A brief summary of the main features of the emulator.
If the disc auto-boots - and most that you'll find on the internet
will - use Run on the File menu to load a disc and have the
emulator auto-boot it. Or drag and drop the disk image from the File
Explorer.
Disc image... accesses the file directly. While the disc motor
indicator is on, the emulator has the file open, and will read and
write it. When the disc motor indicator switches off, the file will
reflect any changes made. You can also modify the image (using tools
such as beebasm) and the
changes will be picked up on the next access.
In-memory disc image... or drag and drop loads the file into memory.
The file isn't updated when changes are made in the emulator (use
Save to do that), and changes made to the file won't be seen in the
emulator (reload the disc image for that).
To load a disc without auto-booting, go to Drive 0 or Drive 1 on
the File menu instead, and use Disc image... or In-memory disc image....
Or, to create a new disc, use New disc image or New in-memory disc image, and select the file to save it to. (This applies to the
in-memory case as well, so the file is ready on disk to save the data
to.) You have the option of creating blank disks of various kinds, and
copies of the various Welcome disks.
The default setup is a BBC Model B with Acorn 1770 DFS and 16K
sideways RAM. The Hardware menu lets you select something different.
(The default list includes several types of BBC B (with various disk
interfaces); B+; B+128; Master 128 with MOS 3.20 or MOS 3.50; Master
Compact with MOS 5.00, MOS 5.10, or MOS 5.11i+Arabic ROMs; and
Olivetti PC 128 S.)
Changing hardware is equivalent to doing a power-on reset, and all state in the emulated BBC will be lost.
The default keyboard layout tries to map PC keys to their BBC equivalent by position - typically what you want for games.
Use the Keyboard menu to select a different mapping. Some games
might be better with the Default (caps/ctrl) layout, which sets PC
Left Ctrl to BBC Caps Lock, PC Left Alt to BBC Ctrl, and PC Caps Lock
to BBC Ctrl.
For typing, you may prefer the two character map options, which try to
map PC keys to BBC keys based on the character, so that PC Shift+0
gives you ) and so on. Default UK is for UK-style keyboards, and
Default US is for US-style keyboards.
To get BBC Copy, use PC End (fn+Cursor Right on a Macbook Pro).
If using Default or Default (caps/ctrl), the PC backslash key
produces BBC @. Press PC Home (fn+Cursor Left on a Macbook Pro) to get
BBC backslash.
If using Default US character map, press PC ` to get BBC pound sign.
If you have compatible game controllers connected, use the Joysticks menu to pick which ones are used for the BBC.
(Joysticks are referred to by name, and are numbered if you have several of the same type connected. At the bottom of the joysticks menu is an entry showing you the name of the last used joystick: the one on which a button was last pressed. This may help you figure out which is which.)
Joysticks 0 and 1 refer to the analogue joysticks.
Assuming an Xbox/Playstation-style game controller, left thumbstick and d-pad correspond to the BBC joystick X and Y axes, and the main 4 buttons and the 2 shoulder buttons correspond to the BBC joystick button. (Other buttons or triggers are unused.)
You can use the same gamepad for both BBC joysticks. In this case, by
default, the left thumbstick and left shoulder button control BBC
joystick 0, and the right thumbstick and right shoulder button control
BBC joystick 1. (The other buttons and triggers are unused.) Tick
Swap shared joysticks to have the assignment the other way round.
Digital joysticks are only available on Master 128 and Master Compact.
Assuming an Xbox-/Playstation-style game controller, left thumbstick and d-pad correspond to the digital X and Y axes, the A and X buttons correspond to fire button 1, and the B and Y buttons corresponding to fire button 2 (when supported).
For Master 128, the digital joystick is connected via a Retro Hardware ADJI cartridge (mostly compatible with the Slogger Switched Joystick Interface cartridge, designed for the Electron). See the Customize hardware section for how to enable this. This isn't supported by the OS, but some Electron games do support it.
For Master Compact, the digital joystick is connected to the 9-pin joystick connector on the back of the machine. This is supported by the OS in the usual fashion.
If the current setup includes an emulated mouse (see the Customize
hardware section below), select Capture mouse to have mouse input go
to the emulated BBC. The system mouse cursor will be hidden,
indicating that mouse input is going to the BBC instead.
To cancel mouse capture, switch away from the b2 window using the
usual OS keyboard shortcut. You can also assign a keyboard shortcut to
the Capture mouse command - see the Customize keyboard keys section
below.
(Note that unlike other commands, Capture mouse is special, and its
keyboard shortcut will always be handled even if it would overlap with
ordinary BBC input.)
