EmuZWin v2.7 release 2.8

(С) by Vladimir Kladov, 2003-2006

I represent my ZX-Spectrum 128 and 48 emulator for Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2K / XP / Longhorn on IBM PC Pentium-I, II, III, IV and compatible.

Download the most fresh version via following link: EmuZWin.zip .Size of the archive (v2.7) is about 1Mbyte. Additionally, it is possible to download archive, containing plug-in sources, documentation on plug-in creation etc. at: zx/EmuZWin_Addons.zip

If you wish, you can download previous versions too:
v2.6: EmuZWin26.zip      961K
v2.5: EmuZWin25.zip      700K
v2.4: EmuZWin24.zip      585K
v2.3: EmuZWin23.zip      463K
v2.2: EmuZWin22.zip      349K
v2.1: EmuZWin21.zip      286K
v2.0: EmuZWin20.zip      265K
 

At this time EmuZWin is one of the fastest and correct among other windowed emulators. Its main features are:

• supporting for Spectrum models (including exact timing and floating bus behavior - "multicolor", which can be turned off when necessary): 48, 128+, 128/+2, 128/+2A/+3, Pentagon, Scorpion and also memory models of ATM, ATM-Turbo-2, Profi; partial support for Issue2/Issue3; also custom multicolor settings; it is possible to switch models (in many cases) and timing (always) without resetting the emulation of current Spectrum program;
• external ROM files are used, these can be configured as desired and to set up another ROM in place of distributed if necessary;
• GigaScreen, Snow effect;
• 256 Color games (Spec256), power GFX-editor to convert usual games to 256 Color mode (existing until year 1999 such 12 games can be downloaded at http://www.emulatronia.com/emusdaqui/spec256/index-eng.htm See also new ones on the Web-page of the Arjun (India, Bangalore): http://www.yantragames.com/ZX256.html );
• full screen mode with DirectX and without DirectX; resized window (scale from x1 to x4), including non-proportional resize, variable border size (from 8 to 48 pixels and to 56 pixels in full screen); additional effects in full-screen mode: Interlace and Blur Motion. The last is the most smooth (non-flickering) animation, and mainly for viewing demo. It takes a lot of processor resources. If it does work not smoothly enough, try to free up some additional resources for it: make display smaller (Alt+'-'), turn on Interlacing ('Alt+'I'), disable Time History 2 Seconds Back, close all other tasks in the system including indexing service, scheduler, anti-virus scanner... When Blur Motion on, sound can be crapped sometimes (pause and resume to fix it), and video is late of emulation on 1-2 frames. Moving parts of display can flicker in brightness a bit, on non-divisible monitor frequencies, so use frequencies divisible by 50, for 100% emulation speed or change emulation speed to make it divisible to monitor frequency (e.g. for 85Hz monitor, use 85% speed, or for 60Hz monitor use 120% speed).
• graphic filters: Smooth Scale, High Quality Magnification, Flip Vertical, Interlace (the last - for full-screen only);
• special filter: Equispaced Frames. It is intended for Anti-Slowdown War (sometimes game speed depends a lot of amount of objects to draw on screen, and in that case game become slower for a time. E.g. Knight Lore). This effect allows to eliminate this behavior: all frames become equidistant, and in some cases game is running smoother. But sometimes speed become too fast, so do not forget to select another custom speed. And, for some games this mode should not be on while it is loading or showing menus, so to switch the mode quickly, key combination Alt+Q is reserved for turning this effect on/off.
• Net Play - game play "on a single Spectrum" from several PCs in keyboard-separated or time-separated mode including hidden moves;
• devices: disk OS Beta128 (TR-DOS), microdrive (Interface-1), tape (loading, including fast load and flash load); MIC sound (in Windows 9x it can be produced via PC-Speaker), AY (ABC / ACB / Mono), Turbo-AY, Covox, Stereo-Covox, General Sound, ZX Printer.
• file formats: SNA, Z80, SLT (read), ZX, TAP, TZX (read), BLK (read), TRD, SCL, HoBeta (*.$B, *.$C - read), UDI (read), FDI, TD0, MDR (microdrive), OUT (write, sound), ZIP (read), GFX, RZX (Action Replay, while replaying allows to use Time 2 seconds back feature, and watch on "keyboard" which keys were pressed while recording the RZX, when several RZX-files are dropped onto the main window, such are played one by one); POK; and also own format EZX, especially to save entire Spectrum and emulator state, including all opened disks, tapes, cartridges, assembler text, maps, scenario etc.;
• it is possible to write your own plugins to extend a list of supported file types;
• Tape and Disk browsers allows to perform some operations to assemble/disassemble tape and disk images;
• screenshots can be saved to .SCR, .BMP or .PNG;
• saving sound to .WAV and .MP3;
• saving video to .AVI;
• variable emulation speed - from 4% to 10000% (it is real now on modern PC to get about 2000-5000% actually) with step 1%;
• Time 2 seconds back/forward up to the start of playing the game;
• power Debugger/trasser (supports Undo, Breakpoints on execute in range, on read/write memory, on port in/out, on additional conditions such register/memory value check etc.), Assembler, Disassembler (can export disassembled code);
• Map Builder, including automatic build;
• emulation of several ZX joystick types (Kempston, Sinclair-II, Fuller; supports up to 2 PC joysticks), mouse types (AMX, Kempston, AY), optical types (Light Gun, Gun Stick; both emulated via mouse);
• allows remapping of any PC key/joystick direction to any ZX key / joystick, or to one of 25 emulator commands;
• drawn keyboard allows not only to see Spectrum keyboard layout but also to press keys via it;
• sound volume control (can be added to status bar);
• configured toolbar; recently opened files history;
• Autosave of the current state (in Autosave.ezx) when emulator is closed, with automatic loading of autosaved state on the next start;
• storing settings in the registry or ini-file (command-line option);

