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. The only exception is X, Extra functions, for which no function keys were available anymore. If you're somewhere deep in the menu structure of 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 five configurations you can choose: a normal Spectrum 48K with or without Interface I, a Spectrum 128K with or without Interface I, and a Spectrum with Interface I and SamRam. Switching to another mode will by default reset the Spectrum. If you don't want this to happen, press CTRL-ENTER instead of ENTER when you've made your choice. It cannot be guaranteed however that the Spectrum won't crash or behave weirdly, for obvious reasons. Going from a Spectrum 128 to a normal Spectrum will almost always crash it, except if you enter the SPECTRUM command before switching.
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. As is already said above, 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.
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. 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, double interrupt frequency 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, so keep track of that.
The Change Settings menu pops up if you press F4. You can do many things here, and I won't explain them all here. The I and O options can be used to redirect the RS232 output; see paragraph 2.6 for information on this.
| R: | R - register emulation, and |
| L: | LDIR emulation |
| 2: | Issue 2 emulation will turn the emulated Spectrum in an Issue 2 Spectrum. (This option also works, but is ridiculous, in Spectrum 128 mode). Some very old programs (Spinads) will not respond to the keyboard properly on Issue 3 Spectrums, and for these programs this option was added. Seldom needed. |
| F: | fast flash makes flashing go twice as fast. Not very useful. |
| S: | sound enables you to turn off all sound, useful for late-night playing. |
| D: | double 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 the other hand, some programs will crash with this option active. |
| 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. (For a slightly more detailed discussion of this option see section 5.1) |
| J: | joystick emulation specifies which Spectrum joystick the PC cursor keys (and analogue or digital joystick, if it is available) control. You can choose from Cursor (default), Kempston, Interface 1 and 2. As I already said above, if Cursor joystick is chosen, the Num-Lock key controls whether Shift is pressed too if the PC cursor keys are pressed. (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.) |
| 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. |
F5 generates an NMI. Only useful if in SamRam mode; otherwise it may reset the Spectrum or (sometimes) crash a program. 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 speed-saved games from tape; see below for more information.
F7 and F8 activate the tape- and microdrive-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. From this menu you can also shell to DOS, and save or load a screen snapshot: a 6912 byte file with extension .SCR that contains a dump of the screen information. This enables you to very easily transfer screens from one Spectrum program to another. The .SCR files can be converted to .GIF or .PCX files by the CONVERT program, available to registered users.
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.