ZEsarUX-7.0

chernandezba

Hi!

I have uploaded a new ZEsarUX stable version :)
This is ZEsarUX 7.0
There are a lot of new features added, more than ever!

You can download the source code, as well as compiled versions for Linux, Mac, Windows and Raspberry Pi from:
https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux

The Changelog is:

Version 7.0. 25 May 2018 - Xeno edition

Added ZX-Evolution BaseConf emulation
Added BetaDisk and TR-DOS emulation
Added Spectrum +3 emulation
Added Spectrum keyboard ghosting error feature
Added ZX Spectrum Recreated keyboard support
Added improved Spectrum 16/48/+ colour palette
Added a fast spectrum core (with some features disabled) just for slow devices, like Raspberry Pi 1/Zero. Now ZEsarUX is playable on RPi1/Zero again!
Added setting to write protect IDE, MMC, ZX-Uno Flash
Added setting to show changelog when updating emulator version
Added actions to file utilities menu: Copy, Move, Rename
Added setting to disable persistent writes on IDE and MMC
Added setting to add a watermark on the display
Added setting to reduce display to a factor of 0.75. Used on RunZX event
Added setting to save spectrum screen to pbm file (black&white)
Added a setting to dump ram contents to file when exiting ZEsarUX, ideal to run automatic tests
Added setting to exit emulator after a number of seconds (--exit-after)
Added experimental simulation of the SAA1099 audio chip from the Sam Coupe
Added second Easter Egg ;)
Added third Easter Egg ;)

Improved debugging:

new enhanced debug cpu menu: view TV electron position on screen, new default view, cursor, toggle breakpoints, run to cursor, change registers, and a lot more...
added cpu-step-over function on debug menu (was already available from ZRCP)
added function to write byte to file on ZEsarUX hardware debug ports

Improved ZRCP:

run command is stopped by default when pressing a key (or sending data to the socket)
when a breakpoint is fired on cpu-step-mode, the breakpoint condition is shown on ZRCP

Improved joystick support:

added joystick test menu
buttons to events and buttons to joystick configuration are saved on configuration file

Improved OSD keyboard:

now you can press up to all 40 keys (on Spectrum/ZX80/ZX81) at the same time
now it can be opened from any place (needs multitask on)

Improved QL emulation:

experimental support of LOAD, LRUN command
can now open qlay mdv microdrive image files

Improved file viewer from file utilities:

specific file viewers for these kind of files: .tap, .zx, .zsf, .sp, .z80, .sna, .spg, .p, .o, .mmc/.ide (fat browser, plus3dos browser), .dsk, .trd, .tzx, .cdt, .flash (zxuno flash, z88 flash, superupgrade flash), .epr, .eprom
default hexadecimal file viewer for unknown files
conversion utility

Improved TSConf emulation:

added TSConf DMA, line interrupt, sprites layers
TSConf rendering: now tiles and sprites are drawn per scanline. Border drawing. Handling of scroll registers
TSConf debugging: debug for DMA, Video registers, Video layers, Sprites, Tiles
added TR-DOS emulation support

Improved menu interface:

emulated machine display is no longer faded or switched to black & white when opening menu. There were different visual glitches due to this feature
a new "tabbed" menus to improve usability and interaction with mouse, joystick and stdout driver: waveform, visualmem, ay player
Character width can be reduced to 7,6 or 5 pixels width
added a setting to limit menu event: enabling it you should press the menu key 3 times in a second to open the menu
added a setting to hide directories from file selector menus, useful when you don't want the user to be able to navigate the filesystem
Smartload: now the cursor remembers last file loaded
added two more GUI styles: Clean and CleanInverse

Improved sprite viewer:

now can see sprites with speccy screen format
you can view sprites up to 512x192
you can see tsconf sprites
you can see pseudo hires zx81 screens

Improved TBBlue emulation:

Added clip window registers
Added Copper
Added almost all next extended opcodes
Added a setting to start TBBlue directly to a 48 rom but with all the Next features enabled, useful for fast snapshot loading

Improved AY Player: now shows waveform volume meter
Improved VU meters with decay effect on AY Player, AY Registers and Waveform
Improved text mode drivers (aalib, stdout, simpletext, curses): text settings are in different submenu, setting to set stdout/simpletext fps
Improved messages windows. You can now have an internal clipboard, press key c to copy to it. Press P on file utils to paste contents to a file
Improved frameskip: better performance, because realvideo buffer is not updated when frameskip
Improved sound: Silence detector activated by default but can be disabled
Improved top speed: loading sound is distorted when setting top speed
Improved autoload: new setting to run at top speed the reset+load"" process
Improved real tape loading: now it shows a percentage of tape loaded
Improved default configuration: when the configuration file doesn't exist, the new one has the autosave configuration setting enabled
Improved configuration parsing: if unknown setting found on configuration file, ZEsarUX will open but warns about the error, and the autosave feature is not enabled
Improved rendering on text mode drivers: now realvideo mode can render directly to black&white text. Try TSConf with --vo stdout --realvideo --autoredrawstdout
Improved Linux library dependencies: libssl is not enabled by default on compilation

Fixed ZX-Uno emulation:

128kb timings are the same as a Spectrum 128k. When port 1ffd enabled, port FF return FF
Kempston port returns 0 when no kempston selected. New BIOS can be used now

Fixed TBBlue MMU when using segment 0000-3FFFH
Fixed Raster interrupts on ZX-Uno and TBBlue. Horizontal raster position was wrong
Fixed window footer when running Pentagon
Fixed panic screen: now it is shown on all machines. New design. I hope you never see it ;)
Fixed some crashes with speech enabled and opening some menus: AY Registers, AY Player, etc...
Fixed annoying sound on Dandanator rom menu
Fixed bug on Z80 cpu core, iff2 was not being reset to 0 when firing an interrupt, so reading it by using LD A,R and LD A,I affected many demos

Some other minor bugfixes and improvements

--

I hope you like it!

