CPCEMU - Documentation

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

   1.1 Tips on how you should read this documentation

   1.2 Copyright, guaranty

   1.3 What is a CPC?

   1.4 What does CPCEMU offer you?

2. Installation of CPCEMU

   2.1 Files which comprise the CPCEMU package

   2.2 Requirements and installation

   2.3 Hints about memory and soundcards

   2.3.1 Using EMS Memory

   2.3.2 Defining the BLASTER environment

   2.3.3 Defining the ULTRASND environment

3. Differences between CPC and CPCEMU

   3.1 Keyboard

   3.2 Loading of Programs, Menus

   3.2.1 Loading from Disk, Menus

   • The Insert Disk Menu
   • The File-Selection Menu

   3.2.2 Loading from and saving on cassette

   3.2.3 Loading and saving of snapshots

4. Changing the Configuration

   4.1 The setup menu

   4.2 The configuration file

   4.3 Command line parameters

5. Data Transfer CPC <-> PC

   5.1 The disk as a media

   5.1.1 The disk transfer program CPCTRANS

   5.1.2 The format- and copy-utility 22DISK by SYDEX

   5.2 The parallel interface

   • The parallel adapter

   5.3 The serial interface

   5.4 Other possibilities

6. Sources of Supply, Support, and Acknowledgments

   6.1 Where can I get CPC software?

   6.2 News, exchange experiences

   6.3 If you have questions or suggestions

   6.4 Other Amstrad CPC emulators

   6.5 Plans for future releases of CPCEMU

   6.6 Acknowledgments

   6.7 Registered trademarks

7. Internal Information about CPCEMU

   Black Box, with its own table of contents

8. Appendix

   A.1 Glossary

   A.2 Bibliography

   A.3 Index

1. Introduction

Welcome to the world of emulators!

What?! You want to know what CPCEMU is, and what you can do with this strange program that has yellow writing on a blue screen, displaying "Syntax Error" after every input?

To avoid long searching, here it is:

CPCEMU emulates an Amstrad CPC 464, 664 or 6128 with many extensions. In other words, the program imitates the behaviour of the older Amstrad computers on your new PC.

For what purpose?

Well, if you still have no idea, then you will not have any need for CPCEMU.

Some reasons:

• Nostalgia (oh, how nice my good old CPC was ...)
• Better performance compared to the original
• Better environment to develop programs in
• Playing games
• Work (yes, a CPC is good enough for simple word processing)
• [...................] <- insert other reasons of your own.

1.1 Tips on how you should read this documentation

You should play around with the online help first, but if you need in-depth or more precise information, read on...

I have tried to arrange the documentation in an orderly fashion. Should you still have questions (after reading it several times!), you can contact me. You can certainly do so, even if everything is perfectly clear to you. See chapter 6 (Sources, Support, ...) on how you can reach me.

• In chapter 1 (Introduction) I describe how best to read this documentation, who owns the copyright and some things about the CPC in general.
• In chapter 2 (Installation) it finally starts. You will be told how to install and start CPCEMU.
• In chapter 3 (Differences between the CPC and CPCEMU) deals with features of the emulator you should know about, if you are familiar with a real CPC. Mainly I will describe keyboard, disks, tapes and snapshots.
• In chapter 4 (Changing the Configuration) I describe how to tailor CPCEMU to your needs. Maybe then you will be able to run your favorite program.
• chapter 5 (Data Transfer CPC <-> PC) you find out how to get your old CPC programs onto the PC. Further, the utilities that come with CPCEMU are explained.
• In chapter 6 (Sources, Support, and Acknowledgments) you will be told how to optain the latest version of CPCEMU and who you can contact should you have any questions.
• In chapter 7 (Internal Information about CPCEMU) is for experts only. The official part of the user manual ends with the previous chapter. I describe how one goes about programming an emulator and what you need to know to do it. The debug menu of CPCEMU is also explained, which allows you to analyze the processor and memory at any time during the emulation. Casual users should skip this chapter, at least during the first reading.
• Appendix A.1 contains a glossary with descriptions of the most important technical terms. Appendix A.2 is the bibliography and A.3 the index.

1.2 Copyright, Guaranty

CPCEMU was developed by (see also section 6.3):

CPCEMU is Freeware, which means you can give the program to friends and acquaintances for free. Archive maintainers are allowed to include CPCEMU in their program collections for downloading. Shareware distributors are allowed to distribute CPCEMU, if they only take a small fee for copying. Compared to Public Domain, Freeware does not mean that it is free and you may do anything with it. I still retain the copyright.

All software and documentation is provided as is without warranty of any kind.

Although this program is freeware, I would certainly accept any sort of support, technical or financial.

See chapter 6 for more details.

1.3 What is a CPC?

If you already know what a CPC is, simply skip this section and continue reading with 1.4.

Still here?

I do not want to go into technical details now, but will rather give you a retrospective view so that you may better understand what a CPC is.

CPC is an abbreviation for Colour Personal Computer.

Computers of this type were first built in 1984 by the british company Amstrad and sold under different names in other countries.

It was the period of the home computer; Commodore C64, Sinclair Spectrum, Atari 800XL, ... when the CPC 464 was unveiled.

It had as much RAM as the Commodore C64 (namely 64 KB), a built in cassette recorder and Locomotive BASIC 1.0. It was followed up by the CPC 664 which had a built-in 3 inch disk drive and a slightly extended Locomotive BASIC 1.1.

The CPC 6128 came in 1985, with 128 KB RAM and nearly the same features as the CPC 664.

3 inch disks were awfully expensive, but more stable than the 5.25 disks (nearly as stable as todays 3.5), and they were noticably faster versus tape speed, very unlike the situation with the C64 ...

All three models were sold with either a colour or a green monitor, which had the power supply built in.

Later, two or three other models (the CPC+ for example) were introduced.

he BASIC was with nearly 178 instructions powerful and fast. One could program graphics, sound and even interrupt handling all in BASIC without the use of PEEKs and POKEs.

The software supply increased dramatically over the years.

1.4 What does CPCEMU offer you?

The following is a short overview of what CPCEMU offers you. Subsequent sections of the documentation will go into more detail.

• CPC graphics in 3 different screen modes (X x Y x COLOURS):
  • Mode 0: 180x200x16
  • Mode 1: 320x200x4
  • Mode 2: 640x200x2
  (With VESA BIOS these graphics can be displayed in resolutions ranging from 640x400x16 up to 1280x1024x16, depending on your monitor and the VGA card used.)
• Sound either through
  • the PC-speaker,
  • Soundblaster (3 channels + noise, stereo),
  • Soundblaster (3 channel FM sound, stereo) or
  • Gravis UltraSound (3 channels + noise, stereo)
• Memory:
  • ROM: OS, BASIC, AMSDOS, up to circa 13 additional ROMs (with EMS)
  • RAM: 64KB, 128KB, up to 576KB Dktronics compatible RAM (with EMS)
• Disk: Special disk images, with the extension .DSK
• Cassette: Standard files under DOS, e.g. CPC BASIC- and binary files with the extensions .BAS and .BIN respectively.
• Snapshots: You can make memory dumps of running programs in order to continue them later. Snapshots have the extension .SNA.
• Speed: On a 386/33 with EMS-memory, CPCEMU is faster than the original. A realtime mode allows you to slow down the emulation to exact CPC speed. This realtime mode works well on a 486DX2/66.

© Marco Vieth, Mai 1998