This system is listed as working. Should all snapshots work with the spectrum system? Or are there known bugs booting some snapshots?

Are you having a problem with a specific snapshot? If so, which one? How was it created? How about loading the same software from cartridge or cassette?

The *.z80 snapshots should work as before: I have begun cleaning up and rewriting the existing implementation and added support for other formats, but the *.z80 code has remained unchanged apart from minor modifications.

Generally speaking, the ZX Spectrum driver shows a good degree of compatibility, provided the program doesn't rely on the features listed at the beginning of drivers/spectrum.c: if you find the keyboard unresponsive, maybe it's not MESS' fault: try changing the config switch from "Issue 2" to "Issue 3" (or viceversa).

http://www.zxspectrum.homeactionreplay.org/hewson.zip

99% of snapshots work that i've used but Nebulus in this zip doesn't boot in mess. Perhaps i added the bug wrong? How can you load it via a cassette when it's a snapshot?

http://bugzilla.mess.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1930

works ok in spectaculator. The z80 shots have "worked as before" since the same problem occurs in older messes.

I also noted this in the 0.137 release. I mainly use MESS to play a game of Atic Atac once in a while and discovered that none of the files I have no longer work in the latest version.
I've these:
ATICATAC.Z80
ATICATAC.TAP
ATICATAC.SNA


Could it be that I need to do something different in 0.137 that I've missed?

Fixed in svn 7577. If you can't build it from sources, BobZ SVN build will be available soon.

Thanks for very quick fix!

So, JoJo, will you try to fix the .z80 snapshots, please? It's probably the most used format, but 128k snapshots are very problematic. Thanks!

Badlands.z80 Is another snapshot where this problem occurs. bugzilla is down so i couldn't attach this comment there.

I'm having problems with keyboard input and the display when using the spectrum.c driver.

Neither of the following hardware versions:

- Issue 2
- Issue 3

allow the ZX Spectrum to recognize the keyboard in the following
game (.z80 snapshot)

Sabre Wulf (1984)(Ultimate).z80

The Spectrum +2e/+3e/128 keyboards will respond but no in game graphics are displayed after pressing '0'.

Mess Version: SVN r13572 (64-bit)
OS: Windows 7 (64-bit)

Can anyone else please confirm/deny?

I have a Sabre Wulf z80 snapshot that works in MESS svn r13572. Both Kempston Joystick and keyboard input work fine. The only "problem" with using a .z80 of this game is that the amulet pieces are always in the same place.

Sabre Wulf should alternate between the title screen and the high score list if you don't touch the keyboard. Does your copy do that?

Load your snapshot in another Spectrum emulator. Play a round and when you're back on the title screen use the emulator to save a new snapshot, then try loading that in MESS.

Both my snapshot copies do not go past these screens:

Sabre Wulf (1984)(Ultimate).z80



Sabre Wulf (1984)(Ultimate)[a].z80





I can load them fine and play the game in the Spectaculator emulator (v7.51).

Saving a state results in a .szx file (in the latest versions) which won't load in MESS.

From this list of Spectrum emulators..
http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/faq/emu_win.html
..find one that can save to .sna or .z80 format.

I think the basic problem comes from the fact that .z80 is basically an alien save state format.. It's not very good, and relies on poking the MAME / MESS cores in ways they probably weren't designed to be poked ;-)

I'm actually surprised they work at all, but I guess for the sake of compatibility with existing images they're still supported.

What format would you recommend?

loading the games from the proper cassette images.. tzx, tap ... that's also likely to ensure that any random number seeding which happens as a one off once the games are loaded happens properly.

Thanks Haze.

I will test the same game in .tap format when I get home.

Works absolutely perfectly when running the .tap image, thanks

Does the emu automatically stop the tape when it has reached the end?

EDIT:

I read that .TZX images are the best ones to use, is this correct?

Found an interesting bug.

If I put the screen in

Pixel Aspect mode (44:37)

and use an overlay

Aperture2x4bg_Aaron.png

the following diagonal line appears from the top right to the bottom left:



EDIT: Sorry about the size, but it can't be captured with F12 and I have to use Fraps.

tzx is the 'best' format afaik (unless there has been a better one since)

I don't think every piece of software is available in every format tho ;-)

tzx contains markers to help with stopping the tape and stuff, but IIRC there's some code in MESS to ignore them.. on purpose (because the tape wouldn't really automatically stop..)

MESS needs a real proper tape manager anwyay.. as I've said in other posts. There is enough data in the formats like tzx to give a nice fade-on, fade-off mouse driven media player like display to help make using them in the emulator much easier, as well as present 'playlists' and jumping between blocks / to exact positions etc.

It's part of my MAME/MESS could do with a better UI, more professional, multi-windowed internal UI rant ;-)

Excellent stuff. I'll use that format if I can.

Having said that when I load the following .tzx file:

Rex (1988)(Martech Games)(Side A).tzx

then the game loads and plays just fine but there is no sound.

Does anyone else have this problem?

It's most likely that the emulation isn't complete IMHO

I don't know how MESS compares with the dedicated Spectrum emulators, but if I was to guess I'd say it's probably still lagging quite far behind.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't use it, because I'm sure in 95% of cases it will be just fine, but there probably is still work to do, the same applies for pretty much every system in MESS.

That's cool. Figured I should point these problems out just in case they weren't known already.

Rex is an awesome Speccy game but it doesn't have much sound to speak of. Try blowing up something, or dying.
Sound works for me in MESS with the .tzx I have.

MESS does a good job with the speccy (even if there will be likely specific issue with some games, I'm not an expert). my limited experience was that most tapes simply work like in other emus.[1]

concerning tape emulation in MESS, manually stopping the tape would be not a problem if you could remap the function to specific keys, so that you would not need to access the UI. therefore, I think we should add remap facilities, not to hack in stop support


[1] it's the zx80/zx81 which had been broken for loooong until Robbbert fixed it. and I think there are still specific memory contention details which are not properly emulated in MESS...

Shooting also produces a sound.

The sound is only affected (sometimes it's muffled, or bits of it are played back) when the tape is loaded and it only happens every few tape loads. This would probably make it hard to trace the bug?

The diagonal line occurs every time the ZX Spectrum driver is loaded though.

And I agree, the tape compatibility is incredibly good for this driver.

When it's part of the format specification I wouldn't call it 'hacking in support'. If you choose instead to not support that format, it's fine, but ignoring the specification is actually a bug.

Either way, it needs to be easier to use. Having to disable full keyboard mode, and then fiddle around in menus usually means you don't actually stop the tape in time on multi-loads etc.



My general compatibility on the Spectrum side testing hasn't been all that high on 'difficult cases', IMHO eta is being over optimistic again. If it's hit and miss over sound working or not it sounds like it could be some kind of timing issue in the emulation, and that wouldn't surprise me. It's better than a lot of systems, but failed hard on many demos last time I gave things a run through and it's a system the advanced games will abuse.

The diagonal line looks similar to the HLSL issue some people were having, although it has been reported with certain flaky intel drivers in non HLSL modes before. That's a MAME OSD layer rendering issue, nothing to do with the emulation anyhow.

or more simply I don't know which games are 'difficult cases'. I never owned or played a real speccy, so I just played random games whose images or names triggered my interest...