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Text File | 1997-01-08 | 22.1 KB | 586 lines

--------------------------------------------------------- | | | _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ | | _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ | | _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ | | _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ | | _/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ By B.Rive | | | | (Macintosh version) | --------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CPC++, A C++ Amstrad CPC emulator Copyright (C) 1996 Brice Rive Version 1.2.1 CPC++ contains ROM images which are copyright Amstrad and/or Locomotive software, and are distributed in good faith, on the understanding that the copyright owners have given permission for these images to be included with shareware CPC emulators. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Contents: _Introduction _Registration _10 reasons why... _Where can I find programs _Launching CPC++ _Unregistered / registered mode _Menu commands _Disk image files _Snapshots _External ROMs _Using a CPC _Keyboard mapping _History _Credits ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Introduction CPC++ is a shareware Amstrad CPC emulator.If you don't know what an Amstrad CPC is, go have a look at Kevin Thacker's Web site: (http://andercheran.aiind.upv.es/~amstrad) CPC++ is a very accurate emulation of the Amstrad CPC computers. It should let you do anything you could do with a real CPC. If you find any incompatibility, please send me a mail describing it at: bricerive@kagi.com or brice@worldnet.fr -Features: 15mn evaluation session time Compatible with most games and many demos (see compatibility list). Compatible with CP/M 2.2 & 3.0 Speed equivalent to a real CPC on a PowerMac 7200 Emulation of 464, 664, and 6128 models Full emulation of Z80 instruction set Exact emulation of Z80 instruction timings Exact emulation of Z80 R register Full emulation of CPC graphics at the scanline resolution Full CPC Sound emulation Full Floppy disc controller emulation (with timings) Joystick emulation on the keyboard Read DSK, EDSK, DIF disk image files Read snapshot file (.SNA) Digiblaster emulation Printer output to file Emulation speed indicator Overrideable on-board ROMs External ROMs support Configurable keyboard -Registered version: Unlimited session time No annoying startup timer Save EDSK disk image files Save Snapshot files. CPC++ is coded in C++ to allow for easy porting under various platforms. The original release runs under SunOS (UNIX), but other platforms will be added in the future (check out http://www.worldnet.fr/~brice/cpc for latest news). You can also send me (bricerive@kagi.com or brice@worldnet.fr) a mail to be added to the mail list and receive notification of new releases. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Registration CPC++ is shareware. When you pay the shareware fee, you get a key that unlocks CPC++: No more annoying startup timer Unlimited session time Snapshot file saves Disk image file saves The key is dependant on which computer you are using and under which name you are using it. If these happen to change, you will need to ask me for a new (free of course) key. There is three ways to get a registration key: -Pay me directly (100FF) -Pay me through Kagi (25$) -Contribute (you figure it out) _To register directly with me, simply mail the following: -Registration code: displayed by CPC++ -Registration fee: 100FF in French bills or French bank check. -name, e-mail or snail-mail address, phone, etc. To this address: Brice Rive, 34 Rue Vignon, 75009 Paris (France) In return I will e-mail (or mail) you the registration key. _To register through Kagi: -Send me your registration code either by mailing it directly to me (bricerive@kagi.com), or by inserting it in the Register program's form, in the comments field (the text icon just left of CPC++ vX.X.X). -Open the Register program that comes with CPC++ and enter the following: - Your full name - Your e-mail address - The number of licenses you want -Save, Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send it with your payment to Kagi. They will handle the payment processing. The exact way to do that depends on your payment method: If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is sales@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number. Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement. If you are paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is: Kagi 1442-A Walnut Street #392-B6 Berkeley, California 94709-1405 USA You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD checks is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical. If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment. Kagi can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end. Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed. Payments send via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed. -When I receive you code and notification from Kagi that you registered, I will send you the registration key by e-mail (or by mail). _To contribute to CPC++: Alternatively, if you don't wish to pay the fee, but would like to be registered, you can offer to help with CPC++' developpement. Help can be writting documentation, porting, thourough testing, etc. Mail me your suggestions (bricerive@kagi.com or brice@worldnet.fr). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 reasons why you should register: 100FF for a virtual CPC, it's cheap ! Using CPC++ with a limited session time is a pain ! How can I finish Gryzor if I can't save snapshots ! The time I would spend hacking out the key is worth more than 100FF ! This really is the best CPC emulator, I need to say it somehow ! The author probably needs some support in his efforts ! I really would like improvements on CPC++ ! Shareware CAN work, let me show you ! I have 100FF, why not do something usefull with it ! Most people do register, why not me? 10 reasons why you should not register: 100FF for a virtual CPC, it's a ripoff ! I love being thrown out of Renegade when I'm about to kill the boss ! I can finish Gryzor with only one life ! I love spending hours on stealing from my fellow programmers ! This emulator is crap, can't even run Roland in Time ! I hate jerks who really believe I would give them a penny ! Who cares for improvements, this emulator is crap ! Shareware is just a way for me to rip off dummier people than me ! I'd rather spend my 100FF on ice cream ! Nobody ever registers, I wont be the first. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Where can I find programs Many programs for CPC can be found on the net. Checkout Kevin's page below for more info. The main ftp site for games is: ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/cpc I developped a system that allows you to transfer full CPC disks from your CPC to a Mac. It uses the printer port of the CPC to emulate a RS432 serial link. It is called CPCTERM and you can find it on my Web Page (http://www.worldnet.fr/~brice). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Launching CPC++: You can launch CPC++ by: Double-clicking on the application Double-clicking on a disk image file Double-clicking on a snapshot file Dropping a disk image file on the application Dropping a snapshot file on the application ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Unregistered / registered mode: In unregistered mode, CPC++ will constantly display a green/red bar at the top of its screen. This is an indicator of how much time there is left in the session. This indicator disapears in the registered mode. Unregistered mode also disables the save options in the Disks and Snapshots menu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Menu commands File:Reset: Resets the virtual CPC. Like turning power off and on. File:Preferences:License: License Code: the code you need to send me when you register. License Key: where you enter the registration key you will receive from me whem you register. Note that letters must be entered in capitals. File:Preferences:Speed: Frame Rate: tells CPC++ how many frames it should actualy refresh on the macintosh screen. If it is set to 1, you get full CPC screen refresh. If higher than 1, CPC++ will skip some frame thus increading its overall speed but degrading the animations. Speed Limit: tells CPC++ how fast it can go. 4 is the speed of a real CPC. You can use than to slow down CPC++ in though game phases. Wait for sound: tells CPC++ to wait for each block of sound to be rendered before doing the next. If marked, the sound will be best but the emulation will not go higher than a real CPC speed. If unmarked, the emulation can go as fast at the speed limit allows, but the sound might be chopped. Responsivness: Controls how much time CPC++ will spend processing Macintosh events. If you set it to selfish or cpu-hog, the emulator will run faster, but you will have to be patient if you want it to answer to events (like menu selection or mouse click) File:Preferences:Startup: Floppy in drive A: lets you specify a disk image path, for the disk you want in drive A when CPC++ starts up. If empty, CPC++ will have no disk in drive A at startup Floppy in drive B: same as above for drive B Startup snapshot: Lets you specify a snapshot file path that you want CPC++ to load at startup. If empty, CPC++ will start normally. Startup command: lets you specify a command that will be ghost-typed on CPC++'s keyboard just after starting up. This is usefull if you have indicated a disk in one of the drives and you want the virtual CPC to automatically start a program on it when it launches. CPM boot: The actual CPC has a jumper on it's main board that let's it automatically boot CP/M on startup (instead of the Basic). This