Sinclair ZX80 / ZX81 Forums

[gus]

If you are at office and comes your boss maybe you the first thing that you do is a very fast ESC keystroke.... mmmm well in that case you will be complicated, because you are changing to full screen !!!
Of course you need a boss that can figure out the difference between the ADV8K and your Development enviroment , not my case
Gus

[BrunoFlorindo]

Hm, I thought this was a thread about problems with the emulator. I'm having a few issues with it and also have a few questions for Mike. I guess I should make a list first.

edit:

I guess I'll just copy/paste the notes that I had in a txt file:

eighty-one: ql emulation never starts, load from audio source doesn't work yet,
support of .p and .o files?, speed? everything is too slow, even loading from
a wav file takes longer than what it would take on a real ts2068.
support of TS2068 joystick is really needed for some joystick-only programs. Maybe it could be emulated
with PC cursor keys and a redefinable key for fire?
Emulator drags and key click sounds twice.

[Mike]

eighty-one: ql emulation never starts, load from audio source doesn't work yet,
support of .p and .o files?, speed? everything is too slow, even loading from
a wav file takes longer than what it would take on a real ts2068.
support of TS2068 joystick is really needed for some joystick-only programs. Maybe it could be emulated
with PC cursor keys and a redefinable key for fire?
Emulator drags and key click sounds twice.

Hmmm, quite a list

The QL emulation is incomplete, which is why it never starts properly. Normally, the button isn't available in release builds but I forgot to disable it before release.

.p .o files? These are fully supported - are you having a problem with them?

Speed - Are you talking specificly about the TS2068? I have yet to find any accurate timing information on the machine, so most of my timing is nothing more than guesses. However, if you can give me information regarding number of clock cycles per scanline, how many scanlines are generated etc, I'll update the timing information.

Sound is messed up in all machines. The sound itself is generated correctly, but I'm using a nasty DirectSound hack. This is what I'm working on at the present - hopefully sound will be significantly better in the next release.

Mike

[BrunoFlorindo]

Hi Mike, thanks for replying.

The .o and .p files was not a problem. I simply didn't see it under the option to load tapes.

About the speed, it's not just the TS2068, but all the ZX machines too. I don't have any data on specific timings, but if you could (for the sake of comparison) run VB81 or Spectaculator, you'll see the difference in speed.

Thanks for the explanation regarding the other issues. I really like EightyOne, mainly because of the TS2068 emulation. It's the only way to test if the TZXs work or not before uploading them to the TS2068YG.

[Mike]

Speed and sound emulation are linked. I think the speed issue is due to the inaccurate timer I'm using - once I've rewritten the sound code, the timing will then depend on the accuracy of how fast DirectSound empties it's buffer (Hopefully, 44.1khz is really 44.1khz etc) and the speed will be more accurate.

Mike

[Paul Panks]

I'm having a problem with loading .p or .o files. Once I select them, it should automatically LOAD "", but it doesn't. In previous uses of Eighty-One, I never had a problem with it. Now I do. Is this an error?

Paul

[sirmorris]

Open the tape manager window and make sure all the buttons are depressed. Drag a program onto the main window and it should auto-flashload.

Shout if it doesn't work for you.

[Paul Panks]

Only the stop button is depressed. The other buttons aren't. I can't seem to get the window from full screen back to a smaller window. How do I do that? I can't drag programs into the window when it is full screen.

Paul

[sirmorris]

Pressing ESC usually does it for me.
Is it that the window is just very large because it's zoomed? If so View->Zoom->100% should do it.

C

[Mike]

I'm having a problem with loading .p or .o files. Once I select them, it should automatically LOAD "", but it doesn't. In previous uses of Eighty-One, I never had a problem with it. Now I do. Is this an error?

You can turn on/off auto loading of files by opening the Tape Manager (Options->Tape Manager), then ensuring the three top right hand buttons are selected as in the picture below... If you hover over them, you can see what they do.

Mike