SDLTRS Help OS X Features

| SDLTRS Help OS X Features Introduction Features Options Text GUI OS X Features Known Bugs Release History Credits

This page describes all of the Macintosh OS X specific features of the emulator:
Media Status Window
Preferences: Display Tab
Preferences: TRS80 Tab
Preferences: Printer Tab
Preferences: Directories Tab
Preferences: ROMs Tab
Preferences: Joystick Tab
Printer Emulation
Media Menu
Display Menu
Control Menu
Media Status Window
The Media Status Window on the SDLTRS emulator allows you to control all of the aspects of digital media emulation from one graphical interface. Besides media management, it allow you to control some often used aspects of the emulator as well. If it is not displayed at the moment, you can display if by issuing the "Show Media Status Window" command in the Media menu.
The status window contains the following elements:
Disk Image pushbuttons:

> This section of the window provides pushbuttons allowing you to access some of the common disk functions that are normally available in the Media menu or the Disk Drive Management window, related to disk sets and creating disk images. See the Media Menu help page for full explanations of the commands.

Displayed Drives selector:

> This section of the window controls which disk drives are shown in the Disk Drive Status display to the right of it. You may choose to display either the first four floppies, the second four floppies, or the hard drives.

Disk Drive Status Display/Buttons:

> This section of the window allows you to control one of the emulated disk drives on the TRS-80. You may insert a disk image by pressing the Insert button. You also can drag and drop a disk image file from the finder to the drive picture to insert the disk. When an image is inserted, you can write protect/unprotected with the Lock/Unlock button. When the drive is write protected, a small lock icon will appear above the lock button. Finally, you can drag disks from one drive to another as well. If you hold the option key while dragging a disk, the disks between the two drives will be swapped, as opposed to just moving the disk from one drive to another.
> Status may also be displayed by the drives. Insert/eject, and lock/unlock buttons will light up/darken when disks are inserted/removed, etc. Also, there is a LED on the drive. It indicates read/write activity.

Cassette Drive Display/Buttons:

> This section of the window allows you to control the emulated cassette drive on the TRS-80. You may insert or remove a cassette image with the Insert/Eject button. The Manage button will take you to the cassette management window, see the Control Menu help section for details.

Printer Control Menu/Button:

> This section of the window allows you to chose which printer emulation you are using from the "Select" pulldown. You may choose the None, Text Printer, or Epson FX-80. The picture of the selected printer will be displayed in this section. The menu also has an option to reset the printer, which is equivalent to turning the printer off and on. The Preview button is used to view what the current printer output looks like. It is active for every printer emulation except the Text Printer. For more info on Printer Emulation, see the Printer Emulation help section. For setting the printer options, see the Printer Tab in Preferences.

Emulator Control pushbuttons:

> This section of the window provides pushbuttons allowing you to access some of the common emulator control functions that are normally available in the Control Menu, such as resets and model selection. See the Control Menu help section for full explanations of the commands.

Preferences: Display Tab
The Display Tab is the heart of the graphics control of the emulator.
From here you can change the:
Display Size
Display Mode:

> These radio buttons allow you to choose to display the emulator in a standard Aqua window, or to use the entire screen for displaying the emulator. You can also change the Display Mode setting from the Display Menu.

Scale Factor:

> In Windowed mode, these radio buttons allow you to choose between the standard Atari Screen Size where one TRS-80 pixel is mapped to one Macintosh pixel, 2xTRS-80 size (oneTRS-80 pixel is mapped to four, 2x2,Macintosh pixels), or 3x TRS-80 Screen size (one TRS-80 pixel is mapped to nine, 3x3,Macintosh pixels). You can also change this setting from the Display Menu. Note, on slower Macs, you may want to change your video depth to Thousands of Colors to achieve full frame rate when using more than 1x mode. (Don't change this while running the emulator!!!).

Window Border Width:

> Put a border of width pixels around the TRS-80 display. The default is 2.

Resize Window on Model 3 Mode Change:

> In Model 3 mode, resize the window whenever the emulated display mode changes between 64x16 text (or 512x192 graphics) and 80x24 text (or 640x240 graphics).

