CPCEMU - Support

6. Sources of Supply, Support, and Acknowledgments

   6.1 Where can I get CPC software?

   6.2 News, exchange experiences

   6.3 If you have questions or suggestions

   6.4 Other Amstrad CPC emulators

   6.5 Plans for future releases of CPCEMU

   6.6 Acknowledgments

   6.7 Registered trademarks

6. Sources of Supply, Support, and Acknowledgments

In this chapter you will read where to get CPC software and whom to ask in the case of questions.
Furthermore, I mention some other Amstrad emulators.

6.1 Where can I get CPC software?

This is no problem if you have access to the Internet. As for Spectrum emulators, a number of anonymous archives exist where you can get CPC software via FTP or WWW.

FTP

• ftp.nvg.unit.no : /pub/cpc, thanks to Arnt Gulbrandsen for creating the site, and to Noel Llopis to maintain it, one of the biggest archives for CPC programs; send what you have in /pub/cpc/incoming for the HTML frontend: HTML.
• sunshine.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de:/pub/joscho/cpcemu: mirror of ftp.nvg.unit.no. Any questions, remarks and additions to joscho@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de. If you have problems connecting to Norway you can try this.
• ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/amstrad, thanks to Remy Card
• ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/amstrad/frontend/menu.htm (HTML front end with the list of all files, size and description included).
  All questions about this site should be directed to roussin@genesis8.frmug.org. All files comes from Genesis, the 8bit generation BBS (see below).
• ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/cpm, thanks to Paul Martin
  Hauptsächlich Amstrad CP/M-Programme. Specific amstrad CP/M related files. Paul Martin (pm@nowster.demon.co.uk) will send anyone, who can give him proof that they own an original Amstrad CP/M Plus disk, the binary ROM images of his CP/M Plus ROMs for free.
• oak.oakland.edu : /Simtel/msdos/emulator/cpcemu15.zip
  other Simtel mirrors:
  • ftp.ibp.fr : /pub3/pc/SimTel/msdos/emulator/
  • ftp.demon.co.uk : /simtel/msdos.
  • ftp.uni-paderborn.de

WWW

• http://andercheran.aiind.upv.es/~amstrad
• and an UK mirror: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~divine/~amstrad/
• ...and many more not listed here.

BBS

• Aspects 2:250/107 : +44 617920260, England
• Genesis the 8bit generation (2:320/220) : +33 1 53 95 32 43 (modem/ISDN) & 44 (modem), Paris (FRANCE), sysop : Emmanuel Roussin. Last versions of emulators, qwerty and azerty 6128 ROMs, freeware, shareware, PD, disk zines, pokes, solutions, demos and a few commercial games (with the permission of their authors). For the moment, there is about 68 Mo of compressed programs. For fido users, you can file request ALLFILES.ZIP, and then what is interesting you. Many thanks to Kangaroo, Tom&Jerry and Juggler for the files they sent me.
• ZNODE 51 : + 49 89 961 45 75, in Germany, from 15:00 to 3:00 CET (MEZ), up to V32b, CPC files
• ...and some more.

6.2 News, exchange experiences

Do you always want to have the latest version of CPCEMU?

Do you want to be informed if a new one is released?

Meanwhile we have set up a newsgroup especially for the CPC!

It is called

comp.sys.amstrad.8bit.

Here you will find discussions about CPCs (and also CPCEMU), and you can talk about your experiences with CPCs.

There is an FAQ (frequently asked questions) available to this newsgroup:

(ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/amstrad/amstrad.htm, FAQ in HTML).

If you cannot read the newsgroup for any reason, write me an email. You will find my address in the next section. Certainly you can also use normal mail to ask me (or David, see below), but please do not forget the return postage. If you send me a contribution, I feel obliged to send the latest version to you at least one or two times.

6.3 If you have questions or suggestions

Then you can write directly to me:

Internet: mail@benchmarko.de

In case you speak or write English (I presume so cause youre reading this) you also can write to David Cantrell:

David offered to help a little to answer the pile of letters. He has scanned firmware manual for the CPC, so everyone can get it in an electronical form.

Do not hesitate to send your comments!

