-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$Id: readme,v 1.2 1998/10/26 03:02:47 tp Exp $
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     __     ______   _ ____  _  _   _ 
                     \ \   / / ___| / | ___|| || | / |
                      \ \ / / |     | |___ \| || |_| |
                       \ V /| |___  | |___) |__   _| |
                        \_/  \____| |_|____/   |_| |_|
                    ===================================

                           VC 1541 Emulator V0.04

                      Copyright (c) 1997 Torsten Paul
			   Lommatzscher Str. 26
			      01139 Dresden
                        paul@os.inf.tu-dresden.de
			   All Rights Reserved

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
				  README
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0. Contents

   1. COPYRIGHT
   2. What does this emulator emulate?
   3. What does it not emulate?
   4. Running the emulator
   5. Accessing emulated disk drives
   6. The cable
   7. Credits

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. COPYRIGHT

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
   any later version.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
   GNU General Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
   along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
   Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. What does this emulator emulate?

   This program is intended to emulate the serial protocol that is used
   for the communication between a Commodore 64 computer and a VC 1541
   Disk Drive (currently only one device).
   That means you can transfer data to and from the C64 without a special
   program on the C64.
   Saving files is only partially supported (on .D64 images and the DOS
   filesystem) and may not work as expected in any case.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. What does it not emulate?

   Nothing of the hardware is emulated by this program. Because of this
   it's not possible to support any type of fastloader.
   Although direct disk access could be emulated, it is not implemented.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Running the emulator

   The emulator tries to detect the serial cable automagicaly. If this
   fails you can specify the used parallel port by adding the -lpt x option
   with x being the port number from 1 to 4.
   If you don't like the long startup delay for probing the processor
   speed you can give it on the commandline too (e.g. for a Pentium 200
   processor you can say -mhz 200).
   To select the directory the emulator starts in you can specify the
   -dir directory option (e.g. to start in E:\TEST\DATA say -d E:\TEST\DATA).
   Currently the dos directory names _must_ be uppercase, sorry.

   Available command line options:

	-h        show this help
	-dev      set device number
	-dir      set startup directory
	-lpt      set printer port
	-cable    force cable type (X1541 or XE1541)
	-mhz      set processor speed to x MHz
	-speed    set processor speed index
	-notsc    disable usage of the pentium timestamp counter (TSC)
	-noabout  suppress display of about dialog
	-guionly  run only the user interface (this is for debugging)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Accessing emulated disk drives

   If you have the emulator running on PC you can load the current directory
   as usual with:

        load"$",8

   This gives the directory of the device which can be a directory on the
   harddisk, a disk-image (.D64), a tape-image (.T64) or an archive created
   by the LYNX archiver (.LNX).
   Loading works as usual too:

        load"filename",8

   To change the directory you can use the cursor keys:

	- select with <CURSOR UP>/ <CURSOR DOWN>
	- change into selected directory with <CURSOR RIGHT>
	- change to higher level directory with <CURSOR LEFT>

   Using the mouse is also possible (if a mouse driver is present, of
   cause :-) but if there is no ".." directory displayed as for .D64 or
   .T64 images you have to use the cursor keys to go back to higher
   level directories.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. The cable

   The program requires the following adapter cable to be connected between
   your parallel printer port (LPT1/LPT2/LPT3) and a commodore disk drive.
   This cable is also known as X1541 cable because it was used the first
   time by a program with this name.
   Nowadays it is used by many programs.


        IBM Lpt port Female:         CBM IEEE serial port Female:
           Ŀ                          _ͻ
   Strobe1  Ŀ                    ͼ         ͻ  _____
                 14AutoFeed     Data5     1SrqIn  _____
   (Data 0) 2Ŀ                             6Reset
               15(Error)      Clock4     2ĿGround
            3       ____               ͻ   3    ͼ 
                 16Init                 ͼ
            4                             Atn
                 17SelectIn Ŀ
            5                 C64signal   IBMsignal       Lpt port + 2 
                18                                                    
            6  ĿGround   2 Ground  18..25 Ground                 
                19         3 Atn          1 Strobe      bit 0      
            7                 4 Clock       14 AutoFeed    bit 1      
                       5 Data        17 SelectIn    bit 3      
                25            6 Reset       16 Init        bit 2      
           13            
           

   As of version 0.04pl5 a new type of cable is supported: XE1541.
   For further information about it see the file x1541.txt (that originally
   comes with the Star Commander as the XE1541 is designed for it)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Credits

   Wolfgang Moser aka Womo (ia122@advs2.gm.fh-koeln.de)
	- XE1541 cable,
	- Parallel Port detection code
   Nicolas Welte
	- XE1541 cable
   Kovcs Balzs aka Joe Forster/STA (sta@ludens.elte.hu)
	- Parallel Port detection code
	(Check out for his Star Commander, the final solution to handle
        disk/tape images for C64 emulators. http://ludens.elte.hu/~sta/sc.html)
   Leopoldo Ghielmetti (GHIELMET@eldi.epfl.ch)
	- X1541 cable and the X1541 transfer program
   Peter Schepers (schepers@ist.uwaterloo.ca)
        - Lots of information about the various c64 file formats is
	  provided in his 'Emulator Formats' documentation
	(if you want to convert _any_ c64 related format try his program
        64COPY.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have fun!

--
Torsten Paul
paul@os.inf.tu-dresden.de