If Capture on click is ticked, the mouse will be captured
automatically if you click on the emulator display.
Use File > Save state to save your place, and File > Load last state to reload it. (All state is saved, including disc contents.)
Use Tools > Saved states to see the list of states saved; click
Load to reload one, or Delete to delete it.
Save states are only available when the emulator has complete control over the entire state of the emulated BBC. That means the following restrictions apply:
-
all floppy disk images loaded must be in-memory disk images
-
hard disk emulation disabled (since hard disk images are are never in-memory images)
-
the current hardware config must have BeebLink disabled
Hover over the Save state option when disabled to get a tooltip
indicating why it's been disabled.
Use the timeline functionality to record a sequence of events for later playback. This functionality is a work in progress - so it's not super useful yet. But having recorded a timeline, you have the option of creating a video from it.
(The timeline uses the save state functionality, so the same restrictions apply.)
Use Tools > Timeline... to show the Timeline window. Click
Record to start recording; events are recorded to the timeline,
along with occasional saved states. Reload a saved state from the
timeline to rewind the timeline back to that point and continue
recording.
Click Replay to play the timeline back.
Having recorded a timeline, click the Video button to produce a
video starting from that point. Select the combination of resolution
and audio bitrate from the popup.
The lossless option saves out a sequence of numbered TGA files and WAV files, completely unprocessed, plus concat files that you can use with command line FFmpeg for stitching them together. The audio is 250 KHz float, as used by b2 internally; each frame is 736x576, timestamp as per the concat file.
(Bear in mind this can in theory use a lot of disk space for longer videos - each emulated second results in 50 images and 1 MByte of sound data! The lossless TGA compression generally works well for BBC Micro output but it can't do a perfect job on every image.)
Enter the file name prefix to save to, which will be used at the
prefix for all the various files it saves out. For example, if
entering test, the WAV files will be called test.000.wav,
test.001.wav, etc.; the video files will be called
test.0000000.tga,test.0000001.tga, etc.
The output files are designed for processing using ffmpeg. For some FFmpeg command line examples, see the FFmpeg notes.
For compressed video, when available, you'll get two resolution options: lower res 1:1 BBC pixels (736x576, 0.96:1 pixel aspect ratio), and higher res 2:1 BBC pixels (1472x1152, 0.96:1 pixel aspect ratio). Both are variable frame rate, but typically 50 fps.
Audio is FLAC.
For best results, use VLC.
The 2:1 option doesn't do anything special - it exists so that when uploaded to YouTube the video gets the HD 1080p50 option.
Use File > Save screenshot... to save a PNG format screenshot to
disk.
Use Edit > Copy screenshot to copy a screenshot to the clipboard.
(On Windows and macOS, this will just work. On Linux, this relies on
the xclip utility, which you
will need to have installed. Available from the package manager on
Ubuntu, and probably on most other distributions too.)
Use Tools > Options... to bring up the options dialog, letting you
fiddle with screen size, emulated speed, and so on.
Tick Limit Speed to have the emulated BBC run at a fixed rate. By
default this is exact BBC Micro speed, or near enough, but you can use
the Speed scale slider to adjust this. (Tick the 1x button to get
back to normal speed.)
Tick Background economy mode to have the emulator update its display
less frequently when it has neither keyboard nor mouse focus,
hopefully making ituse fewer CPU and GPU resources when not being
interacted with.
Tick Auto scale to have the Beeb display automatically scaled based
on the window size, or untick it and use the Manual scale filter to
choose your preferred scale.
Correct aspect ratio makes the display slightly narrower, better
matching the output from a real BBC.
Filter display lets the GPU smooth the display a bit when it's being
stretched.
For best results, leave these options on.
For (inauthentic!) 1:1 pixel output, switch them off and set a manual scale of 1.0, or 2.0, and so on.
Emulate interlace, which you probably don't want to tick,
approximates the visual effect of an interlaced display when
interlacing is switched on.
Hide CRTC cursor when unfocused will try to hide the cursor when the
BBC is running and its display loses keyboard focus, either because
another b2 dialog is active or because the b2 window doesn't have
input focus. This makes the emulated BBC behave a bit more like an
ordinary GUI program, in that flashing cursor implies it's where
keyboard input will go.
Correct aspect ratio and Filter display have the same effect as
the corresponding Display options, but apply to screenshots only.
BBC volume controls BBC sound chip volume. Disc volume controls
volume of the disc drive noises.
When Power-on tone is unticked, the Brrrr... power-on tone will be
silenced. This is not very authentic! - but it might make things a bit
less annoying when you find yourself hearing it a lot. (You will still
get the beep.)