Resize Window on Model 4 Mode Change:

> In Model 4/4P mode, resize the window whenever the emulated display mode changes between 64x16 text (or 512x192 graphics) and 80x24 text (or 640x240 graphics).

Display Color
Emulator Colors:

> Specifies the foreground and background color of the sdltrs window. Default is black (0x000000) for foreground and white (0xFFFFFF) for background.

Fullscreen GUI Colors:

> Specifies the foreground and background color of the fullscreen Text GUI. Default is green (0x008010) for foreground and white (0xFFFFFF) for background.

Disk Leds
This option allows the user to chose if disk activity indicators are shown in the TRS-80 Emulator window (lower edge).
Character Fonts

> Select among several sets of built-in character bitmaps. The three different options allow you to specify the character set used for each model, should you change models during sdltrs execution using the GUI. In Model I mode , five sets are available. The default, wider, is a modified Model III set with characters 8 pixels wide; it looks better on a modern computer screen with square pixels than the real Model I fonts, which were 6 pixels wide. lcmod is the character set in the replacement character generator that was supplied with the Radio Shack lower case modification. (It was reconstructed partly from memory and may have some minor bit errors.) stock is the character set in the stock character generator supplied with most upper case only machines. Since sdltrs currently always emulates the extra bit of display memory needed to support lower case, this character set gives you the authentic, unpleasant effect that real Model I users saw when they tried to do homebrew lower case modifications without replacing the character generator: lower case letters appear at an inconsistent height, and if you are using the Level II BASIC ROM display driver, upper case letters are replaced by meaningless symbols. early is the same as stock, but with the standard ASCII characters [, \, ], and ^ in the positions where most Model I's had directional arrows. This was the default programming in the Motorola character generator ROM that Radio Shack used, and a few early machines were actually shipped with this ROM. Finally, german or genie gives an approximate emulation of the GENIE, a German Model I clone. Characters are 8 pixels wide, and double width is supported even though later GENIE models did not include it.
> In Model III , 4 and 4P ( modes, three sets are available:
> katakana (the default for Model III) is the original Model III set with Japanese Katakana characters in the alternate character positions. This set was also used in early Model 4's. international (the default for Model 4 and 4P) is a later Model 4 set with accented Roman letters in the alternate positions.
> bold is a bold set from a character generator ROM found in one Model III, origin uncertain.

Preferences:TRS-80 Tab
TRS-80 Model
Specifies what TRS-80 model to emulate.
Hi-Res Graphics
In Model III or 4/4P mode select which hi-res graphics card to emulate, the Micro Labs Grafyx Solution hi-res graphics card or Radio Shack hi-res card. In Model I mode, the HRG1B 384x192 hi-res graphics card is emulated. Note that the Model III and Model 4/4P cards from Micro Labs are very different from one another.
Keyboard
Shift Bracket Emulation:

> Chose Shift Bracket Emulation on or off. If on, emulate [, \, ], ^, and _ as shifted keys, and {, |, }, and ~ as unshifted. This is the default in Model 4 and 4P modes, and it works well with the keyboard driver in Model 4 TRSDOS/LS-DOS 6. If off, emulate [, \, ], ^, and _ as unshifted keys, and {, |, }, and ~ as shifted. This is the default in Model I and III modes, and it works well with many TRS-80 keyboard drivers. With some keyboard drivers these keys do not work at all, however.

Keystretch Value:

> Fine-tune the keyboard behavior. To prevent keystrokes from being lost, sdltrs "stretches" the intervals between key transitions, so that the Z-80 program has time to see each transition before the next one occurs. Whenever the Z-80 program reads the keyboard matrix and sees an emulated key go up or down, sdltrs waits cycles Z-80 clock cycles (T-states) before it allows the program to see another key transition. Key transitions that are received during the waiting period or when the Z-80 program is not reading the keyboard are held in a queue. The default stretch value is 4000 cycles; it should seldom if ever be necessary to change it.

