It would be nice to allow snapshots/tapes loading from web.

Hi, it seems I cannot find a way to convert a tap to sna without launching a emu, loading the tap, pausing it, generating a sna,etc... And I want this to be run in batch (nice because I can just run it with a For %i or whatever)

I know what a .sna is, but I've thought I could dump to .sna, just right after the tap is loaded, or... put hook in the keyboard/joystick of the spectrum (a port read?), and generate the sna just right in the main title?.

Well, I am new to ZX dev and learning Go, so excuse me if I am talking nonsense...
I've been reading the source, a bit lost because is the first Go program I've studied wich uses channels, threads, etc... So I am a bit lost. If you have a tip, I could make the modification in local and use here, I guess this is of no use to other people (generally)

thanks!

We should decide which of the public methods in the current API should really be public. Here below a list of candidate methods to be eventually privatized. Please, add others if it is the case.

• NewMemory
• NewUla
• NewPorts

is it possible to find out any information on supported hardware please
fdd3000?
PDS?
micro command?
im also interested in emulating the uhf cathode ray tube output authentically - i understand there are some serious health hazards - phosphoric delay and crosstalk synchronization - two effects barely touched on in the ula book
has anyone access to the FCC ruling on why the zx specturm was not allowed into america? i guess cause we have better software than apple commodore and atari

In some applications an artificial slowdown has been observed. The host CPU is well below 100% utilization, but the Z80 emulation is noticeably slower than it should be. I guess this is due to the sdl.Delay(20) call in gospeccy.go main loop that constantly slows down the execution. On slower machines or when emulating cpu-intensive applications, we need a way to dynamic adjust that delay.

Master-branch of [https://github.com/remogatto/gospeccy] fails to compile with [https://github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-PerfEvents]. [https://github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/gospeccy] is OK.

When executing a gospeccy binary linked against http://github.com/remogatto/Go-SDL package I get

$ ./gospeccy
./gospeccy: error while loading shared libraries: cgo_sdl.so: cannot open 
shared object file: No such file or directory

It seems it's a problem of remogatto/Go-SDL binding. BTW, I open the issue here for better readability.

$ go get -x -v github.com/remogatto/gospeccy/src/gospeccy
github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-PerfEvents (download)
cd .
git clone https://github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-PerfEvents /home/okmonk/go/src/github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-PerfEvents
Username for 'https://github.com': ^C

At first I didn't know why it would ask me for username and password, but apparently there's 404 when trying https://github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-PerfEvents

Any thoughts on this?
Thanks.

PS: go version go1.0.2

It could be nice to take screenshots through the console like this:

gospeccy> screenshot("manic_miner.scr")

Since at the moment the Go language doesn't provide cgo support for ARM devices, these devices can't run the emulator. In fact, cgo is needed in order to support the SDL backend. A solution could be running the emulator as a service that sends video/audio informations to a browser through websockets.

A lot of things changed after the first gospeccy public release. We should improve and rewrite part of the documentation in order to reflect these changes. In particular, we should improve ChangeLog, README and add some pages to the wiki.

To do on the ChangeLog:

• Add latest changes cherry picking from git log output

To do on the README:

• Remove the "naive" adjective from the title and add something more appealing. Perhaps concurrent?
• Tweak the introduction speaking about the new concurrent design resulting from 0xe2-0x9a-0x9b contribution
• Add the new features in the feature list
• Add a "Design" section?
• Fix the Go-SDL dependency in "Dependencies" section. It actually depends by 0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-SDL
• Speak about the new console feature in "Quick start" section
• Add more images. Perhaps an image of the speccy controlled from the console?
• Add a "How to contribute" section explaining code conventions and the fork/pull request github cycle
• Add a "CREDITS" section
• Tell about Convention over Configuration for loading roms/sna/scripts

To do on the wiki

• Add a page with a nice picture showing the current design

It could be nice to have a prompt on the command console. Something like:

gospeccy> load("batty.sna")

It would be nice to add a copy/paste mechanism through the console. It would be useful for sending BASIC snippets to the emulator.

Tests need to be fixed now that the design seems to be a bit more stable and the main gospeccy master branch was merged with 0xe2-0x9a-0x9b branch.

What about slightly modify the vertical size of the border to 24 in order get a perfect 640x480 fit when in fullscreen mode?

Think about changing license from MIT to GPLv3.

Perhaps we need to accomplish a better separation between the emulation core and the frontend pulling up console from spectrum package. Indeed I see the console as a part of the emulator frontend (gospeccy) rather than as a part of the emulator core (package spectrum).

Hi. The link to the screenshot in README.md is broken.

I'd like to write a bunch of test cases for console.go before next release. However, console.go is in package main so it can't be tested with gotest. I'm evaluating to put console functionalities in an external package in order to test it.

It seems that exiting from GoSpeccy by pressing ESC key or by issuing exit() command on the console doesn't work properly again. The problem seems to happen randomly.

Add a bit of convention of configuration spice when loading sna/roms.

The search should be performed following the order:

1. ./
2. $HOME/.gospeccy/sna

For example, given the following situation:

$ ls
game1.sna
$ gospeccy game1.sna

GoSpeccy will simply load ./game1.sna adhering to the principle of least surprise.

However, trying to load a snapshot that doesn't exist in the current directory:

$ gospeccy game2.sna

GoSpeccy will load $HOME/.gospeccy/sna/game2.sna if it exists. Otherwise, an error will be raised.
The same will apply when support for z80 format will be added: in this case GoSpeccy will search for files in $HOME/.gospeccy/z80/.

