Since we are talking about
IBM, will talk about "virtual"
Spectrum, I mean about emulators.
This part of the letter could be labeled "emulator that we
choose (or rather, not choose, so how to choose a practical and
not anything else ...)
A short time after
acquisition of IBM, for all the remaining money we booked in
Inforkome 'UKV Spectrum Debugger' (Author - K. Uglekov). After
the first enthusiastic saver "(C) 1986 Sinclair Research Ltd.
"At PC, we began to explore the emulator.
With all the merits of the program (FDI-wheels, and a
debugger etc.) we would like to mention
about its shortcomings identified in the
process.
One of the biggest drawbacks is poorly controlled speed
emulator - by our Pentium 100 programs
do not use the HALT, working "a little" quickening (5-10
times), even in the Realtime Remulation at Realtime Delay = 1
work ZEUS'e impossible.
Further, all of our friends
emulator refused to read discs formatted on the Spectrum, while
we all CDs are read without problems - apparently it in the
controller. Although even we have observed the following
paradox: some disks perfectly readable from the emulator
refuses to read the program MAKEFDI ...
The following generally applies to
the category of science fiction: some programs incomprehensible
contrive a way to spoil ROM
Virtual Spectrum and
further work to restart the emulator. A Satisfaction Megademo,
according to the author emulator - running without problems,
run only one AGAIN! The second time it can start only after
rewriting File SP_EMU.EXE and SP_EMU.BIN with
archive disk to the hard drive.
Conclusion suggests itself:
Satisfaction Megademo wonderful
way spoil one of these two
(MS-DOS!) Files ...
And now about compatibility.
Despite the fact that the emulation
SH-93 is produced at
I / O ports when using an emulated program
unconventional entry points in TRDOS observed various
unpleasant effects, ranging from beatings heads the drive to
stop and ending with a full hanging or resetting Spectrum
program. What's interesting, when you run these programs from
the hard drive (FDI-file), they usually are loaded properly.
Few of the interface built-in debugger. It would be nice,
if it was like not to Turbo
Debugger, and the beloved
STS. For example, switching windows
disassembler is made by pressing F6, although
arrow keys are free ... It is also very hampered by the
fact that all the numbers in the debugger shows in HEX'e, and
when you enter a new command the same number have entered in
decimal form - not it be easier to make in STS'e: when, for
example, DEC or HEX-system, all parameters
enter into it.
Incidentally, it is unclear why in
input parameters for functions
Write block Write text and the second
a numeric parameter (length) must enter a comma-separated
several times, otherwise length of the resulting file will be
zero ...
In spite of all, UKV Spectrum
Debugger - pretty good
emulator, and we hope that our comments will prompt the author
to creating a new version of the program,
in which the above disadvantages are eliminated.
And now for another emulator
who has fallen into our hands recently - Z80TRDOS (author - G.
Lunter, adaptation to the TR-DOS - B. Mochalin).
Frankly, we did not expect
this emulator is nothing good,
and were surprised huge
number of service functions,
enabled printer, joystick,
mouse, Interface-I, and more
another ...
The emulator is fully adapted to TRDOS, normally reads
most of the discs (with the exception
constitute only discs that have the address label sector
listed the number of 0 / 1, for
normal reading it is always
must be 0), emulates even
click "track record" (however, the "Read Track" is still not
performed). Normally loaded even INSULT MEGADEMO!
The emulator allows you to clearly regulate the rate in%, is
emulation mode screen -
while there are curbs
Multicolor effects and allows you to choose the configuration
of the Spectrum - from Sp48 to Sp128 + Interface-I + Multiface.
You can reassign the findings
ports, output audio on Sound
Blaster or PC Speaker, using the RS-232 and much, much
more ...
Perhaps the only drawback is the inability to reassign the
emulator Drives A / B, but according to the author, the next
version it will be realized, as well as support "Reading track,
and virtual CDs!
