0181) 391 0744, or from
abroad: +44 181 287 4180 and +44 181 391 0744 respectively.
B G Services can also supply ready built tape interfaces for BP 14.50.
These are professional quality items built into 25W 'D' connectors.
(If this archive is old, please enquire on price before ordering)
Files will be on a 3.5" HD disc together with some ready converted
software, which is either PD, or has the approval of the authors.
Other disc sizes may be requested, but these may not contain all the
extra files.
Myself, The Netherlands
-----------------------
Registration via B G Services is fastest, and is preferred. In some
cases, however, sending money to The Netherlands may be more convenient.
Dutch users can transfer NLG 50,- (full version) or NLG 35,-- (without
Disciple emulation) to the following Giro account:
59.45.263 (G.A. Lunter, Groningen)
The registration fee of BP 20/BP 15, US$ 30/US$ 25, DM 50/DM 40, can
also be sent, in cash, to the following address:
Gerton Lunter
P.O. Box 2535
NL-9704 CM Groningen
The Netherlands
Any other (convertible) currency of an approximately equivalent amount
will also be accepted. From Spain and Italy, postal money orders work
best.
Eurocheques can also be accepted. Please do NOT use other currencies
than Dutch Guilders (NLG), and do NOT fill in the place you live, but
write 'Groningen' or leave blank. Cheques that are filled in
differently cost HFL 15-25 to draw.
Jimaz, Czech Republic
---------------------
For registrations in the Czech Republic, you can contact Jimaz.
JIMAZ s.r.o.
Hermanova 37
170 00 Praha 7
phone: +42 2 379 498
fax: +42 2 378 103
Email: vondrack@jimaz.cz
Registration fee is 500 and 650 Czech crowns.
David Pomeroy, New Zealand and Australia
----------------------------------------
For registrations in New Zealand and Australia, contact
David Pomeroy
P O Box 2939
Shortland Street
Auckland
New Zealand
Phone: (09) 627-9618
Email: davidpom@iconz.co.nz
The registration fee is 40/50 NZ$, or 30/40 AUS$.
==================
All sites reserve the right to ignore any order which does not comply
with the conditions above.
If you have an older registered version and wish to upgrade, please
contact your registration site, sending return postage. Updates within
the same version number and normally sent free if a disc and return
postage is received. Updates from previous versions will carry a small
update fee.
1.3 Other emulators
I used to have a list of other emulators for the PC and other computers
here, but the list in Marat Fayzullin/Damien Burke's FAQ was much more
complete and detailed, so I deleted mine. It lists:
14 emulators for PC's,
6 for the Commodore Amiga,
4 for the Acorn Archimedes,
4 for UNIX platforms,
3 for the Macintosh,
1 for the Atari ST,
1 for the NeXTStep, and
1 very old one for the Commodore 64
I believe this makes the Sinclair ZX Spectrum the most often emulated
computer ever!
There are also emulators available for the ZX81. Carlo Delhez, who
also wrote a Spectrum emulator for the QL, wrote the ZX81 emulators
XTricator (for the QL) and XTender (for PC's). There are probably
more. For more information, take a look at the FAQ of the newsgroup
comp.sys.emulators.misc.
1.4 Acknowledgements
From the very first beginning in november 1988, when I wrote the first
lines of code for the emulator, Johan Muizelaar has been a very
demanding and critical user, being only satisfied when it was perfect.
Besides, there are quite a few things I would never have started
working on if he hadn't insisted that I would!
I have also profited much from the fine cooperation with Brian Gaff,
who, besides handling the UK registrations, also generates a continual
stream of suggestions, remarks and bug reports. He also brought me
into contact with many people that contributed to the emulator in
several ways.
A major part of the things new to version 3 of the emulator have been
written by Hugh McLenaghan. He wrote all code for the Disciple/Plus D
emulation, and for the ZX Printer emulation (where I subsequently
introduced bugs...) Also, Hugh wrote much of the documentation for the
Disciple and Plus D interfaces in this file.
Finally, many thanks are due to
o Carlo Delhez for information on the '128 and several other things,
o Andre Mostert for some more '128 info and info on EMS memory,
o Walter Prins for many '128 programs,
o Marco Holmer for making the program such a big hit at the HCC dagen,
o Henk de Groot, for finding a solution to a bug in A86 v3.22,
o Arnt Gulbrandsen for a suggestion which made the emulator faster,
and information on a group of unofficial Z80 opcodes,
o Ruud Zandbergen for his digital joystick interface,
o Jan Garnier for providing the chips to reanimate my real Spectrum,
o Ettore de Simone for finding a noisy bug,
o Rudy Biesma and Tonnie Stap for providing info on the DISCiPLE disk
formats,
o Burkhard Taige for various bug reports on it,
o Ian Cull for enhancing the DISCiPLE program and two bugfixes,
o Bert Lenaerts for information on the AZERTY keyboard,
o Chris Lemon for fixing a bug in the CALL instruction,
o Robert Zmyslowicz, Einar Gattoni Saukas, Bernhard Lutz,
Erik Kunze and Mr. Lee Tonks aka Blood for their thorough
beta-testing of v3.05.
and all the people that I forgot to mention.
1.5 Disclaimers
The last version contained a few bugs, but this version is guaranteed
to be bug-free. You can safely operate nuclear power plants or life
support systems with this software. And if it still happens to break
down, feel free to sue me.
Many of the bugs that disfigured the previous version are gotten rid of
now. Most notably, the problem that saving a Disciple/+D snapshot
caused old data to be overwritten has been fixed. On the other hand,
FORMATting Disciple/+D disks still has its problems, but, depending on
the machine in question, they have overcome in particular cases.
Many people have sent me bug reports, for which I am very grateful. I
have removed most of those, but have not been able to remove them all,
sometimes because the report was too vague and/or irreproducible on my
machine, or because of a mixture of reasons like: difficult to find,
not a problem to most people, easily circumvented, or laziness on my
part.
1.6 Copyrights etc.
Amstrad still holds the copyright on the 48K and 128K rom. However,
they have kindly allowed free use of them.
The Disciple ROM is (c) Bruce Gordon / Format Publications.
The Plus D ROM is copyright Datel / Format Publications.
Multiface and Lifeguard are registered trademarks of Romantic Robot.
They are licensed from Romantic Robot for use in Z80.
The registered version of the Spectrum emulator 'Z80', and the version
distributed with PC Format, may NOT be further distributed. The source
codes, which are part of the registered package, may NOT be used in
other Spectrum emulators running on PC's. In principle, it is okay to
use the Z80 emulator code in an emulator for another Z80-based
computer; however, please do contact me if you want to use it.
2. THE EMULATOR
2.1 Starting the emulator
The emulator will work on any PC with 640K memory and at least a 80286
processor, with a VGA, EGA, Hercules or CGA video adapter. If
available, it will also use EMS memory, an Adlib compatible soundcard,
the SoundBlaster card, a mouse, and an analogue or digital joystick.
The emulator will first read in the switches that are given in the
Z80.INI file. You can enter switches there just like you do on the
command line. Lines starting with a % sign are ignored; they are used
for comments.
After any switches, you may specify a snapshot file on the command
line. This file will then be loaded and executed directly. The
extension .Z80 is not necessary. The emulator will also read .SNA
files (the snapshot format of, amongst others, Arnt Gulbrandsen's JPP);
you don't have to convert them to .Z80 files (but you may want to to
save disk space), and it reads .SLT files (containing snapshots plus
additional data, mostly level data for games consisting of various game
levels).
The emulator tries to figure out what hardware is available, and uses
things as it finds them. Most of the time this will work without you
having to tell it anything, but if you have to, you can override the
defaults by putting switches on the command line. Switches that you
use often can be put in the Z80.INI file. If you give a switch a
second time, for instance if it is also in the Z80.INI file, it will
disable it again.
If you're using a Trident VGA with version 3 BIOS, you may see the
picture compressed at the top of the screen, while the bottom half
contains vertical white lines. This is due to a bug in the Trident VGA
Bios. Start the emulator with the switch -xv to get a full picture.
Some VGA adapters do not produce a stable picture when Z80 is using the
standard VGA mode. If your monitor doesn't sync, try switch -xv.
Some black-and-white VGA monitors only display one of the three RGB
colours (green most of the times), resulting in several Spectrum
colours becoming indistinguishable. Use -xb to use grey tones instead
of colours.
If you are using Hercules, try starting the emulator with -xh on the
command line. The emulator will use a non-standard Hercules mode to
display a full-screen Spectrum picture. You may need to calibrate your
monitor to make the image steady.
If you're using Plantronics, try -p and -q to see which gives the best
result.
If you haven't got EMS memory, the page swapping of the Spectrum 128
cannot be emulated exactly, and, more seriously, it is extremely slow.
Although most programs will work, they will be too slow to be of any
use. Also, the emulator needs lots of base memory if no EMS memory is
present; if you don't have enough, try specifying -xt on the command
line to make the emulator use as little memory as possible (by
shrinking several buffers). The emulator uses 332K or 572K of base
memory (with and without EMS memory respectively), and 47K less in both
cases if -xt is specified. If this is still not enough, try to use
-xu, which saves 83K, but then Hi Resolution Colour emulation does not
work anymore.
On 386 and 486 machines you can emulate EMS by software using EMM386
for instance. The speed of the EMS emulator determines in part the
emulation speed of Spectrum 128K programs, so it may be wise to try a
few for the best results. I use QEMM, which seems to be faster than
EMM386.
The Spectrum 128 has a built-in sound chip. If you have an Adlib
compatible soundcard installed, the Spectrum 128 sound will be played
through the Adlib card. If you haven't, the loudest of the three sound
channels will be played through the internal PC speaker. Sometimes the
effect is quite nice, sometimes it is horrible, but it's all I can do
on a standard PC. If you don't want to have the Spectrum 128 sound
played through the internal speaker, use the switch -xi. If you don't
want the Adlib card to be used (for instance to hear the sound through
the internal speaker) use -xa.
If you're using the Pro-Audio Spectrum 16 sound card, do not install
the resident FM.EXE program; it causes problems with the emulator. Do
make sure that MVSOUND.SYS is installed in your CONFIG.SYS file, to
make the Pro-Audio Spectrum 16 Adlib compatible.
The noise channels of the Spectrum 128 sound chip can work on different
frequencies, whereas the FM chips of the Adlib card cannot. However,
if your Soundblaster is equipped with CMS chips, the noise frequency
can be programmed. Specify -xc to use the CMS chips. (These chips are
not available on Soundblaster Pro cards, and neither on most
Soundblaster clones).
If you're living in Belgium or France, you are probably using an AZERTY
keyboard. Specifying -xz on the command line will make all letter keys
and many punctuation keys work in the right way.
If the emulator erroneously detects an analogue or digital joystick,
use the switch -kk.
The emulator can now also be run under Windows 3.1! However, you
cannot use the tape interface and Real mode doesn't work anymore. In
version 3.04, keyboard handling under Windows is much improved, and
works as well as without Windows. If you let the emulator run
full-screen you may use EGA or VGA, if you want to run it windowed
you'll have to use CGA, because the virtual video display driver of
Windows cannot handle the VGA mode I use (although it's only a standard
text mode; even Windows 95 doesn't know how to handle it). You'll
probably want other default settings of some parameters (such as the
video mode) if you run the emulator under Windows; the emulator will
always use the .INI file in the directory of the Z80.EXE file so the
other switches must be put on the command line or in a .PIF file. An
example .PIF file (which runs the emulator in windowed CGA mode) and a
.ICO icon file are supplied.
The emulator measures the speed of the computer it runs on in the
normal way. Under Windows 95 this gives reliable results; however,
Windows 3.1 causes Z80 to run about 3 to 4 times slower than normal.
You may have to tinker with the speed setting to get it to run at a
reasonable speed.
The emulator will automatically detect whether Windows is running, and
act appropriately. To run the emulator in Windows compatibility mode
in a normal DOS environment, use -xw. If you use this switch under
Windows, it turns windows compatibility mode OFF, and hangs unless you
use Hi Resolution Colour emulation (which doesn't rely on the timer).
When running the emulator under Desqview, use -e for EGA mode display.
At present running under OS/2 is not a good idea as it will crash if
the speed is altered.
These are the most important switches that you have to specify when you
start the emulator. Most of the other switches are used to select
default values for various things which can also be changed when the
emulator is running. Some useful things to select are default
directories for .Z80, .TAP and .MDR files; these will be explained
below.
2.2 Using the emulator
In this section, the basic functions of the emulator, residing under
the function keys F1-F10, are explained.
When the emulator starts, you'll see the usual Spectrum copyright
message appear on screen. Pressing F1 will pop up a small help screen
that explains the function of the function keys and various other
special keys.
By pressing F10, you enter the main menu of the emulator. Most of the
menu options can be chosen directly by pressing another function key; a
small help screen pops up if you press F1. If you're somewhere deep in
the menu structure from the main menu, pressing ESC will get you one
level higher most of the time. Pressing F10 will get you back to the
main menu.
The 'Select Hardware' menu option sits under function key F9. There
are seven major configuration to choose from:
Spectrum 48K
Spectrum 48K + Interface I
Spectrum 48K + SamRam + Interface I
Spectrum 48K + M.G.T. Interface (i.e. DISCiPLE or Plus D)
Spectrum 128K
Spectrum 128K + Interface I
Spectrum 128K + M.G.T.
This menu also allows to choose the M.G.T. type, +D, Disciple with a
pre-loaded operating system supporting graphics output using the Epson
format, and one supporting HP-PCL format graphics output.
In all configurations except the one with SamRam, the Multiface 128 can
be emulated too. The Multiface 128 software is aware of, and can read
and write to, the Microdrive of the Interface I and the Disciple and +D
disk drive.
After a change has been made, pressing ENTER switches to that mode and
resets the Spectrum. If you don't want the Spectrum to reset, pressing
CTRL-ENTER will switch to the new mode while preserving as much of the
runninge program as possible. Switching from 128K mode to 48K mode
will almost always crash the program, except if you enter the SPECTRUM
command before switching. Be careful when you change the disk drive
emulation; when switching an MGT interface (Disciple or +D) on or off,
it is wise always to reset the emulator, as otherwise the hardware will
often not match the system variables.
To use SamRam's monitor on a 128 program, switch the hardware from the
main menu, and generate an NMI (Extra functions - N) before returning
to the emulator. This will often work, but you can't return to the
program without crashing it.
On a real Spectrum 128, the menu bar of the startup screen is moved
using the cursor keys on the '128 keyboard. These keys simultaneously
press a normal cursor key (5,6,7 or 8) and shift. So you can shift the
menu bar with shift-6 and shift-7. It is possible to use the PC cursor
keys for this; you have to select Cursor joystick emulation (which is
selected by default) and press Num-Lock once to have the PC-cursor keys
press the Spectrum Shift key too. You could also specify -xs on the
command line (or put it in the Z80.INI file) to make the PC cursor keys
by default press shift for you in '128 mode; see also the Miscellaneous
remarks section.
