Quick Getting Started guide

The ‘problem’ with SdlTRS is not the lack of options, but the multitude, making its documentation large. As occasional user, I created this Getting Started Guide.

Text GUI menus

Navigation of the menu’s: scroll to select the option you want and click anywhere or press Enter.

Quick keys

ESC - Previous menu and exit menu. And the TRS-80 BREAK key

Right-Mouse - Main Menu

Alt-E - emulator settings: model, clock speed and several options

Alt-W - write current configuration to the configuration file.

F10 - Reset the emulated machine (Shft- F10 for hard-reset)

Alt-0 - Toggle file system write protect (emt_safe)

Configuration file

Sdltrs is controlled by a configuration file, $HOME/.sdltrs.t8c for Linux, sdltrs.t8c in the same directory as sdltrs.exe for Windows. There are lots of options, here a useful subset to get started. Some can be overruled by command line options, but not all.

romfile11, romfile3, romfile4, romfile4p - these contain the path to the ROM image files. The supported file formats are binary (.bin, .rom) and hex-intel (hex). On the command line, the argument is -rom .

emtsave - this option means the emulator cannot write in the host file system, with for instance the EXPORT/CMD program (utility.dsk). Replace it with noemtsave. The Keyboard shortcut to toggle the safe mode is Alt-0.

model=N - this selects the machine to emulate. These options can be overruled by the -1, -3, -4, -4p arguments.

Any file with extension t8c can be supplied as command line argument for custom configurations.

Command line options & arguments

d(isk)N filename - Floppy image for drive N: Specifies the name of the floppy disk image file to be inserted into DiskN (0 - 7). Use "" as filename to remove an image from the drive. The image types supported are DSK, DMK, ...
h(ard)N filename - Hard disk image for drive N: Specifies the name of the hard disk image file to be inserted into HardN (0 - 3). Use "" as filename to remove an image from the drive.
mNo - model emulated: -m1, -m3, -m4, -m4p Select the TRS-80 model to emulate: I, III, 4 or 4P.
serial - Host serial line attached to the emulated machine: -serial <ttyname> Set the tty device to be used for I/O to the TRS-80's serial port. The default is /dev/ttyS0 on Linux, "?COM??" on Windows. Setting the name to be empty (-serial "") emulates having no serial port.