Cheers
Cesar

Brigane

What has this got to do with RetroPie?
This looks like you're just trying to advertise your own coded software.

dudleydes

@brigane It's available as a optional package.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/emulators/zesarux.sh

Brigane

@dudleydes I see, thank you for clearing that up :D

Edit: I don't understand much about what has been written above (please bear with me). What exactly does this do when you install it?

SuperFromND

@brigane This is an emulator for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Sam Coupe; most of the above is a changelog for new features etc.

dudleydes

@supercatfooz It also emulates the ZX80 and the ZX81 - I believe it's the only emulator in RetroPie that does so.

SuperFromND

@dudleydes Well, technically you can use lr-mess to do so as well, but it probably wouldn't be that practical.

Pedanticism aside, thanks for the clarification!

mediamogul

@supercatfooz said in ZEsarUX-7.0:

but it probably wouldn't be that practical.

It actually ends up working very well and is reasonably easy for the systems I've tried. I have AdvanceMESS set up to run the Fairchild Channel F (first cartridge-based game console) and the Bally Astrocade. The latter had the most authentic home version of Pac-Man released throughout the entire 1980s, albeit in an unlicensed form going by the name 'Muncher'. I've been meaning to check out what other systems might be viable, but there's just never enough time.

Pyjamarama

It can do Sam Coupe?

No virtual keyboard I guess, right?

SuperFromND

@mediamogul Oh really? I'll have to give it a try myself later; I'm guessing it runs well since it's not exactly demanding hardware.

I've also tested the Super Cassette Vision on lr-mess (it was in fact the first system I tested) and can confirm it works perfectly fine. A couple others I've tried (to varying levels of success) include:

Various plug and play units by Jakks Pacific (which by the way, a lot of these haven't been dumped or emulated yet; not really relevant to the conversation but I figured I'd point it out)
FM Towns
Arcadia 2001

SuperFromND

Those posts about the ZX81 got me curious, and I wanted to see if I could use lr-EightyOne on the Pi. I git clone'd this repository and compiled it, and it turns out that it runs really well! The only caveat is that you have to set player 2's controller to "Spectrum Keyboard" in order to use the keyboard, and I'm unsure if sound is properly emulated. (I did hear a couple of buzzes when turning on a game, but otherwise nothing; not sure if this is normal for the 81 or not)

I'll probably move my lr-81 shenanagains to their own thread, as to not derail this one.

Edit 6/16/18: Welp, lr-81 is now a part of RetroPie! Just head on over to the experimental section and install it. I'll write some documentation for it on the RetroPie wiki shortly.

chernandezba

@pyjamarama said in ZEsarUX-7.0:

It can do Sam Coupe?

No virtual keyboard I guess, right?

ZEsarUX has virtual keyboard for Spectrum, ZX80 and ZX81
It also emulates Sam Coupe, but this machine is in beta stage

spud11

@chernandezba Hi. I'd like to see whether ZEsarUX-7.0 works with the Sam Coupe, because there are 2 non-standard disk games (960kb .sad disks) - Lemmings and Prince of Persia - that don't work with simcoupe. I've tried ZEsarUX-7.0 with both games, but neither works.

Having looked at the runcommand.log, would I need to set the machine type as --machine Sam in the commandline or do you think it probably won't work because these are non-standard disks?

spud11

@chernandezba In fact, I've just noticed that the Retropie version of the emulator I've installed via the menu remains 5.0 from April 2017, rather than 7.0. Would you have any instructions on how to compile version 7.0 for Retropie? I note that you do provide some binaries but the Retropie version is noted as 3rd party.

chernandezba

@spud11 hi. Disk formats are not supported on Sam coupe emulation (yet ;) )
About compiling on retropie, it’s the same procedure as compiling on raspberry. See the install file.

dudleydes

@spud11 To install version 7.0, you would need to edit the ZEsarUX scriptmodule. Try changing line 26 to the following:

gitPullOrClone "$md_build" https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux.git

If you do this, then updating the setup script will fail unless you run the following commands before you update:

cd RetroPie-Setup 
git reset --hard

(I think this is correct - hopefully somebody will correct me if I'm not.)

The scriptmodule should add a new entry in the Sam Coupe emulators.cfg file for ZEsarUX that includes the --machine sam flag.

spud11

@dudleydes Thanks. I'll give it a go in the next day or so.

iainjh

Hi chernandezba

I really like your work :)

I read that zesarux also emulates MK14, zxspecnext, QL. Are those available in the retropie version? I've installed via the above (changing line 26 to point to - https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux.git etc) - but note the .sh only adds spectrum, amstrad, samcoupe.

I see the machine options in the menu.

Do you please (please!) have plans to add the other systems to retropie build, or advise how to force emulation direct into each machine?

TIA

Iain