

                        ******* ColEm *******
                 The Portable ColecoVision Emulator
                             version 0.4

                         by Marat Fayzullin
                      
	             Acorn Port by David McEwen 
	                          
Introduction
------------

This is a port of Marat's Coleco emulator. There are better Coleco emulators out 
there, but there aren't nearly so easy to port or even have the source freely available. 
Thanks alot to Marat for providing this source!!!

OK so it emulates a Coleco, but what is one of these machines. It is an old 
videogame console not in the leagues of the Playstation here I'm afraid, however 
it does have some rather neat games... such as Zaxxon.


How do I use it ?
-----------------

Easy - just download a game from the internet there are various good sites around 
and few companies actually care what happens with these roms since they are in 
many cases over 10 years old and noone is really going to buy them in this day 
and age. One of the best sites is Daves Arcade Classics, great for MAME roms as well.

Once you have some ROMS you can run them by setting the filetype to Coleco and 
double clicking or dragging the game to the Coleco icon. This loads the ROM. 
To start the actual emulation click Select on the icon and away you go. 
Unfortunately at the moment I havent implemented a Pause function, but one 
is in the works along with exiting to the desktop and leaving the game at the 
same state and then being able to return to it - as with other emulators.

It is fairly intuitive to use... 

The keys during emulation are :


  Cursor keys control movement

  [SPACE] - Fire1 button   
  [LALT]  - Fire2 button 
  [0]-[9] - Digit buttons
  [-]     - # button
  [=]     - . button
  [ESC]   - Quit emulation (also: [F12])

  [CAPSLOCK] switches between joypads      
  
  In the near future they will be conigurable in the front end.  
  
The frontend allows you to alter various variables that will affect the
speed of the game - the Uperiod and Iperiod values. Uperiod is the number of 
interrupts per screen update and the Iperiod is the internal interrupt period. 
In simple terms to speed up the emulator either increase Uperiod, decrease 
Iperiod or both. To slow it down decrease Uperiod, increase Iperiod or both.

Another thing you can do is select screen mode - this is largely irrelevant
as it works best in 320 by 256 although I may define a nicer mode in the near 
future. The problem is that the higher the resolution the smaller the display.
So until I implement some canny scaling routines - it's hardly worth it...
 
Also at the moment you cannot save options - it is just that I am trying to 
decide on the best method of doing this and also I have exams coming up... 
 
The emulator can also be run via the command line - but it is far easier via 
the frontend and from the next realease the two files will be integrated and 
thus the command line access will be removed!! You can find out the available 
commands by typing *Colem -help.
 
This emulator is at a relatively early stage of development and I am releasing 
it now, because I deem it to be perfectly playable. All future updates will be 
posted on my website - http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dem95c -, various ftp sites 
and I shall inform David Sharp so that he can information on his excellent 
site : http://www.come.to/emulate
 
 
 
*FAQ*
----- 

Where's the sound ?
-------------------

This is being worked on... Currently only a few ports of the emulator actually 
have sound and I don't know what it actually sounds like, because I can't get 
sound through the PC version with my PC Card. Thus this may take some time, I 
have a basic idea of how to do it.

Do I need a special screen mode ?
---------------------------------

Nope the emulator runs happily in a 320 by 256 mode as the screen fits nicely. 
I could have it running in a 16 colour mode but that would require a more 
radical recoding, which is a bit of a pain.

Will you get it to run in the desktop ?
---------------------------------------

Possibly, really it would only be viable on a StrongARM, due to the code being 
mainly in C. It is not a priority at the moment, but if I can recode sections 
to provide more speed then we shall see... as it stands it is too slow

Colem version 1.0 is due out soon will you be porting this ?
------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as the source is available I shall get to work. It has some speed up 
features in it that could help out in the quest for speed. It just depends on 
Uni work what the timescale will be, but it shouldn't take long, the machine 
is not very complex.

Will you be porting any other emulators ?
-----------------------------------------

Yes!!

I shall be (am in the process of) porting Marat's excellent MSX emulator!! 
This will provide access to a little known machine that has a large number 
of games and has several of really high quality. 

Other emulator ports are planned, but as the number of platforms left to 
emulate decrease the complexity increases so they may take a while.



Copyright and Disclaimer
------------------------

This emulator is copyright Marat Fayzullin 1994-6, and the Acorn-specific
components are copyright David McEwen 1998. You may not attempt to pass off
any part of this work as your own, although you may distribute it freely as
long as you supply the complete archive (that is, all the files supplied to
you).

This software is supplied "as is". I make no claims about the reliability or
suitability for any purpose of this emulator, and any use of it is undertaken
at your own risk. No responsibility is taken for any failure of the software,
or for any loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by the software.

Whilst I will endeavour to help you if you have problems with this emulator,
no such support is guaranteed.

In the above "This emulator" refers to everything supplied within this
archive, which is specifically the !Colem application and all the files
contained within it, and also the documentation files (including the one you
are reading now).



COMMENTS
--------

Any comments about the emulator as such should go to Marat Fayzullin : 
email : fms@komkon.org
Website : http://www.komkon.org/fms

Any comments about the Acorn specific parts and please no inane emails giving 
me ways of making money etc... just useful constructive stuff please
email : dem95c@cs.nott.ac.uk
Website : http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dem95c