The Save and Load Program options (F2 and F3) will save the whole state
of the Spectrum and some of the emulators' settings to a .Z80 snapshot
file. It will pack the data somewhat, so that the length of the file
varies. The amount of memory saved depends on the current hardware
mode; 48K for normal Spectrum, 80K for SamRam, and 128K for Spectrum
128. (Note that the RAM contents of the M.G.T. interface or the
Multiface 128 are not saved.) The settings that are saved are those
that are program dependent, for instance which joystick emulation is
used, and more technical settings like those of the R register, LDIR
and Issue 2 emulation and video synchronisation. These are explained
below.
Loading a .Z80 file will cause several settings to be changed.
Resetting the Spectrum will not reset these settings to their default
values! Especially the joystick emulation setting change can be
confusing.
All settings can be checked and changed in the Change Settings menu,
which pops up if you press F4. You can do many things here. The I and
O options can be used to redirect the RS232 output; see section 2.13
for information on this. R - R register emulation, and L - LDIR
emulation are usually only necessary when loading programs; for
remarks on these options see section 2.6, and section 5.1 for more
technical details. Other settings and switches are:
H - Hi resolution colour emulation, also called 'coppering'. To
eliminate flickering of moving characters, and to see some colour
effects otherwise not visible. Also, this allows you to see the famous
loading stripes in the border. See section 2.4 for more information.
2 - Issue 2 emulation will turn the emulated Spectrum in an Issue 2
Spectrum. (This option also works, but is out of place, in Spectrum
128 mode). Some very old programs (Blue Ribband, Spinads) will not
respond to the keyboard properly on Issue 3 Spectrums, and for these
programs this option was added. Seldom needed.
S - sound enables you to turn off all sound, useful for late-night
playing.
F - toggle between 50 Hz frame interrupt rate (the standard value) and
some value defined via the switch -dN, setting the frame rate to 100/N
Hz. Without switches, the alternate rate is 100 Hz. If -dN is used
the default rate is set to 100/N Hz and alternate rate to 50 Hz; is -dN
is specified twice (with the same divisor N) then default and alternate
rate are swapped.
Doubling the interrupt frequency is useful for slow machines, as
some programs will run faster when this option is on. If you're typing
in a BASIC program on a slow machine, always turn this on, since the
keyboard, which is polled by an interrupt routine, will respond much
better. On fast machines, this feature is useful for running Spectrum
programs quickly while keeping a normal keyboard response. Some
programs will crash with a frame interrupt rate different from 50 Hz.
V - video synchronisation is used to remove the flickering of moving
characters in some programs. You can choose between Normal, High and
Low. Normal works well for almost all programs; Ghosts and Goblins and
Zynaps look much better when this is turned to High. If you see
characters not moving smoothly or flicker, or a background not moving
as a whole, experiment a little bit with this setting, and re-save the
snapshot when you've found the best setting. On fast computers, try to
use Hi res colour emulation instead. This setting has no effect when
Hi res colour emulation is on. (For a more detailed discussion of this
option see section 2.4 and section 5.1)
J - joystick emulation specifies which Spectrum joystick the PC cursor
keys (and mouse, and analogue or digital joystick, if available)
control. You can choose from Cursor (default), Kempston, Interface 2
and user-defined. As already said above, if Cursor joystick is chosen,
the Num-Lock key controls whether Shift is pressed too with a joystick
movement. (Since the shift and number keys are pressed exactly
simultaneously, it is possible that the Spectrum has already read the
Shift key, but not yet the others, when you press both keys down.
Sometimes you will therefore get the number 5,6,7 or 8 instead of a
cursor movement. If you have used a +3 or +2A Spectrum, you will be
familiar with this!)
Finally, C - Change speed lets you control the speed of the emulator.
As a side effect, slowing down the emulator makes the timing of the
various opcodes correspond more exactly to the actual timing on a real
processor. (Remember this is not possible on slow PCs!)
That concludes the discussion of the F4-'change settings' menu. Let's
continue with the other function keys.
F5 generates an NMI. This is used to activate the Samram, Multiface
128, or start the Disciple/+D Snapshot facility. If none of these are
active it may reset the Spectrum or do nothing.
ALT-F5 or CTRL-F5 resets the Spectrum.
F6 turns on Real Mode. Try this when the emulator is playing a tune
and sounds a little harsh. This mode is needed when you want to load
turbo-saved games from tape; see below for more information.
F7 and F8 activate the tape and Microdrive/M.G.T. menus. Again, see
below for more information.
Resetting the Spectrum, or generating an NMI can be done from the main
menu too, in the X - Extra Functions menu. This is useful if you want
to activate the NMI software of the SamRam for instance just after
loading a snapshot file, or just after you changed the hardware mode.
In this menu it is also possible to save or load a memory block or
screen snapshot; to set a breakpoint (see section 2.21) or to
temporarily shell to DOS. Furthermore, here you can find another
sub-menu for the OUT logging feature. If port FE is logged, such a log
file can be translated into a .VOC sound sample file using the OUT2VOC
utility.
When you're typing BASIC-programs in 48K mode, you'll probably have to
look up some Spectrum keywords. Further down in this documentation
there is an alphabetical list of all keywords and their
key-combination. For 'on-line' help, press ALT-F1 to see the Spectrum
keyboard layout.
2.3 Keyboard emulation
The keyboard. Letter keys are mapped to the Spectrum's letter keys.
The ALT and CTRL keys can both be used for Symbol Shift. Then, there
are a lot of keys on the PC keyboard which don't exist on the Spectrum
keyboard. Many of them are used, to make things easier:
The function keys have several special functions. See the previous
section.
CTRL-Break and CTRL-ALT-DEL quit the emulator. Better use F10-Q-Y
though.
The punctuation keys - = ; ' , . / and their shifts: _ + : " < > ?
have the effect of pressing Symbol Shift and the corresponding letter
key, so you can use these in the straightforward way.
The ESC key presses Shift-1, EDIT, used as a sort of ESC key in many
Spectrum programs. The Backspace key presses Shift-0, the Delete of
the Spectrum. CapsLock presses Shift-2, Spectrum's capslock key.
The PC-cursor keys and the numeric keypad keys 8,4,6 and 2 control the
Cursor, Interface 2, Kempston or user-defined joystick. The TAB key,
and 0,5 and ./DEL on the numeric keypad control the fire button. If
the Cursor joystick is selected, you can select whether Shift should
also be pressed with the NumLock key (but see the discussion above of
the -xs switch).
If you're running the emulator on a slow computer, try doubling the
interrupt frequency (switch -d). Most programs poll the keyboard by
interrupt, in any case the ROM does, and doubling the frequency with
which this happens will make the emulated Spectrum react much more
quickly on your keystrokes.
If you've got an AZERTY keyboard, the standard mappings of the keys
won't work at all properly. Include the switch -xz in your Z80.INI
file in this case; many punctuation keys will now also work properly.
There is no support for other non-US keyboard layouts; sorry!
You can re-map the keyboard by yourself by using the -kx switch. It
has the format
-kxABCD
where #AB denoted the scan-code (in hex, between #01 and #58) and #CD
the key that should be pressed when the emulator sees this scan code.
Normal keys are coded by bytes below #40; the lower three bits denote
the row number (0-7), and the upper three bits the column number (1-5).
Column 1 of rows 0-7 are respectively Shift,A,Q,1,0,P,Enter and Space.
Column 2 to 5 are the keys on the same line, but more toward the
center. For instance, C is on row 0, column 4, and has code 0+8*4=32=
#20. Function key F11 has scan code #57, so to map F11 to C use
-kx5720. Code keys '#CD' in the range #C0 - #DD are used to code for
special keys. Here is the list of codes in this range:
#C0 Edit #CF Joystick left
#C1 - or _ #D0 Joystick right
#C2 + or = #D1 + or =
#C3 Delete #D2 Joystick down
#C4 ; or : #D3 Joystick fire
#C5 " or ' #D4 F1
#C6 , or < #D5 F2
#C7 . or > #D6 F3
#C8 / or ? #D7 F4
#C9 * #D8 F5
#CA Capslock #D9 F10
#CB Numlock (Shift toggle) #DA F6
#CC Scroll lock (+CTRL=Quit) #DB F7
#CD Joystick up #DC F8
#CE - or _ (for grey -) #DD F9
Simultaneous keypresses on the PC keyboard are only transmitted to the
PC to a certain extent, depending on the particular keyboard. My old
keyboard could handle TAB and the keys on the numerical keypad
simultaneously, but my new keyboard can't: when I press TAB and hold it
down, further key presses on the numeric pad are not seen by the PC
at all. There is absolutely nothing to be done about it. Playing
games can be a problem sometimes. You'll have to live with it. All
information sent by the keyboard is used.
2.4 Screen emulation
There are two different ways the emulator can emulate the screen. The
standard way, in which 50 times an emulated second the screen is
checked for changes, and they are subsequently displayed on the
monitor. This works fine, and was the only mode available in previous
versions. It works basically the same with all video modes; however,
some are much slower than others. EGA is notoriously slow, due to the
ugly way it has to be addressed. VGA is definetely the fastest. EGA and
VGA are the only video modes in which the colour of the overscan can be
controlled; in these modes, some emulation of border effects (loading
stripes, for example) can be done. You don't see these effects in the
other video modes.
Changing the overscan colour results in 'snow' lines appearing on the
screen. It is possible to eliminate these by waiting until the video
adapter is in horizontal retrace. This takes some time, therefore the
emulator doesn't do this in Real Mode. Real time loading requires
minimum delay, so the screen does not update. You can select the update
option, but you risk Tape Loading errors!
In the standard mode, the point (relative to the 50 Hz interrupt) at
which the screen is displayed can be controlled by setting the 'Video
Synchronisation Mode' to normal, high or low. If you see moving
characters flickering excessively, try changing this setting. For
instance, BC's Quest for Tires won't look at all good with a wrong
setting; many programs display subtle differences in different modes.
In the Hercules and CGA modes not all colours can be displayed. In EGA
mode, all colours can be displayed, but some colours have the same
intensity in Bright 1 as in in Bright 0. Only in VGA mode the colours
resemble closely the Spectrum originals.
The other video emulation mode is called Hi-resolution colour emulation
mode. In this mode great care is taken to display each video line at
exactly the right time, and also the precise times the border colour is
changed is used to build the border pattern. In this mode, every
hi-resolution colour effect is visible; all flickering problems are
also eliminated (provided they weren't already there on a real
Spectrum!), so no need to adjust the Video Synchronisation Mode.
The drawback of using this mode is that it is much slower, since the
emulator has to keep track of the number of T states passed, and also
has to grab a line from screen memory and put it in a buffer 192 times,
50 times a second. But on fast computers, 486's and up, the emulator
can still easily emulate at 100%.
HRC mode only works with a VGA video adapter.
Finally, when loading turbo-saved programs in Real mode, screen updates
are suspended because they take too much time (even on fast computers).
You can refresh the screen by pressing U - Update in Real mode, but you
should do this only if you're sure that the emulated program is not
loading a block, for pressing U during loading is a sure way to get a
tape loading error.
2.5 Sound emulation
The Spectrum beeper is emulated by the PC's internal beeper. Because
every 1/50th of a second the screen has to be updated, and this takes a
little time even if there are no changes, the sound is a bit harsh. If
you select real mode, the emulator won't update the screen and music
will sound good. If you select HRC mode, the sound will be even
harsher than it does in normal mode.
The sound of the Spectrum 128's sound chip is played through the Adlib
card; if you haven't got such a card some notes are played through the
internal speaker. That sound will be turned off, however, as soon as
the program makes a sound through the normal speaker of the Spectrum.
Some Spectrum 128 programs use the sound chip and the beeper at the
same time, and this won't work properly without an Adlib card.
2.6 Loading programs from tape
This emulator can load programs that are saved to tape in the usual
way, but also turbo-saved programs can be loaded. Furthermore, you can
make a disk file act as an 'emulated tape', so that the normal SAVE and
LOAD commands can be used to transfer data to and from disk easily.
The emulator can load programs from .VOC sound sample files. This is
very useful for multi level games; the levels on the tape can be put in
.VOC samples, and loaded when needed without having to re-install the
tape recorder. How to use .VOC files is described in section 2.8
below. The current section is about loading programs directly from
tape.
First of all, you need an interface to connect the tape recorder to the
PC. There are two ways of doing this. You can use a tape interface on
the LPT port. A circuit diagram is in the DIAGRAM.Z80 program, or you
can obtain a ready-made interface from B G Services, see section 1.2
for more details.
Version 3 can also use the SoundBlaster for tape input. This is easier
since no additional interface is needed. The LPT tape interface
however is more robust in loading. When using the SoundBlaster, you
have to be careful not to put the volume level too high, since
otherwise the SoundBlaster will clip, which is a sure way to producing
tape loading errors. The LPT tape interface is not sensitive to this.
It has proven very difficult to load programs directly via
SoundBlaster. This is due to the fact that the emulator does not have
time to filter the SoundBlaster input (except for a trivial hi-pass
filter to remove a 50 Hz hum) in Real mode. For direct loading, the
LPT interface is strongly recommended. For loading via the
SoundBlaster, the utility READSB (see section 2.19) will read in and
filter the sample. Loading via READSB is, I think, as reliable as
loading via the LPT interface.
If you want to save programs back to tape, you have to use the LPT
interface; it is not possible to use the SoundBlaster for this. (There
is a way to save programs in standard format to tape though; put them
in a .TAP file - see below - convert it to a .VOC file and play this
sample to a tape. Use a good sample player, one that doesn't halt for
half a millisecond between blocks!)
In the program DIAGRAM.Z80 a tape tester is present. The LPT tape
interface has to be calibrated, and this program can also be used to
check the volume level when using the SoundBlaster as input device. The
variable resistor of the LPT tape interface has to be adjusted so that
the bar, which should go to 0% when the volume is down, points just
below 50% at normal volume. In the case of the SoundBlaster, when the
volume is turned up, the bar first goes from 0% to 50% and over, and
then saturates and drops below 50% again. The volume has to be set
such that it is just 50% in the non-saturated zone.
You have to tell the emulator which LPT port you use for tape I/O. Use
command line switch -b2 for example to select LPT2 for tape input (or
put it in the Z80.INI file). Use -xo to select the SoundBlaster for
tape input. It uses base address 0220 by default; if this is not
correct, use for instance -xq 0240 to specify address 0240. The
emulator does not use the SoundBlaster interrupts.
There are two ways to load programs: in 'real' or normal mode. In real
mode, the emulator doesn't update the screen or scan the keyboard, so
that the emulated Spectrum program can run smoothly. The emulator has
to run at about 100%, but then you're able to load everything a normal
Spectrum would load, including turbo-saved programs. The only thing
you see on screen are the loading bars in the border (on EGA or VGA
screens). Real mode is selected by pressing F6. Saving programs in
real mode is a bit useless but it works; enter the SAVE command, press
a key to start saving and quickly press F6 when the saving starts. It
will continue in real mode.
Please note that in real mode, the PC clock is not updated. It will
run behind for as many minutes as real mode has been switched on. The
CMOS clock won't be affected, so the next time you start up your
computer things will be normal again.
