Program, which we choose - The "Spectrum emulator" v1.2.

PROGRAM THAT WE CHOOSE



Music by MITCHELL

(C) Fes'kov Kuzma, Abakan


   Hello, dear

           edition!


   Over the last few years, all my undertakings in the area of 
Spectrum accompany your books and magazines. Something has 
changed over the years in better, something is very,

today is my letter will be
relate to your project called "Author's program."
From room to room in the ZX-Review, we
can see the publication titled "The computers that we
choose, but at present
day, in my opinion, the need arose, and under the heading 
"Programs that we choose. "This theme

pretty long been discussed in
various kinds of electronic journals, more commonly known, 
however, talk about it carefully, while the provincial 
publications are not stint on the various epithets. Therefore, 
your silence on this issue is somewhat incomprehensible, all 
waiting for your words. 

   My proposed topic is not watering your dirt, and
a review of the relevant gaps and
also comfortable working with
distributed by your program, once you have made
such an important and necessary work,
follow it qualitatively. As
known, the best tester - is
people. I did not call to speak with the words "this program
behaves strangely, but also
"I enjoy working with this program, thanks
author.

   In order not to be unfounded, I
offers the first performance test for this column, though, is 
it not very flattering. Thus,


 PROGRAM THAT WE CHOOSE


   It's about the program "Spectrum emulator, more precisely, 
the version 1.2. This is, without doubt, good, and most 
importantly - the desired program. But if the first version 
left a good impression, then Two ...


   We begin, in order:

   The first thing that catches your eye - a complete loss of 
the built-in assembler. Monitor works

normal (I did not notice errors)
but that's when you try to enter any program from the keyboard
Emulator hangs forever, and
You can only get out by pressing
button RESET. This is extremely unfortunate and makes use of 
the monitor unusable for debugging. Yes, the author says that 
bug fixed switching pages, more precisely, the screen is no 
longer redrawn. At first

think this is true,
screen is not flashing, but it works for
This emulator is so slow, and
because I have a PENTIUM 120 (the speed drops to 10-20 percent) 
that this error can be assumed not corrected, but concealed. To 
return to the integrated monitor and one of its functions 
(Write blok) allows write to the hard drive contents

memory. Yes, it really
lets do it, but only in
the first version of the emulator, the second version of this 
program is totally unusable. Let me explain: recording unit you 
ask him name, address, start and length of the block,

but whatever you asked as a parameter to the block length, it
always equal to 8 kilobytes with a minor, and do you have with 
it can not do anything. I read the description: "completely 
rewritten a piece of software works with disks. Perhaps this is 
so, the rate of read / write really increased, and the wheels 
began to read better, but at the same TR DOS has got new errors:

because of errors MAGIC-functions is not
run programs that use them (all versions of the STS and 
others), with frequent writing to disk you after a while find 
that TR DOS disable and responds to your commands, the message 
No disk. Also TR DOS (in both versions) hangs when you try to 
take the sector with the number 160 and further, although it 
uses a subroutine Rom. The new version of the author introduced

port switching pages, expanding the memory up to 1 Spectrum
megabytes, use the standard
PROS while running at the same time
minimum number of programs
but I have quite a lot.
The only thing I have achieved,
so it messed up the disc when you try to copy his copyists
for the pros. And finally the last one,
most insignificant, but at the same
time encountered an error
emulation mode high-brightness (bright). Under certain
combinations of colors, he is always 0, even if you do it and 
turn. Try downloading any graphics editor and set such 
parameters: paper 0, ink 7 and then turn on all

pixels, ie Colour the screen
color ink, then turn
mode pattern, and you do not
see! This error is the first time
made me very jittery.

   However, the emulator has got, in my opinion, extremely 
useful and much needed feature, as the creation of virtual 
discs. Are also extremely pleased me that the author has 
removed restrictions on the segment address. 


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