6.4 Other Amstrad CPC emulators

At the beginning of 1994 I thought that CPCEMU was the only emulator for the Amstrad CPC. Now I know of three other:

• SIMCPC:

  Presumably the first CPC emulator written. CPC Emulator for PC/XT/AT © 1989, 90 by GHE, Aachen. It is only black and white, but with additional ROMs; only a beer humour.

• CPC2PCxx:

  In development since October 1993 by Paco Lopez (Spain), and Is available from some sites now. It is written completely in protected mode and uses the same disk format as CPCEMU.

• CPE:

  In development by Bernd Schmidt. By using a special 50 hertz screen mode, some colour blocks are exactly reproduced. A special 256-colour CPE2 shows exact colour blocks with more than 50 hertz. Also supported: Multi modes, overscan. Latest version: v5.2.

6.5 Plans for future releases of CPCEMU

• overscan
• improved multi modes
• screen centering in higher video modes
• fast hardware scrolling
• US keyboards have no <>, ALTgr
• simulate the expansion port of the CPC
• load CPC disks directly
• load CPC tapes directly (over printer port or Soundblaster card)
• transfer whole disk images with the parallel adapter
• volume control for the Soundblaster
• digiblaster emulation
• customizable joystick keys
• use mouse as joystick
• auto detection of .SNA and .DSK

Maybe this is never done since I do some "real" work now...

6.6 Acknowledgments

• Special thanks to Juergen Weber, not only for many hints and suggestions, but especially for the fast Z80 emulation from his CP/M emulator ZSIM.
  Jürgen G. Weber
  ...
• Also thanks to Bernd Schmidt. Because Bernd wrote his own emulator, we have had the same problems many times. Only if you try to write such an emulator yourself can you imagine, which details cause problems. There is no CPC documentation available, which gives a whole specification. Most parts of the CPC behaviour are detected by experiments with a real CPC.
• Thanks to Ulrich Doewich for including Gravis UltraSound sound output in the emulator and reading through the documentation. Ulrich wrote a similar tool like CPCTRANS. Look out for CPDREAD which can read also copy protected disks.
• Thanks to Emmanuel Roussin for his untiring engagement for the CPC. He did the essential steps for setting up the newsgroup and lent me his Multiface II for months, so that I could include in the emulator somehow.
• Thanks to Arnt Gulbrandsen for his JPP source, where I found ideas for the keyboard handler and the joystick routine. By the way, JPP is a very good Spectrum emulator.
• Thanks to Martin Zacho for supplying a joystick routine.
• Thanks to Fernando J. Echevarrieta Fernandez for pointing out first that version v0.8 did not emulate a CPC 664.
• Thanks to Gilles Molinari for his transfer program for the parallel adapter.
• Thanks to Paul Martin for correcting the English documentation for version 1.0.
• Thanks to Mark Haigh-Hutchinson for his engagement in making programs from the company Vortex public domain.
• Thanks to Martin Young for his outstanding ideas about emulating a Z80.
• Thanks to Linh Hsiesh for many ideas for improvements, most of which should have been incorperated by now.
• Thanks to Fred Harris for writing a letter to AMSTRAD about the ROMs.
• Thanks to Amstrad, especially to Cliff Lawson for allowing me to distribute the BASIC ROM. Amstrad retains the copyright.
  Amstrad plc, Brentwood House,
  169 Kings Road, Brentwood,
  Essex CM14 4EF
  
• Thanks to Richard Clayton from Locomotive for allowing me to distribute the Firmware ROM. Locomotive retains the copyright.
• And thanks to the many users for sending me suggestions or having ideas. Without them CPCEMU would hardly have reached version 1.0
• (Please excuse my English.)

6.7 Registered trademarks

• CP/M, CP/M 2.2 and DRDOS are trademarks of Digital Research.
• MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft.
• IBM PC, PC-XT, PC-AT and OS/2 are trademarks of International Business Machines.
• CPC, AMSDOS by Amstrad,
• BORLAND C, TASM (Turbo Assembler) by Borland,
• 22DISK by SYDEX
• Soundblaster by Creative Labs
• ...

© Marco Vieth, Mai 1998