I've added some screenshots of features I've added to the Emulator over the past few months that I never really talked about; they can make your development with the Gigatron significantly simpler if used properly.
CTRL-H toggles the help screen.
Terminal, (CTRL-T toggles):
- Allows you to control and communicate with a Gigatron over an Arduino interface using BabelFish's inbuilt commands.
- Can directly input text and commands to TinyBASIC.
- Can save and load programs to TinyBASIC.
- Can Copy/Paste text to the clipboard.
- Has a command line history and scrolling abilities.
- Right click brings up a menu.
- Terminal.JPG (265.99 KiB) Viewed 5843 times
Debugger, (CTRL-F6 toggles):
- Allows you to halt on breakpoint, single step both vCPU and Native code and also halt on watch variable.
- Breakpoints can be toggled by switching to disassembler mode, (CTRl-D), and then clicking on instructions, (pink asterisks).
- Breakpoints can also be set using the _breakpoint_ command within vCPU assembly code when using my assembler.
- Clear all breakpoints using the red x.
- CTRL-F7 runs to next breakpoint, (this can cause a debugger timeout if breakpoint is waiting on some type of input, I still need to fix this).
- CTRL-F8 steps PC, in both vCPU and Native modes, i.e. you can single step vCPU and then burrow into the actual vCPU instruction and single step the Native code that interprets that vCPU instruction, (switch between vCPU and Native using CTRL-M).
- Ctrl-F9, runs until watch variable changes, by default it is is set to 0x000E, (frameCount), so debugger will halt every frame, (1/60th of a second); great for single stepping your program visually at the macro level.
- You can set the watch variable by clicking it in the emulator to the address of any variable/memory location that you like.
- The watch variable can also be set using the _singleStepWatch_ command within vCPU assembly code when using my assembler.
- Debugger.JPG (446.85 KiB) Viewed 5843 times
- Dissassembler_vCPU.JPG (419.72 KiB) Viewed 5843 times
- Dissassembler_Native.JPG (485.55 KiB) Viewed 5843 times
Audio Editor, (CTRL-A toggles):
- Allows you to edit the inbuilt Gigatron hardware waveforms for audio channels 1 to 4 and a user sample for loading in your own programs.
- Extremely useful for generating authentic sound effects for old school programmatically generated sound effects used in arcade machines.
- Not useful for sampled sound as the waveforms are each limited to 64 samples.
- Left click in the waveform window changes a sample, right click in the waveform window resets the sample.
- You can load/save a user sample that does not modify the inbuilt samples, this can then be loaded into appropriate Gigatron channels as needed when your code loads on the Gigatron, (see Pucmon.gbas for an example).
- You can modify or reset the inbuilt Gigatron waveforms and test sound effects with your code, (any code), without having to save or load.
- Right click outside of the waveform editor brings up a menu.
- Audio_Editor.JPG (108.44 KiB) Viewed 5843 times