Emulator Debugging: Area 5150's Lake Effect
My last few articles on bus sniffing the IBM 5150 have been building up to this one. We're going to leverage our bus sniffer and sniffer decoder to finally debug Area5150's "Lake" effect. "But wait -", you might be asking: "- doesn't MartyPC run Area5150 already?" Yes, it does, but I have a dirty little secret I need to confess to the world. Despite all the accolades MartyPC has received about being super-accurate, it needed a special, Area5150 specific hack in order to run the final two cycle-counted effects, "Wibble" and "Lake." "Wibble" is the scene with Charlie Chaplin, the green fellow and the elephant. "Lake" is the final end credits scene with the water effect and the PCM audio player. In other words, I cheated. It haven't actually tried that hard to keep it hidden, as you can see if you are watching the console while MartyPC runs: Okay, maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself. Title-s...