Use the GUI Scale setting to scale the overall b2 UI up (making it
appear larger) or down (making it appear smaller).
The b2 UI should appear at the intended size on Windows and mocOS, and you can use this setting to tweak it if the overall size isn't to your taste.
Ensuring things come out looking right on Linux seems to be quite
difficult, so b2 just doesn't bother. If it looks wrong, probably most
likely if you have high-DPI displays, use this setting to try to make
it look right! (If the UI starts out absolutely unreadable, use the
Linux-only --gui-scale command line option to set it - run b2 with
--help for syntax details. The command line option will be used for
the setting, and it will be saved to the config file and persist for
future runs.)
Untick the Pixel font checkbox to have the UI use an outline font
rather than the default pixelly font. The two fonts are about the same
size, so just pick whichever option looks better to you.
See the file association section.
Present in the debug version - see the debug version section.
Keyboard > Command Keys... lets you select shortcut keys for many of
the menu options and window buttons.
By default, BBC keys take priority, so if a key is both a shortcut key
and a BBC key, its shortcut will be ignored. Tick Keyboard >
Prioritize command keys to change this, so the emulator will process
shortcut keys before processing BBC keys.
The results aren't always perfect. For example, suppose you assign Shift+F5 to a command, and then use that combination: when you press Shift, the emulated BBC will see the Shift press, even though the F5 will then be ignored when the emulator recognises the combination.
(There's one exception to this rule: Capture mouse. If it has a
shortcut, that shortcut takes priority over any BBC input.)
Click Keyboard > Keyboard layouts... to bring up the keyboard
layout dialog. Select the keymap of interest in the left hand list,
and use the BBC keyboard map to edit which PC keys map to which BBC
keys.
(Note that the BBC keyboard map always shows the Master 128 keypad, though the keypad is only active in Master 128 mode.)
Hover over a BBC key to see a little Edit PC Keys popup, showing
which PC keys correspond to it. While the popup is visible, press a
key to make that PC key map to the Beeb key.
To remove a mapping, click the BBC key to make the Edit PC Keys
popup stick. Then click the X button next to the PC key's name.
Each keymap also has a Prioritize command keys checkbox, which is
the setting for the Keyboard > Prioritize command keys option (see
above) when the keymaps is first selected. The tick box is the default
setting; you can always use the menu item to change it afterwards.
To create a new keymap, click the New... button to create one that's
a copy of one of the default keymaps, or click the Copy... to create
one that's a copy of one of the ones in the list.
Hardware > Configs lets you edit the list of configs that appear
in the Hardware menu, and choose what each config includes - ROMs,
sideways RAM status, and extra hardware.
Select the config to modify in the list on the left hand side. The right hand side will display the ROM slot contents, and tick boxes for extra hardware.
Click the ... button next to a sideways ROM slot/OS ROM to select
the ROM image. You can load a file off disk, or choose one of the
various standard ROMs that are supplied with the emulator.
Use the Type option in the ... menu for the OS ROM to select the
OS ROM type. The options available are:
-
16 KB- ordinary ROM, 16 KB or smaller (smaller ROMs will be loaded at the top of the region) -
Master Compact (64 KB)- Master Compact ROM, 64 KB (65,536 bytes) exactly, containing OS ROM and sideways RAM banks 13-15. This will work with a ROM dump from a genuine Master Compact ROM -
MegaROM (128 KB)- Master 128 ROM, 128 KB (131,072 bytes) exactly, containing OS ROM and sideways ROM banks 9-15. This will work with a ROM dump from a genuine Master 128 ROM -
Multi-OS (512 KB)- Multi-OS ROM, 512 KB (524,288 bytes) exactly, containing 4 sets of MegaROM contents. There are 4 such options, corresponding to which particular bank you want to use by default. This will work with a ROM dump from one of the commonly-available modern OS ROM switchers(Configs using this option add 4 entries to the
Hardwaremenu, one per multi-OS bank. Select the entry according to the bank of interest)
If using one of the larger ROM types (64 KB, 128 KB, 512 KB), some sideways ROM banks will become hidden, as their contents are part of the OS ROM and can't be configured separately.
Use the Type option in the ... menu for a sideways ROM to select
the sideways ROM mapper type, necessary if a sideways ROM is larger
than 16 KB. The following options are available, each listed with a
(non-exhaustive) selection of a few ROMs that require that type.