If your computer is just fast enough, don't slow the emulator down too
much. Because the IN instruction is relatively slow, the emulator has
to run at about 110% for the best results. If your computer is really
fast, you can best slow it down to exactly 100%. If your computer is
just a bit too slow, you can try to make your tape recorder run slower
too (usually you can do this by adjusting a little screw at the back of
the motor), I successfully loaded several speed-saved programs at 90%.
In normal mode, the standard ROM loading and saving routines are
'trapped' (at addresses 04d8 and 056a) when they're about to start
saving or loading. A routine in the emulator itself then takes over,
and loads or saves a block to tape (or a disk file, see below).
When you enter LOAD "", the emulator starts loading using its internal
loading routine. You'll see a blue window appear. Pressing F6 now
will switch to Real mode, and the emulated Spectrum program will
continue the loading process (if it is running at 100%).
Every time a block is loaded or saved, a window containing some
information of the block to be loaded or saved appears. If you don't
want this, for example because you want to enjoy the loading screen,
specify -tx on the command line.
Using these SAVE and LOAD routines has a great advantage as well as a
disadvantage compared to using the Spectrum's own routines in real
mode. The advantage is that the internal routines work on every
machine, no matter how slow or fast, without having to make the
emulator run at 100%. The disadvantage at using them is that they
obviously won't understand turbo-saved files. For normal use, these
internal routines work much easier, and real mode loading is only
necessary for turbo-saved and well protected programs.
Today, most programs are protected. The emulation of the Z80 processor
has to be exactly right, or those strange decoding routines that use
all features of the processor the programmer could think of, will
definitely crash. It is most important to switch the R-register and
LDIR emulation on, as virtually all protected programs use at least the
R register. Sometimes programs are real sensitive to the timing of the
interrupts; if programs refuse to load, try sampling the first few
blocks in a .VOC file (see below) and load it from there (of course
with R register and LDIR emulation on); when loading from VOC files,
interrupt timings are exact.
2.7 Using .TAP files
The emulator uses files with the extension .TAP to hold a piece of
'tape', with several blocks on it. Each block is usually either a
header or a data block; a normal file thus consists of two blocks.
There are two modes of operation when loading and saving to disk files,
single and multiple .TAP file mode.
In single .TAP file mode, each block saved is appended to the end of
the .TAP file, like what would happen if you were actually saving to
tape. In the same way, when loading in single file mode, each time the
ROM wants to load a block, it is presented the next block in the .TAP
file. It is handled as it would if the block was loaded from tape, so
that if the ROM needs a header and is presented a data block, it will
skip it. The header will however be considered to be read. So,
entering LOAD "rubbish" will show all headers in the .TAP file, just as
an actual Spectrum would show all headers on the tape if you left the
tape running.
If the last block is loaded, the file pointer is moved to the start
again. So a .TAP file can be considered to be an infinite tape. Single
.TAP file mode is useful to save whole programs to disk, or for
multi-load games that need to load in levels as you play.
A sort of 'random access' file management is also useful, for instance
when you're developing a program and need to save several pieces of
data to disk and later load back a specific one. This can be done in
single .TAP file mode (by positioning the file pointer using the Browse
function), but there's a different mode of operation that makes things
easier: multiple .TAP file mode. In fact, by default the emulator is
in this mode.
When the emulator is in multiple .TAP file mode, it will read all
blocks from all .TAP files in a specified directory, one after the
other. When it has finished reading the last one, it will start all
over again.
When saving, the emulator will put the two blocks of a normal file, the
header and the data block, in one .TAP file with a unique name made up
of the printable letters of the file name and a two-digit number. The
name of the .TAP file is irrelevant to the emulator, but to have it
resemble the name of the actual Spectrum file you saved is simply
convenient. If the Spectrum program saves a data block to tape without
first saving a header, the .TAP file produced will contain only this
data block, and the DOS file name will be HDRLES, with a two-digit
number appended to make it unique. The format of the .TAP files saved
in multiple .TAP file mode is exactly the same as the format used in
single .TAP file mode.
You can easily string together .TAP files; for instance a number of
.TAP files created in multiple .TAP file mode can be put into one big
.TAP file simply by concatenating them, e.g.
COPY /B FILE1.TAP + FILE2.TAP ALL.TAP.
Now you know what you can do, but how to get the emulator to do it?
That's what the final section is about: the tape menu.
Press F7 to enter the tape menu. Pressing S will select or de-select
single file mode. As a default, multiple .TAP file mode is selected.
In this mode there are three other possible choices in the menu. First
of all, D selects a tape-file directory where the .TAP files will be
saved into and loaded from. A default directory can be selected by
putting the -xs switch on the command line or in the Z80.INI file; for
example -xs c:\spectrum\taps.
The I and O options are used to select the source and destination of
the saving and loading: the LPT port (in/out) or SoundBlaster port
(only input) for a physical tape recorder, or 'disk' for disk files.
Input and output are directed to disk by default if a default tape file
directory is given by means of a switch on the command line or .INI
file.
If Single .TAP file mode is selected, different and more menu options
appear. With R and W, the input and output tape files can be selected.
They may be the same. If a specified output file already exists, you
may choose to append to or overwrite this old file. Saving is always
at the end of the file; loading always starts at the beginning of the
.TAP file.
A useful shortcut is ALT-F7: it will automatically select single file
mode, and prompt for an input .TAP file.
With the B option - Browse - the position of the file pointer into the
input .TAP file can be changed. If you, for instance, type LOAD""
instead of LOAD "" CODE, the first header is read, and you would have
to read all other headers before trying to load the file again. With
the browse option you can conveniently change the file pointer. Of
every header (that is, every block with flag byte 0 and length exactly
17) the name and type, and of every data block the length is shown.
The option B can also be used to delete specific blocks from a .TAP
file. Make sure you do not only delete a data block or a header, or
the ROM may get confused. (Double data blocks will be skipped, but
double headers can generate Tape Loading errors).
As in multiple .TAP file mode, I and O are used to specify the source
and destination for saving and loading. If you enter a .TAP file name
with R or W, this will automatically be set correctly. You can then
always reset the input or output back to physical i/o again, of course.
Finally, in Single .TAP file mode you can use 'tape mirroring': loading
programs from tape (in normal mode, i.e. not using Real mode) and at
the same time saving a copy of each block loaded into a .TAP file. This
.TAP file can later be used to load the program again, in case
something goes wrong. There are two ways of mirroring: normal
mirroring and exact mirroring. The last one must be used only in
exceptional cases; it will always make a copy of a block, even if it
had a tape error (the corresponding block in the .TAP file will also
have a tape error). This causes ticks in leader tones to make 0-byte
blocks, so the .TAP file may get messy. Do not use exact mirroring if
you don't really have to; I think normal mirroring will always work in
practice.
If you try to leave the tape menu when for instance tape mirroring is
selected, and no output filename is given, the emulator will warn you
and will insist that the error be corrected. Yes, it's stubborn!
One final point about multiple .TAP file mode. If you select a
directory that contains no .TAP files at all, and try to load from the
directory, the emulator will reset itself to physical tape I/O. Select
a different directory and try again. Note that simply putting a .TAP
file in the directory does not reset the emulator to multiple .TAP file
mode, as it will not look in the directory again as soon as it uses
physical tape I/O.
2.8 Using .VOC files
.VOC files contain sound samples, so they can also contain the sound of
a computer tape. The emulator can load programs from these sound
sample files, by keeping track of exactly how much time elapses during
the emulation of a program, and every time the emulated Spectrum
program reads the EAR port, supplying it with the right sample. Via an
intermediate file, a .OUT log file, the emulator can also SAVE and
produce a .VOC file with the right sounds in it.
In this section .VOC file playback is discussed. For a discussion of
how to SAVE to a .VOC file, or how to produce a .VOC file of
Spectrum-generated music, please read section 2.18 about the OUT2VOC
utility.
Because the emulator has to keep track of the emulated time, and also
has to do some calculation every time the EAR port is read (which a
program does rather often when loading), the emulation speed drops
considerably (by a factor of two, roughly) when playing back .VOC
sample files. So loading programs using VOC files may take longer than
loading them directly. On the other hand, it is not at all necessary
to have the emulator run at 100% now, so that even slow computers can
load turbo-saved programs, provided that they can read samples. And on
fast computers, the emulator can be set at the maximum speed, to load
programs much faster than usual.
Using .VOC files is sensible for instance when you have a multi level
game, where subsequent levels are saved in a non-standard format, so
that they cannot be stored in .TAP files. The higher levels can be
stored in .VOC files, and loaded when needed, without having to
re-install the cassette player.
You can take a sample with any sampler program. The emulator supports
most VOC block types. It does not support compressed blocks, though;
use full 8 bit samples. The problem with some samplers is that they
leave a small gap between subsequent blocks within the .VOC file.
These gaps are usually inaudible, but do cause tape loading errors. It
is very important that the sample is taken without any gaps. The
READVOC program reads samples from the LPT tape interface or the
SoundBlaster, and can take long continuous samples without gaps.
Because the emulator converts the 8-bit sample to a simple High or Low
value, READVOC also uses only two values for the signal height. This
results in highly compressible .VOC files; compression factors of about
25 are no exception.
READVOC is good at taking samples from the LPT tape interface, but it
performs worse when used to take samples from sound cards. You'll be
better off using samplers provided with the card.
It is also possible to convert .TAP files to .VOC files, with the
utility TAP2VOC. This was useful to test the .VOC playback feature,
and also makes it possible to write .TAP files back to tape using a
sample player.
To play back a VOC file, press F7 to go to the tape menu, and press P
to select the VOC file playback menu, and enter the name of the VOC
file to be played. The VOC file is now in stand-by. Just for
convenience, the emulator starts playing back the VOC file as soon as
the ROM loading routine is hit; that is, as soon as you type LOAD ""
and ENTER. The emulator will now play the VOC file to the end
(irrespective of what the emulated Spectrum program is doing with the
sound supplied to the EAR port!). When the end is reached, a window
will pop up, and the emulator switches back to normal emulation mode.
It is possible to pause the play-back at any time. Do not do this
while loading, since it will immediately result in a tape loading
error. It is also possible to start play-back without LOAD "", which
is necessary for instance when the VOC file consists of a turbo-saved
block.
And finally, it is possible to wind and re-wind the VOC file, as if it
were a tape. The position is displayed in minutes, seconds and
hundreds of seconds.
Starting the emulator by "z80 -tv file.voc" will play that .VOC file to
the EAR input as soon as the emulator starts. It makes sense also to
load a .Z80 snapshot file from the command line. To make a snapshot
file that starts loading right away, type LOAD "" <ENTER>, press F6
(real mode), B (back to normal mode), F2 (save snapshot) and save it.
2.9 Multi-load games
Some games have several levels saved on the tape, to be loaded when a
previous level is completed. There are several ways to handle these
programs.
First, simply playing it, and loading next levels using a real
tape-recorder seems a good solution.
If the data blocks in which the level data is saved are written to tape
in the standard format, you can convert them to .TAP files. It is most
likely that the program uses the usual ROM routine to load the blocks,
and this routine is trapped by the emulator, so that instead of loading
from tape, the blocks can be loaded from these .TAP files. To convert
the blocks to .TAP file, use a standard tape-to-tape copy program and,
in the Tape menu (F7), specify that tape output should go to some file.
If the blocks are just code blocks with header, simply enabling the
Tape Mirroring option and loading the blocks at 16384 (ignore the
crashes that most probably result; just reset the emulator and
continue) will do the trick. If the blocks are headerless, then go to
the SamRam, press NMI (F5), D for Disassembler, and L:4000 (with tape
mirroring enabled) to load and mirror each block. Here also, ignore
possible crashes which result if the block is too long.
A general method is to store the level data blocks in .VOC sample
files. These files are huge, lengths of several megabytes are common,
but they can be compressed very tightly (if you used READVOC or READSB
to make them). Then, if you need a block, simply shell to DOS,
decompress it, and load it.
Finally, if you want to hack into the program, you can also try to find
the routine that is responsible for the loading of a level. At the
appropriate point, enter an ED FB instruction, with A containing the
level number, and HL the address at which the block is to be loaded.
The emulator will then try to load the data. If loading failed, the
carry flag is toggled; it is untouched if the data was loaded
successfully.
The level data can be stored in a .SLT file (Super Loader Trap file),
which contains a snapshot and can contain data for several levels. If
the current program was not loaded from a .SLT file, the emulator will
look for files with the .DAT extension. The name is made from the
snapshot last loaded, with the required level number appended in
decimal; letters are dropped from the file name if necessary to make
them at most 8 characters long. If the file is not found, the user is
informed of the level number, and given the opportunity to specify a
name.
.SLT files can be produced using the ADDDAT utility. See also section
5.10, file formats, for more information.
This ED FB feature first appeared in XZX 0.5.2, and was devised by
Russell Marks. It is now supported by many other emulators as well.
2.10 Using the microdrive
Compared to the tape, this is really simple. Cartridges are emulated
by files of 137923 bytes. These files have the extension .MDR, and can
contain up to 126K of data. The emulator emulates 8 microdrives, the
maximum amount the Interface I software can handle, and each of these
cartridge files can be inserted in any of the 8 microdrives. (Do not
insert one file into more than one microdrive; this will cause problems
with the buffering done by the emulator as well as the Interface I, and
might result in data loss).
Press F8 to enter the microdrive menu. Press 1 to 8 to select a
microdrive, and I to insert a microdrive cartridge. You can select an
existing one, or type a new name. If the cartridge file isn't found,
the emulator asks whether it should create it. When created, you'll
have to format it first; if you don't, you'll get a 'microdrive not
present' error when you try to read it, just as happens with real
unformatted cartridges. To format a cartridge, type
FORMAT "m";1;"name"
After this the cartridge should have 126K of free space.
The cartridge can be write protected; see the menu option in the F8
menu. This is a characteristic of the cartridge, and the write protect
tab information is therefore stored in the cartridge file.
As on the real Spectrum, you'll have to be careful with OUT's if a
cartridge is inserted. Try OUT 239,0 (on a real Spectrum, this turns
on the microdrive motor) and wait a few seconds; most of your data will
be lost! You can stop the microdrive motor by typing STOP (or, more
generally, generate an error).
The microdrives are emulated at IN/OUT level. This means that every
utility or program that uses microdrives ought to work on the emulator.
Most utilities use hook codes, and these will certainly work.
The GAP line is emulated; this signal is activated if the interface I
senses a piece of tape with no data on it. If the checksum of the
first header block of a microdrive header or data block is not correct,
that block is considered to be a GAP. This will only happen if some
utility writes a bad block to microdrive deliberately, if the file is
newly created and unformatted, or when you type OUT 239,0.
To try the microdrive, load a Spectrum program, switch to Spectrum
48K+If.1 mode if necessary, and turn on Multiface 128 emulation. Press
F8, I(nsert cartridge), enter some file name and create an unformatted
cartridge, return to the Spectrum and press F5 (NMI), S(ave), enter
some name, choose M(icrodrive), choose F(ormat) and wait a few seconds,
then choose S(ave). Then reset the Spectrum, and type LOAD
*"m";1;"name" to re-load the snapshot you just made.