Turbo Mode
Turbo Mode On:

> This will turn Turbo mode on or off. When turbo mode is on, the emulator will run faster than a normal TRS80, by a factor of Turbo Rate, which is explained below, and also set on this tab. The F11 key may be used to switch Turbo mode on or off while running the emulator.

Turbo Rate:

> Set the number of times normal TRS80 speed that the emulator runs when in "Turbo" mode. Turbo mode can be used to speed compute intensive applications, compiling source code for example, on the emulator. The default setting is 5x. Above around 8x you may experience problems with runaway keyboard repeat on the emulator, so use higher values with caution.

Serial Port
Serial Port Switches:

> Set the sense switches on the Model I serial port card. This option is meaningful only in Model I mode, and only when the Serial Port Name is not set to "". The default value is 0x6f, which Radio Shack software conventionally interprets as 9600 bps, 8 bits/word, no parity, 1 stop bit.

Serial Port Name:

> Set the tty device to be used for I/O to the TRS-80's serial port. The default is "". Setting the name to be empty emulates having no serial port.

Disk Drives
Disk Drive Size:

> Selectively set whether drives are emulated as 5-inch or 8-inch. The default setting is 5,5,5,5,8,8,8,8. You can omit values from the end of the list; those drives will get the default values. Setting one or more of the first four drives to 8-inch may be useful for CP/M software that supports 8-inch drives. You can also use XTRS8/DCT with 8-inch drives in the first four positions; even though the prompt suggests the unit number must be 4-7, numbers 0-3 are accepted. XTRS8 does not check whether the unit you've selected is really being emulated as an 8-inch drive, however; you'll simply get errors during FORMAT if you get this wrong.

Doubler Type:

> Specify what type of double density adaptor to emulate (Model I mode only). The type may be percom, radioshack (or tandy), both, or none. The type may be abbreviated to one character. The default is both, which causes the double density adaptor emulation to respond to the special commands of both the Percom and Radio Shack cards.

True DAM Emulation:

> Turn off the single density data address mark remapping kludges described in the "Emulated floppy disks" and "Real floppy disks" sections above. With this option given, the distinction between F8 and FA data address marks is strictly observed on both writing and reading. This option is probably not useful unless you need to deal with Model I disks that use the distinction as part of a copy-protection scheme. See also "Common File Formats for Emulated TRS-80 Floppy Disks", available at http://www.tim- mann.org/trs80/dskspec.html.

Emtsafe
Turn on/off ability for emts (Emulation traps) to write to unexpected places in the host filesystem.
Preferences: Printer Tab
The Printer Tab controls the type of printer emulation that is used for outputting to the printer TRS-80.
The are three choices for printer emulation, None, Text Printer, and Epson FX-80. The Text printer simply sends the printer output to a text file with optional script processing, while the Epson choice emulates a legacy printer, and allow the user to save the printer output in a PDF file.
The sections below describe the options available for each of the printer types.
Text Printer

> Print Command:
> The only option for this printer type is the command used to print. Within the command, %s is used to represent the file name of the temporary file generated during printing. For example, if you wanted the printed text to be opened in BBEdit, you would enter "bbedit %s" (without quotes) in the box. By default, the OSX command "open %s" is used, which will open the printed text in TextEdit by default, unless you have changed your file associations. The temporary files used for printing are created in the printer output directory, which you can choose on the Default Directories Tab. Also, if you have UNIX printing set up, you could directly print using "lpr %s"