In the game Cabal (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0000780), the speed of the main menu color-cycle is different than in other emulators (FUSE, Z80). The reason causing this behavior is unknown. The speed on actual ZX Spectrum hardware is unknown.

The number of SNA files available on the Internet is really low. To be more usable, GoSpeccy should at least support 48k Z80 files.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/faq/reference/z80format.htm

It could be interesting to try building GoSpeccy using gccgo.

gospeccy has a dependency on Go-PerfEvents, which looks to be linux only.
As a result, I can't compile (and thus can't execute) gospeccy on my Mac :-(

GoSpeccy is unable to pass the following timing tests:

http://www.zxspectrum4.net/downloads/timing_tests/
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mark.woodmass/z80tests.tap

The links come from: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=30908&page=2

An emulator (with source code available) which can pass majority of these tests is: http://jspeccy.speccy.org/

Executing "RANDOMIZE USR 0" in Basic fails to reset the machine.

Copy and convert image files from http://github.com/0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/gospeccy/tree/master/doc/ to http://github.com/remogatto/gospeccy/wiki/Architecture

It would be nice to add a BASIC snippets section to the wiki. The section would contain short piece of BASIC code illustrating some funny things of the speccy and/or of the emulator (border scrolling, beeper effects, etc).

For example:

10 BORDER 0
20 BORDER 1
30 BORDER 2
40 GOTO 10

GoSpeccy depends now for a couple of package hosted on github, namely

• 0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-SDL
• 0xe2-0x9a-0x9b/Go-PerfEvents

We should change import statements to the git path of these projects in order to make installation process painless through goinstall.

Don't call panic() in case of tape I/O. This should be fixed before making the next release.

Running the test suite against the current master results in a couple of failing tests (tape loading, reset).

Hide mouse cursor in fullscreen mode.

The number of Makefile dependencies and their handling is really bad right now. This causes excessively long build times.

# time make
real    0m3.900s
user    0m3.937s
sys     0m0.522s

We really need this.

Reference: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/formats.html

Rescaling the main window (entering "scale(2)" in the console) causes the console to forget the command line history.

Currently, there is not support for saving snapshot in the Z80 format.

Emulating the keyboard device on a separate goroutine could help in programmatically sending key events through channels. The main advantage would be about keydown/keyup timing. In fact, to simulate a keypress event (key pressed and released in a short time) it's necessary to send a keydown/keyup events pair. However, a keydown event can not be immediately followed by a keyup event because the system ROM would not be aware of the two events if they occured in a short interval of time (<20 ms). So, after pressing down a key it's necessary to wait a certain amount of time before releasing it. BTW, a call to time.Sleep would be blocking for the emulation goroutine. With a channel based approach such non-blocking synchronization should be easier to implement.

Simulating keypress, keydown/keyup events could be useful in a couple of use cases:

• when loading tapes through the system ROM in order to trigger system ROM loading routine by sending LOAD ""
• in tests
• for simulating key pressing in games

Sporadically, when running

goam test

the program hangs up here. Sporadically, the same behavior can be observed when exiting the frontend (gospeccy executable). It seems there is an issue with the sdl.CloseAll() function.

It seems to me that GoSpeccy doesn't emit the typical beep during the boot stage like FUSE does.

Currently, the root Makefile lacks of an "install" task. This prevent the user to install the gospeccy executable in $GOBIN. It also prevent to install resources files like the system ROM.

I've got some performance issues running benchmarks against 4d55de2:

cd src/spectrum
make bench
...
spectrum.BenchmarkRender         500       4397058 ns/op
spectrum.BenchmarkZ80        500       2881148 ns/op

It seems there is a slowdown compared with commit e7ce336

git checkout e7ce336
make bench
spectrum.BenchmarkRender        5000        590439 ns/op
spectrum.BenchmarkZ80       1000       1907403 ns/op

Perhaps there's something with my tests, I'll see.

The perl script and the erb files in src/gen that generate opcodes.go and z80.go should be synced with the current status of these files in src/spectrum folder.

The stress1.go SEGFAULTs with the following backtrace:

panic: runtime error: SIGNONE: no trap

runtime.panic+0x9f /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/proc.c:1101
    runtime.panic(0x8192f1c, 0x1926148)
runtime.panicstring+0x61 /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/runtime.c:88
    runtime.panicstring(0x84368b0, 0xddbe78)
runtime.sigpanic+0x5c /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/linux/thread.c:304
    runtime.sigpanic()

goroutine 799 [4]:
runtime.gosched+0x75 /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/proc.c:558
    runtime.gosched()
runtime.selectgo+0x2c0 /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/chan.c:789
    runtime.selectgo(0x18dd270, 0x18de980)
clingon.*Animation·animate+0x262 /home/andrea/src/clingon/animation.go:88
    clingon.*Animation·animate(0x18c6d60, 0x8057da6)
runtime.goexit /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/proc.c:149
    runtime.goexit()

goroutine 794 [4]:
runtime.gosched+0x75 /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/proc.c:558
    runtime.gosched()
runtime.selectgo+0x2c0 /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/chan.c:789
    runtime.selectgo(0x956b2b0, 0x18de900)
clingon.*Animation·animate+0x262 /home/andrea/src/clingon/animation.go:88
    clingon.*Animation·animate(0x18c6620, 0x8057da6)
runtime.goexit /home/andrea/src/go/src/pkg/runtime/proc.c:149
    runtime.goexit()

...