Alternatively, switch to SamRam mode, make sure a formatted cartridge
is present, press F5, S, M, S, name, and press ENTER twice to have the
SamRam save a snapshot to microdrive. This snapshot can only be loaded
in SamRam mode.
2.11 Using the DISCiPLE and Plus D interfaces
For an explanation of the commands of the DISCiPLE and Plus D
interfaces, see the relevant sections in chapter 4.
The ROM of the DISCiPLE is supplied with the emulator, together with
two version of the D.O.S. pre-loaded in RAM. The ROM of the Plus D
interface is not supplied, for copyright reasons. The emulator will
only emulate a Plus D interface if it can find a file PLUSDROM.BIN in
the emulator's own directory. If you have a Plus D yourself, you can
transfer the ROM in the following way. Load the operating system from
a Plus D system diskette, and save the entire ROM, together with the
operating system, to disk by entering SAVE d1"rom" CODE 0,16384. Then,
start the emulator and choose hardware mode Spectrum 48K + Disciple
(not Plus D of course), then type LOAD d1"rom" CODE 32768 to load the
rom at address 32768. Then type
POKE 48623,0
to reset the 'open file' counter; failing to do so will result in data
being overwritten when you use the Plus D snapshot feature as the Plus
D system will not build up a used-sector-bitmap if this counter is
non-zero. You can check that this counter is 1 by typing PRINT PEEK
48623; this one open file is the file "rom" itself.
Finally, press F10, X, S for Save Data block, set start address and
length to 32768 and 16384 (decimal) respectively, and save the ROM by
the name PLUSDROM.BIN. If you re-start the emulator now, it will
emulate the Plus D too.
(Aside: to use your own version of the DISCiPLE rom, proceed as above,
but type
POKE 40431,0
Note that for this, the base of DISCiPLE's system variables must be
#0298 = 664 decimal. If it is different, change above address
(corresponding to location #1DEF but displaced by #8000 bytes, i.e.
relative position 6999 decimal). Then use DEBUG or any flexible
file cut-and-paste utility to put the 16K file in the correct position
in the ROMS.BIN file; see file TECHINFO.DOC for the exact position.
End of aside.)
The emulation of the DISCiPLE or Plus D interfaces in turned on simply
by choosing the right hardware mode in the F9 menu. Changing the
M.G.T. type will result in a Spectrum reset (unless you change with
CTRL-ENTER), since a different ROM is switched in.
By default, disks 1 and 2 refer to drives A: and B: respectively, but
this can be changed in the F8 menu.
2.12 Using the Multiface 128
The following is an excerpt from the original Multiface 128
documentation:
MULTIFACE is a registered trademark af RORANTIC ROBOT. Multiface 128
is a true multi-purpose interface with
1) fully universal and 100% automatic back-up facility for tape,
microdrive, Discovery, Plus D or Disciple (although the Discovery is
not emulated, so that that feature is not usable),
2) 8K RAM extension - suitable for GENIE, LIFEGUARD, or as a buffer,
3) MULTI TOOLKIT to study/modify/develop programs, POKE infinite lives,
etc.
Multiface 128 works on the Spectrum 48/128. It can be used any time in
any mode; it is immaterial what is inside the Spectrum at that moment
or how or from what source (tape, disk, cartridge) it has been loaded
(or typed in, etc.). Multiface does not save programs, but computer
contents (compressed RAM image). Upon returning from the M128 or upon
re-loading, the programs continue as if never frozen. To use the M128:
1) Push the NMI key (F5)
2) Select the required option from the menu
The MAIN MENU options are:
Exit: to abandon the Multiface and exit to BASIC (provided BASIC is
present). By using exit, you come out of the Multiface entirely.
All efforts are made to preserve the current program in the Spectrum
intact. The main condition is the existence of standard system
variables - without these the Spectrum crashes. A successful exit
gives you full access to the program. To restart it, if needed, you
must know the starting line or address. Exit is impossible in the
128K mode when the edit ROM is paged and Spectrum ROM is off; in such
cases it does not appear on the menu at all. All in all, you can
only exit to BASIC if it exists - it is like jumping into a pool: a
joy if it's full of water, a crash if there is none.
Return: to continue the program.
Save: to proceed to the SAVE routines:
a) input the name of the program. Up to 9 characters (or just press
ENTER to the input RUN automatically as a default)
b) save to: Tape, Microdrive, Opus [does nothing], Disciple (use D
for Plus D too). You can save the entire program (including the
screen), or the screen only. Programs are compressed to take the
minimal room possible and to load faster. Screens saved on their
own are left intact as standard Spectrum screens.
c) Format microdrive cartridges. Cartridges are automatically named
after the programs to be saved.
Tool: to access the MULTI TOOLKIT routines.
quit - to return to the main menu
Enter - to PEEK and scroll through addresses or to POKE
Space - to allow you to type in a new address
hex - to toggle between hexadecimal and decimal display format
reg - to point to the Z80 registers as they were when the program was
frozen
window - to open a window with full on-screen editing using the
cursor keys. The flashing window address corresponds to the
address in the bottom edit line. The window display is by default
in hex, but you can change it to
text - to see the 128 bytes in the window as ASCII text.
select - to inspect RAM banks 0-7 in 128K mode. Press s + the bank
number
Print - to dump screen to printer. For printer interfaces using COPY
command. You can POKE address 8200 (decimal) with the following
values, if you wish to
113 to turn the line feed on (cr+lf)
112 to turn the line feed off (cr)
17 to dump screen as text with the line feed on
16 to dump screen as text with the line feed off
Jump - not to return, but jump to another address. Strictly for
machine code users only. Enter the address to jump at 8192/3
(low/hi). You can jump to Spectrum ROM/RAM and to M128 8K RAM. As
the M128 overshadows the ZX ROM (8192-16383), address 8194 determines
the paging status: if it is 0, the M128 RAM remains paged, 1 pages
out the RAM and any other value disables the jump command completely.
[Note: if it is 0, also the M128 ROM (0-8191) remains paged.]
You can jump from the main menu, and you can also pre-program M128 to
jump directly upon NMI (F5) and by-pass the M128 ROM software
entirely. To program the direct jump, POKE 8192-3 with the jump
address, and then also 8195-7 with a special identification word RUN
(i.e. 82,85,87). Whenever you press NMI now, you will jump to the
predefined address and not see the M128 menu. To return from your
program to the program you stopped, use RST 0. To revert back to the
Multiface normal operation, press NMI and BREAK (shift+space)
simultaneously. This also cancels the code word RUN.
In standard mode M128 uses 8192-11144 as a buffer (8192-13496 once
you proceed to SAVE) and overwrites anything in there. Using direct
jump, you have 8257-16338 available.
Clear - to clear the extra 64K RAM bank (in 128K mode only!). You can
clear any time, but it is only useful with 48K programs in 128K mode.
However, you should save 48K programs in 48K mode anyway. Also, for
obvious reasons, clearing the banks in 128K programs is not a good
idea.
The actual M128 has a software on/off switch, so that it could be made
completely invisible to programs until the NMI switch was pressed. This
software switch is not emulated. The M128 could be turned off by
pressing 'O' in the main menu; this does not work on the emulator. You
can turn off the M128 in the Select Hardware (F9) menu.
Using the extra 8K RAM - M128 has an 8K Rom containing its own
software, and an 8K RAM used as a buffer. You can use the 8K RAM for
your own mcode routines or for data (but not for BASIC). The RAM must
be paged in machine code to be accessed: use IN A,(191) to page in, and
IN A,(63) to page out. The BASIC In and Out commands can not be used
here (they work, but result in a crash). The 8K RAM overshadows the
Spectrum ROM and thus anything contained in the M128 RAM cannot make
any calls to the Spectrum ROM, as they both occupy the same area. The
M128 RAM routines should therefore be self-contained, independent of
the Spectrum ROM.
Poking infinite lives - To POKE, say 31000,0, first load the program as
usual. When it's loaded, press NMI (F5) and select the tool by
pressing T. When the toolkit menu appears, press SPACE and type 31000.
Once you type 5 digits the cursor automatically moves to the value
field (no need to press ENTER), so type 0 (value is 1-3 digits long)
and this time press ENTER. Finally press Q to quit the toolkit and R
to return to the program.
The Multiface 128 was designed by Romantic Robot UK Ltd, 54 Deanscroft
Avenue, London NW9 8EN, tel. 081-200 8870.
2.13 Using the RS232 channel
This was the only Spectrum i/o channel that could be used in the early
versions of the emulator. Using .TAP files instead of the RS232
channel is often easier, but sometimes using the RS232 channel can be
very useful too, for instance if you've got a null-modem lead that
connects a Spectrum with interface I to the PC you can use it to
transfer data and programs easily. Furthermore, the RS232 channel is
the easiest way to let the emulator communicate with a PC printer.
Several things send their output to the channel designated as 'RS232
output channel'. First of all the ordinary Interface I RS232 "B" and
"T" channels. Secondly the 128K printer "P" channel. Thirdly, ZX
Printer output is converted to a format appropriate for Epson or HP PCL
printers (works for most dot matrix, and most laser/inkjet printers
respectively) and also sent to this channel. Input from the 'RS232
input channel' is sent to the Interface I's "B" and "T" channels.
The Interface I RS232 port, the "B" or "T" channel, behave slightly
differently. The first, binary, channel is the raw channel. It will
let all data go through unchanged. The "T" channel won't let all
control codes through and will expand any keyword; useful for LISTing a
program but otherwise annoying.
The Spectrum 128 has its own RS232 port; it is called the "P" channel.
Output to either the Interface I's or Spectrum 128's own RS232 port
will all be processed as 'RS232 output'.
The output to the RS232 channel can be routed to an LPT port, to a COM
port or to a file on disk. Input can come from either a file or a COM
port.
If you want to use the RS232 channel for printing using LPRINT and
LLIST (shorthand for PRINT #3 and LIST #3), be sure to open that
channel for output to RS232; by default it sends its output to the ZX
Printer, which is not supported. You can open the channel by typing
OPEN #3,"B" (or "T" for listings, or "P" on a Spectrum 128).
Input and output are buffered. This is important to remember when
you're transferring files using the SAVE and LOAD *"b" commands of the
Interface I. If the header is missed, for instance if you try to load
the wrong file type, re-sending the file will not directly work because
there will still be bytes in the buffer. You have to clear the input
buffer before re-sending the file. When inputting from a disk file,
the file pointer can be reset to point to the start of the file again
to re-read the header.
When inputting from or outputting to a disk file, the read or write
position is displayed as a byte-count. An <EOF> sign will appear if an
input file is read completely through to the end.
The RS232 redirection options are in the Change Settings (F4) menu.
When using a COM port, make sure you have initialised it before
starting the emulator with the Dos MODE command, for instance
MODE com1:96,n,8,1
initialises COM1 to send and receive at 9600 baud, no parity, 8 data
bits and 1 stop bit, the default for the Interface I.
Here is how to transfer programs from a Spectrum to the PC using the
RS232 lead. First, you need a null-modem lead. I myself use the
following cable:
Spectrum 'AT' 'PC'
(9 pins) (9 pins) (25 pins)
3 TxD ───────────────────────── RxD 2 3
4 DSR ───────────────────────── DTR 4 20
┌──── CTS 7 4
└──── RTS 8 5
7 GND ───────────────────────── GND 5 7
(so CTS and RTS have to be connected!) This is not a full null-modem
lead; you can only send data from the Spectrum to a PC. If you have an
Interface I, you can use the LOAD *"b" and SAVE *"b" commands on both
your real Spectrum and the emulator to transfer programs and data. It's
best to first type LOAD *"b" and then SAVE instead of the other way
around. If you have problems with transferring data, try to lower the
baud rate to 4800 or 2400 baud; this sometimes helps.
If you don't have an Interface I, but do have a printer interface using
RS232 leads, then you can transfer data using LPRINT on the Spectrum
side, and INKEY$ #3 on the emulator side. It needs a little bit of
programming.
2.14 On joysticks and mice
The emulator support several joysticks and the Microsoft mouse, to
control several Spectrum joystick interfaces, and the AMX Mouse
interface. First, joysticks are discussed.
As was already said in the introduction, the emulated Spectrum joystick
(Cursor, Interface 2, Kempston or user defined) is controlled by the PC
cursor keys and 5/0/. on the numeric keypad and TAB as fire keys. The
emulated joystick can also be controlled by a mouse, or by a real
joystick, either analogue (PC standard) or digital.
The analogue joystick support is rather straightforward. If you've got
one, it works - it couldn't be simpler. The digital joystick support
is less obvious, since PC's don't support these.
To use digital joysticks, Ruud Zandbergen has made a device that uses
the two inputs of a normal analogue joystickinterface to connect a
digital joystick to a PC. Here's the circuit diagram:
15 pins male (pc) 9 pins male (joystick)
1+9 <─────────┬───────────┬────────────┬─────────────┬──> 7 (5V)
┌┴┐ ┌┴┐ ┌┴┐ ┌┴┐
4 x 1 kΩ │ │ ¼ Watt │ │ │ │ │ │
└┬┘ └┬┘ └┬┘ └┬┘
3 <─────────┴──> 4 (up) │ │ │
│ │ │
6 <─────────────────────┴──> 3 (dwn) │ │
│ │
13 <──────────────────────────────────┴──> 1 (rght) │
│
11 <────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──> 2 (lft)
┌────────────────────┐
2 <──────────────┤ 47 Ω ¼ Watt ├───────────────> 6 (fire)
└────────────────────┘
4+5+14 <────────────────────────────────────────────────> 8 (0V)
4+5+14 means: connect pins 4, 5 and 14. The same applies for pins 1 and
9. Here's the list of ingredients:
1 x 9 pins D plug, male
1 x 15 pins D plug, male
4 x 1kΩ , ¼ Watt resistors
1 x 47 Ω, ¼ Watt resistor
piece of 7-wire flatcable
Everything can be fitted into the 15-pins plug. Make sure the resistors
don't touch the other blank connections! This interface can be used for
all usual digital joysticks, with or without auto fire (that is every
joystick that work with a Kempston joystick interface, or that work on
a Commodore 64/Amiga or Atari). The joysticks for the Spectrum +2/+3
will not work, however the pin layout is easy to change.
This joystick interface needs an analogue PC-joystick interface on
which you can connect TWO analogue joysticks (on one plug!). Most
cards can do this, but some multi-I/O cards support only one joystick.
Check the documentation of your I/O card to see whether your
joystickinterface is suitable. The soundblaster joystick interface
works fine.
A number of PC games will behave strangely when the digital joystick
interface is connected; they run very slow or crash. When this
happens, remove the joystick interface (not only the joystick!).
With version 3, the Spectrum joystick (Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair 2 or
user defined) can not only be controlled by the cursor keys or a real
joystick, but also by a mouse. Specify -km on the command line to have
the mouse control the joystick too. (By default, this switch is
already in the Z80.INI file.)