16 KB- ordinary ROM, 16 KB or smallerInter-Word (32 KB)- Computer Concepts Inter-Word, AMX Design, Beebug Master ROMInter-Base (64 KB)- Computer Concepts Inter-Base, PMS The Publisher,Spellmaster (128 KB)- Computer Concepts Spellmaster, Computer Concepts Mega3Quest Paint (32 KB)- Watford Quest Paint, Watford ConQuest, Watford PCB DesignerWapping Editor (64 KB)- The Wapping EditorTED (32 KB)- Watford TED (Teletext Editor)PRES ABE+ (32 KB)- PRES Advanced BASIC Editor PlusPRES ABE (32 KB)- PRES Advanced BASIC EditorView Trilogy (64 KB)- Acornsoft View Trilogy (unreleased, I think - see Stardot thread)Mini Office II (128 KB)- Instant Mini Office II (use that link to get a 128 KByte ROM image suitable for use with b2 - b2 doesn't support the set of 4 x 32 KByte images commonly available)
If the ROM type is 16 KB, you can tick the box in the RAM column to make that sideways slot writeable.
Use the up/down arrows to rearrange the ROM contents, changing the priorities.
Optional items of additional hardware can be added, as follows.
-
(B/B+/Master 128 only) Tick the
External memorybox to add a 16MByte paged RAM 1MHz bus device. Paging registers are at &FC00 (LSB) and &FC01 (MSB), and the corresponding page of the memory appears in page &FD.(The external RAM can't be enabled in conjunction with the Opus Challenger disc interface, as both devices use page &FD)
-
Tick the
Mousebox to add a user port AMX/Watford mouse (B/B+/Master 128), or a Compact mouse (Master Compact/PC 128 S) -
(B/B+/Master 128 only) Tick the
BeebLinkbox to enable support for BeebLink. For more details, see the BeebLink notes -
Tick the
Video NuLAbox to add a Video NuLA (This is ticked by default, as it's very unlikely to cause a problem) -
(Master 128 only) Tick the
Retro Hardware ADJIto add a Retro Hardware ADJI cartridge (upcoming modern remake of the Slogger Switched Joystick Interface. Select the DIP switch settings from the list box. The ADJI will use the digital joystick selected in the joysticks menu -
(B only) Untick the
ROM boardoption to limit the ROMs to using only the onboard 4 sockets, corresponding to banks 12-15. (The other sideways ROM banks will become hidden, as their contents aren't accessible in this state) -
(Master Compact/Olivetti PC 128 S only) Tick the
Serialoption to add the optional serial port upgrade
There are also some second processor options, for B/B+/Master 128:
-
Nonefor no second processor -
6502 cheese wedgefor an external 3 MHz 6502 second processor. (The Acorn documentation doesn't specify what specific type of CPU these cntain, but in practice they all seem to come with a Rockwell 65C02) -
Master Turbofor a 4 MHz 65C102 second processor. (With a Master, this appears on the internal Tube, replicating the Master Turbo; with a B/B+, this setup corresponds to a universal second processor with a Master Turbo board fitted)
(The second processor's OS ROM is configurable, but you can probably just leave it at the default.)
(In either case, as per the on-screen reminder: with a Master, a
*CONFIGURE TUBE may be required to get the OS to detect the second
processor. With a B/B+, be sure to install a ROM installed with the
Tube host code in it, such as the Acorn 1770 DFS.)
For B/B+/Master 128 only, tick SCSI to add an emulated SCSI hard
disk adapter, useable with Acorn ADFS. Select up to 4 hard disk images
to use with it - see the SCSI hard disks section below.
Tick MMFS to add an emulated MMFS interface, emulating the
memory-mapped SPI interface. See the MMFS section below.
Changes to a configuration don't affect the running Beeb until you do
a File > Power-on Reset (if you're editing the current config) or
select the updated configuration from the `Hardware' menu.
To create a new configuration, click the New... button to create one
based off one of the default configs, or the Copy... button to
create one that's a copy of one of the ones in the list.
The Delete button will delete the currently selected config.
SCSI hard disk images come as two files: a .dat file, the actual disk contents, and a .dsc file, holding the disk geometry. The format is exactly the same as that used by BeebEm and B-em, so existing hard disk images should work as-is.
As always with ADFS, when using hard disks in the emulator, be sure to
use *DISMOUNT and the like when necessary. The emulator will write
data to the disk image file only when ADFS requests it!
The easiest way to create a new hard disk image is to use the ... >
New option - this creates a preformatted 10 MByte ADFS hard disk
image.
If 10 MBytes isn't enough, you can reformat it using
$.FORMAT.SUPERFORM - see Acorn's Winchester Disc Filing System User
Guide (e.g,
https://github.com/bitshifters/bbc-documents/blob/master/Hard%20Disk/Acorn_WinchesterDiscFilingSystemUG.pdf).