Epson FX-80 Printer
Character Set:
This option allows you to choose which international character set will be used by default with the printer. On the real Epson, this was set by a DIP switch.
Print Pitch:
This option allows you to choose which character pitch will be used by default with the printer. On the real Epson, this was set by a DIP switch.
Print Weight:
This option allows you to choose which character weight will be used by default with the printer. On the real Epson, this was set by a DIP switch.
Form Length:
This option sets the form length, in inches, for pages output by the Printer Emulation. On the Epson emulation, this sets both the internal page length in the emulated printer, as well as determining the length of a page in the PDF output file from the Printer Emulation. For more details, see the Printer Emulation section.
Auto Linefeed:
This option, which is set by default, will automatically add a linefeed character to every carriage return sent from the emulated Atari to the emulated Printer. This function was normally performed by the printer hardware interface or driver on the Atari (Atari 850 or other). If you get blank lines in your output, you may need to turn this option off.
Print Slashed Zero:
This option allows you to choose if zero characters are printed with a slash by default with the printer. On the real Epson, this was set by a DIP switch.
Auto Skip Perforation:
This option, sets the printer to automatically skip 6 lines at the end of the page. This is very useful for program listings and other non-page formated output. On the real Epson, this was set by a DIP switch. Also, if you choose this option, you may additionally choose to split the 6 lines between the top and bottom of the page, giving a 3 line margin at the top, and a 3 line margin at the bottom of the page. This additional option was not available on the original printer.
Preferences: ROMS Tab
This tab allows you to chose the ROM files used in the emulation of the Atari. These files are not provided with the emulator. To select the file, press the select button, and the chosen filename will appear in the text field.
Preferences: Default Directories Tab
This tab allows the user to specify the default directories used for loading/saving various types of file used by the emulator. To choose the directory, press the select button next to the field, and when the directory is chosen, it's name will appear in the text field.
Preferences: Joystick Tab
This tab allows you to choose the Joystick options for the emulator:
Use Numeric Keypad for Joystick
This checkbox determines if the numeric keypad is used for emulation of a joystick.
USB Joystick/Gamepad
This dropdown allows the user to select which USB joystick, if any, is used for emulation of the TRS-80 Joystick.
Printer Emulation
The Printer Tab controls the type of printer emulation that is used for outputting to the printer device from the emulated TRS-80.
The are two choices for printer emulation, Text Printer, and Epson FX-80. The Text printer simply sends the printer output to a text file with optional script processing, while the other three choices emulator a legacy printer, and allow the user to save the printer output in a PDF file. For information on setting printer options, see the Printer Tab of the Preferences pane. The current printer can be selected, and preview output opened, by either an entry in the Media Menu or by using the printer area in the Media Status Window.
The legacy printer emulations allow the user to preview what has been printed to the printer so far. This preview is presented as a pane which drops down from the main emulator window, and is shown below. Besides previewing the output, there are controls that allow the user to control the emulated printer and output
While the preview is open, the printer is offline, and the main emulator is paused. The printer comes back online when the preview sheet is closed.

The preview shows the printed output on one or more pages of fanfold paper. The length of one page can be chosen in the Printer tab of the Preferences panel, and is 11 inches by default. Two purple triangles, on the left and right hand side of the paper, indicate the "current position"; this is where the next line of output will appear. Breaks between the pages will appear as dotted lines, simulating the perforations in fanfold paper. These dotted lines will not appear in the output.

At the bottom of the sheet are several buttons:

- Leave in Printer: pressing this button closes the preview sheet without affecting the output.
- Tear Off and Save: this button saves the print output in a pdf file. It then clears the print output from the preview and closes the sheet. So metaphorically this is like tearing off the fanfold paper and storing the output in a safe place. After saving the output to a pdf file you can use Apple's Preview program or Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the output or print it on a real printer.
- Tear Off and Delete: this clears the output without saving it and closes the sheet.
- LF: Line Feed, This will cause the current position of the printer to advance by one line.
- Rev LF: Reverse Line Feed, This will cause the current position of the printer to go back by one line.
- FF: Form Feed, This will cause the current position of the printer to advance to the top of the next page.
- Reset Printer: This is equivalent to power cycling the emulated printer, reseting any control characters that may have been sent by the emulated computer. It will also clear the print output, start at the top of a blank page, and close the preview window.