option only works when you have a CP/M disk in drive A. The mechanism used for this feature is to change the AMSDOS ROM address, thus making it the front ROM (see external ROMs). Constructor: Another jumper that is present on a real CPC is a three bit Constructor ID. These are only used at startup to display the correct constructor name. File:Preferences:Configuration: Model: lets you select which model (464,664,6128) will be emulated by CPC++. Note that changing this will require a restart of the virtual CPC (it is not the same anymore). Color/Monochrom: lets you select wether CPC++ is emulating a color or monochrom monitor. Digiblaster: turns on digiblaster emulation. The digiblaster is a simple electronic extension that let's the CPC play 8 bit sampled sounds through it's printer interface. When turned on, the Digiblaster emulation will disable normal printer emulation. You need some digiblaster software (PROTRACKER,DIGITRACKER) to see it work. File:Preferences:Emulation: VSync INT forced: tells CPC++ to force an interrupt at VSync. This is not the correct emulation, but it helps getting some programs to work. Try to turn it on if you see a program that seem to hang. VSync HReses Pos: Controls the position of interrupts relative to the VSync signal. It should normaly be set to 3 but some programs will work better if it is set to 4. Try it if a program that uses screen splitting techniques seems to be off by one line. Real Time: tells the FDC (Floppy Disc Controller) emulation to simulate the time it takes to do disk accesses. This option slow down disk accesses, but it is needed for programs such as Discology which rely on timing to analyze disk contents. DD Error Protection: Some disk copy protections use a physically damaged sector (Archon,...). Reading such a sector several times returns random data, which is used by the protection to identify original disks versus copies. To emulate a damaged sector, turn this option on. DSK Seek Fix: Some DSK files found on the net (BTL, ...) do not exactely respect the DSK file format definition. This option will let CPC++ read them anyway. CRTC Model: The different models of CPC did not have all exactly the same CRTC (Cathod Ray Tube Controller). Although the three variants I know of behave pretty much the same way, they have some tiny differences which will make certain programs (mostly demos) work on one and not the other. The differences are: A = Registers can be read B = Register 3 controls VSync pulse width C = HSync position can be higher than 48 The models are (arbitrarely numbered): A B C Model 0 Yes Yes Yes Model 1 No No Yes Model 2 No No No Default: Lets you reset all these obscure parameters to their default value. File:Preferences:Keyboard: This dialog lets you customize the mapping between the CPC keyboard and your Macintosh keyboard. To map two keys together, hold down the Mac key and, without releasing it, click on the corresponding CPC key. If you click on a CPC key without holding down a Mac key, the dialog will tell you the current mapping. The default button lets you reset the mapping to it's default. File:Quit: Terminates your CPC session. Control:Pause Pauses/unpauses the virtual CPC. Control:Speed indicator: Show/hide the speed indicator. The indicator bar tells you how fast the emulator is running relative to a real CPC. The first mark indicates the speed of a CPC, the second is twice the speed of a CPC ... Control:Full CPC Screen / Quarter size: Selects the size of the CPC display. You can only use full screen if your monitor is at least 832x580. Otherwise, you'll have to stick with the quarter size screen. You can also toggle between the two by clicking on the screen window. Control:Sound: Activate/Deactivate sound rendering Control:Volume: Lets you select the overall volume of the sound emulation. It does not control the volume of the disk insert sound or other gizmos. Drive A:Select Disk Image: Loads a disk image file into the drive (see disk image files below). This is equivalent to inserting a disk in the drive. The get file dialog only displays disk images if they have the correct type. To load untyped disk images, select the All Files option. Drive A:Save Disk Image: Lets you update a disk image dile with the contents of the emulated disk. Don't forget to do that before quitting if you have done some work on the disk. Drive A:Flip Disk: If the disk image file in the drive is double-sided, or if it's name ends either in .A or .B, this command lets you flip it. Drive A:Eject Disk: Ejects the current disk. Disk accesses will fail after that until you insert a new disk. Snapshot:Save Snapshot: Saves the current state of the virtual CPC into a snapshot file. Snapshot:Load Snapshot: Loads the virtual CPC with the contents of a snapshot file (see snapshots below). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Disk image files They are disk images either in DIF format (the one generated by CPCTERM), in DSK format (the standard), or in EDSK (extended DSK) format. When you load a disk image file, CPC++ create an image of it in memory. All subsequent work on the disk is done in memory. To update the actual disk image file, you will need to save it. To enable all the features of disk image files, you need to set their type/creator info to: DIF = cDIF/CPC+ DSK = cDSK/CPC+ EDSK= cDSK/CPC+ Setting the above info for a disk image file enables: -Launching CPC++ by double-clicking on the file (loads the file into drive A) -Launching CPC++ by dropping the file on it (loads the file into drive A) -Loading the file into drive A with double-click (if CPC++ is already running) -Loading the file into drive A by dropping it on CPC++ (if it is running) -Seeing the file in the default Select Disk Image dialog -Seeing the file with the correct icon in the finder ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Snapshots CPC++ can read and write standard (.SNA format by Marco Vieth) snapshot files. This format does not contain enough information to save and restore from some advanced programs, but is sufficient in most cases. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _External ROMs CPC++ includes the default on-board ROMs, but you can override them and also provide external ROMs by putting ROM files in CPC++'s folder. ROM files contain 32768 bytes in their data fork. They are recognized by CPC++ based on their file name. Overriding the on-board ROMs: The on-board ROMs have the following names: CPC 464 kernel ROMLO464 CPC 464 basic ROMHI464 CPC 664 kernel ROMLO664 CPC 664 basic ROMHI664 CPC 6128 kernel ROMLO6128 CPC 6128 basic ROMHI6128 If you want, for example, to use french (AZERTY) ROM in the 6128 emulation instead of the provided english (QWERTY) ROM: name the file that contains the kernel ROMLO6128, and the file that contains the basic ROMHI6128 put those files in CPC++'s folder restart CPC++ or reset the virtual CPC Providing external ROMs: External ROMs can be recognized by CPC++ using the following names: ROMXTxxx Where xxx is the ROM address between 000 and 007 For example, you can replace the provided Amsdos ROM by putting a file named ROMXT007 in CPC++'s folder. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Using a CPC Using the virtual CPC is the same as using a real CPC. Here is a quick reminder of basic commands: CAT To see the contents of a disk RUN"filename.ext" To execute a program Executable program extension usualy are .BAS or .BIN A shortcut to type in the command is: type the filename type CONTROL+LEFT ARROW type CONTROL+ENTER (on numeric keypad) |CPM To launch a CP/M disk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Keyboard mapping The CPC keyboard is mapped to the Macintosh keyboard. The actual mapping uses Macintosh virtual key codes. The default provided keyboard map tries to achieve geographical mapping between the Mac and the CPC keyboard layouts (You can check the CPC layout in File:Preferences:Keyboard). Some not so obvious mappings in the default map: CPC MAC COPY Option/Alt CONTROL Control JoyUp Home JoyDown End JoyLeft Del JoyRight PageDown JoyFire Command ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _History CPC++ v1.2.1: Features: -Configurable keyboard -Graphic speed indicator -GetFloppy all files option -Sna all files option -Reset on model switch -Responsivness speed option -Movable half size window -Handling registration through Kagi.com -Default ROM build-in, use other if present -Support for external ROMs -Add FAT code to fail smoothly on non PPC Macs -Set printer output file TYPE/CREA -Better icon -uSec timing -Default button for emulation prefs Fixes: -Color 13 grey->white -Arrow down key -Smoother sound -Refresh bug when switching from large to small screen -Disable full size screen on smaller macs -check mark for sound on/off menu item -Check mark on pause -Dim saves in non-registered -Select license code in license dialog CPC++ v1.2: N/A CPC++ v1.1: First Mac release ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Credits Many thanks to the following people: -Pierre Guerrier for his reverse engineering of the CRTC/GA and tons of help and ideas on pretty much everything (and the Snapshot file icon). -Gilles Blanchard for sending me more disks to test with. -Fred Herlem for transfering all my game disks to nvg. -Richard Bannister for his help with the Mac version interface. -Kevin Thacker for maintaining the best CPC site on the net and his support (http://arachnid.cm.cf.ac.uk/User/K.E.W.Thacker/Amstrad) -Noel Llopis for maintaining the huge ftp site at nvg.unit.no -Emmanuel Roussin for helping the CPC scene and his BSS. -Everybody who registered and motivated further efforts on CPC++. -Everybody who did send suggestions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _The End. ----------------------------------------------------------------------