SDLTRS Help Text GUI

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

Main Menu
Floppy Disk Management Menu
Hard Disk Management Menu
Cassette Management Menu
Model Selection Menu
Configuration/State File Management Menu
Printer Management Menu
Default Directories Menu
ROM Files Menu
Display Settings Menu
Joystick Settings Menu
Miscellaneous Settings Menu
Main Menu
The main menu is the entry point for the Text GUI. You may move up and down through the menu items using the up and down arrow keys. A menu item may be selected by pressing Enter when the item is highlighted. Pressing ESC moves up a menu level (or exits the GUI if you are at the top level). Besides entering the GUI using F7, submenus of the GUI may be entered by using the key shortcuts show on the first three menu items.
Floppy Disk Management Menu
The floppy disk management menu allows you to insert and remove floppy images into the emulated drives, as well as save and load disk sets, create new disk images, and set emulated disk drive options.
For the first 8 options in the menu, there are three options:

- Hitting Enter while the item is selected, will move to the image selection screen, which is explained below.
- Hitting Backspace will remove a disk image if there is one in the drive.
- Hitting Space will toggle the write protect for the drive. The indicator for write protect is an asterisk "*" in front of the "Disk" in the menu item.

Save Disk Set
This ote, 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.
Load Disk Set
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.
When the user presses Enter in on a Drive item in the Floppy Disk Management screen, the file open menu is displayed. The up and down arrows may be used to scroll through the list of files. Pressing Enter on the <..> item will take you to the parent directory. On Windows, the Drive letters are listed as the last items in the menu, and you can change drives by pressing Enter on those items. You may also go to a particular section of the file list my pressing the first letter of the file name.
In the Floppy Creation screen, 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 Created Disk Into This Drive" is set to something besides none, the created image will be mounted on the specified floppy drive.
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-
Finally, the last menu item allows you to set the size of each disk drive, as either a 5" or 8" drive.
Hard Disk Management Menu
The hard disk management menu allows you to insert and remove floppy images into the emulated drives, as well as save and load disk sets and create new disk images.
For the first 4 options in the menu, there are three options:

- Hitting Enter while the item is selected, will move to the image selection screen, which is explained above in the floppy disk section.
- Hitting Backspace will remove a disk image if there is one in the drive.
- Hitting Space will toggle the write protect for the drive. The indicator for write protect is an asterisk "*" in front of the "Disk" in the menu item.

Save Disk Set
This ote, 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.
Load Disk Set
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.
In the Create Hard 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 Created Disk Into This Drive" is set to something besides none, the created image will be mounted on the specified hard drive.
Cassette Management Menu
The cassette management menu allows you to insert and remove cassette images into the emulated drive, as well as create new cassette images.
For the first options in the menu, there are two options:

- Hitting Enter while the item is selected, will move to the image selection screen, which is explained above in the floppy disk section.
- Hitting Backspace will remove a cassette image if there is one in the drive.

The second option allows you to 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).
The final option allows you to create a blank cassette image.
In the Create Cassette Image window, you may choose a format of a cassette (.cas or .wav).
If the "Insert Created Disk Into This Drive" is set to Yes, the created image will be mounted on the specified hard drive.
Model Selection Menu
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.
Configuration/State File Management Menu
Save State (alt-S or 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 (alt-L or cmd-L)
This menu item allows you load a state file (.t8s) previous saved with the Save State command.
Write Configuration (alt-W or 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 (alt-R or cmd-R)
This menu item allows you load a Configuration file (.t8c) previous saved with the Save Configuration command.
Printer Management Menu
The Printer Management menu 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. The Epson option is only available on the Macintosh, and it emulates a legacy printer, and allow the user to save the printer output in a PDF file.
Close and Reopen Printer Output File:
Selecting this option will cause the printer output file to be closed, and the printer command to be executed using the file name.
Print Command:
The only option for the text 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. On Linux, this defaults to "lpr %s", on Windows "notepad %s", and on the Mac "open %s". The %s in the printer command will be replaced with the name of the printer output file. (On the Mac, this is for the text printer only, not the Epson emulation).
Default Directories Menu
This menu 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 Enter when the appropriate entry is highlighted. That will bring up the Directory select screen. The up and down arrows may be used to scroll through the list of directories. Pressing Enter on the <..> item will take you to the parent directory. On Windows, the Drive letters are listed as the last items in the menu, and you can change drives by pressing Enter on those items. The directory is selected by pressing the Tab key.
ROM Files Menu
This menu 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 Enter when the appropriate item is highlighted, and the file selection menu will appear. It's operation is explained in the Floppy Disk section above.
Display Settings Menu
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.
Character Sets
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.
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).
Disk Leds
This option allows the user to chose if disk activity indicators are shown in the TRS-80 Emulator window (lower edge).
Joystick Settings Menu
Use Numeric Keypad for Joystick
This item determines if the numeric keypad is used for emulation of a joystick.
USB Joystick/Gamepad
This item allows the user to select which USB joystick, if any, is used for emulation of the TRS-80 Joystick. It will bring up a list of the USB joysticks that SDL is aware of as shown below:
Miscellaneous Settings Menu
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.
Turbo Mode/b>:
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 page. The F11 key may be used to switch Turbo mode on or off while running the emulator.
Turbo Speed:
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.
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.
Emtsafe
Turn on/off ability for emts (Emulation traps) to write to unexpected places in the host filesystem.
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.