Text Printer
The Text Printer is used to send output to a plain text file. The file will be stored in the default print output directory, which is settable on the Directories Tab of the Preferences window. The file name will be automatically generated, and will be off the form SPOOL_xxxxx, where xxxxx is a random character string picked by the program/OS. The file may then be post-processed by a shell command, which is specified on the Printer Tab of the Preferences window. By default, the text file is opened in TextEdit.
Epson FX-80 Printer
The Epson FX-80 was a very popular printer in the 1980's, and is therefore supported by many Atari programs.
The emulation is intended to support all of the functions of the original printer, such as different character pitches, bold, italic and underlined text, margins, tabs, and graphic modes. It does not support user defined characters however. It does support proportional printing well, as opposed to the Atari 825 emulation's proportional print support, which is poor.
The technology used by the emulator for text rendering is very different from the technology used in the original Epson. As a result, the characters are somewhat different, but the size and looks of the characters are just like the real thing,
Media Menu
The Media menu on the SDLTRS emulator allows you to insert and remove digital media into the emulator, the same way you would on a real TRS-80. It has the following menu selections:
Floppy Disk Management (cmd-D)

> This menu item supplies access to a full Disk Drive Management window which allows you to insert and remove disks in all 8 floppy disk drives, as well as manage the status of the emulated drives and create images. It brings up a window which looks like:
> Drive Status

> > Each Disk drive can have one of three states:
> > - Empty - The drive has no disk.
> > - Read Only - A disk is inserted, but has write protect switch on, so that you may only read from the disk.
> > - R/W - A disk is inserted, and can be either read from or written to.
> > The Read Only and R/W status of the drive may be set after a disk is inserted.

> Eject All

> > This button allows the user to eject all 8 disks from the drive with one action. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-E.

> Save Disk Set Button

> > This button allows the user to save the names of the disk images that are currently in the drives to a file, to be loaded later. The file that the set is save in has an extension of ".set", and it is a human readable text file, containing the paths of the image files, or a blank line for a drive for a drive that has no disk. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-S.

> Load Disk Set Button

> > This button allows the user to load a disk set saved earlier with the Save Disk Set Button. The user is allowed to browse for the set file, displaying files ending in ".set". The emulator then loads the disk images specified in the file into the corresponding drives. If a drive in the set file is a blank line, no changes are made to the drive. This allows the user to load multiple disk sets sequentially. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-L.

> New Disk Image Button

> > This button will display a new window which you may use to create a new disk image. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-N.
> > In the Create Disk Image window, you may choose a format of a disk. It may be created in either the JV1, JV3, or DMK disk image format (See the Features page for info on the disk formats).
> > If the "Insert New Disk image into drive" checkbox is checked, the created image will be mounted on the specified floppy drive.

Insert Floppy (cmd-1 through cmd-8)

> This sub-menu allows you to insert an image file into any of the 8 emulated disk drives.

Remove Floppy (ctrl-cmd-1 through ctrl-cmd-8, and ctrl-cmd-0)

> This sub-menu allows you to remove a image file from one of the emulated disk drives, or you may empty all of the drives at once.

Hard Disk Management

> This menu item supplies access to a full Disk Drive Management window which allows you to insert and remove disks in all 4 hard disk drives, as well as manage the status of the emulated drives and create images.
> Drive Status

> > Each Disk drive can have one of three states:
> > - Empty - The drive has no disk.
> > - Read Only - A disk is inserted, but has write protect switch on, so that you may only read from the disk.
> > - R/W - A disk is inserted, and can be either read from or written to.
> > The Read Only and R/W status of the drive may be set after a disk is inserted.

> Eject All

> > This button allows the user to eject all 8 disks from the drive with one action. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-E.

> Save Disk Set Button

> > This button allows the user to save the names of the disk images that are currently in the drives to a file, to be loaded later. The file that the set is save in has an extension of ".set", and it is a human readable text file, containing the paths of the image files, or a blank line for a drive that has no disk. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-S.

> Load Disk Set Button

> > This button allows the user to load a disk set saved earlier with the Save Disk Set Button. The user is allowed to browse for the set file, displaying files ending in ".set". The emulator then loads the disk images specified in the file into the corresponding drives. If a drive in the set file is a blank line, no changes are made to the drive. This allows the user to load multiple disk sets sequentially. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-L.

