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Quick Reference |
This chapter covers all the menu items in Sweet16, discussing what they do.
Lets you select a disk image file to mount, using a standard BeOS file panel. In the bottom-right corner of the file panel, there's a "Mount as read-only" checkbox. If you check this, the image will be mounted as if the disk were locked.
You can select multiple disk images to mount if you wish.
This submenu lists the most recently accessed disks, so you can quickly get at them again.
The Eject option pops up a submenu allowing you to select a drive to eject. Empty drives are greyed out and can't be selected.
Mounts the physical disk in the device /dev/disk/floppy/raw; this is the main 3.5" high-density floppy drive. Hold down the control key while selecting this option to mount the disk read-only.
Pops up the Mount Physical Disks window to let you select real disk devices to mount.
If you need to make a new disk image, choose this option. A BeOS save file panel will appear; enter the name of the new image file, and choose the image format and size from the special menus in the file panel's menu bar, and Sweet16 will create the image file.
You can record movies of your Apple IIGS video (but currently only in the larger screen mode; if you're in small video mode, recording doesn't work)! To begin recording, choose Record Movie. The filepanel that appears contains several additional menus in its menu bar:
Choose the movie file format you want to save into. This menu will contain a list of all the file formats you have Media add-ons for, such as AVI or QuickTime.
Choose the codec you want to use for compressing the video. Codecs include Photo-JPEG, Indeo, and the like. If you don't want to compress the video, choose the Raw Video codec.
Choose the compression quality. The lower this quality setting, the smaller the resulting movie will be, but the lower-quality the video will be.
Choose the number of frames of IIGS video to write per second. The Sweet16 video display is 60 frames per second, but you can control the frame rate of the movies you reate. The lower this number, the smaller the movie file will be, but the more jerky the video will appear.
Note that creating movies is a very CPU and disk-intensive process. Unless you have an extremely fast machine, you'll have a very noticeable slowdown of the emulator while creating movies. To get best movie-creation performance, use a high-speed disk drive (a striped disk is best).
When you're done recording, choose "Stop Recording" from the File menu.
Currently, you can't get audio recorded into your movies.
Quits Sweet16. An alert will ask you to confirm first. Notice how the IIGS keeps running while the alert is up. Ah, the power of BeOS.
The Copy item captures the current Apple IIGS video display into the BeOS clipboard as a graphic clipping.
Pastes text from the BeOS clipboard into Sweet16. You can paste any length of text into any program on the IIGS; the paste is executed by simply posting fake keyboard actions so it looks like you're typing the pasted text.
Captures the current Apple IIGS text screen into the BeOS clipboard as a text clipping. You can then paste this clipping into a text editor.
Does the same thing as Copy; copies the current Apple IIGS video display into the BeOS clipboard as a graphic clipping.
Contains options for configuring Sweet16. There are several panels, accessed via tabs, that provide a variety of options.
The CPU Core panel provides options for configuring the Apple IIGS 65816 processor and memory settings.
The Memory slider lets you configure how much RAM your IIGS should have (from 1 to 8 MB). The Speed slider lets you configure the speed your IIGS should run at when at the Fast speed setting. This speed is only used if speed control is enabled. ZipGS emulation can also be enabled and disabled here; it only works if speed control is also enabled.
The "Automatically pause when minimized" checkbox causes Sweet16 to pause automatically when you minimize the video window. Note that due to a minor BeOS bug, Sweet16 doesn't automatically unpause when you bring the window back. You'll have to choose "Pause" again manually to resume the IIGS.
The Disks panel provides options for configuring disk emulation.
Available here is the option to turn on or off cacheing of floppy disk writes. By default this is off; however, your disk writes are much faster with cacheing on (the IIGS will write into a RAM cache, and a background BeOS thread will write to the floppy while you continue to use the IIGS). There is some additional risk to using the write cache (because if an error occurs, the IIGS will never know about it, because it thinks the write already succeeded), which is why this is off by default.
Additionally, you can turn on the "Really eject physical disks" option, which is off by default. When this option is on, Sweet16 will eject removable disks when you eject them from the IIGS.