Finally, the Microsoft mouse can control the AMX Mouse interface, as
supported for example by Art Studio. Specify -ka on the command line
to select this option. The mouse will not control the joystick
anymore. Because of I/O address clashes, the AMX Mouse does not work
with SamRam or an M.G.T. interface enabled. Also, since the AMX
interface must be initialized, and the state of the AMX interface is
not saved in the .Z80 snapshot file, it may be necessary to make the
snapshot before the point at which the Spectrum program initializes the
AMX interface. The program Art Studio re-initializes the AMX interface
regularly, however, so with this program you don't have to worry about
it. You still need to customize the program to use the AMX mouse of
course, so a snapshot of Art Studio will not automatically work; you
need to load the original from tape again, and go through the
customization procedure.
2.15 The utility ConvZ80
This program converts between various snapshot formats, and it can also
convert various tape file formats to .TAP files. Currently it supports
.SNA format (used in various emulators, such as JPP, Peter McGavin's
emulator on the Amiga, and XZX), the .SP format of VGASPEC and
SPECTRUM, the .PRG format of SpecEm, and all old .Z80 file formats.
If conversion is to a .Z80 file, the old (v1.45) format will be used.
This is still supported by the emulator, and some other programs do not
support the new format. Note that, because of this, ConvZ80 will not
convert .Z80 files containing snapshots of 128K or SamRam programs.
CONVZ80 recognizes what it should do by the extension of the files you
enter on the command line; to distinguish between VGASPEC's and
SPECTRUM's .SP formats you can use the switch -o. If the extension
consists of digits only, it is taken to be a ZX tape file, and if it
contains non-digits and is none of .SP, .Z80, .SNA, .PRG or .TAP it is
regarded as a SpecEm tape file.
SpecEm can load .PRG snapshot files, but cannot save them. However, it
emulates the Multiface I, which can save snapshots to tape. SpecEm
will save these blocks as tape files to disk. If you convert these to
a .TAP file (in the correct order!), you can load them into Z80 and
save the program as a .Z80 file.
2.16 Converting file formats - the utility CONVERT
This section is about the utility CONVERT, which can convert some of
the Spectrum's own format into each other, and also converts some of
the emulator's formats into others. It is not about converting files
from other emulators; read section 2.15 if you want to know about that.
CONVERT was useful when the emulator could only communicate with
snapshot files and the RS232 link. It has become less useful now, with
.TAP files and the possibility to load and save blocks directly into
and from Spectrum memory, but it still has some useful features.
It can read three types of input files: pure ASCII, pure bytes (for
instance a .SCR screen dump), and files produced by a SAVE *"b"
command.
Output is pure bytes, ASCII with either CR (Spectrum standard) or CR/LF
(PC standard) for line breaks, SAVE *"b" files containing a Basic or
code file, a .PCX or a .GIF file.
So what can you do? Main uses are adding LF (10 hex) bytes to a text
file produced by the Spectrum; converting a code block into a SAVE *"b"
to load it into the Spectrum using LOAD *"b" (and the reverse of
course: converting a SAVE *"b" file to pure bytes), and converting a
screen dump to .PCX or .GIF graphics files.
Less useful, but possible: LISTing a program (SAVE *"b" file) to
produce readable ASCII, and the reverse: converting an ASCII listing to
executable Basic again.
If you want to make a .PCX or a .GIF file, input should be a SAVE *"b"
file of a screen (length 6921 bytes exactly) or a bare .SCR screendump
(length 6912 bytes). You can make screendumps by selecting the X-Extra
functions menu from the main menu.
2.17 The utilities Z802TAP, TAP2TAPE and TAP2VOC
The SamRam has built in it some snapshot software. Using this software
you can save any 48K Spectrum program to tape or to a .TAP file, as is
explained in section 3.2 below. But the SamRam software cannot handle
a 128K program. The Multiface 128 can also write a snapshot to tape,
but in some cases it is still preferrable to use TAP2TAPE, since the
latter produces less and shorter blocks, and doesn't corrupt the screen
as much as the Multiface code does (on Spectrums without Multiface).
The utility that can convert a 128K snapshot (and 48K ones for that
matter) to a .TAP file is called Z802TAP. The .TAP file includes a
basic loader, and a loading screen if you want. Z802TAP compresses the
blocks it writes (using a better method than used in compressing .Z80
files) to save loading time. If you don't want it to compress the
blocks, for instance when you want to take a look at the ram pages of
the Spectrum 128, specify -u when you run Z802TAP. You can load the
converted program simply by executing
Z80 -ti tapefile
and typing LOAD "" (for a 48K program) or changing the hardware mode to
Spectrum 128 and choose 'Tape Loader' in the menu.
Of course you could also use Multiface 128 or the SamRam to convert a
snapshot to a .TAP file.
The program TAP2TAPE writes .TAP files back to tape. The program
consists of a batch file TAP2TAPE.BAT, which executes the TAP2TAPE.Z80
file using the emulator. The .TAP file is written to tape exactly as
it is, so that if a block contains a tape error, it won't load
correctly from tape either. If the entire .TAP file has been saved the
emulator will start loading from tape. At that point, press space once
to return to DOS.
The TAP2VOC program converts the tape block in a .TAP file to the
corresponding bips and clicks. The resulting .VOC file will be rather
large. It can be loaded back into the emulator, which is rather silly
since using the original .TAP file is better in all respects, or you
can write the program to tape using a sample player.
2.18 The utility OUT2VOC - and how to make .OUT files
The emulator can log OUTs to any I/O port. These OUTs are logged in a
.OUT file, in which is stored what was written to which port at what
time. These log files are used for recording sounds the emulated
Spectrum produces.
The OUTs to port FE, which controls the internal beeper, and those to
ports BFFD and FFFD, which control the soundchip of the Spectrum 128,
are translated into a sample file by OUT2VOC.
There are a number of command line switches. The sample frequency can
be chosen by specifying "-f frequency" on the command line. By default
a sampling frequency of 10 kHz is used.
Ordinarily the OUT2VOC program filters out all frequencies above half
the sampling frequency, so that no aliasing occurs when the signal is
stored as a sequence of samples in a .VOC sample file. For sample
files containing tape data, these aliasing effects are not important.
For these sample files you can use -d to produce 'digital' sample
files, containing only 'high' and 'low' sample values, and nothing in
between. These sample files can be compressed much better.
By default, the OUT2VOC program listens to the EAR output only.
Specify -m to have it listen to the MIC output (only), and -a to have
it listen to the AY-3-8912 soundchip of the Spectrum 128. If you
specify for example -e -a, the program will listen to both
corresponding channels.
Usually, not all registers of the AY soundchip are updated continually.
Some registers are initialised and left at that value. So it may be
necessary to supply the initial values of the soundchip registers. Do
this by specifying '-i file', where 'file' is the snapshot taken just
before you started recording the OUTs.
Some Spectrum programs use extremely many OUTs to produce sounds.
Fairlight for example OUTs about 70000 times a second, thereby indeed
producing one of the finest music I've every heard coming out of an
ordinary Spectrum. The OUT2VOC program takes quite some time to
compute the .VOC file from the raw .OUT output. Use -q for a quick
and little less precise conversion. The difference seems to be barely
audible. This switch has no effect when converting AY soundchip music.
If you specify -s, silences of longer than 1 second will be truncated
to 1 second.
Finally, use -r to produce a raw sample file, without any header or
length info.
To record a sample, go to the Extra Functions menu (F10, X), and select
O. Select the ports you want to log (by default only FE is logged) and
enter a name for the log file. OUTs will be logged until you specify
an illegal name, or press ENTER on an empty line here.
To save a block of data to a .OUT file, simply type the right SAVE
command or use any (turbo-save) program to save it to tape. Note that
.OUT files tend to grow fast; one bit on the tape corresponds to two
OUTs and therefore two 5-byte entries in the .OUT file; a 48K file will
produce a .OUT file of at least 4 Megabytes.
If you give a 16 bit address for an I/O port, only OUTs to this address
will be logged. If you give an address smaller than 100 hex, all
addresses whose low byte equal this number are logged. Note that it
is not possible to log all OUTs to, say, an even port. Although the
MIC and EAR ports respond to all even port addresses, virtually no
program uses a port different from FE, so this will be no problem in
practice.
Note that whereas the 'official' addresses of the register and
value-port of the AY soundchip are FFFD and BFFD respectively, some
programs use other ports that work too. One particular program uses
BEFD, heaven knows why. For these programs, specify FD (or 00FD) as
OUT port to log; this will ensure that all OUTs to any address with low
byte FD is logged (which, alas, includes the much-used port 7FFD).
A recent discussion on comp.sys.sinclair revealed that the AY
conversion of OUT2VOC leaves much to be desired. It is on my list of
things-to-do.
2.19 The utilities READVOC and READSB
These programs can read samples from the LPT port or the SoundBlaster
and store them in .VOC files, for later play-back to the emulator.
This is useful when you use the SoundBlaster as input device, as direct
loading is not very reliable then because Z80 does not filter its input
appropriately; you can store level data of games on hard-disk and load
them without having to play the actual tape again; thirdly, this allows
you to try to load the program with different emulator settings easily.
READVOC uses polling to read the sample. This method does not allow
for very high sample frequencies (even 20 kHz is too much sometimes),
and does not work reliably in multi-tasking environments (DOS boxes of
Windows (95) for example). It is however the only way to take samples
from the LPT interface, and works well under DOS.
READSB has been written for taking samples from the SoundBlaster. It
uses DMA to read the sample, and applies a digital filtering algorithm
for reliable loading. It offers a number of command-line switches.
Digital filtering is highly recommended: for programs that use the
ordinary tape format, -n is appropriate; for turbo-save formats, use
-d. If neither of -d and -n are used, ordinary analogue sample files
are produced, which will very often not load successfully when played
back to Z80. For low sample rates, say 10 kHz, it is a good thing to
use two-times oversampling (switch -2).
When READSB is started, it displays a signal level bar. Set the volume
so that a reasonable input level is reached; do not increase the volume
too much above 50%. Press any key to start sampling, and then 'p' to
pause and display the signal level bar again, or any other key to save
the sample and quit.
READSB uses 0220 as default base SoundBlaster I/O address, and IRQ 7 as
default interrupt level. Be sure to set these to their appropriate
values if your card is not set to these defaults.
Both READVOC and READSB produce very large files. Be sure to have
several megabytes of free disk space available. After sampling, these
sample files can be compressed using ordinary compression programs to
very small sizes.
2.20 Quick overview of command line switches, and features
In this section I will briefly explain all command line switches. It
is useful to at least once read this section carefully; there are a few
small handy features that will otherwise be readily overlooked. Starred
switches are by default put in the Z80.INI file.
-h Hercules graphics
-c CGA graphics
-e EGA graphics
-v VGA graphics
Usually the emulator will by itself correctly determine which mode to
use. VGA mode is by far the best: it is the only mode in which all
colours are correct (including the bright hues), and it is also the
fastest mode. Versions prior to v3.04 also had Plantronics and Extended
Hercules as possible video modes; these are removed to save memory.
-xv 400-line VGA (for some Tridents)
-xb Black-and-white VGA
The black-and-white switch is useful on black-and-white monitors;
sometimes those only display one component of the RGB signal instead of
a weighted average, so that some colours become indistinguishable grey
tones.
Some Trident video adapters, as well as some others, have a bug in
their video BIOS: they don't want to be put in 200-line mode. To get
around this, when -xv is specified 400-line mode is used with a double
amount of lines.
-n Emulate Spectrum without Interface I
-s Emulate Spectrum with SamRam
-1[28] Emulate Spectrum 128 (can be used with -n)
-xk Emulate Multiface 128 interface (can't be used with SamRam)
-9 Default to M.G.T. interface instead of Interface I
-0d M.G.T. = DISCiPLE ROM (default)
-0p M.G.T. = Plus D
These switches select the default start-up hardware configuration of
the emulator. This can all be changed in the Change Hardware menu
under function key F9.
* -znnn.n Emulate the Spectrum at speed nnn.n%
The most sensible setting for this is -z100. By default this is done
in the Z80.INI file.
-xx Hi-resolution colour emulation
This selects hi-res colour emulation by default, so that border effects
and hi-res colour effects are visible. This setting can be changed in
the F4 menu.
-r Emulate the R register
This is usually necessary in turbo loaders and otherwise protected
programs, since they almost invariably use the R register to decode
things. The R register has to be updated every instruction, so that
enabling the emulation of it reduces the emulation speed considerably,
by some 30%. Don't do it unless it proves to be necessary. I don't
know of any program that uses it on the run. If the R register is not
emulated, the R register acts as a random generator.
* -l Better (but slower) LDIR/LDDR emulation
Normally a 8086 MOVSB is used to emulate an LDIR or LDDR. This is a
fast instruction. Programs that use them a lot, most notably Jetset
Willy and Manic Miner, run very fast. On slow computers these programs
are the only ones that are really playable. On fast computers they run
much too fast, so it is a wise thing to use -l on fast computers.
Secondly, without -l the LDIR instruction is not emulated correctly
when it overwrites itself; with -l it is.
-yl, -yh Low, high video synchronization mode
These switches control the phase between the 50 Hz interrupt and the
screen refresh. Some programs need a different setting in order to
remove flickering of moving characters. Enabling hi-resolution colour
emulation also eliminates these problems.
-2 Emulate an Issue-2 Spectrum
Make the EAR line 1 when there's no signal, instead of 0 as it is on
Issue 3 Spectrum's. Some old programs need it (Spinads for example).
-dN Set frame interrupt frequency to 100/N Hz
There used to be an option -d which set the frame interrupt frequency
to 100 Hz; therefore now -d is equivalent to -d1. -d2 is the default
setting, 50 Hz. On slow computers, -d helps to get a better keyboard
response. On the other hand, setting for instance -z350 -d7 makes Z80
emulate a Spectrum 3.5 times as fast while maintaining normal keyboard
response. At run time, the frame interrupt rate may be toggled between
50 Hz and the value set by this switch. If you set -dN twice, then the
emulator starts off with a 50 Hz frame rate, with alternate rate set to
100/N Hz.
-aN Redirect Spectrum RS232 output to LPTn
-oN Redirect Spectrum RS232 output to COMn
-uF Redirect file F to Spectrum RS232 input
-iN Redirect COMn to Spectrum RS232 input
-wF Redirect Spectrum RS232 output to file F
All output to, and reading from, the Interface I's RS232 channel
(channels "b" and "t"), the 128K printer channel (channel "p") will be
sent to, respectively read from, the appropriate device. Furthermore,
output to the ZX Printer will be converted in a format suited for Epson
matrix printers or HP Laserjet printers and also be sent to the 'RS232
output' device or file.
-g No sound
-xa Do NOT use AdLib for 128 sound
-xc Use SoundBlaster CMS chips for noise
-xi Do NOT use internal PC speaker for '128 sound
If no AdLib compatible card is detected, 128K sound output will be
sent, as far as is possible, to the internal PC speaker. Use -xa to
hear 128K sound through the PC speaker when there is an AdLib card
present.