> New Disk Image Button

> > This button will display a new window which you may use to create a new disk image. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-N.
> > In the Create Disk Image window, you may choose a format of a disk. (See the Features page for info on the hard disk formats).
> > If the "Insert New Disk image into drive" checkbox is checked, the created image will be mounted on the specified hard drive.

Attach Hard Disk

> This sub-menu allows you to insert an image file into any of the 4 emulated disk drives.

Remove Hard Disk

> This sub-menu allows you to remove a image file from one of the emulated hard disk drives.

Cassette Management

> This menu item supplies access to a full Cassette Management window which allows you to insert and remove cassette images into the drive, as well as manage the status of the emulated drives and create images.
> Drive Position

> > You can set the position of the cassette tape by changing the Position field. Valid values are 0 (fully rewound) through the number of bytes on the tape (at end of tape).

> New Cassette Image Button

> > This button will display a new window which you may use to create a new disk image. It has a keyboard shortcut of command-N.
> > In the Create Disk Image window, you may choose a format of a cassette (.cas or .wav).
> > If the "Insert New Disk image into drive" checkbox is checked, the created image will be mounted on in the cassette drive.

Select Printer

> This sub-menu item allows you to allows you to chose which printer emulation you are using. You may choose the Text Printer, or Epson FX-80. The sub-menu also has an option to reset the printer, which is equivalent to turning the printer off and on. For more info on Printer Emulation, see the Printer Emulation help section. For setting the printer options, see the Printer Tab in Preferences.

Preview Printer Output

> This menu item is used to view what the current printer output looks like. It is active for every printer emulation except the Text Printer.

Show Media Status Window

> This menu item allows to display the Media Status Window if it has been closed. For more information on this window, see the Media Status Window help section..

Display Menu
Screen Bigger
Set windowed mode scaling to next higher size. (1x, 2x, 3x, and then wraps).
Screen Smaller
Set windowed mode scaling to next lower size. (3x, 2x, 1x and then wraps).
Fullscreen
Switch from Windowed to Fullscreen mode.
Control Menu
The Control menu on the SDLTRS emulator allows the user to pause, reset, and save/load the state of the emulator. It has the following menu selections:
Pause (cmd-P)

> This menu item allows you to toggle the Pausing of emulation.

Soft Reset (F10)

> This menu item allows you to do a warm reset on the emulator, the equivalent of pressing reset on the TRS80.

Hard Reset (shift-F10)

> This menu item allows you to do a hard reset on the emulator, the equivalent of cycling power on the TRS80.

TRS80 Model Submenu

> This submenu item allows you to select the type of TRS80 computer which is emulated. The type of computer may also be chosen in the TRS80 Tab of the Preferences Window.

High Res Graphics Model Submenu

> This submenu item allows you to select the type of TRS80 hi-res graphics card which is emulated. The type of card may also be chosen in the TRS80 Tab of the Preferences Window.

Save State (cmd-S)

> This menu item allows you to save the state of the emulator, so that it may be loaded later with the Load State command. Disk images inserted into the computer are stored in the state file.

Load State (cmd-L)

> This menu item allows you load a state file (.t8s) previous saved with the Save State command.

Write Configuration (cmd-W)

> This menu item allows you to save the configuration of the emulator, so that it may be loaded later with the Load Configuration command. Configuration files (.t8c) are discussed further on the Features page.

Read Configuration (cmd-R)

> This menu item allows you load a Configuration file (.t8c) previous saved with the Save Configuration command.

Turbo Mode (F11)

> This menu item allows you to enable/disable Turbo mode . When turbo mode is on, the emulator will run faster than a normal TRS80, by a factor of Turbo Rate, which may be set in the TRS80 Tab of the Preferences (default is 5).

Debugger(F9)

> This menu item invokes zbx debugger console, to be used for debugging TRS-80 programs, viewing memory contents and other advanced actions. Type help to display list of available monitor commands, type cont to close the monitor console and continue emulation.

Show Message Window
This menu item shows the message window which will display status/startup information about the emulator, and any serious error messages encountered during emulation will be displayed here. The author may use this tool with you to debug difficult, or non-repeatable issues.