The Sound panel lets you configure audio performance.
The amplitude scaling option lets you turn on or off the graudual decrease in volume of the IIGS sound oscillators as more and more oscillators are playing. Turning this scaling off substantially increases audio volume when playing music sequences; however, this shouldn't generally be necessary.
The "Play all sounds as mono" option assumes that all sounds are monaural, and forces them play out both speakers. You usually won't use this option; the only time you'd use this is if you tend to run programs that only use one speaker.
The "Enhanced stereo (headphones)" option enhances the stereo sound for use with headphones.
The Video panel lets you configure video settings.
The only option here for now is "Sync to VBL in full-screen mode". This causes the IIGS video refresh rate to be synchronized to your hardware's video refresh. This gives you improved video for games that use VBL for graphics timing. However, if your video isn't at 60 Hz (which is the default for BeOS's game full-screen modes used by Sweet16), this will cause your IIGS to run at strange speeds.
The Joystick panel lets you select a joystick to use as your IIGS joystick.
Before using the Joystick preferences, be sure to visit the BeOS Joysticks preference application and configure your joysticks. Then you can select your preferred joystick from the list in the Sweet16 Preferences window, as seen above. Click OK to save your selection.
If you find that your joystick's axes are reversed, there are checkboxes here to swap them.
The Serial panel lets you configure the emulation of the two serial ports:
This window is divided into two sections, one for each port. The Device popup menu lets you select a device to be used for that port. Available options include all your physical serial ports, plus None and Network. None indicates that you don't want to use the serial port. Network indicates that a network connection will be used instead of a real serial port. This will cause port 23 to be opened to the appropriate destination. In the future, a means to choose other ports to open will be available.
The "Use Telnet protocol" checkbox enables the use of Telnet specifications on a Serial-via-Network connection.
Serial-via-Network emulates a very simple modem, but instead of sending and receiving data via the serial ports, a TCP/IP socket is used. This lets you connect to sites on the Internet via your BeOS computer's network connection).
Note: this does not imply that you have access to all network services. You cannot run Marinetti connections over a Serial-via-Network connection. In addition, SvN is somewhat experimental right now. It isn't guaranteed that you won't have problems. Use it at your own risk.
The emulated modem responds to few basic AT commands:
These rules will allow many common init strings to be used. This will let you use the same init string for both real modem and SvN connections.
When you "dial" out to connect to a remote site via SvN, Sweet16 emulates the dialout process. The D command is intercepted and is used to open the network connection. If an error occurs attempting to open this connection, Sweet16 reports "NO ANSWER" to your telecom software, just like a real modem would. If the connection opens correctly, Sweet16 reports "OK" followed by "CONNECT speed", where speed is the speed your IIGS control panel is configured to for the serial port. This will let your telecom software know the connection is open, and it should respond properly.
When the SvN connection closes, Sweet16 reports "NO CARRIER". This will let IIGS telecom software know the connection has closed.
This modem emulation is by no means complete; however, it's enough to get the job done in nearly all cases. The only major feature that's missing is support for the "+++" request to return the "modem" to command mode; there's no way to do this under SvN at this time, which means you can't hang up the modem. Choosing "Hang Up" in software such as ProTERM will have no effect.
This option allows you to turn on and off joystick support. Be sure to configure your joystick before turning on joystick support. If there's a checkmark next to the menu item, joystick support is enabled.
Toggles on and off sound support. Please read the warning about disabling sound support.
Toggles on and off a display of the current IIGS system speed in the menu bar. This number is updated every two seconds, and will vary depending on system load or the speed you've chosen in the CPU Core preference panel.
Toggles between full screen mode and window mode. In full screen mode, Sweet16 increases the priority level of its threads, so it runs a lot faster.
Pauses or unpauses the emulator.
Issues a Control-Reset to the Apple IIGS.
Reboots the Apple IIGS.
Displays (or brings to the front, if it's already open) the Mounted Disks window.
Provides some basic information about Sweet16.