#zenzx — Public Fediverse posts

Zenscript is not really a grown-ass language, it's more like a declarative file format inspired by subtitle files, with time-addressed steps expressed in frames, which allows you to perform certain basic scripted functions in the ZenZX emulator.

For example wait until the machine boots up, then load a binary in memory, then press a key, leave it pressed for the duration of 10 frames, look what a variable holds, and once that variable reaches an expected value, take a screenshot.

I'm adding to ZenZX the ability to grab a file with symbols from Zenas or Pasmo (.sym). So that's the new thing that the script in the screenshot can do, load symbols, refer to variables, and trigger conditions. The two new keywords are: wait-mem and expect-mem.

Of course maybe you can do some of the same playing it manually, and using a good debugger. (or in the case of @stevewetherill , watching the screen border flash 🤣 ) but this is better when you need to run automated tests hundreds or thousands of times.

This is between me and you, but I enjoy doing this a thousand times more than playing any games.

#zenzx #emulator #z80 #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrogaming #retrocomputing #golang #foss

I didn't get much sleep, but I got lots of bits! And now it's time for a good nap.

#ZenZX #ZXSpectrum #Speccy #Spectrum #emulator #golang #foss #retrocomputing

Probando las ROMs oficiales en Español. A continuación voy a estar agregando otras ROMs no oficiales para varios otros idiomas.

Testing the official Spanish ROMs. Up next, I'll be adding extra unofficial ROMs for various other languages.

In a second pass, unofficial ROMs will go under the "Custom ROMs" menu, so the mechanics will be: start any supported machine you like, then replace the ROMs as desired.

Third pass: compose your own Spectrum from the set of hardware features implemented, and call that a new "Machine".

#zenzx #emulator #foss #golang #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #speccy

So far so good.

#zenzx #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #golang #foss #retrocomputing #emulator

The ZenZX emulator used to have not even a semblance of user interface beyond what the ZX Spectrum itself displays. I'm now bringing into ZenZX the vaguely Spectrum-inspired GUI toolkit I had created for Zenimate. With a little luck I'll be making it easier to use for human beings.

#ZenZX #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing #golang #foss

This is starting to look more polished.

#zenzx #emulator #ZXSpectrum #Speccy #Spectrum #retrocomputing #TS2068 #golang #foss

I've been doing a little cartography work for the ZenZX emulator, mapping out what compatibility features exactly are yet to be delivered.

#zenzx #Spectrum #ZXSpectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing #emulator #golang #foss

ZenZX is getting Timex Sinclair 2068 emulation. Just because.

This may not look like much but it's the output of a small programme plotting on the screen in so-called HiColour mode.

Also adding Kempston and Sinclair joystick emulation, plus Kempston and AMX mouse emulation.

A Timex Sinclair 2068 is like a Spectrum with extra graphics, and the same AY sound chip that was later inherited by the ZX Spectrum 128k, plus Kempston joystick ports, and some fancy memory modes.

#zenzx #ZXSpectrum #TS2068 #TC2048 #Spectrum #Speccy #

I was finally able to correct my emulator, ZenZX, to make it work with ZX Spectrum +3 floppy discs which weren't so floppy. With many thanks to @FromTheFourthPlanet for her wonderful emulator, SpecIde, I learned massively from her generous gift and her deep knowledge of the machinery involved.
https://github.com/MartianGirl/SpecIde

Now I'm able to load The Artist II by Ocean Software from a DSK image. I wasn't able to draw f** s** using its keyboard layout. Here's a dodgy invader for you.

#pixelart #theartist #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing #zenzx

With Zen80 guaranteed to run on Linux, the next logical step was to try out ZenZX and play some ZX Spectrum stuff. After a little fiddling with GL and Alsa libraries, it compiled right away and ran. Quite smoothly to my surprise!

#zen80 #zenzx #ZXSpectrum #spectrum #speccy #retrocomputing

Debugging my macros. The good thing is that after you have some well designed macros, most of the simple text user interface things behave almost like BASIC, or terminal printing in Pascal.

Also a good chance to dog food myself using the barely improved editor, and trying to make the zenas assembler work and assemble my non-trivial Z80-based text editor. Dog food is good food!
The only problem I found today was a regression in the vim-like command to jump to a line number. One other thing I noticed is that horizontal scroll doesn't work reliably when you have very long lines that extend beyond the right margin.

That being said, It's a little miracle I have never seen it crash, not a single time, during actual development work.
The best of news is that there are not many news on that front!

#bim #tbim #zenas #z80 #zen80 #zenzx #retrocomputing #ZXSpectrum #speccy #Spectrum

tbim, bim, zenas, zen80

Yes, of course all of these things can be done mixing and matching disparate tools in some other ways, but as a matter of access and code legibility you will be able to directly examine every single bit of the toolset and toolchain.

Every single bit traceable, nowhere left for bits to hide. That's something you can't do unless you're a highly sophisticated specialist today.

#bim #tbim #zenas #zen80 #zenzx #retrocomputing #golang #foss

zenas, zen80, bim and assorted tools

Things starting to fall into place like Tetris bricks!

I still can't glue the ZenZX emulator to the text mode editor, but when I decouple the text mode renderer from the editor logic (sometime next year), I should be able to render the editor and other tools using Deluxe UI in a GL-accelerated window, and I should be able to embed ZenZX in a bim pane.

But essentially everything you see in this screenshot, from tiling manager, to editor, to assembler, to emulator, is one single coherent and consistent codebase (with the sole exception of the Spectrum ROM!)

Lots of work ahead in 2026!

Longer term project beyond 2026 will be to get the language ual off the ground and port all these things to ual.