Without CMS chips, the 128K soundchip's noise cannot be faithfully
reproduced. If you have CMS chips installed, use -xc to use them. If
the SoundBlaster is on a different base address than 0220, use -xq to
select it.
* -km Use MS Mouse to control Spectrum joystick
-ka Emulate Spectrum AMX mouse interface controlled by MS Mouse
-kz Use digital Zandbergen joystick
-kk Do not look for analogue or Zandbergen joystick
-k1 Do not use 2nd analogue joystick as Sinclair 1 (1,2,3,4,5)
-k2 Use 2nd joystick as Sinclair 1 always
The emulated joystick (Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair 2 or user defined) is
controlled by the arrow keys and TAB, 5, INS (0) on the PC keyboard,
and optionally also by a digital joystick, and analogue IBM joystick or
a mouse. Use -kk if the emulator erroneously detects either joystick.
If -ka is specified, the PC mouse controls the emulated AMX mouse
interface. Because of I/O address clashes, this only works with SamRam
and the M.G.T. interfaces disabled. The AMX mouse is supported by e.g.
Art Studio.
A second analogue joystick will, when present, always be attached to
keys 1 to 5, the Sinclair 1 joystick keys. If neither -k1 nor -k2 is
given, the emulator will look if the second joystick is in an
acceptable neutral position (i.e. is attached) and if so will use it.
This will usually work. If it incorrectly recognizes the joystick use
-k1. If it doesn't recognize a joystick while it is connected, use
-k2.
-jc Emulate Cursor joystick (default)
-jk Emulate Kempston joystick
-j2 Emulate Sinclair joystick 2 (keys 6,7,8,9 and 0)
-ju<lf><rt><up><dn><fire> User defined joystick
Also quite clear I think. For instance, -juipqzm makes the joystick
control the i,p,q,z and m keys, for instance to play those lovely
Horace games. Special characters are [ for shift, ] for symbol shift,
/ for enter and \ for space.
* -xs Default to shifted cursor keys (NumLock) in '128 mode
By default, the PC arrow keys control the cursor keys 5,6,7,8 and 0 of
the Spectrum. The Spectrum 128 had its arrow keys press the cursor
keys plus shift, and the menu bar of the reset screen of the '128 only
responds to shift+cursor key.
-bN Use LPTn for tape I/O
-xo Use SoundBlaster's A/D Converter for tape input
-xq adr Set base IO address for SoundBlaster (default 0220)
Either the LPT tape interface of the SoundBlaster is used for tape
input. Only the LPT tape interface can be used for tape (MIC) output.
-tv F Play .VOC file F to 'ear' input
-m N F Insert cartridge file F{.MDR} into microdrive N
-xm D Select default directory D for .MDR files
-td D Select directory D for Multiple .TAP File mode
-ts D Specify default directory for Single .TAP File mode
-ti F Use F{.TAP} as tape input
-to F Use F{.TAP} as tape output (if exists, append)
-tm Mirror tape input to disk (Do also specify output file!)
-te Mirror tape input to disk in EXACT mode
-tw Don't wrap load pointer of tapefile at end
-tp Pause after loading .TAP block
All quite clear I think. If -tv is used, the VOC file starts playing
immediately, so be sure there's an appropriate snapshot running to do
something with the signal. -tw makes the emulator load from physical
tape when a .TAP file has been read to the end, instead of starting
again from the beginning. It is used in Tap2Tape.
-xl N Select LPTn for ZX-Printer output
-xj 'Off-line=wait' instead of 'Off-line=No ZX Printer'
-0e Epson printer (for ZX PRINTER & M.G.T.)
-0h HP PCL printer (for ZX PRINTER & M.G.T.)
-0f N Issue a Form Feed every N ZX Printer lines when printing
to a HP PCL compatible printer
Output to the ZX Printer will be converted into graphic data in Epson
(most matrix printers) or HP PCL (most inkjet and laser printers)
format. Use -0e or -0h to select which format to use; default is Epson
format (defaulted in Z80.INI). Also, this selects the default DISCiPLE
ROM to be used; the two ROMs have different screen dump routines
pre-loaded. If you're using a Laser printer, use -0f 103 to have Z80
eject the page once in a while. 103 lines approximate one sheet A4.
Select the LPT port to print the data to with -xl; default is LPT1.
If the printer to which ZX Printer output is sent is absent, busy or
off-line, the emulator tells the Spectrum program that the ZX Printer
is not attached. If you want the Spectrum program to wait in case of
an off-line or busy printer, then put -xj in the Z80.INI file. This
switch is not defaulted because printers sometimes say they're merely
busy or off-line when in fact they are not there at all. Besides, some
Spectrum programs do a COPY without asking, and with this switch the
program would lock up (as versions 3.00 to 3.02 did; in v3.03 and above
you can BREAK into such a loop).
If a printer becomes off-line or unavailable during printing, Z80 will
try to finish its job anyhow, and the program may appear to hang.
Pressing the space bar will make Z80 break the printing loop, and
signal to the Spectrum program that the ZX Printer does not exist.
This, in turn, will cause the ROM printer routines to just skip
printing. Z80 will periodically check the printer status, and when it
becomes available again will make the ZX Printer appear again.
-0i Disable Disciple interrupt
Normally the Disciple and Plus D have their own interrupt routine being
executed 50 times a second. Because this involves many page swaps,
this is quite slow on the emulator. Since the interrupt is not really
necessary anyway, it is reduced to once every two seconds. On some
computers this may still be too much, in which case -0i completely
disables the Disciple and Plus D interrupts. Do not try this in
Unidos! (which is not emulated [yet].)
-0sND Set Disciple/+D drive N to D:
By default, the Disciple/+D drive 1 controls drive A: while 2 controls
B:. If, for example, your B: drive is your only 3.5'' drive, you might
want to map both 1 and 2 to B: which is accomplished by putting -0s1b
in the Z80.INI file.
-xp D Select default directory D for .Z80 snapshot files
Clear.
-xz Assume AZERTY keyboard layout
Assumes the Belgian and French AZERTY keyboard layout.
-xr F Use file F as standard Spectrum rom
The ROM will be used in 48K modes only, and must be exactly 16K long.
-xt Use as little memory as possible with full functionality
-xu Use as little memory as possible; disable HRC emulation
With -xt, all unnecessary buffers used for efficiency purposes only are
reduced to minimum size. Saves 47K, but can make all the difference
sometimes. With -xu, 83K is saved, but Hi Resolution Colour emulation
won't work anymore.
-tx Do not display tape info window when loading or saving
-00 Do not show intro screen, and don't pause at startup
Some people seem to really hate either, or even both. Don't know why.
For better annoyance, -00 only works in the registered version. Hehe.
-xe Do not use expanded memory
Specifying this switch will result in the emulator using 240K more base
memory (making a grand total of 564K). Furthermore, all page swapping
will be much slower, so especially the 128K emulation gets verrry slow.
-xg Log all outs to FE in OUT log file
-xy Dump trace of program in .OUT file
By default, OUTs to port #FE that do not change the state of either MIC
or EAR are not saved to the log file, to save disk space. If, for some
reason, you want all OUTs to be logged, -xg will do the trick. The -xy
option can be used for producing a somewhat crude trace; see section
5.10 on the .OUT format for more details.
-0m F Build map of opcode locations in file F
When this option is specified, Z80 keeps a map of the 65536 address
locations in memory, and tags the address of each instruction that is
emulated. When the emulator is shut down, this map is written to disk
as a 8192 byte file. See section 5.10 of TECHINFO.DOC for an
explanation of the file format, and remarks on how to use this feature.
-xw Run in Windows compatibility mode
In this mode, the timer is not re-programmed. The emulator counts T
states to see when an interrupt has to be generated (so emulation will
be slower). In a Windows (3.1 or 95) DOS box, using -xw will turn
Windows compatibility mode off (as Z80 is aware of Windows and has
turned this switch on itself in that case) and the emulator will
usually hang. There is probably never a need to use this switch.
-kxABCD Press key #CD for scancode #AB.
This can be used to re-map the keyboard, for instance if your C key is
broken, you can re-map it to F11, or any other key for that matter.
Combinations are hard-coded, so that a key pressing , also presses <
when shifted. The scan code is between #01 (ESC) and #58 (F12); a full
list can be found in many places. The format of the key byte is
explained in section 2.3.
-xf Switch full 16K of Interface I ROM
Useless.
2.21 Miscellaneous remarks
1. Problems at the Rom/Ram boundary
There are a few Spectrum programs that have an odd stack pointer, and
run over the ram/rom boundary, for instance Deep Strike, and Elite.
This crashed version 1.45 of the emulator; the problem was circumvented
somewhat in version 2.01, and has been removed in version 3: in most
cases, a word read from or written to FFFF will be read or written as
two bytes. You can check this by typing CLEAR 65535: POKE 65535,0:
RETURN in BASIC; this will lock up version 1.45 of the emulator, it
will lock up version 2.01 if the 80386 is in virtual mode, and it will
only crash the emulated Spectrum (as it should) on version 3.
The check on FFFF is not done at every potentially problematic op-code,
because this would make the emulator noticeably slower. It is
therefore still possible to 'hang' the emulator. Not going to tell you
how, though. All existing programs seem to work okay now.
2. Critical timings
A few programs (the only examples known to me are Fireman and Thing,
but there are more) are quite sensitive to the relative actual
execution speed of emulated Z80 instructions, and crash if it isn't
right. They rely on this-or-that amount of instructions to be executed
between interrupts. If you slow down the emulator, these program will
run fine, because then individual instructions are more carefully
timed. When running in Windows compatibility mode, loading .VOC files
or when the Hi-Res Colour emulation is switched on, these problems
disappear completely as the emulator is then counting off the exact
number of T states to elapse between interrupts.
3. Shifted cursor keys
It may be annoying to have to press Num-Lock every time you use the
Spectrum 128 (because otherwise you'll have to use Shift with the
cursor keys to move the menu bar). To make the emulator press shift by
default every time you use the PC cursor keys in '128 mode, use the
switch -xs. If you press Num-Lock now (in '128 mode), the shift-key
won't be pressed. The 48K modes are not affected by this switch.
4. Running non-standard ROMs
To run the emulator with a different rom than the standard one, you can
specify a rom image file on the command line. Use the switch -xr file,
where 'file' is the name of the image file. This file should be
exactly 16384 bytes long. It will of course not be used in Spectrum
128 or SamRam mode.
The emulator 'ZX' by Rindt and Bruckner comes with several roms, stored
in their tape format. You can convert these files to .TAP files, and
then load them in the normal way (in RAM), and then save the 16K image
from RAM directly. You can also extract it from the files directly by
using the DOS debug utility:
C:\>debug rom.000 (or other rom file (of 16406 bytes))
-m 115 L 4000,100 (move the rom down, overwrite header)
-rcx (new length of exactly 16K bytes)
CX 4016
4000
-n rom000.bin (or some other name)
-w (write it)
Writing 04000 bytes
-q (and quit)
5. Printing with DISCiPLE and Plus D
If, emulating a DISCiPLE/+D and by entering POKE @11,0 the parallel
printer output has been selected, going back to a hardware mode without
M.G.T. interface causes problems with printing to the ZX Printer, since
the output addresses of the "p" channel have been changed by the M.G.T.
ROM. Use the "b" channel of the Interface I instead. You can reset
the channel to the ZX Printer by entering POKE @11,1 while still
emulating the M.G.T. interface. Note however that the printer OUT port
#FB of the ZX Printer is used by the Disciple printer interface, so
that using the ordinary ZX Printer code of the ROM results in rubbish
coming out of the printer. The +D can use the Centronics interface and
the old ZX Printer at the same time.
Although by default channel #3 prints to the ZX Printer, in all
hardware modes, if a DISCiPLE/+D is emulated output to the ZX Printer
is ignored, as these interfaces use the ZX Printer I/O ports for their
own purposes.
6. Breakpoints
A Breakpoint may be set in the Extra Functions menu, option B. If it
is set, the emulator will at the beginning of each instruction check
whether the program counter is equal to the breakpoint address. If
this is the case, it notifies the user, and continues to the main menu.
You could now save the snapshot and inspect register values using
Z80Dump, for example. You could change hardware mode to SamRam, and
generate an NMI from the menu (using Extra Functions, N) to inspect the
code around the breakpoint.
Some fine points. If a breakpoint is hit, the instruction at the
breakpoint address is not yet executed. It will be upon returning. If
you generate an NMI, and subsequently return from it, the first
instruction that will be executed after the NMI is the instruction at
the breakpoint; this will thus make the emulator go to the main menu
once again. Press ESC to continue emulating.
For technical reasons, when counting T states, the time taken by the
instruction directly preceding (in execution) the one at the breakpoint
address is not taken into account. When the emulator hits a
breakpoint, the current frame will be a few T states longer. Not that
you'll notice, probably. The R register is counted through properly
(if it's emulated, that is.)
If the breakpoint address happens to point to an operand instead of an
opcode, the emulator will not respond.
7. Emulation of floating bus
Reading from e.g. port #FE accesses the ULA bus which is used to read
the screen memory. While the ULA is generating the border or
horizontal or vertical retrace signals, this will result in #FF;
otherwise, the value returned is the ATTR or screen byte the ULA is
currently reading. Some programs use this to check whether the ULA is
in vertical retrace (Arkanoid), some use it to actually wait for
specific bytes to pass, which signals that a certain part of the screen
is being generated (Ricochet). Only in Hi Res Color mode will the
emulation of this effect be reasonably accurate to get Ricochet running
correctly. Arkanoid runs reasonably well, but due to the way it is
implemented it produces 'ticks' in the speaker when it is not run in
HRC mode.
3. THE SAMRAM
3.1 Basic extensions
The SamRam is a hardware device Johan and I built for our Spectrums. It
consists of a 32K static RAM chip which contains a modified copy of the
normal Basic ROM and a number of other useful routines, like a monitor
and snapshot software. You can compare it to a Multiface I interface,
but it's more versatile. Another useful feature was a simple hardware
switch which allowed use of the shadow 32K Ram, present at 8000-FFFF in
most Spectrums, but hardly ever actually used.
For more details on the low-level hardware features of the SamRam read
chapter 5. In this chapter I'll explain the software features of the
SamRam software, somewhat bombastically called the 'SamRam 32 Software
System' or the 'Sam Operating System'. By the way, all similarity
between existing computers is in fact purely coincidental and has in no
way been intended. Really!
The SamRam offers a few new Basic commands, and a lot of useful
routines that are activated by an NMI, i.e. by pressing F5. First
I'll discuss the Basic extension.
Select the SamRam by starting the emulator with the -s switch, or by
selecting it from the F9 menu. Normal Basic functions as usual; the
character set is different from the original one. There are four new
commands: *RS, *MOVE, *SAVE and *SPECTRUM, and two new functions, DEC
and HEX, which have replaced ASN and ACS. DEC takes a string argument
containing a hexadecimal number, and returns the decimal value of it.
HEX is the inverse of the DEC function, and yields a four-character
string.
