[Blindapple] A Possible way to change disks with the emulator

Darcy Burnard dhsdarcy at gmail.com
Mon Sep 2 23:17:03 EDT 2013


Hi everyone.  I think I've found a way to change disks in the Apple 2 emulator.  It's not ideal, and it ultimately may turn out to be more trouble than it's worth, but it does work.
The mess emulator has a save state feature.  This saves every aspect of the emulator to a file.  Why you might do this is so you could close the emulator, and then return later, and pick up exactly where you left off.
However, when you restart mess, you can give the -flop1 parameter with a different disk image.  So it's like the apple is exactly how it was before, just with a different disk in the drive.
While in the emulator, you can record a save state by performing the following steps.
On Windows, press scroll lock and insert. On mac, press fn plus delete.  You'll recognize this as the first part of the command to quit.  In this case though, instead of pressing escape, you press shift f7.  At this point you press another key.  I don't think it matters what key, but that key will be the name of the state file.  I have been using the number keys.  Unfortunately sometimes the key you pressed, also is seen by the emulator.  For example, if you press 1, the file will get saved with the name 1, but the apple also gets the number 1 entered.  This is why it may not be an ideal solution.
Anyway, at this point, quit the emulator in the normal way.  Then you can restart it with a different disk image.  Also, you'll need to add -state 1 to your command, where 1 is the name of the key you pressed earlier.  The apple will come back up exactly how you left it, but with your new disk inserted.

Hopefully this made sense.  I've only started playing with it, so there may be a better way to go about doing things.
Darcy




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