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• CPU: Pentium-II 450MHg or better; MINIMUM: Pentium-75MHz
• RAM: 32 MBytes; MINIMUM: 16 MBytes
• HDD: 50 MBytes free space; MINIMUM: 20 MBytes free space
• Display: 1024x768x64K colors or better; MINIMUM: 640x480x256 colors or shades
• Video Card: there are no special requirements
• Sound Card: presents (Sound Blaster compatible); MINIMUM: no sound card
• Direct-X: version 5 or higher (better); MINIMUM: any version available
• OS: Windows 9x with IE 4.0 or higher / ME / NT4SP1 / 2000 / XP / Longhorn; MINIMUM: Windows 95 without IE installed
  Note: most of features are tested first in NT-based OS (Wondows2K, WindowsXP) but the program still compatible in most with Windows95, Windows98, WindowsME and even can be launched in the Linux under wine v9 and above.

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTION

1. Select a directory of your choice (or create new one), e.g. C:\Games\EmuzWin\ and unpack there ALL THE FILES from the archive provided. Do not launch it directly from a ZIP-archive - most archivers (except WinRAR though) do not support extracting all the files when something is launched from it, so it could do some things.
2. If some file(s) can not be replaced, restart Windows (or re-login, but in some cases this possible can not help, e.g. in XP) and try again.
3. That is all. Just run EmuZWin.exe and enjoy :-) If you want you can create a shortcut to the exe somewhere (e.g. on desktop or in Start menu) using common technique: e.g. dragging the executable with right mouse button pressed to the destination.
4. If you wish you can download LensKey.exe utility by Simon Owen (small but great) from the author's Web-site ( http://homepage.ntlworld.com/simon.owen/lenskey ) and put it to a directory where EmuZWin installed, this will enable menu item Tools|Lens Key which runs this utility.

COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS

EmuzWin can be started e.g. from MS-DOS console using following command-line:

>EmuZWin.exe [option...] [filename]

Options available are:

TROUBLESHOOTTING

• Switching to a certain model has no effect (e.g. in the Pentagon there is no TR-DOS item in the system menu).
  Some models still not supported in total (only timing and some RAM / ROM switching). But for implemented models, this mainly a problem of absent ROM image or configuring it. Try unpack Roms.exe (self-extracting archive with ROM images) to \Roms directory or provide your own ROM and then select it in the Configuration dialog for a certain model).
• Game or demo can not load. Spectrum resets, crashed or go into infinitive loop after loading (tape, snapshot or disk image).
  Try to select another hardware model / multicolor timing / ROM image / or for tape image try different ways to load it (may be it is required to go to USR 0, and type LOAD '' (or LOAD ""CODE) from Basic48; or vice versa it is required to reset in certain model like S128 and use Tape Loader there. In some rare cases turning off options Fast Load / Flash Load can help - in menu Control | Tape can help).
  Check if this game/demo can be loaded in another emulator or on real Spectrum machine. If yes, contact me describing a problem.
• Speed is not perfect in Direct-X. Drawing is very slow, down to 1 frame a second.
  Try to change Display resolution. If this did not help, turn option "Use Direct-X in full-screen mode" off.
• Speed is very slow. Try to disable your sound card. It helps, but what to do, I want hear sound?
  Reduce hardware acceleration of your sound card finding a level on which speed is enough and sound still is not garble. In case of any problems with Direct-X or hardware interfaced via Direct-X, a file directX.log is created in the directory of the emulator. You can send it me or read it to get know what happens.
• When program go out from Direct-X, display settings (refresh rate? horizontal refresh?) are incorrect and screen is garbled.
  This can be so on some hardware (and if yes, this behavior is the same for most of Direct-X applications).
  Turn option "Use Direct-X in full-screen mode" off.
• The emulator does not want to switch to Direct-X full-screen. Or, it can not use Direct-X sound (setting Sound On does nothing - it stays always off).
  Try to reinstall or install newer version of Direct-X. If this did not help, compress (ZIP) and send me by e-mail directX.log file (it should be created in the emulator directory). If you could not configure working EmuZWin in full-screen with Direct-X, uncheck flag "Use Direct-X..." in the Configuration dialog: the emulator can work in full-screen without Direct-X (and this even can give some advantages, e.g. fastest switching to/from full-screen mode). Computer should be fast enough, certainly.
• The emulator crashed, when I ...
  Please, e-mail me! This will help to fix a problem as soon as possible. Do not forget to describe what happens (what you did) and may be other circumstances (OS Windows version, the emulator version, game/demo/etc. you loaded, etc. - any info which could be useful to reconstruct bad behavior). Thank you!

There were not planned in 2.1, but possibly in 2.2/2.3/2.4:

• kid-mode (minimum settings available in this mode)
• protocol, statistics of certain games running
• more disk systems
• more models support with shadow ROM/RAM: Scorpion, ATM, Profi, PLM Automatica, Timex, etc.
• loading/saving tape from/to WAV, external line (via sound card), saving tape to TZX
• other printers (then ZX Printer), RS-232

What is not planning at all:

• special installation pack.
• auto-update from the Internet.
• developing help system. All the functions should be simple and main of them available to use by children from 4-6 years old.

See changes history HERE.

http://kolmck.000webhostapp.com/

mailto: vk@kolmck.000webhostapp.com

See also other my ZX-Spectrum 128K/48K emulators for DOS:

EMUZ, 1995. Written in C--. Source found recently (2003) and published too.

Z.com, 2003, written in assembler. Minimal by size (6K) but exact emulator (and playable) Spectrum-128K and 48K emulator. Published with source code.