*RS sends its arguments directly to the RS232 channel. You don't have
to open a "b" or "t" channel first. You're right, it's of limited use.
Example: *RS 13,10
*MOVE is useful: it moves a block of memory to another place. Example:
*MOVE 50000,16384,6912 moves a screen-sized block from 50000 to the
start of the screen memory.
*SAVE works like *MOVE, except that it activates the shadow SamRam ROM
before moving. I used this command to update the shadow ROM, but on
the emulator you can use it to move the shadow ROM to a convenient
place in Ram where you can take a look at it, for instance by executing
*SAVE 0,32768,16384.
*SPECTRUM resets the SamRam Spectrum to a normal one. You lose all
data in memory. By resetting the emulator by pressing ALT-F5, the
SamRam is activated again. Not very useful either.
Then there's the Ramdisk, which is, like the Spectrum 128 ramdisk,
accessed via the SAVE!, LOAD!, CAT!, ERASE! and FORMAT!. The syntax is
straightforward. FORMAT! and CAT! need no parameters; ERASE! only
needs a name. If a file is not found, the SamRam will respond with a
5-End of File error. The Ramdisk has a capacity of 25K.
3.2 The NMI software
Select the SamRam (F9-3), and press F5. A menu with eight icons pops
up. You can select each icon by moving the arrow to it (using the
cursor keys or the Kempston joystick), and pressing '0' or fire. The
icons can also be selected by pressing the appropriate letter key.
The eight icons are two arrows with N and E within them, a magnifying
glass with the letters 'mc' in it (activated by pressing D), two
screens (identified by 1 and 2), a printer (P), a cassette (S) and a
box saying 'overig'. The 'D' activates the monitor or disassembler;
read section 3.3 for information on this program.
Pressing N or E returns you to the Spectrum. If you pressed N, the
normal Spectrum rom will be selected when the NMI software returns; if
you press E, the Rom with the Basic extensions will be selected. Some
games may crash if they see a different rom than the standard Spectrum
one.
Pressing 1 selects the tiny screen editor. You can move a '+' shaped
cursor about the screen using the cursor keys. The following commands
are available:
H: Get the current ATTR colour from the screen at the cursor's
current position, and store it in memory. This colour will be
used by the next command:
Z: Put the colour on the screen
G: Get a character from the screen
P: Put the character on the screen
R: Remove all screen data that is invisible by the ATTR colour
L: Take a look at the bitmap below the ATTR colour codes
T: Return to the main menu. You can also return by pressing
EDIT, or ESC in the emulator.
B: Change border colour
V: Clear the whole screen
If you press 0, you can edit the current 8x8 character block at pixel
level. Again you control the cursor with the cursor keys. Now 0
toggles a pixel. In this mode there are two commands: C clears the
whole block, and I inverts it. Pressing EDIT (ESC) returns you to the
big screen again.
The SamRam has two screen buffers. Buffer 1 is used to hold the screen
which was visible when you pressed NMI, to be able to restore it when
returning. This is the screen you edit with '1'. The second screen
buffer can be used to hold a screen for some time; it is not touched by
the NMI software directly, and will not even be destroyed by a Reset.
If you press '2', a menu appears with four Dutch entries:
1: Scherm 1 opslaan (Store screen 1 into buffer 2)
2: Scherm 2 veranderen (Edit screen 2)
3: Schermen verwisselen (Swap screens)
4: Scherm 2 weghalen (Remove screen 2)
These four functions are rather obvious, I believe.
Pressing 'P' pops up the printer menu. The screendump program is
written specifically for my printer, a Star SG-10. It will probably
work on some other printers, but not on most. The output is sent to
the RS232 channel, so you have to redirect it to an LPT output.
Skipping the most interesting, 'S', for a moment, let's first discuss
the final menu, 'O' for 'Overig', Dutch for miscellaneous. There are
five menu options, of which three are not useful. The first gives a
directory of the cartridge currently in Microdrive 1. The last, 'E',
returns you to Basic if this is anywhere possible: it resets some
crucial system variables and generates a Break into Program. You can
use this for instance to break in a BEEP, or crack a not-so-very-well-
protected program. The three other options select normal or speed-
save, and store the current setting in CMOS Ram. Speed-save won't work
properly on the emulator, because the speed-save routine toggles the
upper 32K ram bank regularly, and this takes too much time on the
emulator. The setting is not important if you use the internal save
routine (which will be used by default, unless you select Real Mode).
Finally, the 'S' option. This option allows you to save a snapshot to
tape or microdrive. I used it a lot on my real Spectrum, and it works
just as well on the emulator. It is very useful is you want to load a
.Z80 program back into a real Spectrum again. There are three
'switches' you can toggle. The active choice is indicated by a bright
green box, inactive boxes are non-bright. You have to use EGA or VGA
to be able to see it... The first switch lets you select whether the
SamRam rom should be active if the program loads or not. This is only
meaningful is you load it back in a SamRam again. Usually I want the
SamRam rom to be active because I like the character set better. The
second switch indicates whether the SamRam should save a 'loading
screen', which it takes from screen buffer 2. If screen buffer 2
contains a screen, this switch will by default be on. Finally, the
last switch lets you select the output media, tape or cartridge.
If the program is loaded back into the SamRam, the only bytes that have
been corrupted are four bytes down on the stack; this will virtually
never be any problem. If the program is loaded back to a normal
Spectrum, these four bytes will also be corrupted, and the bottom two
pixel lines of the screen will be filled with data. (This is
considerably less than any other snapshotter I've seen: for instance
the Multiface I uses more than 35% of the screen!)
The Microdrive BASIC loader needs code in the SamRam rom to start the
program (the RANDOMIZE USR 43 calls it). It won't be very difficult to
write a standard BASIC loader that doesn't need this code, but I don't
think many people desperately need it... Anyway, using the Multiface
128 you can write a compressed snapshot to cartridge which doesn't need
the Multiface.
3.3 The built-in monitor
This is a really very convenient part of the emulator, and I use it a
lot. It is very MONS-like in its commands and visual appearance. It
cannot single-step however, but on the positive side it has some
features MONS hasn't. It is a part of the SamRam, and cannot therefore
be used with Spectrum 128 programs. If you want to take a look at a
Spectrum 128 program, press F10, then change the hardware to SamRam
without resetting, and finally generate an NMI in the Extra Functions
menu. You won't probably be able to continue to run the program, but
at least you're able to see what it was doing.
Press F5 for NMI, and D to enter the monitor/disassembler. The first
eight lines are the first eight instructions, starting at the Memory
Pointer, from here on abbreviated by MP. At first, MP is zero. The
disassembler knows all official instructions, and the SLL instruction.
If another inofficial instruction (i.e. starting with DD, FD or ED) is
encountered, the first byte is displayed on a blank line. The four
lines below these display the value of PC and SP, the first nine words
on the stack (including AF and the program counter, which have been
pushed during NMI), and three MP-memories. These can be used for
temporary storage of the MP, for instance when you take a look at the
body of a CALL, and want to return to the main procedure later.
The bottom part of the screen displays 24 bytes around the memory
pointer.
Commands are one letter long; no ENTER needs to be given. If one or
more operands are needed, a colon will appear. By default the monitor
accepts hexadecimal input. A leading $ denotes that the number is to
be regarded as decimal. If you give the # command, the default will
toggle to decimal, and you need to explicitly put a # in front of a
number which is to be interpreted as a hex number. Also, after the #
command all addresses on screen will be decimal. A single character
preceded by the " symbol evaluates to its ASCII code, and the single
character M will evaluate to the current value of the memory pointer.
The monitor commands:
Q: Decrease the memory pointer by one. You effectively shift one
byte up.
A: Increase the memory pointer, shifting one byte down.
ENTER: Shift one instruction down: the memory pointer is
increased by the length of first instruction displayed on
screen.
M: Change the value of the memory pointer. For instance, M:M
won't change it.
P: Put. The word operand supplied will be stored in the first MP
memory, and the others will shift on place to the right.
Usually, you'll want to store the memory pointer by P:M
G: Get. Typing G:1, G:2 or G:3 moves the value of one of the MP
memories to the MP.
B: Byte. This command needs a byte operand; it will be poked
into memory, and the memory pointer will move one up.
I: Insert. The same as B, except that you can poke more than one
byte. It continues to ask for bytes to poke until you type
Enter on a blank line.
#: Toggles the default number base between hexadecimal and
decimal.
F: Find. You can enter up to ten bytes, which will be searched
through memory. Searching will stop at address 0, because
since the search string is stored in shadow Ram, searching
would otherwise not always terminate. Typing Enter on a blank
line starts the search. Byte operands are entered as usual,
but:
- If a number bigger than 256 decimal is entered, it is
treated as a word in the standard LSB/MSB format. So, 1234
will search for 34,12 hex in that order. Note that 0012
will search for 12, not 12,00.
- A line starting with " decodes into the string of characters
(up to ten) behind it. Normally this would only be the
first character. So instead of typing "M "Y "N "A "M "E
(space=enter here) you type "MYNAME. Note that any
terminating " will also be searched for!
- An x is treated as a wildcard. So if you search for CD x 80
any call to a subroutine in the block 8000-80FF is a hit.
If you search for x 8000, you'll see every one-byte
instruction that has the address 8000 as operand.
N: Continues the search started by F from the current MP.
$: Displays one page of disassembly on screen. In this mode,
the following commands are possible:
$: Back to the main screen
7: [Shift 7 also works, cursor up]: Go to the previous page.
The monitor stores the addresses of the previous eight
pages only.
Q: Go back one byte (decrease MP by one)
A: Go one byte forward (increase MP by one)
Z: Dump this screen to the printer, in ASCII format. Redirect
the RS232 output to a file, and run CONVERT on it to convert
the CR's into CR/LF's before printing (or tell your printer
to do the conversion).
Every other key displays the next page of disassembly.
K: List. The same mode as with $ is entered, but instead of a
disassembly the bytes with their ASCII characters are
displayed. Useful to look for text.
C: Clear. Fills blocks of memory with a specified value. The
monitor prompts with 'First', 'Last' and 'With'. The 'Last'
address is inclusive!
D: Dump. Prompts with 'First' and 'Last', and dumps a
disassembly of the block between these addresses to the
printer. See remark at $-Z. The 'Last' address is again
inclusive.
R: Registers. If you press Enter after R, an overview of the
registers contents is displayed. If you type one of A,B,C,D,
E,H,L,A',B',C',D',E',H',L',I,R,AF,BC,DE,HL,AF',BC',DE',HL',
IX,IY,SP or PC, you can change the value of it. Changing the
value of SP also changes the PC and AF values by the way. You
cannot change the Interrupt mode or IFF.
V: Verplaats. (Move). Prompts with 'From', 'To' and 'Length'.
Obvious.
S: Save. Enter the start of the block you wish to save first.
The monitor then prompts with 'Length'. The block is saved
without a header, as a normal data block (A, the flagbyte, is
0FF)
L: Load. Loads a block of data from tape, at the specified
address. Normal data blocks, headers and blocks with non-
standard flag bytes can be loaded. The first byte in memory
will contain the flag byte. If the checksum isn't 0 after
loading, indicating a tape error, you'll hear a beep.
H: Header read. Loads headers and displays the contents on
screen.
As you're reading this part, I assume you know something of machine
code. Probably you would be interested in peeking into the software of
the SamRam, the Interface I, the Spectrum 128, the Disciple or the
Multiface 128. You'll first have to move these roms in ram to be able
to look at them with the monitor.
The Interface I rom can be moved into ram by saving it to microdrive or
to the "b" channel, with SAVE *"m";1;"rom" CODE 0,8192 or SAVE *"b"
CODE 0,8192, and loading it back again at 32768 for instance. You can
also put this small machine code routine at 23296 and run it: F3 21 0C
5B E5 21 00 00 E5 C3 08 00 21 00 00 11 00 80 01 00 20 ED B0 FB C3 00
07. You ought to be able to disassemble this piece by heart.
The two SamRam roms are easy. The first you don't need to transfer;
the monitor looks at the extended basic rom by default. The second rom
can be moved to 32768 by typing *SAVE 0,32768,16384. (The SAVE is not
the keyword SAVE!)
The first '128 rom, the one which is active at reset and contains most
of the new code, is moved up by typing SAVE!"rom"CODE 0,16384, then
LOAD!"rom"CODE 32768. The other rom is most conveniently moved by
saving it to a .TAP file and loading it back again in ram. To select
the SamRam type SPECTRUM first, and then switch the hardware without
resetting.
The Disciple and Plus D roms can be transferred to RAM by simply saving
them to disk and loading them back at say 32768.
The Multiface ROM is paged by an IN from 191, and paged out again by
INning from address 63. Don't forget to disable interrupts in between,
I'm not sure whether the M128 has a well-behaved interrupt routine.
ROM is from 0-8191, RAM on top of that.
4. THE SPECTRUM
4.1 The Spectrum
This emulator supports the Interface I, the Multiface 128, the DISCiPLE
and Plus D interfaces, and the Spectrum 128. Many Spectrum users will
have no experience with them, so some comments may be useful. On the
other hand, I don't think this is the right place to describe the
Spectrum Basic in full detail. If you want to know it all, read the
official manuals! Information on the Multiface 128 can be found in
section 2.12.
If you want to use Spectrum Basic, you will need the keywords. You
could by the way now also use the Spectrum 128 Basic where you can type
the keywords in by full.
If you press ALT-F1 in the emulator, the Spectrum keyboard layout will
appear. For completeness I include an alphabetical list of all
keywords and their key-combination. In the list below, K stands for
Keyword mode, E for E-mode (type Shift-Alt of Shift-Ctrl to select
E-mode), S for Symbol Shift, and SE for Symbol Shifted (Alt/Ctrl)
E-mode: select E mode and type the letter while depressing Symbol
Shift.
Keyw. Code | Keyw. Code | Keyw. Code | Keyw. Code
ABS E g DRAW K w MERGE SE t SAVE K s
ACS SE w ERASE SE 7 MOVE SE 6 SCREEN$ SE k
AND S y EXP E x NEW K a SGN E f
ASN SE q FLASH SE v NEXT K n SIN E q
AT S i FN SE 2 NOT S s SQR E h
ATN SE e FOR K f OPEN # SE 4 STEP S d
ATTR SE l FORMAT SE 0 OR S u STOP S a
BEEP SE z GO SUB K h OUT SE o STR$ E y
BIN E b GO TO K g OVER SE n TAB E p
BORDER K b IF K u PAPER SE c TAN E e
BRIGHT SE b IN SE i PAUSE K m THEN S g
CAT SE 9 INK SE x PEEK E o TO S f
CHR$ E u INKEY$ E n PI E m USR E l
CIRCLE SE h INPUT K i PLOT K q VAL E j
CLEAR K x INT E r POINT SE 8 VAL$ SE j
CLOSE # SE 5 INVERSE SE m POKE K o VERIFY SE r
CLS K v LEN E k PRINT K p <= S q
CODE E i LET K l RANDOMIZE K t >= S e
CONTINUE K c LIST K k READ E a <> S w
COPY K z LINE SE 3 REM K e
COS E w LLIST E v RESTORE E s DEC SE q
DATA E d LN E z RETURN K y HEX SE w
DEF FN SE 1 LOAD K j RND E t
DIM K d LPRINT E c RUN K r
Character Spectrum kbrd On PC keyboard
& S 6 ALT (or CTRL) 6
' S 7 ALT 7 or '/"
( S 8 ALT 8
) S 9 ALT 9
_ S 0 ALT 0 or SHFT _/-
< S r ALT r or SHFT </,
> S t ALT t or SHFT >/,
; S o ALT o or :/;
" S p ALT p or SHFT "/'
^ S h ALT h
- S j ALT j or _/-
+ S k ALT k or SHFT +/= or GREY +
= S l ALT l or +/=
: S z ALT z or SFHT :/;
? S c ALT c or SHFT ?//
/ S v ALT v or ?//
* S b ALT b or GREY PRTSC/*
, S n ALT n or </,
. S m ALT m or >/.