#bim #tbim #zenzx #zen80 #zenas #foss #golang #retrocomputing #z80

bim editor

I've just barely improved the barely improved editor to support Z80 assembler syntax. The automatic detector of assembly dialect doesn't always work right though, that's a task pending in the backlog.

Up next: running zen80 inside the editor.

#z80 #golang #foss #retrocomputing #bim #zen80 #zenzx

I found another bug in ZenZX's 128k mode with snapshot saving. Wonderful Dizzy loads, runs, plays great. Then I save a snapshot. Snapshot is saved correctly. Reset. Then load that snapshot, the snapshot loads and resumes execution exactly where it left, no crashes, everything works except for keyboard input. Which seems to be something possibly related to interrupt handling, it's possible that I am somehow leaving interrupts disabled after resuming the snapshot. Time to debug some more.

#ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #zenzx #emulator

So Wonderful Dizzy (a game for the ZX Spectrum 128k models) is running quite well in 128k mode on ZenZX. One caveat is that thae fast tape loading feature didn't work this time, more debugging is needed. I'm also going to have to compare the quality of music playback taking other emulators as parameters of reference. All in all, a more successful test than I anticipated.

#ZXSpectrum #Speccy #Spectrum #spectrum128 #Spectrum128k #ZXSpectrum128 #ZXSpectrum128k
#zenzx #emulator #golang #foss #zen80 #z80 #retrocomputing #retrogaming

Wonderful Dizzy on ZenZX, requires 128k mode.

The Oliver Twins 2020
https://zxart.ee/eng/software/games/adventure/kvesty-golovolomki/wonderful-dizzy/dizzy-viii---wonderful-dizzy-2020-v15/

#ZXSpectrum #Speccy #Spectrum #retrogaming #retrocomputing #zenzx

The emulator ZenZX has been up past one hour running a modern Speccy game continuously without memory leaks or crashes.

Go, BubbleBack, go!

#ZenZX #zen80 #z80 #Spectrum #Speccy #ZXSpectrum #emulator #retrogaming #retrocomputing

I may have taken certain artistic liberties.

#zenzx #zen80 #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing

Maybe the visuals won't improve .tap support by much. But... why not?

#zenzx #zen80 #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing

Work in progress.

#zenzx #emulator #golang #foss #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing

Further experiments on the virtual keyboard front.

No idea where this is going really, very experimental.

#zenzx #emulator #golang #foss #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing

Further experiments on the virtual keyboard front (2/2)

(and possibly using the often unused border space for some useful things, a bit like FUSE does with some indicators)

#zenzx #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #speccy #retrocomputing

·

Further experiments on the virtual keyboard front. (1/2)

#zenzx #ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #speccy #retrocomputing

So... I've had this under wraps for months, whilst I've been adding features and ironing out bugs...

I've already been showing:

• zen80: zexall-tested z80 emulator
  https://github.com/ha1tch/zen80

• zenZX: ZX Spectrum emulator (WIP)
  https://oldbytes.space/@haitchfive/115159221509967137

The next logical piece is:

• zenas: Z80 assembler (WIP)

zenas is a new Z80 assembler (work in progress) following a simpler design than my earlier attempt. This is designed to work together with zen80 and zenZX, to hot test and benchmark the code the assembler emits

I'm already seeing some promising results. I think it's a cool feature if your assembler can actually run the code it emits (using zen80) with the potential to verify your object code actually works, and every single cycle is accounted for. I can imagine in the future we can expect to have things like register colouring and other neat features.

If we consider the zenXX tools together with the tape handling tools, and with the floppy image tools, we're approaching the status of lovely toolset that could one day be quite useful.

#zen80 #zenzx #zenas #asm #z80 #golang #foss #assembler #retrocomputing

ZenZX tape loading

(3/3)

#ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing
#retrogaming #zen80 #zenzx
#emulator #golang #foss

ZenZX tape loading

PageUp: Zoom In
(Increments zoom factor)

PageDown: Zoom Out
(decrements zoom factor)

Alt+B / Option+B: toggles visibility of the Spectrum "border"

(2/3)

#ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing
#retrogaming #zen80 #zenzx
#emulator #golang #foss

ZenZX

ZenZX is a ZX Spectrum Emulator based on the zen80 Z80 emulator, writen in Go

I'm Improving tape loading support, and demonstrating how screen control keyboard shortcuts still work during tape load. Probably not something that will blow your mind, but I kind of like it. (1/3)

#ZXSpectrum #Spectrum #Speccy #retrocomputing #retrogaming #zen80 #zenzx #emulator #golang #foss

ZenZX Preview Release

I thought I'd give people something better than promises to toy around with. Here's a very early, very rough, very green preview release of ZenZX.

ZenZX is a ZX Spectrum emulator written in Go with a focus on ergonomics and modular, understandable code. It's partly based on my other emulation project called zen80, a highly compliant instruction-stepped Z80 emulator.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MJR6JMhL1TcIXEfZUkAh4u8eA5yFQgxh/view?usp=drive_link

See the README included in the .zip file and please let me know if you like anything about it, or if you hate anything about it. At this time, and because countless bugs are yet to be corrected, and I'm aware of hundreds of them, I'm not lacking insights of the type "It has a bug". The kind of useful feedback I'd like to get is more about ergonomics and whether you would use a different key mapping, keyboard shortcuts, colours, etc. Any user-facing ideas you would like to see one day, that would be useful.

The source code for the Z80 part is already available at:
https://github.com/ha1tch/zen80

You know where to find me 😃

#ZenZX #emulator #golang #foss #ZXSpectrum #Speccy #Spectrum #retrocomputing

This is the built-in UDG designer tool that comes with the TK90X rom, running on ZenZX.

On this machine, it's invoked entering the command: UDG 2
#TK90X #ZXSpectrum #Speccy
#Spectrum #ZenZX #retrocomputing #TK90