Brotikasten/BROTCD01.iso/cpc/cpe.txt

Text File | 1995-03-08 | 27KB | 489 lines

  CCCCC
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  CCCCC  PPPPP
             PP                  An Amstrad CPC emulator
             PP
             PP                  Copyright 1991-1994 Bernd Schmidt
         PPPPP
         PP                      This program is public domain. You may
         PP                      distribute it freely, provided that you
         PP     EEEEE            do not charge a fee of more than DM 8,-
               EE   EE           or the equivalent in any other currency
               EEEEEE            for copying the disk and provided that
               EE                you always distribute the whole archive
                EEEEE   V.4.7i   including all the files.

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1. What is this then?

This is a doc file. It belongs to a program called CPE, which can emulate an
Amstrad CPC on your IBM compatible 386-AT. All files in this distribution are
public domain, you may distribute them freely, but you may not charge more
than a fee of DM 8,- for copying. You must preserve the original contents of
the archive, you may not modify any of the files, you may not omit or add files
if you distribute the package. There is no warranty on any of the included
programs, you use them absolutely at your own risk. The author refuses to
accept any responsibility for any damages whatsoever you or your computer
system, or in fact anything may take from using any of the supplied programs.

Be warned that you COULD in fact damage your monitor if you are careless!!
Do not press F2 without reading this manual first!

None of the programs or data supplied may be used for military purposes. I
doubt that they CAN be used for military purposes, but anyway...
If you don't agree with these terms, delete everything and forget about CPE.
But you will miss a lot...

Mind you, this is freeware, not shareware. I am not asking you for any
payment, so don't send me money. But do write me if you like this program!
Any comments, suggestions or bug reports are highly welcome.

Share and Enjoy!

und nocheinmal auf deutsch, damit niemand sagen kann, er haette die Passage
nicht verstanden: Benutzung der Programme auf eigene Gefahr, der Autor
uebernimmt keine Haftung fuer irgendwelche Schaeden, die durch die Benutzung
des Programms entstehen, sei es durch sachgemaesse oder unsachgemaesse
Verwendung. Druecken Sie nicht F2, ohne vorher diese Datei gelesen zu haben,
Sie koennten Ihren Monitor unter Umstaenden beschaedigen.
Um dummen Fragen vorzubeugen: Nein, auf dieser HP-Workstation gibt es KEINE
Umlaute.

2. General information

2.1. The Amstrad CPC family

A couple of years ago 8 bit homecomputers were very popular. The best seller
among these was the Commodore 64, but another family of computers was also
very successful in many countries. These were the Amstrad CPCs (they were
distributed under other names in some countries, e.g. you may own a Schneider
CPC if you live in Germany).

There were three different models:
- The CPC464. Released in 1984; it had 32K ROM, 64K RAM and a built-in
  cassette recorder, sitting next to the keyboard. The ROM included the
  Amstrad operating system and Locomotive BASIC 1.0, which was very good.
  You could buy external floppy drives, the one sold by Amstrad used 3-inch
  disks, which were incredibly expensive, since no other computer manufacturers
  used these for their own systems (apart from exotic models like one called
  "Einstein", for example). There were a couple of companies which sold floppy
  drives using 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch disks, but these never were of much
  importance. Included with Amstrad's disk drives was the at that time still
  very widely used disk operating system CP/M 2.2, so that many applications
  became available for the CPC; only the disks did not fit in the 3" drives...
- The CPC664 was the next step in the development. It no longer had a cassette
  recorder to the right of the keyboard, but a 3" floppy disk drive instead.
  The operating system and BASIC ROMs were a little improved, BASIC now had a
  few extra commands and the version number 1.1. The 16K floppy ROM was of
  course already present, so that this computer had a total of 48K ROM.
  It was released in mid-1985.
- Only a couple of months later, Amstrad presented the CPC6128. It was
  basically a CPC664 with the double amount of RAM: incredible 128K! There
  were minor changes in the ROMs, but the increased amount of memory was in
  no way supported by BASIC. To use it, you had to load special banking
  software from disk. Amstrad also supplied a new version of CP/M: CP/M Plus
  or 3.0, which could use the extra memory, so that the problems some programs
  had with the limited memory of the older models were history. After the
  release of the CPC6128, production of the CPC664 was abandoned.

The differences between the systems are small compared to the features they
all have in common:
- the processor: a Zilog Z80A, an 8-bit CPU running at 4MHz, derived from
  INTeLs 8080.
- the video chip: a Motorola CRTC 6845. Together with the Gate Array it is
  responsible for the generation of a video signal. The CPCs knew three video
  modes:
    mode 0: resolution 160x200 pixel, 16 out of 27 colors + border
    mode 1: resolution 320x200 pixel,  4 out of 27 colors + border
    mode 2: resolution 640x200 pixel,  2 out of 27 colors + border
  Needless to say, most games used modes 0 and 1.
- the sound chip: An AY-3-8192; with three independent sound channels, and one
  noise generator. The same chip was later used in the Atari ST computers.
  Some mean people say it has FOUR noise generators.
- the memory management: Although the Z80 CPU only has a 16 bit address bus,
  thus being merely able to address 65536 bytes of memory, you can (in theory)
  use hundreds of kilobytes of RAM and even thousands of kilobytes of ROM.
  This is made possible by the gate array chip, which implements RAM- and
  ROM-banking in the CPC. The 64K that are seen by the CPU are divided into
  4 blocks of 16K each, and by programming the banking registers you can make
  the Z80 access different blocks of memory at the same address. So, the
  highest memory bank (addresses C000-FFFF) usually contains the video RAM,
  but you can als access the BASIC and floppy ROMs at the same addresses.
- All models were only sold together with a monitor. You could either choose a
  color monitor (CTM 644) or, if you did not have THAT much money, a green
  monitor (GT65). These were not just monitors, they also included the mains
  adaptor. The CPC464 received its 5V supply from the monitor, the two later
  models also needed a 12V supply for the floppy disk. It was a very effective
  way of preventing the users to buy other monitors than those manufactured
  by Amstrad.
- There was similar trouble with the printer port. Instead of fitting the
  usual 8 bit Centronics port, Amstrad invented something a LOT more useful:
  The 7 bit Centronics port! It was just another way to prevent users from
  buying external devices from other companies than Amstrad, since Amstrad
  alone built 7-bit printers. But Amstrad had less success here than in the
  case of the monitor; many users owned »alien« printers.
- the joystick port: Amstrad also produced joysticks, and of course they did
  not want CPC users to buy other (better) joysticks than their own, so
  they fitted the CPCs with only one joystick port instead of two. To use two
  joysticks, you had to plug an Amstrad joystick into the computer and plug
  the second joystick into the first - it was the only joystick ever with a
  built-in joystick port!

2.2. The emulator

This is version 4.7i of the emulator; the i means INTeL. In fact, you get two
emulators with this version, one is called CPE.EXE and the other one is called
CPE2.EXE. If you have a fast machine (>=486DX2-66) you probably want to use
CPE2.EXE, which can run at the exact speed of a real CPC and supports graphics
a lot better (especially when it comes to multi-mode multi-colo