4.2 The Interface I
If you want to use the microdrive, you'll need cartridge files. The
emulator can create an empty cartridge file for you. You have to
format it before you can use it. Type
FORMAT "m";1;"name"
to format the cartridge currently in Microdrive 1 giving it the name
'name'. Next, type CAT 1 to get a catalogue of the files on it (none
of course) and the number of kilobytes free. You can save a file by
typing for instance
SAVE *"m";1;"screen"SCREEN$
Instead of SCREEN$ you can use all other expressions that are permitted
also when saving to tape, like LINE nnnn or CODE x,y etcetera. To load
a file back from cartridge, you type (you guessed it)
LOAD *"m";1;"screen"SCREEN$
If the file doesn't exist or is of the wrong type you'll get the
appropriate error message. To erase a file, type for instance
ERASE "m";1;"screen"
Note that no * is needed (or even permitted), and that only the name
should be given. There's another way to create a file on a cartridge,
and that is by using a command like OPEN #3;"m";1;"name", and printing
to that stream. You can use MOVE to move data from stream to stream,
but I'll not go into that --- it's not very much used anyway.
Instead of to the microdrive, you can also 'save to the RS232 link'.
For instance, type SAVE *"b"SCREEN$ (note: there's no name!) to save a
screen. On the emulator you can send the output to the RS232 channel
to a printer (then SAVE *"b" is useless), to a file (can be useful) or
to the COM port (very useful if you connect a real Spectrum to the PC's
COM port!). You can load the data back by typing LOAD *"b"SCREEN$ and
making sure the RS232 channel is fed with the right input (from a COM
port or a file). See also section 2.13.
If you want to use the RS232 channel for printing, open stream 3 for
output to that channel by typing
OPEN #3,"b"
or
OPEN #3,"t"
The first will simply copy everything you send to stream 3 (using for
instance LPRINT or LLIST) to the RS232 channel; the second converts
CR's into CR/LF's, breaks off lines at 80 characters and translates
keywords into character sequences. "t" is useful for LLISTings, but
not for anything else.
Useful extra commands: CLS #, to clear the screen and reset the
attributes to their reset defaults, and CLEAR # to do a CLS # and close
all currently open streams (discarding all data that may still be
buffered!)
The Interface I uses its own system variables. At the first error
message you make (or RASP, or flashing question mark) and at the first
Interface I statement you execute, it inserts them automatically. Some
programs will not run when the Interface I has inserted its system
variables. So if you load a game from tape, reset the Spectrum first
and don't make an error typing LOAD "". With a bit of exercise you
should be able to do this.
4.3 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - Introduction
The DISCiPLE and Plus D were two disk interfaces for the spectrum
designed by M.G.T. (Miles Gordon Technology). The first of these
interfaces was the DISCiPLE, this interface consisted of a disk
interface, microdrive network compatible interface, parallel printer
interface, 2 joystick ports (emulating kempston, cursor, and Sinclair 1
and 2). The unit also had an inhibit button which disabled the
interface hardware (except the joystick ports), and finally a snapshot
button which when pressed stopped the computer to allow the program to
be saved to disk or the screen to be printed. This was made by
Rockfort.
The Plus D was the second of the interfaces, this was a cut-down
version of the DISCiPLE, this interface only had a disk interface,
parallel printer interface and a snapshot button.
Both interfaces had a D.O.S. (Disk Operating System) which was partly
ROM (8K) and partly RAM (8K). When the spectrum was turned on, the ROM
part of the D.O.S. was in control and whenever the command RUN was
issued the ROM tries to load up the RAM part of the D.O.S. from floppy
disk. The advantage of this is that the D.O.S. can be upgraded without
having to change chips over (unless of course it was a major upgrade!).
Another advantage was that D.O.S. extensions could be incorporated or
replace other systems (see later).
With both interfaces, they extended the BASIC commands, but unlike the
microdrives and several other types of drives available, the DISCiPLE
and Plus D took up none of the spectrum's RAM, therefore it was the
most invisible of the disk systems available, not only that, but the
DISCiPLE and Plus D used the same type of disk drives as the BBC micro,
therefore disk drives were both cheap and widely available, also the
disks themselves were also standard, ie 5.25" (800K DS/DD), then later
3.5" (800K DS/DD).
The ROM of the DISCiPLE is supplied with the emulator, together with
two version of the D.O.S. pre-loaded in RAM. The ROM of the Plus D
interface is not supplied, for copyright reasons. The emulator will
only emulate a Plus D interface if it can find a file PLUSDROM.BIN in
the emulator's own directory. If you have a Plus D yourself, you can
transfer the ROM in the following way. Load the operating system from
a Plus D system diskette, and save the entire ROM, together with the
operating system, to disk by entering SAVE d1"rom" CODE 0,16384. Then,
start the emulator and choose hardware mode Spectrum 48K + Disciple
(not Plus D of course), then type LOAD d1"rom" CODE 32768. Finally,
press F10, X, S for Save Data block, set start address and length to
8000 and 4000 (hexadecimal) respectively, and save the ROM under the
name PLUSDROM.BIN. If you re-start the emulator now, it will emulate
the Plus D too.
4.4 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - The basic commands
There are several levels of commands that can be used, these range from
the most straightforward everyday use, to the more advanced, programmer
type commands.
I will first explain the most common commands, so that you can quickly
and easily access DISCiPLE and Plus D disks. Where a 1 is used in the
following commands 2 could be used instead. These commands are:-
RUN - when no D.O.S. (system file) is loaded it will cause this to
be loaded. Otherwise it will just run the BASIC PROGRAM. Please
note that with the emulator the system file is already loaded,
therefore this command is not required, although I have
explained it for completeness.
CAT 1 - will display a longhand catalogue of the disk drive selected.
The form of this catalogue is as follows:-
program no., program name, sectors used, file type,
file size
CAT * - will display a longhand catalogue of the currently selected disk
drive in the same form as described above.
CAT 1! - displays a shorthand catalogue of the disk drive selected.
This catalogue consists of a 3 column list of the filename of
the programs.
CAT *! - displays a shorthand catalogue of the current disk drive.
LOAD pn - p - letter p, n - number between 1 & 80. This is the program
number of the file on the disk, the program number is the
number printed before the name in the longhand catalogue.
LOAD d1"name" - load from drive 1 the program called name
LOAD d*"name" - load from the current drive the program called name
LOAD d1"name" S - load an 48K snapshot from drive 1 called name
LOAD d1"name" K - load an 128K snapshot from drive 1 called name
LOAD d1;a$ - load from drive 1 the program whose name is held in the
string a$
LOAD d*;a$ - load from the current drive the program whose name is held
in the string a$
FORMAT d1 - format the disk in drive 1
4.5 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - More advanced commands
In the previous section I explained enough of the commands so that you
could get to use the floppy disks with DISCiPLE/Plus D software on. Now
I am going to explain the commands that the more experienced user and
those who want to do just a little bit more than just load the
programs.
First of all comes the simple commands of SAVE, MERGE, VERIFY and LOAD.
All of these commands are the same as rge tape versions except that you
have d1, d2 or d* after the LOAD, SAVE etc. There are only two
exceptions to this rule, the first is when you have a string for the
filename, in this case the command becomes:-
LOAD d1;n$ ....... etc
LOAD d*;n$ ....... etc
The second exception is actually an extension. When you save a code
block, you can actually get it to autorun when it is loaded by adding a
third parameter to the SAVE command, e.g. if you had a code block from
40000 to 45000 and the run address was 41023 and you wanted it to be
called testcode to drive 1, you would save it as:-
SAVE d1"testcode"CODE 40000,5001,41023
Now for the extensions.
Any sector on the disk may be loaded to any area of RAM from 16384 to
65535-512. The sector may also be loaded into the RAM of the interface,
however caution should be used at all times when doing this, as you may
destroy the operating system or cause it to behave irrationally.
The syntax of the command is:-
LOAD @n,tr,sec,add
Where:-
n = drive number, ie 1 or 2, note * may not be used!
tr = track number => 0->79=side 0, 128->207=side 1
sec = sector number => 1->10 normally, may not be 0! If you
try and load a sector that is sector 0,
then the operating system will crash!
You may also save to disk in the same way, so if you wanted to write to
Track 5, Side 0, Sector 3 with code from 32768 to 33279 to drive 1 you
would type:-
SAVE @1,5,3,32768
To format a disk all you need to type is:-
FORMAT d1 or FORMAT d2
This is not however as simple as it seems! Although a disk formatted
on the DISCiPLE/Plus D will work with the PC it does not work the other
way round, i.e. a disk formatted on the PC with this emulator will not
necessarily work on the DISCiPLE/Plus D. This is because of differences
of the floppy disk controller chips. With the PC, it puts a special
byte at the beginning of each track to tell the controller whether the
disk is Double Density or High Density, and the spectrum floppy disk
controller does not understand this byte and therefore will not read
the track! If you find this otherwise, then please write and let us
know about it.
You can set some of the D.O.S. system variables using an extended POKE
command. The syntax is:-
POKE @address,value
The address is the BASE address of the system variables of the
interface concerned, the BASE address for each of the interfaces is
different, but the address you use in the POKE command is the same.
4.6 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - The snapshot button
The snapshot button is a button which is used to stop the processor
from executing instructions and making it do something else. In the
case of the DISCiPLE/PLUS D the button can do 5 different tasks
initially. Later on I'll discuss how the fuctions can be altered so
that it can do other tasks. Once these tasks are carried out, the
processor is returned to it's original state and the program continues
from where it left off from.
There are 5 functions that can be carried out with the initial system
file.
To use the button, first you must get to a point in the program that
you want to use the button at, then press the button on the emulator
the snapshot button is F5 (NMI). Once you do this the program will
stop and the border of the computer will flash, this may also be
accompanied with a buzzing noise on the speaker. This is to tell you
that the snapshot button has been activated. The following functions
can then be carried out:-
1 - Print screen to printer in black/white screen size
2 - Print screen to printer in grey scale A4 size
3 - Snapshot screen to disk in SCREEN$ format
4 - Snapshot program to disk in 48K SNAP format
5 - Snapshot program to disk in 128K SNAP format
SPACE - go back to program (ie if F5 was pressed by mistake)
The printer options will print out to EPSON compatible printers,
however the DISCiPLE code has been changed and it is now possible to
print to HPGL printers (e.g. Deskjet and Laserjet printers).
The Snapshot screen and snapshot 48K are very self explanatory and easy
to use.
The Snapshot 128K is slightly more complicated. Once you select this
option the disk drive will start up then after a slight pause the
screen display may/may not change. The border flashes again and you
have to press y or n depending on whether the screen display changed or
not. If the screen stayed the same then press n, but if the screen
changed type y. This is because the 128K spectrum has 2 screens, and
there is no way for the computer to determine which is being used by
itself, therefore it needs the user's help. After you press y or n the
program will be saved onto disk.
Seeing it is possible for you to load programs into the DISCiPLE/PLUS D
RAM area it is possible to have these interfaces carry out other tasks.
The snapshot button code is located in RAM, so you can therefore load a
program into this part of the RAM and as soon as you press the snapshot
button it will execute the new program. There is one problem however,
which is that the program must be written in assembly language and must
also be compiled for running in that part of RAM, also it must take
care of what it does because the SPECTRUM ROM is not paged in,
therefore ROM calls are not easily carried out.
There are several different commercial programs which use the snapshot
button to carry out different tasks, some of these are:-
Snapshot compressing programs
Debugging tools
Cheat finders for games
Programs to allow snapshots back onto tape
The list is endless, and if you are capable of writing a machine-code
program and have the relevant information, then you too could write
your own programs.
4.7 The DISCiPLE and Plus D Interfaces - The system variables
The system variables reside in the RAM of the interface, and cannot be
read of changed by using the normal POKE statement. For access to
these locations the designer of the Disciple and +D ROM has implemented
the POKE @x,y command. It changes the value at address (#0298+x) in
the interface's RAM. Here are the system variables, with their
meaning. Default values are between brackets.
Note that when y (the second argument) of a POKE @ command is larger
than 255, it is interpreted as a word, and it is poked at locations x
and x+1. Handy for locations 14 and 16.
POKE @0: (7) Border change mask when reading/writing disks
POKE @1: (80+128=208) Number of tracks of drive 1. 128 means DS
POKE @2: (208) Same for drive 2
POKE @3: (6) Step rate in ms (may not be lower than 6)
POKE @4: (1) Network (0=off, 1=master, 2..10=assistant, 11..63=slave)
POKE @5: (80) Printer line width (# of chars printed before CR is
inserted)
POKE @6: (0) Control code conversion (0=on, 1=off)
POKE @7: (12) Printer line feed when printing graphics (1/72th inches)
POKE @8: (1) Number of Line Feeds (10) inserted after each CR (13)
POKE @9: (0) Left margin: number of spaces printed after each CR
POKE @10:(0) Convert some characters into graphics (0=off, 1=on)
POKE @11:(0) Enable MGT Centronics printer interface (0=yes,
1=route to standard "p" channel, i.e. ZX Printer)
POKE @12:(word 0) Unused
POKE @14:(word 0) Basic extension call vector
POKE @16:(word #3b0) Basic extension call vector (I think)
The default value of variable 10 was changed to 0. Previous rom images
supplied with Z80 had @11 set to 1 (printer disabled) and @8 to 0
(don't add line feeds), but these were not Disciple/+D defaults, so
they were changed back in version 3.05.
4.8 The Spectrum 128
The main new features of the Spectrum 128 are its larger memory, that
can be used as a Ram drive in Basic, and music capabilities.
The Ram drive is accessed via the LOAD!, SAVE!, ERASE! and CAT!
commands. They work as you would expect. Examples:
SAVE !"name"SCREEN$
CAT!
LOAD !"name"SCREEN$
ERASE !"name"
The 3 channel sound chip of the Spectrum 128 can be used in Basic with
the PLAY command. Example:
PLAY "cde","efg","gAB"
plays three chords. You can program complex effects, melodies and
rhythms with the play command; they require many commands in the three
voice strings which I won't explain... They are explained in the
Spectrum 128's user guide.