Use the C option to set the drive parameters. The total disk size
will be roughly (heads * cylinders * 33 - 135) * 256.
(The -135 is unimportant for any realistic hard disk size, but if you're trying to create a tiny one then it might become noticeable. Safest to pick at least 10 cylinders.)
As another option, you can also refer to a nonexistent file. The
resulting emulated hard disk won't be readable, but you can format it
as above, if the named file (and its .dsc counterpart) can be
created.
It's not intended for regular use, but you can point b2 at an IDE hard disk image, and it'll assume it's a SCSI disk image with a disk geometry that should hopefully work. (You'll get a warning about the lack of .dsc file to alert you to this.) This should let you copy files off the disk.
Note that you may find hard disk images that do work with IDE ADFS but
give a Bad FS map error - some of the IDE ADFS ROMs don't do the
same checks as the standard ADFS. There's no specific fix for this;
you may have better luck with a different emulator.
For more about MMFS, see: https://github.com/hoglet67/MMFS/
To use MMFS with b2, you'll need an MMFS ROM. Download the latest MMFS
release from the MMFS release
page and use one of the
M ROMs, either MMFS or MMFS2.
See the MMFS release structure documentation for more details about the various types of ROM available.
If using MMFS, use the file selector to select an MMB file; if using MMFS2, select a SD card image.
If you're using an emulated Master 128, Master Compact or PC 128 S,
the current CMOS/EEPROM contents will normally be automatically saved
to when they change. So next time you do File > Power-on reset, or
re-select the same config, the CMOS/EEPROM contents will remain set.
(Each hardware config on the Hardware menu has its own independent CMOS/EEPROM contents - the intention being to match what you'd get when using a collection of real machines.)
If recording or replaying a timeline, the changes won't be saved. Use
File > Save CMOS/EEPROM contents to save the contents explicitly
in this situation.
Use Tools > Reset CMOS/EEPROM to reset the saved settings to
reasonable default settings. You'll need to use File > Power-on Reset to see the effect.
Copy text output using Copy OSWRCH text output. It works a bit like
*SPOOL, in that once activated it captures anything printed via
OSWRCH until deactivated.
It's explicitly described as "text output", because it strips out VDU control codes and normalizes line endings. You stand a good chance of being able to paste the result into a word processor or text editor or what have you.
There are 3 text translation modes available on the Copy options
submenu:
-
No translation- BBC ASCII chars come through as-is in the clipboard data. BBC £ chars will turn into ` -
Translate £ only(default) - BBC £ chars will come through as £ -
Translate Mode 7 chars- characters will be translated to symbols that resemble their Mode 7 appearance. (For example,{will come through as¼.) Perfect results from this are not guaranteed
When Handle delete is ticked (which is the default setting), the
emulator will try to handle delete (ASCII 127) chars properly and
remove previous chars when they're printed. This won't handle
everything perfectly, but if you're copying stuff you're typing in at
the BASIC prompt then it will do about the right thing.
(When unticked, the delete chars are stripped out entirely, same as other control codes.)
Paste text from the clipboard to the BASIC prompt using OSRDCH Paste
and OSRDCH Paste (+Return). The (+Return) version effectively
presses Return at the end, which is sometimes necessary when copying
and pasting BASIC listings.
This is intended for pasting in BASIC listings at the BASIC prompt. No guarantees it will work properly anywhere else, but you might get lucky...
To make it easy to paste text in from modern applications, newlines
(CR LF, LF CR, LF) are translated into CR (ASCII 13).
£ is automatically translated into BBC-style £ (ASCII 96).
The Mode 7 characters produced by the Translate Mode 7 chars option
(see above) will automatically be translated into the corresponding
BBC chars, so the data will round trip correctly.
Other non-ASCII characters are not currently supported.
Click Printer > Parallel printer to attach an emulated printer to
the BBC. Printed data is buffered as it is printed; use Printer >
Save printer buffer... to save the raw data to a file.
Printer > Reset printer buffer resets the printer buffer,
discarding the current contents.
Printer > Copy printer buffer text copies the printer buffer as
text, stripping out any BBC control codes and translating line
endings. Note that this won't properly strip out Epson-style ESC
control codes though!
As when copying text, there are copy options available on the Copy options submenu. (See the Copy to clipboard section above.) One thing
to note though is that delete handling is not as useful as with text
output because 127 chars are stripped from the output unless
explicitly sent using VDU 1.
There is some basic emulation of the serial hardware, and the emulated BBC will act mostly as if there's nothing connected to its serial port. This is a work in progress and will improve.
Tapes are not currently supported. Apologies.